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"nothing; from nothing all things proceeded, and into "nothing all will return, and this is the end of our hopes. "There are several heavens or places of bliss, but the "summit of bliss is total annihilation and complete non❝entity or absorption."

Whereupon ten chosen quill-driving disciples set to work upon his biography, produced five thousand volumes of small talk, and this done, Buddha died, or rather, proceeded on his journey from nowhere to nothing, to be finally absorbed.

Ex nihilo nihil fit has some sense in it; but that out of nothing should come everything, to return to nothing again, certainly does seem to warrant a larger acquaintance with morals or sacred metaphysics than is generally thought necessary for a gentlemen's education in these days.

Dr. Thomson, in his journal of travels in India, remarks of Buddhism that:

"This religion is a jumble of metaphysics, mysticism, "moral precepts, fortune telling, juggling, and idolatry. "The doctrine of metempsychosis is curiously blended with "precepts and tenets very similar to those of Christianity, "and the worship of grotesque deities, and yet these images are not considered to be representatives of the highest "order of beings, or of Buddha himself, or of his manifes"tations."

In another place, when he speaks of this charming hypothesis of metempsychosis, he says that he saw "representa"tions of the dead passing through various transformations

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by creeping through a vessel shaped like a dice box ; at "one end of which was seen the head of a fish, &c., and at "the other, the legs of men undergoing the change."

The ancient trinity of Deity appears to have been originally made up as follows, First, the paramount Deity, or parent God; Second, his inspired prophet, or man God; and Third, the prophet's book. So that Deity, prophet, and sacred book constituted the "original trinity in unity." More than one writer remarks the extraordinary analogy that exists between the rites and ceremonies of Buddhists and Confou-Tszeans, and what appears in European

churches, and contends that although it is asserted by European authors that these forms of religion were introduced by the Jesuits who visited China, and introduced their ritualism some centuries ago, yet this is emphatically denied by the natives, who shew that they can prove their doctrines and practices back to the remotest ages. Jesuitism, as preached by such men as Ricci, doubtless moulded many grosser forms of idolatry into less monstrous rites, but still the basis of the entire system must have been there before him many ages.

The great principle of evil, the spirit of malignity, or Qui, is represented as an immense black, hideous monster, who is supposed to exercise a pernicious material influence over human affairs, and this charming conception of a Deity is represented with horns, wings, cloven footed, tailed, and altogether presenting an appearance, that if photographed, would entitle the original to the appellation of a "ludicrously "hideous monster."

In China, amongst a large number of sects of all sorts, three chief religions prevail: Buddhism, the worship of Fo, imported from India: the worship of Taosze, or Laotze, by spirit-rapping savans, mystical, and magic working folks; and the religion of Confucius.

The Buddhists are said to approach nearest to European standards of orthodox religious performances; though differing very little from Thibetan head quarters. The Chinese Buddha is a trinity, consisting of Boodh past, present, and future, together with a smaller fry of gods and godly saints too numerous to describe. The religion has much to do with large praying performances. Indeed it is very confidently asserted by one of their standard divines, that a very pious man, who can tell his beads up to four hundred thousand Ome-too-fows, has a sure and certain expectation of a personal interview with the principal Deity. They have also numerous nunneries dedicated to the goddess of mercy." This goddess of the nuns of mercy is the patroness of women attacked with the small pox, those who are enciente, and those who are never likely to have any

BUDDHISM NOT SAKYA'S PHILOSOPHY.

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family at all, rather an odd conjunction, but perhaps useful in practice.

One strong conviction forces itself into the mind of a student of Buddhism, that it is not proved that Buddha was the real author of all the rubbish imputed to him. Sakya has undoubtedly been served like all true prophets are treated. No sooner are they dead than a huge pyramid of mere verbiage makes its appearance as their work, and it would be as fair to charge Sakya with the authorship of the vast heap of lies and balderdash that bears his name, as it would be to charge Jesus of Nazareth with dictating the verbose platitudes of the fathers of ancient Christianity, or Moses with the talmudism and rabbinical meanderings of the Jewish doctors.

