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 ADDISON ALEXANDER LIBRARY. 
 
 whic!} was presented uy 
 Messks. H. L. and A. Stuart. 
 
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THE KELIGIONS OF THE WOELD. 
 
MACMILLAN & Co., CAMBRIDGE. 
 
 Hlontlon : bell & DALDY, 186, Fleet street. 
 ©XfortI : J. H. PARKER. 
 
 1£ton : E. p. willlvms. 
 
 lEtJinburg!) : edmoxston & douglas. 
 
 ©lasgoto : james maclehose. 
 
THE 
 
 RELIGIONS OF THE WOELD 
 
 AND THEIR 
 
 fdations t0 Clristiaiiit]!, 
 
 CONSIDERED IN 
 
 EIGHT LECTURES 
 
 FOUNDED BY THE HON. ROBERT BOYLE. 
 
 BY 
 
 FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE, M.A., 
 
 CHAPLAIN OF LINCOLN'S INN, AND 
 PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY IN KING's COLLEGE, LONDON. 
 
 • To yvwardv tou Qsou (pavtpov iarTiv iv auTOts* d yap Qua 
 avTOL'i i(pavipu}(TE. Rom. i. 19. 
 
 THE THIRD EDITION, REVISED. 
 
 MACMILLAN & CO. 
 
 1852. 
 
TO THE 
 
 RIGHT IIONOURxVBLE AND RIGHT REVEREND 
 
 THE LORD BISHOP OF LONDON. 
 
 My Lord, 
 
 Througu your Lordship's kindness I 
 was appointed to the Boyle Lectureship; the same 
 kindness has permitted me to relinquish it at the end 
 of ono year. I take the liberty of presenting to your 
 Lordship the Discourses of that year. The study of 
 the subject which is considered in them has been most 
 interesting and comforting to myself ; I shall be thankful 
 indeed if it should prove of any use to my countrymen. 
 Desiring for the Church universal, for that portion 
 of it especially over which your Lordship presides, 
 and for your Lordship personally, all the blessings of 
 this season, 
 
 1 have the honour to be, 
 My Lord, 
 Your Lordship's very obliged Servant, 
 
 F. D. MAURICE. 
 
 December, 1846. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PART I. 
 LECTURE T. 
 
 PART 11. 
 LECTURE L 
 
 -Why Judaism has not occupied a separate place in 
 
 these Lectures. Mahomctanism related to 
 
 - Christianity on its Judaical side. Nature of the 
 
 ' relation indicated. Wherein Mahometanism 
 
 difters from Judaism. Dangers to Christianity 
 
 rAG |.; 
 
 Why these Lectures were founded. Design of the 
 present Course. Mahometanism. Its successes. 
 Reason assigned for them. Principle of the 
 Faith. ....... 1 
 
 LECTURE II. 
 
 Character of the Hindoo Faith. The Brahmin. Wor- 
 ship of the Pure Intelligence. The popular 
 re- action. Vishnu and Siva. Relations of 
 the English Government to Hindooism. . . 34 
 
 LECTURE III. 
 
 Buddhism. Its origin and diffusion. Its various 
 forms. The Lama-Buddhism and its rivals in 
 China. . . . . . . G6 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 
 The Old Persian Faith, and its destruction. The 
 Egyptian. The Greek. The Roman. The 
 Gothic, General Conclusion. . . .96 
 
VI CONTENTS. 
 
 FAGB 
 
 from the forgctfulness or predominance of its 
 Mahometan side. How the Christian Faith 
 and Church satisfy the cravings of Mahometans. 130 
 
 LECTURE II. 
 
 The relation between Christianity and Hindooism 
 generally compared. Mistakes concerning it. 
 Investigation of its nature. The twice-born 
 man. The Image of Brahm. Incarnations. 
 Sacrifice. Dangers to Christianity from its 
 Hindoo side. How Christianity can and can- 
 not satisfy Hindoos. .... 162 
 
 LECTURE III. 
 
 How this relation should be detected. The descent 
 of the Spirit. Relation of the Christian Church 
 to the Jewish. Supposed analogy to the re- 
 lations of Buddhism with Brahminism. The 
 resemblances and difference between Christi- 
 anity and Buddhism. The Buddhist side of 
 Christianity threatening its existence. How 
 Christians may speak to Buddhists elsewhere, 
 especially in China. . . . .188 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 
 The early preaching of the Gospel — how it affected 
 Greeks, Egyptians, Romans, Goths. Form of 
 this preaching. Resistance from the doctrine 
 of an Evil Principle. Mahometan protest 
 against it, and for the sacredness of the outward 
 world. Hindoo protest on behalf of a divine 
 kingdom. Buddhist protest for an actual In- 
 dwelling Spirit. Modern infidel protest for 
 humanity. Christianity established by all. 
 Conclusion. . . . . . .218 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 THE substance of these Lectures was delivered, 
 according to the directions of Boyle^s Will, 
 in one of the London Chnrches, on the first Mon- 
 days of certain months in the years 1845 and 
 1846. Though it is not imperative on the preacher 
 to print his Discourses, it has been the custom to 
 do so. Indeed the intention of the Founder seems 
 to be scarcely fulfilled by addressing a series of 
 Sermons on subjects requiring some attention, at 
 distant intervals, to the eight or ten persons who 
 in the present times compose an ordinary week- 
 day congregation. In preparing them for publi- 
 cation T have omitted the texts, which were little 
 more than mottoes, and have altered the forms of 
 language which belong especially to pulpit com- 
 position. 
 
 The object of the Lectures, will, I hope, be 
 sufficiently intelligible to those who read them. 
 But it is a duty to speak of some writers who 
 have discussed the same subjects, and to whom I 
 am indebted. 
 
 In the first Lecture I have not touched upon 
 the question which is considered in Mr. Forster^s 
 
VI 1 1 PREFACE. 
 
 Maliomctanlsm Unveiled. My business was with 
 popular views upon the subject, not with learned 
 and ingenious speculations. Of Mr. Forster*s 
 theory I do not feel competent to express an 
 opinion; so far as it evinces a desire to deal fairly 
 with facts which Christian apologists have often 
 perverted, and a confidence, that the cause of 
 Christianity must be the better for such fairness, 
 it must, I am sure, have done good, even if the 
 basis upon which it rests should bo found unten- 
 able. 
 
 Mr. Carlyle's Lecture on Mahomet in his Hero 
 Worship, is probably much better known to my 
 readers than Mr. Forster's treatise. Some per- 
 sons may have been led by that Lecture to identify 
 Mahometanism with reverence for the person of 
 Mahomet ; they will strongly object to the senti- 
 ments which I have expressed in one passage of 
 this book. But I do not anticipate any such 
 objection from Mr. Carlyle himself. No writer 
 has more distinctly recognized the Islamite prin- 
 ciple of subjection to an absolute Will as the vital 
 one in this faith ; or has exhibited a more earnest, 
 I had nearly said a more exclusive, veneration for 
 that principle. A man seems to him to be strong 
 or weak, admirable or contemptible, precisely as 
 he is possessed by it or as he substitutes some 
 
PREFACE. l^ 
 
 notion of happiness, some theory of the Universe, 
 in place of it. Those who feel that they are 
 under the deepest obligation to Mr. Carlyle for 
 the power with which he has brought the truth of 
 this principle to their minds, for the proofs which 
 he has given that, as much in the seventeenth 
 century as in the seventh, it could break down 
 whatever did not pay it homage, cannot be per- 
 suaded to look upon any phrases of his which 
 appear to convey an opposite impression, however 
 much they may be quoted, however partial he 
 may seem to them himself, as the most genuine 
 expressions of his mind. They rather recognize 
 in these phrases an attempt, confessedly unsuc- 
 cessful, to bridge over the chasm which separates, 
 as Mr. Carlyle thinks, the ages in which this faith 
 could be acted out from our own in which it has 
 become only a name. That no phrases or for- 
 mulas, from whatever period or country they may 
 be borrowed, can accomplish this object, Mr. 
 Carlyle is a sufficient witness ; that it must be 
 accomplished in some way, his lamentations over 
 the present state of the world abundantly prove. 
 Those who think that it is the first duty of an 
 author to provide them with sunshine, find these 
 lamentations intolerable; there are some who 
 seem to be pleased with them as they might be 
 
 M.B.L. ^ 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 with any unusually strong exhibition of passion 
 upon the stage. There are others who hear in 
 his wailings the echoes of their own saddest con- 
 victions, but who for that reason cannot be con- 
 tent to spend their time merely in listening to 
 them or repeating them. One who desires to lead 
 an honest life, and learns that men in former days 
 were honest, because they believed in a Personal 
 Being, who is, and was, and is to come, must ask 
 himself whether such a belief has become impos- 
 sible for him. And if we are assured by Mr. 
 Carlyle that under the conditions of Mahomet- 
 anism or even of Christian Puritanism it is now 
 impossible, then we must again ask, Why so 2 Is 
 it because the truth which made these faiths so 
 energetic is not what it was, or is it because it 
 dwelt in them apart from other truths, without 
 which in our days, it can scarcely even exist, much 
 less live ? These questions may never present 
 themselves to a dilettante admirer of Mr. Carlyle ; 
 those whom his writings have really moved, and 
 who regard him with hearty, though perhaps silent, 
 gratitude and affection, are, I know, haunted by 
 them continually. If these Lectures should lead 
 any one such questioner even to hope for an 
 answer, they will do the work for which I espe- 
 cially designed them. 
 
PREFACE. XI 
 
 In illustration of the remark that the Maho- 
 metan conquerors were not merely ' Scourges of 
 God,' however they may have deserved that title, 
 I would suggest to the reader a comparison of 
 their wars with those of Zin^his Khan. May I 
 advise him also to read with some attention the 
 passage in Gibbon (Chap. lxiv. Vol. xi. pp. 391, 
 392, Svo. Ed.) on the philosophical religion of 
 that Mogul whom Frederic II., the accomplished 
 Suabian, the enemy of Popes, the suspected infi- 
 del, denounced as the common foe of mankind, 
 against whom he invoked a crusade of all princes ? 
 Gibbon's panegyric, illustrated as it is by his faith- 
 ful narrative of the proceedings of Zinghis Khan 
 and his successors in Persia, Russia, Hungary, 
 &c., of their incapacity to preserve a record of 
 their own acts, and of their ultimate conversion 
 by the bigotted Mussulman, is full of the deepest 
 instruction. 
 
 In connexion with the remarks upon the con- 
 stitution of Mahometan Society as exhibited in 
 the Ottoman Empire, I would recommend the 
 study of Ranke's excellent Essay upon that sub- 
 ject in his Fiirsten und VolJcen. 
 
 The second Lecture is a collection of hints, 
 which may not, I hope, be quite useless to some 
 whose personal observations of India, or whose 
 
 b2 
 
Xll PREFACE. 
 
 knowledge of its languages may enable them to 
 detect my mistakes, and if they please, to laugh 
 at my ignorance. The scholars of British India 
 and the intelligent natives have good right to 
 despise any one who sets up his own notions in 
 opposition to their testimonies, and who makes 
 these notions an excuse for severe reflections upon 
 a state of society with which he is unacquainted. 
 They may possibly be tolerant of one who by 
 comparing their testimonies, so far as he has been 
 able to gather them, has corrected many crude 
 notions which he had previously entertained, and 
 who desires nothing more than that any senti- 
 ments of disgust and contempt which Englishmen 
 in India may conceive for the notions and prac- 
 tices which they witness, should rather be 
 counteracted than strengthened by their English 
 education. Professor H. Wilson has undertaken 
 an edition of INIr. MilFs History of British India, 
 in the hope, as he intimates in his preface, of 
 correcting, by the evidence of facts, the harsh 
 judgments of the Hindoos, into which the his- 
 torian, was led by theory. To the civil and 
 military servants of the Company such a work 
 may be as useful as the design of it is benevo- 
 lent. But the missionary, though it is to be 
 hoped he will not neglect to profit either by 
 
PREFACE. Xm 
 
 Mr. Mill's labours, or by the experience and 
 oriental wisdom with which Professor Wilson has 
 enriched them, is open to another kind of tempta- 
 tion, which the one will not much increase, nor 
 the other enable him to resist. The actual sight 
 of a country wholly given to idolatry, must be 
 far more startling and appalling to him than any 
 pictures he can have formed of it previously. 
 Not to weaken these impressions, but to prevent 
 them from overwhelming him, and so destroying 
 that sympathy with the victims of idolatry, which 
 is the most necessary qualification for his task, 
 should be the great object of his home instruc- 
 tors. For this end, I think, we should aim, not 
 merely at cultivating Christian love and pity in 
 his heart : these will scarcely be kept alive, if 
 there be not also an intellectual discipline, (I call 
 it intellectual^ yet it is in the very highest sense a 
 moral discipline,) to shew him what the thoughts 
 and feelings of which Hindooism is the expression, 
 have to do with himself, how they are interpreted 
 by the experience of individuals and the histor}^ 
 of the world. I look earnestly to St. Augus- 
 tine's College, in the hope that it may fulfil both 
 these tasks. Should it do so, it will be indeed 
 worthy of its name ; it may be the instrument of 
 restoring faith to England as well as of imparting 
 
XIV PREFACE. 
 
 it to her dependencies. For do we not need, as 
 I have hinted in my last Lecture, to be taught 
 that the Gospel is not a dead letter, by discover- 
 ing what living wants there are in us, and all men, 
 which it meets and satisfies ! 
 
 It might have been desirable that I should 
 have appended to this, and the two following 
 Lectures, some illustrative notes : I had intended 
 to do so, but I feared that I should increase the 
 size and price of the volume, without conferring 
 a proportionate benefit upon the reader. I can 
 enumerate in a few lines the books from which 
 my proofs would have been drawn. From them 
 (and they are within the reach of persons who are 
 as ignorant of Oriental literature as I am,) much 
 more may be learnt in the course of a few hours* 
 fair study, than from long appendices of extracts 
 selected at the pleasure of an Author. 
 
 The Essay of Mr. Colebrooke on the Vedas, 
 in the eighth volume of the Asiatic Researches, 
 and Mr. Rosen's Latin translation of the Rig 
 Veda, are at present"* the chief helps which the 
 
 * I understand that a young German, now in London, 
 whose knowledge of Sanscrit is profound, and his industry jo/w.s 
 quam Germanica, has it in contemplation to publish and 
 translate all the Vedas. English money it is to he hoped 
 will not he wanting, when the other and more indispensable 
 requisite is supplied by a foreigner. 
 
PREFACE. XV 
 
 Western student possesses for a knowledge of the 
 earliest Hindoo faith. It is important to observe, 
 that while Mr. Colebrooke's extracts are chiefly 
 taken from the liturgical part of the Vedas, those 
 upon which the late Rammohun Roy raised his 
 argument for the corruption of the later faith, 
 were doctrinal passages. His conclusion, as I 
 have hinted in my Lecture, is therefore unsatis- 
 factory, though it ought not to be called unfair or 
 disingenuous. If he had quoted the prayers which 
 Mr. Colebrooke has made us acquainted with, 
 English readers would no doubt have discredited 
 his boast of the primitive Monotheism of his 
 country. But they would have done so hastily. 
 Those prayers imply a Monotheism as certainly as 
 the direct teaching ; and the one may justly be 
 adduced as the interpretation of the other. The 
 question is, what Monotheism \ The prayers and 
 doctrine I think make the same answer: a Mo- 
 notheism which made it impossible to distinguish 
 the object worshipped from the mind of the wor- 
 shipper, and therefore which implicitly contained, 
 and out of which was inevitably developed, the 
 later Polytheism. We may be thankful to Ram- 
 mohun Roy for helping us to detect the old faith 
 at the root of one which seems so unlike it, but 
 cannot allow him to confuse us, however inno- 
 
XVI PREFACE. 
 
 cently, by the use of a phrase, which is susceptible 
 of the most opposite significations. 
 
 The translation of the Menu Code, by Sir W. 
 Jones, brings that part of the subject within the 
 reach of all. I hope the reader will verify the ac- 
 count I have given of it by examining it for him- 
 self, together with the excellent digest of it, in the 
 first volume of Mr. Elphinstone's history. 
 
 The third Appendix to the history of this emi- 
 nent statesman contains an admirable commentary 
 upon the Greek accounts of India, contained in 
 the fifteenth book of Strabo, and the Indica of 
 Arrian. 
 
 The Vishnu Purana, edited by Professor Wil- 
 son, exhibits another and much more recent stage 
 of the mythology — that which I have spoken of as 
 produced by the artificial incorporation of the old 
 faith with the different kinds of worship which had 
 arisen from popular movements and reactions. To 
 trace the progress of these movements with little 
 help from external history, is of course difficult; 
 no one solution of the problem can be certain ; 
 all as hints may be useful. The one I have sup- 
 posed seems to be internally probable and con- 
 sistent ; still there is an objection to it which I 
 have no wish to conceal. Professor Wilson offers 
 reasons for thinking that the Puranas which have 
 
PREFACE. XVll 
 
 the Siva element predominant in them, are con- 
 siderably older than those which have the Vaish- 
 nava characteristics. It may hence be concluded 
 that the Siva worship itself preceded that of 
 Vishnu. If this were the case, I should be wrong 
 in my fancy respecting the first transition from 
 the merely abstracted Brahminical religion to the 
 popular ; at least, wrong in assuming what may 
 have been true in a particular case, as explaining 
 the history generally. Other authorities think 
 that the two forms of worship may have had a 
 contemporaneous development in different places; 
 a view not incompatible with the one I have taken, 
 especially as it is assumed on all hands that the 
 names considered as attributes or characters of 
 the divinity, as forms through which he was 
 beheld, existed almost in the first stage of the 
 religion. 
 
 The subject of the Philosophical sects among 
 the Hindoos, is treated by Mr. Colebrooke in a 
 series of papers in the first and second Volumes 
 of the Royal Asiatic TransactioTis. These papers 
 (which should be compared with the paper on the 
 Vedanta System, by Col. Vans Kennedy, Vol. in. 
 p. 412) are full of interest. 
 
 These writings of actual observers should be 
 studied before the speculations of even the most 
 
XVlll PREFACE. 
 
 intelligent thinkers. But I should be ungrateful 
 if I did not say that the passages on India in the 
 Mythologies of Baur and Windisehmann, and 
 still more in Hegel's Philosophy of History ^ with 
 the little book of Frederick Schlegel, called Die 
 Indien^ have illuminated many dark and dull 
 reports, and have enabled me to feel the con- 
 nexion between the thoughts of other periods and 
 countries and those which characterise our own 
 times. 
 
 The temptation to speak of Buddhism merely 
 or chiefly in this connexion, is one which I was 
 aware of when I entered upon the subject in my 
 third Lecture, and which I strove to resist. I 
 am sure that any advantage we may derive 
 from a comparison of the difficulties which have 
 beset Asiatics in different ages, with those which 
 are besetting Europeans now, must depend upon 
 the earnestness with which we determine first to 
 understand the former in themselves. If we are 
 more eager to make applications, than to ascer- 
 tain what we have to apply, we may write a 
 polemical treatise which will convince all who 
 agreed with us before, and will furnish writers 
 in reviews, who have exhausted their old argu- 
 ments or invectives against some opponent, with a 
 set of new phrases ; but we shall not remove one 
 
PREFACE. XIX 
 
 perplexity from any earnest mind ; we shall only 
 throw into it a nevi element of confusion. The 
 ultimate tendencies of Buddhism to entire evapo- 
 ration, to mere negation, are manifest enough. 
 The like tendencies assuredly exist, perhaps are 
 becoming stronger every day, in Christendom. 
 But to take the result of a certain doctrine or 
 habit of mind, without considering its stages, 
 varieties, counteractions ; its lights as well as its 
 shadows ; how it weaves for itself at one time 
 a dogmatic or sacerdotal vesture ; how it sinks 
 at another into a mere speculation ; above all, 
 what an Eternal Verity keeps it alive in all its 
 forms ; is not using it for the warning and in- 
 struction of men, but turning it into a mask for 
 frightening children. If it is well for us to shew 
 what possibilities lurk in Buddhism because they 
 lurk in us, still more ought we to consider its 
 actual history, because it is the history of a pro- 
 cess which may be passing in the minds of persons 
 whom we are most ready to think of as having 
 reached the last development of unbelief; because 
 it may be going on in us when we are giving our- 
 selves credit for the greatest amount of faith. 
 
 Entering upon the subject with these feelings, 
 I desired to hear of Buddhism not in digests, 
 which represented it as a system at rest, but 
 
XX PREFACE. 
 
 from intelligent observers who saw it in motion 
 and described its different appearances. The 
 papers on the subject in the Royal Asiatic Society 
 are for this purpose invaluable, especially those of 
 Mr. Hodgson, to which I have referred in the text 
 {Transactio?is, Vol. ii. p. 222) ; that on Buddha 
 and the Phrabat by Captain Low (Vol. in. p. 57); 
 that on the consecration of priests by Mr. Knox 
 (Vol. III. p. 271) ; the disputations respecting 
 Caste by a Buddhist (Vol. iii. p. 160). To these 
 may be added different accounts of the Lama in 
 the Asiatic Researches^ (Vol. i. p. 197, and xvii. 
 pp. 522 — 524,) and the later narrative of Mr. 
 Turner. For a general statement, I know nothing 
 better than the article on Buddhism in the Penny 
 Cyclopoedia. Dr. Pritchard's works will supply 
 valuable information upon this as upon most other 
 subjects. Of course it would be absurd to slight 
 the French writers upon Buddhism, though on a 
 subject which offers such facilities for systema- 
 tising, and in which systematising is so likely to 
 mislead, it may be lawful to view them with some 
 suspicion. 
 
 Of the Confucian doctrine, on the other hand, 
 they are probably the best, as they are the most 
 zealous and enthusiastic expounders. The Quatre 
 Livres of Confucius, translated by Pauthier, 
 
PREFACE. XXi 
 
 is a moderately-sized and readable book, and 
 the preface to it is very useful and instructive. 
 The Chinese reverence of Fathers is abun- 
 dantly illustrated in the fourth volume of the 
 Memoires sur les Chinois, par les Missionaires de 
 Pekin. All our recent writers, Davis, Medhurst, 
 Gutzlaff, though valuable in reference to China 
 generally, are rather vague and unsatisfactory on 
 the subject of its religion. The Chinese exhi- 
 bition at Knightsbridge was, in this respect, more 
 valuable than any of them. 
 
 The recent interpretation of the arrow- 
 headed inscriptions by Major Rawlinson will 
 add, no doubt, greatly to our knowledge of the 
 Persian or Zend doctrines. They seem to con- 
 firm the opinion which was so long entertained 
 upon other grounds, that Darius Hystaspes was 
 an instrument in the restoration of the true 
 Persian faith, after it had been subverted by the 
 Pseudo-Smerdis. It seems also clearer than it 
 was before, that the reformation, which is con- 
 nected with the name of Zoroaster, consisted 
 mainly in the assertion of the absolute supremacy 
 of Ormuzd. It does not follow that Ahriman 
 worship was prohibited or wholly denounced : that 
 it was continually re-appearing in the popular 
 mind, is evident. The later Magian faith may 
 
XXU PREFACE. 
 
 have been an attempt to reconcile the reformed 
 with the popular doctrine ; or rather, may it not 
 be supposed, that Zoroaster's was the regal creed, 
 and that the priests never more than partially 
 recognized it I 
 
 What has been said respecting the three cycles 
 of Eg}^ptian gods, is explained at large in the 
 jE^^pten of Chevalier Bunsen, Vol. i. p. 423 — 433. 
 He has a remark (p. 432) upon the mistaken 
 effort to form Triads in different mythologies, by 
 bringing together gods from different localities, or 
 periods of history, which I have found very useful. 
 Keeping it in memory, I think I have learnt more 
 to find in the Triad, an interpretation of all 
 mythology, than if I had laboured ever so dili- 
 gently to find parallels for it in the external parts 
 of the systems. 
 
 If I had been writing a history instead of a 
 lecture, it would have behoved me, when speaking 
 of the relations of Christianity with Persia, to 
 have noticed the Nestorian missions in that country. 
 I believe the history of these missions would throw 
 an important light upon the whole subject ; but 
 it would have led me into many details, which, 
 especially in a recapitulation, I was anxious to 
 avoid. To pass over any facts merely because 
 they might tend to the honour of heretics, would 
 
PREFACE. XXlll 
 
 be grossly inconsistent with the professions, and, 
 I hope, with the spirit, of these Lectures'^. 
 
 * I ought perhaps to have noticed two large Works, written 
 by Englishmen, on the subject of my second Lecture ; the 
 Hindoo Antiquities of Mr. Thomas Maurice, and the work 
 on the Literature, Manners, and Religion of the Hindoos, by 
 Mr. Ward. They illustrate two habits of mind directly oppo- 
 site to each other ; almost equally unfavourable, I think, to 
 a true apprehension of the Brahminical faith, and of its re- 
 lation to Christianity. Mr. jMaurice seems to regard the 
 abominations of idolatry as objects merely of literary interest 
 and antiquarian curiosity. Mr. Ward can see only the hateful 
 and the devilish ; of what good it may be the counterfeit, 
 what divine truth may be concealed in it, and may be needed 
 to supplant it, he has not courage to enquire. Each, I think, 
 is refuted on its own ground. Dilettante scholarship is found 
 not to be sound scholarship. That which has no hold on the 
 present, proves not to be true of the past. Mere observers 
 of evil do not describe the evil accurately or vividly enough ; 
 the points may be correct, but the impression is false ; for 
 want of light, we do not feel the darkness. I believe most 
 persons find it exceedingly difficult to read either of these 
 books ; quite impossible, to remember them. 
 
 I ought to have said, when speaking of Rammohun Roy, 
 that his Tracts were written originally for his own country- 
 men, not for Englishmen. They were first printed in Cal- 
 cutta : collected and re-published in London, I beUeve under 
 his direction, in 1832. 
 
PART I. 
 
 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD. 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 Whi/ these Lectures were founded. Design of the present 
 Course. Mahonietanism. Its successes. Reasons as^ 
 signed for them. Principle of the Faith. 
 
 IN the year 1691 Robert Boyle directed by a 
 Codicil to his Will " that Eight Sermons 
 should be preached each year in London for 
 proving the Christian Religion against notorious 
 Infidels, to wit, Atheists, Theists, Pagans, Jews 
 and Mahometans ; not descending lower to any 
 controversies that are among Christians them- 
 selves." He desired " that the preacher of these 
 Sermons should be assisting to all companies, and 
 encouraging of them in any undertaking for pro- 
 pagating the Christian Religion to foreign parts;" 
 and " further, that he should be ready to satisfy 
 such real scruples as any may have concerning 
 these matters, and to answer such objections and 
 difficulties as may be started, to which good 
 answers have not yet been made." 
 
 The second of these clauses seems to explain 
 the intention of the first. The objections to Chris- 
 tianity urged by Jews, Pagans and Mahometans , 
 were not, perhaps, likely to perplex an ordinary 
 Englishman. But England, in the 17th centur}', 
 
 M.B.L. A 
 
PART I. LECTURE I. 
 
 was becoming more and more a colonizing country. 
 The American settlements were increasing in im- 
 portance every year. The East India Company 
 had already begun its career of commerce, if not 
 of conquest. In his own particular department of 
 natural science Boyle observed the most steady 
 progress ; no one was doing more to accelerate 
 it than himself. He would naturally divine that 
 an advancement, not less remarkable, must take 
 place in another region, in which the interests of 
 men were far more directly engaged. He must 
 have felt how much the student in his closet was 
 helping to give speed to the ships of the merchant, 
 and to discover new openings to his ambition. As 
 a benevolent man he could not contemplate ac- 
 cessions to the greatness and resources of his 
 country, without longing that she might also be 
 conscious of her responsibility, that she might 
 bring no people within the circle of her govern- 
 ment whom she did not bring within the circle of 
 her Light. Accordingly, we find him offering 
 frequent encouragement by his pen and purse to 
 the hard-working missionaries who were preaching 
 the Gospel among the North American Indians. 
 Cheering words, pecuniary help, and faithful 
 prayers, might be all which these teachers of 
 savaofes could ask from their brethren at home. 
 But Boyle knew that difiiculties which they would 
 rarely encounter must continually present them- 
 selves to those who came in contact with the 
 Brahmin in Hindostan, with the Mussulman both 
 in Europe and Asia, with the Jew in every corner 
 
REASONS AGAINST CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 3 
 
 of the globe. A man who thought h'ghtly or con- 
 temptuously of any of these, or of their argu- 
 ments — who had not earnestly considered what 
 they would have to say, and what he had to tell 
 them — could not be expected to do them much 
 good. Moreover, Boyle was too well acquainted 
 with philosophical men, with the general society 
 of England, and with his own heart, not to be 
 aware that there was another kind of opposition 
 more formidable than this, which the proposal to 
 diffuse Christianity abroad must struggle with. 
 Was the gift worth bestowing? Were we really 
 carrying truth into the distant parts of the earth 
 when we were carrying our own faith into them? 
 Might not the whole notion be a dream of our 
 vanity ? Might not particular soils be adapted 
 to particular religions ? Might not the effort to 
 transplant one into another involve the neces- 
 sity of mischievous forcing, and terminate in in- 
 evitable disappointment ? Might nut a better 
 day be at hand in which all religions alike should 
 be found to have done their work of partial good, 
 of greater evil, and when something much more 
 comprehensive and satisfactory should supersede 
 them? Were not thick shadows overhanging 
 Christendom itself, which must be scattered be- 
 fore it could be the source of light to the world ? 
 Such questions as these Boyle must often have 
 heard propounded by others ; but the deepest and 
 most painful suggestion of them had been to him- 
 self. He tells us, in the sketch of an European 
 tour written under the name of PMlaretiis, that 
 
 a2 
 
PART I. LECTURE I. 
 
 when he was still a young man, after he had 
 visited other places, his curiosity at last led him 
 to those wild mountains where the first and 
 chiefest of the Carthusian abbeys is seated ; 
 where the devil, taking advantage of that deep 
 raving melancholy befitting so sad a place, his 
 humour, and the strange stories and pictures he 
 found there of Bruno, the father of that order, 
 suggested such strange and hideous thoughts, 
 and such distracting doubts of some of the 
 fundamentals of Christianity, that though his 
 looks did little betray his thoughts, nothing but 
 the forbiddingness of self-dispatch hindered his 
 acting it. But, after a tedious languishment 
 of many months in this tedious perplexity, at 
 last it pleased God one day he had received the 
 Sacrament to restore unto him the withdrawn 
 sense of his favour. But, though Philaretus 
 ever looked upon these impious suggestions 
 rather as temptations to be resisted than as 
 doubts to be resolved, vet never did these fleet- 
 ing clouds cease now and then to darken the 
 clearest serenity of his quiet ; which made him 
 often say that injections of this nature were 
 such a disease to the faith as toothache is to 
 the body, for though it be not mortal, it is 
 very troublesome. However, as all things work 
 together for good to them that love God, Phi- 
 laretus derived from this anxiety the advantage 
 of groundedness in his religion ; for the per- 
 plexity his doubts created obliged him to re- 
 move them — to be seriously inquisitive of the 
 
boyle's personal conflicts. 5 
 
 " truth of the very fundamentals of Christianity, 
 '•' and to hear what both Jews and Turks, and 
 " the chief sects of Christians, could allege for 
 " their several opinions ; that so, though he be- 
 " lieved more than he could comprehend, he 
 " might not believe more than he could prove, 
 *' and not owe the stedfastness of his faith to so 
 " poor a cause as the ignorance of what might 
 " be objected against it. He said, speaking of 
 " those persons who want not means to enquire 
 " and abilities to judge, that it was not a greater 
 " happiness to inherit a good religion, than it was 
 " a fault to have it only by inheritance, and think 
 " it the best because it is generally embraced, 
 " rather than embrace it because we know it to 
 " be the best. That though we cannot always 
 " give a reason for what we believe, yet we should 
 " be ever able to give a reason why we believe it. 
 " That it is the greatest of follies to neglect any 
 " diligence that may prevent the being mistaken 
 *' where it is the greatest of miseries to be de- 
 *' ceived. That how dear soever things taken 
 " upon the score are sold, there is nothing worse 
 " taken up upon trust than religion, in which he 
 *' deserves not to meet with the true one that 
 *' cares not to examine whether or no it be so." 
 (Works, Vol. I. p. 12.) 
 
 It is evident, I think, that a comparison of 
 religious systems undertaken by a man who had 
 just passed through so tremendous a conflict, and 
 who had no professional motive for entering upon 
 it, must have been something very different from 
 
O PAKT I. LECTURE 1. 
 
 a dry legal enquiry respecting the balance of pro- 
 babilities in favour of one or the other. I do not 
 mean that Boyle will not have brought to this 
 subject all the habits of patient investigation 
 which he ordinarily applied to the study of phy- 
 sical phenomena. The very anguish of his mind 
 made it essential that he should seek for a real 
 standing ground ; and that he should not there- 
 fore strain facts for the sake of arriving: at an 
 agreeable conclusion. Indeed, it is difficult to 
 say which conclusion would seem most agreeable 
 to a man exercised as he was : there would be at 
 times a bias of understanding, and even affection, 
 as strong against Christianity, as his education 
 could create in favour of it. But, undoubtedly, 
 his object in questioning these different schemes of 
 belief will have been to ascertain what each of 
 them could do for him ; what there was in it to 
 meet the demands of his heart and reason. It 
 was no occasion for clever special pleading ; the 
 question was to him one of life and death : when 
 he had once resolved it, the next duty was to act 
 upon his conviction, and to strive that all men 
 should be better for that, which he, because he 
 was a man, had found to be needful for himself. 
 Upon this principle he founded these Lectures. 
 The truth of which he had become assured, was, 
 he believed, a permanent one ; the next generation 
 would need it as much as his own. He did not 
 suppose that the actual relation in which that 
 truth stood to different systems of belief could 
 alter. But it did not follow that the enquiry 
 
FAITH HOW REGARDED IN THE LAST CENTURY. 7 
 
 respecting the nature of that relation would be 
 exhausted in his day. As new regions unfolded 
 themselves to European adventure, new facts 
 modifying or changing previous notions respecting 
 the faiths which prevailed in them, might come 
 to light ; fresh and more trying experiences might 
 make the past more intelligible ; the same doubts 
 respecting the justice, wisdom, or possibility of 
 bringing other men into our religious fellowship 
 which presented themselves to his contemporaries, 
 might appear again and again in very different 
 shapes, appealing to even opposite feelings and 
 tempers. 
 
 The event, I believe, has proved that he was 
 right. Within fifty years a prodigious change 
 has taken place in the feelings of men generally — 
 of philosophical men particularly — respecting Re- 
 ligious Systems. In the latter part of the 17tli 
 century, still more during a great part of the 
 18th, they were regarded by those who most gave 
 the tone to popular thinking and who had the 
 highest reputation for wisdom, as the inventions 
 of lawgivers and priests. Men cleverer and more 
 dishonest than the rest of the world found it im- 
 possible to build up systems of policy or to estab- 
 lish their own power, unless they appealed to 
 those fears of an invisible world which ignorance 
 so willingly receives and so tenderly fosters. This 
 being the admitted maxim respecting religions 
 generally, it seemed the office of the Christian 
 apologist to shew that there was one exception ; 
 to explain why the Gospel could not be referred 
 
8 PART I. LECTURE I. 
 
 to this origin ; how entirely unlike it was to those 
 forms of belief which were rightly considered de- 
 ceptions. That many dangerous positions were 
 confuted by works written with this object ; that 
 many of the distinguishing marks of Christianity 
 were brought out in them ; that many learnt 
 from them to seek and to find a standing-ground 
 in the midst of pits and morasses, it is impossible 
 to doubt. But the demonstrations of God's pro- 
 vidence were in this case, as in all others, infi- 
 nitely broader, deeper, more effectual than those 
 of man's sagacity. The evidence furnished by the 
 great political Revolution at the close of the last 
 century seems slowly to have undermined the 
 whole theory respecting the invisible world and 
 men^s connexion with it, which possessed the 
 teachers of that century. Men are beginning to 
 be convinced, that if Religion had had only the 
 devices and tricks of statesmen or priests to 
 rest upon, it could not have stood at all ; for that 
 these are very weak things indeed, which, when 
 they are left to themselves, a popular tempest 
 must carry utterly away. If they have lasted 
 a single day, it must have been because they had 
 something better, truer than themselves, to sus- 
 tain them. This better, truer thing, it seems to 
 be allowed, must be that very faith in men's 
 hearts upon which so many disparaging epithets 
 were cast, and which it was supposed could pro- 
 duce no fruits that were not evil and hurtful. 
 Faith it is now admitted has been the most po- 
 tent instrument of good to the world ; has given 
 
CHARACTER OF MODERN OBJECTIONS. [) 
 
 to it necarly all which it can call precious. But 
 then it is asked, is there not ground for suppos- 
 ing that all the different religious systems, and 
 not one only, may be legitimate products of that 
 faith which is so essential a part of man's con- 
 stitution ? Are not they manifestly adapted to 
 peculiar times and localities and races? Is it not 
 probable that the theology of all alike is some- 
 thing merely accidental, an imperfect theory about 
 our relations to the universe, which will in due 
 time give place to some other I Have we not 
 reason to suppose that Christianity, instead of 
 being, as we have been taught, a Revelation, has 
 its root in the heart and intellect of man, as much 
 as any other system ? Are there not the closest 
 the most obvious relations between it and them ? 
 Is it not subject to the same law of decay from 
 the progress of knowledge and society with all 
 the rest? Must we not expect that it too will 
 lose all its mere theological characteristics, and 
 that what at last survives of it will be something 
 of a very general character, some great ideas of 
 what is good and beautiful, some excellent maxims 
 of life, which may very well assimilate, if they be 
 not actually the same, with the essential prin- 
 ciples which are contained in all other religions, 
 and which will also, it is hoped, abide for ever 2 
 
 Notions of this kind will be found, I think, in 
 much of the erudite as well as of the popular lite- 
 rature of this day ; they will often be heard in 
 social circles ; they are undoubtedly floating in 
 the minds of us all. While we entertain them, it 
 
10 PART I, LECTURE I. 
 
 is impossible that we can, with sound hearts and 
 clear consciences, seek to evangelize the world. 
 Yet they are not to be spoken of as if they 
 proceeded from a merely denying, unbelieving 
 spirit : they are often entertained by minds of 
 deepest earnestness ; they derive their plausibility 
 from facts which cannot be questioned, and which 
 a Christian should not wish to question. They 
 may, I believe, if fairly dealt with, help to 
 strengthen our own convictions, to make our duty 
 plainer and to shew us better how we shall per- 
 form it. All their danger lies in their vagueness : 
 if we once bring them fairly to those tests by 
 which the worth of hypotheses in another depart- 
 ment is ascertained, it may not perhaps be hard 
 to discover what portions of truth and what 
 of falsehood, they contain. I think I shall be 
 carrying out the intention of Boyle's Will, if 
 I attempt, in my present course, to make this 
 experiment. I propose to examine the great Re- 
 ligious Systems which present themselves to us 
 in the history of the world, not going into their 
 details, far less searching for their absurdities, 
 but enquiring what is their main characteristical 
 principle. If we find, as the objectors say, good 
 in each of them, we shall desire to know what 
 this good is, and under what conditions it may 
 be preserved and made effectual. These ques- 
 tions may, I think, be kept distinct from those 
 which will occupy us in the latter half of the 
 course. In what relation does Christianity stand 
 to these different faiths? If there be a faith 
 
MAHOMETANISM ITS PROGRESS. 11 
 
 which is meant for mankind, is this the one or 
 must we look for another 1 
 
 I shall not take these systems in their his- 
 torical order, but rather according to the ex- 
 tent of the influence they have exerted over 
 mankind ; a reason which would at once deter- 
 mine me to begin in the present Lecture with 
 Mahometanism. 
 
 For the first ninety years after the publication 
 of this religion in the world, the Christians of 
 Europe could do little more than wonder at its 
 amazing and, as it seemed, fatal, progress in Asia 
 and Africa. Before the end of a century it had 
 obtained a settlement in a corner of their own Con- 
 tinent and threatened every part of it. But the 
 new Western Empire established itself, Christian 
 champions appeared in Spain, the power of the 
 Caliphs declined. Then Islamism appeared again 
 in another conquering, proselytising tribe. For two 
 centuries the European nations wrestled to recover 
 its conquests in the Holy Land. A period followed 
 during which the disciples of both religions seemed 
 almost equally threatened by Tartar hordes. These 
 stooped to the Crescent; in the 15th century a 
 mighty Mahometan government was seen occupy- 
 ing the capital of the East, threatening the Latin 
 world, profiting by the disputes of Christian sove- 
 reigns with one another, exhibiting its own order 
 and zeal in melancholy contrast to the quarrels, 
 unbelief, and heartlessness of monarchs and pre- 
 lates. It became a question with the thoughtful 
 men of that time, whether the Ottoman empire 
 
12 PART I. LECTURE I. 
 
 did not possess a polity which was free from the 
 tendencies to weakness and decay that had existed 
 in all previous governments, and whether it might 
 not last for ever. 
 
 In the 17th and 18th centuries, when the fal- 
 lacy of this notion was making itself evident, 
 Christians began to speculate coldly and quietly 
 upon the causes which had given such pre valency 
 to this faith in past days, and which still kept 
 it alive in their own. It may be well to consider 
 a few of the explanations which different persons, 
 according to their different observations or habits 
 of mind, have offered of this fact, that wo may 
 not lose the benefit of any light which has been 
 thrown from any quarter upon the nature or 
 principle of the religion itself. 
 
 I. It was an easy and obvious method of 
 solving the difficulty, to say that the Mahomet- 
 ans had triumphed by the force of their arms; per- 
 sonal valour, and a compact military organization 
 being comprehended under that term. That they 
 were warriors from the first, that their courage 
 was often amazing, and that the Ottomans for a 
 long time possessed the secret of military sub- 
 ordination, as scarcely any nation has ever pos- 
 sessed it, is evidently true. And it is a truth 
 of which Christian apologists would very naturally 
 avail themselves. The opposition, not in some 
 accidental points, but in their whole scheme and 
 conception, between the Sermon on the Mount, 
 and the doctrine which could require or sanction 
 such methods for its diffusion, would of course be 
 
FIRST MODE OF EXPLAINING IT CONQUEST. ] .j 
 
 carefully noted. Plain men would be asked to 
 declare which teaching bore clearest tokens of 
 belonging to the earth, which of a Divine origin. 
 Nor was this argument an unfair one, however 
 it might be, and has been again and again tra- 
 versed by an appeal to the practice of Christians, 
 and the weapons to which they have resorted for 
 the defence and propagation of their faith. For 
 it is quite clear that the Mahometan wars were 
 no accidental outgrowth of the system — that they 
 were not resorted to with a doubtful conscience, 
 with any uneasy feeling that they might by possi- 
 bilitv be inconsistent with the intentions of their 
 Founder. On the contrary, the very spirit and 
 life of Mahometanism exhibited themselves in 
 these wars. In them came forth all the most 
 striking and characteristic virtues which the doc- 
 trine has a right to boast of. 
 
 The Mahometan ruler felt that he was fulfil- 
 ling his vocation, when he was going forth against 
 the infidel ; he could scarcely fulfil it in any other 
 way. ^ye know indeed that Bagdad and Cordova 
 became celebrated for all graceful refinements, for 
 letters, even for toleration. We know that science, 
 physical and metaphysical, became a distinctive 
 mark of the Arabians. Where a book like the 
 Koran, w^ritten in a beautiful language, is regarded 
 with unbounded reverence, by degrees it will be 
 studied ; and out of that study will be produced 
 a literature which may spread itself in various 
 directions. Monarchs would feel the influence of 
 such pursuits, and would consider it their chief 
 
14 PART I. LECTURE I. 
 
 honour to direct them. But though periods Hke 
 those of Haroun-al-Raschid were sure to occur in 
 the history of JMahometanisra, though in one sense 
 they may be considered natural developments of 
 it, they assuredly do not belong to the religion 
 as such ; they rather shewed that the original 
 spirit which possessed its disciples was becoming 
 feeble ; they portended a further decline of it, and 
 probably its revival in some more vigorous form. 
 Whenever a Mahometan ruler quite allows his 
 arms to rust, whenever he does not feel that it is 
 his main work in the world to diffuse his doctrine 
 by those means which are most simple and direct, 
 we may be sure, whatever temporary prosperity 
 may be vouchsafed him, that his dynasty cannot 
 last very long. 
 
 But though on these grounds it may be fair to 
 represent Mahometanism as essentially warlike, it 
 is surely a great mistake to suppose that by saying 
 so we have accounted for its spread over so large 
 a portion of the earth. No thoughtful man could 
 accept such a solution, because when he hears of 
 valour in men and discipline in armies, he must 
 ask himself whence these proceeded, how they came 
 to attach themselves to this particular faith, and 
 because that question must inevitably lead him to 
 seek for the real ground of success elsewhere. It 
 cannot satisfy any Christian, because the very belief 
 which he opposes to that of the Mahometan, must 
 teach him that arms are not the most mighty 
 things ; that there are secret invisible influences 
 which are stronger than they. 
 
SECOND EXPLANATION POWER OF IMPOSTURE. 15 
 
 II. The proneness of the human mind to 
 embrace any imposture was resorted to as a 
 second method of accounting for this pheno- 
 menon, one w^hich might perhaps combine with 
 the former and help out its weakness. Of this 
 proneness, the records of the world's history seem 
 to supply abundant proofs — our own daily expe- 
 rience of others, and of ourselves, still more. All 
 men, in one kind of language or another, have 
 confessed that there is something in man which 
 tempts him to entertain falsehood, and disown 
 truth, to follow deceitful guides, to reject the 
 honest and true, to make a lie and to love it. 
 And yet I think all confess, in one kind of lan- 
 guage or another, that whenever any man, or any 
 body of men, has learnt to relish what is false, 
 and dislike what is true for its own sake, that 
 man, or that body of men is in the last stage 
 of corruption and degradation — is approaching a 
 point in which manliness, faith, and union become 
 impossible — in which the death of all individual 
 power, of all social existence, is at hand. That 
 the elements of such destruction are in every hu- 
 man being and in every human fellowship at every 
 moment, and that they are often gathered up in 
 religious systems, none will dispute. But that 
 they can account for the existence of any thing 
 which has endured for a long time, which has 
 manifested great power ; that in them lies the 
 source of a vigour and concentration which they 
 are perpetually threatening to extinguish, I think 
 no sane person who sets the question fairly before 
 
16 PART I. LECTURE 1. 
 
 himself can believe. We may need the propensity 
 of men to believe impostures, as a key to many 
 portions of the history of the Mahometan faith, 
 to many circumstances of its present condition ; 
 we shall not find therein the secret of its diffusion 
 and predominance. 
 
