Was Buddha God? Was Mahomet God?
The archdeacon does not believe in any miracles but those of his own religion. But if the spread of a faith proves its miracles to be true, what can be said about the spread of the Buddhist and Mohammedan religions?
Islam spread faster and farther than Christianity. So did Buddhism. To-day the numbers of these religions are somewhat as follows:
Buddhist: 450 millions.
Christians: 375 millions, of which only 180 millions are Protestants.
Hindus: 200 millions.
Mohammedans: 160 millions.
It will be seen that the Buddhist religion is older than Christianity, and has more followers. What does that prove?
But as to the reasons for the great growth of these two religions I will say more by and by. At present I merely repeat that the Buddhist faith owed a great deal to the fact that King Asoka made it the State religion of a great kingdom, and that Christianity owes a great deal to the fact that Constantine adopted it as the State religion of the Roman Empire.
We come now to the archdeacon's second argument: that the divinity of Christ is proved by the evolution of the Christlike type of character.