ism was a combination of the ethical system of Buddhism with the theology of Judaism. The ascetic rules attributed in the synoptic gospels to Jesus were not original with him, but were mere repetitions of, and variations from, the teachings of Siddhartha, who meant them literally and established them in actual practice among his

bikshoos.

Such rules might do for some anchorites in Hindostan and Judea, but were not adapted to the wants of any large community, and were especially unsuitable for the Europeans, whose intellectual energy, industrial activity, political freedom, and martial spirit demanded protection for the rights of person and property. Asceticism forms no part of the common life of Christianity.

When Siddhartha died, the empire of Persia included not only Asia Minor, Judea, and Mesopotamia, but much of Hindostan. It brought Persians, Jews, Greeks, and Buddhists into intimate political relations for more than a century before the conquest of Alexander; and for centuries after his time those relations were equally intimate. Greek sovereigns, whose capitals were in Bactria and Afghanistan, ruled over considerable districts in the valley of the Indus, for several centuries. Menander, a Greek monarch, ruled over a thousand cities of Hindostan; and Buddhist tradition says he became a convert to Buddhism. One of the sacred books of that religion is a record of discussions in which he took part. About 290 B. C. Megasthenes, a learned Greek, who, as embassador from Seleucus I., visited King Chandragupta, at Patna, in the valley of the Ganges, wrote a book called Indica. Dionysius, another learned Greek, was embassador from Ptolemy II., of Egypt, to the son of Chandragupta. Seleucia, a city of 500,000 people under the

rule of a Greek aristocracy, maintained a large trade with India for more than two centuries. In the time of Augustus, the trade between the Mediterranean and Hindostan gave occupation to more than a hundred ships on the Indian Ocean. After the time of Alexander, a caravan of elephants to be used in war was sent nearly every year to Persia and Asia Minor from the valley of the Indus, and from that source came the elephants which Pyrrhus took with him to Italy in 281 B. C.

In the middle of the IIIrd century B. C., Asoka, who ruled over a large part of Hindostan, became a zealous Buddhist, and he sent missionaries to preach his faith in western Asia, Egypt, Cyrene, Macedonia, and Epirus. These missions and the intimacy of political and commercial relations between Hindostan and the Persian empire, the resemblances between Buddhism and Essenism, and the later origin of the latter, are sufficient to prove that it is a mere adaptation of Buddhistic ideas to the circumstances of Judea.

SEC. 540. Causes of Success.—The triumph of Christianity over the older faiths was due mainly to the superiority of its discipline. It was the first ecclesiastical organization to be a church, as we understand that word. Its congregational worship; its sacred ceremonies at baptisms, marriages, confirmations, confessions, absolutions, and burials; its teaching of the catechism; its systematic and comprehensive charities; its accumulation of wealth; its acquisition of all the important family secrets; its attraction for high oratorical and administrative talents; and the thoroughness of the discipline in which every member of the community was made subject to a supreme sacerdotal authority,—all these things contributed to a combination of influences to which no other ecclesiastical

organization of extensive dominion had ever made any approach. In the IIIrd century the Christian clergy had become the most thoroughly disciplined, the most influential, and the most remarkable priesthood the world had ever seen. They were men selected for plausible and fluent speech and administrative capacity. They were educated for their business. They They were supported liberally. By the ceremonies of baptism, confirmation, marriage, confession, absolution, and burial, and by the supposed possession of the keys of heaven and hell, they had control over the secrets, the consciences, and the conduct of their followers.

Besides superiority over all other religions of the Roman empire in its discipline, Christianity was also superior to them in its doctrines. It was the only universal religion preached, or at least preached extensively; and the people were tired of national religions. Osiris, Baal, Moloch, Chemosh, Athena, Mars, and Zeus had been discredited. No national god was found to possess supreme power; no nation could prove that it had all the virtue and wisdom of the world. The ideas that there was only one God, who had no proper name, and that he looked with equal favor on all nations, had gained an extensive foothold before the time of Paul. Christianity was the first ecclesiastical organization that preached these doctrines distinctly and urged them forcibly upon the attention of all the people of the Roman empire. The educated classes were tired of worship by sacrifice, tired of a worship without didactic influence, tired of hereditary priests, and tired of disconnected temples dedicated to numerous gods. They were glad to find refuge from them in Christianity.

The dogmas of Christianity, with their explanation of

the relations between God and man, are more comprehensive than those of any other ecclesiastical system. They impress the common mind. They furnish an abundant stock of positive and plausible assertions, which the ordinary heathen could not disprove, and to which he could not reply effectively. They supply abundant material for the talk of the missionary who finds that fluency and confidence in himself are two of the chief elements of success.

In the pagan religions, the sacerdotal power was hampered by the hereditary transmission of office, by the ceremonial character of the worship, by the worldliness of the priesthood, and by the lack of hierarchical organization. Among the Christians, on the other hand, the ablest young men were selected for the church, they were trained as orators and social and political managers, they were brought under strict disciplinary supervision, and they were supplied with large revenues.

The evangelists tell us that Jesus appealed to prophecy and miracle as evidences of his divine commission. But this testimony, when examined, has more weight against than for his claim. Most of the so-called prophecies to which he and the apostles called attention are passages which had not the least messianic meaning; and in cases of unquestionable messianic prophecy said to be fulfilled. in his person, as in regard to the blood of David and to birth at Bethlehem, we have reason to suspect that the only evidences of fulfillment are fictitious. The main purpose of Jesus in appealing to the prophecies must have been to convince the scribes, Pharisees, and lawyers among the Jews, and among these classes he failed completely.

The miracles are treated in the gospels as the chief

evidences that the Messiah had come.

When Peter ad

dressed the disciples at their first meeting after the final disappearance of their Master, he said that Jesus was "approved among you by miracles and wonders and signs, which God did by him in the midst of you." When the cities of Galilee were cursed for their unbelief, it was because they were indifferent to the "mighty works," the miraculous cures, done in their midst. When a blind man was brought to Jesus, the disciples, assuming that the blindness was the punishment for a sin, inquired whether the offense was committed by the blind man or by his parents. Jesus replied, "Neither hath this man sinned nor his parents, but that the works of God should be made manifest in him." That is, he was deprived of sight so that Jesus should have an opportunity of proving his divine authority by working a miraculous cure.

The miraculous evidence did not prove very successful. The brothers of Jesus refused to believe in him. On one occasion his friends suggested that he was a lunatic. He was driven out of Nazareth, the city of his residence. He made few converts in Chorazin and Bethsaida, the chief cities of Galilee. He complained that "a prophet is not without honor but in his own country and among his own kin and in his own house."2 The miracles reported in the gospels are extremely suspicious. Most of them are cures of bodily ailments in which disease and recovery might have been imaginary or simulated. The records of the miracles, instead of being written with full particulars by persons of high repute and published on the spot without delay in the common language of the country, lack all those essential requirements. The miracle worker believed that numerous diseases were caused by diabolic possession; and some of the most nota