BY ARTHUR LILLIE AUTHOR OF "BUDDHISM IN CHRISTENDOM," ETC. LONDON SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO. NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1893 UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME , The "Philosophy at Home" Series. 1 to 5. SELECTIONS FROM THE WORKS OF ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER—Translated from the German by T. Bailey Saunders , M.A. (Oxon), viz. :— 1. THE WISDOM OF LIFE, 4th Edition. 2. COUNSELS AND MAXIMS, 3rd Edition. 3. RELIGION, A DIALOGUE, and other Essays, 3rd Edition. 4. THE ART OF LITERATURE, 2nd Edition. 5. STU

A volume that proves that much of the New Testament is parable rather than history will shock many readers, but from the days of Origen and Clement of Alexandria to the days of Swedenborg the same thing has been affirmed. The proof that this parabolic writing has been derived from a previous religion will shock many more. The biographer of Christ has one sole duty, namely, to produce the actual historical Jesus. In the New Testament there are two Christs, an Essene and an anti-Essene Christ, and

In the Revue des Deux Mondes , July 15th, 1888, M. Émile Burnouf has an article entitled "Le Bouddhisme en Occident." M. Burnouf holds that the Christianity of the Council of Nice was due to a conflict between the Aryan and the Semite, between Buddhism and Mosaism:— "History and comparative mythology are teaching every day more plainly that creeds grow slowly up. None come into the world ready-made, and as if by magic. The origin of events is lost in the infinite. A great Indian poet has said, '

Moses. Until within the last forty years the Old Testament has been practically a sealed book. It found interpreters, no doubt—two great groups. The first group pointed to its useless and arbitrary edicts, and pronounced them the inventions of priests inspired by fraud and greed. The second group practically admitted the arbitrary and useless nature of most of the edicts, but maintained that they were given by the All-wise, in a book penned by His finger, to miraculously prepare a nation distinc

Buddha. I propose now to give a short life of Buddha, noting its points of contact with that of Jesus. PRE-EXISTENCE IN HEAVEN. The early Buddhists, following the example of the Vedic Brahmins, divided space into Nirvritti, the dark portion of the heavens, and Pravritti, the starry systems. Over this last, the luminous portion, Buddha figures as ruler when the legendary life opens. The Christian Gnostics took over this idea and gave to Christ a similar function. Buthos was Nirvritti ruled by "Th

The Four Presaging Tokens. Soothsayers were consulted by King Suddhodana. They pronounced the following:— "The young boy will, without doubt, be either a king of kings, or a great Buddha. If he is destined to be a great Buddha, four presaging tokens will make his mission plain. He will see— "1. An old man. "2. A sick man. "3. A corpse. "4. A holy recluse. "If he fails to see these four presaging tokens of an avatâra, he will be simply a Chakravartin" (king of earthly kings). King Suddhodana, who

After Buddha's Death. From Buddha's death we turn to Buddha's religion and its progress. And I think the narrative form will help us best, but a few preliminary remarks are necessary. What is Buddhism? "The religion of Buddha," says Professor Max Müller in his "Chips from a German Workshop," "was made for a madhouse." "Buddha," says Sir Monier Williams in his "Buddhism," "altogether ignored in human nature any spiritual aspirations." Having heard the dictum of Oxford, perhaps it is fair to liste

The Apostles of the Bloodless Altar. There are two Zoroasters, or rather a sort of dual personality. One of these Zoroasters lived six thousand years B.C. according to Darmesteter, and the other about five hundred years B.C. The earlier Zoroaster swathed Persia in a network of silly rites and regulations. A culprit who "threw away a dead dog" was to receive a thousand blows with the horse goad, and one thousand with the Craosha charana. A culprit who slew a dog with a "prickly back" and a "wooll

The Gospel according to the Hebrews. Papias, the Bishop of Hieropolis (about A.D. 140), wrote a small sentence which, examined critically recently, has revolutionised all our ideas about the four eye-witnesses of Paley. He tells us that Matthew first in the Hebrew dialect wrote the λόγια [Greek: logia] (sayings), and each person translated as he was able. This tells us everything. Matthew in Aramaic wrote down all the "sayings" of Christ that he could remember, and our three gospels and a number

The Essene Jesus. We now come to an important question, Did Christianity emerge from Essenism? Historical questions are sometimes made more clear by being treated broadly. Let us first deal with this from the impersonal side, leaving out altogether the alleged words and deeds of Christ, Paul, etc. Fifty years before Christ's birth there was a sect dwelling in the stony waste where John prepared a people for the Lord. Fifty years after Christ's death there was a sect in the same part of Palestine

The Anti-Essene Jesus. I have said that in the New Testament there is an Essene and an anti-Essene Christ. Both are most conspicuous in the Gospel of St. Luke. Catholic and Protestant disputants are aware of this. Until the days of Ferdinand Christian Baur, St. Luke had an immaculate reputation. He was believed to be the companion of St. Paul on his voyages. He was believed to have written the third gospel almost as early as the date of Paul's imprisonment. He was the reputed author of the Acts

The Church of Jerusalem. Competent critics hold that Luke has based the Acts on earlier records. Certainly the picture of the early Church at Jerusalem is very Essenic. The disciples had all things in common. They lived in groups of houses, with a central house of assembly, like the Therapeuts. They had two main rites, baptism and the breaking of bread. They had for officers, deacons, presbyters, ephemereuts. Wine and flesh meat were forbidden, if we may judge the parent from the daughter. For t

Johannine Buddhism. The Indians of old observed that one portion of the sky was dark at night and one portion lit with stars. They judged that the dark portion was spirit—primary substance, and that the light portion was the same substance made tangible to the senses under the form of matter. The Buddhists took over these ideas and called the dark portion Nirvritti and the light portion Pravritti. In Nirvritti dwelt the formless, passionless, inconceivable God—Swayambhu the Self-Existent. Pravri

Rites. I have left myself little space to write of the many points of close similarity between the Buddhists and the Roman Catholics. The French missionary Huc, in his celebrated travels in Thibet, was much struck with this similarity. "The crozier, the mitre, the dalmatic, the cope or pluvial , which the grand lamas wear on a journey, or when they perform some ceremony outside the temple, the service with a double choir, psalmody, exorcisms, the censer swinging on five chains, and contrived to