The idea of transferred good Karma, the merits of the former lives of an individual being passed on to another individual, is of course quite foreign to the lower Judaism, which believed in no after life at all. In the view of the higher Buddhism, Sakya Muni saved the world by his teaching, but to the lower, the Buddhism of offerings and temples and monks, this doctrine of Karma was the life-blood. It was proclaimed that Buddha had a vast stock of superfluous Karma, and that offerings at a temple might cause the worshipper in his next life to be a prince instead of a pig or a coolie. In the "Lalita Vistara" (Chinese version, p. 225) it is announced that when Buddha overcame Mâra all flesh rejoiced, the blind saw, the deaf heard, the dumb spake, the hells were cleared, and all by reason of Buddha's Karma in previous lives. In Romans (v. 18), St. Paul writes thus:-- "As by the offence of one, judgment came upon all men to condemnation, even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life. "For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous." Here plainly all the world is saved by the Karma of Christ. Now Dr. Kuenen, whose main proposition is that Christianity emerged from Judaism alone, should tell us how Paul got this idea. The priests and the Levites were the sole interpreters of the law, and they had settled that a certain Hebrew had so broken that law that it was necessary to execute him. And now another Hebrew proclaims that the righteousness of this man is so great that he can bestow the "free gift of life" to "all men." Would not Caiaphas have called the second Hebrew out of his mind. But St. Paul was a Pharisee, and as a Pharisee he knew that the Pharisees that he tried to convert believed that nothing but blood could wipe out sin. In the person of Christ he mixed up the two ideas. "Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood, to declare His righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God." (Rom. iii. 25.) But according to our first quotation, Christ had already saved "all men" by his righteousness alone. Plainly St. Paul, who viewed the Old Testament as "allegory," "carnal ordinances," "beggarly elements," and so on, never meant his trope about Adam's sin to be taken too literally. PARABLES. Buddha taught in parables. I will give one or two. The reader is referred to my "Popular Life of Buddha" for some very beautiful ones. THE PRODIGAL SON. A certain man had a son who went away into a far country. There he became miserably poor. The father, however, grew rich, and accumulated much gold and treasure, and many storehouses and elephants. But he tenderly loved his lost son, and secretly lamented that he had no one to whom to leave his palaces and suvernas at his death.