Julius Smith

“ Nay, it affirms of God himself that he is the highest example of intense life, of intense personality, the great ‘I Am That I Am,’ and teaches us that we are to thirst for a continuance of personal life as a gift from him, nay, more, that we are to thirst for the living God himself and for conformity to his likeness; while Buddhism sets forth as the highest of all aims the utter extinction of the illusion of personal identity—the utter annihilation of the Ego—of all existence in any form whatever, and proclaims as the true creed the ultimate resolution of everything into nothing. ”

“ Before men can reach this goal, they must have passed through myriads of existences, many of these lives being spent in hells filled with all tortures. The hells of Buddhism are filled with terrors measured only by the wildest imagination, lasting through millions of years. Buddhism is a system in which there is no God to hear a prayer or speak a consoling word. Then what is worship under such a religion, if indeed it be a religion? The people and the yellow-robed priests fill the spaces before these several shrines, and there offer flowers and food to the images of Gautama. ”

“ Surely in this comprehensive list of contrasts the great scholar has shown that there is an immeasurable height of moral and spiritual philosophy, and revealed truth concerning God and man in the Christian religion that Buddhism never conceived. It has no excellence in moral precept that is not better stated by Christianity. Christianity sheds a broad, clear light on the way to find salvation from sin. Buddhism has no light, and no consolation. The human heart finds rest in the one, but the other can not bring a moment’s peace to any anxious or agonizing soul. ”

“ From the northern ridge they look upon the whole mountain amphitheater with its glorious lake “shimmering” in the sunlight, high-rimmed with its border of living green, while to the north, stretching hundreds of miles to east and west, rise the perpetually snow-covered Himalaya mountains. The picture, one of nature’s wonders,301 has few equals for inspiring beauty and grandeur combined. As the man looks through the rare, clear, mountain air, on peaks and range resting in quiet strength and majesty, he almost feels as if he was in sight of the eternal hills where God is. ”

“ The festival is still observed, but men do not throw themselves under the wheels. I have seen the great car, with its hideous idol, drawn past our mission-house in Rangoon, attended by thousands of Hindus, with all the noise and confusion of an Oriental procession; but there is no blood on its wheels now, and no crushed bodies are left in the street.
There was another even more terrible custom prevalent in India for ages, in which the Government had to interfere. It has for centuries been the custom of Hindus to give their little girls in marriage when tender children. ”

“ There will be a day when every pagoda will crumble down, every mosque and Hindu temple fall into decay, and Christian churches stand in their places, and Burma, as all other parts of this needy world, will be fully redeemed. In a brighter world there will be a time of rejoicing over the gospel triumphs, and all who in person or by proxy aided in the gospel victories in all the world, shall strike glad hands, like the old soldier, and say, “I was there and helped in the glorious work.” ”

“ Society itself could not exist if the fundamental teachings of Buddhism were observed. All innocent joys are prohibited among those who would attain to Nirvana. It makes self-destruction the highest aim of man. To cease to be born, and to extinguish personal consciousness, is set before its followers as the final goal to be sought. How can such a system, so opposed to all that men love, find millions of adherents? ”

“ As these meshes of the living net grow, they tighten into a hug that kills, first the vine and then the tree. Each in turn is devoured by the great parasite. Its net meantime becomes a solid wooden shell, reaching to the ground and lifting its crown high among the other giants; a tree made great by the death of two others; a tree and vine, each seemingly having as much right to live as this parasite that preys on other forest life. ”

“ To a temporizing conscience this is a very comforting doctrine.
Buddhism teaches that character and states of existence are determined finally by a man’s unaided efforts. Human nature in all lands takes kindly to such teaching. If men could purchase salvation at a price in payment or sacrifice of even life itself, there would be many applicants for eternal life, who will not receive it as a gift. Buddhism is very complimentary to self-conceit when it teaches that we need no God to enlighten us, no Savior to save us, but that we can recover ourselves. ”

“ During these months I thought of the anomaly of being presiding elder of a district so far away, being also a sick man, and yet so hard pressed were we all, that no other missionary could be spared from any field to take up the work that I would have so gladly laid down. It became apparent that I was not to meet with greatly improved health, even here. Bishop Thoburn was away in America, and while he is one of the most hopeful of men, he gave up all expectations that I would be able to go on in mission work in India. He had actually selected my successor in America. ”

