Men, Women, and Gods; and Other Lectures

by Helen H. Gardener

* See Edward Clodd, F.R.A.S., "Childhood of Religions."
** "In the Gathas or oldest part of the Zend-Avesta, which
contains the leading doctrines of Zoroaster, he asks Ormuzd
[God] for truth and guidance, and desires to know what he
shall do. He is told to be pure in thought, word, and deed;
to be temperate, chaste, and truthful; to offer prayer to
Ormuzd and the powers that fight with him; to destroy all
hurtful things; and to do all that will increase the well-
being of mankind. Men were not to cringe before the powers
of darkness as slaves crouch before a tyrant, they were to
meet them upstanding, and confound them by unending
opposition and the power of a holy life. 'Oh men, if you
cling to these commandments which Mazda has given, which are
a torment to the wicked and a blessing to the righteous,
then there will be victory through them.'"
—Max Muller.
*** "In this old faith there was a belief in two abodes for
the departed: heaven, the 'house of the angels' hymns,' and
hell, where the wicked were sent. Between the two there
was a bridge."
—Ibid.

Professor Max Muller remarks: "There were periods in the history of the world when the worship of Ormuzd threatened to rise triumphant on the ruins of the temples of all other gods. If the battles of Marathon and Salamis had been lost and Greece had succumbed to Persia, the state religion of the empire of Cyrus, which was the worship of Ormuzd, might have become the religion of the whole civilized world."

In which case my Chicago friend would have asked, "If you destroy a belief in Ormuzd, and that he gave the only supernatural moral law to Zoroaster, how will children ever be taught what is right and what is wrong, and how can they ever know that it is not right to lie and kill and steal?"

"Their creed is of the simplest kind; it is to fear God, to live a life of pure thoughts, pure words, pure deeds, and to die in the hope of a world to come. It is the creed of those who have lived nearest to God and served him faithfullest in every age, and wherever they dwell who accept it and practice it, they bear witness to that which makes them children of God and brethren of the prophets, among whom Zoroaster was not the least. The Jews were carried away as captives to Babylon some 600 years before Christ, and during the seventy years of their exile there, they came into contact with the Persian religion and derived from it ideas about the immortality of the soul, which their own religion did not contain. They also borrowed from it their belief in a multitude of angels, and in Satan as the ruler over evil spirits." [So you see that even our devil is a borrowed one, and it now seems to be about time to return him with thanks. ] "The ease with which man believes in unearthly powers working for his hurt prepares a people to admit into its creed the doctrine of evil spirits, and although it is certain that the Jews had no belief in such spirits before their captivity in Babylon, they spoke of Satan (which means an adversary) as a messenger sent from God to watch the deeds of men and accuse them to Him for their wrong-doing. Satan thus becoming by degrees an object of dread, upon whom all the evil which befell man was charged, the minds of the Jews were ripe for accepting the Persian doctrine of Ahriman with his legions of devils. Ahriman became the Jewish Satan, a belief in whom formed part of early Christian doctrine, and is now but slowly dying out. What fearful ills it has caused, history has many a page to tell. The doctrine that Satan, once an angel of light, had been cast from heaven for rebellion against God, and had ever since played havoc among mankind, gave rise to the belief that he and his demons could possess the souls of men and animals at pleasure. Hence grew the belief in wizards and witches, under which millions of creatures, both young and old, were cruelly tortured and put to death. We turn over the smeared pages of this history in haste, thankful that from such a nightmare the world has wakened." *

The world has awakened, but the Church still snores on, confident and happy in the belief that she has a devil all her own, and that he is attending strictly to business.

Next we have Buddhism, which numbers more followers than any other faith. It is five hundred years older than Christianity. It has its prophet or Messiah who was exposed to a tempter,** and overcame all evil; its fastings and prayers; its miracles and its visions. Of Buddha's teachings Prof. Max Muller tells us that he used to say, "Nothing on earth is stable, nothing is real. Life is as transitory as a spark of fire, or the sound of a lyre. There must be some supreme intelligence where we could find rest. If I attained it I could bring light to men. If I were free myself I could deliver the world."

*Clodd, F.R.A.S.
** "Afterward the tempter sent his three daughters, one a
winning girl, one a blooming virgin, and one a middle-aged
beauty, to allure him, but they could not. Buddha was proof
against all the demon's arts, and his only trouble was
whether it were well or not to preach his doctrines to men.
Feeling how hard to gain was that which he had gained, and
how enslaved men were by their passions so that they might
neither listen to him nor understand him, he had well-nigh
resolved to be silent, but, at the last, deep compassion for
all beings made him resolve to tell his secret to mankind,
that they too might be free, and he thus became the founder
of the most popular religion of ancient or modern times.
The spot where Buddha obtained his knowledge became one of
the most sacred places in India."
—Clodd.

Buddha, like Christ, wrote nothing, and the doctrines of the new religion were fixed and written by his disciples after his death. Councils were held afterwards to correct errors and send out missionaries. You will see, therefore, that even "revisions" are not a product of Christianity, and that "revelations" have always been subject to reform to fit the times.*

* "Two other councils were afterward held for the correction
of errors that had crept into the faith, and for sending
missionaries into other lands. The last of these councils is
said to have been held 251 years before Christ, so that long
before Christianity was founded we have this great religion
with its sacred traditions of Buddha's words, its councils
and its missions, besides, as we shall presently see, many
things strangely like the rites of the Roman Catholic
Church."—Clodd.

I will here give a few of the wise or kind or moral commands of Buddha. If the first were followed in Christian countries we should be a more moral and a less superstitious people than we are to-day.