But the grand and crowning distinction between the import and effect of the two ministries emerged at the close. After Gotama died and his body was burned, and his relics had been reverently gathered, and distributed, and enshrined in costly dagobas erected in the various scenes of his labours, there was an end of him. He had gone out into the void, according to his own theory of the hereafter, and, no longer capable of being of use to his disciples, he exhorted them to be “their own refuge, their own law, and to work diligently out their salvation.”[143] But when Jesus had been crucified there was manifestly not an end, but rather a new beginning of His personal influence, a rising in fuller power, a coming again with greater authority. From the very morning of His ministry He took His death into His plan, as the consummation of one stage of His mission, without which His plan would have been a failure. All His teaching centred in His death, as a moral and spiritual necessity in Divine providence. Instead of complaining of it, He pointed to it as the seal of His Messiahship, “the cause for which He was born, the end for which He came into the world,” “the hour” of His glorification. The very setting of crime and passion which His enemies sought to give to the manner of it only made it in His estimation more divine. Instead of evading it He went straight to meet it, when the time had come, as one who had a purpose to fulfil by it. That purpose He announced to be the development of His personal resources, the liberation of the creative energies of His being. As uncrucified He might be weak, as crucified He would be so mighty as to “draw all men unto Him.” The event amply fulfilled the prediction, for shortly after the crucifixion Christ again confronted the world in another form and in far greater power. The followers of Buddha went forth testifying to his law, and they prefaced their preaching by the invariable formula, “Thus have I heard, when the Blessed One lived in ——.” Their mission was simply to recall and declare and expound the system of a master who had been absolutely lost to them, but the apostles of Christ from the very first testified not of a doctrine, but of Christ Himself, as one who having died still lived, was reigning in mightier power, and would be with them always, even to the end of the æon.