Rhys Davids, that of an age in which plenty and peace were to abound as the fruits of righteousness.[175] The idea of a golden age is common to most religions, and as the Western Aryans always preserved it, we may conclude that the branch which reached India carried it thither with them. Soon, however, as the belief in transmigration took possession of them, they seem to have lost it. Their book of the generations of man did not mount higher than the Fall; existence was essentially evil in their thought, and belief in a golden age on earth, either in the past or in the future, was quite inconsistent with the creed which Buddhists inherited or created. The other branch of the Aryan stock so cherished it that it adorns their most beautiful mythologies; but even with them the golden age was always placed in the past, and the world, fallen from good, was supposed to be degenerating from bad to worse. And so it is that the fondest glances of even the happy Greek are not forward but backward cast, and that sadness mingles with his most mirthful music. It is possible at least that changes so favourable to the fortunes of the new religion, and the social reforms which followed its extension, may have awakened in the pious the memories of old Vedic faith; and that the victories of Chandragupta may have suggested to the authors of the Suttas the idea of the invincible Buddha advancing through the ages, as the chariot-wheel of the sun disperses the clouds in the heavens. It is certain, however, that neither Buddha nor his earliest disciples ever dreamed of applying the title of Cakka-vatti to or of associating the promise of a better time with himself. To old Vedic faith as supporting his teaching or predicting his mission he never appealed; he ignored all previous teaching: and indeed in ancient Indian teaching, uninspired by either promise or hope, there is nothing prophetic. In the case of Christianity it is quite the contrary. The conception of the Messiah as the righteous and glorious King, under whose reign all the world would be blessed, was not suggested by political experience two centuries after the dawn of Christianity. It was formulated and predicted many centuries before the coming of Christ. The Hebrew, like the Aryan, never lost the memory of a happy past, but, unlike the Aryan, he placed his paradise not only in the past but in the future. With far richer materials at his command than the Aryan seems to have possessed for painting a vanished golden age, the Hebrew poets made very sparing use of them. A few paragraphs exhaust all they have to say as to the traditions of a paradise that had been lost, but their whole Bible is full of the hope of the good time which is coming to all the world. This hope, centred as it was in their Messiah, Christianity from the very first took up and promised to fulfil. The ministry of Jesus was scarcely begun before it was associated with Him. Among the first questions asked