ARTICLE V.

THE TRUE LIGHT OF ASIA.

BY JOHN T. PERRY.

IF old beliefs and current opinions have been more savagely attacked in former times, they have never been more plausibly assailed than to-day. The individual iconoclast has given place to schools of erudite antagonists, whose systems so intermingle scholarship and sophistry that it is often difficult to know what to accept and what to reject. We can not afford to throw away every thing they proffer, and it would be suicidal to swallow all that they exhibit as genuine fruit from the tree of knowledge.

It is harder to discriminate, because all the mistakes have not been committed by one side. The defenders of truth, the authorities who we feel must be right in their general conclusions, have been proved guilty of gross mistakes in detail; and, if we are to meet a panoplied foe, we must have that justice on our side that will insure our being thrice armed.

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Every thinker has his theory about man, his origin, and his destiny. Docile minds range themselves under some leader. All are seeking for that light which shall illume the pathway of life and, perchance, project into the unseen. The evolutionist urges his argument as a sufficient answer to all the problems of the race. From molecules of star dust and protoplasm and cells blind force constructs man. Tennyson thus describes the process:

'Star and system rolling past,

A soul shall draw from out the vast
And strike his being into bounds,
And moved through life of lower phase;
Result in man, be born and think."

VOL. V, No. 20-33

At first uncivilized, barbarous, he becomes cultured, develops, evolves into an Isaac Newton or a John Stuart Mill!

To this I affirm first, on the authority of Niebuhr, seconded by Whately, that there is no instance in history where a savage nation has risen to civilization without external aid, while more than one mighty empire has evolved itself into barbarism. Second, Egypt, Assyria, and India show that primitive and nearly, or quite, pure monotheism has everywhere given place to the wildest idolatry, little Israel alone preserving and gradually clearing and exalting-though with many temporary backslidings-the idea of one supreme, self-existent Deity, wholly separated from

his works.

The earliest civilization of which we are informed-that of Egypt-was in full bloom at the first. The architecture of the first dynasties was the grandest and purest. It appears to have begun in maturity, springing into existence. like Minerva from the brain of Jupiter. Egypt had no successive paleolithic, neolithic, bronze, and iron ages. She had them altogether during her entire history. It is begging the question to assert that, by the laws of evolution, she must have had them, for there is no evidence of it, save the necessities of a theory.

Max Müller (Contemporary Review, January, 1875) has shown that the imperfection of any nation's language does not arise from lowness of development. He says: "We see to-day that the lowest of savages-men whose language is said to be no better than the clucking of hens or the twittering of birds, and who have been declared, in many respects, lower even than the animals, possess this one specific characteristic that if you take one of their babies and bring it up in England, it will learn to speak as well as any English baby; while no amount of education will elicit any attempt at language from the highest animals, whether bipeds or quadrupeds."

Rawlinson ("Origin of Nations") says of the Weddas

of Ceylon, the most debased of savages, with a vocabulary of only a few hundred words, and unable to count above two or three, and with no domesticated animals save the dog: "The best comparative philologists pronounce their language to be a debased descendant of the most elaborate and earliest known form of Aryan speech-the Sanskrit; and the Weddas are, on this ground, believed to be degenerate descendants of the Sanskritic Aryans who conquered India.""

On the other hand, the Mpongwes of the Gaboon region, on the west coast of Africa, whose language was first reduced to writing by the American missionaries, speak a tongue as musical and rich in inflections as the Greek, and capable of expressing exactly the most abstract religious ideas. The cultivated Chinese, as is well known, have no name which their Christian teachers are satisfied in accepting as an equivalent for God.* Evolution can not explain these phenomena. Dismissing it and the theoretical speculations of all physical specialists, let us glance at some facts of history which may help us to a theory more in accord with the things we have most surely believed. We thus narrow our ground somewhat, but our first impressions, like those of the settler in the forest, are that we are surrounded by a mighty maze.

The time was when learned men thought every thing in heathenism borrowed from the Bible. Theophilus Gale, the learned Puritan divine of the seventeenth century, who gave half his library to Harvard College, maintained in his "Court of the Gentiles" that the "original of human literature, both philologic and philosophic," was drawn "from the Scriptures and Jewish Church." As he says in the rugged rhymes of his introduction:

"Phoenicia must with palms no longer crown
Sanchoniathan, falling down

Like Dagon to the ark, who there adores
Diviner stores.

Legge is satisfied with Chang-ti as describing full Deity. His conclusions are opposed by many missionaries.

Nor let proud Babilon

Berosus bear so high upon;

His works were Babel-like confusion.

Nor Egypt Hermes boast, or Manetho

Her 'leventh learned plague, the greatest she knew.
These gyant authors or their pigmie Frie

Can ne'er with Moses vie

For truth or for antiquitie.

They all in one long row like cyphers stand,
He at their head, like figure to command.
They all had signified just naught

Had he not all their force of wisdome taught.

Upon this elaborate work

Phoenician Cadmus when he Thebes did raise

('Tis his humilitie's or fortune's praise)

Resolved to set

His alphabet.

Forwards the left began

And so it alwaies ran,

Leaving to ancient Hebrew still the right hand space
For reverend age the place.

She in her numerous offspring o'er the world doth reign.”

So other erudite writers, whose names are almost forgotten, held not only that Hebrew was the mother of all languages, but that all the religions of heathendom were perverted copies of ancient Judaism, or of a primitive faith that embraced a long array of doctrines. Some of these men were prodigies of learning, but they were unacquainted with modern philology; and a mere likeness in the sound or spelling of names led them to identify characters between whom there was little or no resemblance. Thus, on this plan, Abram has been declared a Hindoo, a disciple of Brahma, and Sarai, his wife, deemed a copy of the god

dess Sarasvati. Orthodox, as well as heterodox, critics have tried to find a relationship between Moses and Bacchus, Samson and Hercules; and other examples, as farfetched in their reasoning, might be adduced.

Modern scholars, in repudiating these fancied analogies, have gone a step too far, perhaps. Max Müller says, in his "Science of Religion:" "The theory that there was a primeval, preternatural revelation granted to the fathers of the human race, and that the grains of truth which catch our eye when exploring the temples of heathen idols are the scattered fragments of that sacred heir-loom-the seeds that fell by the wayside or upon stony places-would find but few supporters at present. He would confine revela

tion to the lessons written on the heart and consciences of individual men.

He adds, "that true Christianity seems to become more and more exalted the more we appreciate the treasures of truth hidden in the despised religions of the world. But no one can honestly arrive at that conviction unless he uses honestly the same measure for all religions. It would be fatal for any religion to claim an exceptional treatmentmost of all, for Christianity."

The credit to be given to this statement, which accords with the views of the majority of the students of comparative religion, must be based on a thorough knowledge of the facts in the case. Too many Christians think only of the heathen as persons who, in their blindness, bow down to stock and stone. In their mind's eye they essentially reproduce the picture, so familiar to Sunday-school children, of the tall missionary dressed in a swallow-tailed coat, who stands beneath a palm-tree, book in hand, while dark-skinned and very scantily clothed natives sit in a circle about him. They should know that with all the follies, superstitions, and abominations of heathenism are connected subtle systems of metaphysics, not a little noble morality, which, if not much practiced, may find a parallel in this respect in Christendom, and also beliefs strangely akin to the teachings