 III. Led by these or other considerations, to 
 feel that what is right must be recognized in this 
 faith, as well as what is wrong, Christians have 
 sometimes explained its influence, by speaking of 
 the plagiarisms in the Koran from the Old and New 
 Testament Scriptures. ThatMahometanism derived 
 much from its connexion with the older faiths of 
 the world, would be confessed, I suppose, even by 
 the philosophers who have least veneration for those 
 faiths. They would easily acknowledge, nay, have 
 often acknowledged, how much historical dignity 
 and sacredness an Arabian teacher must have ac- 
 quired by connecting himself with patriarchs who had 
 lived two thousand years before; who were attached, 
 by closest links of association, to the very soil his 
 countrymen trod ; whose doctrine he could speak 
 of as the truth given to their fathers, now revived 
 in its purity by himself. Nor would it be denied 
 by these philosophers, that one living not only 
 among Sabean worshippers but amongst Christians 
 and Jews might advance his cause by professing 
 his sj^mpathy wuth much of the teaching in their 
 holy books ; by saying, that he came to restore 
 their systems to purity, while he delivered his 
 countrymen from idolatry. But though, perhaps, 
 thus much might be conceded by all, far more 
 
PLAGIARISMS AND BEAUTIES OF THE KORAN. 17 
 
 by a firm believer in the Bible, it may be fairly 
 doubted whether the word " plagiarism" is one 
 suited to the case ; or whether, so far as Maho- 
 met was a plagiarist, he could have exerted any 
 influence. If he had merely transferred passages 
 from our Scriptures to his, merely adopted formal 
 doctrines which they set forth in living power, to 
 mix them with his own notions, one cannot be- 
 lieve that he ever would have moved the heart of 
 a single nation or of a single man. A teacher 
 may, indeed, exercise a much greater power by 
 reviving what is old, than by inventing what is 
 new ; but to revive a principle he must have been 
 penetrated by it, it must have taken possession of 
 him, it must have inspired his whole being ; other- 
 wise he could never impart it to others. Some- 
 thing of this sort must have been the case with 
 Mahomet ; and therefore his plagiarisms, great 
 as they may have been, do not account for his 
 success. 
 
 IV. The same answer may serve for those 
 persons of a very different temper who are dis- 
 posed to dwell with complacency upon passages in 
 the Koran which contain just and benevolent 
 sentiments, and who believe that these were not 
 merely transferred from Jewish or Christian sources, 
 but actuallv exhibited the heart of the writer. 
 We may admit the existence of such sentiments ; 
 we need not, in the least, wish to represent them 
 as insincere or hypocritical ; we may believe that 
 they have exercised a real influence over the 
 minds of Mussulmans, who constantly repeat 
 
 M.B.L. B 
 
18 PART I. LECTURE I. 
 
 them, and look upon them as proceeding from a 
 prophet of God. But we cannot beheve that 
 mere phrases and sentiments, be they ever so 
 good, nay, even if they did not occur in the midst 
 of any that are fond or trivial and contradictory 
 to themselves, could have wrought a deep con- 
 viction into the minds of men previously indis- 
 posed to them. A precept may be of vast weight 
 when we have bowed to the preceptor ; otherwise 
 it is weak : it may be respected and praised, but 
 it will not be followed ; nothing will be abandoned 
 for the sake of it. 
 
 V. There would seem then to be far more 
 plausibility in the opinion of those who attribute 
 great weight to the character of Mahomet itself, 
 believing that however it may have been mixed 
 of good and evil qualities, it was of a kind to act 
 mightily upon his own countrymen, and through 
 them upon mankind. He has been spoken of as 
 one of the great governing and leavening minds 
 of the world, one able to stamp his own image 
 upon nations and generations. Men did homage 
 to him, it has been said, as they always will do 
 homage to one who they feel is their master, who 
 is stronger than they, because his convictions are 
 stronger, because he has grappled more with real- 
 ities, because he has faith in unseen substances, 
 of which thev see little more than the shadows. 
 Such assertions may be at variance with many 
 conceptions we have formed of this man, but there 
 is much in his biography to bear them out ; there 
 is nothing in them, I believe, to startle any Chris- 
 
SENSE OF INSPIRATION. 19 
 
 tian who knows the grounds of his own belief. 
 At what point the strong conviction of a truth 
 which must be divine, which must be given us 
 from above, becomes mixed with self-exaltation, 
 with the desire of shewing how wise we are, and 
 of exercising a dominion over others for our own 
 sakes, it is hard to determine in any case. The 
 more we know of ourselves, the more we shall 
 understand how it is possible to vibrate between 
 the certainty we have of principles, which for the 
 sake of our moral being we cannot part with, 
 and a positiveness about notions which we have 
 grounded upon them. When the conscience is 
 clear, when the man is lowly, when he has been 
 subdued by discipline, the opposition seems clear 
 to him as between day and night ; the delusion 
 of his own heart is manifested to him by the light 
 which God has kindled there. But amidst the 
 noise of human applause the distinction vvhich was 
 so definite vanishes, the precious and the vile 
 become hopelessly mingled. Such personal ex- 
 periences,, which all have had in a greater or less 
 degree — which earnest and thoughtful young men 
 especially require to be schooled in, because it 
 depends upon the way they use them whether 
 strong and clear and bright impressions in their 
 minds shall destroy their docility, shall make them 
 merely utterers of some new notion, or shall ripen 
 into blessed discoveries of that which is true — 
 these experiences, I say, may help us to read the 
 biographies of men who have had a great influence 
 upon the world, with a kindlier and truer feeling. 
 
 b2 
 
20 PART I. LECTURE I. 
 
 Their impressions were, doubtless, more over- 
 powering than ours, their conflicts greater, their 
 temptations severer. It is hard to say, that be- 
 cause they called themselves inspired, they meant 
 to deceive ; that language might be the language 
 of humility, not of arrogance — the confession that 
 every good gift, above all every illumination re- 
 specting any invisible reality, cometh from the 
 Father of Lights. Not in this conviction, but in 
 that pride which forgets Him — in the desire to 
 be something in themselves — do we trace the be- 
 ginning of all imposture ; in the blending of the 
 two together, the melancholy mixture which re- 
 ligious systems present to one who studies them 
 in themselves or in their effects. I am far then 
 from wishing to deny that Mahomet's character 
 may have met with unfair treatment at the hands 
 of Christians. And it is, without doubt, one af 
 the most noticeable circumstances in the history 
 of his religion, that his own person should have 
 been so much bound up with it ; that every caliph 
 or sultan who has reigned over any tribe of his 
 followers should have reigned in his name ; that 
 the recollection of a man should have so much 
 more power than even the book which Mussul- 
 mans regard with such profound reverence ; that 
 the honour of a human chieftain should so mark- 
 edly distinguish a religion which looks upon man 
 as separated by an immeasurable distance from 
 the object of his worship. But this last remark 
 shews that the person and character of Mahomet, 
 important as they may have been in their prac- 
 
HERO-WORSBIP. MONOTHEISM. 21 
 
 tical influence, cannot satisfactorily explain the 
 charm by which his religion worked its way. In 
 fact, it is one of the anomalies which requires 
 to be accounted for, that a human leader should 
 win this reverence. He himself declared and felt 
 that he was nothing but a witness for God ; his 
 followers received and honoured him as holding 
 that office. All the worth he had in him was de- 
 rived from that of which he testified. When he 
 began consciously to take up any other position it 
 was one of weakness. We may consider Mahomet 
 a hero if we please ; we may regard the rever- 
 ence for him as a proof of men's tendency in all 
 circumstances to worship heroes ; but we cannot, 
 without denying the plainest facts of the case, 
 say that the success of his doctrine was a conse- 
 quence of this disposition. His teaching was em- 
 phatically the denial of that worship ; every Maho- 
 metan sword was drawn to prove that it was false, 
 and to put it down. 
 
 VI. It might seem to follow inevitably, from 
 what has just been said, that the Monotheism of 
 Mahomet, and his hatred of idolatry, constituted 
 the strength and vitality of his system. This 
 opinion has often been maintained, and a reader 
 of the history is continually tempted to adopt it. 
 As we follow any of the earlier conquerors through 
 Persia, through Egypt, through the Greek empire, 
 we feel that the enthusiasm of the chief and of 
 the soldier is connected with what they believe to 
 be the destruction of false worship, the carrying 
 out of the first and second Commandments. AU 
 
22 PART I. LECTURE I. 
 
 the enemies of the Prophet are regarded alike as 
 infidels, because all are thought to have raised 
 something created into the place and glory of the 
 Creator. The belief that nothing in the earth, 
 nothing in the heavens, not even light, is a symbol 
 of God ; that not even man himself can be looked 
 upon in any other character than as a minister 
 of the one Supreme Being, evidently inspires 
 every enterprize. In the strength of it they 
 destroy temples idols priests, plunder cities, make 
 slaves of their inhabitants, turn their children 
 into soldiers of the Crescent. All this is true, 
 and yet I think no considerate person will suppose 
 that mere opposition to the grossest forms of 
 false worship could give nerve to any arm, far 
 less permanence to any society. If Monotheism 
 means the not believing in many gods, it could, as 
 little as the other causes we have enumerated, be 
 the root of the Mahometan faith and the Ma- 
 hometan power. 
 
 VII. But these sweeping conquests of Ma- 
 homet are susceptible of yet another interpreta- 
 tion, which has sometimes been applied to the 
 whole history of their dominion : they may be 
 regarded as the righteous judgments of God upon 
 guilty nations, whether these were the idolaters 
 of India, the fire-worshippers of Persia, the cor- 
 rupted Greek, or the Visigoth. It is difficult, 
 I should think, for any person really taking the 
 Bible as his guide, nay, for any person recognizing 
 a Divine Providence at all, not to look upon 
 every great earthquake which has shaken king- 
 
THE ISLAMITE PRINCIPLE. 23 
 
 doms as a Divine visitation ; not to see a Divine 
 hand regulating outward circumstances, and the 
 wills of men. Nor can we go so far without 
 going further, and asking what the state of those 
 nations was on which the scourge descended 1 jf^ 
 we pursue the enquiry fairly in this case, we shall 
 be led, it seems to me, to the discovery of the 
 real ground of the Mahometan might, and per- 
 haps to regard the continuance of that might 
 through so many ages not wholly as a calamity. 
 In the Christian nations which were permitted to \ 
 fall under the armies of Islam, almost as much as 
 in those which were avowedly Pagan, the sense 
 of a Divine Almighty Will, to which all human 
 wills were to be bowed, had evaporated amidst 
 the worship of images, amidst moral corruptions, 
 philosophical theories, religious controversies. No- 
 tions about God more or less occupied them ; but 
 God Himself was not in all their thoughts. The 
 awe of an Absolute Eternal Being, to be obeyed 
 as well as to be confessed, was passing away in 
 some — had scarcely been awakened in others. 
 The soldiers of Mahomet said, by their ^vords 
 and acts, "God verily is, and man is his minister, 
 to accomplish his will upon earth." This we shall 
 find was the inspiring thought in the warriors of 
 the Crescent — this gave them valour, subordina- 
 tion, discipline. This, where it encountered no 
 like or equal feeling in the minds of those among 
 whom they came, made them invincible. We 
 must not be content with talking of their armies ; 
 here was the life of their armies. We must not 
 
24 PART I. LECTURE I. 
 
 speak of men's readiness to receive an imposture ; 
 in yielding to this assertion they were bowing to 
 a truth. This was no verbal copy from ancient 
 records ; it may have been the oldest of all verities, 
 but it was fresh and new for every one who 
 acted upon it. It was no mere phrase out of a 
 book — no homage to a mortal hero — no mere 
 denial of other men's faith. Let us go yet farther 
 and say, It was a mercy of God that such a wit- 
 ness, however bare of other supporting principles, 
 however surrounded by confusions, should have 
 been borne to His Name, when His creatures 
 were ready, practically, to forget it. The first 
 Mahometan conquest, the continued Mahometan 
 dominion, proves the assertion "God is" to be no 
 dry proposition, but one which is capable of exer- 
 cising a mastery over the rudest tribes, of giving 
 them an order, of making them victorious over 
 all the civilization and all the religion which has 
 not this principle for its basis. 
 
 I think that most persons studying the history 
 of Mahometanism without prejudice, will feel that 
 this is the principle which confronts them at every 
 turn, and to which every thing else is subordinate. 
 And if so, the consideration is surely a very im- 
 portant one for our purpose. Vie are told that 
 the mere theological part of religious systems is 
 only a loose, flimsy drapery for certain maxims of 
 morality, or certain ideas about the nature and 
 spiritual destinies of man. How does the study 
 of Mahometanism bear out this opinion ? Is it 
 a collection of moral maxims which has been 
 
INFERENCES FROM THESE STATEMENTS. 25 
 
 its strength? Is it some theory or conception 
 about the nature of man ? Precisely the oppo- 
 site assertion is true. All mere maxims, all mere 
 ideas about the nature of man, have proved weak 
 and helpless before this proclamation of a living and 
 Eternal God. The theological transcendant prin- 
 ciple is just the one which has stood its ground, 
 which has re-appeared age after age, which the t 
 most ignorant warriors felt was true and mighty ' 
 for them, for which no cultivation has provided 
 any substitute. We are told, again, that the cha- 
 racter of particular localities and races determines 
 what shall be the character of a theology ; that 
 that only is universal which concerns the laws of 
 outward nature or the life of man. How does the 
 history of Mahometanism bear out this opinion? 
 Let it be granted that the soil of Arabia was one 
 on which it was fitting that such a doctrine as 
 that of Mahomet should be first preached : let 
 it be allowed that the Semitic race has been 
 especially distinguished from every other by an 
 interest in what is purely Divine, by a comparative 
 indifference to what is human. But here is an 
 assertion which tribes the most remote from this 
 are compelled to recognize ; which establishes it- 
 self in India, in Syria, in Egypt, in Greece. And 
 it is remarkable that, while numerous sects and 
 parties have been called into existence by ques- 
 tions respecting the proper successors of Mahomet, 
 or the interpretation of the Koran, the Divine 
 principle among them has been the uniting one. 
 It is said again, that the great doctrines which 
 
26 PART I. LECTURE I. 
 
 have been embodied in religious systems are the 
 creations of the religious principle in man ; that 
 his faith moulds the object which it worships : in 
 other words, that what is called theological truth 
 is but some outward expression of our feelings or 
 habits of mind. Look again at the history of 
 Mahometanism ; consider the facts steadily : there 
 
 \ are none to which the supporters of this theory 
 should more gladly appeal. They can find no 
 instance of a race of which faith in an unseen 
 object has been more characteristic. "Faithful" 
 is the very name by which the Islamite warriors 
 proclaim themselves to the world. But what was 
 the nature of this faith ? It meant nothing, it 
 was nothing, except so far as it asserted a Being 
 not dependent on itself; the ground of man's 
 being ; one of whom he was the minister, not the 
 Creator. The Mahometan believed that the God 
 whom he worshipped must have revealed Himself 
 — that man could not have discovered Him. He 
 went forth to beat into powder all gods which he 
 supposed man had invented. Take away these 
 characteristics from his faith and it vanishes, with 
 all the doings which were the fruits of it. 
 
 **• One question still remains to be considered 
 
 before I close this Lecture. May not the prin- 
 ciple which Mahometanism embodies be left to 
 the protection of the system which it seems to 
 have created for itself? — We must look into 
 Mahometan history for the answer. 
 
 ^Vhen I spoke to you of the great power by 
 which the Mahometan soldier was carried along 
 
WILL THE SYSTEM PROTECT THE TRUTH IN IT ? 27 
 
 in his enterprizes, of the principle which gave 
 him strength and endurance, you may have won- 
 dered that I did not dwell more upon the rewards 
 which were promised to him after death, upon the 
 Paradise of sensual felicity for which the brave 
 man was encouraged to hope. I did not allude 
 to this motive, because I do not believe that it 
 was the one by which the Mahometan hosts were 
 really inspired. The mighty conviction that they 
 were then, at that very moment, called by God 
 to a work — that thev were his witnesses and 
 were the ministers of His vengeance, was, I 
 believe, immeasurably more effective than any 
 dreams, were they ever so gross and palpable, of 
 what might be given to them hereafter. When 
 they had already cast themselves away to live or 
 die, they had a sense of immortality which no 
 such visions could impart, which alone made them 
 credible. 
 
 But when the Mahometan was at peace, the 
 belief of a mighty Sovereign to whom he was 
 doing homage, no longer sufficed him ; he began 
 to ask himself what he was living for? To the 
 multitude these sensual promises were a tolerable 
 answer. These were the things to be desired ; 
 for these, by whatsoever means the Koran or its 
 interpreters prescribed, if they were in earnest, 
 they were to labour. Some, with higher appre- 
 hensions, would feel that such rewards were not 
 satisfying ; they would explain away the language 
 of Mahomet, and pursue the practices, to which 
 the others submitted in hope of earthly gratifica- 
 
28 PART I. LECTURE I. 
 
 tions, that they might attain the knowledge or 
 vision of God. The former would fall into gross 
 moral corruptions, the latter w^ould indulge in 
 philosophical speculations — would found sects — 
 would substitute theories and notions for that 
 Being in whose name their fathers had fought. 
 This has actually been the case, and hence it has 
 been proved that Mahometanism can only thrive 
 while it is aiming at conquest. Why? Because 
 it is the proclamation of a mere Sovereign, who 
 employs men to declare the fact that he is a 
 Sovereign, and to enforce it upon the world. It 
 is not the proclamation of a great moral Being 
 who designs to raise his creatures out of their 
 sensual and natural degradation; who reveals to 
 them not merely that He is, but what Tie is — why 
 He has created them — what they have to do with 
 Him. Unless this mighty chasm in the Mahometan 
 doctrine can be filled up, it must wither day by 
 day — wither for all purposes of utility to mankind ; 
 it can leave nothing behind but a wretched 
 carcase, filling the air with the infection of its 
 rottenness. 
 
 For, secondly, see how that which gave all 
 the dignity and glory to this system becomes, 
 from its want of some other element, the very 
 cause of its degradation. The absolute govern- 
 ment of the unseen Being had presented itself to 
 the Mussulman, in every age, in the absolute, 
 visible government of his caliph or sultan. While 
 the divine feeling was strong and alive, the sub- 
 jection to the human ruler was an affectionate, 
 
BLANKS IN MAHOMETANljjM. 29 
 
 dutiful, entire submission. The ruler was, in very 
 deed, the centre of his warriors. He felt towards 
 them as a protector, sharing their toils, bound 
 to the same master, enduring hardships in the 
 same cause. But the battle over, he becomes the 
 absolute monarch in the midst of his seraglio — 
 they are merely his slaves. There is no such con- 
 nection between him and the being whom he 
 worships as permanently to check this tendency — 
 to make the monarch feel that he is set over them 
 to do them good, or the subjects that they have 
 an appeal against him to a higher Ruler. 
 
 The very nature of the Ottoman government 
 — and that government is the perfect develope- 
 ment of the Mahometan idea — excludes the pos- 
 sibility of orders and gradations in society. Its 
 strength lies in all being simply subjects of the 
 one ruler, holding their offices not in virtue of 
 any hereditary ranks or privileges, but only at his 
 pleasure. When therefore the one principle which 
 quickened the whole society waxes feeble, of neces- 
 sity it becomes the most intolerable of despotisms. 
 Elsewhere there is a balance and conflict of powers, 
 which even in the dreariest periods produces strug- 
 gles or paroxysms of life ; here, if the monarch do 
 not inspire his people with strength, all is dead. 
 And the same cause which destroys what may 
 be called the family bonds of civil society, de- 
 stroys equally the family itself. Polygamy is no 
 accident of Mahometanism : a careful considera- 
 tion of the system will shew that it must fall to 
 pieces the moment any reformer shall attempt to 
 remove this characteristic of it. 
 
so PART I. LECTURE I. 
 
 But again, the first principle of Mahometanism 
 wanting the support of some other which it does 
 not acknowledge, must change, and is continually 
 changing, into one which is the counterfeit and 
 direct opposite of itself. The belief of a living, 
 acting Will passes into the acknowledgment of a 
 dead necessity, a Fate, against which there is no 
 struggling, which drives the soul not to energy for 
 some great object, but to indifference, languor, and 
 the submission that means despair. Oftentimes 
 indeed the patience of a Turk must even yet 
 awaken our homage and our shame. Joyfully 
 would we confess that God has not suffered the 
 true principle to be wholly extinguished by its 
 bastard product. But we would draw from that 
 confession not a pretext for leaving this, or any 
 feeble and beautiful plant of a better soil, to the 
 hot-bed which has always impeded its growth, and 
 now threatens to stifle it altogether ; but a certain 
 hope that it is intended to receive culture from 
 without, and that, by help of that culture, it may 
 yet blossom and bear fruit abundantly. 
 
 These remarks may prepare us to take notice 
 of one great fact in the history of Mahometanism, 
 which is the connecting link between it and the 
 other systems of which I propose to speak here- 
 after. 
 
 I have talked of the victories of the Crescent 
 in different quarters of the globe, and it is not 
 easy to exaggerate the greatness of those vic- 
 tories. Yet we all know they were not complete ; 
 they did not exterminate that which they were 
 
ITS FAILURES. 31 
 
 meant to exterminate. I do not speak now of the 
 resistance which this great power encountered 
 from the hammer of the Mayor of Paris, or from 
 the heroes in the Asturian mountains. I do not 
 speak of anything which is directly connected with 
 Christianity. I mean that the most remarkable 
 of the old polytheistic faiths, though crushed, were 
 not cast out ; that some of the countries which 
 yielded to Mahometans are not Mahometan. It 
 behoves us to enquire into the meaning of this 
 fact — to ask ourselves what there was in their 
 doctrines, compounded of all strange elements, 
 sanctioning so many fearful crimes, for which the 
 simple and purer Mahometan faith could provide 
 no satisfaction. We may find that convictions 
 which the Mahometan trampled down, do as much 
 require recognition as those which he enforced; 
 that man has demands for himself which will not 
 be satisfied by being told that he is the servant 
 of an absolute Will — demands which must, some- 
 how or other, find their explanation, must in 
 some way or other be reconciled with that great 
 truth. 
 
 I will not anticipate the nature or the results 
 of that enquiry ; but I hope we may gather some- 
 thing from the one in which we have been en- 
 gaged. You have found a set of men brought up 
 in circumstances altogether different from yours, 
 holding your faith in abhorrence, who say in lan- 
 guage the most solemn and decisive, " Whatever 
 else we part with, this is needful to us and to all 
 human beings — the belief that God IS — the recog- 
 
32 PART I. LECTURE I. 
 
 nition of Him as a living personal Being." You 
 have seen this faith growing weak for a time, and 
 everything else growing weak with it ; you have 
 seen it re-appearing, finding a new set of champions 
 to assert it, compelling nations to bow before it. 
 Be sure that here is something which the heart 
 and reason within you have need of — which they 
 must grasp. Be quite sure, that if you give them 
 in place of it any fine notions or theories ; if you 
 feed them with phrases about the beautiful or the 
 godlike, when they want the source of beauty, the 
 living God ; if you entertain them with any images 
 or symbols of art or nature when they want that 
 which is symbolized ; if you talk about physical 
 laws when you want the lawgiver, of mechanical 
 properties when you want him who set them in 
 motion, of secret powers when you want him who 
 acts by them and upon you, you are cheating 
 yourselves — cheating mankind. Remember fur- 
 ther, that the acknowledgment of this Being may 
 imply much more than the Mahometan perceived, 
 but that it does imply that which he perceived. 
 If such an One is. His will must be the law of the 
 universe. Every creature in the universe must 
 be in a right or wrong position, must be doing his 
 work well or failing in it, as he yields himself to 
 this will, or as he resists it. And let us not 
 fancy that the early Mahometan was entirely 
 mistaken as to the way in which this will ought 
 to be obeyed. He may not have understood what 
 enemies he had to fight with, what weapons he 
 had to wield, but he did discover that the life 
 
LESSONS FROM MAHOMET ANISM. 33 
 
 of man is to be a continual battle, that we are 
 only men when we are engaging in a battle. He 
 was right that there is something in the world 
 which we are not to tolerate, which we are sent 
 into it to exterminate. First of all, let us seek 
 that we may be freed from it ourselves ; but let 
 us be taught by the Mussulman that we shall not 
 compass this end unless we believe, and act upon 
 the belief, that every man and every nation exists 
 for the purpose of chasing falsehood and evil out 
 of God's universe. 
 
 M.B.L. 
 
 C 
 
PART I.— LECTURE II. 
 
 Character of the Hindoo Faith. The Brahmin, Worship 
 of the Pure Intelligence. The popular re-action. Vishnu 
 and Siva. Relations of the English Oovernment to 
 Hindooism. 
 
 THE remarks which I made at the close of my 
 last Lecture will prepare you to expect that 
 I should speak in the present of Hindooism. That 
 faith has been brought into conflict with Maho- 
 metanism, has succumbed to it, and yet has main- 
 tained its ground, leaving the victorious religion 
 the religion of a small minority. Though it may 
 pretend to an antiquity which it does not possess, 
 it has certainly lasted three thousand years. The 
 language in which its holy books are composed is the 
 mother-tongue — if I may use that phrase in its 
 literal, rather than its ordinary sense — of the 
 Greek, the Latin, and the dialects of our Gothic 
 ancestors; consequently, of nearly all which are 
 spoken in Western Europe at this day. From this 
 fact it might, I think, be inferred, if other evidence 
 were wanting, that the mythologies of these nations 
 could be traced to an Indian source. But there 
 is abundant evidence, so much as to have misled 
 those scholars who were first struck with it into a 
 forgetfulness of the important historical principle, 
 that w^e cannot determine the character of nations, 
 or of their belief, merely by finding the point 
 from which they started ; that each must be 
 
IMPORTANCE OF HINDOOISM. 35 
 
 studied in itself, and in its own utterances, and 
 that we gain only a secondary aid in our inves- 
 tigations when we have the means of affiliating it 
 to some other. That this mistake was committed 
 by some of the great Orientalists of the last 
 century, I think is now generally acknowledged ; 
 they seemed to suppose that they could learn 
 more of the Greeks from Sanscrit books than from 
 their own. But an extravagance which is natural 
 to all discoverers does not make the discovery 
 itself less valuable ; in fact, we are only beginning 
 to appreciate its importance. The more practi- 
 cally we learn to sympathize with our fellow-men 
 in all countries and in all ages, to cultivate such 
 sympathy for our own sake and for theirs, and for 
 the glory of God, the more will all such hints 
 respecting the relationship between different na- 
 tions be reflected on and prized. And this remark 
 suggests another and much weightier reason, why 
 a Boyle Lecturer should address himself to the 
 subject of Hindooism, and why we all should take 
 an interest in it. It is the faith, to say the least, 
 of between eighty and ninety millions of people, 
 subjects of the British Empire. By conquests 
 scarcely paralleled for rapidity in the annals of 
 the world, we have obtained supremacy over them, 
 and by civil policy we have tried to preserve it. 
 As to the right character of this policy there has 
 been the greatest variety of opinion ; but I think 
 intelligent men are now well agreed, that what- 
 ever it be, it must be grounded upon a knowledge 
 
 c2 
 
36 PART I. LECTURE II. 
 
 of the character, institutions, faith of the people 
 who are to be influenced by it. Civilians, military 
 officers, and missionaries in India, have exerted 
 themselves to acquire this knowledge, and to make 
 it available for us. Their theories, as well as their 
 facts, when they seem most contradictory, are 
 worthy of study and of comparison ; they may all 
 help us in finding the principle of Indian life and 
 belief, and that principle, when we apprehend it, 
 may make the differences in their observations and 
 opinions more intelligible. 
 
 There are, unquestionably, considerable diffi- 
 culties in the investigation. This ancient people 
 is strictly speaking without a history. " No date 
 of a public event," — I use the words of Mr. 
 Elphinstone, — " can be fixed before the invasion 
 of Alexander; no connected relation of the na- 
 tional transactions can be attempted until after 
 the Mahometan conquest." Yet it would seem 
 that we were in the greatest need of such records 
 to connect the phaenomena which offer themselves 
 to the eye of the traveller in this day with the 
 early books which are still regarded with the pro- 
 foundest veneration. A Hindoo will sometimes tell 
 us in wild language that he acknowledges three 
 hundred millions of gods ; he means, of course, 
 that the number is indefinite, that any object or 
 power in nature, any heroic man, may be a god. 
 And those who trace Oriental extravagance in 
 such a description, will, nevertheless, remember, 
 to have heard of various beings who are acknow- 
 
ITS APPARENT CHANGES. S7 
 
 ledged objects of Hindoo adoration — of Brahma 
 the Creator, of Vishnu the Preserver, of Siva the 
 Destroyer, of Indra, the Lord of the Elements, 
 of the fearful goddess Devi, of the beautiful hero 
 Krishna, and a multitude more. Yet learned 
 and trustworthy critics, Asiatic as well as Euro- 
 pean, confidently affirm that the ground of the 
 Brahminical faith is Monotheistic ; that One 
 Being is assumed in the earliest of the sacred 
 books to be the origin of all things ; that this 
 was no lazy, inoperative tenet, but penetrated 
 the whole system of worship, and the life of the 
 worshipper. Putting such facts and such state- 
 ments together, you might be ready to conclude 
 that there was no real identity between the faith 
 of one of these periods and of the other ; that 
 either by conquest, or some strange process of 
 degeneracy, the character and feelings of the peo- 
 ple had become so changed as to make the notion 
 of one Hindoo or Brahminical religion a mere delu- 
 sion. But many considerations will shew us that 
 this opinion, however plausible, is untenable. I 
 have said, that the early Vedas, composed, per- 
 haps, fifteen hundred years before the time of 
 Christ, be their tenets what they may, are still 
 regarded with unbounded veneration by the reli- 
 gious men among the Hindoos. The Menu code or 
 institute, which is probably about six hundred or 
 seven hundred years younger than these, and 
 which indicates some, though not radical, altera- 
 tions of practice and opinion during the interval, 
 must still be the great study of every English 
 
88 PART I. LECTURE II. 
 
 jurist who wishes to understand the grounds of 
 Hindoo law and life at the present day. Five 
 or six centuries after the composition of this 
 code the troops of Alexander crossed the Indus. 
 The picture which the Greeks give us of society 
 as they observed it, accords with that which we 
 gain from the earlier native source ; but, what 
 is still more to the point, it also accords in 
 essentials with what our own countrymen tell us 
 of India now. With the advantages we possess 
 from the actual occupation of the country, from 
 being able to examine parts of it which the Greeks 
 never visited, and from modern habits of critical 
 investigation, we must see many things much more 
 clearly than they did ; and therefore, even when 
 their reports are different from the present state 
 of things, it is not necessary to assume that there 
 must have been really a great change. It is 
 hardly needful, however, to take this remark into 
 consideration, for we are assured, by those who 
 have the best opportunties of judging, that one 
 of the most remarkables features of Hindoo life, 
 the constitution and government of the villages, is 
 exhibited with surprising faithfulness in narratives 
 which were derived from observations made more 
 than two thousand years ago. Such permanence 
 in social habits would surely lead us to expect 
 something corresponding to it in the inward con- 
 victions of a people ; and we are not left to con- 
 jecture. The soldiers of Alexander found a set 
 of men whose great business was contemplation, 
 who submitted to numerous privations and auster- 
 
GROUND OF THIS FAITH. S9 
 
 ities that they might pursue it more effectually. 
 The Brahmins they found were the leading class 
 in the country ; military, agricultural, commercial 
 occupations were all subordinate to theirs — all 
 society had, in fact, organized itself in conformity 
 with their ideas. The Greek fancied they had 
 less to do with civil affairs, than we know, from 
 their own code, that they must have had. But 
 the general conception which he formed of the 
 Brahmins was singularly accurate. He called 
 them Sophists, a name, which, in his own country, 
 often denoted mere sceptics ; here it had no such 
 signification ; it implied that the Brahmins were 
 not merely priests, such as were to be seen else- 
 where ; that their first business was study ^ and 
 that the purely sacerdotal office was secondary to 
 this. As the accounts which the Greek writers 
 give of the objects of Hindoo worship are meagre, 
 and evidently distorted by the desire of finding 
 resemblances to their own mythology, we might 
 suppose that, for our purpose, we could not learn 
 much from them. But I believe we shall find 
 that their report of the Brahmins is, in fact, the 
 key to the whole system ; one which, if we use it 
 rightly, will enable us to discover its leading cha- 
 racteristics, and to understand, however little we 
 may be able to trace, the varieties of form which 
 it has assumed. 
 
 The name of Brahmin at once suggests that 
 of Brahm. The resemblance is no accidental one ; 
 nor does it merely signify that the Brahmin is the 
 minister or priest of Brahm. The connexion is 
 
40 PART I. LECTURE II. 
 
 of a far more intimate and wonderful kind. The 
 learned man, the contemplative sage, aspires to be 
 one with him whom he adores — to lose his own 
 being in his. And what is this being? He is 
 the Absolute Intelligence ; the Essential Light. 
 E-est, Contemplation : this is his glory, his perfec- 
 tion. You will feel at once the direct opposition 
 between this idea and that of the Mahometan. I 
 bring it before you just at this point, that you 
 may see how much we may impose upon ourselves 
 by the word Monotheism, which is often used as 
 if it were common to these two faiths, at least in 
 their' origin ; that you may see at the same time 
 in what sense it has been honestly and rightly ap- 
 plied to Hindooism. Mahometanism began with 
 a Prophet, but we saw the Prophet soon merged 
 in the Khalif or Sovereign. This Sovereign was 
 the organ of a mighty Will, which had called all 
 things into existence, and of whom all men are 
 servants. He fulfils his service in perpetual con- 
 flict ; only in such conflict does his faith make its 
 meaning intelligible. There are no natural gra- 
 dations of society, no hereditary ranks ; all are 
 merely ofiicers holding their position under the 
 one ruler. The priest is an insignificant person. 
 Strictly speaking, there is no priesthood. The 
 dervish or learned man may be an important ad- 
 viser of the Sovereign : in times of quiet he may 
 promote learning, or become the head of a sect ; 
 but when he is most regarded it is only as an in- 
 terpreter of the Divine Will. The first principle 
 of Mahometanism would be violated if he aspired 
 
BRAHM AND THE BRAHMIN. 41 
 
 to be himself divine. Here, on the contrary, the 
 priest, the student, the beholder is judge, law- 
 giver, everything. The God is an Intelligence, not 
 a Will — himself a higher priest — a more glorious 
 student — a more perfect contemplator. You can 
 scarcely conceive a mandate issuing from such a 
 being : all things must flow from him as light 
 from the sun, or thoughts from a musing man. 
 Such an idea is ever implied in Hindooism ; but 
 it may not have been frequently expressed, it may 
 sometimes have been contradicted, in the earliest 
 stage ; for tlie wrapt student, feeling it his highest 
 calling and privilege to meditate on an Absolute 
 Being in silence and awe, will have had such a 
 practical reason for not confounding him with the 
 world around, as no theoretical consistency could 
 outweigh. It was far otherwise with the feeling 
 of a relation between the human worshipper and 
 the object of his adoration. This feeling was not 
 resisted, but strengthened by his practical disci- 
 pline. He was taught that he was intended to 
 rise into the closest communion, nay, into actual 
 identity with the Divinity : to realize such a state 
 was the effort of his existence. 
 
 The Brahmin believed that there was in man 
 a capacity for such intercourse or absorption as 
 this ; but surely not in all men. Some are merely 
 animal : there must be a race intended for this 
 high converse, there must be a race excluded from 
 it. One would not say, however, that the highest 
 sage is the only man who is -not merely animal. 
 The warrior must have something of the higher 
 
4^ PART I, LECTURE 11. 
 
 diviner faculty ; it may be cultivated and ripened 
 in him. Even the merchant, the traveller into 
 other lands, must be more than a merely earthly 
 creature. These orders of men should be kept 
 apart from the lowest of all — the mere human 
 animal, the Sudra. Yet the purely contemplative 
 man should not be allowed too much intercourse 
 even with these. He may educate them to be 
 such men as they are meant to be, but he must 
 keep himself and his race pure : this race must be 
 carefully trained to be the model of humanity — 
 to rise above humanity — by perpetual meditation 
 on the unseen Brahm. 
 
 The so-called laws or institutes of the Hindoos 
 are all designed for tliis purpose. They are, pro- 
 perly speaking, a system of education or discipline ; 
 a method of fitting the highest man for fulfilling 
 his vocation, and all the others for preserving their 
 proper relation to him. The idea of a separation 
 between the twice-born man and the merely animal 
 man, is the fundamental one ; all the arrange- 
 ments are for the purpose of giving effect to this 
 idea — all other distinctions are secondary to it. 
 The twice-born man must, by certain services or 
 sacraments, the principal of which is reading the 
 Vedas, maintain his relation to the unseen object. 
 He must practise certain plans for lessening his 
 dependence on mere material gratifications ; he 
 must cultivate rather the passive than the active 
 qualities. In the progress of ages the two middle 
 classes seem to have disappeared, or at least this is 
 the prevailing Brahminical opinion. The system has 
 
CASTES THEIR PRINCIPLE. 48 
 
 undergone other modifications, till at length, in 
 some places at least, it has so adapted itself to the 
 different pursuits and occupations of men, as to offer 
 an excuse for the European notion, that it was in- 
 vented in an early stage of society by some legis- 
 lator, who observed that labour must be divided 
 in order to be successful, and that there is likely 
 to be an hereditary aptitude for particular pro- 
 fessions or trades. Such a notion seems to be 
 refuted by the fact that, according to the early 
 arrangement of castes, there was no accurate di- 
 vision of employments ; that persons of the same 
 order were allowed to perform many which were 
 unlike and incompatible. Nor does another plau- 
 sible hypothesis, that the Brahmins were a con- 
 quering tribe and the Sudras a conquered one, 
 seem to be more tenable. Those who have the 
 best opportunities for comparing them, say that 
 they can discover no such differences between 
 them as would warrant the supposition of their 
 belonging to a different race, none greater than 
 are naturally produced by meaner occupations and 
 a sense of degradation during a long course of 
 years. But the great objection to this opinion 
 is, that the Sudras are not in any sense slaves, 
 and never can have been such ; the Greeks were 
 surprized to find all classes in India free citizens 
 in some sense, in however low a one. So that 
 probably we cannot get much further than the 
 religious principle as the basis of the distinction — 
 than the idea, I mean, that there is a tendency 
 in men to become purely animal, and that there 
 
44 PART I. LECTURE II. 
 
 is a race of men in which this tendency is realized 
 and perpetuated ; that there is in man that which 
 may be raised to fellowship with the Divine ; and 
 that there is a race in which this capacity is 
 exhibited and transmitted. 
 
 In spite then of the fact, that there are in the 
 very earliest Hindoo Yedas prayers and hymns to 
 light and fire, and to many natural powers, nay, 
 though the liturgical part of them consists mainly 
 of such prayers, we may fully admit the assertion, 
 that the Brahmin is seeking after One Divine, 
 unseen object ; that he is only asking these dif- 
 ferent creatures to tell him what that object is, 
 and how He is to be found ; nay, that his aim in 
 his whole life and discipline is to purify himself 
 from outward, sensible things, that he may ap- 
 proach nearer to this One Source of Illumination. 
 
 But then how can we explain the fact, that 
 men setting this end before them, looking upon 
 the most mysterious powers in the universe as at 
 best ladders to ascend to the highest region — 
 ladders which the wise men could generally, in 
 time, throw away — should have become so utterly 
 entangled in sensible, outward idolatry as the mo- 
 dern Hindoo seems to be ? The explanation often 
 given, that the ordinary gods are but the gods of 
 the vulgar, that the learned man has altogether 
 another view of them which he keeps to himself, 
 is quite unsatisfactory. For the point we want to 
 ascertain is this, how the Brahmin came to sup- 
 pose that the divers and manifold beings of whom 
 the Hindoo Pantheon consists, could be helps to 
 
THE ABSTRACTED TEACHER. 45 
 
 the discovery or the presentation of the One Being; 
 how he could possibly be induced to reverse the 
 whole order and object of his studies and dis- 
 cipline ; to introduce variety, that he might sug- 
 gest the idea of unity ; to bring in a host of visible 
 forms, that he might lead his disciples more cer- 
 tainly to that which is beyond their senses. I do 
 not deny the possibility of such a scheme, but the 
 origin and the steps of it should be explained. If 
 a modern Brahmin confesses that he attaches 
 no importance to the things to which he seems 
 to attach the greatest, we may accept his testi- 
 mony against himself. Still more willingly we may 
 believe one who says that he loves the simple 
 faith which he thinks has departed, and that he 
 will spend his life in efforts to restore it. But we 
 cannot take the witness of either respecting their 
 fathers. The process by which they arrived at one 
 strange conclusion after another may have been as 
 simple and natural a one as that by which their * 
 traditions are discarded, or that by which they are 
 traced to a deliberate purpose of imposture. 
 
 And this, I believe, is actually the case. 
 While the Brahmin was learning, by various arts, 
 to practise abstraction of spirit, was searching, by 
 various helps, to arrive at the perception of the 
 Perfect One, he felt that the light, the intelligence 
 which entered into his own heart — that which 
 raised him above his fellows — that which enabled 
 him to see mysteries, must be the great expres- 
 sion of the Divine Being. Brahm becomes 
 Brahma ; the light which flows from the source 
 
46 PART I. LECTURE 11. 
 
 of light, the wisdom which comes from the fount 
 of wisdom is that which declares him — this is his 
 Name. In that character the initiated disciple 
 is to worship him : no sacrifices need be offered to 
 him, no temples need be raised to him. It is 
 the inward and purified intellect which does him 
 homage. A very sublime conception, you may be 
 inclined to say ; one which it is no wonder that 
 enlightened Brahmins in our day should wish to 
 reproduce. 
 
 But imagine yourselves in the school where 
 this sublime doctrine was taught ; look at the self- 
 satisfied, self-glorified person who is proclaiming 
 it ; see how he has gone on, step by step, till, from 
 a profound idea of some awful, absolute Being, 
 he has passed into the habitual conviction that 
 this Being is himself; he has become his own 
 God. Mark what contempt ho manifests for 
 persons about him, what utter inhumanity has 
 grown out of this notion that he is the very 
 perfection of liumanity, that ho is above it. Sup- 
 pose an earnest, enthusiastic disciple, struck with 
 the contradiction, saying to himself, "Is this the 
 devout, the self-losing, absorbed Brahmin whom I 
 was taught to wonder at — whose teachinoj at first 
 seemed to me so sublime?" In the tumult of his 
 feelings, in the sadness of his disappointment, he 
 goes forth from the school into Nature. What a 
 change he finds there ! What a sense of refresh- 
 ment, freedom, calmness, penetrates through his 
 whole being ! Surely he has been living till this 
 time in a close, pent up atmosphere, thinking only 
 
THE REF0R:MER VISHNU WORSHIP. 47 
 
 of himself; ever hoping, and hoping in vain, to 
 find his God in himself. But is he not here? 
 What a wonderful order there is through this 
 wide universe ; an order of day and night ; of 
 seasons of heat and seasons of rain ; an order in 
 the planets over our heads ; an order in the 
 growth of the flowers at our feet ; an order in the 
 overflowings of the mighty river. Yes, his name 
 is the Preserver ! Conceive of him under that 
 name — w^orship him under that name — call him 
 Vishnu : bid men rejoice that they have such an 
 One caring for them. The name, perhaps, had 
 been known before in the Brahminical school. It 
 had been one thought, among many, that Brahma 
 was the preserver of things : now it becomes the 
 name. Hundreds of hearts are ready to welcome 
 it : even the poor Sudra can look up, and feel 
 that it has a sound of blessing to him. And now 
 the older worship becomes, comparatively, obso- 
 lete ; the young reformer has prevailed. The 
 Brahminical order must take up his doctrine, and 
 proclaim it, and reconcile it as they can with that 
 which they held before : if they do not so, a sect 
 of Vishnu worshippers will form themselves — men 
 will go out into the deserts and proclaim this 
 faith, without respect to the laws of family or 
 caste at all. 
 
 In some such way as this, I conceive, the 
 popular Vishnu worship may have supplanted the 
 original Brahma worship. It would be surely 
 hard to say that the alteration was in itself for 
 the worse ; yet the effect of it must, undoubtedly, 
 
48 PART I. LECTURE II. 
 
 have been to withdraw the idea of divinity from 
 the inner sanctuary in which it had dwelt ; to 
 bring it forth into the world. Then temples 
 would be raised, the fruits of the earth offered, 
 with songs and symbols, to the great Preserver. 
 But soon there will have been a fearful re-action 
 against this kind of service. How could the mere 
 feeling of a beneficent Guardian of the Earth help 
 men who were tormented with a sense of inward 
 evil? What was there in such a Being: at all 
 corresponding to the dark visions which con- 
 tinually rose before them, \vhether they looked 
 behind or before, to the past or the future ? But 
 was there nothing in Nature which did correspond 
 to these inward agonies, which seemed to be the 
 very echo of them ? Were there no frightful 
 floods and earthquakes — was there not a con- 
 tinual process of destruction going on in the uni- 
 verse ? Is not death the mighty king to whom all 
 must do homage? Poor worshippers of Vishnu, 
 how miserably you are striving to hide the realities 
 of the world from your eyes — to strew garlands 
 over the grave ! You have never yet dared to 
 pronounce the real name : it is Siva the De- 
 stroyer. If you know your own state, and what 
 you have to fear, you will invoke that name — you 
 will propitiate that divinity. And do not think 
 to approach him with such oblations as are signs 
 of plenty and gladness. It is blood he craves for; 
 the blood of your children and of yourselves. No 
 sacrifices but these can appease his wrath, or 
 abate the misery which he is sending to you, and 
 
THE DESTROYER THE DELIVERER. 49 
 
 designing for you. Here was another deep con- 
 viction working in the heart of the Hindoo, and 
 destined to produce the most fearful fruits, from 
 generation to generation. The Brahmin could 
 not allay it — could not reduce it under his old 
 notion of the Brahma, the one celestial Intelli- 
 gence, who spoke only in the Wise. The Siva 
 sect rose up in fierce antagonism to the Vishnu 
 sect. He must endeavour to bring the different 
 ideas into reconciliation ; to assign the Brahma, 
 the Vishnu, the Siva, each a part in the arrange- 
 ment of Nature, and in the different ages of the 
 universe. Keligious books are composed, some 
 with the Vishnu, some with the Siva element pre- 
 dominant in them ; the former with a gracious, 
 the latter with a stern, forbidding aspect ; the 
 first not denying the dark principle — only keeping 
 it in the back-ground ; the latter doing homage 
 to the Preserver, but confessing the greater might 
 of the Destroyer. 
 
 Soon the unsatisfied heart feels another ne- 
 cessity. If it be true (and can it be denied ?) 
 that the Power which divides and annihilates has 
 such a direct influence over the destinies of the 
 world, may not the Preserver yet have somewhere 
 an undisturbed reign ; and may he not descend 
 from that region, at certain periods, to claim his 
 rights over this earth too — to create again that 
 which has perished I Is there not a principle of 
 Restoration implied in Preservation ; nay, in De- 
 struction itself? The animals die, but the race 
 survives : and have there not been in the ages of 
 
 M. B. L. D 
 
50 
 
 PART I. LECTURE II. 
 
 man periods of deepest calamity, when all things 
 seemed to sink in utter ruin, followed by bright 
 sunny days — the earth coming forth out of dark- 
 ness into light? These must have been the times 
 of Vishnu's descent. The animals, we have been 
 told, all exhibit some side or aspect of the divinity, 
 may have been, originally, portions of it. In these 
 he may have appeared. ^len may have been 
 able, without becoming absorbed, to behold him, 
 and converse with him. Again, the priest will 
 partly have led the popular conviction, partly have 
 been led by it. He will have arranged the num- 
 ber and method of these Vishnu incarnations, re- 
 ducing dreams to a system, and sanctioning the 
 hope that there might be an avatar, which should 
 restore all things. 
 
 But these dreams were not sufficient. Was 
 not a kind and gracious Rajah who felt for his 
 poor subjects one in whom the Divinity was more 
 likely to manifest himself, than in any of those 
 creatures, however sacred, of which man is prac- 
 tically the master ? Have we not always felt that 
 a man was permitted, in some mysterious way, to 
 contemplate the Divine Being — to become one 
 with him ? Why may not He in such a form, so 
 much more beautiful than any other, appear to 
 us ? The brigrht Krishna becomes the centre of 
 innumerable legends. He is felt to be the true 
 form of the divine Deliverer. As other dreadful 
 apparitions rise up beside Siva, and claim the 
 kind of worship which is offered to him — as there 
 comes forth even a Kali to be a patroness of 
 
THE OLD FAITH AND THE NEW. 51 
 
 murder, to make strangling a virtue ; this image 
 of" a friend and protector of the helpless is the 
 more eagerly sought after, and delighted in. 
 
