But to regard these teachers as men, only, is to divest them also of all the magical powers which a fond credulity has ascribed to them. A teacher who seeks converts to his religion by curing a horse, as Zoroaster is supposed to have done, or by changing a stick into a serpent, as Moses claims he did, or water into wine, as Jesus is believed to have done, instead of saving the world, degrades it. We insult our teachers when we ascribe to them miraculous powers such as walking on the water, multiplying, loaves and raising the dead. All the wonders of the world cannot make what is bad, good, or what is false, true. A teacher who has a falsehood which he wishes to pass for the truth may resort to a miracle; but why should an honest soul undertake to win converts by unintelligible performances? If physical and mathematical truth can, unaided, command universal assent, why should there be "signs and wonders" to maintain moral or intellectual truths? Moreover, if a teacher has power to stop the sun, has he not the power to make people see the truth without a miracle? If he can raise the dead, can he not lift the human mind out of error without the aid of extraordinary phenomena? Resorting to miracles to convert people, proves, not the power, but the despair of the teacher. He who can command followers relying solely upon the truth of his teaching is, and remains forever, a greater moral and intellectual force than he who is driven to surprise and bewilder his hearers before he can convert them. *
* To aim to convert a man by miracle is a profanation.
—Emerson
And now before we can make an estimate of the world's leading religions, we must try to arrive at some sort of an agreement as to what we would consider the greatest virtue, and what the greatest vice in religion.
There will be no objection, on the part of my readers, to the statement that the most heinous of all vices in any religion is cruelty. There is not a crime or an error which is not made worse by cruelty—or softened by the absence of it. Cruelty is the most inexcusable, the most inhuman, the most unreasonable, the most degrading, and the most deadly of the vices that human nature is heir to. Cruelty is consummate wickedness. It is the passion of the bad because it is bad. It is doing evil from pleasure, Think, then, what a serious thing it is for a religion purporting to be "divine" to recommend the halter, the fire-brand and the sword, for instance, against all who do not subscribe to its dogmas. With such a religion in force, it will not be necessary to invent a devil, for man, himself, under its influence, must develop into a fiend of hate and cruelty, withering all he comes in contact with, as the frost blackens all it bites.
It is admitted that there is an element of cruelty in almost all the religions of the world;—though of Buddhism it has been claimed that during its nearly twenty-five centuries of existence, it has not killed, much less tortured a single human being in the name of religion. That is certainly an enviable record. It should compel the hot flush of shame to the cheek of those persecuting Faiths which have shed enough human blood "to incamardine the multitudinous seas." As Buddhism is one of the numerically stronger religions of the world, and as it has helped to shape the beliefs and practices recommended by the more recent creeds, a brief examination of its fundamental doctrine would assist us in making an estimate of its moral worth and may be useful to this discussion. What is the teaching which makes of Buddhism a distinctive religion? Life is an evil, taught the Hindu reformer. To desire life is the acme of immorality according to this doctrine for it is to desire that which is evil. Desire is the soil in which spring up all the noxious weeds which choke to death the flower of happiness. To cease to desire is to conquer freedom from suffering. Salvation according to Buddhism consists in winding up and sealing forever the book of life, leaving not the remotest possibility for any fresh life to spring up again. This pessimism, which while it has attractions for the speculative and supine Oriental, is justly abhorred by the creative and ever-youthful European. The important question is not, "Is life worth living?" but "How can life be made worth living, since live we must?" While therefore Buddha taught a scrupulous morality, while his own character stands out as one of the noblest, and while his teachings have made countless millions gentle and peaceful, nevertheless, there is in this mildest of religions, much that is positively harmful. The Buddhist conception of life with its blighting pessimism which recommends non-resistance to evil, has emptied a continent of its vigor and converted it into a desert. The teaching of orthodox Buddhism may be likened to the advice which a sea captain, driven by despair, might give to his men on deck—to sink the ship in order to escape the storm. Then again the Buddhist doctrine of reincarnation as an endless chain of nightmares, dragging man through unending births to "the vast void night," has caused untold agony of mind and body. This gloomy view has made life, for millions of people, a misfortune, love a crime, and the earth, a hell!
The believers in transmigration or reincarnation forget that the scientific view of man leaves no room for anything to migrate. What science understands by soul is the word which expresses the functions, including brain activity and the circulation of the blood. When these cease there is no soul to go anywhere. Neither could reincarnation produce the moral discipline claimed by its advocates. It is no punishment to return to the world in a lower form of life, since there is no memory, clear and ringing, of a former and higher existence. Moreover, the lower forms of life are more callous and not at all conscious of deflection from a better standard. If a cruel man becomes a tiger, it would be giving him a better chance to be more cruel. Unless the animal can remember his humanity, he can not be disciplined by a descent into a lower stage of being..
But the Buddhist hell, fearful though it is, is, fortunately, not everlasting. Over its gaping mouth is spread the rainbow arch of Nirvana, that is to say, deliverance for all from every form of suffering, in sleep—eternal sleep, which will, some day, according to this religion, fold an aching world on its cool and calm bosom.
The vice of Buddhism then is its exaggeration of the troubles of life—its deprecation of the opportunities for the pursuit of truth and goodness which life offers. By dwelling too long and too often upon the thorns, Buddhism becomes blind to the rose which is as real as the thorns. And again this Oriental teacher set up an unattainable ideal when he demanded the eradication of all desire from the human soul. Man can only change his desires; he cannot cease to desire. Not to desire is also a desire—a desire to be free from desire.
The virtue which we admire most in Buddha's doctrine is gentleness. Buddha is said to have been of all great leaders the most compassionate. He trembled to cause pain to the least of sentient things. The birds, the fishes, the crawling worms, as well as man, he looked upon as his brothers. Buddhism might be called the Religion of Pity. There is little doubt but that wherever Buddhism triumphed there war and persecution, two of the most abominable institutions of all time, practically disappeared.
It is with feelings of undivided admiration that I now come to speak of Confucius—the only Rationalist among the immortals of ancient times. If the other founders of Faiths owe their reign over the minds of men, in part at least, to the wonderful miracles attributed to them, Confucius, on the contrary, owes his increasing reputation to the complete absence of the supernatural from his life and doctrines. He has conquered the ages by his common sense. And his sanity assures for him a future which we can not safely predict for the others.