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[1 Of logical necessity, in the interests of the “ apostolic succession,” going back through a series of pontiffs (“bridge-builders ” between God and man) to a “keeper of the keys” of heaven, and so to the theologi- cal character of the “mediator” or “redeemer ” or “savior” with which most Western churches have invested Jesus, —a matter somewhat miti- gated in the Anglican Church by reducing a pontificate to an episcopacy, or “overseeing,” of the affair, and still further diluted in many other sects to a pastorate, or “sheep-folding,” on the part of a clergyman or clericus ; z. é. an individual learned enough to read and write, as distinguished from any lamb who knew less. —C.] A BUDDHIST CATECHISM. 55 between men and God, to-help to obtain pardon of sins; the _ Buddhist priests do not acknowledge or expect anything from a divine power, but they seek to govern their lives according to the doctrine of Buddha and teach the true path to others. A Personal God Buddhists regard as only a gigantic shadow thrown upon the void of space by the imagination of ignorant men. ; [1 Philosophic atheism is not to be misunderstood for what “ the fool hath said in his Zeart” (manas), and is confounded with godlessness only ‘by the ignorant, the knavish, and the priest-ridden. God is a religious, emotional, or ideal necessity; really, naturally, rationally a nonentity. It being logically impossible for the Infinite Absolute to be anything that the Finite Conditioned can conceive, no personal God that man ever in- vented can be conceived to be, except in human imagination. Every true psychist, mystic, occultist, or spiritual Magus differs ¢ofo cwlo from any possible priest or pastor of exoteric ecclesiasticism, in that the former makes his own God with whom to identify himself, while the latter keeps at least three ready-made infinite and absolute Gods to be furnished on ‘demand, —thus preserving the custom of every great “heathen” trini- dolatry, of every exoteric hierarchy. “ Not to learn man from God, then, as did our forefathers, but to learn God from man, is the task before us.” “God made man in his own image,” it is said; and, to do the Creator’s handiwork justice, let it be added, man has had the grace to return the compliment. . “The primitive doctrine that God created man in his own image, male and female, and consequently that the divine comprised the two sexes within itself, fulfils) all the conditions requisite to constitute a Catho- lic theological dogma; inasmuch as it may be truly affirmed of it that it has been held semper, ubique, et ab omnibus, being as universal as the 56 A BUDDHIST CATECHISM. 123. Q. Do they accept the theory of everything having been Jormed out of nothing by a Creator ? A. Buddha taught that two things are eternal; namely, “ Akasa”? and “Nirvana.” Everything has come out of Akasa in obedience to a law of motion inherent in it, and, after a certain existence, passes away. Nothing ever came out of nothing. Buddhists do not believe in miracles; hence they deny creation, and cannot conceive of a Creator,} phenomenon [of sexual procreation] to which it owes its existence. Not only in his own image, male and female, and all other physical respects, does man create the God to whom he ascribes his own existence, but in his own image, — moral, intellectual, emotional, and sfzritual.” Atheism? Theism? Monotheism? Polytheism? Pantheism? O ye of little faith, anthropomorphotheists one and all, crouching beneath “a gigantic shadow thrown upon the void of space,” know that ¢here are as many Gods — no more, no fewer —as there are human beings who have ever conceived an idea of Deity. — C.] [' Since every speculation on the origination of the real or objective order of things is as futile as any forecast of its termination could be, the wisest men of all times and places have deprecated such use of the think- ing principle as idle, vexatious, and profitless. What shall be said of the intelligence of those who are faithfully credulous that either the begin- ning or the end is known, or can be known, of man? What, of the sin- cerity and credibility of those who make a business and a living by going about telling the people that they know such things? Let the charitable mantle of silence fall about them, and judge them not, whether they be blind, or open-eyed leaders of the blind. Repugnant as the answer in the text must be to religious sentiment, A BUDDHIST CATECHISM. 