 At each step in this process more of the forms 
 and images of outward nature will have been called 
 iu; to express the conception of which the heart 
 was full ; at each step the theoretic man will have 
 been obliged to incorporate new schemes of the 
 universe, new speculations upon all questions — 
 astronomical, geological, physiological, metaphy- 
 sical, into his theology, in order to connect the 
 later and more popular outgrowths of it with the 
 original root. Nevertheless, it is certain that, 
 amidst all these definite conceptions and idolatrous 
 forms, the primary idea of an Inconceivable, Ab- 
 solute, Unseen Being, whom it is the highest glory 
 of the holiest man to behold, and in whom he is 
 to be lost, has survived — survived not as a theory 
 of some learned Brahmin, but as so deep and es- 
 sential an article of popular faith, that all other 
 habitual convictions, nay, the reverence for the 
 Brahminical order itself, which seems worked into 
 the very tissue of Hindoo society, must give place 
 to it. Keligious orders, formed without any refer- 
 ence to distinction of castes, shall be followed and 
 reverenced in proportion as this seems to be the 
 end of their existence : the perfectly abstracted 
 Yogi shall be looked upon as greater, because in 
 the way to a higher knowledge, than he who can 
 explain all the order of nature. In fact, in the 
 worst form of what may be supposed modern cor- 
 ruptions we may trace the original feeling at work. 
 
 b2 
 
/ 
 
 52 PART I. LECTURE II. 
 
 The woman who gives up herself to death on her 
 husband's funeral pile, is exhibiting the same deep 
 sense of the necessity of self-abandonment, self- 
 sacrifice, which is implied in the desire of the 
 contemplative man to be absorbed into the Divine 
 Essence. 
 
 We have, then, a faith presented to us here, 
 which the more we think of it, the more fairly we 
 consider its apparent anomalies, the more light 
 we receive respecting it from different and con- 
 tradictory reports, the more heartily and affec- 
 tionately we sympathize with the feelings of our 
 fellow-men, the more we know of ourselves, will 
 awaken in us the more of reflection, and wonder, 
 and awe. It is the faith not of savages but of 
 men in whose minds respect for learning has oc- 
 cupied all but the highest place; men whose whole 
 commonwealth is modelled upon the notion, that 
 the seer, the learned man, ought to be at the 
 head — that all other people should look up to 
 him. At the same time, these learned men have 
 not been able to devise a belief at their pleasure for 
 those whom they have governed. Strong necessi- 
 ties have come forth out of the heart of the people, 
 demanding satisfaction — compelling the wise men 
 to remould their system, yet recognizing the worth 
 and reality of that higher, older principle, which 
 they seem to set at nought. I do not think it 
 would be easy to find a fairer test of those asser- 
 tions respecting the religions of mankind which I 
 proposed to examine. 
 
 The first of them — that there are deep truths 
 
HINDOOISM APART FROM ITS THEOLOGY. 53 
 
 implied in each of these systems — receives, it 
 seems to me, abundant confirmation from even 
 the hasty glance we have been able to take of 
 Hindooism. In the midst of the extravagancies 
 and horrors which the most favourable testimonies 
 prove it to have brought forth, and which have 
 multiplied, not diminished, as it has expanded, 
 we have been able to trace some convictions so 
 sacred, so bound up in the heart of the people 
 for thousands of years, as to sustain the credit of 
 monstrous fictions, to make tormenting practices 
 endurable ; convictions which have been able to 
 create and perpetuate a complicated form of 
 society, and to defy the power of victorious in- 
 vaders. 
 
 But it is affirmed next, that these deep con- 
 victions will in time disengage themselves from 
 the theological element in which they dwell ; that 
 theology being only an inadequate attempt to 
 explain the phenomena of the universe. Now, 
 I have been careful that you should notice how 
 much of the Hindoo system is an attempt to 
 explain the phenomena of the universe; it was 
 scarcely necessary for me to remark how ineffec- 
 tual a one. But, if you have followed the course 
 of my observations, still more if you have made 
 observations for yourselves, you will, I think, be 
 convinced that these theories about the world are 
 precisely the non-theological element of the system; 
 precisely that which has been added to the theo- 
 logy, and become a part of it, in consequence 
 of the inability of the Hindoo to distinguish be- 
 
54 PART I. LECTURE II. 
 
 fween God and the world. His inward convic- 
 tions, from first to last, have had reference to the 
 Absolute, Unseen God, and to his relations with 
 man. The drapery of these convictions has been 
 his doctrine about Nature. Nor can that idol- 
 atrous, degrading, often filthy drapery ever be cast 
 away, unless it can be shewn him that the theolo- 
 gical riddles, for which he has been seeking a so- 
 lution in Nature so long and not finding it — which 
 are bound up with the deepest wants of his heart 
 — can receive their explanation somewhere else. 
 
 But, most of all, the notion that all ideas 
 respecting an unseen world, are produced by the 
 religious faculty in man, might seem to receive 
 countenance from the Hindoo records. How active 
 that faculty has been, what worlds it has called 
 into existence, whilst there were no outward 
 transactions to relate or no one to relate them, 
 we have seen. The Hindoo in action the idlest, 
 is in imagining, dreaming, combining, the most 
 bjisy of all human creatures. But is this all we 
 have learnt? Have we not found also an assur- 
 ance in the mind of these people that all the 
 efforts of thought in them must originate in a 
 communication from above, and require fresh com- 
 munications to meet them I In the thinking, or 
 reasoning, or religious faculty, call it what you 
 will — or, as I should say, in the man's own heart, 
 in his inmost beinsf — have arisen desires and 
 longings after converse with the unseen world, 
 with some living being in that unseen world, 
 with some one between whom and himself he feels 
 
THE RELIGIOUS FACULTY. 55 
 
 there is a relation. His religious books echo the 
 cry ; they mutter a half response to it : but the 
 response is only the question thrown into a more 
 definite form. The highest student meditates on 
 the problem, and repeats his own thoughts ; or, 
 more probably, what some ancient person, who 
 meditated and conversed with the Divinity, said 
 about it ; or what some other said that he said. 
 The circle is a very weary one ; if we calmly con- 
 sider it, and what kind of comfort those receive 
 who are ever revolving in it, we shall confess that 
 the Hindoo is rio^ht in his belief, that the wisdom 
 of which he sees the image and reflexion must 
 speak and declare itself to him ; that he cannot 
 always be left to grope his way amidst the shadows 
 which it casts in his own mind, or in the world 
 around him. I ask nothing more than the Hindoo 
 system and the Hindoo life as evidence that there 
 IS that in man which demands a Revelation — 
 that there is not that in him which makes the 
 Revelation. I ask no clearer proof of the fact, 
 that whenever the religious feeling or instinct in 
 man works freely, without an historical revelation, 
 it must beget a system of priestcraft. It must 
 be satisfied by God, or overlaid by man, or stifled 
 altogether. 
 
 The question still remains : Is the help to this 
 state of things to come from within the system? 
 I hinted that there are, or have been, Hindoo 
 patriots who have dreamed of bringing back the 
 first state of Brahminism, setting up the Mono- 
 theism of the older Vedas, sweeping away the 
 
56 PART I. LECTURE II. 
 
 accumulations of centuries. But if the original 
 Brahminism itself contained the great puzzle of all 
 subsequent ages ; if the Monotheism of the Vedas 
 admitted the doubt whether man, nay, whether 
 all things, might not be a part of the Divinity ; 
 if those accumulations of centuries were the inevi- 
 table results of anxieties which men could only 
 quell by destroying themselves, it seems some- 
 what unreasonable to go back to the beginning 
 of a series, every step of which, so far as we can 
 tell, would have to be repeated. Or, if the notion 
 be that some form of Monotheism, not involving 
 the idea of direct connexion between God and 
 Man, or God and Nature, might supersede the 
 existing superstition, is it not playing with words 
 to speak of this as a revival or restoration ? must 
 it not be simply a denial of the fundamental prin- 
 ciple of the whole system ? We need not, how- 
 ever, enter upon this subject at present, for both 
 these experiments have been made under every 
 possible advantage. Buddhism, a doctrine, to 
 which I hope to devote a separate Lecture, may, 
 at least under one of its aspects, be regarded, as 
 a formal effort to revive the original Brahminical 
 idea ; an effort not without very important results, 
 which have affected a large portion of the world ; 
 but which has not displaced Hindooism on its pro- 
 per soil, and which, I think, we shall find is scarcely 
 the doctrine any modern Hindoo reformer would 
 desire to produce. To the other experiment I 
 have alluded already — it is that of Mahometanism. 
 A considerable number of the Hindoo race were 
 
CAN THE OLD FAITH BE RESTORED ? 57 
 
 converted to this faith, and profess it to this 
 day. But it could take no hold of the heart of 
 the people, for it solved no one difficulty which 
 was perplexing them; it affirmed a truth which 
 staggered them, and before which they bowed ; 
 one, however, which in this form coalesced with 
 scarcely any conditions of their intellectual or of 
 their moral being. 
 
 Whether Christianity can do for the Hindoo 
 what these systems have not done, is a question 
 for our future consideration. One or two re- 
 marks I would make here which may remove some 
 difficulties from that enquiry, and which seem to 
 arise naturally out of the present subject. I 
 cannot feel surprize that the statesmen and scholars 
 of British India, observing the failure of the Ma- 
 hometans to overthrow the faith and institutions 
 of this strange people, should have pressed strongly 
 upon their own government the duty of respecting 
 what it had not power to subvert. I cannot 
 believe that an indifference to evils which were 
 continually before their eyes, or a feeling that 
 the safety of English dominion is the highest of 
 all considerations, can have induced men often 
 of the greatest cultivation and humanity to protest 
 against the effi)rts which some of their countrymen 
 were making to spread the faith of Europe in the 
 East. It is much pleasanter, and surely more 
 reasonable, to believe that they felt there was 
 something hard-hearted, almost impious, in tram- 
 pling upon convictions which had struck root into 
 the soil for many thousand years, which had 
 
58 PART I. LECTURE 11. 
 
 created the whole fabric of society. For such 
 a feehng one is bound to entertain the greatest 
 respect ; only I think men generally so clear- 
 sighted must by this time have perceived that 
 there was an important oversight in the inference 
 which they drew from it. No doubt it is a very 
 serious thing to assault the belief, even the preju- 
 dices, of any ancient people. But this assault 
 had already been made; every circumstance which 
 brought Englishmen into contact with the Hindoo 
 was a repetition of it. When all nature is peo- 
 pled with divinities it does not require an adverse 
 theologian to wound the prejudices of the wor- 
 shipper, — the army commissary, the judge, the 
 ordinary traveller, must interfere with them con- 
 tinually. Above all, when it came to be perceived, 
 as it would of course be in time perceived by any 
 benevolent government, that Englishmen ought 
 not to be settled in a countrv without communi- 
 eating to its inhabitants some portion of that 
 knowledge which they possess, or rather, when it 
 was found that a people so eager for information, 
 so quick in receiving it, as the Hindoos, would not 
 be content until they had learnt the secret of our 
 mechanical achievements, — it was certain that some 
 cherished tenet must be outraged, some express 
 statement in the religious books contradicted, if the 
 teacher of European science should advance beyond 
 his alphabet. Such considerations do not prove 
 that the idea of respecting a people's convictions 
 is a false one ; they shew only that there are 
 certain accidents of these convictions which we 
 
DANGER OP THE HINDOO FAITH. 59 
 
 are not only permitted, but obliged, to make light 
 of. Just in proportion to that necessity which is 
 laid upon us for shewing the Hindoo that visible 
 things cannot be treated with the reverence which 
 he has been taught to feel for them, should be 
 our desire and determination to preserve him 
 from the danger to which he is certainly exposed, 
 of thinking that all the questionings of his fathers 
 respecting the invisible world had no purpose or 
 meaning. These questionings belong to the most 
 radical portion of the Hindoo mind ; in them 
 you see what the Hindoo is, what his existence 
 means, and how he has been able to stamp such 
 an image of himself upon society. To these 
 questionings he owes the activity of his intellect 
 and imagination when all his other tendencies and 
 his outward circumstances would make him indo- 
 lent ; hence have arisen his love of letters and his 
 desire for science. But the time has evidently 
 come when he cannot be questioning merely ; he 
 must have answers. I contend that he who is 
 able to give them is not a destroyer, but a pre- 
 server ; that he will have a right to boast of 
 having upholden all that was strongest and most 
 permanent in the Hindoo life and character, while 
 English influences in general were, however inno- 
 cently and inevitably, threatening to undermine 
 them. I concede with equal readiness, that if 
 Christianitv do not offer these answers, it cannot 
 make this boast ; it must leave to some other in- 
 strument the work of regenerating Hindostan. As 
 the question is brought to this test, let us gather up 
 
60 PART I. LECTURE II. 
 
 in a few words the enigmas which have tormented 
 the Hindoo so long, and of which, for the sake 
 of his practical life, he demands a solution. 
 
 First, he has had the deepest assurance that 
 God must be an Absolute and Living Being, who 
 can be satisfied with nothing less perfect than 
 himself; and yet he has an equally deep convic- 
 tion that this Absolute and Eternal Being cannot 
 merely live in self-contemplation ; that there must 
 be some object in which he sees his image re- 
 flected. The thought is expressed with great ear- 
 nestness and beauty in one of the early Vedas, 
 where Brahm is introduced seeking for the image 
 of himself. The words which are imputed to him 
 express the strong feeling, that a merely solitary, 
 self-seeking, abstracted being would be one whom 
 a man, experiencing his own need of sympathy and 
 fellowship, could not bear to contemplate. The 
 thought expands itself through the whole Hindoo 
 mythology. It utters itself from the beginning 
 in the idea of a Brahma, as well as a Brahm ; it 
 gives birth to all the later notions of goddesses 
 dwelling beside the gods. If no voice comes from 
 the secret place to interpret this mighty contra- 
 diction which the learned man has perceived, which 
 the most ignorant Hindoo feels, their thoughts of 
 God and their human life must continue a hopeless 
 maze. 
 
 For the perplexity which grows out of this 
 lies close to personal, as well as social, existence. 
 May not man himself be this partner of the Divi- 
 nity 1 If he is, what means that deep assurance 
 
THE BRAHMIN AND SUDRA. 61 
 
 of a Divinity retired within the sanctity and aw- 
 fulness of his own nature ? — if he is not, what 
 mean these yearnings in the spirit after the know- 
 ledge of him ; this promise in the heart that it 
 may be attained ; this discontent while it is 
 wanting? It is an idle thing to cut this knot by 
 affirming either principle and denying the other ; 
 all confusions, theoretical and practical, of the 
 Hindoo arise from the attempt to do this, and 
 from the experience of its impossibility ; only if 
 you can shew that they have been reconciled, 
 and how, will you lead him to any clearness or 
 freedom. 
 
 Again man has this glorious faculty ; but a 
 portion of men seem without it. It must dwell 
 in a caste ; the rest must be cut off from it. 
 Leave this thought to work, and it will bring 
 forth the fruits which it has brought forth hither- 
 to. The modern Hindoo, with his European 
 culture and science, will be just as contemptuous 
 to all who want his information and intellect as 
 the Brahmins of old ; the twice-born notion may 
 change its form, in effect it will be as rampant and 
 tyrannical as ever. You cannot extirpate it, until 
 you justify it — until you can shew that some 
 eternal truth lies in the distinction, and yet that 
 it excludes no human creature ; that it asserts the 
 common privilege of Brahmin and Sudra. 
 
 Then we come to another set of questions — 
 This Absolute Being, what manner of being is 
 he ? If it be true that he stands in some relation 
 to us and the world, in what relation ? Is he 
 
62 PART I. LECTURE II. 
 
 benignant, or hateful I is he a preserver or de- 
 stroyer? You cannot answer the question with 
 any vague flourishes of rhetoric. The Hindoo is 
 wilUng enough to acknowledge a kind and gracious 
 ruler, but the worshipper of Siva meets you with 
 a set of facts Here is misery, here is death. 
 You must encounter these facts — you cannot 
 blink them. You must be able to say — " I can 
 shew that this misery and death do not interfere 
 with the idea of a God of Order, Mercy, Love ; 1 
 can shew it by practical tokens and demonstra- 
 tions ;" otherwise you must leave the sects to 
 fight on for ever, with a tolerable certainty that 
 the darker will in general have the ascendancy. 
 Again, the idea of a struggle between life and 
 death, order and disorder, good and evil, and of 
 the victory having been achieved by the God 
 actually descending into the battle-field, and him- 
 self taking part in the strife ; the idea that he 
 must assume some form which is subject to all 
 the accidents of earthly calamity ; this is one 
 which a European may easily scoff at, when he 
 sees it presented to him in the Hindoo stories, 
 and, doubtless, he will find many a learned Brah- 
 min who is ready, with more or Itss reserve, to 
 scoff too, nay, to represent such a notion as quite 
 incompatible with the higher Brahminical theo- 
 logy. But let it be well considered that a stern 
 demand of the popular conscience carries with it 
 a very mighty witness ; if the learned order bows 
 to that demand, allows the people to clothe their 
 inward belief in their own shapes, and reduces 
 
PROBLEMS TO BE SOLVED. 63 
 
 their crudities to a system, we may be sure that 
 the faith of the taught is stronger and more vital 
 than that of the teacher ; it may be grosser, but 
 it must contain, at least, as real an element. Ex- 
 cept this part of the Hindoo conviction can be 
 recognized ; unless it can be shewn how the belief 
 of such a divine descent is compatible with the 
 highest idea anv Brahmin can entertain of the 
 divine perfection, or of man^s spirit being intended 
 to ascend to the apprehension and participation of 
 it ; I cannot see how the Hindoo race can ever 
 be permanently raised above its present degrada- 
 tion, or how that respect and justice, w^hich have 
 been so passionately demanded for the faith and 
 institutions of centuries, can be practically ren- 
 dered. Once more — It is, undoubtedly, a right 
 thing in a government to suppress, by actual edict 
 and physical force, human sacrifices. The Ro- 
 man, tolerant as he was of all polytheistic systems 
 in the provinces, took this course in our own 
 country when he was dealing with the practices of 
 Druidical worship. But neither by this act, nor 
 by establishing municipal institutions in Britain, 
 nor by building and encouraging the natives to 
 build baths and porticoes and temples, did he 
 provide any real substitute for those dark, myste- 
 rious thoughts of the unseen world, which had 
 haunted the mind of the Celt under his oaks, and 
 which found a fearful expression in the sacrifices 
 of children or of men. Those thoughts were the 
 stamina of the British heart ; when an external 
 civilization expelled them, what remained was a 
 
64 PART I. LECTURE II. 
 
 feeble colony, groaning for help to the masters 
 who could give it help no longer ; a colony which 
 needed to have all its arts and polish destroyed 
 by a people possessing some real faith, some in- 
 ward strength, that the soil might, by this pro- 
 cess, be prepared to bear genuine native fruits. 
 It will be the same with Hindostan, if, while we 
 put down the burnings of widows, and bestow a 
 culture which makes such practices disgusting to 
 its inhabitants, we are not able to shew them 
 what is the true form of self-immolation, and how 
 wife, and maiden, and widow — how men, whether 
 called to the contemplative, or active life, may 
 practice it. 
 
 I know that I am asking no light thing of 
 any faith when I say. All this it must do if it is 
 to satisfy the heart and conscience of this Asiatic 
 people. But let me ask you, before I conclude, 
 whether a faith which does less than this can 
 satisfy your hearts and consciences ? We are in 
 a world of action, and energy, and enterprize, 
 more unlike that dreaming and speculative world 
 we have been hearing of than the soil and climate 
 of Enjjland are unlike those of Hindostan. And 
 yet I will be bold to say it, the same thoughts 
 which stir the spirit of the Indian sage and the 
 Indian Sudra, are working secretly beneath all 
 our bustling life, are affecting the councils of 
 statesmen, are entering into the meditations of 
 the moralists and metaphysicians who most despise 
 theology ; in another form, are disturbing the 
 heart of the country peasant, and of the dweller 
 
THE GREAT HUMAN QUESTION. 65 
 
 in St. Giles's. Tliey are such questions as these— 
 What do we worship ? A dream, or a real Being I 
 One wholly removed from us, or one related to 
 us ? Is He a Preserver, or a Destroyer I Has 
 Death explained its meaning to us, or is it still a 
 horrible riddle I Is it still uncertain whether Life 
 or Death is master of the world, or how has the 
 uncertainty been removed? What is the evil 
 which I find in myself 2 Is it myself? Must / 
 perish in order that it may perish, or can it be in 
 any wise separated from me 1 Can I give up my- 
 self, and vet live ? What are these desires which 
 I feel in myself for something unseen, glorious, 
 and perfect I Are they all phantasy, or can they 
 be realized ? If they can, by what means ? Has 
 He to whom they point made himself known to 
 me ? How am I connected with Him I Must I 
 utterly renounce all the things about me, that I 
 may be absorbed into Him, or is there any way 
 in w^hich I can devote them and mvself to Him, 
 and only know Him the better by filling my 
 place among them ? These are the great human 
 questions ; distance in time and space does not 
 affect them. ; if we are not concerned with them 
 it is because we have not yet ceased to be savages, 
 or because we are returning, through an extreme 
 civilization, into the state of savages : if they do 
 occupy us, we shall find that there can be but 
 one answer to them for the Englishman and the 
 Hindoo. 
 
 M.B. L. E 
 
PART I LECTURE III. 
 
 Buddhism. Its origin and diffusion. Its various forms. 
 The Lama. Buddhism and its rivals in China, 
 
 IN my former Lectures I have spoken of two 
 religions, very opposite in their character, 
 which have exercised an influence over a large 
 portion of the world — the Mahometan and the 
 Hindoo. The former, we said, could only thrive 
 when it was in action ; the proper element of the 
 other was rest. They were brought face to face 
 in Hindostan. The Islamite triumphed, as might 
 have been expected ; but there was a passive 
 strength in the Hindoo, which ultimately kept its 
 ground, and enables him to say that his system 
 has endured for three thousand years. 
 
 I hinted that it had had struggles with a very 
 different kind of enemy from the Mahometan — 
 with a doctrine in many of its essential peculiari- 
 ties Hke its own. That doctrine is the Buddhist, 
 the faith of Thibet, of Siam, of the Burmese Em- 
 pire, of Cochin China, Japan, Ceylon ; the popu- 
 lar, though not the state, faith of China. It is said 
 to number above three hundred millions of people 
 among its disciples ; to be, therefore, by far the 
 most prevailing religion which does exist, or ever 
 has existed, in the world. It is, surely then, 
 deserving of earnest investigation ; there must be 
 something in it which has given it this wide diffu- 
 
FORMS OF BUDDHISM. 67 
 
 sion. It must express some necessities of man''s 
 heart, some necessities of our own. 
 
 I propose, in the present Lecture, to enquire 
 what these are ; to search for the main principle 
 of Buddhism ; to consider in what relation it 
 stands to those religions of which we have spoken ; 
 lastly, to enquire how it is connected with two 
 other systems which divide with it the Celestial 
 Empire. 
 
 A faith which is spread over such a number 
 of countries, many of them very different from 
 each other in outward circumstances, perhaps even 
 in race and early cultivation, must present great 
 varieties, which may seem to make the use of a 
 common name rather a convenient refuge for our 
 ignorance, than a proof that they have really any 
 connexion. Undoubtedly our information re- 
 specting the different forms of Buddhism is still 
 very imperfect, and we have not the same means 
 of correcting and enlarging it as in the case of 
 countries which have fallen under our own do- 
 minion. Ceylon is, I believe, the only British 
 possession in which pure Buddhism is professed. 
 Nevertheless, I am convinced that the intelligent 
 travellers and residents who have given us ac- 
 counts of what they have seen or heard in the 
 different countries I have enumerated, or of what 
 they have read in the books which these countries 
 account sacred, have not been mistaken in behev- 
 ing that the fundamental doctrine is the same in 
 all. The opposition between different views of 
 the system, great as it is, admits, I think, of a 
 
 e2 
 
68 PART I. LECTURE III. 
 
 tolerably easy explanation ; easy, at least, if we 
 do not merely look to find a meaning in the dry 
 records of other people's notions or practices, but 
 compare them with what we have felt and expe- 
 rienced in our own lives. The numerous phases, 
 however, which the system assumes, make it very 
 desirable that we should ascertain from what 
 country it was derived, where we may seek for 
 the first form of it. On this subject there is 
 some, but, I think, now not much, difference of 
 opinion. The external arguments which induced 
 Sir William Jones, and some eminent scholars of 
 the last century, to suppose that its native seat 
 could not have been Hindostan, have given way 
 to later and fuller information. There was a 
 stronger internal argument, arising from a com- 
 parison of the Brahminical and Buddhist faith, 
 which is also, it seems to me, untenable ; but 
 which is well worth considering, and which at 
 once connects the present subject with that of the 
 last Lecture. 
 
 We do not adequately describe the condition 
 of Hindostan, by saying that the priests consti- 
 tute its leading caste. The whole form of society 
 has a sacerdotal stamp upon it ; it has moulded 
 itself in conformity with a religious idea ; not, as 
 some have fancied, with a professional or mercan- 
 tile one. And yet, when we look into the mean- 
 ing of this system it explains itself, by the doctrine 
 that there is in man a capacity for beholding the 
 Unseen Being, and that there is in man an animal 
 nature which admits of no Divine converse. The 
 
BRAHM. 69 
 
 Brahmin is the learned, divine, absorbed man, the 
 end of whose existence is to become one with Brahm. 
 
 Brahm himself, I observed, was emphatically 
 an Intelligence, a thinking, not a commanding 
 being — One from whose thoughts all the universe 
 has flowed out, not one by whose will it has been 
 created. He is a higher priest, not in any sense 
 a sovereign ; herein standing in the most direct 
 contrast to the object of Mahometan worship. 
 Between, then, the God and the worshipper there 
 is the most direct affinity, which may become 
 identity. Intelligence is to be the characteristic 
 of both. The hereditary caste is to preserve this 
 Intelligence ; its discipline to prevent it from 
 being debased by mixture with people in whom 
 the lower nature is predominant, or by contact 
 with things which may make it predominant in 
 themselves. 
 
 Now that any set of men should arise in a so- 
 ciety constituted like that of Hindostan, to deny 
 the existence of a special caste of priests, might 
 not seem surprising ; for one might conjecture 
 that there would be popular re- actions against so 
 very strict and exclusive a system. We saw that 
 there had been such popular reactions in Hindos- 
 tan. They took this form. They demanded a 
 being less abstract than Brahm; not a mere 
 thinking being, but one who should exercise actual 
 influence over the arrangements of Nature and 
 the world — one to whom its good or its evil 
 might be ascribed — one who should not merely 
 cultivate intercourse with an absorbed devotee, 
 
70 PART I. LECTURE HI. 
 
 but should enter into fellowship with human crea- 
 tures in their ordinary condition. To such strong 
 workings of popular feeling, to such cries of the 
 popular heart, we traced the Vishnu and Siva 
 worship, which the priests had been compelled to 
 incorporate with that older principle it seemed 
 striving to subvert. In these cases the priestly 
 caste, whatever rude shocks it may have sustained, 
 nevertheless kept its ground, even in the hearts 
 of the people who assailed it. In fact, nothing 
 proves more clearly than such changes, how much 
 the reverence for a priestly order has been bound 
 up with the sympathies and character of this 
 nation. Neither the awakening of impulses which 
 the priests could not control, nor conquest by such 
 an utterly unsacerdotal people as the Mahomet- 
 ans, have availed to weaken this reverence. The 
 priests have adapted themselves to feelings which 
 they could not subdue ; their authority has waxed 
 stronger by a doctrine which threatened to crush 
 it and the popular faith together. 
 
 But the Buddhist doctrine cannot in any wise 
 be identified with this kind of movement. The 
 word Buddha, it seems to be admitted on all 
 hands, means Intelligence. That men ought to 
 worship pure Intelligence, must have been the 
 first proclamation of the original Buddhists. The 
 deduction from this must have been, that no caste 
 of priests was necessary for such worship. Could 
 this doctrine have originated on the soil of Hin- 
 dostan I I do not wonder that thoughtful persons, 
 especially those whose experience made them aware 
 
TWO CO-EXISTENT PRINCIPLES. 71 
 
 of the facts I have just alluded to, should have 
 said that it could not: that a theory so contrary 
 to the tendencies of Hindoos from generation to 
 generation, must have come from some other re- 
 gion, and been rudely forced for a time upon this. 
 But plausible as such an hypothesis may seem, I 
 think I have given you sufficient reason for dis- 
 trusting it. The sacerdotal principle has indeed 
 struck its roots very deep into the Indian soil, 
 probably from as early a time as any to which we 
 can look back. It has shewn itself to be, in some 
 form or other, inseparable from that soil. But it 
 has grown up side by side with another principle, 
 from which, at times, it is hardly distinguishable ; 
 the reverence for human intelligence ; the disposi- 
 tion to make this the great Brahminical charac- 
 teristic. It is quite conceivable, then, that from 
 a very early time two sets of men may have co- 
 existed in Hindostan ; one composing an here- 
 ditary order of priests, the other a mere order of 
 sages or devotees. They co-exist in India to the 
 present day, on terms not probably of sympathy, 
 but also not of absolute opposition or repulsion. 
 The Greek writers allude to two classes seen by 
 the soldiers of Alexander, between whom it has 
 been reasonably enough supposed that a relation 
 similar to this may have subsisted. 
 
 Both will alike have aimed at converse with 
 the pure Intelligence, absorption into him. Both 
 therefore will have been far removed from any 
 wish to substitute for this object of worship one 
 of a more visible and earthly character. But 
 
72 PART I. LECTURE III. 
 
 different circumstances may have operated to draw 
 each of them into closer connexion with that 
 which is visible. The hereditary priest will have 
 maintained his position by taking part in civil em- 
 ployments — will gradually have exhibited less of 
 the higher and more abstracted character. The 
 devotee will have been reverenced by the people 
 for retaining and carrying out this character. 
 Thus he will have been brought into greater 
 sympathy with them ; will have been induced to 
 symbolize the object of his worship, that it might 
 be more apparent to ordinary men. In this way, 
 perhaps, we may account for the appearance of 
 temples, possessing the characteristics of Budd- 
 hism, which must have existed in Hindostan from 
 a very early period. Gradually the distinction 
 between these classes will have become more 
 marked and definite. Sages will have appeared 
 calling upon men to adore Buddha in purity and 
 simplicity, denouncing the hereditary caste, de- 
 nouncing the books upon which they rested their 
 pretensions, acknowledging a modified sympathy 
 with the worship of the people as opposed to 
 that of the Brahmins. In what hght these sages 
 were regarded we shall consider hereafter; now 
 it is only necessary to observe that there are the 
 widest differences of opinion among Buddhists 
 respecting the time in which the original sage, 
 the first Buddhist teacher, flourished. That one 
 Sakya Muni appeared in the sixth century be- 
 fore Christ, who produced an effect upon the 
 inhabitants of India of the kind I have just de- 
 
ORIGINAL SEAT OF BUDDHISM. V3 
 
 scribed, and that he left a series of successors, 
 seems to be ascertained. But he was in all pro- 
 bability only the rekindler of feelings, which had 
 been existing previously ; only the person who 
 formally set them in opposition to the Brahminical 
 tendencies with which they had been hitherto, 
 though by somewhat loose and fragile links, asso- 
 ciated. Although, then, I would by no means 
 support a paradox which has had some countenance 
 from learned men, but not from the most learned 
 or those who have examined the subject most, 
 that Buddhism was the original doctrine, of which 
 Brahminism was a depravation — though such an 
 opinion has to struggle with the greatest opposi- 
 tion of outward facts, and is, I think, also quite 
 inconsistent with the respective character of the 
 two systems ; yet I imagine we must look upon 
 Hindostan as the place from which both have 
 started, must assume that they were branches 
 from the same root, and that their separation, 
 however decided at last, was a slow and gradual 
 work. Ultimately the systems did come into 
 direct collision, and it became evident that they 
 could not dwell together on the same soil. The 
 Brahminical succeeded in expelling its rival from 
 Hindostan, and it went forth to seek and to find 
 an asylum first in one, then in another of those 
 numerous Asiatic countries which it now claims as 
 its own. 
 
 This view of the origin of Buddhism may be 
 a great help, I think, in reconciling the very op- 
 posite reports of it which we obtain from those 
 
74 PART I. LECTURE III. 
 
 who have seen it in different, or even in the same, 
 localities. The extreme Polytheism of India we 
 found was not so incompatible with what was said 
 of its original Monotheism, as it appeared at first. 
 But what are we to say of a doctrine which is 
 sometimes represented as one of almost perfect 
 Theism ; sometimes as direct Atheism ; sometimes 
 as having the closest analogy to what in a Greek 
 philosopher, or in a modern philosopher, would be 
 called Pantheism ; sometimes as the worship of 
 human saints or heroes ; sometimes as altogether 
 symbolical ; sometimes as full of the highest ab- 
 stract speculation ; sometimes as vulgar idolatry ? 
 Strange as it may seem, the same doctrine is, I 
 believe, capable of assuming all these different 
 phases ; no one of them can be thoroughly under- 
 stood without reference to the other. Each is 
 very imperfectly denoted by the names which I 
 have used ; for the feelings, good and evil, which 
 work in the hearts of human beings, can never be 
 satisfactorily expressed by mere labels describing 
 a notion or theory. 
 
 I. Thus, to begin with the first supposition. 
 Buddhism is, as we have seen, an attempt at the 
 highest, least material idea of divinity. Buddha 
 is clear light, perfect wisdom. You must not try 
 to conceive of him as doing anything. Rest is not 
 so much his attribute, as his very essence. He is 
 One, the One ; and it is only with the inward eye, 
 purged from sensual corruptions, and steadily fixed 
 on the contemplation of unity, that he can in any 
 wise be apprehended. For the natural eye of the 
 
THE BUDDKISt's BELIEF IN GOD. 75 
 
 ordinary man views a multiplicity of things, each 
 thing divided and separate from the other. The 
 natural eye takes account only of appearances ; it 
 requires the severest discipline for a man to be- 
 hold the Reality. This is surely Theism in its 
 highest form and conception. It is something 
 much more than we are wont to mean by that 
 word, for by a Deist or Theist we often describe a 
 person who does not deny the existence of God ; 
 who admits it as a sort of ultimate fact, as the 
 Hercules' pillar of the universe. But to the 
 Buddhist, the belief in God is the most awful, and 
 at the same time the most real of all thoughts ; 
 one not thrust back into the corner of a mind 
 which is occupied by everything else, but which he 
 thinks demands the highest and most refined ex- 
 ercise of all the faculty that he has. It is some- 
 thing which is to make a change in himself, which 
 is at once to destroy him and to perfect him. 
 And the effect is a practical one. Buddha is 
 ever at rest. Can his worshippers be turbulent 1 
 Can he admit any rude or violent passions into 
 his heart ? He must cultivate gentleness, even- 
 ness, all serene and peaceful qualities, reverence 
 and tenderness to all creatures, or he is not in his 
 rightful state. He is not tempted, or obliged, as 
 the Brahmin is, to look upon any human creature 
 as merely animal, as excluded even from the 
 highest privileges. He denies the natural differ- 
 ence of the Sudra ; the poorest man of the vilest 
 race may become one with Buddha. Hence, 
 though he belongs to no priestly family, all his 
 
76 PART I. LECTURE III. 
 
 functions are more essentially those of a priest 
 than the Brahmin's can be. He claims no civil 
 distinction ; he is to be reverenced simply as 
 offering up prayers for the peace and prosperity 
 of all other people. He must abstain from much 
 speech. In silence he may best hope to know the 
 Unseen Intelligence. This is one aspect of the 
 doctrine, and surely a very interesting one. 
 
 II. But if the Buddhist sage asks himself, 
 ' What is it that I am contemplating : I cannot 
 see it, or hear it, or handle it ; I dare not con- 
 ceive it; it is altogether inconceivable, and yet I 
 know of it only by this mind of mine : ' he is likely 
 to find himself in a strange perplexity. Or, if he 
 puts the case thus to himself : ' The end I propose 
 to myself is to become absorbed, lost, that is to 
 say, nothing. Can it be Something which is to 
 work this result ? Can it be Something I am con- 
 templating?' He must say at length 'No, it is 
 Nothing. Nothing must be the ground of my life, 
 of ray being — of the being of all the things I see!' 
 Here is Atheism ; a deep, hopeless void, yet touch- 
 ing on the borders of that doctrine which impHed 
 real belief in a living Divinity. 
 
 The transition to such Atheism is, no doubt, 
 possible in the Brahminical doctrine ; but here it 
 is much easier. For the existence of a continuous 
 caste preserves the tradition of a Divinity, invests 
 it with a reality in some sense independent of the 
 mind of the beholder. Here all rests upon that 
 mind. The light seems to be projected from the 
 eye ; now it may be a bright sun in the heaven ; 
 
THE BUDDHIST TRIAD. 77 
 
 now it may shrink into a speck ; now it may 
 vanish altogether. Yet we should draw a wrong 
 inference from the incapacity of the Buddhist in 
 this state of mind to give any form to his belief, if 
 we said that it is wanting. He may even declare 
 in honesty, ' I see nothing,** and the words being 
 the utterance of despair, not of triumph or satis- 
 faction, may themselves contain a sure witness, 
 even to himself, that there is that which no words 
 or thoughts of his can comprehend ; an eternal 
 absolute ground of all words and thoughts. 
 
 III. And soon the Buddhist discovers an 
 escape from this void of nothingness. He began 
 with looking upon the One Intelligence as alone 
 real; all outward nature he discarded, as merely 
 apparent. But the visible world claims its rights ; 
 he cannot disown it ; he must, in some way or 
 other, take it into his system. The Intelligence 
 therefore, the pure Buddha, must have a partner 
 of his throne. It is Dharma ; the principle of 
 Matter ; that out of which all things are formed. 
 But these two powers, Intelligence and Matter, 
 seem essentially opposite : if they are co-workers 
 how can they be reconciled I There must be 
 another power, Sanga, the mediating influence, 
 which binds the informing mind to the dead form- 
 less thing upon which it works. This is nearly 
 the explanation which a Buddhist priest gave to 
 the English resident at Nepaul of a subject which 
 has occasioned much controversy. It is borne out 
 by the symbols in the Buddhist temples. They 
 seem contrived to express the idea of some active, 
 
78 PART I. LECTURE III. 
 
 productive power ; of some passive, merely recep- 
 tive power ; again, of something which is the joint 
 result of both. If we compare the Buddhist 
 Triad with the Hindoo Triad of Brahma, Vishnu, 
 and Siva, the Creator, Preserver, Destroyer, we 
 are struck rather by their difference than their 
 resemblance. The powers of preservation and 
 destruction are militant powers ; each is continu- 
 ally invading the kingdom of the other : Brahma 
 is looked upon as the common origin of both. 
 Here the Intelligent Power is considered as ba- 
 lancing, or sustaining, the Passive, Material 
 Power ; and a third as necessary to their fel- 
 lowship. The latter idea is, I think, by far the 
 deeper, and more suggestive ; but then it is ab- 
 stract, rather than personal ; more of a philoso- 
 phical speculation ; less of a practical belief. And 
 it leads very directly to the next side of Buddhism 
 — what is called its Pantheistic side. 
 
 IV. Beginning with the notion that the In- 
 telligence is entirely separated from the world — 
 that He is One, and it multiform — the Buddhist 
 may arrive, by a series of easy steps, at a conclu- 
 sion which would seem most opposed to this, that 
 the Intelligence is essentiallv one with the world : 
 in fact, that it can only be considered as the in- 
 forming life or soul of the world. As in the case 
 of Brahminism, it may be rightly said that this 
 doctrine was latent in the Buddhist from the first : 
 in other words, that the moment he began to 
 think upon Nature with no other data than the 
 belief which he possessed, he must inevitably ter- 
 
HUMAN BUDDHAS. 7.9 
 
 minate in this scheme. But it should be said, at 
 the same time, that he has struggled earnestly, 
 even heroically, with this tendency ; that his 
 effort to contemplate the pure Essence indicates a 
 genuine desire to see something above the world, 
 not merely dwelling in it and actuating it. How- 
 ever true then it may be that Buddhism often be- 
 comes a mere notion of a God diffused through all 
 things, I cannot believe that this is its charac- 
 teristic principle. To ascertain what that is, we 
 must examine the next allegation respecting it, 
 that it is especially the deification of human saints 
 or heroes. 
 
 V. We can scarcely speak of this as Si phase 
 of Buddhism. Everywhere you will find certain 
 human beings called Buddhas. You will find 
 Europeans asking such questions as these. When 
 was Buddha born \ How many Buddhas are 
 there ? And those who are asked seemed not as- 
 tonished at the inconsistency of the two enquiries, 
 or of either with that idea of a pure essential In- 
 telligence, sometimes the fixed only reality, some- 
 times so divested of all qualities as to become 
 nothing, sometimes diffused through all things. If 
 you consider the starting point of the doctrine, 
 you will see that the departure from it, which is 
 involved in this notion of human Buddhas, is far 
 less than it seems. The abstracted man was to 
 become one with the Divinity. In the mind of 
 the Hindoo a whole caste is marked out for that 
 glory. But a whole caste evidently does not at- 
 tain it; there must be immeasurable differences 
 
80 PART I. LECTURE III. 
 
 of taste, earnestness, wisdom, in the priests of one 
 generation, still more in those of successive gene- 
 rations. So it comes to pass, that there is much 
 feeling of a divine character diffused through a 
 great many ; not so much belief of actual divinity 
 in particular individuals. Here, on the contrary, 
 there is no check to the conviction that a man 
 has risen to the state of Godhead — may be a God. 
 In proportion as the Infinite Object fades into 
 obscurity, or waxes fearful, the vision is more 
 cherished of his appearance in some man, who 
 in this or that period confers blessings on some 
 particular country ; traverses different countries ; 
 now mounts into the regions where Indra the 
 Lord of the Elements dwells — now descends to 
 earth, like Vishnu ; (for these powers have passed 
 from the Hindoo into the Buddhist legends ;) 
 and leaves here and there, in some mountain 
 or valley, footmarks which may be noted, and 
 become the symbols of his continual presence. 
 For as he has moved through space, passing 
 rapidly from one portion of the globe to another, 
 so does he live through different periods of 
 time, the same principle inhabiting various forms ; 
 the same Buddha, though there may have been 
 a number of Buddhas — though they may appear 
 even now. 
 
 VI. And now we can understand how idol- 
 atry, the worship of different outward natural 
 things may be attributed to this Theistic, Atheis- 
 tic, Pantheistic, Human Doctrine. Through all 
 nature, above and beneath, Buddha has journeyed; 
 
SYMBOLISM OF SENSIBLE OBJECTS. 81 
 
 everywhere he has left his footmarks ; everywhere 
 we may find tokens of him. Sun, moon, and 
 stars, all things on this earth, may speak of him. 
 Or we may think of him as the fixed Immoveable 
 Past, as the Actual Present, as the dim Future 
 of fears and hopes. But these sensible objects are 
 too distant and vague ; these Past, and Present, 
 and Future, too abstract. And we want to feel 
 that we are not contemplating them in themselves, 
 or for their own sakes, but the living, quickening 
 Intelligence which has stamped its form upon 
 them. They must be changed into symbols ; in 
 that character we must approach them and revere 
 them. They must assume shapes which are given 
 to them by the kindred Intelligence in ourselves. 
 Oftentimes these shapes will be animal ; for 
 how ought we to think of the creatures around 
 us, with those half human faculties and affections 
 which we discover in them ; with the ferocity and 
 cunning which are surely not peculiar to them? 
 Must not they be inhabited by a human spirit in 
 some degraded, fallen condition I Are they not 
 wandering about as signs to us of what we may 
 become ; of that state to which, by cultivating 
 the lower and baser qualities of our nature, we 
 may reduce ourselves ? So reasons the Buddhist ; 
 he reveres and fears the animals as meaner forms 
 of that Intellect, of which he sees the highest form 
 in the glorified man, the Buddha. 
 
 VII. I have not yet spoken of Buddhism as 
 a social system. I described its ministers as form- 
 ing an order of devotees, so distinguished from a 
 
 M.B.I.. F 
 
82 PART I. LECTURE III. 
 
 caste of priests. It is necessary to speak thus of 
 them, for we must not suppose because they have 
 no hereditary vocation, that they take their office 
 at hazard, or that they have no communion with 
 each other. We have a very accurate description 
 of the ceremonies which are observed in some 
 countries at their consecration, of the questions 
 which are asked to ascertain that they have no 
 bodily or mental disqualification for the task. 
 Such ceremonies, though they may vary in their 
 forms, exist wherever Buddhism exists. In Thibet, 
 which must be regarded as the centre and proper 
 home of the religion, the priests are called Lamas; 
 it is they who decide who the Lama, the true high 
 priest of the universe, at any given time is. I say 
 they decide who he is; for they could never allow 
 that the faculty of choosing the chief Lama re- 
 sides in them. In some person or other the spirit 
 of Buddha dwells ; he is meant to be the head 
 of the universe ; to him all owe homasfe. This 
 Lama, therefore, never dies ; he is lost sight of 
 in one form, re-appears in another. Tiie body of 
 some old man who has had this honour loses its 
 breath, is laid in the tomb. The Lama has passed 
 into some infant, who is brought up in a convent 
 with special care, preserved from sensual influ- 
 ences, taught from the cradle to look upon himself 
 as the shrine of the Divinity, and to receive the 
 homage of rajahs, nations, even of the Celestial 
 Empire ; nay, even of European monarchs. Some 
 of you may remember to have read of a solemn 
 embassy sent by the English government at Cal- 
 
THE DIAGNOSTIC OF BUDDHISM. 83 
 
 cutta, in the days of Warren Hastings, to the court 
 of the Lama. A very affecting letter had been 
 addressed by him to the English authorities in 
 India, asking their help in checking quarrels be- 
 tween certain native sovereigns, an object, he said 
 which he sought diligently in prayers by day and 
 night. An old man was the author of this letter; 
 before Mr. Turner, the English envoy, arrived he 
 had left the world ; and a child of eighteen months 
 was acknowledged as his successor. It reigned 
 by no hereditary right ; but the other Lamas pre- 
 sented him with unquestioning faith as the repre- 
 sentative of the Perfect Intelligence through whom 
 it would most surely utter itself. 
 
 If we now try to sum up the evidence which 
 we have gathered from different indications re- 
 specting Buddhism, I do not know that we can 
 do it better than in the words of Mr. Hodgson, 
 the resident at Nepaul, to whom I have already 
 referred. "The one infallible diagnostic of 
 Buddhism," he says, with an emphasis and deci- 
 sion which were the result of patient enquiries, 
 conducted during many years, "is a belief in the 
 infinite capacity of the human intellect." This is 
 the conclusion to which all our enquiries into the 
 system have conducted us. The idea of an Adi 
 Buddha, or Absolute Eternal Intelligence, is there, 
 but it is hidden ; it gradually evaporates. The 
 possibility of utter Atheism is there ; but the 
 heart flies in dismay from it. The vision of a 
 Unity resulting from the reconciliation of oppo- 
 sites is there ; but it either passes into a mere 
 
 f2 
 
84 PART I. LECTURE III. 
 
 theory, or seeks for images to express it, which 
 make it material. The conception of an intelh- 
 gent soul in nature is there ; but it quickly re- 
 solves itself into a recognition of all Nature as 
 symbolising human deeds and attributes. Lastly, 
 the idea of deified men is there ; but this loses it- 
 self in another, that there is in man, in humanity, 
 a certain Divine Intelligence, which at different 
 times, and in different places, manifests itself more 
 or less completely, and which must have some one 
 central manifestation. The Human Intellect is 
 first felt to be the perfect organ of worship ; 
 finally its one object. This is Buddhism ; this is 
 the conviction which, with more or less of confu- 
 sion, is w^orking in the hearts of three hundred 
 millions of people on this globe of ours. 
 