“ Beyond this again, on the farthest horizon, are seen the rounded ridges of the Arracan Hills, about one hundred and twenty miles from Thandaung. In all this vast expanse of mountain, valley, and plain there is not one barren rood of earth. Mountains and plains, where not recently cleared, are covered with a tropical forest. Where there are cultivated fields, they are matted with luxuriant green of growing rice, or yellow with the ripened crop. ”

“ There are men of many years in the country whose moral worth has grown with a steady growth as the years have gone forward, and have made themselves a name that is a rebuke to every dishonorable or unclean life, and a tower of strength for themselves, and a mighty bulwark against popular evils that degrade their fellow-countrymen. These men, with their time, business sense, and their money, are always actively on the side of right and righteousness. No people have had more such friendships in India than the Methodist missionaries. ”

“ It is forever cropping up in the heart of man, as much in the West as in the East, as much in the North as in the South; forever reasserting itself like a pestilential weed, or like tares amidst wheat, forever blighting the fruit of those good instincts which underlie man’s nature everywhere. ”

“ There are many social distinctions made in Asia, most of all in Southern Asia, peculiar to the land, and the Government adds its official distinctions and social ranks. But when it comes to the law and its administration in protection against all oppression and injustices, these social conditions have no place. It appears to be true that in a Briton’s mind there are two places where men of all stations have equal rights—before a court, and at the sacramental altar in the church. Every man is protected in the exercise of his religious faith, and must not be molested by any. ”

“ There is nothing springing from sympathy, pity, or hope in this religion.
As these five well-fed priests sat on that platform, the broken-hearted widow, son, and daughters came forward, and bowed down and worshiped them. The bruised and broken human198 heart cried in anguish and must cry for help, and Buddhism offers only the worship of a yellow-robed priest! Buddhism has no God. It tries to crush all human pity. ”

“ But it is my purpose to set before the reader that wherein Buddhism is contrasted with Christianity, believing that Christianity, and it alone, satisfies the wants of any human soul. I have desired to show wherein Buddhism fails in all essential features to measure up to this need of man for a perfect religion. It is not intended to disparage any incidental good that Buddhism may possess, but to show the contrast with Christianity in its fundamental teachings. ”

“ Why a great beast with such strength, joined to such intelligence and self-possession, will submit to the feeble and often stupid man who sits on his neck, and work for man at all, is a marvel. But the transient visitor only sees the elephant working in the mills. This is only a small part of his task. He does all the heavy dragging of the logs to get them to the river from the forest where they are grown. ”

“ A system of inspection was at once established on all railroads and steamship lines throughout India and along its coasts. Every traveler, irrespective of race or rank, has been examined by medical experts. Yet in spite of this precaution the deadly scourge has insidiously worked its way almost throughout the empire. But still the Government grapples with the pestilence. One can feel something of its terrors when it is noted that ninety-four per cent of all who are seized by the plague die. Six hundred thousand have died of the plague in five years. ”

“ Characteristics of the Races of Burma The cosmopolitan character of the population of Rangoon has been given, and it is only necessary to add that all towns near the sea and on the railways have the same intermingling of foreign and native peoples. But there is a much greater preponderance of those races which are at home in Burma. As you go inland, of all the immigrants the most ubiquitous is the Chinese.
The Burmese are easily the chief people of Burma over any other race, native or immigrant, in any part of Burma. Indeed, they rank high among all peoples of Asia. ”

“ The Suez Canal is the natural dividing-line between the Western and the Eastern civilizations, between the cold Northlands and the perpetually tropical countries of Southern Asia. Looking westward and northward, you find energy put to practical account; looking eastward, you find lethargy and life no more aggressive that it must be to keep peoples as they have been for a thousand years. Westward you greet progress, but Eastward life has been stagnated for ages, and only stirs as it is acted upon from the West. ”

