And being a scholar, a traveler, and a sojourner among the Hindoos, and well versed in their history, no person ever had a better opportunity to know than he. We will hear this renowned author further. "In the Sanscrit dictionary, compiled more than two thousand years ago, we have the whole history of the incarnate deity (Chrishna), born of a virgin, and miraculously escaping in his infancy from the reigning tyrant of his country (Cansa). He passed a life of the most extraordinary and incomprehensible devotion. His birth was concealed from the tyrant Cansa, to whom it had been predicted that one born at that time, and in that family, would destroy him;" i. e., destroy his power. (Asiat. Res. vol. i. p. 273.) This writer also states that the first Christian missionaries who entered India were astonished to find there a religion so near like their own, and could only account for it by supposing that the devil, foreseeing the advent of Christ, originated a system of religion in advance of his, and "just like it." Stated in other words, he got out the second edition of the gospel plan of salvation before the first edition was published or had an existence. Rather a smart trick this, thus to outwit God Almighty.
With respect to the vast antiquity of the Hindoo oriental religion, which indicates it as being not only the source from which the materials of the Christian religion were drawn, but as being the parent of all the leading systems, with their three thousand subordinate branches which existed at a much earlier period than Christianity, we need only point to the deep chiseled sculptures and imperishable monuments enstamped on their time-honored temples, tombs, altars, vases, columns, pagodas, ruined towers, &c., which, with contemporary inscriptions, warrant us in antedating the religion of the Himmalehas far beyond the authentic records of any other religion that has floated down to us on the stream of time. The numerous images of their crucified Gods, Chrishna and Saki, emblazoned on their old rock temples in various parts of the country, some of which are constructed of clay porphyry, now the very hardest species of rock, with their attendant inscriptions in a language so very ancient as to be lost to the memory of man, vie with the Sanscrit in age, the oldest deciphered language in the world.
All these and a hundred corroboratory historical facts fix on India as being the birthplace of the mother of all religions now existing, or that ever had an existence, while the great workshop in which they were subsequently remodeled was in Alexandria in Egypt, whose theological schools furnished the model for nearly every system now found noticed on the page of history—Christianity of course included. So much for the unrivaled antiquity of the Hindoo religion. Now, the more important query arises, What relationship does ancient heathen or Hindoo Budhism bear to Christianity? What is the evidence that the latter is an outgrowth of the former? As an answer to this question, the reader will please note the following facts of history:—
1. Alexandria, the home of the world's great conqueror, was at one period of time the great focal center for religious speculation and propagandism, the great emporium for religious dogmas throughout the East, and a place of resort for the disciples of nearly every system of religious faith then existing.
2. In this capital city, comprising about five hundred thousand inhabitants, were established a voluminous library, and vast theological schools, in which men of every religious order, and of every phase of faith, met and exchanged religious ideas, and borrowed new doctrines, with which they remodeled their former systems of faith, amounting in some cases to an entire change of their long-established creeds.
3. In these theological schools the Jewish sect, which afterward became the founders of Christianity, were extensively represented; for, let it be noted, its first disciples and founders had all been Jews, probably of the Essene sect. "For a long time the Christians were but a Jewish sect," says M. Reuss' "History of Christian Theology." Alexander had, previous to this time (that is, about 330 b. c.), subjected the whole of Western Asia to his dominions, including, of course, "The Holy Land"—Judea.
4. By this act a large portion of the Jewish nation were transferred from their own country to Alexandria. And this number was afterward vastly increased by Alexander's successor, Ptolemy Sotor, who carried off and settled in that credal city one hundred thousand more Jews.
5. As the result, in part, of these repeated calamities, "the Lord's chosen people" were literally broken up. They lost their law, lost their leader and lawgiver, lost their language, lost the control of their country, the "Promised Land" which (they verily believed) the Lord had deeded to them in fee simple, and ratified in the high court of heaven, and had declared they should hold and possess forever. And finally they partially lost their nationality, being literally dissolved and broken up; and were finally almost lost to history—the ten tribes disappearing entirely.
6. The Jews had ever manifested a proneness for copying after the religious customs of their heathen neighbors, and engrafting their doctrines into their own creeds, as their bible history furnishes ample proof.
7. In Alexandria a very superior opportunity was afforded for doing this, excelling in this respect any previous period of their history.