 I greatly desire to ask this doctrine, what 
 testimony it bears for or against that hypothesis 
 which it is the purpose of these Lectures to ex- 
 amine ; the hypothesis, I mean, that the Divine 
 portion of the faith of different nations signifies 
 nothing ; that it is only an attempt to explain 
 the phenomena of the universe ; that there is no 
 need of a Kevelation to man, because in himself, 
 in his own heart there is a sufficient revelation of 
 all the truths he wants to know ; that we may 
 safely leave this to work itself out as it can in the 
 different religious systems, without pretending to 
 inculcate notions of our own, which, perhaps, are 
 only a little better than those we should displace. 
 But I believe we shall be in a fairer condition to 
 meet these questions, when we have considered 
 
CHINA. SOCIAL ORDER. 85 
 
 the circumstances of a country in which Budd- 
 hism does not exist alone ; in which it is counter- 
 acted, and yet, I think, also illustrated, by the 
 presence of systems older, in that country at least, 
 than itself. 
 
 Numerous as are the puzzles which the history 
 and actual condition of China may present to 
 European enquirers — even to those few who are 
 acquainted with its language, and have had oppor- 
 tunities of closely observing it — I do not think 
 that there is much difference of opinion respecting 
 its main and distinguishing characteristic. Its 
 learned men, we are told by the most respectable 
 authorities, say, without exception, ' a principle of 
 Order is that which we discover and reverence in 
 the world C and every act of their lives, the con- 
 struction of their society, their art, their most 
 minute ceremonies, bear out the assertion. If 
 you hear their choicest phrases reported to you, 
 or look at the works they have produced, or re- 
 member the duration of their empire, or think 
 how many shocks from without it has withstood, 
 or even read one of their singular state papers, 
 you can scarcely avoid saying within yourself; 
 here is a people which, successfully or unsuccess- 
 fully, is striving to be orderly, which for genera- 
 tions has been carrying on this struggle, which 
 hates everything that interferes with its success, 
 would gladly obtain it by any sacrifice. Hence 
 the preservation of historical records in their 
 driest form has been as important a purpose in 
 their eyes as it has been an indifferent or impos- 
 
86 PART I. LECTURE III. 
 
 sible one to the Hindoo. Hence, from first to 
 last, we discover among them precisely the oppo- 
 site view of social life to that which we have 
 noticed in the conception of the Buddhist Lama. 
 The Chinese does not first ask where Spiritual 
 Intelligence dwells, and then confess that to this 
 he must submit. But he starts with the belief 
 in Government or Society ; and then demands 
 that all study and intelligence should be applied 
 to the preservation of it. The emperor is the 
 datum or postulate from which the speculations 
 of philosophers, as well as the arrangements of 
 society, begin. He is put into the position which 
 he holds that he may be the spring and soul of 
 Order to the commonwealth. How he may be 
 so he is to enquire very diligently. All the func- 
 tionaries of government arc to be chosen accord- 
 ing to their fitness to preserve that order, ac- 
 cording to their knowledge of the maxims upon 
 which it rests. To prevent any infractions of it 
 by themselves, or those over whom they rule, is 
 to be their incessant study. Instruction there- 
 fore, it would seem, has been from the earliest 
 period a primary condition of all civil duties and 
 employments. The Chinese have not anticipated 
 the West more in other machinery than in that 
 of education, and in the importance which they 
 have attached to it. Schools, great and little, 
 especially for the instruction of those who shall 
 have any offices in the state, were the great dis- 
 tinction of those dynasties, which we should call 
 in the history of any other people — here the 
 
CONFUCIUS. ROOT OF HIS SYSTEM. 87 
 
 name would be strikingly inapplicable — the heroic 
 period of the Empire. Because they fell into 
 decay, and the fabric of social order with them, 
 it was necessary that a Reformer should appear. 
 
 Confucius appeared, not to introduce new 
 maxims, but to revive the old — to explain what 
 he saw to be the conditions and first principles of 
 Chinese government and to embody them in books. 
 These books have been for two thousand years the 
 school-books of China : the maxims of society and 
 practical conduct possessing an authority higher 
 than any decrees, because they explain that which 
 must make decrees stable, and procure obedience to 
 them. The education of Confucius was one in state 
 affairs. He was strictly a government functionary. 
 He was disgusted with the confusion and disorder 
 which he found in all departments of the state, and 
 he retired to meditate in secret the grounds upon 
 which a reformation must be undertaken. He did 
 not trust solely to his own reflection, or to Chi- 
 nese antiquity. There was an old man, Laoutsee, 
 who spoke much of the Divine Reason which dwelt 
 within each man, of its being the first object of 
 every man to cultivate this, and to bring all his 
 faculties of body and mind under its rule. This 
 he seems to have set up as the maxim of life, 
 in opposition to the political notions of it, which 
 prevailed among his countrymen generally. To 
 his words Confucius listened respectfully ; though 
 far from admitting his doctrine, he turned it to 
 account by subordinating it to his own. He taught 
 also that a man must cultivate this reason in him- 
 
88 PART I. LECTURE UI. 
 
 self — must try to arrive at self-government, even 
 at perfect self-government ; but all for social ends 
 and purposes, all that he might be better able to 
 contribute towards the rational administration of 
 the state, towards the preservation of public order. 
 But where lay the root of this order ? Its first 
 ground Confucius, still professing only to be an 
 interpreter of old and admitted doctrines, said, 
 must lie in actual relationships ; the family must 
 sustain the state. The autliority of the father 
 must be the root of all other authority. The em- 
 peror must be regarded, must regard himself, as 
 the common father. He was set to keep his people 
 in order, and upon this principle he must order 
 himself. These were not mere words. They 
 actually express that which has been the binding 
 principle of Chinese society, from generation 
 to generation. Jesuit missionaries, Protestant 
 missionaries, English travellers, French philoso- 
 phical admirers of Confucius, have all alike con- 
 fessed it. The maxims of Confucius are faithful 
 results of the observations of a man honestly de- 
 sirous to make use of the experience that is given 
 him for a moral purpose ; they may generally be 
 read with interest, often with admiration, as hints 
 for conduct — even as helps to internal self-disci- 
 pline. But they would be feeble and unmeaning, 
 and could scarcely have exercised any great influ- 
 ence on the mind of a nation, if they had not 
 rested upon the recognition of a real and eternal 
 principle of order, lying far deeper than all Chi- 
 nese formalities, or than the formalities in the 
 
CONFUCIUS NOT AN ATHEIST. 89 
 
 mind of Confucius himself. Fatherly authority 
 was his ultimate principle. Practically, he went 
 not a step beyond it. What he heard of divine, 
 unseen, mysterious powers above man, or above 
 nature, or even in man and in nature, of some 
 thing or person beyond the earthly emperor, or the 
 earthly father — he by no means denied. What- 
 ever faith his countrymen had respecting the invi- 
 sible world, he would have wished to confirm. But 
 he did not see his way in such enquiries : he could 
 not trace the actual connexion between them and 
 practical life. And the sincerity of his mind re- 
 volted against the notion of merely using them as 
 ^^tifices to keep up respect for human institutions. 
 On this ground he has, I think, been too hastily 
 condemned as an atheistical philosopher. I cannot 
 feel any desire to make good such a charge. It 
 is a pleasanter, and also a truer, course, to admit 
 that his confession of ignorance may have been 
 a genuine one ; and may even have implied that 
 he had deeper thoughts than he knew how to 
 express. We may be sure that what there was 
 weak and maimed in his scheme will discover 
 itself in the course of history, and that this dis- 
 covery will be far more valuable than any rash 
 conclusions of ours respecting it. 
 
 Not many centuries after this reform, a Chinese 
 emperor became aware that there was some blank 
 in the doctrine of Confucius ; a blank which was 
 not filled up by turning him into a god, and 
 raising temples to him. Side by side with the 
 Confucian, or State-worship, dwelt the Taou sect. 
 
90 PART I. LECTURE III. 
 
 the disciples of that old philosopher with whom 
 Confucius had conversed, men who still maintained 
 that the Reason was something divine and mys- 
 terious in each person and would lead him into 
 inward contemplation not make him the handy 
 instrument in a State machinery. But these people 
 had little faith, except in themselves. The effect 
 of their mysterious knowledge upon others seemed 
 chiefly exhibited in charms and incantations and 
 magic arts, which interfered with the good order 
 of the State, rather than promoted it. Something 
 else was wanted. The emperor heard of a great 
 teacher and prophet somewhere in India. In spite 
 of the remonstrances of wise men, who shewed him 
 how grievously he was departing from Chinese 
 maxims in preferring foreign to native culture, 
 the Buddhist faith was imported into the empire. 
 A religion resting upon communion with the 
 unseen world, in all its outward and many of its 
 inward characteristics the direct opposite of the 
 Confucian system, gained footing on the soil which 
 that system ruled. The result was what might 
 have been expected. The new faith took hold of 
 popular sympathy and has retained that sympathy 
 to the present day. It was and is despised by 
 the great mandarins, by the functionaries of 
 government, by the adorers of social order. But 
 it is more than tolerated by the government as 
 such ; it is recognized as deserving of respect, 
 even of homage. Though the emperor cannot 
 allow the Lama to interfere with his own supreme 
 rule, and has procured the appointment of a 
 
THE BUDDHIST AND CONFUCIAN DOCTRINE. 91 
 
 deputy Lama who shall be really the head of the 
 Buddhist society in his dominions, and his sub- 
 ject, he yet sends embassies to the high priest in 
 Thibet, and asks his intercessions for China. Evi- 
 dently Buddhism is felt, even by the disciples of 
 Confucius, to be an element of society in China 
 which cannot be dispensed with, and for which 
 their own system, much as they may prefer it, 
 offers no substitute. 
 
 I have said, that in moBt of its inward, as well 
 as outward characteristics, the Buddhist and the 
 Confucian doctrine are opposed. I used this lan- 
 guage, because it is evident that in one respect 
 they are not opposed. Different as are the func- 
 tions which are assigned to the intellect of man 
 in the three Chinese systems, that intellect is still 
 an object of profound veneration to all. Wisdom 
 is viewed as wholly social and experimental in the 
 first, internal and mystical in the second, strangely 
 mixed with the idea of what is super-human and 
 eternal in the third. Had it been otherwise, had 
 there been nothing common in these faiths, it is 
 scarcely possible to conceive of them dwelling to- 
 gether in such an empire ; or to suppose that one 
 should at all supply the gaps in the other. 
 
 And which, then, of these three faiths, shall 
 we say can be described by that comprehensive 
 formula, ' a mere attempt to explain the pheno- 
 mena of the universe V All three do attempt that, 
 doubtless, — Buddhism, especially. But, does the 
 faith of the Buddhist consist in this ? Is it this 
 which in his inmost heart he wants to know? 
 
92 PART I. LECTURE III. 
 
 Every enquiry we have made has led us to the 
 opposite conclusion. He is obliged to question 
 the universe, because he does not know what else 
 he should question. He has questioned it, and 
 to every problem which disturbs him it has re- 
 turned a more confused answer. He has asked, 
 what that is within him which is higher than it, 
 what that is which seeks a knowledge which it 
 cannot give ? He is sure that he is above the 
 world — that it was never meant to be his master 
 — that the spirit in him must have its ground else- 
 where. But where ? What is this ground ? Is 
 it anything? Is it nothing? Who will tell him? 
 That which has asked the question cannot give 
 the answer. With deepest solicitude, he cries, 
 *' Do Thou, of whom I see the footmarks in natural 
 things, but most of all in human beings, in those 
 who have thoughts, and reasons, and wills — in 
 those who feel that these are not meant to be 
 the servants of their senses, or of the things 
 with which their senses deal, — do Thou tell me 
 who Thou art, and how I may draw nigh to Thee. 
 Tell me what Thou hast to do with man, for 
 something Thou must have. Tell me if there be 
 a man, and where he is, in whom I may behold 
 Thee ; One who is not here to-day, and gone to- 
 morrow ; but who, amidst all changes of times, 
 the disappearance of generations, lives on. Tell 
 me if there be indeed a King and High Priest of 
 the universe — a man actually Divine. And this, 
 too, I need to know : What that Light is which 
 dwells in me; whether it is self-derived, or, as my 
 
THE RESULTS OF BUDDHISM. 93 
 
 inward heart tells me, derived from Thee. Whe- 
 ther there be any Spirit coming forth from Thee 
 to dwell in men, and bind them together — to 
 make them gentle, and gracious, and wise — to 
 be the common life of all, and still the life of 
 each. And if these things be so, tell me how 
 these things can be reconciled, as my reason has 
 whispered that they can be, though as yet I see not 
 how, with that Unity — the essential condition of 
 Thy Being — that which divides Thee from all the 
 multitude of things and persons with whom in 
 this world we converse." I say that Buddhism, 
 rightly interpreted, is a prayer of this kind — an 
 earnest prayer, consciously or unconsciously uttered 
 by three hundred millions of people. And yet we 
 are told that it is honouring the faith of these 
 people, shewing tenderness and respect for them 
 to believe that there is not any Revelation, save 
 that which man procures for himself. In other 
 words, that this prayer never has been, never can be, 
 answered. Only if we have really brought ourselves 
 to this contempt for the thoughts of so many human 
 beings, can we patiently think of this faith working 
 out, as the phrase is, its own results. It has been 
 working out its results for all these thousands of 
 years — and what have they been 1 The worship 
 of the intellect has not caused the intellect to 
 grow — not even to grow to an ordinary human 
 or earthly stature ; I say nothing of that Divine 
 stature which it feels that it may reach. The 
 priest of Buddha, of the Intelligence, is rarely 
 an intelligent man. That mighty portion of the 
 
94 PART I. LECTURE III. 
 
 globe over which Buddhism rules is nearly the 
 most ignorant portion of it. And yet in it lie 
 the seeds of all highest, noblest culture, if only 
 we can really address ourselves to that which is 
 within the hearts of those who hold this faith, if 
 we can only tell them that which they crave to 
 know. That it is a vain and cruel thing merely 
 to carry our own notions among them — our no- 
 tions upon any subject, divine, human, earthly, 
 I admit readily. If we do not know that which 
 will solve their riddle — if we cannot tell them — 
 Here is that which will turn doubt and confusion 
 into clearness ; here is that which is not our 
 notion, but which has come from God to confound 
 our notions, to confound our pride ; and which is 
 meant, not for us, but for mankind : for mercy's 
 sake, let us be silent — the Buddhists are better 
 as they are. 
 
 So also of the Confucian scheme. That can- 
 not be charged with want of practical results. 
 Yet that something is wanting, China itself has 
 confessed. Can it be supplied from within ? 
 When we fancy it I think we commit a great 
 injustice. Mr. Medhurst, the author of an in- 
 teresting book on China, the result of his own 
 observations, expresses his wonder and even in- 
 dignation, that Confucius, having dwelt so beauti- 
 fully on the rights and duties of a father, should 
 not have carried up his thoughts to the Great 
 Father of all. I confess that I feel quite unable 
 to adopt this language. It seems to me evidence 
 of Confucius being a sincere man, that he did not 
 
WHAT THE CHINESE REQUIRE. 95 
 
 allow himself to use mere figures of rhetoric upon 
 this subject, for such in his lips they would have 
 been. If having spoken of one holding an actual 
 relation under the name of Father, he had after- 
 wards used that word as a synonym for a Creator 
 or for an unknown Being, the pleasure which such 
 expressions might have caused us would have been 
 dearly purchased by the loss of reality in the mind 
 of him who resorted to them. If you can tell the 
 Chinese that this is an actual relation, that it has 
 been proved to be so, that our human relation is 
 the image of it, that the reality of one gives 
 reality to the other, that the honour paid to rela- 
 tionships is not incompatible with that seemingly 
 abstract, unsocial, unreal view of the Reason of 
 which the Taou sect has been the champion ; and 
 that the Buddhist spiritualism is not an element 
 of new confusion, but of reconciliation — you will 
 indeed discover to him that deepest foundation of 
 order which he is looking for — you will shew him 
 that way from the visible to the Invisible which 
 he has never yet discovered. But any teaching 
 short of this, that hard and formal and yet withal 
 practical and serious, mind of his, will repel. You 
 will find that you have not learnt the spell which 
 can break the heavy yoke of custom from off his 
 neck, and change him from the most perfect of 
 living machines into a living Man. 
 
PART L— LECTURE IV. 
 
 The Old Persian Faith and its destruction. The Egyptian. 
 The Greek. The Roman. The Gothic. General 
 Conclusion. 
 
 rpHE Mahometan, the Hindoo, and the Budd- 
 I hist, are the great prevaiHng faiths of the 
 world. A person indeed who should insist upon 
 reducing all the religious thoughts and convictions 
 he met with in different places under one of these 
 three heads, would exliibit great practical igno- 
 rance ; for the feelings and apprehensions which 
 belouir to actual human beinors will not bear to be 
 so treated. A man will not really be intelHgible 
 to you, if, instead of listening to him and sym- 
 pathising with him, you determine to classify him. 
 But it is true, that one who has patiently studied 
 and livingly realized the characteristics of these 
 wide-spread beliefs, will not be hopelessly puzzled 
 by the notions of men in any part of the globe, 
 civilized or savage. There are no other existing 
 forms of religious thought sufficiently distinct from 
 these to deserve a separate examination in such a 
 course of Lectures as this ; none which have not 
 grown out of them, or have not been rapidly absorbed 
 into them. And it is of existing systems that I wish- 
 ed first and chiefly to speak, because for the practi- 
 cal object I proposed to myself, and which Boyle 
 desired we should keep in sight, these must be the 
 most important. I could not, however, do proper 
 
PERSIA. 97 
 
 justice to the subject if, before I enter upon the 
 second division of it — the consideration of the 
 way in which Christianity is related to different 
 religions — I did not touch upon what may be 
 called the defunct systems, those which belong to 
 history, and which have yielded to the might 
 either of the Crescent or the Cross. The word 
 'defunct,' we shall soon find, is only in one sense 
 applicable to them ; they had that in them which 
 is not dead, and cannot die ; that which is ex- 
 erting an influence upon the mind and education 
 of Christendom at the present day. Still, as 
 systems, they belong to the past; they will there- 
 fore supply a new kind of test for trying the 
 maxims respecting the worthlessness and tran- 
 sitoriness of what is merely theological, which I 
 have been examining in former Lectures. For 
 the reason I have given they ought not to be 
 treated in the same detail as those which have 
 occupied us hitherto : indeed, I do not think we 
 should gain so much by considering them in detail, 
 as by glancing at them side by side ; so that the 
 principles which distinguish them, and those 
 wherein they are alike, may be more readily dis- 
 cerned. 1 shall therefore endeavour to compress 
 what I have to say of them into a single Lecture. 
 I. The old Persian rehgion is the first which 
 offers itself to our notice, as standing in a close 
 relation, both outwardly and inwardly, to the 
 Hindoo. The Zendavesta, the religious book in 
 which this faith is professedly set forth, cannot be 
 appealed to as a very certain authority respecting 
 
 M.B.L. G 
 
98 PART I. LECTURE IV. 
 
 it ; what we possess is confessedly a compilation 
 from earlier sources ; and though critics think that 
 they can detect older fragments in the midst of it, 
 there is great difficulty in separating them from 
 the mass, or in determining the time when it was 
 put together. The age and history of the man 
 who is spoken of as the great prophet of this 
 faith, Zerdusht or Zoroaster, are equally obscure. 
 It has even been questione<l whether such a man 
 ever existed — whether he does not merely repre- 
 sent a divine principle, or a stage in a nation's 
 history. It might seem, then, as if this doctrine, 
 of which we have such vague records, must have 
 exercised but a slight influence ; at all events, 
 that its essential character cannot be -ascertained. 
 Both conclusions would be erroneous. Whatever 
 authority the Zendavesta may have, whatever 
 kind of person Zoroaster may have been, the Per- 
 sian faith has been bound up with the life of 
 a great portion of Asia, and has left as strong 
 evidences as any both of its nature and of its 
 power over the minds of men, even in generations 
 far removed from each other. 
 
 The readers of Gibbon will remember a splendid 
 passage of his history describing a great Asiatic 
 revolution which took place in the third cen- 
 tury after Christ. The old Persian empire was 
 then ruled by the Parthians. Their dynasty had 
 lasted for several centuries : it had been set up 
 after the G reek armies had conquered Asia ; after 
 they had established their own habits and civi- 
 lization in the midst of it. Thdr worship the Par- 
 
CHARACTER OF THE PERSIAN FAITH. 99 
 
 thians to a considerable extent adopted ; the old 
 faith of the Persians they crushed. At the period 
 I speak of it was found that this faith had lain 
 hidden under the soil, but had never been de- 
 stroyed. The Magi came forth and proclaimed that 
 which they affirmed to be the original teaching of 
 Zoroaster. The innovations of five centuries were 
 swept away ; a dynasty which the Persians recog- 
 nized as the continuation of the old kinordom of 
 Cyrus was established, and the nation's old belief 
 was the foundation upon which it rested. This 
 power became the great Eastern antagonist of 
 Rome: at a later period, it had nearly wrested the 
 empire of Asia from Constantinople: it sunk at last 
 under the irresistible strength of the Mahometan 
 armies. For a time, those whom the Mahometans 
 called fire-worshippers struggled hard : at length 
 they vanished into an insignificant sect ; Persia 
 acknowledged the Prophet of Arabia as its one 
 divine teacher. 
 
 But what was the faith which governed the old 
 Persian while he ruled the world — which dwelt so 
 deeply in the heart of a people that it could revive 
 after a lapse of centuries — which perished all but 
 utterly at last? We have seen that the Brahm of 
 the Hindoo, the Buddha of that mighty sect which 
 arose out of Hindooism, is especially the Intelligent 
 Being, He in whom light dwells, and by communica- 
 tion with whom men become enlightened. Observe 
 how naturally, how inevitably, one uses this word 
 Light for Intelligence. We feel instinctively that 
 it is much the better word of the tvvo; that one is 
 
 g2 
 
100 PART I. LECTURE IV. 
 
 hard and abstract, the other Hving and real. So 
 men have felt in all countries and ages. Their 
 bodily eye distinguished one thing from another — 
 could exert itself in the day, was useless in dark- 
 ness. They had as certainly something within them 
 which could discern a sense in words, a meaning 
 in things. This surely was an eye too. There was 
 no better way of speaking about it : And there 
 must be some light answering to this eye, older 
 than it, otherwise it could not be. Thev discovered, 
 too surely also, that there was a state in which 
 this eye saw nothing, a state of darkness. If we 
 keep these very simple thoughts in our minds, 
 (I say, keep them in our minds, for they are there 
 already ; we are obliged to make use of this lan- 
 guage — it belongs to us all, to prince and peasant 
 alike) ; and if we recollect that what we are apt 
 to overlook as too simple, is oftentimes just the 
 most important thing of all — the key which un- 
 locks a multitude of treasure-houses — we shall be 
 able to enter into the belief of different people, 
 and to trace the transition from one to another far 
 more easily. The conviction which we have found 
 dwelling so strongly in the minds of Brahmin 
 and Buddhist, though taking different forms, was 
 this — 'he who has the inward eye most opened, 
 must be the greatest man : he in whom it is 
 quenched, must be the lowest and most miserable 
 man.' And the puzzle which we saw tormenting 
 them both, in different ways and different degrees, 
 was this. But where is this light ? Is it only in 
 the eye ? What then does the eye behold ? Is 
 
ORMUZD AND AHRIMAN. 101 
 
 it not in the eye \ How then can I call that a 
 light \ A very deep question indeed ; the answers 
 to which, in every case, are full of practical signi- 
 ficance. The Persian solution was the most simple 
 of all. He felt that his whole life was precisely 
 this debate between light and darkness. There 
 must, he said, be Lords over this light and over 
 this darkness. This had probably been his oldest 
 and strongest conviction. 
 
 The nights in Persia are clear and beautiful. 
 The stars were a language which spoke to pea- 
 sant and priest alike of light coming out of dark- 
 ness. On these the one will have meditated till 
 he thought them powers and rulers of the world ; 
 the other will have paid them actual homage. The 
 Magians, the servants of the Light, will have 
 devised a system of worship addressed to these. 
 If Zerdusht or Zoroaster were a real man, he pro- 
 bably arose at a time when this worship had be- 
 come very general, and when the mind of the people 
 had become much debased by it. To some man, or 
 some men, it was given to perceive that the minis- 
 ters of light had become ministers of darkness. 
 Those things which symbolized a Divine Light had 
 been substituted for it. He rose up as the witness 
 for Ormuzd, the Lord of Light, to testify that 
 light comes from him, and not from the outward, 
 material things ; that whoso serves them is the 
 servant of Ahriman, the Prince of Darkness. While 
 Ahriman teaches his servants to bow down before 
 visible things, Ormuzd communicates to men his 
 living Word, (that is the meaning of Zendavesta,) 
 speaks to their hearts, teaches them the laws of 
 
102 PART I. LECTURE IV. 
 
 justice and order. The battle between Ormuzd and 
 Ahriman will be long, but Ormuzd must triumph 
 at last. The kingdom of light is mightier than 
 the kingdom of darkness. This was the substance 
 of the Persian faith, to the revival of which, in 
 its strength and simplicity all that was vigorous 
 in the Persian character and government, seems to 
 have been owing. There was the greatest differ- 
 ence between it and the Hindoo — precisely this 
 difference. The Hindoo thought of light and dark- 
 ness as the opposition between cultivation and igno- 
 rance — between the Brahmin and the Sudra; the 
 Persian looked upon them as expressions for right 
 and wrong. Far less refined and intellectual than 
 the Indian, far less capable of mere speculation, he 
 had a sense of practical, moral distinctions to 
 which the other was almost a stranger, or, at 
 least, which never presented themselves to him, 
 nakedly and directly, as the foundation of all other 
 distinctions. Hence a difference in their scheme of 
 life. Right must be proclaimed by some one ; not 
 merely recognized or perceived. The Persian, 
 therefore, looked much more to an authority which 
 should command men, or to a teacher who should 
 impart wisdom, than merely to a thinker or devotee. 
 He regarded the king, from whom the law and 
 words of grace proceeded, with more reverence 
 than the priest. There might be many conflicts 
 between the two, at times they might work in 
 harmony, but this was the abiding, characteristic 
 Persian feeling. 
 
 But there were two or three difficulties specially 
 besetting him who held this faith. The Persian 
 
THE PERSIAN PUZZLE. 103 
 
 felt that visible things were not to be adored. It 
 was the worship of Ahriman to set up them as the 
 lords of men. Yet he had more need than the 
 Hindoo to feel that the object he was worshipping 
 was above himself, not merely in himself. He must 
 speak of the Light as coming to him, not merely 
 as proceeding from him. But if so, how shall he 
 realize it 1 Must not the light, or must not the 
 fire, or must not the sun, be in some sense or other 
 an object for him to fear and obey I This thought 
 would be always re-appearing in the popular mind, 
 nay, in the mind of the teacher who most protested 
 against it, when he was struggling with the ten- 
 dency in himself and other men to set up their own 
 thoughts as if the true Light was in them. To meet 
 it the Magian devises a theory. These outward 
 objects are but images or counterfeits of something 
 within ; they are the productions of the king of 
 darkness : the good and great beings who appear 
 in the world come forth from the inner kingdom 
 to subvert these. Startinor from such a notion as 
 this, it was easy to produce a universe of phantasies; 
 the simple and earnest mind of the Persian, 
 struggling against them, and struggling in vain, 
 would plunge into direct idolatry. Another awful 
 question there was : Did this power of good origi- 
 nate the power of evil, or is each self-created ? Or 
 whence do they come I Some hidden being there 
 must be — some deeper ground than all that man 
 could conceive. They tried to express it in some 
 name — they called this ground of all things, Time 
 without Bounds. 
 
104 PART I. LECTURE IV. 
 
 Under this last form the Persian faith came 
 into contact with the Christian Church of the first 
 ages. The influence of the Gospel over Persia was 
 slight and partial ; but the preachers of it per- 
 ceived a deep meaning in the Persian speculations. 
 Gradually some appeared who thought the spe- 
 culation beautiful, who cared little for the solution. 
 These produced some of the darkest of the early 
 heresies. When the Mussulman encountered the 
 Persian faith he felt no such temptation. " Is this 
 your God — this Time without bounds, this phan- 
 tasy the Living Being? It is impossible. No! 
 pretend what you will, you are worshippers of fire, 
 or of the sun, or of the stars. With our swords 
 we cut through your webs of sophistry — through 
 your worlds seen and unseen — your good and your 
 evil principles. There is one God, and Mahomet 
 is his prophet. Yield to that belief, or perish !'* 
 
 The victory was very complete ; such an one is 
 hardly recorded in the annals of the world. But 
 when it was effected there was found to be some- 
 thing imperishable in Persian faith and feelings 
 which could change the characteristics of Maho- 
 metanism itself. To it we owe those stories of 
 fairies and genii, which mix with our earliest 
 impressions of Mahometanism. In a later time 
 Persia became the home of the great Sofi schism, 
 which has introduced a new Pantheistic element 
 into the doctrine of the Koran. Under the Maho- 
 metan teaching, which in Turkey has certainly 
 been favourable to veracity, the strong sense of 
 moral right and wrong which distinguished the 
 
EGYPT. 105 
 
 Old Persian has deserted him. He who was cele- 
 brated by Xenophon as above all men the speaker 
 of truth, has become proverbial for lying. 
 
 II. The history of Persia at a certain period 
 becomes connected with that of Egypt. The con- 
 nexion is a religious one. The Persian king, Cam- 
 byses, seems to have been a fanatic, and to have 
 carried on wars, if not for the propagation of his 
 own faith, at least, for the punishment of those who 
 held what he thought a false one. The Egyptian 
 priests were especial objects of his abhorrence. If 
 we ask on what grounds, we shall be led into the 
 consideration of another faith of the old world, 
 which has left the most singular records of itself ; 
 which at different periods of its existence is bound 
 up with Jewish and with Greek history ; which 
 was an object of profound interest to students 
 two thousand years ago, and is scarcely of less 
 interest to the students of our own century. 
 
 One subject immediately suggests itself to most 
 of us when we think of Egypt. I mean its hiero- 
 glyphics, or sacred symbolical writing. And as the 
 deciphering of this writing has been the key to 
 all modern discoveries respecting the details of the 
 history of this people, so the mere fact itself that 
 they did use such a character, is, perhaps, the most 
 helpful of all to the understanding of its principle. 
 We have seen what a puzzle it was to the Per- 
 sian to connect the outward things which he saw 
 with those which were objects of his thought ; how 
 continually there seemed to be some light very 
 near to his mind and heart which was revealing 
 
106 PART I. LECTURE IV. 
 
 itself to him ; how while he realized this con- 
 viction, the outward sensible things which with- 
 drew him from this light, were regarded as dark 
 and e^'il ; and yet how difficult he found it to 
 express his thoughts about that inward light, 
 except in terms which soon became confused with 
 sensible images. The Egyptian never seems to 
 have had this horror of visible things. He felt 
 that something very sacred lay beneath them, and 
 was expressed by them. To discover what this 
 was, to read what was hidden in the objects of 
 nature, was, in his apprehension, the function of 
 the wise man. Then he was to translate back these 
 percepti(ms of his, into outward forms and images, 
 that the vulgar might be able to profit by them 
 so far as it was meant that they should. Hence, 
 there grew up an order of priests in Egypt, as 
 separate from the rest of society, as tlie Brahmins. 
 A caste system organized itself in the African, as in 
 the Asiatic, nation. But the Egyptian priest was 
 not an abstracted man in the same sense as the 
 Hindoo ; he did not so much withdraw himself 
 from the contemplation of outward things, as seek 
 to extract a virtue and a meaning from them. His 
 first thouo^ht of all seems to have been that there 
 was a Being hidden from man, but who was mak- 
 ing himself manifest in different forms and signs. 
 His operations in nature, the power which is 
 exerted over the earth, and the life which goes on 
 within it, might, especially in a country of such 
 unparalleled fertility as Egypt, present themselves 
 as objects of wonder and witnesses of a Divine 
 
 1 
 
HIEROGYLPHICS WHAT THEY IMPORT. 107 
 
 presence. But it would be impossible to think 
 of these powers in the earth, without thinking of 
 the animals which dwell upon it, of the different 
 powers and qualities which they display, of their 
 birth, and decay and renewal. These animals sup- 
 ply him with more distinct anddefinitesymbols than 
 the vague expanse of the heaven or earth. Dif- 
 ferent kinds of power are more concentrated and 
 expressed in them ; they can be far more easily 
 exhibited in stone or in writing. Hence these 
 became predominant objects of meditation to the 
 priests. The various characteristics of the God- 
 head very soon become Gods. Students of Egyp- 
 tian monuments discover three stages in the 
 worship — three different cycles of gods. In the 
 earliest cycle the idea of the Amnion, the hidden 
 god, is the predominant one ; and his manifesta- 
 tions are themselves rather in active energies, in 
 vital operations, than in outward objects. The 
 third cycle is the one most directly outward, hint- 
 ing, however, at principles which in the first 
 period were less perceived. As might be expected, 
 different cities are found to have different classes 
 of symbols ; those in Upper Egypt to be charac- 
 teristically diverse from those in the Lower ; 
 though at some period an attempt must have 
 been made to bring all into one system. 
 
 Here, then, we seem to be in the idolatrous 
 country — the country of divided worship : that 
 which teaches us what idolatry means ; how man 
 loses sight of a centre : how every separate thing 
 about him may become his master. And yet, 
 
108 PART I. LECTURE IV. 
 
 throughout the whole of this idolatry there is a 
 perpetual questioning of an unknown power to 
 tell what this visible creation means. Each thing 
 that is beheld is a riddle, an oppressive, torment- 
 ing riddle, of which some solution must be found. 
 The Egyptian priest feels that the riddle is in the 
 things. He does not put it into them, and it is 
 not for him to do more than catch a stray hint of 
 what each is denoting. But there is some object, 
 some centre. The Pyramids point up to heaven 
 as if they would say, " We are in search of it, we 
 would reach it if we could." 
 
 Such a system as this, on whatever side he 
 viewed it, would be very offensive to a Persian 
 king, especially if he lived shortly after the revival 
 of his own faith, and before it had undergone any 
 of its later changes. The Egyptians would seem 
 to him worshippers of those outward things, which 
 he was taught to regard as in some sort the pos- 
 sessions of Ahriman. And all their mystical 
 wisdom would look like miserable attempts to 
 bring light out of darkness. It was far otherwise 
 with the Greek. The enquiries and speculations 
 of the Egyptian priests were listened to by him 
 with attention and wonder. He thought they had 
 a secret which he did not possess ; he eagerly, 
 but often in vain, questioned them to learn what 
 it was. In later times, when a Greek kingdom 
 had established itself in the heart of Egypt, under 
 the Ptolemies, both Jews and Greeks met upon 
 that soil, and the old Egyptian feeling, of a mys- 
 terious meaning lying at the root of all things, 
 
LATER EGYPTIAN HISTORY. 109 
 
 exercised a remarkable influence over both. The 
 influence was felt by the Christian Church which 
 established itself afterwards there, and which con- 
 sisted of both elements. It has left deep traces 
 in the thoughts of men during all subsequent 
 periods. But Christianity, which had a strong 
 hold upon the Greek cities of Egypt, seems never 
 to have penetrated into the heart of the country 
 population. The symbolizing tendencies which it 
 had inherited from the old faith led to divisions 
 on most momentous points, which appeared to 
 lose their momentousness in the violent party 
 strifes and intellectual subtleties to which they 
 gave rise. Egypt became sectarian and demo- 
 ralized ; the Mahometan power established itself 
 there. Various dvnasties and various forms of 
 Islamism have possessed it at different times ; the 
 arms which swept away subtleties and janglings 
 were utterly unable to cultivate the mind of the 
 Egyptian. All the European refinements and 
 material wisdom of its present ruler have not 
 awakened one thought in the people's heart, or 
 done ought but make their slavery more ignomi- 
 nious and hateful. If the Memnon lyre is again 
 to give forth any music, it must be touched by the 
 rays from some sun which is not yet visible in that 
 heaven. 
 
 III. To understand the difference between 
 the Egyptian and the Greek faith, it is not neces- 
 sary to study a great many volumes, or to visit 
 different lands : our own British Museum will 
 bring the contrast before us in all its strength. 
 
110 PART I. LECTURE IV. 
 
 If we pass from the hall of Egyptian antiquities 
 into the room which contains the Elgin marbles, 
 we feel at once that we are in another world. 
 The oppression of huge animal forms, the per- 
 plexity of grotesque devices, has passed away. 
 You are in the midst of human forms, each in- 
 dividually natural and graceful, linked together in 
 harmonious groups ; expressing perfect animal 
 beauty, yet still more the dominion of human in- 
 telligence over the animal. You perceive that 
 the Greek is not mainly occupied with spelling 
 out a meaning in the forms of nature : their sym- 
 metry and harmony present themselves to him as 
 delightful and satisfying. He is not trying to 
 find out the natural characters in which he shall 
 utter his thoughts : he feels that he is able to 
 write them in a character devised by themselves, 
 upon nature. He can take the forms of the 
 world and mould them into expressions of the 
 spirit that is working in himself. The Brahm or 
 Buddha of the East, the God of Intelligence, is 
 with him. At Delphi, the centre of the world, 
 he utters his oracles of wisdom, by which states 
 and men are to rule themselves. But he is no 
 mere formal, abstract Divinity : He is all Light 
 like the Persian God ; you may see him in the 
 sun ; but he himself is a beautiful human being, 
 with his quiver and bow, destroying the creatures 
 that offend the earth, or punishing human wrongs; 
 with the lyre, at the sound of which cities spring 
 up and men are brought into order and harmony. 
 Apollo seems to be the central figure in Greek 
 
APOLLO ZEUS. Ill 
 
 mythology, that around which the others have 
 disposed themselves. The idea of Light and 
 Wisdom, which is concentrated in him, is diffused 
 in different forms, male and female, through the 
 rest of the mythology, each having some particular 
 locality, and presenting some different aspect to 
 the Greek mind. 
 
 But it is felt that this bright, clear, human 
 form cannot be the ground of all things. A Hin- 
 doo might have said that he was an emanation 
 from the First Principle ; but a Greek, with his 
 strong human feelings, at once refers him to a 
 Parent, and says that he must be the Son of 
 Zeus, the Lord of All. And what is He, and 
 where does He dwell ? On a high Thessalian hill, 
 out of the sight of men. There his thunders are 
 heard ; thence his decrees come forth. An awe 
 surrounds his habitation, but he too very speedily 
 becomes a clear, definite conception. He is seen 
 in a human form, presently figured in sculpture. 
 Human acts and passions are ascribed to him. 
 The thought of mere solitary, self-subsisting gran- 
 deur is intolerable to the Greek ; around him 
 therefore must be a council of chiefs. And 
 since the upper world seems his possession, since 
 it is impossible to conceive of him otherwise than 
 in the World of Light, the nether world, the 
 dark world, must have its own ruler, and that 
 other strange region, which seems neither to be- 
 long to the world above nor to the world below, 
 the illimitable ocean, on which the Greek gazed 
 with delight and child-like wonder, which was 
 
■*: 
 
 112 PART I. LECTURE IV. 
 
 ready to swallow him up, and yet which owned 
 his rule, w^hich he could traverse with his ships, 
 which gave him a sense of unbounded freedom 
 and communion even while it shut him in, and 
 separated him from his fellows — this too must 
 have its Monarch. 
 
 There was delight in forming these conceptions, 
 in moulding them into actual shapes ; and yet the 
 heart craved for something else, something that 
 it could not thus conceive and mould. Dreams 
 came to them of an earlier period, when another 
 divinity, older than Zeus, had dominion — Chronos, 
 or Time, was his name. Of such a one Zoroaster 
 had spoken, but his abstraction of time without 
 limits is quickly moulded by the Greek into an out- 
 ward form, — an old man with a scythe, who devours 
 his children as soon as they are born. So quickly 
 did these visions of a world above man, or of a 
 world in the past, take their shape and colouring 
 from the actual world, and from the mind of him 
 who observed it. And other visions there were, 
 which confessedly belonged to earth, though they 
 began and ended with heaven. The Greek Hercules 
 is the head of a whole class of human benefactors 
 and heroes, who tilled and subdued the earth, 
 drained marshes, destroyed beasts and oppressive 
 men, one of whom also penetrated into the lower 
 world, delivered the victims of death, so proving 
 his title to be a son of the god, and, ultimately, 
 rising into fellowship with the gods. With these 
 were mingled men who aspired rashly and pre- 
 sumptuously to that glory — Titans, who strove to 
 
PROMETHEUS, DIONYSUS. 118 
 
 overcome the Lord of Heaven by pure strength — 
 one who was sentenced to perpetual thirst for 
 seizing the divine nectar — one whose name de- 
 clares him to be the representative of wisdom and 
 foresight, who opposed the brute strength of the 
 Titans, but who, because he stole fire from heaven 
 for the good of man, must be fastened to a rock, 
 and be the prey of a vulture, till a predestined 
 deliverer should come. 
 
 All these conceptions could harmonize very 
 well with that worship of Apollo which seems to 
 have been characteristically the Greek worship. 
 But at some time or other a mysterious divinity 
 appeared, who possessed men with an inspiration 
 which raised them into gods, or degraded them 
 into brutes — a power to be felt rather than be- 
 held. The Greek imagination was able to give 
 even this Deity a form and a name ; to invest 
 him with ivy-leaves, and describe him as coming 
 amid songs and shoutings from India. But the 
 idea of such a power, so near to man, so deep and 
 inward, could not forsake them. It uttered itself 
 in poems, which were of a very different character 
 from the free songs of early times ; which spoke 
 of man as carrying on a conflict with himself and 
 with the world ; which spoke of a deep, unknown 
 Fate, whereto even the gods must bow. This 
 faith associated itself also with Mysteries, which 
 imparted to the mind of the whole nation a sense 
 of something too sacred for words to utter, or 
 images to represent, and which must, nevertheless, 
 lie at the root of human life and society. 
 
 M.B.L. H 
 
114 PART I. LECTURE IV. 
 
 Meantime the feelings which these mysteries 
 conveyed to the popular mind were realized in an- 
 other way by thoughtful men ; they began to say 
 within themselves, The origin of the things we see, 
 of our own lives, of human society, cannot be in 
 those persons to whom the traditions of our an- 
 cestors have ascribed them. The authors, they 
 said, of these traditions were poets, who created 
 our creators. But where is that which is not con- 
 ceived, not created ! Is it in the things themselves 
 — in water, or earth, or air, or lire I Is it in our 
 own mind I Is it in some principle which unites 
 these together^ These were the questions which 
 the Greeks asked themselves, when they could be 
 no longer content with the vision of a fair-haired 
 Apollo, but must find out what that Light or 
 Intelligence was of which his name testified. In 
 pursuing such enquiries, some were willing to seek 
 aid of those Egyptian priests who seemed to 
 have discerned the meaning of things, and not to 
 have invented a meaning for them. Some wished 
 to turn the stories of their childhood into mere 
 abstract speculations ; some discarded them, and 
 all belief together. The wisest of them laboured 
 to shew the Greek youths that their Conscience 
 and Reason demanded something which they did 
 not create for themselves ; that all faith and re- 
 verence and worship, the words which they spoke, 
 their own existence, their very doubts and ques- 
 tionings, pointed to a deep, eternal ground, which 
 could not be a visible phantom, nor a theory, nor 
 an abstraction — which must be the Being. 
 
LATER GREECE HER ANCIENT MYTHOLOGY. 115 
 
 We may possibly persuade ourselves that with 
 this record of human thoughts we have nothing 
 to do. But with it is bound up the history of 
 one of the most remarkable people that has ever 
 existed upon the earth. Their inward history 
 is necessary to interpret the outward one. From 
 it we must learn why the Greeks were so mighty, 
 and why they were so weak, why their intellect 
 asserted such a dominion over the greatest phy- 
 sical power, and why it could not be victorious 
 over the animal nature in themselves, why, when 
 they were feeble, they seemed capable of ruling 
 the world, and why, when they became its masters, 
 they were broken in pieces. And this enquiry 
 has not become an obsolete one even in reference 
 to Greece itself : the last thirty years have given 
 it new interest. The Greek mythology, after 
 some desperate efforts to ally itself with philo- j/ 
 sophy, and in that shape to put itself forth as an 
 antagonist to Christianity, sunk into insignifi- 
 cance ; the last school of purely Greek philosophy 
 was closed in the reign of Justinian. But the 
 habits and character which that mythology and 
 philosophy embodied, exhibited themselves most 
 remarkably in the history and controversies of the 
 Christian church, were preserved at Constantin- 
 ople through the whole of the middle ages, pene- 
 trated into the West at the revival of letters, have 
 survived on their own soil three centuries of Ma- 
 hometan dominion, and must be earnestly studied 
 by all who desire that the new Greek kingdom 
 should not exhibit all the vices and none of the 
 
 h2 
 
 / 
 
 y 
 
116 PART I. LECTURE IV. 
 
 merits of the old Greek republics ; who desire 
 that it should be, as it may be, an efficient bond 
 between the European and the Asiatic, the 
 Western and the Eastern World. 
 
 IV. The Faith which is embodied in the 
 acts and literature of the Romans is often sup- 
 posed to be the same with that of the Greeks. 
 But this opinion arises, I think, from the habit of 
 comparing the systems together, instead of seeking 
 the main and central object in each. The majority 
 of the Latin books which we read belong to a 
 period after the Greeks had become the teachers 
 of Rome, and after its own faith had in a great 
 measure disappeared. Yet even from these, it is 
 easy to perceive that Apollo, who, as the teacher 
 of wisdom, the model of human beauty, the source 
 of harmony, was the prominent Greek Divinity, 
 never could have occupied any similar place in the 
 Latin mind. In the system of the Greeks the 
 father of gods and men was of course the centre. 
 He was so, I believe, practically and vitally to the 
 Roman. But he did not habitually think of 
 Jupiter as seated on a mountain, as the lord of 
 earth and air. Such notions might gradually de- 
 velope themselves in his mind ; but, first of all, he 
 believed there was One in the capitol of his own 
 city ; a presence there from which all law and 
 government, the right of the father, the authority 
 of the consul, proceeded. These different con- 
 ceptions — of a Being dwelling in the centre of the 
 world, and uttering oracles of wisdom to guide 
 the thoughts and understandings of men; — of one 
 
BELIEF OF GREECE AND ROME RESPECTIVELY. 117 
 
 dwelling in the centre of the City, and issuing words 
 of authority and law to bind citizens together, to 
 restrain, mould, organize societies, seem to mark 
 the difference between the characters and doings 
 of the two nations ; each wonderfully asserting 
 the power of man over natural things, and ascrib- 
 ing this power to his connexion with a divine 
 ruler, or teacher, or inspirer: but the one using 
 nature to set forth man's thoughts, the other 
 making it the servant of his purposes ; the first 
 creating statues, the other, roads and aqueducts ; 
 both aiming at unity, but the one always ready 
 to sacrifice actual unity to an ideal, the other 
 considering everything subordinate to the object 
 of keeping men practically at one ; each alike 
 disturbed by the oppositions of self-will and indi- 
 vidual interest ; but these concealing themselves, 
 in the Greek, under the pretence of defending 
 some Principle, in the Roman, under the ambition 
 of upholding the rights of some Order. 
 
