I have a friend who is struck with the tale of how Buddha, wearing a Brahman’s form, when “drought withered all the land,” encountered a starving tigress with her cubs, and, in the unbounded pity of his heart, offered himself a sacrifice to their hunger. He says: “Here is a beautiful religion for me.” And yet he is not touched by the story of a Saviour who carried the burden of the pains and sorrows of many and died that they might live.
Disregard no good, wherever found. The human race must have its ideals. Thousands have felt what a famous man has expressed, that, were there no religion, men would of necessity invent it and worship a false idea. The religion of Mohammed is better than the idolatry of the Arab; the idolatry of the Arab was better than nothing. The races—each at its own stage—have been improved by their religions. The Scandinavian conception of Walhalla; the Ancient Oracle at Dodona, where the priests in gloomy groves caught the responses of Zeus from the whisperings of the sacred oaks; the ancestor worship of the Chinese, the system of symbolism in Egypt—all represented the struggle toward ideal life and the notion of retributive justice. With bowed head and reverential heart I would stand in the presence of any sincere devotion, the uplifting of the soul in prayer to the God of its faith; how much more in the presence of that worship which the best intelligence of the best races has accepted. And how often one misinterprets the real meaning of an alien religion. The “Light of Asia” gives a meaning to Nirvana never heard from the pulpit:
“Foregoing self, the Universe grows ‘I’;
If any teach Nirvana is to cease,
Say unto such they lie.”
Let young men learn as a common-sense proposition that, though creeds may change, though there may be frequent readjustments of theological beliefs, the religious sentiment is an essential fact of our nature, and has a meaning the depth of which they have not sounded.
The love of Art is necessary to the complete man. Whatever may be said of the cold, intellectual spirit, one attains a high standard of humanity only when he possesses a heart warmed and ennobled by a vivid conception of the Beautiful found in the rainbow, the color of the leaf, and the sparkle of the rill, works framed in nature and hung in God’s great art gallery—the universe. Man sees the real spirit shining through material forms, and architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and poetry follow. Noble thought and action, right and truth, all perfect things partake of the essence of Beauty. Art adds to nature; it casts a halo:
“The light that never was on sea or land,
The consecration and the Poet’s dream.”