"PREPARE YE THE WAY OF THE LORD!"
"Buddha's triumphant entry into Râjagriha (the "City of the King") has been compared to Christ's entry into Jerusalem. Both, probably, never occurred, and only symbolise the advent of a divine Being to earth. It is recorded in the Buddhist scriptures that on these occasions a "Precursor of Buddha" always appears. (Bigandet, p. 147.)
"WHO DID SIN, THIS MAN OR HIS PARENTS, THAT HE WAS BORN BLIND?" (John ix. 3.)
Professor Kellogg, in his work entitled "The Light of Asia and the Light of the World," condemns Buddhism in nearly all its tenets. But he is especially emphatic in the matter of the metempsychosis. The poor and hopeless Buddhist has to begin again and again "the weary round of birth and death," whilst the righteous Christians go at once into life eternal.
Now it seems to me that this is an example of the danger of contrasting two historical characters when we have a strong sympathy for the one and a strong prejudice against the other. Professor Kellogg has conjured up a Jesus with nineteenth century ideas, and a Buddha who is made responsible for all the fancies that were in the world B.C. 500. Professor Kellogg is a professor of an American university, and as such must know that the doctrine of the gilgal (the Jewish name for the metempsychosis) was as universal in Palestine A.D. 30, as it was in Râjagriha B.C. 500. An able writer in the Church Quarterly Review of October, 1885, maintains that the Jews brought it from Babylon. Dr. Ginsburg, in his work on the "Kabbalah," shows that the doctrine continued to be held by Jews as late as the ninth century of our era. He shows, too, that St. Jerome has recorded that it was "propounded amongst the early Christians as an esoteric and traditional doctrine."
The author of the article in the Church Quarterly Review, in proof of its existence, adduces the question put by the disciples of Christ in reference to the man that was born blind. And if it was considered that a man could be born blind as a punishment for sin, that sin must have been plainly committed before his birth. Oddly enough, in the "White Lotus of Dharma" there is an account of the healing of a blind man, "Because of the sinful conduct of the man [in a former birth] this malady has risen."
But a still more striking instance is given in the case of the man sick with the palsy. (Luke v. 18.) The Jews believed, with modern Orientals, that grave diseases like paralysis were due, not to physical causes in this life, but to moral causes in previous lives. And if the account of the cure of the paralytic is to be considered historical, it is quite clear that this was Christ's idea when He cured the man, for He distinctly announced that the cure was affected not by any physical processes, but by annulling the "sins" which were the cause of his malady.
Traces of the metempsychosis idea still exist in Catholic Christianity. The doctrine of original sin is said by some writers to be a modification of it. Certainly the fancy that the works of supererogation of their saints can be transferred to others is the Buddhist idea of good karma, which is transferable in a similar manner.
"IF THE BLIND LEAD THE BLIND, BOTH SHALL FALL INTO THE DITCH." (Matt. xv. 14.)