affairs of life, to the large cylinders used by lamas in the service of the great temples and those erected by the roadside to be turned by water or wind, we have what is, without doubt, the oldest religious symbol in the world, the sacred "wheel" which simulates the rotation of the seasons, the events of life, and the divine power.

The laxity of thought in religion, which is so prominent a feature in the Christian world, has its counterpart in this greatest religion of the East. "The Buddhist monks of Siam do not, as a rule, endeavor to make their sermons interesting. They are satisfied to monotonously chant or intone a number of verses in the dead language Pali, and to add an almost incomprehensible commentary in Siamese. Nor do their hearers care. Crouching on the ground in a reverential posture, they make merit by appearing to listen, and they do not believe that that merit would be one whit the greater if they understood the language of the preacher. They have been taught that 'blessed is he who heareth the law.'" It certainly would not require much imagination to establish a resemblance between this kind of devotion and that which distinguishes so many Christian congregations.

The resemblances between Buddhism and Christianity are not confined to the unreasoning faith of the followers or the well-known Catholic spirit of both religions; the symbols, the ceremonies, the worship, are strikingly alike. As Buddhism preceded the Roman Church by some six centuries, it is not unlikely that a great many of the forms of Christianity have been derived from it. "Father Bury, a Portuguese missionary, when he beheld the Chinese bonzes tonsured, using rosaries, praying in an unknown tongue, and kneeling before images, exclaimed in astonishment: There is not a piece of dress, not a sacerdotal function, not a ceremony of the court of Rome, which the Devil has not copied in this country!' Mr. Davis (Translations of the Royal Asiatic Society,' ii., 491) speaks of the celibacy of the

6

1 H. Alabaster: "Good Words," vol. XIII, p. 845.

Buddhist clergy, and the monastic life of the societies of both sexes; to which might be added their strings of beads, their manner of chanting prayers, their incense and their candles.' Mr. Medhurst (China,' London, 1857) mentions the image of a virgin, called the 'Queen of Heaven,' having an infant in her arms and holding a cross.' Confessions of sin are regularly practised. Father Huc, in his 'Recollections of a Journey in Tartary, Thibet, and China' (Hazlitt's translation), says: 'The cross,' the mitre, the dalmatica, the cope, which the grand lamas wear on their journeys, or when they are performing some ceremony out of the temple, -the service with double choirs, the psalmody, the exorcisms, the censer suspended from five chains, and which you can open or close at pleasure,—the benedictions given by the lamas by extending the right hand over the heads of the faithful, the chaplet, ecclesiastical celibacy, religious retirement, the worship of the saints, the fasts, the processions, the litanies, the holy water,-in all these are analogies between the Buddhists and ourselves.' And in Thibet there is also a Dalai Lama, who is a sort of Buddhist Pope. ** * The rock-cut temples of the Buddhists, many of which date back to two centuries before our era, resemble in form the earliest (Christian) churches. Excavated out of solid rock, they have a nave and side-aisles, terminating in an apse or semi-dome, around which the aisle is carried, ✶✶✶ and Buddhist monks (centuries before our era, as now) took the same three vows of celibacy, poverty, and obedience, which are taken by the members of the Catholic orders."

If the Phoenician navigators in the Mediterranean, eight hundred years before Christ, brought to the shores of Greece the knowledge of the arts of Egypt, the manufactures of Tyre, and the products of India and Africa, is it to be won

1 Thought to be derived from the still more ancient Egyptian myth of Isis and the miraculously conceived Horus.

The Cross is one of the oldest of religious symbols, found in Egypt and the East, thought to be derived from the ancient sex-worship.

"Ten Great Religions," Clarke, vol. I., pp. 139–142.

dered at that the religious forms and ceremonies of these early ages should have been gradually transplanted from one country to another? It is true that there is no recognized historical movement which indicates the growth of Christianity out of Buddhism; but is not the intercourse which is known to have existed between the ancient nations sufficient to account for the resemblance between their religions?

CHAPTER XX.

THE RELIGIONS OF GREECE, ROME, SCANDINAVIA, AND ISLAM.

Widely Contrasted Types of Religious Belief Showing Constant Principles of Development.

THE religions of ancient Greece and Rome are extinct. No living representative remains of the worshippers at the Acropolis and the Pantheon. The gods of these places are still an inspiration in art and poetry, but they have long since ceased to be regarded as divine. A just comprehension of the ancient mythologies, strange as it may seem, has been gained but recently. The difficulty in reaching the true significance of myths arises from the fact that the truths which they contain are so evanescent that they are injured by any thing short of the most delicate and sympathetic analysis. In mythology, analogy is strained to the uttermost, poetry is abused, symbolism overwrought, fiction overwhelms fact, and yet truth survives in the form of real thought and feeling throughout. To discover these truths, to discern the workings of the social heart and mind under these dense accretions of imagery, is the task of the student of mythology.

The Greeks had a wonderfully poetic cosmogony. Their intellectual vigor is declared by the endless details with which they worked out their imaginary surroundings. Where other nations were content with a few abstractions, concerning the origin of things beyond the reach of ordinary perception, the Greeks originated fable after fable to satisfy their inquiring minds, until they were surrounded with a world of semi-supernatural beings to which all phenomena were traced and by which every conceivable

experience was explained. "Love issued from the egg of Night, which floated in Chaos. By his arrows and torch he pierced and vivified all things, producing life and joy."

Ophion and Eurynome ruled over Olympus until they were dethroned by Saturn and Rhea. Then the rebellion of Jupiter against his father Saturn and his brothers the Titans was successful. The penalties inflicted upon the vanquished Titans involved the imprisonment of some of their number in Tartarus. Atlas was condemned to bear up the world upon his shoulders, and Prometheus, the divine sufferer, is chained to the rocks and at length delivered by the self-sacrifice of Cheiron. Jupiter divided with his brothers his newly acquired dominions, retaining the heavens, giving Neptune the ocean, and Pluto the realms of the dead. Jupiter was king of gods and men, and the earth and Olympus were regarded as common property. Juno (Hera), the wife of Jupiter, was queen of the gods, the stately peacock was her favorite bird, and Iris, the goddess of the rainbow, attended upon her. Jupiter bore the shield called Ægis, which was the workmanship of Vulcan, and the eagle attended, carrying his thunderbolts.

Vulcan (Hephæstos), the son of Jupiter, was born lame. Juno, displeased at his deformity, flung him out of heaven. A whole day in falling, he at last alighted upon the island of Lemnos, where, in the interior of his volcano, he commanded the Cyclopes workmen at the forge.

Aphrodite, the frail wife of Vulcan; Mars, the god of war; Phoebus Apollo, the god of archery, prophecy, and music; Venus, the goddess of love and beauty, and Cupid, her son; Minerva (Pallas Athênê), the goddess of wisdom, who sprang in full armor from the head of Jupiter, Mercury, the god of eloquence, science, commerce, and theft;-these usher in the long list of Grecian deities, a marvellous imaginative creation thronging with heroic personages the world of fancy in which this nation dwelt. Such explanations of the questions of existence are, no doubt, childlike; but none but the most intelligent children have such imaginations.