It will doubtless have occurred to anyone reading the preceding pages, if he be but familiar with the New Testament, that either the Christian histories called Gospels have been largely influenced by Buddhist's legends, or that the story of Siddartha has been moulded upon that of Jesus. The subject is one which demands and deserves the greatest attention, for if our religion be traceable to Buddhism, as the later Jewish faith is to the doctrines of Babylonians, Medes, and Persians, we must modify materially our notions of "inspiration" and "revelation." Into this inquiry St. Hilaire goes as far as documentary evidence allows him, and Hardy in _Legends and Theories of the Buddhists_ also enters upon it in an almost impartial manner. From their conclusions there can be no reasonable doubt that the story of the life of Sakya Muni, such as we have described it, certainly existed in writing ninety years before the birth of Jesus; consequently, if the one life seems to be a copy of the other, the gospel writers must be regarded as the plagiarists. In the story of Buddha, we have eliminated the miraculous part, and exhibited him simply as a remarkable man. Nevertheless, in the writings of his followers, miracles in abundance are assigned to him. Whether these existed in the original history Hardy doubts, and his remarks are so apposite that we reproduce them (op. cit. p. xxviii). "Upon the circumstances of this first rehearsal (of the life and doctrine of Siddartha), most important consequences depend. If the miracles ascribed to Buddha can be proved to have been recorded of him at the time of his death, this would go far towards proving that the authority to which he laid claim was his rightful prerogative. They were of too public character to have been ascribed to him then if they had not taken place; so that if it was openly declared by his contemporaries, by those who had lived with him in the same monastery, that he had been repeatedly visited by Sekra and other Deivas; and that he had walked through the air and visited the heavenly world in the presence of many thousands, and those the very persons whom they addressed, we ought to render to him the homage awarded to him by even his most devoted followers. But the legend of the early rehearsal has nothing to support it beyond the assertion of authors who lived at a period long subsequent. The testimony of contemporaneous history presents no record of any event that quadrates with the wonderful powers attributed to the 'rahals,' which would undoubtedly not have been wanting if these events had really taken place."