Buddhism is really nothing but a resurrection pie of a still older religion, perhaps Brahminism, which in its turn is the hashed meat of a still earlier tradition. Buddhism has apparently followed the stereotyped course of all theisms. A prophet rises up and proclaims one true God, and is an atheist to old religions. He departs, then half converted theologians edit his book, or invent one if he has not left one, and what with fining down, and colouring up, erasing here, cutting out there, together with general repairs and alterations, the unfortunate parent author would never be able to recognise his own begetting if it came before him. The new truth and the old form of error, and the mixed truth and errors of past traditional systems, all get mixed together, so that the teacher of the new philosophy would be puzzled to say what really was his work, if he was asked to select it from the rest. According to one of the many views of Buddha's history, it seems he was a royal prince, who turned ascetic, and polled his head. He goes under a positive dictionary of titles, as Gotama and Chakia Mouni. He is a thorough ascetic, practising all kinds of saintly duties required in monkish life, and claims to be, as one assumed or imputed title shews, "an extinguisher of the senses," and is said to be holy by his own merit, and consecrates himself his own priest, so he teaches certain sacred precepts, and ten commandments.

Then we hear of a fiercely contested theological row that was brewed in the sixth century, between Brahmins and Boodhists, Boodhism taking refuge in the Himalaya. The followers of Chakia Mouni in the flowery land have only a very moony account to give, though they kindly offer the use of their libraries, as if any body valuing sanity of mind, would be rash enough to wade through some score thousand volumes or tracts of their choice theological palaver.

It has been said of Buddhism that it is philosophically a paradox, because it resolves all natural phenomena into materialism, and that Sakya its founder ignored the existence of a supernatural power. To say the best of these assertions, they are one sided views, and by no means absolutely true. If Sakya ignored the existence of Deity it was only in reference to mankind's assumed knowledge that he did so, and the same denial of man's knowledge of God is applicable to Jesus of Nazareth, for he told both Samaritans and Jews that they knew not God; and in one of his recorded prayers, he says that the whole world did not truly know Him. If therefore Sakya's atheism was an absolute negation of all possible idea of God, equally so is the negation of the founder of Christianity. But neither one nor the other attempted to overthrow an old form of faith without substituting another and better one to take its place. Sakya's theism has perished; his atheism towards effete ancient theological systems, and his materialism, alone appears above the vast flood of human tradition that drowned the newer philosophy of active religious duty in the turbid waters of metaphysical mysticism.

The notion vulgarly ascribed to Sakya, that he supposed the universe had originated from nothing, and would return to nothing again, is a mistake. What he taught was apparently to this effect, that to the infantile human mind, all natural phenomena resolve themselves into material processes, of which the first cause is unknown, and all natural phenomena being necessarily material, there is nothing left for the human mind but to submit to the fate that material conditions impose upon it, and the fate so imposed is nothing short

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PROBABLE SIGNIFICANCE OF SAKYA'S "NIBBAN." 261

of this, namely, that as the human mind is an attribute of a material organization, the mind perishes or returns to Nibban," or the hell of nothingness, when the material body obeys the law of natural processes that necessitates the incessant subtle modification of material atoms.

This system of Sakya is supported by modern science. It amounts to this, that all natural force is material, and all natural or material force acts in time. Time therefore determines the form and disposition of all natural force. Every first or supernatural cause must be made, or become incarnate in natural or material forms and dispositions before it can in any way effect the human mind. Therefore the human mind neither is nor can in any way whatever be effected by a supernatural cause, but in all cases this cause is begotten into material or personal phenomena before it affects human consciousness.

Since all natural force acts in time, and since all natural force is a material one, it follows that all material force is modified by time, that is, time determines the form and disposition of all force; in other words it is the form and disposition of material atoms that vary, because absolute force itself neither is nor can be increased nor diminished. Time and force in this philosophy are convertible. And no force is ever lost, but the instant that the time of any force has run its assigned course it commences a transferred exertion in some other form or direction, so the action of any force produces an equivalent force of some different kind. In all these instances, where the form of the force varies in convertible shapes, it is the subtle modification or change of material atoms that is engaged in determining the form and disposition of natural force, and thus without matter there is no phenomena of any kind that can possibly have any effect upon the human mind. Here then was Sakya's atheism of supernaturalism, but it does not therefore follow that it was atheism to nature. To that theistic philosophy of which Sakya was a prophet it had a proper scientific bearing. This relation has perished in the bastard traditional edition that has been handed down to modern times, and which is really