I asked, ‘What good did you expect to get by going through this task?’ He replied, ‘I hope I have laid up an abundant store of merit, which will last me for a long time.’
This, let me tell you, is a genuine Hindū notion. It is of the very essence of Brāhmanism, of Hindūism, of Zoroastrianism, of Confucianism, of Muhammadanism. It is even more of the essence of Buddhism. For, of all systems, Buddhism is the one which lays most stress on the accumulation of merit by good actions, as the sole counterpoise to the mighty force generated by the accumulation of demerit through evil actions in present and previous forms of life. Nor did the Buddha ever claim to be a deliverer from guilt, a purger from the taint of past pollution. He never pretended to set any one free from the penalty, power, and presence of sin—from the bondage of sinful acts and besetting vices. He never professed to furnish any cure for the leprosy of man’s corrupt nature—any medicine for a dying sinner[283]. On the contrary, by his doctrine of Karma he bound a man hand and foot to the inevitable consequences of his own evil actions with chains of adamant. He said, in effect, to every one of his disciples, ‘You are in slavery to a tyrant of your own setting up; your own deeds, words, and thoughts in your present and former states of being, are your own avengers through a countless series of existences.
“Your acts your angels are for good or ill,
Your fatal shadows that walk by you still.”
‘If you have been a murderer, a thief, a liar, impure, a drunkard, you must pay the penalty in your next birth—perhaps as a sufferer in one of the hells[284], perhaps in the body of a wild beast, perhaps in that of some unclean animal or loathsome vermin, perhaps as a demon or evil spirit. Yes, your doom is sealed. Not in the heavens, O man, not in the midst of the sea, not if thou hidest thyself in the clefts of the mountains, wilt thou find a place where thou canst escape the force of thine own evil actions[285]. Thy only hope of salvation is in thyself. Neither god nor man can save thee, and I am wholly powerless to set thee free.’
And now, contrast the few brief words of Christ in his first recorded sermon[286]. ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He hath anointed Me to preach good tidings to the poor; He hath sent Me to proclaim liberty to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound.’
Yes, in Christ alone there is deliverance from the bondage of former transgressions, from the prison-house of former sins; a total cancelling of the past; a complete blotting-out of the handwriting that is against us; an entire washing away of every guilty stain; the opening of a clear course for every man to start afresh; the free gift of pardon and of life to every criminal, to every sinner—even the most heinous and inveterate.
Still, I seem to hear some admirers of Buddhism say: We admit the force of these contrasts, but surely you will allow that in the moral law of Buddha we find precepts identically the same as those of Christianity—precepts which tell a man not to love the world, not to love money, not to hate his enemies, not to do unrighteous acts, not to commit impurities, to overcome evil by good, and to do to others as we would be done by?
Well, I admit all this. Nay, I admit even more than this; for many Buddhist precepts command total abstinence in cases where Christianity demands only temperance and moderation. The great contrast, as I have already explained, between the moral precepts of Buddhism and Christianity, is not so much in the letter of the precepts, as in the power brought to bear in their application.
Buddhism, I repeat, says: Act righteously through your own efforts, and for the final getting rid of all suffering, of all individuality, of all life in yourselves. Christianity says: Be righteous through a power implanted in you from above, through the power of a life-giving principle, freely given to you, and always abiding in you. The Buddha said to his followers: ‘Take nothing from me, trust to yourselves alone.’ Christ said: ‘Take all from Me; trust not to yourselves. I give unto you eternal life, I give unto you the bread of heaven, I give unto you living water.’ Not that these priceless gifts involve any passive condition of inaction. On the contrary, they stir the soul of the recipient with a living energy. They stimulate him to noble deeds, and self-sacrificing efforts. They compel him to act as the worthy, grateful, and appreciative possessor of so inestimable a treasure.