Oriental religions

“ How was it that the simple nature worship of the Indo-Aryans grew into the vast deposit of modern Hinduism, and developed those social customs which have become walls of adamant? How could Buddhism grow out of such a soil and finally cast its spell over so many peoples? What were the elements of power which enabled the great sage of China to rear a social and political fabric which has survived for so many centuries? How was it that Islam gained its conquests, and what is the secret of that dominion which it still holds? ”

“ All religions are Oriental, and with the exception of the Christian, their sacred books are all written in Oriental languages. The materials, therefore, for a comparative study of the religious systems of the world had all to be supplied by Oriental scholars. But far more important than those materials, is the spirit in which they have been treated. The sacred books of the principal religions of mankind had to be placed side by side with perfect impartiality, in order to discern the points which they share in common as well as those that are peculiar to each. ”

“ Archbishop Trench, in discussing the exaggerations from which a careful study of the Oriental religions would doubtless save us, says, "There is one against which we are almost unwilling to say a word. ”

“ By a peculiar irony of fate those controversialists are to-day in many instances our only aid in reviving the idolatry they attempted to destroy. Although the Oriental religions were the most dangerous and most persistent adversaries of Christianity, the works of the Christian writers do not supply as abundant information as one might suppose. ”

“ These mystic Oriental religions are profoundly Pantheistic; one life pulsing through all living things; one existence bodying itself forth in all individual existences; such is the common ground of those mighty religions which number among their adherents the vast majority of human kind. ”

“ But, you will say, since in the classic age philosophy also claimed to lead to morality through instruction and to acquaint man with the supreme good, why did it yield to Oriental religions that were in reality neither original nor innovating? ”

“ Certain it is, that the oriental religions which have encouraged this sublimity of devotion and self-annihilation in the Deity, have not been remarkable for the formation of a sound and vigorous type of moral character. ”

“ Rebirth into a new life, constant support of faith through membership in a sacred community and by religious services, confident assurance of salvation—these were the common characteristics of the oriental religions which go far to explain their hold on the Roman world in the early centuries of our era. ”

“ It is evident that the oriental religions became spiritualized in course of time, and that the various deities at least of Egypt and of Syria came to be conceived, in accordance with the dominant philosophy, in a henotheistic or pantheistic way. ”

“ It is the boast of the author of Esoteric Buddhism, that strange mixture of Western spiritualism with Oriental mysticism, that his system despises the tame "goody, goody" spirit of Christianity, and deals with the endless growth of mind. ”

“ It may conceivably be argued, says the modern man of the world, that after all those Oriental religions have not developed such virtues and graces as has Christianity. It may perhaps be argued that in time the religion of the West, if missionaries will persevere, will raise the Hindu higher than his own obscenities have succeeded in doing, and that the civilization produced by Christianity is actually of a higher type, in spite of its evil by-products, than that of the head-hunters of Borneo and the bloody savages of Africa. ”

“ The all-pervading presence and potency of Confucianism are without parallel among Oriental religions. There are those who account for its predominant position and its abiding character by denying its claim to be called one of the chief religions of the world. ”

“ Zoolatry was abandoned in the temples, but people continued to regard as divine the lion, the bull, the bear, and the fishes, which the Oriental imagination had seen in the starry vault. Old totems of the Semitic tribes or of the Egyptian divisions lived again, transformed into constellations. Heterogeneous elements, taken from all the religions of the Orient, were combined in the uranography of the ancients, and in the power ascribed to the phantoms that it evoked, vibrates in the indistinct echo of ancient devotions that are often completely unknown to us. ”

“ With such a conception of latter-day paganism, we may more easily understand its strength and the bitter rivalry between it and the new faith, as well as the facility with which pagan society, once its cause was proved hopeless, turned to Christianity." The Oriental religions had made straight the way. Christianity triumphed after long conflict because its antagonists also were not without weapons from the armory of God. ”

“ In contrast to the cold and formal religions of Rome, the Oriental faiths, with their hoary traditions and basis of science and culture, their fine ceremonial, the excitement attendant on their mysteries, their deities with hearts of compassion, their cultivation of the social bond, their appeal to conscience and their promises of purification and reward in a future life, were personal rather than civic, and satisfied the individual soul.... ”

“ The adaptation of preaching to the hearers of Asiatic lands is a task that may well make us thankful for every help that may be furnished us.... The missionary is far too apt to come from the West with exalted notions of his own superiority, and with a feeling of condescending pity for men who, perhaps, have pondered the deep things of the universe far more than he. Let him really master a philosophy like the Confucian, and he will better illustrate the Christian grace of humility, and be so much the better prepared for his work. ”

“ Not only were the gods of Egypt and Asia never supplanted like those of Gaul or Spain, but they soon crossed the seas and gained worshipers in every Latin province. Isis and Serapis, Cybele and Attis, the Syrian Baals, Sabazius and Mithra were honored by brotherhoods of believers as far as the remotest limits of Germany. The Oriental reaction that we perceive from the beginning of our era, in studying the history of art, literature, and philosophy, manifested itself with incomparably greater power in the religious sphere. ”

“ In the East one can live in quiet solitude, with no effort, close to nature. The representatives of all faiths wear ostentatiously their badges, pray in public, and no one sneers at all religions. Oriental faiths have no organization; there is no head of Hinduism, Buddhism, or hardly of Mohammedanism. There are no missions, but religion grows rankly from a rich soil, so the boy wrote three demands: a reasonable theory of the universe, a workable and working code of conduct, and a promise of something desirable hereafter. ”

