The testimony of Abbe Huc, a Romish priest, of what he saw in Tibet, is not to be doubted. “One cannot fail being struck with their great resemblance with the Catholicism. The Bishop’s crosier, the mitre, the dalmatic, the round hat that the great lamas wear in travel ... the mass, the double chair, the psalmody, the exorcisms, the censer with five chains to it, opening and shutting at will, the blessings of the lamas, who extend their right hands over the heads of the faithful ones, the rosary, the celibacy of the clergy, the penances and retreats, the cultus of the saints, the fasting, the processions, the litanies, and holy water, similarities of the Buddhists with ourselves. Besides, they have the tonsure, relics, and the confessional.” The Catholics, to account for these things, attribute them to the devil.
“Bad as he is, the devil may be abused,
Be falsely charged and causelessly accused,
When men, unwilling to be blamed alone,
Shift off their crimes on him, which are their own.”
Instead of the thousands of imaginary gods and semi-gods of the ancients, the Christian Church has its calendars of saints. In place of the oracles of mythology, the church has its priests, who presume to know all the purposes of the Almighty and to speak for Him. The old system in new clothes.
The Romish notion of purgatory and the use of the rosary is evidently derived from Tibet. Every Tibetan prays with his string of beads. The fear of a Buddhist is the six-fold existence after death. The long purgatory is his dread. Believing that he can pray off much of it in this life he keeps his whirligig praying machine going continually. In that country they have little grinding mills that are turned by the mountain streams and common to all the community. When a man goes with his grist to mill, he takes along a roll of paper prayers, yards in length. Having put his grain into the hopper, he winds the prayer around the mill shaft and turns on the water. He then smokes his pipe while his grain is being ground and his prayers repeated by water-power. Is not this much easier and as beneficial, as much of the church religious praying?
In Ladak there are long lines of walls on which prayers are inscribed. Walking back and forth along the walls each works off so much of the dreaded hereafter.
Do I believe that Jesus was conceived of the Holy Ghost? Not at all, any more than any other child. He was the son of Joseph and Mary, just as I am the son of my father and mother. My reason, my common sense, my sense of honor, and my deep reverence for Almighty God will not allow me to think otherwise. I cannot think of the Infinite God being born of a woman. Such a thought is most degrading, it degrades the character and being of God, and it degrades men to have such a thought about Him. If Jesus could be conceived in that way, why not others? This has actually been claimed again and again.
I read not long ago of a man and a number of women in a harem, not far from Chicago, in America. The women had children whom they claimed were all conceived by the Holy Ghost, and why not, if Mary could have a child in that way? The account says that some Christian people assembled in a church, made angry speeches, passed resolutions to bring the man and women into court, and some proposed to mob them and burn down the premises. The only charge against them was the claim of the supernatural conception of the women, as in every other respect they were irreproachable. These Christian people, whose very fundamental dogma of their faith is the unnatural conception of Jesus, attacking this first principle of their belief, is like thieves berating a thief for stealing.