The Metaphysic of Christianity and Buddhism: A Symphony

by D. M. Strong

Early in the introduction the writer says: "It is held that the celestial figure of the sweet Prophet of Nazareth is illumined with strange and unknown radiance when the light of Oriental faith and mystic devotion is allowed to fall upon it. It is a fact that the greatest religions of the world have sprung from Asia. It has, with some accuracy, been said, therefore, that it is an Asiatic only who can teach religion to Asiatics. In Christ we see not only the exaltedness of humanity, but also the grandeur of which Asiatic nature is susceptible."

In the following very plain terms he distinguishes Christ as the Logos of the Gospel of St. John, with which may be classified the "Bodhi," or Intelligence of the Buddhists: "He was the thought and energy of God. He was the plan of God. He was the light of divine reason and love, as yet involved within the great impenetrable. In that sense the whole universe was at one time merely the thought of the Infinite Being. And every one of us has sprung from the formless ocean of divinity that spread through all."

"John the Baptist," he writes, "had announced the kingdom of heaven. Jesus pointed to it. Pointed where?... He pointed to the kingdom of heaven in his own heart. He pointed to the inner sphere where his disembodied spirit communed with the eternal spirit of life; and, beholding God in him and himself in God, he exclaimed: 'I and my Father are one.'... He also beheld his brethren in him, and cried: 'Abide in me, and I in you.'"

This, the writer says, is pure Idealism, and Christ even idealized his flesh and blood, and administered them to his disciples as a sacrament.

Finally, this enraptured saint of Hindustan places before the reader two characters in illustration of the distinctions which may be said to exist between Eastern and Western conceptions of Jesus: "One of them is an elaborately learned man, versed in all the principles of theology. His doctrine is historical, exclusive, and arbitrary.... He insists upon plenary inspiration, becomes stern over forms, continually descants on miracles ... condemns men to eternal darkness and death. He continually talks of blood and fire and hell ... he hurls invectives at other men's faith.... All scriptures are false which have grown up outside of his dispensation, climate, and authority.... He is tolerated only because he carries with him the imperial prestige of a conquering race. Can this be the Christ that will save India?

"By his side another figure. He is simple, natural. He is a stranger to the learning of books. Out of the profound, untaught impulses of his soul he speaks.... His doctrines are the simple utterances of a fatherhood which embosoms all the children of men, and a brotherhood which makes all the races of the world one great family.... All nations respond to his mystical utterances about heaven and earth.... His self-immersed air, absent eyes ... which show that his spirit is far, far away, point him out to be the Prophet of the East, the sweet Jesus of the Galilean lake.

"Throughout the whole Eastern world the perfume of his faith and devotion has spread. The wild genius of Mohammed knew and adored him amid the sands of Arabia. The tender, love-intoxicated soul of Hafiz revelled in the sweetness of Christ's piety amid the rosebuds and nightingales of Persia. Look at this picture and upon that.... When we speak of an Eastern Christ we speak of the incarnation of unbounded love and grace; and when we speak of a Western Christ, we speak of the incarnation of theology, formalism, ethical, and physical force. Christ, we know, is neither of the East nor of the West; but men have localized what God meant to make universal."

Happily there is no need to substantiate the fact of the immense consolations derived by humanity from the Christian mode of regarding the past, the present, and the future, with all its dazzling possibilities, in the direction of a New Jerusalem; but it must, indeed, seem strange to those nurtured amid Christian influences that a religious system such as Buddhism, which does not recognize a God or Soul or Immortality in the Occidental sense of these terms, should claim to have as its product that cœur léger temperament which is said to be, and to have been, the distinctive characteristic of its countless adherents.

When the mind wanders afar from the dogmatic of the scholiast, the life of Jesus presents itself with a dramatic force of loveliness and grandeur which, of its kind, cannot be surpassed; and the poetic pathos of the New Testament, though not so resonant as that to be found in the pages of such works as Job and the Prophets, possesses a pastoral charm of its own at once soothing and stimulating.