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All recruits to Jesus' standards were promised life everlasting in the long hereafter, if they remained faithful to his precepts (36) His twelve disciples were to sit upon twelve thrones, and eat and drink at Jesus' table; and likewise were to judge the twelve (33) Matt. 24: v. 34. Mark 13: v. 30. Luke 21: v. 25. Cor. 15 : V. 23 and 24, and 52. Eev., ch. 1 : v. 1. (34) Let us see about this. Mercury is thirty-sev^n millions of miles nearer the sun than the earth. It is, therefore, fifty-eight millions of miles from the earth to Mercury. As Mercury has six and a half times as much light and heat as our earth, and as water boils at 212°, IMercury is therefore about 100° hotter than water at the boiling point. That being so, it would seem that the saints would have rather a hot time, even while presiding over the twelve tribes. (Matt. 19: v. 28.) But how can Mercury break loose from its orbit? The Sun, that all-powerful magnet, holds it in place, as if chained by mil- lions of iron cables. Moreover, the sun himself is only a star, but he is one million four hundred thousand times larger than the earth, and five hundred times larger than all his satellites com- bined. Will he fall to the earth? or will this little earth fall into him? Whoever wrote Matt. 24: v. 29 and v. 3, was misled by Isaiah 13: v. 10, and Ezra 32: v. 7, and Joel 2: v. 10 and v. 31, and Amos 5, v. 20. Those early writers believed the earth to be flat and that the stars were only little twinklers just a small dis- tance above their heads; they had no conception of the distance and magnitude of the starry host. (35) Matt. 25: v. 31; Mark 8: v. 38; Luke 9: v. 26; 2nd Tim., ch. 2: V. 12. (36) Luke 18: v. 29 and 30. A QUESTION OF MIRACLES 277 tribes of Israel. (37) The wicked were then to be roasted in furnaces of fire ; but they still had teeth, for they could "gnash" them. (38) All those doctrines about the sim being darkened and the stars falling, and the punishment of the wicked, and the heavens for the saints, were in the world long before Jesus came. He only preached them anew, or, as it were, emphasized them. And the same rule holds against Gotama, as cen- turies before he was born a priestly code and iron- bound caste system was in full force. It was as hate- ful and unjust as the code of Moses, for it treated the unfortunate Sudra as rigorously as Moses treated the unfortunate heathen. Section 5. The old Hindu code was so strict that if a "twice born man" (39) even threatened bodily injury against a Brahmana he must wander, it is said, one hundred years in hell. (40) The Sudra under (37) Matt. 19: v. 28; Luke 22: v. 30. (38) Matt. 13: v. 38 to 43. (39) The ceremony of "twice born," or "second birth," was a solemn religious rite; the time of Savitri (invitation) of a Brahman, passed at sixteen years, and of a Kshatrya at twenty- two, of a Vaisya at twenty-four. A chord of Munga grass for a Brahman, a hempen string for a Kshatriya, and a woolen thread for a Vaisya, was placed over the left shoulder and under the right arm. Even after Savitri, he must study the Veda; must invoke the sun, morning and evening; and must lead a pure life. He must worship his food; eating it with concentrated mind. Tonsure was also practiced at Sax-itri. For women, the nuptial ceremony was sufficient. John, ch. 3: v. 5, says a man "must be born of water and the spirit," to reach heaven. The Hindus one thousand years before John, also used water in their religious rites. Did John copy them? (40) Law of Manu, 4, Sec. 165. 278 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES Buddha's teaching could rise if he obeyed the law. Yet Buddha's punishment of the wicked is like that of Jesus, awful beyond belief; but Buddha relieved his hells somewhat by his doctrine of transmigration. Whence came that old belief, or in whose brain it was born, no one can truly tell. It is thousands of years older than Pythagoras. (41 ) It was probably born in some old Hindu's brain ; but Herodotus thought it came from Egypt. On closer examination ethnology carries us back beyond Egypt, and points to Asia as its birthplace. "The cradle of mythology and the language of Egypt," says