Ten Great Religions: An Essay in Comparative TheologyClarke, James Freeman
Islamic
Ten Great Religions: An Essay in Comparative Theology
Clarke, James Freeman
Christianity and other religions; Religions
development. For Christianity certainly teaches that we unite ourselves
with God, not by sinking into and losing our personality, in him, but by
developing it, so that we may be able to serve and love him.
Chapter IV.
Buddhism, or the Protestantism of the East.
§ 1. Buddhism, in its Forms, resembles Romanism; in its Spirit,
Protestantism.
§ 2. Extent of Buddhism. Its Scriptures.
§ 3. Sakyamuni, the Founder of Buddhism.
§ 4. Leading Doctrines of Buddhism.
§ 5. The Spirit of Buddhism Rational and Humane.
§ 6. Buddhism as a Religion.
§ 7. Karma and Nirvana.
§ 8. Good and Evil of Buddhism.
§ 9. Relation of Buddhism to Christianity.
§ 1. Buddhism, in its Forms, resembles Romanism; in its Spirit,
Protestantism.
On first becoming acquainted with the mighty and ancient religion of
Buddha, one may be tempted to deny the correctness of this title, "The
_Protestantism_ of the East." One might say, "Why not rather the
_Romanism_ of the East?" For so numerous are the resemblances between the
customs of this system and those of the Romish Church, that the first
Catholic missionaries who encountered the priests of Buddha were
confounded, and thought that Satan had been mocking their sacred rites.
Father Bury, a Portuguese missionary,[92] when he beheld the Chinese
bonzes tonsured, using rosaries, praying in an unknown tongue, and
kneeling before images, exclaimed in astonishment: "There is not a piece
of dress, not a sacerdotal function, not a ceremony of the court of Rome,
which the Devil has not copied in this country." Mr. Davis (Transactions
of the Royal Asiatic Society, II. 491) speaks of "the celibacy of the
Buddhist clergy, and the monastic life of the societies of both sexes; to
which might be added their strings of beads, their manner of chanting
prayers, their incense, and their candles." Mr. Medhurst ("China," London,
1857) mentions the image of a virgin, called the "queen of heaven,"
having an infant in her arms, and holding a cross. Confession of sins is
regularly practised. Father Huc, in his "Recollections of a Journey in
Tartary, Thibet, and China," (Hazlitt's translation), says: "The cross,
the mitre, the dalmatica, the cope, which the grand lamas wear on their
journeys, or when they are performing some ceremony out of the
temple,--the service with double choirs, the psalmody, the exorcisms, the
censer suspended from five chains, and which you can open or close at
pleasure,--the benedictions given by the lamas by extending the right hand
over the heads of the faithful,--the chaplet, ecclesiastical celibacy,
religious retirement, the worship of the saints, the fasts, the
processions, the litanies, the holy water,--all these are analogies
between the Buddhists and ourselves." And in Thibet there is also a Dalai
Lama, who is a sort of Buddhist pope. Such numerous and striking analogies
are difficult to explain. After the simple theory "que le diable y était
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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