 This distinction is apparent in every part of 
 the Roman faith. A God who defines and pre- 
 serves boundaries is more sacred in his eyes than 
 the teacher of the divinest art. If he honours 
 any God as a teacher it is Mercury, because he 
 imparts the gift of eloquence, by which bodies of 
 men are swayed — by which armies are moved or 
 regulated. This result, and not the cultivation of 
 any faculty for its own sake, is what he seeks. 
 The god of war, who is often utterly contempt- 
 ible in the Greek legends, is his great patron 
 and defender. The first king in old Roman heroic 
 
118 PART I. LECTURE IV. 
 
 traditions is his son, though it is not as a con- 
 queror, but as the organiser of an infant com- 
 munity, that those traditions present him to us. 
 War, in the Roman conception of it, is not an 
 exhibition of individual prowess, however such 
 prowess may be called forth by it : but a means of 
 subduing restless, striving atoms into order. It is, 
 then, not at all inconsistent with his reverence for 
 Mars, that a feeling of the sanctity of domestic ties 
 should especially belong to his faith. Virgil, who 
 though as a writer he may have copied Greek 
 models, was in heart a Roman, and entered into 
 the spirit of his counti^y's traditions better than 
 any man, lays the foundation of it in filial rever- 
 ence, in the care of household gods. If the Ro- 
 man entertained any of the Persian awe of fire, 
 as the symbol of light and penetrating power, it 
 was expressed in his worship of Vesta, the goddess 
 of the hearth, the preserver of family purity, and 
 in the fire which was ever to be kept burning 
 within her temple. The power of the father lay 
 at the root of his law and life ; and it was not, 
 like the Chinese, a mere human apprehension, it 
 was practically and essentially connected with all 
 his thoughts of a Divine Being. He looked upon 
 the bonds of family life as implied in the 
 existence of a commonwealth — as its necessary 
 basis and continual support. Upon any less real 
 foundation so mighty a power could not have 
 stood. Having such a ground, whatever threatened 
 it with dissolution ultimately contributed to its 
 strength. Conflicts of different orders of society 
 
KOMAN PAGANISM GIVES WAY. 119 
 
 brought out principles of the constitution which 
 were previously latent ; opposing principles, yet 
 necessary to each other. And soon it seemed as 
 if a power which had grown up by such regular 
 and mysterious processes must be irresistible. 
 Carthage, Egypt, Greece, bowed before it. The 
 Parthian Empire disputed with it the sovereignty 
 of Asia. The countries of Western Europe it 
 appeared specially appointed to subdue and civilize. 
 The belief of Rome gave it, as we have seen, its 
 centre ; in the capitol where Jove dwelt, the nation 
 and the world which it ruled found the principle of 
 their cohesion. The statesmen saw that it was so ; 
 they lost the belief, but determined that it must 
 be upheld for the state's sake. The Family they 
 would have acknowledged it was expedient to 
 uphold for the same reason ; but that refused to 
 stand upon a fiction, to live merely because it was 
 wanted by the politician. As all domestic bonds 
 became relaxed, the forms of the religion be- 
 came more consciously unreal. Then it was seen 
 that the state could not exist any longer upon 
 its old ground. A visible Emperor must supply 
 the place of an invisible Law and Presence. The 
 military sacrament of the soldiers to the com- 
 mander must be the one substitute for the ancient 
 reverence. And such was the force of this bond, 
 so much of the feeling and principle of order 
 still survived in it, that the state could last even 
 for centuries with this thin plank separating it 
 from the abyss. The plank cracked often — gave 
 way at last ; and the nations, which had been 
 
120 PART I, LECTURE IV. 
 
 prepared for the day and the hour, seized the 
 spoil. Before that catastrophe the proclamation 
 of a set of Galilean fishermen, that a crucified 
 man was the Lord of the World, had been beheved 
 by the Emperors. Roman paganism seemed to dis- 
 appear from the earth. But its peculiar character, 
 the secret of its power, the cause of its decay, 
 should be carefully reflected on, or the history of 
 Western Christendom for twelve hundred years 
 will be to us an inexplicable riddle. 
 
 V. Very soon after Rome became an empire 
 it was discovered that there was a part of Europe 
 which was more formidable to it than even the 
 Parthian empire in the East. Intelligent Ro- 
 mans began to enquire very earnestly what that 
 German race was which seemed to present the 
 newest and strangest obstacle to Roman ascend- 
 ancy. They had a prophetic feeling that the 
 question would be a very interesting one in after 
 days to their own country and to mankind. They 
 found a people who recalled to them the traditions 
 of their own ancestors ; rude and scattered, full 
 of individual energy, severe and chaste, reverencing 
 family bonds ; with a sense, however imperfectly 
 developed, of social order. A few observations they 
 made upon the faith of this people, which are well 
 worthy of note. *' The Germans looked upon day," 
 says Tacitus, " as coming out of night, the last as 
 the ground of the first. They appeared to pay a 
 kind of worship to the earth. They looked upon 
 themselves as descended from Mannus." It seemed 
 to the Roman, trying to translate their notions into 
 
THE GOTHS THEIR MYTHOLOGY. 121 
 
 his own, that Mercury was their chief god. These 
 hints, sHght and imperfect as they are, throw great 
 hght upon the mythology of Germany and the 
 North, as we receive it from those who Hved under 
 its influence. To trace it through all its mazes 
 may be difficult, and not very profitable ; but there 
 are certain great features in it which are worthy 
 of earnest consideration. 
 
 I did not endeavour to disconnect the Mytho- 
 logy of Persia from its climate and scenery. The 
 thoughts of the Magian w-ere wonderfully affected 
 by Eastern nights and days, an Eastern earth and 
 sky. So likewise were the thoughts of the Goth, 
 by the murky atmosphere in which he dwelt, by 
 the dark woods which he must fell, by the seas 
 out of which the solid land emerged or which 
 broke in upon it. Doubtless, the phenomena of 
 the world occasioned the Northerns great per- 
 plexity ; all the powers of earth and air and fire 
 and water are at work in their tales and poems. 
 The conflicts of these powers, may, in one sense, 
 be said to be the subject of them. 
 
 But we know little, indeed, about our ances- 
 tors, if we suppose that they were thinking merely 
 about such matters. They described wars of 
 giants, of good and evil powers. It is easy to say 
 these giants only express the struggles and throes 
 of nature — cultivation contending with barren- 
 ness, spring succeeding winter. But why are they 
 giants ? Why do they take this personal form ? 
 Why, if winter and spring were chiefly in their 
 minds, did they not speak of winter and spring ? 
 
122 PART I. LECTURE IV. 
 
 Tacitus is most right in saying that the earth is 
 the object of their study, perhaps, of their wor- 
 ship ; but he is still more right in saying that 
 thev felt themselves derived from Mannus. Man 
 is the subduer of the earth ; because he lives upon 
 it, tills it, sows it, rescues it from the waters, 
 brings the harvests of autumn out of the frosts of 
 winter, therefore do these Goths care about the 
 earth. And those battles which they see going 
 on upon it or beneath it, those struggles of gigan- 
 tic powers of evil with deliverers and benefactors, 
 are interpreted to them by what they feel going 
 on in themselves ; they are the wars of Mannus, 
 much more than of the earth, and sea, and sky. 
 Read them in this light, and every Northern saga 
 is full of profoundest interest and instruction. A 
 mighty power of death and of darkness struggling 
 to draw all creatures into itself; mightier powers 
 of good struggling against it : consuming fires, 
 that are to destroy what is corrupt ; life coming 
 out of death, second birth, resurrection — these 
 are ideas by which you see that they were haunted 
 and possessed. They could find no clue to the 
 strange mystery, yet they felt that it was near 
 them, and about them, and that there must be 
 some bright sun, which would come forth one day 
 to scatter the shadows, and shew all things in their 
 true relations and proportions. Yet it is equally 
 true that Mannus himself and his origin are lost 
 in the Infinite. Tacitus expresses the idea of the 
 mythology in this respect too distinctly and de- 
 finitely, but not unhappily, when he speaks of 
 
ODIN VARIOUS THEORIES. 123 
 
 Mercury, the messenger of gods and men, who 
 passes rapidly from heaven to earth, and from 
 earth to the shades below, who connects each 
 with the other, as the object of Gothic reverence. 
 Such a being, only surrounded with vagueness and 
 mist, not capable of being exhibited in a form hke 
 the Greek Hermes, or the Roman Mercury, is the 
 Northern Odin. Each new theorist about him 
 will present him in a different aspect, one as a 
 mere mortal, to whom a history may be ascribed 
 — one as a mere Divinity — one as a teacher of 
 human wisdom — one as merely the ideal of wisdom 
 — one perhaps as the representation of some phy- 
 sical process — one as the establisher of a political 
 order. Each may give plausible reasons for his 
 opinion ; no worshipper of him could have told 
 you which was true ; he would have felt that in 
 some sense all must be true. Precisely the ne- 
 cessity of his mind was to find some object in 
 which these characters might really meet: who 
 should bring the clear light out of the darkness, 
 and be a conqueror in that war with the earth's 
 tormentors. 
 
 I have now completed this division of my sub- 
 ject, and I may ask you for a moment to consider 
 how the different portions of it are connected to- 
 gether, and what is the general result. Maho- 
 metanism, we see, stands upon a different ground 
 from all the rest. It starts from the Divine Will, 
 it assumes a declaration of that Will to men, it 
 
124 PART I. LECTURE IV. 
 
 affirms men to be the servants of God to execute 
 His AV^ill. Hindooism has only the faintest con- 
 ception of a Divine Will ; but it recognizes a 
 Divine oriojinal Lio^ht or Intelliojence from which 
 the intelligence in man proceeds, and which it is 
 to contemplate. In striving to ascertain what 
 this Light is — how it is distinct from the human 
 intelligence — the Brahmin becomes lost in specu- 
 lation. The Buddhist cuts the knot, practically 
 makes man's intellect the origin of all things ; yet 
 recognizes a certain universal Intelligence dwelling 
 in the race, and concentrated from time to time 
 in some person. Hindooism and Buddhism have 
 been compelled in different ways to come down 
 from the merely abstract region, and to speak of 
 the Divinity as concerned with the doings of ordi- 
 nary men ; as exercising influences beneficent or 
 pernicious over them : each has been obliged to 
 explain what the universe has to do with the ori- 
 ginal Intelligence ; each has been compelled into 
 an idolatry of material things against which, in 
 its first conception, it is a protest. Both have 
 struggled with Mahometanism, and been overcome 
 by it ; neither has been able to amalgamate with 
 it ; for neither has it been found to be a substi- 
 tute. Buddhism in China has established itself 
 side by side with a system of social order, the basis 
 of which is the recognition of paternal authority, 
 and which regards the knowledge of the invisible 
 as unattainable. Entirely opposed to this system, 
 Buddhism has been found nevertheless an indis- 
 pensable supplement to it ; even for the accom- 
 
SUMMARY. 125 
 
 plishment of its own purpose. These different 
 faiths which exercise a dominion over so large 
 a portion of the universe, claim something to 
 satisfy them, something to unite them. Not one 
 of them contains the solution of the difficulties 
 which it has raised ; each testifies that there is a 
 chasm which the other seems meant to fill up ; 
 but it remains a chasm still. Not one of them 
 can be satisfied by any philosophical theory about 
 the universe, or about man, or about God, or 
 about all of them. Mahometanism meets such 
 theories by its primary proclamation, God is ; He 
 must be a living personal Being : he must be the 
 King of Men. Hindooism is continually attempt- 
 ing to philosophize, but every new turn of its his- 
 tory proclaims. We want a Living Intelligence, 
 which shall hold converse with men, and with 
 which men may converse. Buddhism has been a 
 continual effort at philosophy ; but every passage 
 of its history proclaims, Philosophy will not do 
 for us ; we want a Living Intelligence to dwell in 
 man. And now we have to add some new evi- 
 dence to this. First, we hear from the Persian 
 a cry for some infinite, absolute Being, the ground 
 of Light and Darkness, which he can only call 
 Illimitable Time. Then from the Egyptian the 
 witness of an Ammon, or hidden God. Then 
 from the Greek the cry for something which he 
 cannot express — which must be veiled in mys- 
 teries, which the poet speaks of as irresistible 
 Fate, which the philosopher says must be the 
 Being, which cannot be material, and yet is no 
 
126 PART I. LECTURE IV. 
 
 abstraction. The Roman must have an invisible 
 God of the city, a righteous lawgiver, preserving 
 the authority of his state, or it perishes. Unless 
 in the heaven or the abyss there be one greater 
 than Mannus, the dark thoughts of the Goth 
 signify nothing. But none of them can be satis- 
 fied with the recognition of this hidden Being. 
 There must be a manifestation of Him. From 
 the immeasurable Time a Light must come forth, 
 and that Light must be a Person. An Ormuzd 
 must speak living words, nay, must be a living 
 Word. Amnion must assume forms ; the visible 
 must, in some way, set forth the Invisible. One 
 all clear and bright must be himself Wisdom to 
 the Greeks — must utter the thoughts of wisdom, 
 which keep them a people, and then must scatter 
 himself through a thousand visible images. The 
 Jove of the capitol cannot be only there. His 
 presence must come forth in the host and in the 
 family. Odin must travel from land to land, 
 teach, give laws, open Walhalla to men. 
 
 Look at these religions, and you see in them 
 all a witness of unity. Look at them again, and 
 you see there is something which divides them 
 from each other. They confess that if men are 
 to unite, it must be in something above them- 
 selves ; they cannot unite ; for things beneath 
 themselves, the accidents of life, the climate, the 
 soil of the lands in which they dwell, seem to 
 determine what it is that is above them. They 
 confess that if men are to unite, it must be in 
 something above themselves : but the habits, tem- 
 
A REALITY IN THE PAGAN MYTHOLOGIES. 127 
 
 pers, tastes of the worshippers determine what it 
 is which is above them. 
 
 This is the report which history gives of these 
 reh'gions — the stamp which they have left of them- 
 selves upon the actual universe. Dare you talk of 
 all this as merely an illustration of the working of 
 the religious principle in men ? Dare you use 
 such a dry, withered, heartless abstraction, to get 
 rid of the recollection that you have been hearing 
 how beings of your own flesh felt and acted and 
 suffered? Or can you comfort yourselves with 
 saying, " These have all passed away ; the Persian 
 Ormuzd and Ahriman — the Egyptian dream of 
 types in the world which must have some antitype 
 — the Greek question, how is it I can create such 
 marvels 2 what is it I cannot create I — the Roman 
 sense of a divine order in the nation and family — 
 the Odin warfare of good and evil spirits ; they 
 have passed away as visions of the night.'' Visions 
 they were, but visions which came to men con- 
 cerning the dreadful realities of their own exist- 
 ence. They were visions of the night, but by them 
 men had to steer their vessels and shape their 
 course ; without them all would have been dark. 
 And we belong to the same race with the men 
 who had these visions; some nearer to us, some 
 more distant, some brought up in regions utterly 
 unlike our own, some almost our kinsmen after 
 the flesh ; all our kinsmen in reality. It has not 
 been a mistake, I believe, in our education that 
 we have busied ourselves so much with the legends 
 of Greece and Rome. If we used them aright. 
 
] 28 PART I. LECTURE IV. 
 
 they would not serve for the food of an idle dilet- 
 tantism — they would teach us reverence and fear. 
 We should tremble as we remembered * These 
 dreams of a beauty which eye hath not seen, or 
 ear heard, have visited the hearts of human beings 
 generations ago ; the dark and filthy imaginations 
 which mingled with these dreams were engendered 
 in the same hearts : by one as much as the other 
 and by the fearful combination we know that 
 those hearts were like our own. They will dwell 
 together in us, and in time the vile will seem real, 
 the beautiful only a shadow, unless we can find 
 that the beauty has been somewhere substantiated ; 
 unless we can see the beauty apart from the cor- 
 ruption ; unless there is some power which can 
 establish the one, and destroy the other, in our- 
 selves." 
 
 Such reflections often come, I trust, to the 
 young men of our land, as they read the classical 
 fables. Yet these belong rather to a refined cul- 
 tivation, and they may so possess the mind with 
 the love of finite forms as to make it forget that 
 those who conceived them could not be satisfied 
 with them ; but cried for the Infinite beyond. 
 It is otherwise with the tales of our own proper 
 ancestors. These are bound up with the thoughts 
 of our peasantry ; the most ignorant man feels 
 that they represent some of the unspeakable fears 
 and hopes of his spirit. And they clothe them- 
 selves in no orraceful forms. The storms and earth- 
 quakes of nature are the only adequate types of 
 the conflict which they speak of, a conflict in which 
 
CLASSICAL FABLES. 129 
 
 human beings of that day were actually engaged. 
 Are we not engaged in it too ? Have we asked 
 ourselves whether we can bear up in it alone I if 
 not, whether we know where help in it is to be 
 found ? 
 
 M.B.L. 
 
PAET II. 
 
 RELATIONS OF THE RELIGIONS OF THE 
 WORLD WITH CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 Why Judaism has not occupied a separate place in these 
 Lectures. Mahometanism related to Christianity on 
 its Judaical side. Nature of the relation indicated. 
 Wherein Mahometa^iism differs from Judaism. Dan- 
 gers to Christianity from the forgetfulness or predo- 
 minance of its Mahometan side. How the Christian 
 Faith and Church satisfy the cravings of Maho- 
 metans. 
 
 I SPOKE in my last Lecture of Mahometanism, 
 Hindooism, and Buddliism, as the three great 
 existing religions of the world ; of the Persian, the 
 Egyptian, the Greek, the Roman, and the Gothic, 
 as the most conspicuous of those which belong to 
 the past. It may strike some of you, that in one 
 of these lists, though you may scarcely be able 
 to say in which, there was a capital omission. 
 Might not even the letter of Boyle's Will have 
 reminded me, that the Christian missionary is 
 likely to be encountered by Jews in all parts of 
 the world? Is there any faith which has had a 
 more memorable past than theirs ? 
 
 It is indeed true, that a person must take a 
 most imperfect view of society during the last 
 eighteen hundred years, who forgets that the Jew 
 
THE JEWS. 131 
 
 has had a place in it. Upon whatever age, upon 
 whatever portion of the world he fixes his eye, this 
 strange figure encounters him. He sees men with- 
 out a place which they can call their own upon the 
 earth, still feeling themselves to be the nation which 
 has been chosen out of all others to be the head 
 of the earth ; men willingly submitting to the most 
 grovelling occupations, and with a character seem- 
 ingly conformed to these occupations, yet never 
 deserted by a vision of past and future glory ; 
 men trampled upon by all people, and yet exer- 
 cising a mighty influence, one which has increased 
 with the increase of riches and civilization, over 
 the counsels of statesmen and princes ; men, who 
 if the time should come when no God but Mam- 
 mon is worshipped in the world, will carry a fear- 
 ful recollection into the temples of Mammon of 
 one who may be his destroyer. It is true also 
 that the Jew has never been without powerful 
 arguments for that which he holds, and against 
 that which he denies. He can always appeal to 
 his own consistency in support of the first — to 
 the persecutions and crimes of Pagans, Maho- 
 metans, and Christians, as evidence in opposition to 
 them. Though he cannot make converts, though 
 he does not wish it — for his business is to keep 
 the family of Abraham distinct from all others — 
 he can do much to shake the faith of those among 
 whom he dwells. In all times, of late years more 
 especially, he has been able to adapt himself to 
 prevailing habits of thought and feeling, to become 
 conspicuous in art and science, to enter into philo- 
 
 i2 
 
182 PART II. LECTURE I. 
 
 sopliical speculations, and strangely to mingle the 
 lessons which he has received in the schools of 
 the Prophets with the wisdom of those who most 
 despise them. 
 
 The Jew then may on these grounds be well 
 said to belong to the present, his religion to be 
 one of the existing religions of the earth. He is 
 a witness for something which survives. But he 
 is also, by his own sad confession, a witness for 
 something which is departed. Persia, Egypt, 
 Greece, Kome exhibit the signs of a bygone world 
 to travellers who go in search uf them. The 
 Israelite carries the signs of the change which 
 has befallen Palestine with him into the meanest 
 street of every city of Europe, Asia, America. 
 The rich merchant, the beggarly hawker testify to 
 the glory of David and Solomon. 
 
 But there is this reason for not placing the 
 Jew in either of those divisions to which I re- 
 ferred the other beliefs of mankind. We cannot 
 go back in his case, as we did in the Mahometan, 
 to the first promulgation of the faith, or, in the 
 case of the Hindoo, to the earliest Vedas, without 
 finding ourselves engaged in the assertion or de- 
 fence of that which is as dear to us as it is to him ; 
 we cannot interpret his present position, except 
 by comparing it with our own. In following tlie 
 course which I marked out for myself originally, 
 we shall, I believe, be enabled to consider this 
 subject from its right point of view. I proposed 
 to enquire how the religions which have passed 
 under our review stand severallv related to Chris- 
 
THE DIVINE VOICE SPEAKING TO MEN. 133 
 
 tianity. The first of these was the Mahometan. 
 Now it is in the Jewish side of Christianity that 
 we must seek for this relation. From the Old 
 Testament we shall learn what are the great points 
 of agreement between us and the Mahometan. In 
 studying those points of agreement, we shall, per- 
 haps, see more clearly the grounds of our difference 
 both with the Mahometan and the modern Jew. 
 
 I. I endeavoured to shew you in my first 
 Lecture that the mere dry, formal assertion of 
 the unity of God, as an article of doctrine, was 
 not that which had given Islamism its power. 
 The proclamation, *' There is one God," was no 
 school formula ; it was the announcement of a 
 Living Being, acting, speaking, ruling. Now this 
 is the leading characteristic of the Old Testament. 
 Schoolmen giving you an account of it will say, 
 that it is distinguished from all Pagan books by 
 its assertion of the unity of the object of worship. 
 But we have seen reason to think that this quality, 
 taken alone, might not separate it from the early 
 sacred writings of the Hindoos. Turn to the 
 Book of Genesis or Exodus, and you at once feel 
 the essential difference. There are no speculations 
 about God, no questionings how man is to con- 
 template Him, or to be absorbed into His essence. 
 He is creating the world according to a certain 
 order ; He is making man in His own image ; He 
 is placing man in a garden, fixing a certain pro- 
 hibition for him, giving him a helpmeet, discover- 
 ing his sin when he has broken the command, pro- 
 nouncing a sentence upon him, promising him a 
 
134 PART 11. LECTURE I. 
 
 blessing. He is punishing the murderer, visiting 
 the earth with a flood, calling out a man to be 
 a preserver of the race, sending forth his sons to 
 people the earth, with the rainbow as a pledge of 
 His mercy ; scattering them abroad when they 
 wish to build a tower, and to make themselves a 
 name ; calling a man out of his father's house, 
 and bidding him go into a land which should be 
 shewn him ; promising him that in him and in his 
 seed all the families of the earth should be blest ; 
 giving him a covenant, giving him a son ; trying 
 the faith of the father ; revealing Himself to Isaac 
 and Jacob ; guiding the Hebrew youth into 
 Egypt ; causing him to bring his whole family 
 thither ; hearing their cry when a king arose who 
 knew not Joseph, and made them slaves ; reveal- 
 ing Himself to Moses as the I Am ; sending signs 
 and judgments upon Pharaoh, bringing the people 
 out of Egypt, appointing them a feast in memorial 
 of their deliverance from generation to generation ; 
 feeding them with manna, and causing the rock 
 to be struck when they were thirsty ; proclaiming 
 the Law to them amidst thunders and lightnings; 
 prescribing the form of the tabernacle, and the 
 order of the priesthood; laying down the ordinary 
 rules which were suitable to them as an eastern 
 people ; going before them in the ark of the co- 
 venant. 
 
 Nothing, you see, is set forth in the Hindoo 
 manner, as a dream, or thought, or reflection 
 about God ; all is set forth as coming from Him ; 
 He iSj and He is doing. This is the Old Testa- 
 
THE DIVINE CALLING OF MEN. 135 
 
 ment language ; this is the language which the 
 Mahometan asserts must be true still. It is a re- 
 cord, he said, but not merely a record — it tells us 
 of Him who'was, and is, and is to come; of One 
 by whose command the world was made, and by 
 whose command it subsists ; w-ho rules and directs 
 in the affairs of men, not less now than of old. I 
 conceive that there is nothing in Christianity so 
 primary and fundamental as this belief; nothing 
 which it is so necessaiy for us to assert, in the 
 simple, practical language of the Old Testament, 
 and not to dilute by any modern phrases or unreal 
 substitutes. It was on this account especially that 
 I violated chronology, by considering Mahomet- 
 anism before either of the other religions with 
 which it divides Asia; for I believed that it had 
 taken hold of the great first principle — that it had 
 begun at the beginning ; not working its way up 
 to the divine ground from the earthly, but as- 
 suming that ground as its starting point. And, 
 at the same time, I wished you to feel how idle 
 the assertion is, that this doctrine merely belongs 
 to the world in its infancy ; how when it seemed 
 to have become obsolete, amidst the arguments 
 and discussions of the schools, it stood forth 
 again as a living, terrific reality : as a truth which 
 men must be taught by the sword, if they would 
 be taught it in no other way. 
 
 II. Next, the Mahometan believed that the 
 Lord of All does actually make His will known 
 to men ; that He speaks, and that they can hear 
 and obey His voice. This is the second most ob- 
 
136 PART II. LECTURE 1. 
 
 vious characteristic of the Old Testament. Abram 
 is called out of his land by the unseen Lord. He 
 knows that he is, and he does what he is com- 
 manded. Moses is bidden to go in before Pharaoh; 
 he shrinks from the work, but he is certain that 
 the Lord God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob 
 has sent him. Thus Revelation, or the declaration 
 of God's mind and will — of God himself — to man, 
 is assumed as the ground of action, and histor}-, 
 and knowledge. It is not put as a vague, distant 
 possibility that such communications may be made 
 to man, that they may reach him ; it is declared 
 that they must reach him, or that he is helpless 
 and ignorant. He must act under a divine call 
 of some kind, or he cannot act rightly. The 
 Mahometan affirms that this truth of the old time 
 is a truth of the later time. In the seventh cen- 
 tury after Christ, Mahomet claims to be called 
 of God to a work. We may believe that in many 
 points he greatly mistook the nature of this call, 
 of this work. But the principle that any man 
 who rouses the heart of a nation, who proclaims 
 any deep truth in the midst of it, has a calling — 
 a calling from God — that he has no right to deny 
 it or to explain it away ; that he cannot do what 
 he is meant to do except on the faith of it ; this 
 is a conviction which we Christians like the Maho- 
 metan, have inherited, or ought to have inherited, 
 from the Jew. Our own language is framed upon 
 the supposition : we speak of callings and voca- 
 tions. If the words mean nothing, it is a great 
 pity that we should use them. It is lending our- 
 
THE DIVINE BOOK. 137 
 
 selves to a falsehood — it is contracting a false 
 habit of mind. But I am sure they have meant 
 something to men in past times — to all good and 
 great men, who have really served their generation 
 in any kind of work. And I do trust and believe 
 that they mean something to some of us still ; 
 that we feel we should be parting with what is 
 most precious, if they ceased to mean that some- 
 thing — that we desire they should mean much more. 
 III. But, thirdly, the Mahometan, while he 
 acknowledges that the voice of God thus speaks 
 to men, believes as strongly that there is meant 
 to be some record of His utterances — some book 
 of which it may be said. This is the book. He 
 cannot part with this conviction ; it is necessary to 
 him. Whether or not he can explain how and 
 why the Koran should cease at a certain point, 
 he is sure that it was to cease at a certain point — 
 that there must be a Book which is complete, and 
 to which men may refer as an authority. The 
 Israelites, of whom we read in the Old Testament, 
 could not of course contemplate that Book as a 
 complete Book : it was growing. Their own lives 
 and histories were contributing to it. Their Pa- 
 triarchs had no Book. Still, from the time that 
 the Law was delivered, they were convinced that 
 they had that written in enduring letters which 
 proceeded from God. They believed that His 
 communications were meant to be preserved in 
 letters. They laboured to preserve them, and to 
 keep them apart from all which they believed was 
 not His. They had confidence that God Him- 
 
138 PART II. LECTURE I. 
 
 self would watch over His own Revelation. Upon 
 us this conviction also has descended ; we agree 
 with the Mahometan that the belief in a Book of 
 Revelation, a completed Book, is not incompatible 
 with the idea of God ruling in the world now — 
 of His calHng men to do a work for Him now; 
 nay, that the one truth is necessary to the other. 
 Why Mahomet required a new Bible in the seventh 
 century, why we do not require it, is a point to 
 be considered hereafter ; that which I am pressing 
 here is, that both alike do feel the need of a 
 Bible — of a Divine Book. 
 
 IV. But the Mahometan does not only look 
 upon the pecuHar Prophet as called of God. He 
 believes that the whole body of Islamites is a body 
 called by God to the work of proclaiming Him, 
 and putting down whatever sets itself in opposition 
 to Him. I need not remind you that the children 
 of Israel had this belief before them. In the 
 strength of it they went — a little handful of men, 
 who were lately Egyptian slaves — and drove out 
 the Canaanitish people ; beating down their walls, 
 and slaying them with the edge of the sword. 
 They were not a wild, undisciplined host — a 
 terrific horde, like the Huns or the Avars of later 
 times; they were most orderly ; divided accord- 
 ing to tribes, each man encamping beside the 
 standard of the house of his fathers, marshalled 
 under regular leaders, practising the ordinary me- 
 thods and stratagems of war. Still, that which 
 gave them all their energy, that which made them 
 one people, that which caused their discipline to 
 
THE DIVINELY- APPOINTED WARRIORS. 139 
 
 be an instrument of their valour, not a substitute 
 for it, was a belief that the Lord of Hosts was 
 among them, that they were His soldiers, and 
 moving under His command. They were sure 
 that they had a commission from Him to punish 
 a people the cup of whose iniquities was full. 
 They were sure they were not doing a work for 
 themselves, but were executing the purposes of 
 His Will. And this the Mahometan says is the 
 true law of armies, the right spirit for men of 
 later as well as earlier davs to fio^ht in and to act 
 in. They must feel that an Unseen Power is in 
 the midst of their host; that they are His soldiers. 
 We are often told that the opinion is a mistaken 
 and a dangerous one ; one which belonged to 
 Judaism, and which Christianity discountenances. 
 I cannot think so. That there is a sense in which 
 the disciples of the Koran have perverted Jewish 
 example, I shall endeavour to shew presently. 
 Perhaps we shall find that the perversion has 
 been in not adhering to it closely enough. But 
 I do not think that any Christian nation has 
 ever been the worse for believing that it was act- 
 ing as the minister of God. Our forms and pro- 
 clamations always express this. Have we been 
 better when these forms and proclamations were 
 real and significant, or when they were false ? It 
 seems to me, that the more we come to think 
 these phrases not merely phrases, but the expres- 
 sions of what is true, the more simple and honest 
 our lives will be, and that when to any nation 
 they become mere phrases, its life, I need not say 
 
140 PART II. LECTURE I. 
 
 its Christianity, is gone. I feel very sure that 
 the sense of a Divine Presence has never utterly 
 forsaken, and does not forsake, anv host of Chris- 
 tian men fighting by land or sea : or that, if it 
 do, their arms become palsied, and they become 
 the shame of their enemies. They may act very 
 inconsistently with this profession ; the incon- 
 sistency no doubt weakens the reality of it ; but 
 it is not a mere profession. Asking the help of 
 God may be a poor formality to easy, luxurious 
 men ; those who are on the eve of battle, who 
 are standing between life and death, have no time 
 for words unless they mean something. And they 
 have a signification as of old, otherwise a feeble 
 force would not be able to put a greater one to 
 flight, supported by all the advantages of position, 
 and the resources of art. When our soldiers shall 
 quite disbelieve that the same Lord who went 
 forth with Joshua and Gideon is with them, see 
 whether we shall have tidings of courage and tri- 
 umph, and not rather of cowardice and ignominy. 
 V. We saw how much the office of the 
 caliph or sovereign blended itself with Mahometan 
 life and histor}^ how the visible centre of the host 
 recalled to each soldier the sense of his allegiance 
 to Allah the Unseen King. Here, again, we are 
 reminded of the Old Testament. David, and 
 every true king, felt that he reigned by covenant 
 with God, that he was the witness of Him to the 
 people. And his people returned the feeling. 
 Looking up to him, they felt that they were a 
 people indeed — it was not a dream ; they were so 
 
KE-ACTION OP SOVEREIGX AND SUBJECT. 141 
 
 actually ; thev bad one heart, one with each 
 other, one with those who had gone before them, 
 one with those who should come after them. Of 
 course such language is liable to misinterpretation. 
 There were crimes and divisions in the times of 
 David and Hezekiah, as at all times. Scripture 
 does not conceal them, but declares them, and 
 shews the punishment of them. When any evil 
 deed was perpetrated by the king it destroyed 
 the reverence of the people for him, and so their 
 o^Ti unity. On the other hand, their evil con- 
 dition re-acted upon him, and led him to depend 
 more on the number of his armed men than upon 
 the strength of Israel. These facts far from 
 weakening the assertion I made, illustrate it. Do 
 not they seem also to prove that these records 
 are not merely records of the past, or of a par- 
 ticular nation, but that they explain the bonds 
 by which sovereign and subjects are connected 
 according to a divine and immutable law, in all 
 times and in all nations I So the Mahometan 
 thought in his own case. Had the people whom 
 he attacked felt the same ; had there been that 
 real vital relation between the monarch and those 
 who paid him homage, which there was between 
 the caliph and the soldiers of the Crescent, those 
 soldiers would not have triumphed as they did. 
 I am making no rash assertion ; but one borne 
 out by history. Asia was not able to resist the 
 armies of the prophet, because there was in it 
 no such national feeling as that which I have de- 
 scribed. Constantinople could not ultimately resist 
 
142 PART II. LECTURE I. 
 
 them, for this feehng was perishing in the Greek 
 empire. They were resisted in Western Europe, 
 for there a set of Christian nations had gradually- 
 grown up, believing, amidst many confusions and 
 inconsistencies no doubt, but still practically be- 
 lieving, that their kings were covenant kings, 
 reigning in the name of the Lord, as much as the 
 kings of Judah had ever done. 
 
 These are some of the points of real affinity 
 between Christianity and Mahometanism. I say 
 Christianity ; meaning thereby that though these 
 principles belong to the Old Testament, and not 
 to the New, as such, yet that Christians can adopt 
 them and realize them, and that Jews, who seem 
 to stand upon the ground of the Old Testament, 
 cannot. 1 do not say this in reproach to them, 
 I merely state a fact. All the most living prin- 
 ciples of the Old Testament, those which were 
 embodied in the history of the Jewish people, 
 have become dead letters to their descendants. 
 They retain the acknowledgment of the Divine 
 unity as against anything which contradicts it, 
 or seems to them to contradict it. But the sense 
 of a Living Being, of One speaking, acting, ruling, 
 this may dwell deep down in the heart of Jews ; 
 it may have been drawn out by persecution in 
 many ; but, so far as we can judge, it is always 
 threatening to become dried in a formula among 
 the orthodox Israelites, to lose itself in panthe- 
 istical phrases among the liberal and intellectual. 
 The former class will readily acknowledge a Di- 
 vine Book, but for the very purpose of keeping 
 
THE OLD AND MODERN JEW. 143 
 
 out the notion of any real intercourse between 
 heaven and earth since it was closed. And yet 
 this Book will not satisfy them ; it must be stifled 
 under Rabbinical interpretations ; all its practical, 
 homely, awful realities, must be reduced into no- 
 tions, and speculations, and frivolities. The hberal 
 class will gladly avail themselves of phrases about 
 a living voice, that they may throw off the burden 
 of these interpretations, and in fact of the Book 
 which they oppress. But the living voice does 
 not proceed from a personal being who has a right 
 to command his creatures ; there is no bowing to 
 it as to that which must not, cannot be resisted ; 
 no acknowledgment of a high calling, no feeling 
 of a relation to the past ; only a claim to be in- 
 dependent, to think and feel differently from those 
 who went before — a very natural tendency, surely, 
 in men who have been under a grievous yoke, but 
 offering little hope that they will be emancipated 
 from it, or will not fall under a more grievous one 
 still. No wonder then that the reality of the 
 unseen should be lost in that very worship which 
 was established as the witness of it, that the 
 Jewish ceremonial should bind the spirit to earth 
 instead of raising it. No wonder that the most 
 vulgar of all outward things, the mere coin by 
 help of which one is exchanged for another, should 
 have become the great object of heart devotion. 
 To speak of this people as not having now any 
 sense of the relation of a people to its Sovereign, 
 would be a mockery : that heavy loss is of course 
 inevitable. It is far pleasanter, to remember that 
 
144 PART II. LECTURE I. 
 
 the sense of a national existence, of a national 
 calling, has, through all these centuries of degra- 
 dation, not forsaken them. It has been upheld 
 by that glorious hope of a Deliverer to come 
 hereafter, which neither the Rabbinism of one of 
 their schools, nor the Pantheism of another, has 
 been able to extinguish. They had been almost 
 six hundred years without a temple or a capital, 
 scorned and hated by all people, when Mahomet 
 arose ; yet when he bade them join his standard as 
 the reviver of the true faith of their fathers, as the 
 asserter of the Lord Jehovah against his enemies, 
 they utterly refused the invitation. He thought, 
 and perhaps rightly, that they were too degraded 
 to understand the words which he spoke to them, 
 too little worshippers of Him whom their Scrip- 
 tures proclaimed, to believe that He could really 
 interfere in the affairs of the world. The pro- 
 phet's first great war, therefore, was directed 
 against them. If they yielded they were not 
 crushed, still less converted. The belief that 
 they belonged to the true stock of Abraham, and 
 he at best only to an illegitimate offshoot from 
 it, that they were children of the promises, and 
 he was not, sustained them. Here was the one 
 sure thing which they could hold fast, a token 
 that the lock of hair on the head of Samson, 
 shorn, blinded, and captive, might still grow 
 again. There was a reality and continuity in the 
 national feeling of the Jew which the Islamite 
 felt he could not encounter. He acknowledged 
 a sovereign, his empire was to spread far and 
 
THE DIVINE NAME. 145 
 
 wide ; but, except so far as the caliph or repre- 
 sentative of Mahomet was concerned, this em- 
 pire had no connexion with any feeling of family, 
 or even country. Mecca became indeed the shrine 
 of religious worship for all Mahometans ; but the 
 practical centre of Mahometan society was at one 
 time in Persia, at another in Spain, at last in 
 Turkey. So that a system, in many respects like 
 the Jewish, was in this one directly opposed to it. 
 The Jews had grown from a family into a nation, 
 and, so long as they continued a nation, were the 
 great witnesses against all attempts at universal 
 sovereignty. The Mahometans, setting at nought 
 family distinctions and national distinctions, at- 
 tempted to bind all races and languages together, 
 under the authority of one man, the successor of 
 the Prophet. 
 
 This is a remark of great importance with a 
 view to the subject on which we are now engaged. 
 I have shewn you that there are many points in 
 which Christianity and Mahometanism both claim 
 affinity with Judaism, as it was set forth in the 
 Old Testament. Now we are come to a point in 
 which they both separate from it. The Maho- 
 metan claims to be a universal religion ; to set up 
 a universal society. The Gospel does so too. The 
 questions we have now to consider are, on what 
 basis these universal societies respectively rest, 
 and what is the relation between them. 
 
 I. We have seen that it is common to Ju- 
 daism, to Mahometanism, to Christianity, that 
 they assert the will of a living Being as the ground 
 
 M.B.L. K 
 
146 PART II. LECTURE I. 
 
 of all things, that they speak of Him as declaring 
 Himself, as exercising a continual, not an occa- 
 sional, government over men. This recognition 
 of a Divine, personal, unseen Sovereignty ; of One 
 who is not sought out by men, but who seeks men ; 
 who calls them, and chooses them to do His work, 
 is the strength of all three. Each one of them 
 becomes helpless when this faith is lost, or is ex- 
 changed for any other. But if you look at the 
 records of the Old Testament, you will be struck 
 by nothing so much as this — that the Divine 
 Being is continually said to be declaring His Name 
 to men. In other words, it is not the fact of His 
 existence chiefly which He is teaching them to ac- 
 knowledge ; but his character — what manner of 
 Being He is. He calls upon them to obey a Will ; 
 each act of obedience brings them into closer ac- 
 quaintance with Him who gives the command. 
 
 11. Hence we are able to understand the 
 calling of the Jewish Prophet. We are expressly 
 told that he is called to know this Name. The 
 character of God reveals itself to him in the dif- 
 ferent circumstances of his own history, or his na- 
 tion's history. He is taught that the evil which 
 he is conscious of in himself, and which he sees in 
 others, comes from unlikeness to the perfect Being 
 in whose image he is created. He has but a 
 glimpse of the Divine purposes and character, but 
 it is such a glimpse as is suitable to his necessities 
 and the necessities of his time. It enables him to 
 understand what he is, and what his nature is, 
 without God — what the blessing is of being called 
 
REVELATION A BOOK OF LIFE. 147 
 
 by Him — what the end of his calling is ; namely, 
 to make this Name known to his countrymen ; to 
 bring it out in opposition to the evil which is most 
 prevailing among them. 
 
 III, And so too he understands, and is able 
 to set forth, the purpose of his nation'*s calling. 
 It, too, was to proclaim this righteous Name — to 
 exhibit the conflict between God and all forms of 
 evil — to shew that righteousness is a reality, and 
 not a dream — that the government of the world 
 is based upon it — that wrong and oppression are 
 not meant to triumph — that the earth is not 
 meant to be a den of robbers. 
 
 IV. But such a Revelation as this, though 
 it may be handed down in enduring letters — 
 though it may become a possession for all genera- 
 tions, could never merely be delivered to men as 
 a book of sentences or maxims; it must come 
 forth in a gradual history — a history of Divine 
 acts and human acts. 
 
 The Revelation assumes that God is altogether 
 distinct from His creatures ; it must enable us to 
 feel that He is distinct from them. It declares 
 that He has made man in His own image ; it 
 must enable us to feel practically that this asser- 
 tion also is true. It treats man as we find him, 
 full of wrong and evil ; it treats man as capable 
 of the highest good — as unsatisfied till he attains 
 that good. We must learn how these two 
 things are compatible. It must be a book of 
 life, then, not merely of letters — a record of real 
 men, and real events. It must shew how the 
 
 k2 
 
] 48 PART II. LECTURE I. 
 
 Divine Will directed events, and disciplined men 
 for that perfect good, that knowledge of Himself, 
 which he had designed for them. It must shew 
 how He cultivates those faculties in His creature 
 which he has given ; how He enables them to 
 overcome the darkness and evil in the midst of 
 which they are struggling. 
 
 V. These are very obvious characteristics of 
 the Jewish Revelation : its origin in a personal 
 Being ; its recognition of a righteous Name ; its 
 speaking of each class in the nation, and of the 
 whole nation, as called to declare that Name ; 
 its human, practical, and historical form. But 
 there is another characteristic as obvious. The 
 history is always pointing to a completion, and 
 that completion in a Person. The Prophets have 
 a vision of a King, who shall be the manifestation 
 of God — the perfect image of Him — the Man — 
 the Deliverer of the called nation, the ruler of all 
 the nations : who should establish righteousness, 
 should open the unseen world, should unite earth 
 and heaven. For such an one, these Prophets 
 say, David and his line were the preparation — He 
 would really establish a universal kingdom. Now 
 Christians affirm that the ground of universal so- 
 ciety is the Revelation of this King. This Son of 
 God, they say, has been manifested ; He in whom 
 this perfect Image dwelt ; He has exhibited that 
 Image in the life and acts of a man, in the poverty 
 and death of a man ; He, as a man, has exercised 
 dominion over the powfers of nature ; as a man, 
 wrestled with spiritual evil ; as a man, triumphed 
 
THE CHRISTIAN UNITY. 149 
 
 over death ; as a man, ascended to the right hand 
 of God ; He having so united man to God, has 
 sent down His Spirit to dwell among men, that 
 they might be one family, and glorify the Father 
 of all in Him. The universal kingdom, say they, 
 must be a fatherly kingdom. The Lord of it 
 must be a suffering man, who is yet the Son of 
 God. That which makes it one, and enables men 
 to acknowledge God as one, must be a uniting, 
 reconciling Spirit, who raises them above the 
 broken forms and shadows of earth — above those 
 material things, in which there is nothing but 
 division, into the true unity, the perfect, absolute 
 Love. 
 
 This, according to the Christian's faith, being 
 the kingdom which is meant for all men, he must 
 believe that God Himself designs that it should 
 be made known to men ; that all people should 
 be brought into it. Men now, as much as for- 
 merly, must be commissioned servants of God for 
 this end : there must be distinct callings tending 
 to the accomplishment of it. All who have been 
 brought to acknowledge the true King must have 
 a share in the calling. But that particular work 
 which was assigned to the Jewish nation, of put- 
 ting down wrong and violence, of asserting justice 
 and judgment, though it can never be obsolete, 
 though each nation must be called upon in its own 
 place and circumstances to fulfil it, cannot be the 
 highest work of all. For He who did the highest 
 work of all, did it by suffering, submission, sacri- 
 fice ; the greatest triumph over the greatest evils 
 
150 PART II. LECTURE I, 
 
 was won in this way. Power manifested itself in 
 weakness ; He who was most meek, proved Him- 
 self to be most a King. He who most proved 
 Himself to be Divine, did so by becoming one 
 with the poorest and vilest. This was not a 
 novelty in the history of the world ; in a measure 
 it had been she\Mi before, that what is greatest is 
 best able to stoop ; that what can most bear to 
 be crushed, has most capacity of life ; that each 
 thing must die before it can attain its perfection. 
 The whole history of the world, rightly read, 
 would illustrate this lesson : above all, it had been 
 illustrated by the prophets and holy men of the 
 Old Testament : nay, those very exertions of na- 
 tional strength and energy, which seem to set this 
 principle at nought, were themselves exhibitions 
 of it. The glory of the Israelitish conquest of 
 Canaan was this, that it was the triumph of weak- 
 ness over strength, of infused spiritual might over 
 the height of walls and the bulk of giants. 
 
 But though men had been learning this lesson 
 gradually, the time which fully brought it out, 
 which set at nought all pretensions of outward 
 strength to dominion, which shewed that the power 
 of God Himself must be exhibited through weak- 
 ness and death, in order that it may be felt to be 
 the power of Love ; this was of necessity the be- 
 ginning of a new era. Henceforth surely every 
 new event of history would demonstrate this truth 
 afresh. Whatever power was working in the 
 world must submit to this, or be broken by it. 
 The evidence might be various, complicated, often 
 
THE WORLD BEGINNING AFRESH. 151 
 
 contradictory ; but it would all tend to this point 
 — it would assert a Loving Will as the ground of 
 all thinsfs : that that Will had been fullv mani- 
 fested to men in the person of a man, who de- 
 lighted to do it ; that it can only accomplish its 
 ends by bringing the wills of men into subjection 
 to itself. 
 
 Now Mahometanism formally sets at nought 
 this idea of a Divine and universal kingdom ; treats 
 it as a mere imagination which outrages all 
 simplicity. It goes back to the one principle of 
 God's sovereignty ; cares nothing for the gradual 
 unfolding of a Name through a history of living 
 acts ; assumes that the Book is given to the pro- 
 phet as a complete scheme of life ; affirms that it 
 is the commission of the faithful to diffiise faith in 
 this Book, and in the fact of the Divine sove- 
 reignty through the world ; for this purpose in- 
 vests its caliph or sovereign with absolute do- 
 minion. In the seventh century after Christ, 
 Mahomet taught that the world was to begin its 
 history again ; but to begin it with no hope of a 
 progress. That principle, which had been the 
 mere starting-point of Jewish faith, the ground of 
 what it was learning for nineteen hundred years, 
 was to be the one, all-sufficing maxim of Maho- 
 metan life. The Koran was to make it the one 
 all-sufficing maxim for generations. 
 
