Ancient Faiths And Modern: A Dissertation upon Worships, Legends and Divinities in Central and Western Asia, Europe, and Elsewhere, Before the Christian Era. Showing Their Relations to Religious Customs as They Now Exist.Inman, Thomas
Religion
Ancient Faiths And Modern: A Dissertation upon Worships, Legends and Divinities in Central and Western Asia, Europe, and Elsewhere, Before the Christian Era. Showing Their Relations to Religious Customs as They Now Exist.
Inman, Thomas
Religions
Our hypothesis respecting a connection between the teaching of the
Indian and the Hebrew, appears to be strengthened when we contemplate
the distinction between the doctrines of the Jewish and the Hindoo
sage. We have seen how they agree as regards the morality which they
inculcate, the celibacy and poverty that they enjoin, the firm belief
in preexistent, or original, sin, and in a future state of rewards or
punishments. They differ in the veneration paid to antecedent authority.
Sakya Muni believed in his own inspiration, and rejected the writings
which were reverenced by his parents and Mends. Jesus seems to have
believed that he was himself supplemental to Moses and the prophets.
He did not want to destroy or to supersede them absolutely, as we learn
from Matthew v. 17, and xxiii. 23. He had, apparently, an unbounded
confidence in their truth, and, with an assurance in their sanctity, he
spoke of their writings as the very words of God, and we shall see
that the main, if not the only, points in which Jesus diverges from
the Hindoo prophet were the products of the Hebrew's full belief in the
sacred truth of the Jewish Scriptures.
The son of Mary taught, as the most important part of his doctrine, that
the world would shortly come to an end, and that he was sent to
show mankind, or, rather, the Jews, how to escape from the terrible
catastrophe. I do not think it possible for anyone to read the words
attributed to Jesus, and not recognize that this was the turning point
upon which everything in his preaching hinged. Sakya Muni spoke of the
future misery of all those who did not adopt his method of salvation;
Jesus treated of the impending destruction of the whole world, of an
immediate judgment of mankind, and of the certain punishment of the
majority. That we are not uttering vague assertions we may show by
reference to Matt. xxiv. 3, wherein we find certain disciples asking,
"What shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?"
After a long preamble, telling of troubles and misery, we have the reply
of Jesus in vv. 29 et seq.:--"Immediately after the tribulation of those
days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light,
and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens
shall be shaken: and then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in
heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall
see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great
glory. And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and
they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end
of heaven to another.... Verily I say unto you, This generation shall
not pass, till all these things be fulfilled." This is substantially,
and almost literally, repeated in Mark xiii. 26-30, and in Luke xxi. 32.*
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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