And now, will you ponder these words of Arthur Lillie, M.A., the author of Buddha and Buddhism? Speaking of the astonishing success of the Buddhist missionaries, Mr. Lillie says:
This success was effected by moral means alone, for Buddhism
is the one religion guiltless of coercion.
Christians are always boasting of the wonderful good works wrought by their religion. They are silent about the horrors, infamies, and shames of which it has been guilty.
Buddhism is the only religion with no blood upon its hands. I submit another very significant quotation from Mr. Lillie:
I will write down a few of the achievements of this inactive Buddha and
the army of Bhikshus that he directed:
1. The most formidable priestly tyranny that the world had ever seen
crumbled away before his attack, and the followers of Buddha were
paramount in India for a thousand years.
2. The institution of caste was assailed and overthrown.
3. Polygamy was for the first time assailed and overturned.
4. Woman, from being considered a chattel and a beast of burden, was
for the first time considered man's equal, and allowed to develop
her spiritual life.
5. All bloodshed, whether with the knife of the priest or the sword
of the conqueror, was rigidly forbidden.
6. Also, for the first time in the religious history of mankind, the
awakening of the spiritual life of the individual was substituted
for religion by body corporate.
7. The principle of religious propagandism was for the first time
introduced with its two great instruments, the missionary and
the preacher.
To that list we may add that Buddhism abolished slavery and religious persecution; taught temperance, chastity, and humanity; and invented the higher morality and the idea of the brotherhood of the entire human race.
What does that prove? It seems to me to prove that Archdeacon Wilson is mistaken.
THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION WHAT IS CHRISTIANITY?
What is Christianity? When I began to discuss religion in the Clarion I thought I knew what Christianity was. I thought it was the religion I had been taught as a boy in Church of England and Congregationalist Sunday schools. But since then I have read many books, and pamphlets, and sermons, and articles intended to explain what Christianity is, and I begin to think there are as many kinds of Christianity as there are Christians. The differences are numerous and profound: they are astonishing. That must be a strange revelation of God which can be so differently interpreted.