 Grand then as was the truth which Mahomet 
 proclaimed, needful as the proclamation of it was 
 for the overthrow of Jewish and Christian unbe- 
 lievers, he did but re-affirm the primary confession 
 
152 PART II. LECTURE I. 
 
 of both ; he denied that which made this primary 
 confession consistent in itself and effectual for 
 man. By this denial he sanctioned and adopted 
 some of the worst, most characteristic supersti- 
 tions and evils of the Jews and Christians against 
 whom he protested. They had substituted words 
 for realities ; faith in notions for faith in God ; he, 
 in seeming to add a new revelation, destroyed the 
 vital, historical progressive character of the old ; 
 in publishing newer and later notions, set mankind 
 at a more hopeless distance from Him to whom 
 these notions related. By this denial he made the 
 acts and struggles of Islamism unintelligible. For 
 beginning in weakness, triumphing through faith, 
 this doctrine was a witness for the Christian prin- 
 ciple which it set at nought. The grandeur of 
 the Crescent can be understood only by the light 
 which falls upon it from the Cross. Because the 
 Mahometan recognizes a mere Will governing all 
 things, and that Will not a loving Will, he is 
 converted, as we saw that he had been in the 
 course of his history, from a noble witness of a 
 Personal Being into the worshipper of a dead ne- 
 cessity. Because he will not admit that there 
 has been a jNIan in the world who was one with 
 God — a Man who exercised power over nature, 
 and yet whose main glory consisted in giving up 
 Himself, therefore he cannot really assert the vic- 
 tory of man over visible things when he tries most 
 to do so. He glorifies the might of arms when 
 he most talks of the might of submission. Be- 
 cause he does not acknowledge a loving will acting 
 
> MESSAGE FROM GOD ONLY EFFECTUAL. 1 DO 
 
 upon men's wills, to humble them in themselves, 
 and to raise them to God, therefore he becomes 
 the enslaver of liis fellows, therefore cheerful obe- 
 dience to a master, which for a while distinguished 
 him, becomes servitude to a tyrant. Because he 
 will not acknowledge that the highest and divinest 
 unity is that of love, but rests all upon the mere 
 unity of sovereignty, he has never been able to 
 establish one complete government upon the earth. 
 It has been found that such a universality or 
 unity is merely material ; that it has no root in 
 the nature of things — in the Divine order ; that 
 each new age must do something to weaken its 
 integrity and hasten its dissolution. 
 
 Two questions, I hope, may have been partly 
 answered by these observations. The first is, 
 whether Christianity must abandon its claims to 
 be a Revelation, in order that it may deal fairly 
 with the Mahometan 2 The second, whether it 
 can strengthen and quicken that faith of his which 
 we found was ready to perish? Whatever pre- 
 tends only to be a better system of notions, a 
 better scheme of conduct than his own, he will 
 reject while he has the courage and constancy of 
 his fathers ; will only receive because he has sunk 
 into a state in which it is indifferent what he 
 holds, or rather, in which it is impossible for him 
 with a real vital grasp to hold anything. Maho- 
 met was believed by those, and those only, who 
 felt that he brought a message from God ; nothing 
 which does not come as a message from God can 
 reach the hearts of those who still acknowledge 
 
154 PART II. LECTURE I. 
 
 him. And of what form must the message be 2 
 If it sets at nought the first conditions of his 
 original faith, nay, of his very existence, this he 
 is certain cannot be from God ; yea, he knows it 
 must be from the devil. Only that which assumes 
 this as its eternal foundation, and which deepens 
 and expands it so that the facts of human life 
 which seem least in accordance with it shall be 
 shewn to rest upon it, will carry that Divine 
 stamp which the reason and conscience it awakens 
 will recognize. Therefore we agree with the argu- 
 ments of our opponents to this extent. Supposing 
 they had proved the Gospel not to be a revelation, 
 but only a product of the human intellect, their 
 conclusion is incontestable. It ought not to be 
 presented to the Mahometan ; it is utter folly, or 
 else cruelty, to inflict the proclamation upon him. 
 But if it does not follow, from the likeness which has 
 been detected between Mahometanism, Judaism, 
 and Christianity, that they are all equally deceived 
 in their great postulate ; if it appears that Chris- 
 tianity interprets that postulate, and prevents it 
 from sinking into a dead notion ; then we have 
 found the power which can avenge the outrages 
 and injuries of Islamism, preserving the precious 
 fragments of truth which are lodged within it, 
 forming them into a whole, making them effectual 
 for the blessing of all the lands over which it 
 reigns. 
 
 And surely, if this be the way in which we 
 can and should speak to the Mahometan, no other 
 can befit us in our intercourse with the Jew. 
 
ALIKE TO THE JEW AND MAHOMETAN. 155 
 
 Whatever there is in him of strength or earnest- 
 ness clings to the belief that God spake to his 
 fathers. Systems, rabbinical and philosophical, 
 may choke that belief ; money-getting habits may 
 almost extinguish it. But it haunts him ; it is 
 an oppression to him, from which in these ways 
 he seeks to be delivered when he is in an evil 
 state of mind ; it is his only consolation and hope 
 when he rises into a higher one. AV^ith it is 
 connected that sense of nationality which is even 
 yet his noblest characteristic, however mixed it 
 may be with sin and weakness. To it is linked 
 that hope of a coming Deliverer which sometimes 
 cheers him amidst all the misery and anguish of 
 his actual condition. A religion which is not a 
 message from God, not an unveiling of Him, is 
 at once felt by him to be a phantasy. He may 
 adopt the modern talk about the religious instinct 
 or principle creating its own object ; but it is in 
 his mouth, if in no other person's, absolutely in- 
 sincere. Again then we say, if Christianity be not 
 a Revelation, or we do not think it is, we are right 
 to keep it from the Jew, as being something with 
 which his mind can have no possible affinity. 
 But if it is this ; if it is such a revelation as rests 
 upon his data, as justifies his nationality, as estab- 
 lishes his hope of a Deliverer, while it takes from 
 these convictions that narrowness which he is 
 beginning to find incompatible with his apprehen- 
 sions respecting the condition and greatness of 
 man ; shews how the nationahty, without being 
 lost, may be expanded into a universal fellowship ; 
 
156 PART ir. LECTURE I. 
 
 hinders the vision of a future revelation from 
 degenerating into the expectation of a sensual 
 and mundane felicity, by declaring that the Re- 
 deemer has come already to claim Man for his 
 possession, and to rescue him from his earthly 
 bondage ; then we may feel in this case that there 
 is one power, and but one in the world, which 
 can raise the fallen Israelite to a new and spiritual 
 life. 
 
 There is, however, another view of the rela- 
 tions of Christianity with Judaism and Mahomet- 
 anism — another, and a most important one. If 
 Christianity deserve that character in which I 
 have endeavoured to present it, it has, and it 
 ought to have, its Judaical and Mahometan side. 
 It may, as I have said, alienate this part of its 
 own possession ; it may forget the great truth 
 which it has inherited from Judaism, the truth of 
 a living King and Lord of the World ; it may 
 try to sever the doctrine of Christ from this 
 absolute and eternal ground ; then that doctrine 
 loses all its meaning, becomes a shadow, and not 
 a substance — a dogma, not a living word. Then 
 God does assuredly raise up some witness for this 
 truth, lest men should be robbed of it. But it 
 is also possible for Christians to exalt the Judaical 
 or Mahometan side of Christianity exclusively, to 
 become, in fact, practically Jews or Mahometans, 
 though they do not belong to the family of 
 Abraham, and may care nothing about the Ara- 
 bian Prophet. In practice Christians have done 
 this when they have attempted to copy Jewish 
 
HOW WE COPY THE JEW AND MAHOMETAN. 157 
 
 example in the manner of propagating their faith: 
 really copying not that, but Mahometan example : 
 for we truly copy Jewish example, as I have shewn 
 you, when we go forth as national bodies, under 
 our national sovereign, to resist wrong and robbery, 
 and to maintain the position which God has 
 given us; we copy Mahometan example when we 
 attempt to spread the principles of the Universal 
 Family, which is based upon the Love of God, 
 and the Sacrifice of Christ, and the gift of the 
 Spirit of meekness and of charity, by any other 
 methods than those of love, and sacrifice, and 
 meekness. We seem to copy Jewish example — 
 we really copy Mahometan example, when we 
 seek for any visible, mortal man to reign over the 
 Universal Family ; for the Jewish king reigned 
 not over the universe, but over a particular na- 
 tion : and so soon as a universal society grew out 
 of the national one, it was the glorious proclama- 
 tion that an Unseen King, who had ascended to 
 the right hand of God, was its only Sovereign. 
 We seem to copy Jewish example — we really 
 copy Mahometan example, when we set visible 
 and outward rewards before us as the prizes 
 of our high calling; for though the Jew lived 
 especially to assert God's dominion over the earth, 
 and to rule it, and subdue it for Him, yet the 
 reward he always kept in sight was, that be 
 might know Him who exercised righteousness 
 and judgment in the earth, that he might awake 
 up after His likeness, and be satisfied with 
 it. In like manner we copy the example of the 
 
158 PART II. LECTURE I. 
 
 modern Jew and of the Mahometan, not of the 
 ancient Jew, or if of the ancient Jew, only of the 
 formal, heartless Pharisee, when we receive the 
 Bible not as a record of actual doings, of actual 
 intercourse between a living Being and His crea- 
 tures upon earth, but only as a collection of 
 notions and opinions, about which we are to dis- 
 pute and tear each other in pieces. Still more 
 effectually do we assume the character of the ser- 
 vant of the Prophet, of the degenerate Israelite, 
 when we set up the dry confession of God's sove- 
 reignty against his righteousness, supposing that 
 His acts are ever acts of self-will ; that His glory 
 is ever anything but the glory of purity, and 
 goodness, and truth. In all these ways we may 
 prove that there is indeed a very near relation 
 between our belief and theirs, inasmuch as we can 
 hold the one under the name of the other. 
 
 Again, we may adopt what some would call, I 
 think wrongly, a merely theoretical Judaism, or 
 Mahometanism ; we may seem to copy Jewish ex- 
 ample by asserting the simplicity of God's nature ; 
 by denying the possibility of a man manifesting 
 forth the Unseen God, by rejecting the belief of a 
 Father and of a Son, and of a Spirit who binds 
 them together in an ever-blessed Unity. Why this 
 is not the adoption of the true Judaical Faith, but 
 the rejection of it, I have explained already; it 
 has been ever ready to issue in the dryness of 
 modern Judaism, wherein all which we see alive in 
 the Old Testament, is petrified. Now especially 
 that result is inevitable ; for now, less than in 
 
NO EXEMPTION FROM TEMPTATION. 159 
 
 any former day, is it possible to speak of God 
 as if he stood in no relation to man. The ten- 
 dency of our time is to confound Him with His 
 Creatures, with the w^orks of His hands ; to lose 
 all thought of His distinctness ; to regard Him 
 as only the conception of man's mind, a sort of 
 synonyme for man's thinking faculty, or for the 
 life which dwells in things. Against such notions 
 the records of Judaism and Mahometanism are 
 mighty and standing protests : but they are more 
 and more ineffectual protests. They shew why 
 such notions of God can never satisfy human 
 beings who know their own necessities ; not what 
 these notions signify, and how they are to be 
 satisfied. 
 
 It is true, then, that the temptations of Jews 
 and Mahometans are our temptations ; that we 
 carry their practical confusions and divisions within 
 our own bosoms. At every moment we are liable 
 tx) fall into them. Each careless step we take, 
 each unholy temper we indulge, the neglect of our 
 duties, the tolerance of our evil, is always increas- 
 ing the danger. It is true also that the Christian 
 has no right to undervalue any good thing which 
 he finds in any Jew or Mahometan ; it flows from 
 a principle which he ought to hold fast, and which 
 ought to produce the same or better fruits in him. 
 While we acknowledge that every right act in 
 them deserves tenfold more admiration than it 
 could deserve in us, and that all our evil acts 
 must be done with ten-thousandfold greater sense 
 of wrong and less of excuse, this confession does 
 
160 PART II. LECTURE I. 
 
 not in the least affect what we believe ; for 
 Christianity is not concerned in justifying our 
 sins, but in condemning them : it does not say 
 that any particular set of men, calling themselves 
 by the Christian name, are better than others ; 
 but it says that God will be true, though every 
 man be a liar ; that His kingdom will be estab- 
 lished whether we who belong to it care that it 
 should be established, or cut ourselves off from it. 
 And the same conscience which tells us of our 
 evil, forces each of us to say : ' This evil comes 
 not from my faith, but from indifference to it. It 
 comes not from my holding too fast by that which 
 is simple and old when I might be seeking for a 
 new and finer Christianity. It comes simply from 
 my forgetting the Creed of my childhood. For 
 if I did believe in God the Father Almighty, 
 Maker of Heaven and Earth, I should be acknow- 
 ledging that Will which Jew^s and Mahometans 
 acknowledge as the ground of all things : only I 
 should be confessing it as a loving and fatherly 
 Will. If I did believe in Jesus Christ His only 
 Son our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy 
 Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under 
 Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried, 
 who descended into hell, and rose again the third 
 day from the dead, who ascended into heaven, 
 and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father 
 Almighty, who from thence shall come to judge 
 the quick and dead, I should feel and understand 
 that there is indeed a Man who will reign over 
 the world, and judge it as Jews and Mahometans 
 
THE CHRISTIAN CREED. 161 
 
 teach ; but that this Man is the Son of God and 
 the Son of Man ; one who before He claimed our 
 homage, submitted to our curse, wrestled with 
 death and overcame ; who has already set up His 
 throne in the highest region of all, and calls upon 
 every voluntary creature in his heart and spirit 
 to do him homage. If I did believe in the 
 Holy Ghost, the Holy Catholic Church, the Com- 
 munion of Saints, the Forgiveness of Sins, the 
 Resurrection of the Body, and the Life Ever- 
 lasting, I should feel there was a mighty, Divine 
 Power working in us, to make us more completely 
 servants of a human king and of the Divine Will, 
 than Jews and Mahometans have ever dreamed 
 they could be ; to make us members of a universal 
 society, as Islamites wish to be ; to make our 
 bodies more triumphant over death, more glorious 
 than they have thought possible ; but, besides 
 this, to make us sons of God — brethren with Him 
 who is the Son of God — brethren with those who 
 have passed into another world, who are perfectly 
 freed from temptation and sin, who have inherited 
 not a sensual Paradise, but a kingdom of right- 
 eousness, and peace, and love.' 
 
 M.B.L. 
 
PART II.— LECTUKE II. 
 
 Ilie relation between Christianity and Hindooism generally 
 compared. Mistakes concerning it. Investigation of 
 its nature. The twice-born man. The Image of Br ohm 
 Incariiations. Sacrifice. Dangers to Christianity 
 from its Hindoo side. How Christianity can and 
 cannot satisfy Hindoos. 
 
 THE subject which I propose to consider in 
 my present Lecture, is the relation between 
 Christianity and Hindooism. That such a relation 
 exists has been felt by most persons, different as 
 their theories have been respecting the nature or 
 the cause of it. Christian writers on Hindoo an- 
 tiquities have spoken of various traditions, which 
 they suppose must have been derived, originally, 
 from Scripture narratives — -of various Hindoo 
 doctrines which have an obvious resemblance to 
 some that form part of the orthodox faith of 
 Christendom. Infidel writers have been equally 
 willing to notice these correspondences, and have 
 turned them to their own account. If any part 
 of the Hindoo theories about the origin of the 
 world recalls the Mosaic narrative, this is evi- 
 dence to them that each was equally the work of 
 some early, imperfect theorist, that neither has 
 any claim to Divine authority. If the similarity 
 is of an historical kind, the notorious confusion of 
 the Hindoo records throws new doubt upon the 
 Jewish. If, again, the likeness be between the 
 great mysteries of the Christian faith, and the 
 
AXALOGIES MAY MISLEAD US. 163 
 
 more recondite Hindoo speculations, what, they 
 ask, does this shew but that these mysteries are 
 the results of certain trains of human thought, and 
 have only been attributed to a higher origin, be- 
 cause our forefathers had not the same means as 
 we have of tracing them out in the minds of those 
 whom they considered ignorant and idolatrous as 
 we do ? 
 
 I do not wish to conceal any of these objec- 
 tions ; I am rather anxious to put them forward 
 at the outset of my enquiry, because they concern 
 not so much the conclusions to which it may lead, as 
 the method in which it shall be pursued. It is no 
 doubt true that Christian writers have often caught 
 at external, superficial indications of a resemblance 
 between their own faith and that of other men, 
 and have strained evidence to shew how it must 
 have been produced. And I am satisfied that 
 every such attempt to make out a case by inge- 
 nious twisting of words or perversion of facts, is 
 sorely punished. For the impression left upon 
 our minds, supposing the likeness completely 
 established, would be no more than this ; that 
 certain opinions of certain people upon matters 
 of history, or upon questions of a very subtle 
 and refined nature, had something to do with 
 opinions existing among ourselves, and might, 
 perhaps, have proceeded from the same source. 
 But the mere theories which we find in the sacred 
 books of different nations, either about the past 
 state of the world, or the system of it now, though 
 they are worthy of our study and reflection, as 
 
 l2 
 
164 PART II. LECTURE II. 
 
 hints (not always the most important hints) to- 
 wards understanding what is the radical principle 
 and belief of the race which adopts them, are not 
 themselves identical with that principle and that 
 belief. Now when this is the case with that to 
 which we compare the Christian doctrines, it is 
 far too likely that we shall begin to think of them 
 in the same way. They will appear to us also 
 notions and. opinions about certain great subjects; 
 divine notions and opinions we may call them ; but 
 a mere name will not change their character : 
 we shall not feel that they have to do with our 
 own life and being ; we shall regard them as 
 truths which we are to hold, not as truths which 
 are to hold us, which are to give us a stand- 
 ing ground for time and for eternity. I do not 
 wonder, then, nor am I altogether sorry, that 
 those who have put forward this view of the rela- 
 tions between Hindooism and Christianity should 
 have been taught that their own weapons may be 
 used against them. Such discoveries, instead of 
 shaking our faith, may lead us to feel more dili- 
 gently for the foundation of it ; to ask whether 
 other nations have not given evidence that they 
 too need such a foundation ; whether they are not 
 craving to be told what it is. 
 
 In considering the relations between Maho- 
 metanism and Christianity, we did not satisfy our- 
 selves with shewing that certain precepts of the 
 Koran corresponded to certain precepts of the 
 Bible, and that the one was wrong when it had 
 departed from the other. It seemed necessary to 
 
THE VITAL PRINCIPLE OF MAHOMETANISM. 165 
 
 examine whether the main principle of Mahometan 
 life, that which had given strength to its hosts 
 when they were most strong, be or be not em- 
 bodied in Christianity, and whether there or here 
 it has most vitality, and is most in harmony with 
 other principles equally important. If we could 
 not find that the great Mahometan truth was as- 
 serted more distinctly, mightily, livingly in Chris- 
 tianity than in Mahometanism, we did not feel 
 that Christianity could ever be a substitute for 
 Mahometanism. If that for which the Maho- 
 metans w^ere content to give up their lives, were 
 merely a formal proposition in our faith, we were 
 sure we could not sustain ourselves against them. 
 If anything wherein we differed from them w-eak- 
 ened this principle, that was so much of evidence 
 against us. Nothing seemed sufficient to us but 
 the discovery that the belief in an Absolute Living 
 God actually ruling in the world seeking men 
 . not first sought by them, which is the root of all 
 their convictions, is the root of ours ; that Chris- 
 tianity perishes even more completely than Maho- 
 metanism when this truth is forgotten ; that this 
 principle has lost its power over the Mahometan 
 mind, or been changed into one of the most oppo- 
 site character, just because it wants the support 
 of other kindred truths, which belong to the es- 
 sence of Christianity. 
 
 Precisely in the same manner I would deal 
 with the present subject. In my second Lecture 
 I considered what were the permanent character- 
 istics of Hindooism, those which had survived in 
 
166 PART II. LECTURE II. 
 
 all its changes, and made its different changes in- 
 telligible, those which had resisted all opposition, 
 even from truths which seemed mightier than 
 they and from men who were braver and stronger 
 than those who upheld them. I would now en- 
 quire whether these characteristics have their 
 counterparts in Christianity ; whether they enter 
 into the substance of it, as they do into the sub- 
 stance of Hindooism ; whether the difficulties and 
 contradictions which we found had grown naturally 
 out of these convictions, and yet had weakened 
 and impaired them, belong also to our belief; 
 whether in that belief these Hindoo truths are 
 or are not reconciled with those to which they 
 seemed utterly hostile. I have said again and 
 again, that I do not think we prove our confidence 
 in the divinity of that which we confess by sub- 
 jecting it to light tests, by arguing that this or 
 that is not justly required of it. AVhatever has 
 been found necessary in the course of six thousand 
 years'* experience, we have a right to ask of that 
 which offers itself as the faith for mankind. And 
 I do not believe that it ever has shrunk, or ever 
 will shrink, from any demands of this kind that 
 we make upon it. 
 
 The position of the Brahmin in reference to 
 the rest of Hindoo society was that which seemed 
 to us at once the most obvious outward mark of 
 the system, and its essential characteristic. Here 
 was the radical distinction between Hindooism 
 and Mahometanism ; here was the key to its con- 
 nexion with Buddhism, and to the divergence of 
 
THE TWICE-BORN MAN. 167 
 
 the latter from it. The Greeks under Alexander 
 had seen that the Hindoo people were cast in the 
 Brahminical mould — -they retain this mould under 
 the English government in the nineteenth century 
 after Christ. Whatever principle then be the 
 ground of the belief in the superiority of the 
 Brahmin to other men, can be no mere accident 
 of Hindoo opinion, no mere notion in the sacred 
 books ; it must belong to the innermost heart 
 of the race. This principle we found expressed 
 in that distinction between the twice-born man 
 and other men, which is the characteristical one 
 of the Menu code. All mere distinctions of 
 occupation, even the distinctions of the four origi- 
 nal classes, seemed to resolve themselves into this. 
 This, therefore, had endured, though two of those 
 classes had disappeared, and though the whole 
 caste system had undergone great outward modi- 
 fications. This had continued universal amidst 
 all its local varieties. Nor was there much diffi- 
 culty in ascertaining the ground on which the 
 distinction rested. First of all, it stood on the 
 conviction that there is in man that which is 
 meant to converse with an Unseen Spiritual Being, 
 that this is the vocation of the highest wisest 
 man, of him who is properly the man, who is 
 alone able to guide and rule his fellows. Next, 
 upon the consideration that this is not the natural, 
 ordinary state of men, that this is an ignominious, 
 degraded, animal state, out of which whoever is 
 raised, must be raised by different acts of purifica- 
 tion, acts which are to bring him into a relation 
 
168 PART II. LECTURE II. 
 
 more or less intimate with Brahm. Thirdly, we 
 saw that the idea of hereditary succession became 
 involved with this, that the twice-born men be- 
 came a distinct family, to be preserved pure from 
 generation to generation. 
 
 I repeat these observations in this place the 
 more carefully, because I am anxious that you 
 should not suppose I am attaching any force to a 
 mere phrase like that of the twice-born man. 
 This phrase instantly suggests to every Christian 
 an idea with which all his life he has been familiar. 
 Hence, it might lead us to one of those hasty 
 analogies against which I have already warned 
 you. A person thoughtfully and earnestly con- 
 sidering such a subject as this for a great prac- 
 tical purpose, will be suspicious of himself when 
 he finds that he is noticing a verbal correspond- 
 ence ; he Nvill be aware of the temptation to build 
 an argument upon it, and will understand how 
 very easily he may be deceived by a translation 
 from another language, made by men who were 
 formed in an English school of thought, and were, 
 perhaps, glad to catch at a rendering which would 
 bring a lively and well-known image before the 
 minds of their readers. I am quite willing, there- 
 fore, to forget this expression altogether, or to 
 adopt any other that an Oriental scholar shall 
 srive me as a substitute for it, which has no re- 
 semblance to our own sacred dialect. It is the 
 thing, and not the word, I wish you to notice; 
 the deep conviction which has wrought itself into 
 the mind of the Hindoo, and which has gone 
 
THE JEWISH SEPARATION. 169 
 
 along with him through every stage of his history. 
 Still more earnestly would I remind you that it is 
 not the words New Birth, or Second Birth, which 
 characterize Christianity, but the meaning indi- 
 cated by them. To realize that conviction, let us, 
 as on the last occasion, look at the context of the 
 Scriptures, not confining ourselves to the New 
 Testament, but beginning with the opening of 
 Jewish history. 
 
 I. You will remember how we traced the 
 idea of a Divine call through the whole of that 
 history. I referred to it then for the purpose of 
 shewing how everything in our faith, as in the 
 Mahometan, rests upon the recognition of an act 
 done on the part of God. But in that call was 
 involved the idea of distinction, of separation. 
 Abraham is called out of his father's house, he is 
 set apart to be the head of a peculiar family, and 
 the whole of that family have a sign of the separa- 
 tion appointed for them. When the nation is 
 called out of its Egyptian bondage, not only is this 
 sign carefully preserved ; not only is every insti- 
 tution expressly contrived to keep this people 
 distinct from other people ; but within the nation 
 itself distinctions begin to be established. The 
 priest is called out to the special work of pre- 
 senting sacrifices, a whole tribe is set apart to the 
 service of the tabernacle. They are carefully desig- 
 nated ; the anointing oil is poured upon their 
 heads ; garments of honour and beauty are given 
 them ; Holiness to the Lord is inscribed on the 
 forehead of the high priest. The last fact shews 
 
170 PART II. LECTURE II. 
 
 you how completely the idea not only of a separa- 
 tion is involved in these appointments, but of a 
 separation for the very purpose to which the 
 Brahmin is devoted. The priest is dedicated to 
 the service of the Unseen Jehovah. He is to 
 enter into His presence, to hold awful converse 
 with Him. His separation, is never for an in- 
 stant spoken of as having another object than 
 this. A gross animal taste, a disposition to ho- 
 nour visible things and bow before them, is cha- 
 racteristic of men generally ; the elect people are 
 taken from the surrounding nations, that they 
 may be emancipated from this slavish tendency. 
 Yet the Jew is reminded that he is liable to it 
 like other men : that he must be cut off from it ; 
 that he must look upon himself as intended for 
 intercourse with that which the eye cannot tell 
 him of. The priest explains the end of the nation's 
 existence. It is expressly declared that the tribe 
 of Levi is taken instead of the firstborn of all the 
 families of Israel. 
 
 Here you see one very clear indication of the 
 principle which Hindoo society embodies. And 
 this principle is not less characteristic of the later 
 history than of the earlier. True the people be- 
 gan in process of time to mix with the nations 
 round about them, and to adopt their habits. 
 But the wise man always warned them, and the 
 fact proved, that hereby they were destroying 
 themselves. When they forgot their covenant, 
 when they no longer looked upon themselves as a 
 chosen, separated people, above all when their 
 
IT IS MAINLY SPIRITUAL. 171 
 
 priests lost sight of their own vocation, and the 
 purpose of it, feebleness, division, subjection to 
 their neighbours, followed of course. The fact 
 does not change in the least degree from one 
 generation to another. The only change is in the 
 increased knowledge which the Jews obtain of the 
 reason and ground of the fact. This progress is 
 very remarkable. The prophets told them more 
 and more distinctly, that they required to be 
 circumcised in heart ; that the separation must 
 not be merely from surrounding people, but from 
 an evil and corruption in themselves ; that if they 
 remembered the covenant of their God, and clave 
 to Him, they would overcome not merely the 
 Moabites and Edomites, but a perverse, grovel- 
 ling habit of soul, which was the cause of their 
 idolatry ; that if they forgot this covenant, they 
 would sink first under the yoke of their own incli- 
 nations, then under that of Nineveh or Babylon. 
 The more you read the Old Testament prophets 
 the more you will see that amidst all the various 
 circumstances which surround them, amidst all 
 the different methods of instruction which they 
 are taught to adopt, this is their great burthen. 
 But is there not a change in the New Testament ? 
 Did not our Lord destroy that separation which 
 the teachers of the old time had been so careful 
 to establish ? Did not his coming put Jews and 
 Gentiles on a level ? We must not permit vague 
 phrases of this kind to hide from us the fact that 
 our Lord, so far from obliterating the principle 
 for which the Jewish nation had testified, asserted 
 
1 72 PART II. LECTURE II. 
 
 it, established it, expressed it for the first time in 
 all its clearness and fulness. That, He said, which 
 is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born 
 of the Spirit is spirit. Except a man be born 
 again, he cannot see the kingdom of heaven. In 
 this language he gathers up the very meaning of 
 the old dispensation ; shews us what a truth was 
 involved in every part of it ; how every part had 
 been a preparation for the full revelation of this 
 truth. His coming was, no doubt, to destroy the 
 barrier between Jew and Gentile ; but not till 
 that barrier had been proved to have its justifi- 
 cation in the very condition and being of man, 
 in his relation to God and to the world. If there 
 is a flesh in man, by obedience to which he be- 
 comes degraded, sensual, idolatrous, if he naturally 
 is obedient to this flesh, and can only attain the 
 rights of a spiritual creature, when the Lord of 
 all raises him above his nature, above himself, 
 then we can understand why a whole nation should 
 have been called by its position in reference to 
 other nations, by its strength and weakness, right- 
 eousness and sins, by the experience of all its 
 individual members, to set forth this mighty fact 
 in which the eternal destinies of mankind must be 
 involved. And this testimony we hold is not, 
 and cannot be, obsolete. The Christian Church 
 claims to be a body of twice-born men ; claims to 
 be a witness of that mighty privilege which men 
 have of conversing with the Unseen and Infinite, 
 as well as a witness of the tendency which 
 there is in man to be merely animal and sensual. 
 
man's relation to the divine nature. 17s 
 
 The Christian Church claims a set of ministers 
 who shall represent the spiritual glory and pri- 
 vileges of the whole body, shall be instruments 
 in overcoming the low and grovelling propen- 
 sities of its members. Here, then, is a principle 
 which is as characteristic of our faith as it is of 
 the Hindoo, which has scarcely moulded Oriental 
 society more than it has moulded the society of 
 modern Europe. 
 
 II. It is impossible to separate the belief in 
 the superiority of the Brahmin to other men, 
 from the belief in his relation to Brahra. Tech- 
 nically we may call one a political, the other a 
 theological idea ; practically, the former may, for 
 a while, survive the latter. But in any serious 
 investisration of the grounds of the religious system 
 they must be contemplated as identical. Brahm 
 is Wisdom or Light : the Brahmin is the reflex- 
 ion of this Wisdom or Light. Such a view of 
 the divinity, and of the way in which man is 
 related to him, is found in different modifications 
 among all those people who are members of what 
 is called the Indo-Germanic stock, and, perhaps, 
 in some who do not belong to it. W^hile creative 
 Will, Command, Sovereignty, Separation from 
 man, are the attributes of Him whom the Arabian 
 proclaimed to be the one God, Persians, Greeks, 
 Goths, each recognized Intelligence, an Intelli- 
 gence communicable to man, and quickly involving 
 human worship, as the object of their reverence. 
 But long before this reverence had taken any 
 definite form among these people, hear how 
 
174 PART II. LECTURE II. 
 
 strongly it was expressed by those Hebrew sages 
 who seemed to live for the assertion of the Ma- 
 hometan truth : *' I Wisdom dwell with Pru- 
 dence, and find out knowledge of witty inventions. 
 I am Understanding ; I have strength. By me 
 kings reign, and princes decree justice. By me 
 princes rule, and nobles, and all the judges of the 
 earth. The Lord possessed me in the beginning 
 of His way, before His works of old. When 
 there were no depths, I was brought forth ; when 
 there were no fountains abounding with water. 
 Before the mountains were settled, before the hills 
 was I brought forth : while as yet He had not 
 made the earth, nor the fields, nor the highest 
 part of the dust of the world. When He pre- 
 pared the heavens, I was there : when He set a 
 compass upon the face of the deep : when He 
 established the clouds above : when He strength- 
 ened the fountains of the deep : when He gave to 
 the sea His decree, that the waters should not 
 pass His commandment : when he appointed the 
 fountains of the earth : then I was by Him as 
 one brought up with Him ; and T was daily His 
 delight, rejoicing always before Him ; rejoicing in 
 the habitable part of His earth ; and my delights 
 were with the sons of men." 
 
 Here we have the origin of the universe as- 
 cribed to AVisdom ; kings and judges are said to 
 rule by Wisdom ; Wisdom is said from the first 
 to have had her delight in the sons of men. Is 
 this an isolated passage ; the dream of some par- 
 ticular writer, who had perhaps been instructed 
 
THE DIVINE WORD OR WISDOM. 175 
 
 by Chaldeans ? On the contrary, it expresses the 
 very spirit of the Jewish economy, as it is pre- 
 sented to us in the writings of all its historians 
 and prophets. The wise king or the wise prophet 
 is ever spoken of in Scripture as having the divine 
 Wisdom, the divine Word with him, nay, in him. 
 He does not shrink from the pretension. In his 
 truest, humblest state of mind, he feels and con- 
 fesses himself to be only a reflexion of the divine 
 Light, an utterer of the divine Voice. He charges 
 it as a sin upon the false teachers, that they 
 speak words out of their own hearts. Here again, 
 the New Testament takes up, expands, and inter- 
 prets the language of the Old. " In the begin- 
 ning," says St. John, "was the Word. In Him was 
 Life, and the Life was the Light of men. And the 
 Light shineth in darkness, and the darkness com- 
 prehended it not." Of these words, and of some 
 which I have for the present omitted, St. John's 
 Gospel and his First Epistle are the exposition. 
 They declare what this life was which had been the 
 light of men, how it was manifested, who it was 
 that could say, " I am the Light of the World ; 
 he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness." 
 III. But we detected a yet deeper conception 
 beneath that one of the relation of the Brahmin 
 to Brahma ; we found that Brahma himself was 
 supposed to be the expression or manifestation of 
 Brahm, who must be thought of only as Absolute, 
 Self-existent. These two ideas are inseparable. 
 The God is said to have sought for a companion 
 of his throne, and having considered and rejected 
 
176 PART II. LECTURE II. 
 
 all animal natures, at last to have found his one 
 adequate image in man. This thought, we saw 
 was a pregnant one : a dualism, not of opposi- 
 tion but of consort, might be traced through the 
 whole mythology. 
 
 Now, in the passage which I quoted from the 
 Book of the Proverbs, you cannot fail to have 
 noted the words, " The Lord possessed me in the 
 beginning of His ways. I was with Him as one 
 brought up with Him." Beneath this Wisdom, 
 this teacher of the Sons of Men, this Ruler of 
 Princes, by whom the sea and earth have been 
 formed, there is still a deeper and more unfathom- 
 able essence. Is this a dream, mixing incon- 
 sistently with the rest of the discourse ? You 
 cannot banish it without destroying the sense of 
 the context. Does it stand apart from the general 
 course and tenour of Jewish Revelation ? You 
 cannot understand the most striking, turning 
 points of that Revelation, if you determine to pass 
 by these words as incomprehensible or insignificant. 
 Habitually the Jew believed that He whom he 
 worshipped dwelt in the thick darkness ; no eye 
 had seen Him ; it was unlawful to conceive any 
 likeness of Him. But He also believed that this 
 Lord had revealed Himself to Abraham, as he sat 
 by the tent-door in the heat of the day on the 
 plain of Mamre ; that He had been the Captain 
 of the Hosts of Israel ; that He had spoken to and 
 by every holy seer. Do you say, " These were 
 difficulties; they look like contradictions in the 
 faith of this people ; they seem fragments from 
 
AN APPARENT DISCREPANCY. l77 
 
 different religions — witnesses that they were not, 
 as divines pretend, the subjects of a continuous, 
 harmonious revelation V I admit the difficulty ; 
 I see why those who have never discovered it in 
 themselves, should suppose it must have arisen 
 from the blending of two incompatible traditions. 
 I admit, further, that the apparent contradiction 
 could not be removed from the mind of the Jew ; 
 that it must have haunted him — sometimes have 
 tormented him ; that the vision of a reconciliation 
 will only from time to time have cheered him, in 
 the fulfilment of lowly duties, after hours of deep 
 sorrow, in the temple-worship ; that a verbal re- 
 conciliation could not satisfy him, or any man. 
 But a reconciliation he and the Hindoo both 
 demand ; the penalty of not finding it is — Modern 
 Judaism, or Modern Hindooisra. In that passage, 
 which I purposely mutilated when I quoted it 
 before, St. John says, " In the beginning was the 
 Word, and the Word was with God, and the 
 Word was God. The same was in the beginning 
 with God." He states broadly, and in union, the 
 two truths which the former dispensation had be- 
 held separately, each of which had seemed at times 
 to stifle the other, each of which had again 
 seemed necessary to the other. But he does not 
 attempt to bring them together in words, until, 
 as he believes, they had first been brought together 
 in fact. The Word, he says, was made flesh, 
 and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, 
 the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, 
 full of grace and truth. 
 
 M.B.L, M 
 
178 
 
 PART II. LECTURE II, 
 
 IV. I would beg you to remark how the 
 Evangelist speaks of Him here, first as a Word, 
 then as a Son. The Hindoo dreamed of Li^ht 
 proceeding from a Fountain of Light ; the Greek, 
 of a Child springing from a Father. Naturally, 
 and without effort, St. John recognizes both con- 
 ceptions ; for the divine Wisdom is with him no 
 abstraction ; the divine Son is with him no ma- 
 terial image. Hence there is no sudden transi- 
 tion from the divinest part of the Christian lore 
 to that which connects it with the popular faith 
 of Hindooism. Tlie Word was made Flesh. A 
 divine Incarnation is affirmed to be the great 
 instrument for redressing the evils of the world. 
 It is declared that He who had held converse 
 with holy men in their hearts, He whose life was 
 the light of men, had brought himself nigh to all, 
 so that he could be seen with human eyes — 
 handled with human hands. 
 
 I have said that the Scripture speaks of this 
 Incarnation as the means for the redress of mortal 
 evils. But if we will use its language strictly, we 
 shall make a closer approximation to the Hindoo 
 apprehension : we shall say that it was expressly 
 to deliver men out of the power of the Destroyer, 
 to break in pieces his kingdom, that the Eternal 
 Word became one with his creatures. Nowhere 
 more distinctly than in Christian Theology is there 
 the recognition of the fact which the Siva wor- 
 shipper perceives ; nowhere less effort to make 
 men comfortable by dissembling the fact, that 
 misery and death have gotten hold of the earth ; 
 
THE DESTROYER CONFOUNDED. l79 
 
 nowhere a more emphatic affirmation of the wit- 
 ness which the heart and consciences of men have 
 borne everywhere, but with special earnestness in 
 Hindostan, that in them, in the region of man's 
 inner being, is the fiercest debate with the evil 
 which he sees without ; that there, in that region, 
 he has to encounter it in its highest form, in its 
 most radical principle. The Gospel does not start 
 with a philosophical lie ; what man by bitter ex- 
 perience has discovered to be his condition, it 
 assumes to be his condition. 
 
 V. But dare we admit the genuineness of 
 that other page in the book of human experience 
 which the Siva worshippers would blot out l The 
 Incarnation answers this question ; affirms the 
 Preserver to be the Lord of all ; affirms Him 
 through the whole course of His government to 
 have been upholding this earth and those who 
 dwell upon it ; to have been interfering for their 
 rescue. Here, in this very Incarnation, and that 
 which follows from it, is the assertion of his com- 
 plete dominion ; the answer to the Destroyer's 
 claim to be in any sense the Creator, to have any 
 dominion wdiatsoever over that race which has 
 paid him such fearful homage. 
 
 That which meets us first in the records of 
 the life of the Son of Man upon earth, after He 
 had been declared to be the Son of God, is a 
 conflict, which no human eye could behold, with 
 the Destroyer ; next, the testimony which He 
 gave outwardly of the truth He had in that secret 
 battle made good, by delivering the bodies and 
 
 ]m2 
 
180 PART II. LECTURE II. 
 
 spirits of men out of their bondage to inward 
 miseries and inward tyrants. Yet never for an 
 instant did He speak of the claim which he put 
 forth for the dominion of the Gracious Preserver 
 and Father, as a new claim. Never when he 
 spoke of setting up His Kingdom did he admit 
 that He was not King of kings and Lord of lords 
 before. The Jewish calling and economy had 
 been asserting for generations the fact, that the 
 Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, slow 
 to anger, and of great mercy, forgiving iniquity, 
 transgressions, and sin, was the one Lord ; that He 
 had taken this nation to be His, to make them 
 witnesses of His righteousness and government ; 
 that every one who received His Revelation of 
 Himself, who submitted to Him, and trusted in 
 Him, was thereby brought into a righteous state, 
 was thereby enabled to understand the purpose of 
 His government, and to receive the blessings of it. 
 VL Trust in this Being lay at the foundation 
 of the life of the Jewish people. That trust in- 
 volved Sacrifice. They gave up themselves ; so 
 they rose out of the dominion of that Spirit of 
 self-will to which others were paying homage ; so 
 they were able in their daily acts to resist him, 
 and defy him, and to declare that neither in him- 
 self, nor in any of his innumerable forms, images, 
 apparitions, had he any title to the obedience of 
 God's servants. The Jew was taught that he was 
 devoted, sacrificed to this Lord, who had chosen 
 his nation, who preserved it from generation to 
 generation, who exercised righteousness and judg- 
 
SACRIFICES TO NO VISIBLE POWER. 181 
 
 ment in all the earth. It was He who called 
 the priest, appointed his vocation ; to Him he 
 was to bring the sacrifices for himself and his na- 
 tion ; to Him, and to no visible things ; to Him, 
 and to no unrighteous, hateful power. Sacrifice 
 was the bond of the nation's existence ; sacrifice 
 the act by which man realized his place in it, and 
 came to understand its privileges. The meaning 
 the law the ground of sacrifice was interpreting 
 itself to the conscience and reason of the true 
 Israelite by every step of his discipline, by every 
 act of obedience, by his sin, by his repentance. 
 More and more he felt it to be the law of the 
 universe ; apart from which its very existence is 
 a contradiction ; since only in perfect submission 
 to the perfect Will can any creature attain its life 
 and freedom. He was prepared therefore for that 
 announcement which the Apostles of our Lord 
 made so boldly, that the Son of the Father, the 
 Deliverer of Man, had offered himself a perfect 
 Sacrifice to God ; that He had accomplished this 
 act by entering into all the miseries of man ; that 
 with this loving, filial sacrifice, He who was perfect 
 Love was well pleased ; that in it was the Atone- 
 ment and Reconciliation of all Creation to Him, 
 through its original Head ; that in the strength 
 of it each man might offer himself to God as a 
 reasonable, holy, acceptable Sacrifice. 
 
 I hope I have shewn in these last hints that 
 if the other portions of the faith of the Hindoos 
 have that which answers to them in ours, their 
 faith in the might and blessing of Sacrifice is one 
 
182 PART n. LECTURE II 
 
 ia which we are bound with all our hearts to par- 
 ticipate. If there be any acts in past or present 
 ages on which we can think with delight, which 
 we can be sure had Christ's mark upon them, 
 which have wrought misrhtily. though in general 
 secretly, for the deliverance of men from idols, 
 from intellectual or spiritual plagues, here has 
 been the root and spring of them. But it is just 
 in the point of deepest sympathy with this ancient 
 people that we arrive at the secret of our oppo- 
 sition. Upon the question to whom the Sacrifice 
 should be offered, whether by it we propitiate 
 a Siva, or surrender oursehes in faith and trust 
 to Him who cares for us and loves us ; whether it 
 is to overcome the reluctance of an enemv, or is 
 the offering of our own reluctant wills to a Father 
 in the name of one who has presented and is ever 
 presenting His own fihal and complete Sacrifice — 
 upon this issue, let us understand it well, our con- 
 troversv with Hindooism turns. 
 
 The idea of a Kehama obtaining a power 
 from his gods which they cannot afterwards resist 
 to curse and plague his fellow-men, is involved in 
 the one doctrine, and is ready at any moment to 
 come forth in a form of terrific wickedness, in the 
 likeness of some Man-God. The Ao^onv of the 
 Garden, the spirit of the 22nd Psalm, the Cross of 
 Him who became nothing that the Power, and 
 grace, and Wisdom of God might through Him 
 shine forth upon all creatures ; here we see the 
 Christian Sacrifice, the Sacrifice of the God-Man. 
 This Spirit of Sacrifice He promises to all who 
 
CHRISTIAN HINDOOISM HOW AVOIDED. 1S3 
 
 are made the Sons of God in Him. Evervthino: 
 then depends in our dealings with the Hindoos — 
 let me add, eventhincr in our dealino^s with our- 
 selves — upon the degree in which we grasp this 
 distinction, or lose sight of it. I shewed you that 
 we are open to all Mahometan temptations. So 
 are we to all Hindoo temptations. We may 
 exalt a priestly caste, as if it were set up to make 
 the rest of men Sudras ; we may dwell upon the 
 privilege of holding intercourse with the Divine 
 Being, till we sink into self- worshippers : we may 
 revenore ourselves for this abstract idolatrv bv 
 plunging into outward idolatry ; we may at last 
 bow down before Siva, who we should have known 
 was in all these ways drawing us into his worship, 
 since every act of pride, spiritual, intellectual, 
 sensual, is a mystery of his worship. 
 
 These danglers have discovered themselves in 
 former periods of the world ; seeing that they 
 appertain to human nature, we may be as liable 
 to them as those who lived in anv country or age. 
 Is it an escape from them to deny the. existence of 
 a priesthood, to say that intercourse with heaven 
 is a dream, to scoff at all popular feelings, to 
 maintain that the conscience of evil is nothing, 
 that sacrifices are a mockerv ; Or. rather is the 
 escape from them to maintain that a priesthood 
 exists for the purpose of raising men above animal 
 degradation, as a witness of the great rights of hu- 
 manity ; that, because intercourse with heaven was 
 intended for the spirit of man. and has been made 
 possible for men, therefore lowliness and self-abase- 
 
184 PART II. LECTURE II. 
 
 ment are our most proper and reasonable conditions; 
 that poor and rich, priests and Sudras, have been 
 alike looked upon, sympathized with, redeemed, 
 raised to human privileges by Him who took the 
 nature of all ; that every man may be delivered 
 from an evil conscience, that he may renounce and 
 scorn the authority of the evil spirit, that he may 
 offer himself in Christ's name to God ? This is the 
 alternative for India and for England. In other 
 words, the question is, whether w^e hold a system 
 of opinions or a revelation from God ? All Brah- 
 minical acts, services, sacraments, imply an effort 
 or scheme on the part of the creature to raise 
 himself to God. All Christian acts, services, sacra- 
 ments, imply that God has sought for the creature 
 that he might raise him to Himself. The differences 
 in our thoughts of God, of the priest, of the sacri- 
 fice, all go back to this primary difference. When 
 we get into the region of conceptions and specu- 
 lations, all our views of that which is divine will 
 be fragmentary ; some of them will be very dark, 
 because they are derived from our own experience ; 
 either these become predominant, or in seeking to 
 rid ourselves of them we deny facts and extin- 
 guish great portions of our own being. To believe 
 really, practically, that God is light and in Him 
 is no darkness at all, we must believe that He 
 has caused this light to arise and shine ; we must 
 seek to walk in it, and to see all things by it. 
 
