Jesus withheld all explanation as to how evil came into the world. He dealt with it as a fact. He did not even theorize about the origin of evil. He taught, on the principle of his well-known saying, "He that hath ears to hear let him hear." "A careful regard to audience is traceable in his use of apocalyptic language about his second coming; it is to Jews only—the Twelve, or the high priest, or the Sanhedrin, or Nathaniel, the 'Israelite indeed'—that he speaks of cleft heavens, cloud chariots, and attendant troops of angels. With the Roman governor he avoids Jewish metaphors" (Encyclopædia Britannica, "Eschatology").
Both Jesus and Gotama must have realized the hopelessness of imprinting their so-called esoteric teaching (which underlay and intertwined with the ethical) upon the understanding of those who had not cultivated noumenal instincts. Gotama had need, even on his death-bed, to explain everything all over again to his closest companion, the beloved disciple Ananda. In how many ways Jesus endeavoured to convey the meaning of the kingdom of God to his hearers! Yet to this day how few have grasped a fraction of its import. The meaning must be felt rather than understood by the intellect. In fact, it is necessary to become a Parsifal to do so ("for not many wise men after the flesh are called"). Also, one must get as far as possible away from the bondage of the intellect, which handicaps one in the attempt. A full knowledge of such mysteries cannot be attained until the machinery of the brain is left a considerable distance behind; until ideas are no longer in positive connection with the neural vibrations of the brain. The clock cannot hear what is going on around it for the noise of its ticking. Plotinus says: "To reach the ultimate goal, thought itself must be left behind; for thought is a form of motion, and the desire of the soul is for motionless rest, which belongs to the One."
Neither Jesus nor Gotama committed themselves to writing; hence we are entirely dependent, in our judgment of the purport of their mission, upon the general tenour of communications vouchsafed to us by the special correspondents of their era. It is upon these synoptists and other recorders that people build their theories, and pile up interpretations in various very restricted senses.
But defining is truly dethroning in the cases of Jesus and Gotama. Like the dove in the Song of Solomon, they abide in the clefts of the rocks, in the secret places of the stairs. The suppliant can only satisfy his thirsty soul with an invocation: "Let me see thy countenance, let me hear thy voice; for sweet is thy voice, and thy countenance is comely!" Theism, Atheism, Deism, and many other 'isms must be cast out of our minds into the bottomless pit before we can hope to place our trembling feet within even the threshold of their presence. There, perforce, we must arrest our progress, lost in transcendent wonder. This, as Carlyle says, is worship in its highest sense.
No allusion was made either by Jesus or Gotama to the miraculous circumstances said to have attended their nativity; and, although there exist no data for the assumption that the historians of the latter were inspired writers like those of the New Testament, the messianic halo with which Buddhist tradition has encircled the figure of Gotama tends to bring together the personalities of the two reformers into closer pictorial relationship. But this blending of the portraiture cannot be taken in any sense as a help towards wheeling into line the psychological forces in the field of inquiry. Nevertheless, the interest attaching to these traditions as coincidental, and the consideration that the date of the Buddhist chronicles is anterior to that of the New Testament, render them worthy of brief notice.
M. Ernest de Bunsen[H] says: "Among a circle of Indians prophecies were accredited which announced the incarnation of an angel, called the Anointed or Messiah, who should bring to earth the Wisdom or Bôdhi from above, and establish the kingdom of heavenly truth and justice. He would be of royal descent, and genealogies would connect him with his ancestors. The 'Blessed One,' the 'God among Gods,' and the 'Saviour of the World' was, according to Buddhistic records, incarnate by the Holy Ghost, of the royal Virgin Maya, and he was born on Christmas Day, the birthday of the Sun, for which reason the Sun became the symbol of Gotama Buddha. To be like Gotama is to reach the ideal[I] which has been set to humanity, and to be like God. Salvation does not depend on any outward act, but on a change or renewal of the mind, or a reform of the inner nature, or faith in the innate guiding power of God, of which the celestial Buddha, incarnated in Gotama, was held to be the highest organ. The saving faith, therefore, was brought by, and centred in, the incarnate Angel-Messiah, the Saviour of the World. Salvation is by faith, and faith comes by the Maya, the Spirit or Word of God, of which Gotama, the Angel-Messiah, was regarded as the divinely-chosen and incarnate messenger, the Vicar of God, and God himself on earth. According to Chinese-Buddhistic writings, it was the Holy Ghost, or Shing-Su, which descended on the Virgin Maya. The effect produced by this miracle is thus summed up in the most ancient Chinese life of Buddha which we at present possess, translated between A.D. 25 and 190: 'If the child born from this conception be induced to lead a secular life, he shall become a universal monarch; but if he leaves his home, and becomes a religious person, then he shall become Buddha, and shall save the world.'"
Dr. Paul Carus, in his Buddhism and its Christian Critics, pp. 150-51, says: "According to the orthodox Buddhist conception, there is no doubt about it that the incarnation of Buddha, in the person of Gotama Siddharta, has passed away. Gotama has died, and his body will not be resurrected. But Buddha continues to live in the body of the Dharma—i.e., the law or religion of Buddha; and, in so far as he is the truth, he is immortal and eternal."
"The whole world may break to pieces, but Buddha will not die. The words of Buddha are imperishable."
The idea of the appearance of a periodical Messiah was extant throughout the Jaino-Buddhist times, thousands of years before Gotama Buddha entered upon his mission in the field of religious reformation. "Millions of Buddhists still believe that their Lord will come again to redeem his people, appearing as Maitri."[J] The twenty-three Buddhas who preceded Gotama—"the immortal saints universally acknowledged by the Jains as coming to earth in divers ages to aid and bless mankind"—have been recorded, with their names, fathers' names, and symbols, reaching as far back, it has been calculated, as 6,000 B.C. "The Blessed One said: 'The Buddha that will come after me will be known as Maitrâiya, which means he whose name is Kindness.'"
The conception of a mystical Trinity was introduced into both the Christian and Buddhist systems of belief at a late stage of their development. In the case of Buddhism it arose from the simple formula:—