English
Travellers of approved credit tell us, that the millions whom you boasted of as ad- herents to your creed in Thibet, and parts of Tartary and China, are amongst the least intelligent worshippers, and the least advanced in all the arts of life, that can be found in all Asia. But wherever intelligence is low, virtue is weak. I have no desire to deny whatever good you feel able to assert as existing' BUDDHIST WEAKNESS. 527 among you. Only consider, and judge for yourself, whether the firmer and purer virtues are ever strong, without a clear con- viction of the All-seeing Judge of the whole earth. That short- coming of belief on this point, which you acknowledge partly for yourself, and more strongly for some of your brethren, cannot fail to tell on your morals : it seems also to have aficcted your metaphysics. You were very anxious, in an early stage of this dialogue, to repudiate the charge of * total perishableness,' or of reducing all things to a material flux, which some Hindds had brought against you. Then came a discussion about the solidity of matter, which you said was not mere appearance, but had something underlying. Yet you thought intelligence was more certainly known to exist than matter itself; nay, was perhaps the cause of matter's existing ; or at least the organ of its recog- nition. As to the primary atoms you spoke of, I hardly know whether their existence also, or whether only the composite form of definite objects was held by you as dependent upon intelli- gence. But at least all form and aggregation of things were considered by you as so dependent : and I think very reasonably so. For whatever may be the substance, or ultimate principle of solidity in things, that which combines atomic particles in material objects is most easily conceived of as a mental principle, or a law ; and if so, it has meaning, or implies a more or less ordering intelligence. I admit that a tree, for example, has no material substratum, apart from both the atoms composing it, and that combining principle, or natural law, which gives it both generic life and type according to the germ of its species. Thus the idea of substance being dependent upon an ordering intelligence applies to the life of the tree, and to the plank which comes from it, no less than in turn it does to the relative structure of the table, or to its characteristic form, which implies a carpenter : and I believe the same idea is as truly applicable to any primary atoms, though of such it must be more difficult to prove. But then, after all this confession, that the material depends upon the intelligent, and form upon meaning, you 528 "TOTAL PERISHABLENESS/' UNSUBSTANTIAL FLUX. proceeded calmly to explain a doubt whether the vast frame of the world has any intelligence indwelling of sufficient activity to have the care of governing and ordering. I must not quite say you took away self-consciousness; but, coming as near to that as possible, you took away design, or meaning, and so destroyed that which gives the laws of combination to material forms, and even existence to their primary particles. It seems acknowledged, that such a conception of passiveness in Deity affects your notions of the life to be expected hereafter. For it takes away clear individuality, and leaves a breathless absorp- tion. So it must, I apprehend, in moral questions take away the clear boimdaries of right and wrong ; and if any one were speculative enough to care about pushing it into consequences respecting the material world, it would be found to make all existence uncertain. So that, I suspect, the Brahmanical re- proach of * total perishableness*' had more meaning against the Bauddha doctrines than at first sight appears. For you do resolve the universe into a vast ocean, as you said, or rather a flux of generation and perishing, in which existence is connected with intelligence ; but intelligence has no governing design, and becomes either passively observant, or else as blind and object- less a force as if it were material : and so all the laws which express a Divine meaning, and give the world and all that is therein its form, or which give direction to human life, and stability to virtue or penalty to crime, or warrant to our souls for the expectation of an abiding individuality hereafter, are swept away in the whirl of a blind and remorseless revolution, without beginning or end. This is indeed a * total perisbable- ness,' and opens a dreary prospect. Supposing then such were the doctrine which Sdkya preached, I cannot so far call him a deliverer. Even if, as you imagine, he wrought miracles, they arc not credentials firom a moral Governor of the world, for thev do not lead to one, and you do not acknowledge one "who mi^-ht have caused them ; but are only strange products of this Nature. • See above, pp. 8, 9. BUDDHISM NOT A DIVINE REVELATION. 529 which you say expresses no design, and therefore they convey us no message. The very contents of your doctrine then seem to negative the possibility of its being a Divine Revelation. But it must be added, that the processes of nature are in fact uniform enough for things so extraordinary as what are called miracles to require no common attestation. Whereas such as you appeal to, mixed up with legends and fables, and recorded in books written, many of them, after a long interval of time, have even less proof than we require in common history, and tell more against the credibility of the story, than for the truth of the doctrine. As to S^kya, let us honour what was good in him. Probably his success was due to his goodness, and to the dim awe which in an ignorant age invested whatever belonged to him with more than human dignity. But his deliverance of men from a sacerdotal yoke was temporary ; it has even passed away in itself; and if you would now restore it, which might be to his tnie honour, still it would be temporal. But in the sad transitoriness of the world, which Sdkya lamented, and with our better souls hungering and thirsting within us for something more durable, our deliverance must be an eternal one, if it is to be the bread of life. Lead us not into temptation^ hut deliver us from evil must be our prayer to Him whom we can call Saviour. Again, Shew us the Father is aery which the better nature of man- kind must offer with hope to its teacher. Nor can we feed on the prospect of breathlessness ; but each man desires a Redeemer of his life, of whom he can say. Whom I shall see for myself, and not another. Nor must the Spirit which helps us be called void*; for it is not a mere emptiness of earthy, but a fulness of heavenly things, such as love, joy, peace, and hope fiill of immortality, which we must seek from One who can uphold our steps in life. It is no blame to the man S4kya, that he fell short of giving these things, which were not his to give ; but such a salvation of the soul from sin in all its burthen and stain, and such a vision through the open gates of heaven of a perpetual Helper • See p. 10. M. r. 34 530 PRACTICAL EVIDENCES OP CHRISTIANITY. of our souls, is what mankind need, and such has been wrought for us by Jesus, the heavenly Messenger and Word of God. In Him the Divine Mind has become vocal ; and so He has brought us to a Creator and Lawgiver of all worlds, and a righteous Judge, but yet an eternal Saviour. Not from His own wrath, so much as from the evil which estranged us from Him, and from breach of the immutable laws against which our faithless- ness would dash itself. He ever rejoices to deliver those who call upon Him. Our sacred books which record this revelation of the Word of Grod made man, have all the characteristics which you thought miglit suit a Divine message. They are full of humane sentiment, not in formal theories, but brought out in simple precepts, wliich tell upon every man's life, and exempli- fied (as we see) in the conduct of those who utter them. Their doctrine is deep, since it opens mysteries which no speculation can exhaust, yet plain so far that children can act upon it. They bring before our eyes the first teachers of the faith of Christ working wonders in stirring men's minds, and throwing a new force into human motives on the side of good. Instead of doing violence, Christ and His followers suffered it.