57 124. Q. Did Buddha hold to idol-worship ? A. He did not; he opposed it. 125. Q. But do not Buddhists offer flowers and make rever- ence before the statue of Buddha, his relics, and the monuments enshrining them ? emotion, aspiration, or any other effzcal capability of our natures, we must here again steadily impose the same distinction between philosophic logical necessity and what may be called the license of human morale. Denial of a Creator, in the usual exoteric sense, follows necessarily as a corollary of philosophic atheism. Many who will look upon this as heathenish and abominable may be surprised at the following words of a Roman Catholic, highly qualified to speak for his Church : — “Tt is necessary to premise that the Church takes little notice of God as Creator of the world, beyond formally ascribing creation to him, but con- cerns herself with him as the ideal of humanity, — ‘God in Christ;’ an ideal in which it is impossible to recognize aught in common with ihe principles on which animated Nature has for the most part been con- structed. In other words, the Church is what the world would, if it were given to thinking, call a¢hezstic. But atheism is necessarily the secret [known only to the initiated] of every anthropomorphic religion; for it is through failing to find in the world external to man aught that can be recognized as God that the Church has sought to meet man’s want of such a Being by constructing a substitute or equivalent out of the inher- ent characteristics of the race.” That is precisely what the Hebrew hier- archy did for Israel when it invented Jehovah. Christians of all sects have inherited the grim and grotesque spectre of Sinai, whom they have no little difficulty in identifying with “our Father who art in heaven” of Calvary. Buddhism is strong and wise enough to require neither of these, and makes no secret of the fact. — C.] 58 A BUDDHIST CATECHISM. A. Yes; but not with the sentiment of the idolater.1 126. Q. What is the difference ? A. Our Pagan brother not only takes his images as visi- ble representations of his unseen God or Gods, but the re- fined idolater in worshipping considers that the idol contains [1 See note to Questions 97, 98.— On the general subject of idolatry I will first quote: ‘‘ You have demanded of me the ‘keys of the creeds.’ I gave you before the key to their moral side in the worship of perfection. I give you now the key to their physical side: it is the worship of the sun. The sun and the organs of sex are the fundamental symbols of every re- ligious worship known to us, all alike catholic in their acceptance, their necessity, and their functions. ... So little is there strange and recondite in these facts that it is a perpetual marvel among the initiated how even the least incredulous of the laity contrive to ignore them, —a marvel not unmixed with apprehension as to the result that would follow from their becoming enlightened. The blind impetuosity, on the other hand, with which Protestant sects indignantly denounce ‘idolatry,’ Pagan or Catholic, while themselves offering palpable homage to the sun under the name of Christ, is to us [Catholic initiates] a never-failing source of amusement.” The whole question of “ idolatry,” with all its fiercely seething contro- versies and recriminations, resolves itself simply into symbolism, — the concrete expression of abstract ideas. A three-cornered piece of paper, for example, symbolizes a triangle; we may ignorantly or conveniently call it a triangle if we choose, and no mathematician need be angry or alarmed, well as he knows it is infinitely remote from mathematical triangularity. We may piously make it a symbol of the Trinity if we choose, and no theologian should complain if it helps-us to understand the idea of trinity, or serves in any way alere flammam of our devotion to the Godhead. A BUDDHIST CATECHISM. 59 in its substance a portion of the all-pervading divinity. The Buddhist reyerences Buddha’s statue, and the other things you From the savage who piously carves an image of his Manitou out of one end of a stick of wood and prosily cooks his dinner with the other end, to the rapt ecstatic whose stigmata bleed before the crucifix bearing its weight of agony; from the rudest representation of lingham or yoni to the glories of a Grecian Pantheon; from the prehistoric pictograph on the rocks to the glowing Raphael above a cathedral altar, — the links are unbroken. On the one hand, it is an artistic and zsthetic matter, depend- ing upon the skill and fidelity with which a man can translate his ideas in wood or stone; on the other hand, a religious sentiment, the grossness and crudity or the refinement and elaboration of which depend upon a man’s degree of mental and moral (intellectual and spiritual) develop- ment. It is a sliding-scale; the extremes are superstitious ignorance and luminous wisdom ; but between these no man and no church should pre- sume to draw the line and cry “Idolatry!” Nay, more: a third element enters into all symbolism, independent alike of ignorance or enlighten- ment. It is a sentiment, lofty, holy, and tender, of respect for any me- mento of that which one loves, —a feeling rather religious than the reverse, yet far from incompatible with the highest wisdom.