“ The case of the early Britons may have been somewhat similar. The genius of most of the Oriental religions seems to have been opposed to foreign intercourse of every kind, the prohibition or systematic discouragement of which the priests doubtless regarded as one of their most important securities for the preservation of their influence and authority; and very probably such may also have been the spirit of the Celtic or Druidical religion. ”

“ Thus the exchange of products, men and ideas necessarily increased, and it might be maintained that theocracy was a necessary consequence of the mingling of the races, that the gods of the Orient followed the great commercial and social currents, and that their establishment in the Occident was a natural result of the movement that drew the excess population of the Asiatic cities and rural districts into the less thickly inhabited countries. ”

“ A specific reason for the study of the non-Christian religions is found in the changes which our intercourse with Eastern nations has already wrought. With our present means of intercommunication we are brought face to face with them, and the contact of our higher vitality has aroused them from the comparative slumber of ages. Even our missionary efforts have given new vigor to the resistance which must be encountered. We have trained up a generation of men to a higher intellectual activity, and to a more earnest spirit of inquiry, and they are by no means all won over to the Christian faith. ”

“ This great chimera changed religion as well as divination, its spirit penetrated everything. And truly, if, as some scholars still hold, the main feature of science is the ability to predict, [2] no branch of learning could compare with this one, nor escape its influence.
The success of astrology was connected with that of the Oriental religions, which lent it their support, as it in turn helped them. We have seen how it forced itself upon Semitic paganism, how it transformed Persian Mazdaism and even subdued the arrogance of the Egyptian sacerdotal caste. ”

“ Martin and Professors Legge and Douglas all insist that the sacrifices there celebrated are relics of the ancient worship of a supreme God. China is full of the traces of polytheism; the land swarms with Taouist deities of all names and functions, with Confucian and ancestral tablets, and with Buddhist temples and dagobas ”

“ In conclusion, there are many points in which Christianity asserts its unique supremacy over all other systems of which there is time but for the briefest mention. It presents to man the only cultus which can have universal adaptation. Christ only, belongs to all ages and all races. Buddha is but an Asiatic, Mohammed is an Arab and belongs only to the East. The religion or philosophy of Confucius has never found adaptation to any but Mongolian races ”

“ These ancient religions of the East are behind intrenchments, and they are prepared to make a desperate resistance. Those who have never come into close contact with their adherents, and discovered by experience the difficulty of dislodging them and convincing them of the truth of the Gospel, may very properly misunderstand the work of the foreign missionary and wonder at his apparent failure, or at least his slow progress. ”

“ A god, conceived of as being universal, received every mortal as his child. Whenever these religions had any relation to the state they were no longer called upon to support old municipal or social institutions, but to lend their strength to the [28] authority of a sovereign regarded as the eternal lord of the whole world jointly with God himself. In the circles of the mystics, Asiatics mingled with Romans, and slaves with high functionaries. ”

“ And there are thousands in India whom a Government education has left with no real faith of any kind, but whose pride of race and venerable customs is raised to a higher degree than ever. They have learned something of Christianity; they have also studied their own national systems; they have become especially familiar with all that our own sceptics have written against Christianity; still further, they have added to their intellectual equipment all that Western apologists have said of the superiority of the Oriental faiths. ”

“ Apostles of infidelity are sent out to heathen countries to gather weapons against the truth. Natives of various Oriental lands, once taught in our mission schools perhaps, but still heathen, are paraded on our lecture platforms, where they entertain us with English and American arguments in support of their heathen systems and against Christianity. Young pastors, in the literary clubs of their various communities, are surprised by being called to discuss plausible papers on Buddhism, which some fellow-member has contributed, and they are expected to defend the truth. ”

“ The salvation of the soul, which had become the one great human care, was especially promised in these mysteries upon the accurate performance of the sacred ceremonies. The rites possessed a power of purification and redemption. They made man better and freed him from the dominion of hostile spirits. Consequently, religion was a singularly important and absorbing matter, and the liturgy could be performed only by a clergy devoting itself entirely to the task. The Asiatic gods exacted undivided service ”

“ The secular papers of Japan present in almost every issue some discussion on the comparative merits of Christianity, Buddhism, Evolution, and Theosophy, and many of the young native ministry who at first received the truth unquestioningly as a child receives it from his mother, are now calling for men whom they can follow as leaders in their struggle with manifold error. ”

“ The Oriental mysteries, directing the will toward an ideal goal and exalting the inner spirit, were less mindful of economic utility, but they could produce that vibration of the moral being that caused emotions, stronger than any rational faculty, to gush forth from the depths of the soul. ”

“ In spite of the prestige that surrounded Eleusis, the word "mysteries" calls up Hellenized Asia rather than Greece proper, because in the first place the earliest Christian communities were founded, formed and developed in the heart of Oriental populations, Semites, Phrygians and Egyptians. Moreover the religions of those people were much farther advanced, much richer in ideas and sentiments, more striking and stirring than the Greco-Latin anthropomorphism. ”

“ The connection subsisting between the religious systems of ancient and distant countries presents many a problem difficult of solution. Indeed, their mythologies and religious rites are generally so distinct as to admit the hypothesis of an independent origin ”