By him the heaven and earth, space and the firmament, have been solidly founded: he spread abroad the light in the atmosphere.
Heaven and earth tremble for fear before him. He is God above all gods!”
Rig-Veda.
[6] The mystical name formed of the three elements A U M, representing the three forms of the deity.
[7] Nirvâna—“a condition of total cessation of changes; of perfect rest; of the absence of desire, and illusion, and sorrow; of the total obliteration of everything that goes to make up the physical man. Before reaching Nirvâna, man is constantly being re-born; when he reaches Nirvâna, he is born no more.”—Olcott’s “Buddhist Catechism,” p. 32.
[8] We find one phase of this in the worship of ancestral tablets. These are of wood, a foot high, and bear the name of the departed ancestor, the hour of his birth, and that of his decease. They are worshipped twice a month with tapers and burning incense. Death is believed to liberate three spirits from the tenement of clay; while one of these occupies the grave, and another seeks the invisible world, the third is supposed to take up its habitation in the tablet erected by filial reverence. The accompanying engraving shows one of these ancestral tablets with its inscription in Chinese. (Read Du Bose’s “The Dragon, Image, and Demon.”)
[9] The two Chinese philosophers remind us of the two Greeks, not only by the moral tone of their teachings, but by their relative positions as master and follower. Nor were their respective eras widely apart; compare their dates—
The master, Confucius, 551-478 B.C.
The disciple, Mencius, 370-288 B.C.
The master, Socrates, 470-399 B.C.
The pupil, Plato, 429-348 B.C.
[10] Some hold that the Pentateuch was compiled by Moses from extant writings of an earlier period; others believe it to have been reduced to its present form at a much later date; while many theologians ascribe it all to Moses, except the part that relates to his death and a few interpolated sentences. Its authenticity as part of God’s Word has been disputed from time to time, and particularly in these later days; but neither Jews nor Christians doubt its inspiration, though they admit that in parts its meaning may have been misconceived. We have here to do with it, as with other parts of the Bible, simply as a literary work. (See Rawlinson’s “Historical Illustrations of the Old Testament.”)
[11] For example, the Book of Jasher, which appears to have been a collection of songs in praise of the just and upright—the subject of endless discussions.