Then he would tell how when he set “a-rolling the wheel” of the “kingdom of righteousness,”[151] he did so with such effect that not only multitudes of men, but eighty thousand gods and angels, “hearing, each in their own tongue, though the language was that of Magadha,”[152] were by one sermon imbued with saving knowledge and converted; how during his long and holy ministry, by discourses and parables and miracles, he brought countless millions of men and women, and gods and sprites and fairies, to find the right way; how the great devas came to worship or to ask counsel from him;[153] how, inviolable and invincible, there could not be found, either in this world or in the world of the devas, Mâras, Brahmans, “any who could either scatter his thoughts or cleave his heart”;[154] how he was transfigured,[155] and at last, when the time was come, accompanied by a disciple very dear to him, how he lay down like a king between two trees. Then when winds were hushed, and streamlets silenced, and flowers from heaven shed their blossoms over him like rain-drops, and a great earthquake rumbled, and the sun and moon hid their faces, and the great Brahma lamented, rising through light to light he achieved the full Nirvana.[156] It is not wonderful that Christians who have only read or heard of the statements current as to the remarkable coincidences between the miraculous incidents recorded in the Buddhist legends and the Christian Gospels should be perplexed, and that not a few of those who are anti-Christian in their attitude should have almost jumped to the conclusion that the biographers of the two lives must have known of each other’s works and borrowed each other’s traditions. Examination of the alleged coincidences, however, reveals that there is no occasion for the perplexity in the one case, and no ground for the jubilation in the other. By no honest process of manipulation can we turn the supposed similarities into even probable identities. The incidents illustrate very widely contrasted lives, and enforce dogmas utterly contradictory to each other. If any one is desirous of ascertaining the coincidences which are stated to exist, he will find them clearly set forth and classified by Professor Seydel in his so-called Buddhist Harmony;[157] and if he require any more than his own common sense to guide him to an opinion concerning them, he had better consult the Appendix to Professor Kuenen’s Hibbert Lectures on _National Religions and Universal Religions_, Dr. Kellogg’s _Light of Asia and Light of the World_, and Dr. J. Estlin Carpenter’s article in the _Nineteenth Century_, December 1880, “On the Obligations of the New Testament to Buddhism.” These authorities will confirm the judgment which any unbiassed and intelligent juryman would form, from considering the evidence adduced in support of the theory of borrowing, and from a simple comparison of the alleged parallels themselves, that Buddhism had not the smallest direct