“ Crowding close together at the end of the ditch of fire, they wave their banners, chant, shout, and shriek until a frenzy possesses them, and then they plunge into the fire with their bared feet and legs! The first man to leap into the fire sinks more than half way to his knees in the fiery pit, and the next step also, and so through the ditch. As might be supposed, he plunges through as fast as possible with his greatest strides. He is followed in turn by every other of the twenty or more fanatics of his company. ”

“ When in the future the traveler comes to Burma and visits the pagoda, and when the resident passes through Rangoon’s streets, and is not pained with the vision of lepers begging at his feet, let them remember that for centuries these Buddhist lepers were spurned by their own race and countrymen, and that it was the Christian missionaries who gathered them into homelike asylums, there to receive loving Christian care. ”

“ We still had time to build a village out of the bamboo poles and thatch, out of which these cultivators’ houses are always made. This was rather a hopeful beginning, and we had assurance of twice as many people to follow.
Just at this time we met with an example of the careless disregard of a financial obligation often found in the Burman. His cool indifference to a promise, however well secured, is frequently refreshing in its audacity. The Burmans were to furnish all the cattle to work the land. We were to lay out no money whatever on the business features of the colony. ”

“ If a Burman asks for a piece of land, and a European, any Englishman indeed, asks for the same piece of land, the Burman will surely get it. One becomes more and more convinced that the policy of Government in India is to govern for the best interests of the Government. There is another great plan of Government to aid agriculture. The people of all parts of the Indian Empire are chiefly agricultural. They are like all Asiatics, great borrowers of money. They generally mortgage the crop by the time it springs out of the soil. The native money-lender demands as much as three per cent a month ”

“ Among themselves the Burmese have no caste system, except that of the pagoda slave, hence all kinds of work are honorable. But when the Indian, with his caste system, comes in and classifies life into the infinitesimal distinctions of respectability, and the reverse in all kinds of work whereby all domestic service is put under this caste system, the proud Burman refuses to be a servant! ”

“ In this matter it is well worth study, especially on the part of America, which has now to enter upon the rule of large and distant possessions. It is also to be noted that the wonder of England’s Government is that she has been able to allow of a diversity of Governments in her several possessions suited largely to local conditions, so that no two of her colonies are entirely alike, and yet she has been able to give protection, justice, and the largest measure of liberty to each country that the people are able to utilize for their own good. ”

“ But there is a sting, the more painful for its injustice, on the innocent child born of mixed parentage, when born out of wedlock, which in the cruelty of social speech attaches more shame to the innocent child than guilt to the heartless father. I have been led to believe that this injustice accounts for much of the supersensitiveness in the whole Eurasian community. Then they labor under the disadvantage often of having a very dark skin. It is a curious law of nature that the Eurasian child often has a darker skin than even his Asiatic parent. ”

“ The country is flat; but the quaint conical Bengali houses that line the shore, with their carefully-laid thatch roofs, the cocoanut and date palms growing in great luxuriance on the alluvial deposit of the river front, and the wide reaches of the rich rice-fields, through which the winding river makes its way, all present a picture of rare tropical interest and beauty. ”

“ Rice-growing is the one line of cultivation that characterizes the land of Burma. In India there are greater rice fields, because the rice lands are more extensive. But in India they cultivate other crops, and this even on the rice land. In India they frequently, if not generally, grow two or more crops on the same land in one year, or different crops on adjacent land at the same season. But the Burman grows one crop only, and that is uniformly rice. He is a rice-grower and a rice-eater. In the plains there is no other grain grown that is generally used for human food. ”

“ There are great questions of missionary policy to settle. A strong force of missionaries, adequately superintended by men who are acquainted with the work they superintend, is the least that can be asked in our missions. A close and detailed oversight of all mission interests, working out a far-sighted policy, which changes only by light that comes by actual experience in mission work, is of the greatest value. ”

“ Great ropes are drawn high up into the framework, where it is designed the coffin shall be placed before the burning. A procession is formed to bring the body in great state, with all kinds of symbolical banners and imitations of the sacred elephant. The casket is placed on these great ropes, and skillfully drawn into the tower of the structure. When the body is once in its place, the younger men hastily take up burning spears, as fire brands, and hurl them into the combustible material, and in an instant all is aflame. ”