238 Charge against Buddhism. [LECT. Buddhism, and then there remains the whole pantheon of gods, with incantations and worship of the dead. Buddhism claims to make men gentle, but the Mongolians were as bloodthirsty after they became Buddhists in 1247 A.D. as before, and the Red Caps and Yellow Hats of Buddhism waged between themselves long and bloody war. To call any purely Buddhist country now in the world, a moral country, would show an absolute ignorance of what morality means. What there is of morality in Japan is due to Confucius, for what Buddha has taught of morality in China and Japan is borrowed more or less from Confucian philosophy. My count against Buddhism in short is this: 1. It has no consistent teaching of God, and a religion without a God is no religion at all, in any true sense of the word; and Buddhism borrows gods to suit each people. 2. Its fundamental principle of the inherent evil of existence as such, leads men to degrade, but never to elevate, themselves. We want something to make men prize existence, and that will lead them to improve it, not to get rid of it. 3. It has gone through the regular, natural, down-hill development; is to-day no real moral power, and is incapable of renovation. 4. No Buddhist country or people has ever yet been distinguished intellectually, commercially, politically, socially; and never can be so long as Buddhism is retained, simply because its fundamental principles are antagonistic to intellectual, commercial, political, social and moral progress. 5. No civilized land could be made to believe in Buddhism to-day. IV.-Persia. Another kindred line of development we find in the old religion of Persia, which centres for us in the one noble figure of V.] Persian Reform and Decay. 239 a grand reformer, Zoroaster. Without going through the proofs, it seems clear that Zoroaster appeared about 700 B.C., near the time when Brahman speculation in India added a new deformity on the old degraded cult of the people. The Persians originally came from the same stock as the Aryan Indians, had originally the same primitive worship, but in time had accumulated gods many and priests many, as in India; then Zoroaster came with a philosophy and a reform. Instead of adding a speculation on the old idolatry, he brought back the worship of the one God whose memory had not quite faded away. But not being able to banish the gods that had grown on his people, he put them all down a degree, and counted the good ones angels, and the bad ones demons. So the people accepted his teaching, and a reformation was the result. The old traditions preserved are almost entirely like those of the Bible from Adam to Noah. After that they became local and refer to struggles with the Turanians, hence what on one side were good gods, on the other side became devils. Darius Hystaspes calls on Ahurmazed as God and names him only, but he is creator of all, guardian of all. This God of Zoroaster was a holy God, and with this teaching the morals of the people were also great improved. The ethics of the Avesta are pure, lying is reprehended, polygamy allowed as in Old Testament times, but adultery was severely punished. But the greatest crime of all was idolatry. By repentence the sinner might be restored. The offerer brought himself as a living sacrifice with prayer and song. With this strong faith the land grew great, conquered Babylon, helped the Jews, and met a check only in Greece. But there lay here also the seeds which soon brought forth decay. There was a bad god nearly as strong as the good; the angels and devils would not be content with their lower rank, and were again accorded a place among the gods, or at least were worshipped as saints are now in Papal lands. Then there was a mixing of the idea of 240 Europe tells the same Story. [LECT. sin and evil. Blind superstition grew apace, immorality spread ; sodomy even was paid for with a light fine. Religion was given over to be a matter for the priests who were to remove sin from the soul for so much money; a constant sinking into pantheistic polytheism, but never a trace of Mr. Spencer's mythical evolution to higher forms. To-day it has vanished almost entirely from its home-land; only a few degraded fire-worshippers here and there as remnants, and a body of respectable Parsees in India, who maintain the moral code of their master, and have rid themselves of idolatry,—a philosophical residue. V.