The quality of the contents of the two sets of writings is not under discussion, but we cannot help remarking one characteristic of the Christian Scriptures which is not likely to emerge in our longest acquaintance with the Buddhist books. No one ever expects that the genuineness of the contents of the Tripitaka will ever be discussed with anything like the intensity and acerbity with which we have discussed the genuineness of the books of the Bible. The long and fierce contendings that have been waged over each portion of the Gospels will never take place over any of the Suttas. We have been working for five centuries to secure a proper English translation of the Holy Bible, and we are not satisfied with it yet: does any one expect a similar expenditure of labour to secure a proper version of the Tripitaka? It is possible that scholarship will by and by exhaust this particular field of Oriental research, and “having catalogued its discoveries will put them aside and proceed to more interesting studies”; but though men have quarrelled about and questioned the Holy Scriptures for eighteen centuries they are not likely to come to a term of their hostility or curiosity. The ceaseless endeavour to disprove, refute, shows that we cannot get rid of them. There must be something either in the history of their production or the quality of their contents, or the range of their influence, which separates them from all sacred books of the type of the Buddhist Tripitaka. Certainly we cannot conceive it possible that any of these so-called Bibles of other religions will ever among any civilised people supplant the Christian Bible. “One chapter of Isaiah,” says Quinet,[83] “has more in it than a whole Republic of Plato.” One Psalm of David will outweigh all the religious lore of the Vedas. One sentence of Moses, “The Lord our God is one Lord: I the Lord am holy,” is worth all the speculations of the devout and learned authors of the Upanishads. Not that the Republic, the Vedas, the Upanishads are to be despised. On the contrary, the more they are studied the more likely is the Bible to be revered, for the truth that is in them is only prophetic of truth which could not then be revealed and received. We may outlive and outgrow the teaching of these wise ancients, but we have not yet transcended the originals of Christianity, and it is not at all likely that we ever shall. There is an end to the perfection of all other systems, but here is “a commandment exceeding broad,” “whose line has gone through all the earth, and its word to the end of the world.”