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1 and 2; the iDook of Daniel was written about 164 or 166 years B. C. — that is, centuries after the exile; and many think it has a Persian origin, but the Essenes learned also from India, as we shall see. (7) The reader should notice that when the book of Daniel was written, the department of Hell had not been fully organ- ized; as the sinner was not then consigned to a furnace of fire, but only to everlasting contempt. 130 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES peared, thenceforward we have devils and Ilell and angels without number. Jesus, it would seem, was familiar with those doctrines in Tobit. The Persians and Jesus taught the resurrection of the body, but backsliders from Buddhism were simply excommunicated. The Essenes did the same. The Essenes taught that bodies are corruptible and imper- manent, but that souls are immortal and live forever; that the souls of the righteous when released from their bodies, as from a vile prison house, mount up- ward rejoicing, and reach a beautiful land beyond the great ocean, wdiere there is neither excessive heat, nor freezing cold ; that there they are fanned and refreshed continually by gentle breezes blowing from ofT the ocean, and there they live in immortal vigor. But the souls of the wicked, at the death of the body, are rushed off to a dark, tempestuous den, where they suffer a never-ceasing torment, (8) But here again the Essenes did not follow Buddha, for he taught transmigration ; that the wrong-doer, devoid of rectitude, is full of anxiety when he dies, and after his death is reborn into some states of dis- tress and punishment — a state of woe; that the well- doer, strong in rectitude, dies without anxiety, and after his death is reborn into some happy state in heaven. (9) (8) Josephus, Wars of the Jews; Book 2, ch. 8, sections 9 to 12. (9) Vol. 17, Sacred Books of the East, p. 100. There ar those who falsely state that Buddha did not teach of heaven for the just, or punishment for the wicked. They might just as truly say, that Jesus did not teach of a A QUESTION OF MIRACLES 131 The Buddhists did not offer bloody sacrifices; and the Essenes in that matter utterly rejected the old Mosaic ceremony and followed the Indian method. The Bhikkhus (monks) of India wore yellow gar- ments and had everything in common; and here the Essenes followed them completely, except that their garments were white. Section 3. That doctrine or method of having everything in common, which the Essenes and Therapeutic learned from India, the Apostles and their followers adopted for a short time, but when Ananias held back a part of his possessions, the whole Jewish superstructure collapsed at once, and has never been heard of in Palestine since. (10) The Bhikkhus practiced a very severe asceticism ; so also did the Essenes and Therapeutse. We have al- ready seen that Buddha's teachings abolished slavery in India. The Essenes condemned it in Palestine. The Bhikkhus practiced the strictest rules of celibacy ; the Essenes and Therapeutse did not marry, but adopted children and reared them to their own modes of life and thought. The Bhikkhus rejected pleasure as an evil ; so also did the Essenes. The Therapeutae heaven for the just. Buddha taught a re-birth for the wicked, where after a long period of discipline, they could have a new opportunity to gain heaven by good deeds. In other words, he gave the wicked another chance. What earthly — or heavenly — good to consign a wicked man to eternal flames'? Punishment should be, in the last analysis, to reclaim, to improve, to reform. An eternal punishment makes the punisher worse than the wicked- est. (10) Acts, ch. 2, V. 43 to 45, and ch. 4, v. 32 to 35, and ch. 5, ▼. 1 to 10. 132 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES and Essenes believed in angels; so did Buddha and the Bhikkhus, but the former were careful to write down the names of their heavenly messengers, and they charged their proselytes under oath to preserve them. ( 1 1 ) The Buddhists laid great stress and emphasis on speaking the truth at all times ; and in this, also, the Essenes and Therapeutic followed them. Buddha preached the Gospel of love and peace, and Jesus afterwards did the same. Now it is but reasonable to believe that as the Buddhists preceded the Essenes by centuries in teach- ing their asceticism, their strict love of truth, their rejection of slavery, their community of goods, their fastings, their prayers, their vegetable diet, their aboli- tion of animal sacrifices, their belief in the immortality of the soul, their doctrine of angels, and that the souls of the wicked are punished after the death of the body, and that, moreover, there was a beautiful place called heaven where the souls of the righteous live in everlasting enjoyment; that it was wrong to do harm to any living thing; that riches were to be despised; that, in short, as all these doctrines were in the world and openly taught in India (12) centuries before the (11) Josephus, Wars of the Jews; book 2, ch. 8, sections 2 to 10. At the time of Daniel, 166 B. C, the Jews had only two angels, whom they knew by name — Michael, an Irish angel, and Gabriel, whose nativity is uncertain. (12) But some of these matters were not original, evt,A with the Buddhists; for a thousand years before Gotama came, the Brahmans, in their code, had set forth that no one must appro- priate (uteal) the goods of another, nor injure another in any ■way; that he who gave false evidence should be deprived of his Bight, shorn and tumbled into Hell. (Manu., ch. 8, eee. 93.) A QUESTION OF MIRACLES 133 Essenes or Therapeutse came, we must conclude, there- fore, that they were imported or learned from the Buddhists, possibly in part from the Persians. For when an invention is once in the world, either in re- ligion or anything else, no patent ought or should be granted to the later arrival. More especially is this true if those doctrines have been simply transplanted from some old faith, well rooted in a distant field, Judaism, we know, combated most of those things. (13) Section 4. Our next inquiry is as to the time when those religious doctrines were carried from India into Egypt and Palestine. The date is not absolutely cer- tain, but it is highly probable that Asoka's missionaries about 240 years B. C. led that peaceful crusade. It was a stubborn, prolonged contest, and bore fruit slowly, for the Jewish law punished apostates with death. Here may be found the reason why the Essenes claimed to hold to the law of Moses — it saved their necks ; for in truth they held to very few things in that old bloody Mosaic code. The Jews being a trading, trafficking people, thirst- ing for gain, lived mostly in cities. But the Essenes, with their more strict morals, were safer in the coun- try. They therefore became husbandmen, and it was Moreover, the Brahmans used water for purificatory purposes at least seven hundred years before Ezekiel wrote his chapter 36, T. 25 to 30, and eh. 37 or ch. 13, Zaehariah. (13) Ctesias, a Greek historian, wrote a history of India and her religion in the fifth century B. C. Buddha was then living. 134 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES perhaps a full century after Asoka's missionaries visited Palestine before they had gained numbers numerous enough to be designated as a rehgious sect. In stating that the Essenes of Palestine and the Therapeut?e of Egypt learned their rites from India, I follow that great classical scholar, the late Dean Mil- man of the English Church, who, after sifting all the evidence, was forced to the conclusion that Buddhist missionaries, 200 years B. C, were their original teachers. In fact, Babylon, long before Jesus' day, had been a hot focus of Buddhism. Syria was com- pletely permeated with it. (15) At this point I reach the enquiry : Were the Es- senes the vanguard of that great religious revolution inaugurated by John the Baptist and Jesus? Epiphanius says they who believed on Jesus were called Jessaie, or Essenes, before they were called Christians, either because Jesse was the father of (14) There are some \Yho claim that the Therapeutee and Essenes imbibed their doctrines from the Pythagoreans, as those people practiced celibacy, abstained from animal food, and at one time had a community of goods. Pythagoras was born about 586 years B. C, but his system was rather philosophical and political than religious.