Both start from the idea that death, disease, pain, and misery is the result of sin--and both imagine that sin consists in living and acting upon the natural wants, necessities, and propensities of human kind. Both imagine that to be natural is to be vile, and that salvation is to be attained by resisting every impulse which is common to mankind Man desires to eat when hungry--this is a weakness to be combated; a mother loves her babe--this must not be tolerated; a youth covets a damsel in marriage--this is a snare to draw both down to hell; celibacy must be enforced. The argument runs thus,--If any one enjoys life he is sure to fear death, and will certainly pay for his pleasures; but if any one has the resolution to pass his years on earth in misery like that of hell, he will be glad to die, and fearless of any place of torment; use has bred a habit in him and no torture can come amiss. Some Christian author has ventured to assert "religion never was designed to make our pleasures less," but he was a conspicuous heretic. Buddha's doctrine was founded upon the assertion that life is always short, and that it is not worth a man's while to buy a few years of enjoyment with myriads of years of agony. Jesus preached that the Jews' time was short, for they, and most probably all the world besides, were to be burned up any day within the duration of the generation--what then was the use of laying up stores of grain, of buying fine clothes, and keeping wine to get mellow? Both preachers were equally short sighted and absurd in their teaching, for if their disciples were to live upon alms, and all repented and adopted the doctrine, it is clear that all would starve together, and self immolation by hunger was repugnant to both prophets. If no one made clothes all must go naked, and indecency was forbidden. If no one was to lay up money, there would be no one to pay for work, yet toil was considered to be a duty. If every one was to live from hand to mouth, who would keep a calf until it became a heifer, or a lamb to become a sheep? It is difficult to conceive that two individuals could have worked out such a scheme of salvation independently, and the minuteness of the resemblances induces me to believe that Jesus, possibly without knowing it, first adopted and then promulgated in Judea the doctrines of the Indian sage.