Bunson, "is in Asia. Sanscrit, five or six thousand years ago, was brought by migrating Hindus from India and planted on the Nile, and there became the root, or foundation, of the ancient Egyptian tongue. We know this from the numerous Sanscrit words used by the Egyptians." Such exact and w^holesale copying is never accidental. Sanscrit was their mother tongue. And with the language came also the belief in transmigration. But, like every belief and custom that is carried into new fields, changes and modifica- tions slip in. So it was in this case. The transmigration of the Hindu was a punishment or retribution for the sins committed in the body. For mortal sins the Hindu "passed a large number of (41) Pythagoras was born in Samos about 582 B. C. A QUESTION OF MIRACLES 279 years through dreadful hells" (42) ; and afterwards was born as a dog, or pig, or goat, or bird. For theft he was born a rat, or insect, or crow. The old Hindu belief was, that the soul that chiefly clung to vice was finally overtaken by retribution. But when its time of retribution was past, it again entered the goal for a new trial. The Egyptian belief was that the soul, whether good or bad, traveled through a circuit of animals, fishes, birds, insects, etc., and that this "circuit of the soul" is performed every three thousand years. (43) In short, transmigration in India was caused by sin- ful deeds : but in Egypt the soul transmigrated whether good or bad. Gotama found this old Hindu doc- trine venerable with age and undertook its over- throw by preaching assiduously the doing of such ac- tions as are righteous, by deed, word, and thought; that all conditions of the heart that are evil must be rooted out and destroyed (44) ; that whoever reached this exalted state was freed from the neces- sity of returning in the future into a mother's womb, and of being reborn into a new existence. Of course, transmigration is an ancient, exploded myth; but if it ever was visited upon the wicked as a retribution, is there any other or more effective remedy for it than (42) Manu. 12, Sec. 54 and following. (43) Herodotus 11:123. Manu 6, Sec. 61. Manu is pretty severe on a -woman who violates her duty towards her husband; for she enters the womb of a jackal, and is tormented by diseases for her sin. Mann 6, 664. (44) Vol. XVII, Sacred Books of the East, p. 112 to 114. 28o A QUESTION OF MIRACLES Gotaina's sensible teachings? Moreover, if Jesus ex- isted in the beginning ( ?), it does seem as if he ought to have interested himself to save Eve there in the garden ; for thus both hell and transmigration — fright- ful dreams — w^ould never have been heard of. CHAPTER XXIV Was it Resurrection or Was it Resuscitation? Section i. Here now we come to the parting of the roads. Buddha did not believe in a resurrection of the body; and he did not teach that wild and senseless doctrine. Neither did the Jews believe in it until after the book of Daniel appeared, shortly to be fol- lowed by Maccabees, which speaks of the dead being raised up unto everlasting life. ( i ) When Jesus came, he found that doctrine in the world, and he did not condemn it, but on the contrary he emphasized it, claiming that John the Baptist was Elias come back to the earth. (2) But the question is this: Was Jesus' mortal body resurrected ? That has been a disputed question for now nearly nineteen hundred years, and the controversy is not yet ended. Millions of good people firmly believe that his body was actually resurrected; and other millions, equally as good, stoutly deny it. (1) The book of Daniel was written about 166 B. C, and not, as Bible chronology has it, 606 B. C. Br. Ency., Vol. 6, p. 805, Edition 9, 2nd Maccabees 7, v. 9 to 36. Jos. Antiq. 18: 1, 3. (2) Matt. 11: v. 14; Matt. 17: v. 10 to 12; Mark 6: v. 15 to 16. Of course the sect of Sadducees did not believe in the resur- rection. (Matt. 22: v. 23; Luke 20: v. 27.) Neither did tht Sadducees believe in angels or spirits. Acts 23: v. 8. 281 282 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES It is objected that if the body of Jesus, when taken down from tlie Cross, was in fact a pale, gliastly, rigid corpse, it could no more come back to life than any other dead body.