-European Religions. Out of the same Aryan centre came forth at different times the people who founded the nations of Greece and Rome and the Scandinavian tribes. All their religions have traces of a common origin. Though the idea of one holy God had vanished before we meet with traces of their first history, yet their religion of those early times is somewhat nearer the clean fountain than in after days, for as we trace it down the several streams, the very same down-hill tramp keeps time to the tread of the centuries. Agriculture, civilization, arts, commerce, politics, power, grew apace, but the gods became less god-like, philosophy laughed and tried to manufacture ethics to save the people, but failed, and the nations went down in moral rottenness. You will remember that for a length of time the descendants of Ham and Shem dwelt together, or nearly together, under a common ruler Nimrod, a God-fearing Hamite. The Shemites, with a mixture of Turanians probably, settled in the well-watered plains near the mouth of the great rivers Tigris and Euphrates. Here they early developed a commercial life, and laid the founda V.] Shemite Commercial Prosperity. 241 tion of the money-getting, and the pound-of-flesh-Shylock quality which has marked the Shemite all the way through to the present day. As they grew wealthy and powerful by commerce, they gradually grew restive under the quiet rule of Ham, and the god-fearing character of the pastoral people above them. About the year 2700 B.C. they rebelled, conquered the Hamites, scattered or subjugated them, absorbing some, and causing their language to become extinct. Many of the Hamites wandered away into Canaan and Egypt, and it may be that at the same time many were driven to the East. It was now that these conquering Shemites, coming to the plain of Shinar as told in the Bible, having rejected the Holy God of their fathers and of Ham, concocted a plan of making a god and a religion for themselves; and they said :-"Come, let us build a tower, that no flood can touch, and let us make an image of god and a name for ourselves, and defy the old God." So they built an immense tower, probably about 2500 before Christ. Some great natural catastrophe, or supernatural intervention occurred, making a new scattering of tribes and causing the building to cease. But the bulk of the Shemites remained there; they never were colonizers abroad. And, whatever the catastrophe was, it did not prevent these godless Shemites from developing a civilization and a religion of their own. Long before Abraham's day they had risen to a great degree of culture and power. In Abraham's time Chedarlaomer possessed probably the whole of the Tigris and Euphrates plain, and extended his sway as far as Jordan river, including Sodom, Gomorrah, and those cities of the plain. Their time of greatest power was about 2000-1500 B.C. And now, as to their religion. Down to the time of Abraham, there was a remnant of a party who still held the primitive faith in a holy God, the tradition of which is told us to-day by old documents of baked books of clay. Here is one : 242 Degradation of God-idea. [LECT. "Every day thou shalt draw near to thy God; offerings, gifts of mouth and of toil thou shalt bring, and whatever is right'in presence of Deity; beseeching, and in humility bowing the face down to the earth. Holy shalt thou be in the fear of God; the fear of God thou shalt not neglect-in fear of the angels thou shalt live." And here God-Ilu-is the El-Elohim of the Bible. But the traces of this tradition soon completely die away, and the very opposite is seen to be the prevailing cult of Shem. Bel becomes the highest of the gods and Istar his chief consort, the goddess of fruitfulness, and also goddess of life-destroying war. In the national religion all trace of pure worship vanishes, and this most filthy of all idolatries seems suddenly to have sprung into being. The most worshipped divinity is the goddess of animal fruitfulness. In India, Egypt, and elsewhere a subordinate deity of sex grew on their systems, but Shem alone makes this goddess supreme in a filthy pantheon, and worships her with immorality unspeakable. In every other land moral perversion never descended so far that it was not at least thought right to be chaste; but in the religion of Shem, the vilest, lowest, most unspeakable deeds of immorality were made the supreme acts of worship in the service of their supreme god. And then of course there resulted a perfect chaos of immoral life, a destruction of conscience, an absolute loss of religious idea, a contempt for all ethical law. In Abraham's time about 2000 B.C. the pestilence had reached as far as Sodom, the limit of Babylon sway, whose very name has come down to us to-day as a cognomen for a nameless debauch. Between Sodom and the seacoast Abraham had found a mixture of Shemites and Hamites of his own mind as to the worship of God. He is one with Melchizedeck, and one with Abimelech. But 400 years later, when Abraham's descendants came up out of Egypt, Moab and Ammon, and all Canaan had become one vast Sodom; the peaceful land of shepherds was full of cities and civilization and |