 In my second Lecture, I referred to the condition 
 of the Britons, who had parted with their original 
 faith and had received Roman civihzation, when 
 
LESSONS FROM ROMAN HISTORY. 185 
 
 they were no longer protected by Roman arms. 
 I said the example was one which the statesmen 
 of British India would do well to ponder. To 
 abolish human sacrifices is good ; but a blank will 
 be left in the nation's heart even by the loss of 
 such practices as these which must be filled up, 
 or we shall impoverish those whom we seek to 
 reform. But there is another, sadder side of this 
 history, one which refers not to the conquered, 
 but to the conquerors. Britain uttered her groan 
 because Rome could no longer send forth her 
 lesions. The hundred hands which had been 
 stretched from east to west, from north to south, 
 were palsied ; for the giant who moved them had 
 become a child. And whence came this decay of 
 strength I All the signs of it still belonged to 
 Rome. From the city of Jerusalem to the city 
 of York she had traversed the earth with her 
 roads; within her own walls were the mightiest 
 trophies of art over nature. Her history told 
 by what wonderful agencies human and natural, 
 by how evidently divine an ordinance, her glory 
 had been achieved. And to the gloss of civiliza- 
 tion had been added the gloss of Christianity. 
 The Emperor had believed when other help was 
 failing, that in the might of the Cross he might 
 still conquer. The sign was indeed there, but it 
 was marked upon the standard, not written upon 
 the hearts, of those rulers of the world. They 
 saw not what it meant ; how it interpreted and 
 crowned all that had been great in their history 
 hitherto; how it separated the real great from 
 
186 PART II. LECTURE II. 
 
 the real little ; how it sanctified all those feelings 
 of obedience, duty, reverence for unseen law, 
 self-devotion, by which the city had risen from 
 nothing ; how it poured contempt upon dominion, 
 except as an instrument by which the highest 
 might serve the lowest, upon glory, except as it 
 grew out of humiliation, and was the exaltation 
 of man above himself. The civilized Christian 
 Roman had lost the heart, the reverence, the 
 faith, which belonged to his rude Pagan ances- 
 tors ; that Christianity and civiHzation might be 
 victorious, the miserable patrons of both were 
 swept away. 
 
 If it is so with us ; if our civiHzation merely 
 consists in those outward conveniences and mecha- 
 nical inventions which are the fruits of it, assur- 
 edly we sliall impart but that which we have ; we 
 shall communicate only our external polish to the 
 nations which we rule ; their inward condition 
 under our hands will become less strong, less sound, 
 than it was before. If our belief in Christianity 
 floats upon the surface of our minds, just keeps 
 itself alive by a few phrases and conventions in the 
 multitude of our pursuits, if it offers no greater 
 evidence of its vitality than the debates and con- 
 troversies which it engenders, assuredly we cannot 
 present it to the Hindoo with the slightest hope 
 that he will receive it in exchange for a faith 
 which, be it good or evil, has governed his life. 
 Only if our cultivation be of that kind which is 
 truly human, which delights to discern the essen- 
 tial humanity of each nation, to honour it, to 
 
OUR OWN RECEPTIOX OF THE GOSPEL. ] 87 
 
 sympathise with it, shall we understand that which 
 is peculiar in our subjects, or reform that which 
 is corrupt in them. Only if we have received the 
 Gospel as the answer from heaven to inward per- 
 plexities which we have a thousand times tried 
 to stifle, but could not ; only if we have learnt 
 that these perplexities are the groans of the 
 human spirit within us crying for deliverance ; 
 can we with honest confidence speak to that spirit 
 in whatever region it dwells, in whatever language, 
 clear or inarticulate, it utters its voice, as one 
 spake to it of old, " Say not. Who shall ascend 
 up into heaven ? that is, to bring Christ down ; 
 or. Who shall descend into the deep ? that is, to 
 bring Christ again from the dead : for lo I the 
 word is nigh thee, in thy mouth and in thy heart, 
 even the word of faith which we preach." 
 
PART II LECTURE III. 
 
 How this relation should be detected. The descent of the 
 Spirit. Relation of the Christian Cliurch to the Jewish. 
 Supposed analogy to the relations of Buddhism with 
 Brahminism. The resemblances and difference between 
 Christianity and Buddhism. The Buddhist side of 
 Christianity threatening its existence. How Christians 
 may speak to Buddhists elsewhere, especially in China. 
 
 THAT Buddha and Brahm are words of cog- 
 nate if not of the same signification ; that 
 Buddhism is nevertheless essentially opposed to 
 Brahminism, seeing that it denies the existence of 
 a priestly caste ; that the Buddhists are scattered 
 over many lands, and have adopted various forms 
 of belief and opinion ; that their universal charac- 
 teristic is reverence for the human intellect, which 
 they think of as one, though diffused through many 
 persons, and as having its central manifestation in 
 the Lama ; that Buddhism exists in China beside 
 two other forms of opinion with which it does not 
 combine — I have explained in my third Lecture 
 of the First Part. It is now our business to 
 enquire whether this system has any or what affi- 
 nities with Christianity. If the enquiry is conducted 
 fairly, it must satisfy certain conditions. The resem- 
 blance which we detect must be not in the super- 
 ficial accidental parts of either faith, but in their 
 radical and essential characteristics ; these must not 
 be assumed by the enquirer on his own authority, 
 but must have some clear voucher that they are 
 
THE DAY OF PENTECOST. ] 89 
 
 recognized as radical and essential characteristics by 
 Buddhists and Christians respectively ; the likeness 
 must not be to that side of Buddhism which coin- 
 cides with Hindooism — otherwise we shall only be 
 repeating the last Lecture — but to the opposite side. 
 The festival of Whitsuntide is observed in all 
 parts of Christendom ; here in England, among 
 the Protestants in the north of Europe, by the 
 liomanists in the south, by Greeks and Arme- 
 nians, by the descendants of English, French, and 
 Spanish settlers in North and South America. It 
 is felt by all these to commemorate a great event, 
 the event which marks the establishment of the 
 Christian Church in the world. They derive their 
 notion of this event from the record of it in the 
 second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. 
 There we are told, that on a certain day which 
 had long been kept as a festival day among the 
 Jews, numbers of them were gathered from vari- 
 ous countries of Asia, Africa, and Europe, in the 
 city of Jerusalem. In that city dwelt a body of 
 priests, divinely called, as its inhabitants believed, 
 to this office, members of a priestly family. There 
 were also authorized doctors and interpreters of the 
 law, whose words were received by the great mass 
 of the people as oracles. On the day of Pente- 
 cost, says the writer of the Acts, a great body of 
 the inhabitants of the city, and of the strangers 
 from other lands, were drawn to a place near the 
 temple, because they were told that a set of men, 
 not priests, not doctors of the law, but inhabitants 
 of the most despised part of Palestine, themselves 
 
190 PART II. LECTURE III. 
 
 of the lowest caste, Galilean fishermen, were 
 speaking in different tongues the wonderful works 
 of God. This power the Scripture declares was 
 given them from on high. The Spirit of God had 
 descended upon them ; they spake with other 
 tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. To 
 the body thus endued it is said a multitude joined 
 themselves. They were regarded with more and 
 more jealousy by the priests and doctors of the 
 Jews. But they spread themselves through Pales- 
 tine ; they went into other lands. Everywhere, 
 they declared that they came in the power of the 
 Spirit, who had thus broken down the barriers of 
 language and race ; everywhere they said that 
 this Spirit would be given to those who believed 
 their message. 
 
 Are we to conclude from this story that the 
 Christian faith broke loose from the Jewish faith, 
 as Buddhism broke loose from Brahminism ; that 
 in each case there was a vehement reaction aofainst 
 caste narrowness and local boundaries ; that in 
 each case this reaction was associated with the re- 
 cognition of a spirit dwelhng in men ? There may 
 be much plausibiHty in such a notion ; for many 
 reasons it would commend itself to certain modern 
 philosophers. Only they would say, ' In order 
 to make out this resemblence, it is necessary to 
 divest the scriptural story of its halo of mystery 
 and marvel. Take it as it stands, and all you 
 learn from it is, that on a certain occasion a 
 strange phsenomenon was seen, unlike any that had 
 previously occurred, or was to occur again ; at 
 
THE FULFILMENT OF A PROMISE. 191 
 
 variance with the constitution of man and the 
 deahnofs of his Creator. In that form it offers 
 only a seeming analogy to the Buddhist doctrine ; 
 seeing that the latter assumes the presence of a 
 divine and diffusive spirit to be the proper charac- 
 teristic of humanity, at least in its noblest state, 
 and that on this ground it oversets the caste prin- 
 ciple — not for a particular emergency but alto- 
 gether. If, however, you are inclined to admit 
 that this is the confused narrative of a re- 
 markable epoch in Jewish history (and indeed, 
 in the world's history) when there was awakened 
 in the nation, or in a part of it, the conscious- 
 ness, previously slumbering, of a capacity in men 
 generally for that knowledge which had been 
 confined to the priests — a narrative surrounded, 
 as all Hebrew narratives are, with a divine ma- 
 chinery — we will admit that you have established 
 your case.** 
 
 I submit that one part of this statement is 
 quite incorrect. If I read the story as it stands, 
 I shall not merely be told that a certain event 
 happened at a certain time and in a certain place; 
 I shall be told that this event was the fulfilment 
 of a promise made to the fathers of the Jewish 
 nation ^ I shall be told that it was intended for 
 those of that generation, and for their children. 
 These assertions, it will be remembered, are very 
 prominent in the discourse which the writer of 
 the Acts of the Apostles attributes to St. Peter. 
 One therefore who believes his statement cannot 
 look upon this descent of the Spirit, with all that 
 
192 PART II. LECTURE III. 
 
 was implied in the circumstances of it, as violating 
 the laws of the human constitution, as an excep- 
 tion in the plan of the Creator. He must look 
 upon it as expounding that constitution, as carry- 
 ing out that plan. But on what grounds, it will 
 be asked, can it be alleged that the principles set 
 forth in the Jewish scriptures and the Jewish 
 economy were asserted and realised by a trans- 
 action which seems to destroy the exclusive hier- 
 archy, ultimately the exclusive national limitation, 
 which lie at the root of them ? The answer to 
 this question will, I believe, shew that the affinities 
 of Christianity with Buddhism are much closer 
 and more extensive than they would be on the 
 hypothesis of the former being a rebellion against 
 Judaism ; on the other hand, will explain wherein 
 the difference between them consists, and what 
 that ' miraculous halo' which is imputed to the 
 Scripture narrative, has to do with it. 
 
 We turn to the earliest of the Jewish records, 
 and we find it declared that God made man in his 
 own image, and gave him dominion over all the 
 other creatures he had formed. Before a word 
 has been said about the difference of one people 
 from another, here is a broad fundamental asser- 
 tion respecting man as man. Perhaps you will 
 say, ' Yes ; but this is set at nought by one which 
 immediately follows it ; the fall of Adam is the 
 real, though the creation of man may be the 
 nominal, beginning of the history." As we are 
 examining these records to find what they actually 
 affirm, I consider the simplest, nay, the only 
 
RECOGNITION OF EVIL IN THE BIBLE. 193 
 
 honest, method is to take them, as beginning 
 where they seem to begin, not to assume a start- 
 ing-point of our own. It will then be seen more 
 clearly whether they have a connexion with each 
 other, or are only a collection of Sibylline leaves; 
 whereas, if we insist that the Divine drama opens 
 at a certain chapter, and that all which precedes 
 is prologue, we do not find the connexion, but 
 make it. The arrangements of divines may de- 
 mand such violence upon the text ; but I do not 
 think it is ever justified by the conscience of 
 simple and devout Christians. I believe they 
 would be shocked to the last degree if you insisted 
 in plain language upon their believing that the 
 constitution of God was nullified, destroyed, or 
 even at all affected, by the evil acts of man. Un- 
 doubtedly, there is the fullest, most immediate 
 recognition of the fact that evil entered into the 
 world. There is no tampering with experience, 
 no attempt to represent the universe as something 
 else than it is, in order to make it accord with 
 the account of its origin. There is no hint of a 
 golden age, during which sin and death were not 
 upon the earth. We are told that the very first 
 man forgot that he was made in the image of 
 God; yielded to the temptation of an inferior 
 creature ; came under death. He denied the law 
 after which he was created. And each of his 
 descendants is shewn to have the same propensity 
 to obey that which he was meant to rule ; to dis- 
 believe in Him whom he was meant to obey. But 
 neither the first man nor any of his successors 
 
 M.B.L. N 
 
194 PART II. LECTURE III. 
 
 could make this degradation and disobedience any- 
 thing else than an anomaly and a contradiction. 
 The worst man in Scripture is never represented 
 as evil in any other sense than because he fights 
 against the law under which he exists, and of 
 which his very transgression is the continual wit- 
 ness. And therefore in the Bible God is ever re- 
 presented as addressing Himself to the creature 
 whom He had formed, as awakening in him by 
 His voice a consciousness of his right condition. 
 
 He is represented as speaking thus to Adam 
 when he was hiding himself from His presence ; 
 as speaking thus to Cain when he was meditating 
 his crime, and when he had committed it. In 
 each case it is assumed that the creature addressed 
 stood in a direct relation to the Creator, however 
 he might be denying it and determining to shut 
 himself out from it. And I need scarcely remind 
 you, that he is treated, after the fall as well as 
 before it, as still intended to have dominion over 
 the earth and the animals upon it. The ground 
 is cursed for his sake : in the sweat of his brow 
 he must till it ; but he does till it — he does sub- 
 due it. He is continually disposed to treat it as 
 his master, but he is compelled to act as if it were 
 his slave — compelled at the same time to remem- 
 ber that its power of producing nourishment for 
 him depends not upon himself, but upon an Un- 
 seen Will, which he is ever inclined to lose sight 
 of. The punishment of the race when lust and 
 violence had spread over it, the preservation of it 
 in a family, the blessing under which the sons of 
 
ABRAHAxM A WITNESS FOR GOD AND MAN. 195 
 
 Noah go forth to replenish the earth and to sub- 
 due it, the confusion of their purpose of dwelling 
 together in one plain when they were meant to 
 people the earth, bear witness to the same prin- 
 ciple. Man, the race of Man, is treated as formed 
 in the image of God, as intended for rule over the 
 creatures. 
 
 Now if this be the case with respect to the 
 records of the period preceding the Call of Abra- 
 ham, those which follow can only be understood 
 on the same principle. The history of the chosen 
 people does not record an outrage upon mankind 
 for the sake of one portion of it ; it is the history 
 of men taken out of darkness into the light, made 
 conscious of their own state, as created in the 
 image of God and meant to have dominion over 
 the earth. A Mesopotamian shepherd is called 
 the friend of God — in him all the families of the 
 earth are to be blessed. Out of his family grows 
 a nation. It is a witness to all nations against 
 the separate idolatrous worship which is dividing 
 them. Its members are taught to believe that 
 God Himself is their Kin^ — the Unseen God of 
 all the earth. They are not in some unnatural 
 condition because they are taken under His go- 
 vernment ; their lives are simple, natural, orderly, 
 in proportion as they remember it ; confused and 
 irregular when they forget it. As the history of 
 the nation goes on, there are continually new dis- 
 coveries of evil tendencies, of an evil nature, in the 
 members of it. They are not different from the 
 rest of the world ; they are equally idolatrous, 
 
 n2 
 
196 PART II. LECTURE III. 
 
 equally selfish, equally corrupt. Where then is 
 their advantage ? The Lord of All has revealed 
 Himself to them ; He has taken them into cove- 
 nant; they may trust Him. In trusting Him 
 they rise above these selfish and idolatrous ten- 
 dencies — they become truly men. The Jewish 
 Prophet, when he is most overwhelmed with his 
 own evil and with the evil of his nation, obtains 
 most apprehension of the truth that Grod will ex- 
 hibit his perfect Image to men, in a Man, and 
 will so confound all the images they have made. 
 Except such an Image were really presented to 
 them in a Man — except it were really shewn to 
 be true that Man was made in the Image of God, 
 and had dominion over the creatures, and that 
 Death and Evil were not his masters, the visions 
 of Jewish seers were delusions. But St. Peter, 
 when he spoke to the Jews on the day of Pente- 
 cost, was firmly assured that a Man had appeared 
 in the world who was the perfect Image of the 
 Unseen God. He believed that this Person had 
 been declared in the waters of baptism to be the 
 Son of God ; that the Spirit of God had descended 
 upon Him ; that in the strength of that Spirit he 
 had exercised dominion over the powers of nature, 
 over man's spiritual enemies ; had passed through 
 death, had ascended to the right hand of His 
 Father. That He should give His Spirit to men, 
 to make them the sons of God in Him; to restore 
 them to God's Image ; to give them power over 
 the earth ; to constitute them the masters, and 
 not the subjects of visible things ; — this seemed 
 
HOW S. PAUL SPOKE OF THE GIFT OF THE SPIRIT. 197 
 
 to him the right and reasonable fulfilment of ex- 
 press promises which were contained in the Jewish 
 Scriptures, and of all their meaning. 
 
 With equal certainty he said, that the pro- 
 mise would be to them and to their children. He 
 was sure that the Spirit of God had taken posses- 
 sion of the powers, and energies, and speech of 
 men. He was sure that in yielding to that Spirit 
 he was obeying no strange, unnatural impulse, but 
 was submitting to his proper guide and teacher, to 
 the Author of all order, and peace, and unity. 
 More than this, perhaps, he may not have per- 
 ceived. To see in this gift the witness for a great 
 human fellowship, to see all that it implied re- 
 specting man's creation and his redemption was 
 perhaps reserved, more perfectly, for another 
 Apostle. Through intense personal humihation 
 and suffering did the Apostle Paul learn that 
 Christ by His death, and resurrection, and ascen- 
 sion, had justified man before God ; that the 
 Spirit of God was given, not only as the fulfil- 
 ment of all promises which had been made to the 
 fathers of the Jewish nation, but as the fulfilment 
 of the original law of his creation, when He made 
 all things in Christ Jesus, with the intent of 
 finally gathering them all together in Him. In 
 his Epistles we find him brought into contact with 
 men of different habits, philosophies, and educa- 
 tions. The old mythologies had prepared them 
 very readily to recognize an inspiration from God. 
 The sages very readily recognized the worth of 
 the individual soul in man; but the inspiration 
 
]98 PART II. LECTURE III. 
 
 which the first admitted was sudden and casual, 
 the honour which the other paid to the soul was 
 sohtary, exclusive, self-exalting. He spoke of a 
 Spirit of God as given to dwell continually in 
 man ; to be the source in him of all knowledge, 
 faith, love ; the strength for all ordinary toils, 
 the comforter in all sorrows, the power of explor- 
 ing the unseen and the future. He spoke of this 
 Spirit as calling forth a spirit in man, in the indi- 
 vidual man, which lifts him above himself, which 
 he cannot call his own, which belongs to him as 
 the child of God, the member of a universal family 
 — " the spirit of man which is in him." 
 
 That profound feeling of reverence for the 
 human spirit, then, which we have discovered in 
 the Buddhist, his belief in the mighty capacities 
 of this spirit, his determination to recognize these 
 capacities as belonging to the race, not to some 
 one section or class of it, his assurance that the 
 spirit in man cannot be circumscribed by the 
 limits of time or space, or by the measures and 
 conditions of individual feeling and consciousness, 
 his conviction that this human spirit must, in some 
 mysterious manner be divine, has its full justifica- 
 tion in Christianity. And every subordinate idea 
 which has grown out of these in the mind of the 
 Buddhist has that which answers to it in the 
 Gospel. He believes that it is the privilege of the 
 divine man to contemplate the Divinity in His 
 purity. The highest view which St. Paul takes 
 of the privileges of Christian men, in consequence 
 of the gift which had been bestowed upon them, is 
 
BUDDHISM OF THE GOSPEL. 199 
 
 that they might know God ; his most earnest 
 prayer, that they might increase in this know- 
 ledge. The Buddhist beheves that, in order to 
 the attainment of such knowledge, the mind must 
 be separated from outward, sensual things. Sanc- 
 tifieation, the deliverance of the heart and mind 
 from earthly, temporal influences, that they may 
 enter into the enjoyment of that which is unseen 
 and eternal, is the very work which the writers of 
 the New Testament, with one accord, attribute to 
 the Holy Spirit who had been given them. The 
 Buddhist however, feeling that he must, in some 
 way, study the universe, and account for the facts 
 which he observes in it, was led to perceive the 
 necessity of a power which originates or begets, 
 a capacity which receives, a bond which unites 
 them. The Scriptures, too, suppose a power 
 which creates, a power in the creature which re- 
 ceives ; the Scriptures contemplate the union and 
 co-working of these powers as the condition of 
 health in all that exists ; they shew how all de- 
 struction in the human, voluntary creature has 
 come from his will not yielding itself to the divine, 
 creating, inspiring Will ; how all restoration comes 
 from their being again brought into accordance. 
 They speak of the deepest ground of all things 
 being the awful union of the Father with the Son 
 in the Spirit. 
 
 Again, we heard of holy men appearing as 
 benefactors of different portions of the globe ; 
 their footsteps traced upon earth, yet their home 
 seeming to be somewhere else. What they are 
 
200 PART II. LECTURE III. 
 
 is known chiefly by what they have done ; their 
 acts are palpable ; a mystery hangs about them- 
 selves. They are called Buddhas ; though they 
 appear in places and times far apart, the same 
 wisdom, the same power dwells in them all ; they 
 must be the wisdom and power of Buddha ; they 
 can belong to no other. Even thus do Christians 
 speak of those who in far-off ages, in various lati- 
 tudes, have shed light into the hearts of men, 
 have cheered the poor in the midst of their sore 
 trials with help for the present, hope for the 
 future, have restrained triumphant evil, and la- 
 boured that righteousness and truth might flourish. 
 These we hold to be all partakers of the self-same 
 Spirit ; in their words and acts they manifest its 
 presence ; care not to be great in themselves, but 
 do homage to a mysterious greatness, from which 
 all that seems such in themselves is derived ; shew 
 that they have their work on earth, their citizen- 
 ship in the heavens. Once more, the Buddhist 
 affirms that there must be some person, and that 
 a human person, in whom the perfect wisdom 
 resides. He need not in his earthly appearance 
 be glorious ; he may wear the form of a child ; 
 but the Power must be within, and must so 
 reveal itself that men shall see the Divine Priest 
 is there. Even thus is it the clearest, most 
 invariable proclamation in the Gospel, that each 
 man, in his best, purest estate, does but utter 
 some portion of the Divine Mind, does but ex- 
 hibit some one partial image of the Divine Cha- 
 racter ; that there is one perfect Utterance of 
 
BUDDHISM AND CHRISTIANITY HOW OPPOSED. 201 
 
 that voice, one perfect image of that substance, 
 one in whom the Fulness pleased to dwell, one 
 who humbled Himself to the cradle of Bethlehem, 
 to the Cross of Calvary ; who in that cradle, and 
 on that Cross, shew^ed forth the Divine glory: 
 and who, because He humbled Himself, has been 
 exalted to be the High Priest of our race for 
 ever. 
 
 But as we have seen this relation between 
 Buddhism and Christianity coming out before us 
 with increasing brightness, we must, I think, have 
 become also more and more conscious of some 
 difference, which, whatever it be, is a deep and 
 radical one. The philosophical objectors told us 
 that if we could separate the story of Pentecost 
 from its ' mythical ' accidents, the sound of the 
 rushing mighty wind, the cloven tongues, the 
 notion of a particular endowment bestowed by 
 Jesus Christ at that particular moment on His 
 disciples, we should arrive at an intelligible result, 
 which might throw some light upon Buddhist and 
 other history. I complained of this statement so 
 far as it represents the events of that day as iso- 
 lated, as inconsistent with principles recognized in 
 the Jewish economy, as importing that the in- 
 dwelling of a Spirit in man is not implied in his 
 original constitution. Subject to these remarks, 
 I now admit that they are right in looking upon 
 these miraculous circumstances as indicative of the 
 difference between the Scriptural and the Budd- 
 hist conception of the spiritual endowments of 
 human creatures. The Buddhist starts from the 
 
202 PART II. LECTURE III. 
 
 human ground ; assumes the existence or possi- 
 bility of certain qualities and attributes of a divine 
 nature in man ; supposes the man, in virtue of 
 these, to hold intercourse with the Divinity. The 
 Scripture starts from the divine ground ; assumes 
 that man according to his constitution is nothing 
 but an image ; denies that he can originate any- 
 thing ; sets forth a revelation of his Creator to 
 him as the foundation of his knowledge — of his 
 life ; represents all faculties, powers, energies of the 
 creature as gifts of the Creator. Upon this dif- 
 ference every other depends. If the first view 
 be the right one, there can, of course, be no divine 
 manifestation, for there is nothing to manifest. 
 The Creator does not witness to men by visible 
 signs that He is the Author of these gifts, for He 
 is not the Author of them, or He does not design 
 to make them know that He is. If the other view 
 be true, these (so-called) miracles, these exercises 
 of power, these signs of a Presence, are precisely 
 the methods which commend themselves to the 
 conscience and reason of mankind as the most 
 fitted — I had nearly said as the only possible — 
 witnesses of a truth, which, when it has been once 
 testified of in this way, can hereafter be held as 
 certain and abiding though there be no startling 
 signs of it at all. 
 
 Now, as Buddhism and Christianity are the 
 respective exemplifications of these two methods, 
 it may be well to consider the practical results of 
 each. You will see, I trust, my object. I do 
 not desire to make out a charge against Buddhism 
 
A LEADING CONTRAST BETWEEN THE TWO. 203 
 
 on the ground of its moral deficiencies ; but, I 
 want to ascertain how far these deficiencies are or 
 are not owing to this characteristical feature of it, 
 that more than any other system the world has 
 ever seen, it makes the belief of a Divine power 
 working in man its ground, and ascends from that 
 ground to any apprehension it may entertain re- 
 specting the Divinity Himself. 
 
 I. One leading contrast offers itself instantly 
 to our notice. The Buddhist believes that a 
 Divine wisdom and power dwells, or may dwell, in 
 human beings, and that its dwelling constitutes 
 them, heroic spirits — saintly men. The New 
 Testament begins with teaching us what kind 
 of Spirit this must be ; what manner of Being He 
 is from whom this Spirit proceeds ; what must be 
 the manner of His working in creatures who sub- 
 mit to His government. It speaks of the Spirit 
 of Him who had declared Himself for ages to the 
 Jews as the God of Truth and Righteousness ; it 
 speaks of the Spirit of Him who gave His Son for 
 men. It sets forth the character of this Spirit 
 by His life, in whom it is said to have dwelt with- 
 out measure. If Hohness was more characteristic 
 of Him than power, the Spirit of holiness is the 
 name by which we are taught to express it most 
 uniformly and perfectly. If meekness, humility, 
 gentleness, were the essential qualities of His life, 
 the Spirit is known as the Spirit of meekness, hu- 
 mility, gentleness : these are declared to be the 
 fruits of its operations. If His whole life was an 
 act of self-sacrifice, His Spirit is set forth as the 
 
204 PART II. LECTURE III. 
 
 power whereby man is able to offer himself a 
 sacrifice. If Love was the source and end of His 
 sacrifice, it is the Spirit of Love which He pro- 
 mises to those who obey Him. Not that these 
 assertions in the least interfere with the other 
 equally prominent one, that He is the Spirit of 
 Truth and Knowledge ; that all powers and exer- 
 cises of mind, and their direction are from Him. 
 No one brings out that assertion more clearly than 
 St. Paul ; but he winds up the enumeration of 
 gifts and powers in these words : " And yet I 
 shew you a more excellent way. Though I speak 
 with the tongues of men and of angels, and have 
 not charity, I am become as a sounding brass, or 
 a tinkling cymbal." Love is in his teaching, as in 
 his life, the highest manifestation of the presence 
 of the Spirit, because God, from whom it proceeds, 
 is Love. 
 
 IL All this difference, you see, is grounded 
 upon the difference between the naked idea of a 
 Spirit dwelling in man and identical with himself, 
 and the idea of Him as given to men by the 
 Eternal God through His Son. Look now at the 
 difference as to another point, the estimate of hu- 
 man creatures. To the Buddhist those whom he 
 believes thus endowed necessarily become gods ; 
 they can be nothing else. And thus, he who 
 starts with the rejection of an hereditary priest- 
 hood as an intolerable yoke, because men, as men, 
 have the capacity of seeing God and worshipping 
 Him, ends by becoming the poor servant and tool 
 of a priesthood. All who can exhibit the intel- 
 
THE BUDDHISt''s DILEMMA. 205 
 
 lectual power which he feels is of right his, and 
 yet which he is conscious that he does not actually 
 possess, must be objects of his obedience and his 
 worship. He has no standard with which he can 
 compare what they are and what they do ; he is 
 sure that there must be some who enjoy inter- 
 course with the unseen world ; they cannot tell 
 him what the intercourse means, what the result 
 of it is, how he can be the better for it. They 
 seem to say, some of them actually say, and wish 
 him to understand that at all events they are 
 marking out a ne plus ultra to Ms enquiries, '' Be- 
 yond us lies a void of Nothingness." Into that 
 void the listening disciple has no temptation to 
 enter. What can he do but accept these finite 
 temporary priests as the best substitutes for the 
 Infinite which he longs for and yet shrinks from I 
 They at least keep alive the appetite, they save 
 him from utter despair. Such is the condition of 
 those who can only contemplate the Spirit which 
 they feel is meant for man as in man. The Chris- 
 tian is taught to think of this Spirit as in God, as 
 coming forth from Him. He is taught that he 
 may ask God continually for the quickening and 
 renewing of it in himself, and in all the family to 
 which he belongs. He is told that when the 
 Comforter comes He shall convince the world of 
 Sin, of Righteousness, of Judgment ; that He 
 shall not become identical with the man himself; 
 but shall shew him his evil ; shall raise him out 
 of that evil into a Righteousness which is above 
 him, which is in one who is gone to the Father ; 
 
206 PART II. LECTURE III. 
 
 shall give him the continual assurance of a final 
 separation between that which is true and that 
 which is false. 
 
 III. Thus the promise of the Spirit is the 
 promise to a man of a power to overlook his own 
 mind, to judge its acts and movements, to know 
 what in it requires to be cut off, what is wrought in 
 God. Every human heart is to be the subject of it ; 
 no creature belonging to the race for which Christ 
 died, is meant to be defrauded of this mighty illu- 
 mination. But no one who receives it can pre- 
 tend to be thereby exalted above his fellows ; his 
 knowledge is the knowledge of his own individual 
 abasement ; of that glory which he shares with 
 his kind in Christ. And therefore the Scripture, 
 in strict conformity with this idea, represents all 
 intellectual gifts as bestowed, not to raise one 
 man above another, but simply that men may be 
 enabled to serve each other. The highest of all 
 is the servant of all. He who holds his gifts un- 
 der this condition, and confesses his unfitness for 
 the use of them, is a fellow-worker with the Di- 
 vine Spirit. He is doing that which he was sent 
 here to do. He who uses them for any other 
 end, who holds them on any other condition, practi- 
 cally disowns the blessing and its Author. The 
 priest and the prophet come under this rule. 
 They especially are to look upon themselves as 
 called by Him who is the deliverer of men out of 
 their confusions and darkness, to an office under 
 Him, as endowed with powers by Him to fulfil 
 this office. So far as the priest or the prophet 
 
THE BUDDHIST AND CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 207 
 
 looks upon all the ability he possesses as a gift, 
 the object of which is determined by the character 
 of the giver, and the nature of His work, so far 
 he is a true priest and true prophet ; assuming 
 his abiHty as his property, he becomes a false 
 priest, a false prophet ; in the language of Scrip- 
 ture a wolf, and not a shepherd, a destroyer of 
 men, not their deliverer. 
 
 IV. But the conception of the Lama supplies 
 us with the most perfect illustration of the differ- 
 ence I am endeavouring to point out. In him 
 is gathered up that spirit of humanity which the 
 Buddhist worships, and from which he deduces his 
 divinity. The Christian affirms that He in whom 
 the priesthood of the universe rests is the eternal 
 Son of God, that He took human nature, united 
 it to God, endued it with that Spirit which dwelt 
 without measure in Himself. He, they declare, 
 is the Head of many members, through each of 
 which, so long as it abides in Him, the same life- 
 blood is transmitted. The former notion, ground- 
 ed upon a true and deep feeling that there must 
 be a centre or that there can be no fellowship, 
 assumes the centre anywhere — in a child or old 
 man — and demands implicit faith that there all 
 intelligence rests. The other, starting from the 
 fact that humanity has a centre above itself, de- 
 clares how He who claimed to be this centre, in 
 poverty, weakness, contempt made good his title, 
 by proving that He could deliver the spirit of man 
 out of its fetters, that in owning Him to be its 
 Lord it attained the freedom it was sighing for. 
 
208 PART II. LECTURE III. 
 
 The one notion glorifying the intellect and spirit 
 of man, insists upon their doing homage to the 
 meanest object which they create for themselves 
 to worship ; the other, humbling the intellect and 
 spirit of man before one who has established his 
 right to be their master, offers them an expan- 
 sion and exaltation of which the knowledge and 
 love of an absolute and perfect Being are the only 
 limits. 
 
 V. Thus the society of the Buddhist has no 
 bond except the existence of something mysterious 
 in the creatures who belong to it ; feeling this to be 
 insufficient, he invents an external supremacy, and 
 endues it with attributes which he knows it does 
 not possess ; he makes a lie, and the lie avails him 
 nothing, for the three hundred millions which own 
 it compose only a mass of atoms without any prin- 
 ciple of cohesion, though they are ever seeking one. 
 The Christian Ecclesia confesses by its very name 
 that its existence has its ground in the call of an 
 Almighty Being ; that it stands only by His will ; 
 that it is distinguished from a divided world to be 
 a witness of that true glory which man possesses 
 when he looks upward, not downwards, to a Mas- 
 ter, not to himself ; that, having such a call and 
 being such a witness, it is baptized with a Spirit 
 of power, and truth, and love, who by it would 
 bring all men into the divine fellowship which 
 embraces all peoples, tongues, kindreds, — from 
 which no one can, except by an act of self-will, 
 be excluded. 
 
 VI. I might perhaps leave the comparison 
 
CONTRADICTIONS HOW RECONCILED. 209 
 
 here drawn to work its way upon the consciences 
 and hearts of all who love truth and freedom and 
 their kind, in deed more than in word. But the 
 subject is so transcendantly important at this 
 time, that I must present it still in one or two 
 other lights. The first is this. Buddhism, you 
 see, necessarily excludes Mahometanism and Hin- 
 dooism. It is the direct contradiction of the 
 former ; Mahometanism basing the universe upon 
 the distinctness and absoluteness of God. Its 
 antipathy to the second is the great fact of its 
 history, the explanation of its existence. It denies 
 the reality of that distinction which is involved in 
 the doctrine of the twice-born man, as opposed to 
 the ordinary man. And now we find it cannot 
 sustain those pretensions to spirituality, on ac- 
 count of which it is at war with the unspiritual 
 Mahometan, or that pretension to humanity and 
 freedom from priestcraft, on account of which it is 
 at war with the exclusive Brahmin. It sets their 
 ideas at nought ; it utterly fails in realizing its 
 own. But we have been led to think that ideas 
 which have exercised such a sway over multitudes 
 of human beings from generation to generation, 
 must be realized is some way. Our philosophers 
 have taught us to pay this homage to the thoughts 
 of our fellow-men ; we bless them for the lesson ; 
 we are ashamed of not having learnt it sooner, of 
 not having rather imparted it to them. I beseech 
 you seriously to ponder this question. How may 
 these ideas be realized \ How may they be recon- 
 ciled \ And if you should, after much thinking, 
 
 M.B.L. O 
 
210 PART II. LECTURE III. 
 
 find that this ancient Revelation which you were 
 going to cast aside as one of the false and worn- 
 out systems of the world, supplies that realization 
 and reconciliation — supplies them because it is a 
 revelation, — on that ground, and no other — then 
 be sure that if you do cast it aside, or wish to 
 prove it something else than a revelation, the rea- 
 son is not that you care for what is expansive and 
 comprehensive, that you hate what is formal and 
 narrow ; this is not any longer the ground of your 
 opposition. Will you then with great earnestness 
 ask yourselves, what it is \ 
 
 VII. Perhaps, however, we have been speak- 
 ing only of a verbal reconciliation ; you want one 
 which shall be practical ; one which may bear to be 
 tried on a great scale. Let us see then whether 
 the case of China, a country which you will allow- 
 to be practical at least in its aim, to offer quite 
 sufficient room for a large experiment, may not 
 supply what you require. If you did hear of a 
 people which had had for ages the strongest con- 
 viction that the authority of the Father was the 
 one foundation of society, but had never been able 
 to connect this conviction with the acknowledge- 
 ment of anything mysterious and divine ; of a 
 society which for ages had not been able to pre- 
 vent a certain body of its subjects from dreaming 
 that there is a mysterious and divine Word or 
 Reason speaking to the wise man, out of which 
 dream, however, no fruits had proceeded but im- 
 postures and delusions ; if you were told, that into 
 the heart of this society Buddhism had come, with 
 
THE AUTHORITY OF A FATHER. 211 
 
 its strange testimony of a Spirit in the human 
 race, the ordinary manifestations of which are seen 
 in very ignorant priests, its perfect manifestation 
 often in an infant : if you heard that these doc- 
 trines had never been able to combine, and yet 
 that no one could succeed in banishing the other 
 from an empire in which order and unity are 
 prized as the highest blessings of all, nay, that 
 experience had proved to reluctant sages, that 
 none of these elements of discord could safely be 
 extinguished, that each was in some strange way 
 needful to the permanence of that which it seemed 
 to undermine : — and if after this you heard of a 
 faith which assumed that the ground of all things 
 and all men is a Father ; that He has spoken 
 and does speak by his Filial Word to the hearts 
 and spirits of men, so making them wise, and 
 separating them from what is base and vain ; that 
 this Filial Word has been made flesh and dwelt 
 among men, and has given them power to become 
 sons of God ; and that through Him a Spirit is 
 given to dwell with men, to raise up a new spirit 
 in them, to unite them to each other, to make 
 them living portions of a living body ; that men 
 are actually admitted by a simple rite into a 
 Name expressive of their adoption by the Father, 
 their separation by the Word, their inspiration 
 by the Spirit ; that in this Name stood a uni- 
 versal fellowship, which upheld the authority of 
 earthly fathers upon the ground of the divine 
 relation, which asserted the distinction of wise and 
 foolish, good and evil men, upon the ground of 
 
 o2 
 
212 PART II. LECTURE III. 
 
 their following or disobeying the monitions of that 
 filial teacher, from whom all right human instruc- 
 tors derived the power whereby they were able to 
 make good and useful scholars, which maintained 
 the intercourse and communion of human beings 
 upon the ground of their obedience to the Spirit 
 of order and harmony ; — if, I say, these two sets 
 of facts were presented to you side by side, would 
 not you feel there was some strange adaptation in 
 the one to the other ; that there was in the last 
 the secret principle and power for which it was 
 evident from the former that China had through 
 centuries been asking in vain ? 
 
 VIII. But why do I speak thus ? does it not 
 sound like the idlest of all visions to talk of our 
 converting Buddhists, when, judging from various 
 indications, they are far more likely to convert 
 us ? I have not disguised from you the Buddhist 
 side of Christianity ; I have rejoiced to set it 
 forth, as I rejoiced to set forth the Mahometan 
 and Hindoo sides of it. But, as we saw that 
 either of these elements might in any age become 
 the predominant, almost the exclusive one, it is 
 needful that we should consider well how this 
 third doctrine may in former days have crushed, 
 may crush in our own, every other. Assuredly, 
 there are distinct traces of prevalent triumphant 
 Buddhism in the Christian Church of periods gone 
 by. The history of Orders rising up to reform 
 society, to rebuke organized priesthoods for their 
 self-indulgence, coldness, exclusiveness, to assert 
 the rights of the poor, to maintain that every 
 
CHRISTIAN BUDDHISM. 213 
 
 member of Christ's flock has a calling to benefit 
 the rest ; beginning thus nobly, and then sinking 
 into more intolerable despots than those against 
 whom they protested — self-exalted in their gifts, 
 their knowledge, their ignorance, their poverty ; 
 — deceiving, and being deceived ; drawing all re- 
 verence to themselves on the score of their humility, 
 holding down the poor in slavery, whom they came 
 to deliver ; this history contains one class of such 
 phenomena. In the history of Mysticism and 
 Quietism, telling how men beginning to seek God 
 with earnest hearts, to denounce the idolatrous 
 notions others had formed of Him, to retire into 
 the secret chamber that there might be no hin- 
 derance from outward things to the clearness of 
 the vision, to mortify their flesh that it might 
 not stand in their way, went on till their hearts 
 grew puffed up and proud, till they began to boast 
 of wonderful discoveries vouchsafed to them alone, 
 till they became the subjects of all nervous im- 
 pressions, fantasies, disorders, more sensual than 
 those whom they charged with being so ; how at 
 last they gazed on vacancy, and felt, if they had. 
 not honesty to say, *The vision is gone, we see 
 nothing:' here we find Christian Buddhism in 
 another manifestation. And the lessons which 
 these two records supply are not obsolete ; either 
 of these temptations may assault any of us again ; 
 in some form is perhaps assaulting all of us. 
 
 IX. But chiefly should we be careful to note 
 what common principle it was which in each of these 
 cases turned so much seeming truth into a curse ; 
 
214 PART II. LECTURE III. 
 
 for it is of thaji we have need to beware in what- 
 ever dress it may come, or if our especial work 
 should be to encounter it in its nakedness. Un- 
 questionably the member of the order and the 
 solitary mystic alike yielded to the feeling, ' It is 
 this power in me, this faculty of government, this 
 faculty of vision, which is the great thing of all. 
 How glorious to belong to this great society, for 
 which I am ready to live and die ; how glorious 
 to have this capacity of conversing with the Infi- 
 nite, for the sake of which I have cheerfully re- 
 signed all thino^s ! ' Who could think that the 
 deadliest poison was lurking in^such words as 
 these ; that there could be the essence of all pride 
 in such self-sacrifice ? But what if men should 
 say boldly, 'It is this power in me which is really 
 the great power of all ; it is this eye in me which 
 creates the object it seems to behold. I will 
 acknowledge nothing else, worship nothing else.' 
 What if this should be the language which men 
 lisped a few years ago, and now begin to speak 
 distinctly ? Then surely there will gradually ap- 
 pear most of the other signs which we have traced 
 in Buddhism, and many which could not appear 
 in it, or in any heathen system. First, the for- 
 mation of an intellectual priesthood more utterly 
 without the sense of a vocation, more simply 
 glorying in its powers, therefore more intolerant, 
 exclusive, oppressive, than any other with which 
 this earth has ever been cursed. Next, the con- 
 sciousness in that exclusive priesthood of a want of 
 sympathy with actual men, notwithstanding their 
 
ITS LATEST FORM ^TREATMENT OF IT. 215 
 
 boast of humanity in the abstract ; therefore an 
 attempt to supply this want, as it always has been 
 supplied, by devices to meet the taste of the vul- 
 gar, by prodigies, portents, sorceries; physical 
 mysteries being called in as a compensation for 
 the absence of divine mysteries ; science being de- 
 graded into an instrument of basest imposture. 
 Finally, intellectual worship after giving birth to 
 all forms of empiricism, ending at last in the ele- 
 vation of some merely brute power to the throne 
 of the universe ; a power which will prove by its 
 triumph, that if intellect, freedom, humanity, have 
 no better protectors than themselves, they must 
 be trampled down ; will prove, as we are well as- 
 sured, by its ultimate discomfiture, that they have 
 another Protector, Him from whom all good and 
 perfect gifts have come. 
 
 X. But it will avail little to call up such 
 visions as these, however certain we may feel from 
 the testimony of history that they will one day shew 
 themselves to be realities, if they lead us only to 
 the denunciation of others, to a dread of the words 
 which tJiey speak, or of the acts which they do. 
 Oftentimes I fear such denunciations and such 
 dread conceal a verv shallow faith in ourselves ; 
 oftentimes they indicate that we are sadly beset 
 with that pride in our own intellectual powers 
 which we attribute to others. Ourselves we need 
 to suspect ; our own half belief in the truths of 
 which we talk most loudly ; our own readiness to 
 substitute the conclusions of our understandings 
 for the divine teaching. If we heartily confess 
 
216 FART II. LECTURE III. 
 
 these sins and repent of them we shall not magnify 
 the operations of the divine Spirit less because 
 some seem to contemplate them exclusively ; we 
 shall not be betrayed into the vulgar and deceitful 
 policy of underrating the reason and faculties 
 of men, because some seem to overvalue them; 
 we shall not fancy that we shew great dex- 
 terity and piety when we force a feeling in one 
 direction, because its natural growth seems to be 
 in another. 
 
 Kather, we shall regard all the tendencies of 
 particular periods with reverence as indications of 
 God's will, however perverted by man's ignorance 
 and selfishness. When we meet with a fanatical 
 exaltation of spiritual emotions, excitements, ex- 
 tasies, we shall be most anxious to assert the re- 
 ality and universality of spiritual communications; 
 to place them on their deepest ground, to shew 
 how utterly dreary man's condition would be with- 
 out them. When we see a fanatical exaltation of 
 human faculties, then most shall we be eager to 
 assert their worth and sacredness ; to vindicate 
 them from all aspersions grounded upon the im- 
 I)erfections which attach to them in this world ; 
 to maintain that he who refuses them the noblest 
 cultivation despises and blasphemes the Author of 
 them. And that the truths proclaimed by raving 
 Sects and by Idolaters of the Intellect may both 
 be preserved, we shall bring them into fellowship. 
 The communication of the divine Spirit we shall 
 believe to be the only means whereby the Reason, 
 the Heart, the Understanding, are enabled to per- 
 
CONCLUSION. 217 
 
 form their rightful functions, to be vigorous, calm, 
 pure, in harmony with the mind of the Creator, 
 and with all that is truly human. Holding all 
 power as a trust, every office as a stewardship, be- 
 lieving that the divine Spirit itself who dwells with 
 us is the greatest trust, the most awful steward- 
 ship, we shall feel more the glory of our race be- 
 cause we feel more our own insignificance ; shall 
 be more really men, because we walk more humbly 
 with our God. 
 
PART II.— LECTURE IV. 
 
 The early preaching of the Gospel — how it affected Greeks, 
 Egyptians, Romans, Goths. Form of this preaching. 
 Resistance from the doctrine of an Evil Principle. 
 Mahometan protest against it, and for the sacredness 
 of the outward world. Hindoo protest on behalf of a 
 divine kingdom. Buddhist protest for an actual In" 
 dwelling Spirit. Modern infidel protest for humanity, 
 Christianity established by all. Conclusion, 
 
 IN former Lectures I have considered the re- 
 lation in which Christianity stands to the 
 existing rehgious systems of the world, to Maho- 
 raetanism, Hindooism, Buddhism. In this, the 
 last Lecture of the course, I ought, according to 
 the plan which I laid down for myself, to con- 
 sider in what relation it stands to those which I 
 called the defunct systems — those of ancient Per- 
 sia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, and the Gothic world. 
 But it will strike you at once that this subject 
 has, in a great measure, been anticipated. 
 
 I could not allude to the facts which justified 
 my use of the word defunct, in reference to these 
 religions, without indicating the kind of influence 
 which Christianity had exercised over them. I 
 was obliged to tell you that the worship of the 
 god of Light in Greece, the state religion of 
 Rome, the worship of Odin amongst the Goths, 
 had given way before the preaching of the Crucified 
 Son of God. I could not omit to notice the way 
 in which the Gospel had established itself in the 
 
EARLY CHRISTIANITY MAHOMETAN SUCCESS. 219 
 
 Greek cities of Egypt, or the influence it had 
 received from the culture previously existing in 
 them, or the resistance it had met with in the 
 country districts where the old Egyptian doctrine 
 had its strongest hold. I could not but speak of 
 that revival of the Persian faith, which took place 
 in the second century of the Christian era, of the 
 obstruction which that faith offered to the Gospel, 
 of its remarkable re-action upon some of the 
 teachers of the Gospel. I should have no excuse 
 for travelling again over this ground, though the 
 observation we took of it was so rapid and super- 
 ficial, were it not that the facts to which I have 
 just alluded, taken in connexion with those which 
 have engaged our attention already, suggest 
 painful doubts to the mind, doubts closely related 
 to those which it has been the object of the whole 
 course to examine. 
 
 The aspect of Christianity in the first ages, 
 notwithstanding the exceptions which I have no- 
 ticed, is that of a youthful, growing, victorious 
 doctrine ; its roots laid in the depths ; its branches 
 spreading over the earth, and reaching to heaven. 
 But then came Mahometanism, utterly exter- 
 minating that Persian doctrine with which the 
 Christian teachers had so unsuccessfully fought; 
 bringing Egypt, great part of Asia, and a section 
 of Europe, under its yoke. When we studied the 
 history of this faith, we learnt that it had con- 
 quered much from the Gospel, and had scarcely, 
 through twelve centuries, yielded to any permanent 
 impression from it. The latter assertion is almost 
 
220 PART II. LECTURE IV. 
 
 as true of Hindooism, in spite of the establish- 
 ment of a Christian empire in the East. Budd- 
 hism still holds a tliird of the globe in almost 
 undisturbed possession. Now a person comparing 
 these two sets of facts will be very likely to say, 
 * Supposing your answers to the philosophical 
 objectors, who maintain that Christianity is a 
 decaying, nearly obsolete, creed be ever so rele- 
 vant and strong, yet what are they when weighed 
 against this startling confirmation of their state- 
 ments ? Must not that faith have had a fitness 
 for other ages, an unfitness for ours, which during 
 six centuries accomplished so much, which now 
 seems to be accomplishing almost nothing ; which 
 could then encounter the wisdom and power of 
 those nations that we still recognize as having 
 Tjeen the wisest and mightiest in the world, which 
 now fails in a conflict with the ignorant and inco- 
 herent worshippers of Buddha. And if you escape 
 by pleading that the human professors of this 
 doctrine are less sincere and energetic than they 
 were, what is this but saying that it depends on 
 human energy ; that it is, in fact, a human sys- 
 tem, strong whilst those who hold it are strong — 
 sure to wither when their zeal withers V Such 
 an objection as this cannot he evaded. In con- 
 sidering it, I shall be led to examine the different 
 steps we have taken, beginning with the question, 
 How did Christianity address itself to the systems 
 with which, in its infancy, it came into collision ? 
 
 I am forced to use the word Christianity ; for 
 many purposes it is a convenient one. But I 
 
THE APOSTLES WITNESSED OF A LORD AND KING. 221 
 
 must remind you, that it was not a word which 
 was familiar to the Apostles, or to those who 
 succeeded them in the first ages. We are not 
 told that they went forth preaching Christianity. 
 The writer of the Acts of the Apostles says that 
 they preached the " Kingdom of God," or '' the 
 Gospel of God," or " Christ," or " the Gospel of 
 Christ." To expound these words fully, would 
 be to expound the New Testament. But this 
 meaning lies upon the surface of them : the Apos- 
 tles came witnessing of a Lord and King ; the 
 Lord and King of men. The proclamation of 
 the Crucified Man, as the Son of God, was their 
 Gospel, or good tidings. In that character men 
 were invited to receive Him. The Apostles be- 
 lieved their own words ; they could therefore 
 trust God to prove them true. If this man were 
 the King of the World, strange and ridiculous as 
 the proposition might sound in the ears of Jews 
 or Heathens, He would be shewn to be such by 
 one means or other. Some of the Apostles knew 
 nothing of the previous feelings and discipline of 
 the nations ; some, as the Apostle Paul, might 
 have meditated on that subject, and have con- 
 versed much with men of different opinions. But 
 all alike met the people among whom they came, 
 not with arguments to prove this opinion true, or 
 that false, but with the announcement of a Person 
 who had a right to men's obedience, and whom 
 it was good that they should obey. 
 
 I. St Paul at Athens encountered Epicureans 
 and Stoics ; he disputed with them in the market- 
 
2 22 PART II. LECTURE IV. 
 
 place. When we are made acquainted with his 
 words, we find they were of this kind, " Whom 
 ye ignorantly worship, Him declare I unto you." 
 ' Your poets have said, that we are the offspring 
 of God ; it is true ; therefore do not make Him 
 after the likeness of things you see. He is not 
 far from any of us ; for in Him we live, and move, 
 and have our being. He has appointed a day 
 in the which He will judge the world by that Man 
 whom He hath ordained ; whereof He hath given 
 assurance unto all men, in that He hath raised 
 Him from the dead.' This language, you see, 
 assumed that the Athenians were in search of 
 God ; that they were ignorantly worshipping Him; 
 that they had a sense of His being a father; 
 that they wanted some one living, human image 
 of Him, to supplant those images of Him which 
 they had made for themselves. In Athens itself 
 the words were little heeded ; men there were 
 busy seeking for some new thing to talk of; they 
 were occupied with schemes of the universe ; of 
 realities they had lost the perception. But the 
 teaching was adapted to all that was sound and 
 true in the Greek mind ; it met whatever wants 
 that mind was conscious of. The Greek asked 
 for one who should exhibit humanity in its per- 
 fection ; he was told of a Son of Man. He 
 felt that whoever did so exhibit Humanity must 
 be divine. The Son of Man was declared to be 
 the Son of God. He had dreamed of one from 
 whom the highest glory man could conceive must 
 have proceeded. He was told of a Father. He 
 
GOSPEL TO THE GREEKS. 223 
 
 had thought of a divine Presence in every tree 
 and flower. He heard of a Presence nearer still 
 to himself. He was not told that he must cease 
 to believe in powers ruling in the Sun or Moon, 
 or over any portion of the earth. The Apostles 
 had no commission to declare there might not be 
 such Powers, or whether they had actual per- 
 sonality ; they were not to deny the existence of 
 kingly men upon the earth, or of angels or saints 
 in the unseen world ; only they were to say, 
 This Man is the King of kings, the Lord of 
 lords. Of his fulness must they all have received 
 who are anything, or ever were anything, here or 
 elsewhere ; their graces can only be a reflexion 
 from His grace. They were to say, He is nearer 
 to you — more directly related to you than all 
 these can be ; for He has taken the nature of all, 
 and borne the sorrows and sins of all : in Him 
 there is nothing partial, nothing imperfect ; no 
 feebleness of sympathy in any single direction. 
 They were to say farther. If in any of the objects 
 of your reverence there is anything earthly, sen- 
 sual, evil; anything belonging to human nature 
 in its corruption : then that must be contrary to 
 Him ; that must be at war with Him. So far as 
 any creature is endued with such qualities, it is 
 an evil creature ; it has the evil spirit ; it is not 
 to be worshipped as if it were glorious, but re- 
 nounced as devilish ; as that w^hich v/ould draw 
 you from the true estate into which Christ, by 
 taking your nature, has redeemed you. Therefore 
 the Greek mythology was met at ail points by this 
 
224 PART II. LECTURE IV. 
 
 Gospel. What was actually or possibly good in 
 it, the Kevelation of Christ comprehended ; what 
 was evil and degraded it wrestled with, by pro- 
 claiming the good which it had counterfeited. 
 But this was its charm, The Greek had a world 
 without a centre ; the preachers of the Gospel 
 made the centre known to him. What could 
 revolve about it, fell into its proper orbit; what 
 determined to move independently of the centre, 
 was seen to be unnatural and distracted. 
 
 II. How the Gospel found its way into the 
 Egyptian heart we are not informed so distinctly. 
 This however we may remember; Our Lord spoke 
 to His disciples in parables ; through them he de- 
 clared the mysteries of the kingdom. The facts 
 of outward nature, tlie ordinary transactions of 
 man, he recognized as a sacred writing, in which 
 God had expressed part of his meaning, a meaning 
 which he did not will to remain hidden, but which 
 his Son unfolded. That the preachers of the 
 Christian kingdom in Egypt should think much on 
 this method of discovering the divine treasures 
 was inevitable. But the substance of the commu- 
 nication was still the same. The Egyptian was 
 questioning all nature to tell him of the Amnion, 
 the hidden God : the Christian answer was still, 
 "Him declare we unto you." 
 
 III. So it fared likewise with the Roman, 
 whose worship had really, as we saw, a different di- 
 rection from that of the Greek, however at various 
 points they might intersect each other. The clear 
 intellect, the beautiful form, were not in his mind 
 
THE ROMAN THE GOTH. 225 
 
 the constituents of Kinghood or Godhead. Order, 
 self-government, the capacity of ruHng others, 
 submission of individual will to law, he demanded 
 in the chief man ; and qualities corresponding to 
 these alone seemed to him divine. A faith with- 
 out an organized harmonious society, was to the 
 Latin a dream. After many struggles his own 
 mighty commonwealth had felt that it could only 
 continue to exist under the guidance of a single 
 head ; and that head one uniting military and 
 religious titles ; a ruler of armies, an object of 
 adoration. A king, in whom was seen the perfect 
 fulfilment of Law — the surrender of the individual 
 Will to the Higher Will; the entire self-sacrifice; 
 a King who was the centre of a society, the head 
 of many members, was proclaimed by the fisher- 
 men of Galilee, by the tent-maker of Tarsus. That 
 announcement met Roman life on all its sides and 
 aspects ; adopted its highest maxims ; overreached 
 its noblest idea of fellowship ; shewed that the true 
 society had for its chief, one altogether unlike the 
 emperor; one whom he must crush, or to whom he 
 must bow. And so, by slow degrees, the Roman 
 state-idolatry, hke the Greek idolatry of indivi- 
 dual forms and persons, perished out of the world, 
 IV. The Goths, again, heard the same pro- 
 clamation of a kingdom of God. It did not find 
 them watching the embers of an expiring civiliza- 
 tion, but full of boyish vigour and life and rude- 
 ness, eager to break and subdue the earth ; pos- 
 sessed by the wildest dreams of powers in earth 
 and sea which wrestled for victory; doing homage 
 
 M.B.L. P 
 
226 PART II. LECTURE IV. 
 
 to a champion of a strong hand and seeing eye, 
 the leader of their hosts and their prophet. With 
 much joy, though amidst much confusion, these 
 barbarians welcomed the tidings of a Redeemer 
 in whom men could own at once their Lord and 
 their brother. 
 
 A redemption of man, a redemption of all 
 that had been lost or disorderly in creation, was 
 equally assumed in the preaching to Greeks, Ro- 
 mans, and Goths: — It was set forth as an accom- 
 plished fact ; as laying the only right and reason- 
 able ground-work for human life ; as that of which 
 the Church, by its very existence, bore testimony. 
 And it was signified in the word Redemption^ 
 that the partakers of it were not brought into 
 some novel or unnatural state, but into that for 
 which they were created, that which was implied 
 in their human constitution. 
 
 V. If this was the nature of the Christian 
 preaching and its success, we may understand 
 where it was likely to encounter the greatest ob- 
 structions. The Persians believed in two rulers 
 of the world, one good, one evil. The great re- 
 former had indeed affirmed that the Lord of 
 Light would prevail at last. He seems to have 
 believed that the Prince of Darkness was a rebel 
 against him ; not originally a divider of his throne. 
 But he never quite realized this conviction ; he 
 could not entirely deny the outward universe to 
 Ahriman ; the Persians generally deemed him to 
 be the creator of it. The two powers were re- 
 garded as having each a right over man, his flesh 
 
THE PERSIAN. 227 
 
 and his external circumstances being especially the 
 property of the dark Spirit. What mighty evi- 
 dences there seemed to be in favour of this hypo- 
 thesis ! How all history, from its beginning on- 
 wards, seemed to vouch for it ! What obstinacy 
 in the old forms of evil ; what new floods of it 
 were continually pouring in as from a perennial 
 source ! In the third or fourth centuries, when 
 the Roman empire was tottering to its fall, under 
 the weight of its own wickedness, the proofs of 
 Ahriman's sovereignty were surely not less than 
 they had been before. Had the Gospel of Christ 
 permanently altered this state of things 1 When 
 the Persian conversed with Christians, he found 
 them more ready than others to acknowledge an 
 evil in themselves, more sensitive to its existence 
 in the world. They even seemed to admit its 
 supremacy, and to speak of the higher and purer 
 state which they said Christ had established as 
 a deliverance out of the natural human condition ; 
 of His saints as rebelling against the Prince of 
 this World. Such language, often carelessly and 
 ignorantly used, often misunderstood when it was 
 rightly used, may at first have led the Magian to 
 think that the Gospel had not undermined his 
 primitive doctrine — had rather brought new facts 
 in confirmation of it. And yet he will have found 
 Christians ready to live and die for the assertion 
 that Christ was the one only Lord ; that all things 
 in heaven and earth and under the earth were 
 subject to Him ; that no power of evil could 
 measure itself against Him ; that He held an 
 
 p2 
 
228 PART II. LECTURE IV. 
 
 undoubted, undivided authority. The Persian will 
 therefore have felt that, in spite of seeming coin- 
 cidences, this faith was one with which his could 
 not consist ; that he was bound to exterminate 
 the believers in Jesus, if he could not convert 
 them. 
 
 We have good evidence that no question was 
 so profoundly agitating to men's minds in the first 
 ages as this. The Magians, as I said, succeeded 
 in re-establishing their old doctrine, and with it 
 the old Persian empire. But the belief in rival 
 powers of good and evil, to the latter of which 
 the origin of all visible things might be ascribed, 
 spread far beyond its limits. It incorporated it- 
 self with all the religious and philosophical views 
 of the age; it penetrated deeply into the Church 
 of Christ, was the great characteristic of its most 
 prevalent heresy, and mingled, in different forms 
 and measures, with every other. Of all tests of 
 the reality of Christian humility and faith, the 
 greatest seems to have been the power of practi- 
 cally meeting this temptation, of resisting the con- 
 clusion that a perfectly good being could not be 
 the author and ruler of the imiverse ; that man 
 could not really be a holy and redeemed creature; 
 that the material world, at all events, must be 
 given up as an evil thing. Only the simple, child- 
 like trust which said, ' There are many things I 
 cannot explain, but this I know, that the Son of 
 God has taken my nature, and made it holy, has 
 walked this earth and made it holy, that He has 
 adopted us into fellowship with Him, and com- 
 
ST. AUGUSTINE. 229 
 
 mands Us to look upon ourselves as holy, in spite 
 of all the evil that is in us ; and commands us to 
 treat every creature as holy, though corruption 
 and death may have set their mark upon it' — 
 only a faith of this kind, surmounting present 
 appearances, and laying hold of a higher truth, 
 waiting calmly for them and it to be reconciled in 
 God's good time, and meanwhile bracing the heart 
 to those daily duties, which, on the other hypo- 
 thesis, must have been thrown aside as useless and 
 hopeless, could have hindered any Christian from 
 becoming inwardly, if not professedly, a Mani- 
 chean. St. Augustine has given us, in his own 
 biography, a striking picture of this conflict. 
 With a Christian mother and a heathen father, 
 brought up in the feeble rhetoric of his time, but 
 full of earnest thoughts which made him long to 
 understand the nature of himself and of God ; 
 full also of violent passions seeking for gratifica- 
 tion ; he eagerly embraced the doctrine of the 
 Manichean teachers, for it seemed at once to ex- 
 plain the problem of the universe, and to justify 
 the indulgences which something within him con- 
 demned. He shews us how he was forced from 
 speculations upon things without, to a more awful 
 study of that which was passing in himself; how 
 he learnt to perceive that the evil within him was 
 the resistance of his will to a perfect and holy 
 will; how this discovery did much more than 
 scatter his old notions ; how it led him to ask 
 what that pure and Holy Being had been doing 
 on behalf of our race ; whether He had offered 
 
230 PART II. LECTURE IV. 
 
 men the means of knowing Him and being like 
 Him. Then the meaning of Christ's coming 
 dawned upon him ; he beheved that the perfect 
 and holy Being was manifested in Him ; that in 
 Him man might behold his own true and proper 
 state, and rise to it ; that in His strength we may 
 cast off evil from us, as an enemy which has no 
 proper right or dominion over us, or over any 
 creature ; that man when he becomes the slave of 
 outward things is evil, not because they are evil, 
 but because he is created to be their master. 
 These truths, which slowly worked themselves out 
 in his mind amidst great discouragements and bit- 
 ter sorrows, he was asserting under one aspect or 
 another all his life through. Shadows of his old 
 system no doubt often darkened his intellect ; 
 when he was tempted to make Christianity a sys- 
 tem, they were sure to re-appear. But there were 
 times in his life when he felt more clearly than 
 almost any man ever did, that evil does not belong 
 to the order of the universe, but is its disorder; 
 that every creature seeking to dwell in selfish in- 
 dependence, of necessity embraces that disorder 
 and becomes a part of it; that every creature 
 entering into God's covenant and yielding itself 
 to Him, becomes orderly, reasonable, blessed. 
 
 But it required more than the teaching of any 
 man, however wise, to check a belief which was 
 so plausible as this. Though only open heretics 
 affirmed that the world was essentially an evil 
 thing, and originated in an evil Being, from whom 
 Christ came to deliver his disciples — though these 
 
Mahomet's witness for the gospel. 231 
 
 statements were generally felt to be blasphemous 
 — yet numbers acted as if they were true. Those 
 who decided to live pure and holy lives, left the 
 world that they might do so. The sphere of 
 human action was regarded by saints as an un- 
 godly one, and those who moved in it and ruled 
 it, shewed by their lives that they adopted the 
 opinion. There was no distinct, audible voice, 
 declaring, *' The kingdoms of this world are the 
 kingdoms of our God and of His Christ." The 
 belief silently gained ground, that there was no 
 warrant for such an assertion ; that the redemp- 
 tion which our Lord had wrought, whatever it 
 might mean, did not mean this. 
 
 VI. But soon a voice was heard, speaking 
 these words in the ears both of Persians and 
 Christians : " This earth is the possession of the 
 One Lord, the God of Abraham ; He claimed it 
 as His when He called out Abraham, and promised 
 that he and his seed should possess a portion of it. 
 The earth is still His. Those who say he has an 
 equal or rival are liars.'' This was Mahomet's 
 language. His sword was ready to make it 
 good. The Magian faith, the Persian empire, 
 fell to pieces before it. Of all the Mahometan 
 enterprizes this was the most startling, and that 
 by which its other triumphs may be best under- 
 stood. We complain of Mahometanism for its hard 
 outward character ; for the materialism of its acts 
 and its rewards. But see how well suited it was 
 on this very ground to meet precisely that evil 
 tendency to which men's minds had yielded. The 
 
232 PART II. LECTURE IV. 
 
 denial of God's dominion over the actual world ; 
 the notion, that though He might have a reign 
 somewhere else, it was not here ; this unbelief was 
 destroying all ordinary morality, all simple trust 
 in a Father, was introducing atheism, or else devil- 
 worship, among those who pretended to worship 
 the Holy God, and utterly to renounce his enemies. 
 No mere spiritualism, if it had been ever so fine 
 and true, could have broken this spell. Palpable 
 proofs were wanted that the kingdoms of this 
 very earth were subject to an Unseen and Abso- 
 lute Sovereign. And the Mahometan conquests, 
 though so mighty a testimony against Christians, 
 were not a testimony against the Gospel, but for 
 it ; a testimony to one necessary, forgotten por- 
 tion of it ; a proof that, if the Church of Christ 
 forgets its own proper position, God can raise up 
 the strangest instruments to do his work. 
 
 I say one portion of the Gospel ; for you will 
 remind me that if Mahometanism asserted half 
 the doctrine of the text I quoted just now, " The 
 kingdoms of this earth are God's ;" it denied the 
 latter half of it, " and His Christ's.'' But this 
 remark requires to be explained and qualified by 
 two others. Mahometanism does, indeed, deny 
 the fact on which our Gospel rests, that a man is 
 verily and indeed one with the Lord of all ; how 
 that denial has affected the whole system, I have 
 considered in a former Lecture. But if we re- 
 member what the doctrine was which Mahomet- 
 anism subverted, we shall see that it involved a 
 much more direct denial of Christ, of his rule 
 
ITS PRACTICAL EFFECT. 283 
 
 over this universe, and of his relation to God. 
 The disposition to look upon the world as the pos- 
 session of an evil power, which belonged to the 
 Persian, and to the Christian who had caught his 
 temper, made it impossible even to think of it as 
 connected with Christ. The idea of Christ as a 
 deliverer of man from the power of his Creator, 
 went far deeper than the denial of His essential 
 oneness with the Creator. So far as Mahomet- 
 anism helped to clear the air of these pollutions, it 
 removed the greatest of all impediments to the re- 
 cognition of that doctrine which it set at nought. 
 But secondly, in order to understand the effect of 
 a system, and the place it occupies in the scheme 
 of Providence, we should think not only of itself, 
 but also of that which has been called out in op- 
 position to it. The formation of society in modern 
 Europe stands in close relation to the history 
 of Mahometanism. The Christian nations were 
 brought to feel that they were connected with 
 each other, and what connected them, by seeing 
 such large portions of the world knit together in 
 the acknowledgment of the Arabian prophet. 
 Then was the feeling distinctly realized, that all 
 government has a Divine basis, that kings must 
 be anointed with oil in the name of Christ, that 
 the different members of the community hold their 
 possessions, offices, powers, ultimately of Him ; 
 that they depend in different gradations upon 
 each other ; that fealty is due to that which is 
 unseen, reverence to that which is weak. Thus, 
 in short, those institutions, forms, habits of 
 
234 PART II. LECTURE IV. 
 
 thought established themselves which characterize 
 the middle ages : which mav be mischievous when 
 they exclude other principles, more clearly per- 
 ceived in later times ; which have become mixed 
 with corruptions, counterfeits, tyrannies, and con- 
 founded with them ; but which are essential ele- 
 ments of our social existence at this day, and can- 
 not perish until we perish. Now these embodied 
 the other half of the great truth which St. John's 
 words express : " The kingdoms of this world are 
 the kingdoms of his Christ." Nor should it be 
 forgotten, that while the Mahometan doctrine has 
 been proved by the evidence of history to be 
 maimed and self-destructive, so long as it stands 
 alone, rejecting the principle of European society; 
 that society was continually in danger of losing its 
 own foundation and stability, and of becoming ut- 
 terly idolatrous and depraved through forgetfulness 
 of the principle w^hich the Mahometans put forth. 
 The worship of the men who uttered, of the visible 
 symbols which shadowed forth, divine truths, might 
 have effaced those truths, but for the testimony 
 which Islamism was permitted to bear on behalf of 
 them. 
 
 VII. But though the Gospel, as it was 
 preached by the Apostles and others who followed 
 them, involved the assertion that the earth was 
 redeemed and claimed as God's possession by 
 Christ, I am far from affirming that this was its 
 only or its most characteristic affirmation. The 
 Old Testament was especially the witness for God's 
 government of the earth. The New speaks of the 
 
THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 235 
 
 kingdom of heaven. John the Baptist said the 
 kingdom of heaven was at hand. Our Lord illus- 
 trated its principles in every discourse and every 
 miracle ; His Apostles invited men to enter into 
 it ; in their Epistles they unfolded its nature to 
 those who had believed the message and sought 
 the privilege. This kingdom they described as 
 one of righteousness, peace, and joy; the eye could 
 not see it, but it was most real. It was a king- 
 dom for the heart and spirit of man, for that which 
 was most properly himself, for that in which dwell 
 all his capacities of sorrow, of sympathy, of trust, 
 of hope, of love. It was called the kingdom of 
 God because communion with Him is the great 
 blessedness of it. And it is the kingdom of God 
 because men are brought into it that they may 
 see themselves, their fellow-creatures, the whole 
 universe, as He sees them ; not partially, or each 
 in reference to a separate centre, as they naturally 
 do. Into this kingdom, our Lord said, men were 
 pressing. Experience of sorrow, a sense of weari- 
 ness and dissatisfaction with all that was visible, 
 the feeling of a good almost within reach and yet 
 never quite attained ; above all, the bitter con- 
 sciousness of something wrong within, which need- 
 ed to be purged away, of a hollow which needed 
 to be filled up ; these were intimations to men of 
 an unseen treasure which they were intended to 
 possess, which only One mightier than they could 
 enable them to possess. Such thoughts and long- 
 ings would especially haunt the hearts of poor and 
 suffering people ; they would be rarer in men who 
 
236 PART II. LECTURE IV. 
 
 had outward ease and comfort. But our Lord 
 spoke of a divine power which could awaken in all 
 the desire and capacity for this good ; of a birth 
 from above by which their spirits might be made 
 fit for the Kingdom of Heaven ; of an inward 
 eye which might be opened to behold it. The 
 Apostles, when they baptized men into the Name 
 of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy 
 Ghost, bade them understand that this power was 
 given them, and that though their bodies dwelt in 
 Corinth or Ephesus, their real home was with Him 
 whom they could love but not see. These were 
 the words which stirred the hearts of the early 
 Christians and led them to that indifference for 
 outward things, which afterwards blended so easily 
 with the Persian notion that these things were 
 to be despised or regarded as evil in themselves. 
 But the truth was not the less mighty because it 
 was capable of a grievous perversion. The belief 
 in it was the strength in which the Christian con- 
 fessor lived and died. The invisible world was his 
 dwelling : each day he sought to become more 
 familiar with it, to have every thought and feel- 
 ing brought into harmony with it ; to shew forth 
 more of the temper and spirit of it in his converse 
 with his fellow-creatures. While, indeed, he kept 
 his Lord's words and example in recollection, he 
 <jould not scorn any earthly task, he must look 
 upon all the creatures of God as good ; while he 
 remembered for what end Christ had come upon 
 earth, he must deem fellowship with men more 
 blessed than separation from them. Still it was 
 
IN WHAT SENSE OURS IS AN EVIL WORLD. 237 
 
 the first gift of his redemption, that he could rise 
 out of this circle of things. And when he saw to 
 what coldness and hardness of heart, to what gross 
 superstitions, those yielded, whose thoughts and 
 aspirations were bounded by what they could see 
 and handle, he could understand in what sense 
 St. Paul blessed God for having delivered the Ga- 
 latians out of this present evil world. It was an 
 evil world, because men made it so, by renouncing 
 the privilege of men ; by living as if they had only 
 senses and were not spiritual beings capable of 
 spiritual enjoyments ; as if each could only realize 
 the little portion of the goods of earth which he 
 calls his property, and might not enter upon that 
 inheritance of true blessedness which all may 
 share together, as all may share the light of the 
 sun together. 
 
 If men could so pervert these truths as to for- 
 get that the outward world was redeemed to be a 
 part of God's kingdom, and if their inward life 
 suffered terribly from this forgetfulness, it became 
 manifest in the course of ages that they could quite 
 as easily lose sight of that v^hich was specially 
 and emphatically the Christian doctrine while they 
 seemed to admit and prize its material results. 
 Since the active energies of men's minds have 
 been awakened, since we have felt that it is our 
 vocation to subdue the earth, to trade, colonize 
 and conquer, this has become the characteristic 
 temptation of all Christian nations, perhaps I may 
 say, especially the characteristic one of our own ; 
 for it lies close to some of our highest virtues, to 
 
238 PART II. LECTURE IV. 
 
 our business-like habits, our love of action, our im- 
 patience of what does not look real and practical. 
 
 Englishmen in the last century seem for the 
 most part to have persuaded themselves that man 
 is not a mysterious being; that the Gospel does 
 not address him as such ; that its main use is to 
 check disorders which the law cannot entirely 
 redress, to make servants respectful to their 
 masters, to keep the humble classes from inter- 
 fering with the privileges of their superiors ; that 
 the kingdom of heaven is a place where certain 
 rewards are bestowed hereafter for decency of 
 conduct here. Those who refused to act upon 
 these maxims, and earnestly devoted themselves 
 to a spiritual life, fancied, not unnaturally, that 
 the desires of which they were conscious did not 
 properly belong to human beings ; that all men 
 ought to have them, but that in fact scarcely any 
 had them ; that the unseen world is for the select 
 few, not for mankind. 
 
 But to Englishmen in the eighteenth century, 
 the continent of India revealed itself with its trea- 
 sures and its wonders. Its material treasures mi^ht 
 help to strengthen the worldly appetite which 
 went in search of them ; but its wonders, well 
 considered, might surely have supplied the coun- 
 teraction, might have proved that men everywhere 
 need a kingdom of heaven as well as a kingdom 
 on earth. The Hindoo lives in a world of thought. 
 He is certain that divine knowledge, the know- 
 ledge of Brahm, is the highest end of hfe. He 
 cannot be satisfied till he is united with the 
 
HINDOOS PREACHING TO ENGLISHMEN. 239 
 
 Divinity. The divine man, he says, must be a 
 twice-born man, must be raised out of his natural 
 condition, must not lose himself in communion 
 with outward things. Indications of this faith 
 are forced upon the observation of every English- 
 man in India ; he may explain them as he will 
 but he cannot deny them. Do they not say to 
 him just perhaps when the associations of his 
 childhood are about to be cast off altogether — 
 ' What you used to hear from your nurse and 
 your mother may after all mean something. You 
 were told that you were a twice-born man, a 
 member of Christ, a Child of God, an inheritor 
 of the kin<Tdom of heaven. May there not be 
 treasures nearer to you than these Indian trea- 
 sures, treasures which are yours by the clearest 
 title, and yet which you have never reduced into 
 possession? If you could impart them to these 
 subjects of ours, might you not do that for them 
 which the best legislation cannot do I Will you 
 not at least ask whether the Hindoo is wrong in 
 thinking that man is made for something else than 
 to buy and sell, to eat, drink, and die; and 
 whether if he is right, there is any escape from 
 his restless self-torture, except in the calm faith 
 that it is our Father's good pleasure to give us 
 that kingdom which the idolater would at the 
 price of any anguish wring from the objects of 
 his worship V 
 
 Here then is a voice coming from the most 
 opposite quarter to that whence the other was 
 brought to us — a voice of the most different kind. 
 
240 PART II. LECTURE IV. 
 
 Yet it comes as a witness not against but for 
 that which we have been taught to beheve, a 
 witness not for but against our indifference to it. 
 So that these two voices compared together, may, 
 I think, help to answer the question we have been 
 examining, whether Christianity be not dependent 
 for its evidence and its success upon the faith of 
 those who promulgate it. There cannot be a 
 truer assertion than that this is the criterion of 
 a human system ; there cannot be a more un- 
 doubted prophecy than that the Gospel, if it be a 
 human system, must perish, as all systems are 
 perishing. On the other hand, if it were any- 
 thing more than this, we should expect that the 
 weakness, heartlessness, cowardice, baseness of its 
 advocates would themselves be in some way con- 
 verted into demonstrations of its truth ; that 
 when men w^re holding their peace respecting it, 
 the stones would cry out. Have we not found 
 this to be the fact ? You say that Islamism has 
 not fallen before the Cross. No, but Islamism 
 has become one of Gods witnesses for the Cross 
 w^hen those who pretended to bear it had really 
 changed it for another standard. You say that 
 Hindooism stands undisturbed by the presence of 
 a triumphant Christian nation. Yes, for Hindoo- 
 ism has been wanted to teach this nation what it 
 is very nearly forgetting itself, very nearly forcing 
 others to forget, that Christianity is not a dream 
 or a lie. 
 
 I believe these conclusions must be brought 
 home, in some way or other, to the hearts as well 
 
SECTARIAN MODE OF TEACHING. 241 
 
 of those who are earnest about heathen missions 
 as of those who are indifferent to them. For 
 what is it that palsies all efforts of this kind ; 
 what is it that produces the contrast which we 
 have confessed between the teachers of our own 
 and those of earlier days ? Is it not that we have 
 more than half subscribed to the philosophical 
 doctrine ; more than half acted as if we were 
 engaged in propagating a system of our own l 
 Has not the impression we have conveyed to the 
 minds of ^lahometans and pagans been something 
 of this kind : ' These Frenchmen, Dutchmen, 
 Spaniards, or Englishmen, acknowledge a certain 
 teacher, to whom they attach very high titles. 
 They wish us to acknowledg^e their teacher instead 
 of those whom we in Arabia, Persia, or Hindoo- 
 stan, have been accustomed to honour. In other 
 words, they wish to make us Europeans, to bring 
 us over to their modf^s and habits of thinking.' 
 I know and thank God that other impressions 
 than this have been made by the Christian mis- 
 sionaries of all ages and nations upon those among 
 whom they have gone. I know that the hearts 
 of many of them have been so possessed with the 
 love of Him who died for them and for all man- 
 kind, that they could not speak of Him as if He 
 was their teacher, the Head of their sect. By 
 th&ir language, by their acts, by that higher, 
 simpler teaching which the Bible supplies, they 
 must have carried home to many a broken-hearted 
 creature, crying for a Comforter, the assurance 
 that there is One who has taken the nature, not of 
 
 M.B.L. Q 
 
242 PART II. LECTURE IV. 
 
 Englishmen, Frenchmen, Spaniards, but of Man ; 
 who has entered into man's misery and death ; 
 has borne the sins of man ; has encountered all 
 his enemies, and vanquished them. 
 
 The history of Missions would be barren in- 
 deed if this were not the case. But the more we 
 admit the worth of such testimonies — (how great 
 it has been we shall not know till the great day 
 of revelation) — the more convinced must we be 
 that the old proclamation of a divine kingdom, 
 the old Gospel that the Son of God the Deliverer 
 of Man has appeared and will be shewn hereafter 
 to be the Lord of the Universe, is the only effec- 
 tual one ; that this is as fresh to-day as it was 
 eighteen hundred years ago, because it is a pro- 
 clamation of that eternal Law of the universe, which 
 wears not out, which grows not old ; is not, in any 
 sense whatever, our scheme, or theory of the uni- 
 verse, but is sent to confound, to break in pieces, our 
 schemes and theories of the universe ; to shew how 
 feeble and contemptible we and they are ; how 
 little we or any human creatures want a theory ; 
 what absolute need all creatures have ..of a Living 
 God who will reveal to us Himself: what relation 
 there is between us and Him ; how He works in 
 us to bring us to know His purposes, and to move 
 in accordance with them. 
 
 VII L That last discovery is indeed one with- 
 out which the words I have just been speaking 
 would seem only words of discouragement. To look 
 out upon the world, and see a valley covered with 
 the dry bones of different systems, to hear them 
 
THE BUDDHIST GOSPEL. 243 
 
 clashing together as if they might be .joined to 
 each other, and then to be told, ' It is all in vain ; 
 there is no voice which can bid the breath enter 
 into these bones ; perhaps it might have come 
 from Christians, but it does not ; they too occupy 
 part of this valley ; they have become dry bones, 
 very dry indeed ; clashing always, never uniting' — 
 such an announcement as this, however softened 
 by thoughts of the past or the future, must be a 
 very mournful one. But that third great religion 
 of the world comes to turn the current of these 
 thoughts, to check this despondency. We are 
 but ill provided with a theory, say the Budd- 
 hists ; we have tried many, and little fruit has 
 come of them. But this we are assured of : you 
 Christians may not have heard it, but there 
 is a quickening, life-giving Spirit, which is meant 
 for humanity ; which all may possess together ; 
 which alone can bring a universe out of chaos, 
 unity out of division. Wonderful testimony to be 
 borne from the ends of the earth, from such a 
 medley of strange people, so different in their 
 thoughts, so incoherent in their utterances ! Is 
 not the report of it like the sound of that rushing 
 mighty wind, which was heard on the day of 
 Pentecost, not indeed itself the promised Power, 
 but the type and herald of it ? Does it not say 
 that we too might have cloven tongues to declare, 
 in different tones and measures, according to the 
 different thoughts, habits, and apprehensions of 
 men, the same wonderful works of God, and that 
 these tongues might be of fire if only the living 
 
 q2 
 
244 PART II. LECTURE IV. 
 
 inspiration were confessed and obeyed by us? 
 Does it not bid us remember that with this Spirit 
 of peace and love and a sound mind we have been 
 sealed ; that the Name of the Father, and the 
 Son, and the Holy Ghost, which was to be the 
 blessing, the permanent blessing, of Pentecost, 
 has been bestowed upon us ; that we hold this 
 Spirit, not as the Buddhists dream, by our own 
 rigrht, — to be therefore the witness of our inde- 
 pendence, flowing from no source whence it may 
 be replenished — but as the very bond of our de- 
 ])endence and childhood, as the Spirit of adoption, 
 whereby we are to cry, Abba, Father; as the 
 power whereby we can ask and receive a new 
 life day by day. If so, there is cause enough for 
 humiliation in all of us, for despair in none. The 
 broken limbs of the world may yet be united, if 
 the broken limbs of the Church be united first. 
 But are these the limbs of a great system, or of 
 a living body l Holding the first opinion of her- 
 self, the Church has been either held artificially 
 together, the children within her groaning under 
 the bondage to which she has subjected them, 
 those without hearing in her invitation a message 
 not of deliverance but of heavier slavery ; or else, 
 these artificial joints and fastenings being removed, 
 she has split into fragments, upon which those who 
 are clinging to them feel they can less and less 
 depend, which offer to heathens an excuse for 
 adhering to the tradition of their fathers, be it 
 ever so dreary, till we who bid them leave it are 
 agreed what they should adopt in its place. But 
 
THE POWER OF THE SPIRIT. 245 
 
 if the Scripture language is true, if the Church 
 is a body constituted in a Head, the Buddhist 
 proclamation carries with it the reproof and con- 
 solation which we require. There is a Power 
 which can bring us not into some imaginary con- 
 dition of excellence, but precisely into our true 
 condition : which can remove the individual inte- 
 rests, selfish feelings, national antipathies, narrow 
 apprehensions that all our efforts to produce unity 
 have only evoked and strengthened ; which can 
 bring down our high notions and conceits of what 
 we are and what we do ; which can enable us to 
 be God's servants and to do His work in the world 
 He has redeemed. Having confessed our re- 
 bellion against this Spirit, and sought the renewal 
 of it in us and in the whole Church, we shall no 
 longer say, as we have been tempted to say, ' The 
 power of evil is supreme over the universe ; only 
 there has been a special deliverance vouchsafed to 
 us ;' we shall, from our hearts, abjure such blas- 
 phemous Manicheism ; we shall say boldly to all 
 people among whom we go, ' The devil is not your 
 master, he has no right to your worship : the 
 God, in whom is light and no darkness at all, has 
 claimed you and the whole creation for his own. 
 His marvellous light is as much for you as for us. 
 We only enjoy it upon the condition of renouncing 
 all exclusive claim to it, upon the condition of 
 bidding you enter into it.' 
 
 IX. Buddhism, then, like Hindooism and 
 Mahometanism, has its lesson for us. We are 
 debtors to all these in a double sense. Nor, I 
 
246 PART II. LECTURE IV. 
 
 think, is it otherwise with those modern infidels 
 whose objections I have been considering through- 
 out this course. Our obhgations to them are not 
 sHght if they have been sent to break down a low 
 grovelling notion we had formed of our own posi- 
 tion and work ; if they have been employed to 
 convince us that human systems must indeed 
 perish, one and all, that what survives must be 
 something of a much higher derivation, of a more 
 permanent character. We owe them the deepest 
 gratitude if they have led us to ask ourselves 
 whether there is any faith, and what kind of faith 
 it is, which must belong, not to races or nations, 
 but to mankind ; still more, if they have forced 
 us to the conclusion, that the real test, whether 
 there be such a faith, and whether it has been 
 made known to us, must be action, not argument ; 
 that if it exist, it must shew that it exists ; that 
 if it have power, it must put forth its power. So, 
 in this nineteenth century, the opponents of Chris- 
 tianity will return to the maxim which the wisest 
 of them announced in the first : " If this be of 
 men, it will come to nought ; if it be of God, we 
 cannot overthrow it." 
 
 I have been anxious in these Lectures to shew 
 that I did regard this practical experiment of our 
 faith as the really decisive one. In compliance 
 with the directions of Boyle, I sought for that 
 which seemed to be the most prevailing form of 
 unbelief in our day ; and I found it in the ten- 
 dency to look upon all theology as having its 
 origin in the spiritual nature and faculties of man. 
 
THE TRUE TEST OF CHRISTIANITY. 247 
 
 This was assumed to be the explanation of other 
 systems, why not apply it to Christianity? The 
 questions we have asked are, ' Is it the adequate 
 explanation of any system ? Do not all demand 
 another ground than the human one \ Is not 
 Christianity the consistent assertor of that higher 
 ground \ Does it not distinctly and consistently 
 refer every human feeling and consciousness to 
 that ground ? Is it not for this reason able to 
 interpret and reconcile the other religions of the 
 earth l Does it not in this way prove itself to 
 be not a human system, but the Revelation, which 
 human beings require?' 
 
 ' Prove ! "* you cry : * Yes, on paper ! It is 
 easy to prove many things about human creatures 
 when you are not actually dealing with them."* 
 Assuredly, most easy. It was of this that the 
 other clauses of Boyle's will warned me. They 
 said very significantly, 'Your business is to urge 
 upon your countrymen the duty of not proving 
 Christianity upon paper ; but of entering into ac- 
 tual intercourse with Jews, Mussulmans, Hindoos, 
 Buddhists, for the purpose of shewing that it is a 
 reality."* Accordingly, I have never lost sight of 
 this object. My questions have been, ' How may 
 we bring Christianity into contact with the actual 
 convictions of these different people 1 How may we 
 put it upon the broadest trial l Where have other 
 instruments and appliances failed \ for that is the 
 point on which we would make this bear. Where 
 may it most clearly prove its inefficiency, if it be 
 inefficient I ' In no case have I wished to disguise 
 
248 PAKT ri. LECTURE IV. 
 
 any apparent symptoms of its failure. I have en- 
 treated Cliristians and infidels to investigate these 
 symptoms, that they may ascertain the causes of 
 them. And lest you should fancy, from the view 
 I took of these systems, that 1 was recommending 
 some new method of dealing with them, which 
 could only be learnt and applied after a long dis- 
 cipline, and at last could scarcely be followed by 
 simple ministers of the Gospel, I have endeavoured 
 to shew you in this Lecture, that precisely the 
 course I have suggested is that which the preachers 
 of the Gospel in the first ages actually adopted, 
 that our departures from it have arisen from want 
 of simple faith ; that the discipline we require is 
 especially one to restore this faith. And lest, 
 from what has been just said about the unity of 
 Christians, you should conclude that I suppose 
 missions to the heathen should be deferred till 
 some indefinite time when the nations of Chris- 
 tendom can make a simultaneous assault upon 
 the outlying world, I would remind you that my 
 reference to the first ages, and to the successful 
 missionary efforts of every subsequent age, pre- 
 cludes such a notion. What nation of the earth 
 owes its Church to a simultaneous effort among 
 nations or among men ? If any one nation takes 
 its stand upon its true ground as a member of 
 that body whereof Christ is the Head, that nation 
 becomes a witness to all Christian nations of their 
 true Unity, if they care ever so little for it ; that 
 nation can fulfil its own task of vindicating the 
 truths which its heathen subjects confess, by 
 
OUR INTERCOURSE WITH THE HEATHEN. 249 
 
 imparting to them the truths which they want, 
 thouGch all the other Christian nations should smile 
 or frown upon its endeavours. Any Christian man 
 who takes his stand upon the same ground of unity 
 in the Church whereof Christ is the Head, who 
 acts consistently with that position, fulfilling the 
 office to which he is called, and not seeking some 
 other to please himself, may become a witness in 
 every land to which he goes of the fellowship into 
 which his baptism has brought him ; may in his 
 words or hfe expound the principle of this fel- 
 lowship ; may shew how universal its privileges 
 are, and how each may for himself partake of 
 them. 
 
 But I know that there must be many on 
 whom the often-repeated words, * There are hea- 
 thens at our doors, we ourselves are half heathens ; 
 leave Buddhists and Mahometans till you have 
 provided for these,** will have an effect sufficient 
 to destroy their interest in all such exhortations. 
 One answer to these objections is well-known, and 
 has b^en sufficiently used. If Englishmen did 
 abstain rigidly from all intercourse with Maho- 
 metans, Hindoos, Buddhists, if no body of our 
 countrymen were engaged in trading with other 
 countries, or in conquering them, or in keeping 
 possession of them, the interdiction of all spiritual 
 communication might be judicious — at all events 
 possible. But as the points at issue are, what 
 kind of communication shall we hold with these 
 people, what kind of help or protection shall we 
 extend to them : if they are spiritual creatures. 
 
250 PART II. LECTURE IV. 
 
 and as such must in some way be dealt with, then 
 how 2 — since this, I say, is the fair statement of 
 the case, such appeals to our home sympathies 
 seem rather capricious and rhetorical than bene- 
 volent or sensible. But this is not the only reply 
 which is suggested by our particular circumstances ; 
 or which lies in the nature of the subject itself. 
 A faith which boasts to be for humanity cannot 
 test its strength unless it is content to deal with 
 men in all possible conditions. If it limits itself 
 to England, it will adapt itself to the habits and 
 fashions and prejudices of England, of England 
 too in a particular age. But doing this, it will 
 never reach the hearts of Englishmen. You say, 
 * Try your Christianity upon the cotton-spinners 
 of Manchester, upon the hardware men of Bir- 
 mingham ; if it fails with them, do you expect it 
 will succeed in Persia and Thibet?' We know it 
 will fail, it must fail in Birmingham and Manches- 
 ter, if it addresses the people in those places mainly 
 as spinners and workers in hardware. This has 
 been the mistake we have continually made. We 
 have looked upon these * hands' as created to work 
 for us ; we have asked for a religion which should 
 keep the ' hands ' in the state in which they will 
 do most work and give the least trouble. But it 
 is found that thev are men who use these hands ; 
 and that which is a religion for hands, is not one 
 for men. Therefore it becomes more evident every 
 day that there is a demand in Manchester and 
 Birmingham for that which, till we understand 
 human beings better, we cannot supply. To ac- 
 
THE LATTER DAYS. 251 
 
 quire that understanding we need not grudge a 
 journey to Persia or Thibet; we need not think it 
 an idle task to enquire what people want, who are 
 not called to spin cotton or work in hardware, but 
 who are creatures of the same kind with those who 
 do. When thoughtful men say that a working 
 age of the world is about to begin, they mean, I 
 suppose, an age in which those essential qualities 
 of humanity which belong to working men as 
 much as to all others shall be more prized than 
 the accidents by which one class is separated from 
 another. Most important is it then to ascertain 
 whether we are holding a faith which addresses us 
 as members of a class, a class of fine gentlemen, 
 philosophers, divines, or one which addresses us as 
 men, which explains the problems of our human 
 life. Two centuries ago Boyle was led in deep 
 anguish of spirit to consider that question for 
 himself; for himself, and not I think without 
 something of the like anguish, must each one of 
 us consider it in this day. We are told that 
 circumstances have changed, that our condition 
 is a different one from his. Doubtless, the saying 
 is true ; circumstances are always changing ; but 
 the necessities of man's being do not change. 
 What was true of man generations ago, is true 
 now. If our condition is different from that of 
 our forefathers, the difference is this : we are 
 come nearer to the great crisis of all contro- 
 versies, there is less power of hiding ourselves from 
 realities amidst shadows and appearances. Thanks 
 be to God that such a time has come, terrible as 
 
252 PART II. LECTURE IV. 
 
 it may be to many, nay to all of us ! For this is 
 the time which will shew that His truth is not of 
 man, neither by man : but that it is for men, 
 here and everywhere. Only then when the grass 
 withereth, and the flower fadeth, — so speaks indi- 
 vidual experience, so speaks the voice of history — 
 is it known assuredly that the Word of our God 
 shall stand for ever. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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