It is very questionable whether any human analogy will enable us, even approximately, to fathom what are designated "the designs of Providence." Every example that I can at the present remember given by theologians is bad. Take, for example, the most common one which draws a comparison between God and a father, Ps. ciii. 13, "like as a father piti-eth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him;" Prov. iii. 12, "Whom the Lord loveth he correcteth, even as a father the son in whom he delighteth;" Heb. xii. 6, 7, "Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth." "If ye be without chastisement, whereof all men (are) partakers, then are ye bastards and not sons." These enunciate the idea that God, being the universal father, treats mankind as a judicious parent treats his offspring, and that as a child cannot at all times know why he is punished until many years have passed over his head, so human beings cannot tell, until they reach another world, why they were punished in this. To assist this assertion the text is quoted "What I do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter" (John xiii. 7.) If there be any truth in the analogy, it must follow that all who in this world "endure grief, suffering wrongfully" (1 Pet. ii. 19), are children of God, whom he is educating for a better world. If that, again, be so, then—when Christians persecuted Mahometans, Romanists burned Protestants, and Spaniards slaughtered Mexicans and Peruvians—it follows that the vanquished, and not the conquerors, were the elect of the Father. But this deduction directly opposes those promises said to be made to the Jews by Jehovah, viz., that victory should be the reward of their piety. As it is a poor system which declares that two opposite results come from the same cause, we must refuse to believe that both victory and defeat are proofs of a Father's love. I am quite aware that some reader may retort that a kind parent may punish one child at the same time that he rewards another. I grant it at once, but that only demonstrates, if it proves anything, that all creatures must be regarded alike as the offspring of the Creator, and that none are favoured peculiarly on the one hand, or are outcasts on the other.
As it is undesirable to mix political up with religious events, I refrain from drawing from history such illustrations as have frequently been supposed to indicate the will of the Almighty. The fall from power of Egypt, Tyre, Assyria, Babylonia, Persia, Greece, Carthage, Rome, Spain, are all supposed to have been caused by some special providential design. In like manner theologians draw certain deductions from the discovery of the New World, and the slaughter of the majority of its aboriginal inhabitants; from the Crusades; from the influx of the Turks into Christendom; and of the Moors into Spain. Some, whose imaginative powers overwhelm their reasoning faculties, see in the wars of recent times that final shaking of the nations, which some soi-disant prophet declares must precede the millennium, and the battle of Armageddon; vaccinators, and interpreters are as abundant and irrepressible now as ever they were. Their fundamental assumption is that God has acted as they would have done in His place. Now He is a sort of Irish landlord, a portion of whose property is overrun with pauper farmers, and He clears them away to make room for more sensible and wealthier tenants, as the Canaanites were removed to give place to the Hebrews. Now, He is represented as a parent, who hearing that a son has engaged in fight and been conquered, merely remarks "serves him right!"—the kind of comfort given to the Jews after they had been harried by the Edomite confederacy, and subsequently by the Chaldeans. Again, the same mighty Jehovah is represented as a Stoic, who remarks, when some mischance happens to those who are said to be his children, "Never mind, accidents will happen—through much tribulation you must enter into my rest, or the kingdom of heaven."
I entirely decline to adopt the profession of prophet and interpreter, contenting myself with increasing what knowledge I may have, rather than endeavouring to deduce from it theories whose weakness an hour may demonstrate; nor do I put faith in any one who adopts such a business.
For example, let us assume that two savage tribes, having gods of different names and shapes, go to war on the bidding of their priests—one is conquered and the other is victorious. The one attributes his reverse to the anger of his own deity, not to the power of the god of his enemy. The other imagines that he owes success to the influence of his protector and his superiority over his foe's fetish. A civilized on-looker, who believes that all the deities are devils and powerless, attributes victory and defeat to perfectly natural causes, e.g., superiority in weapons, tactics, numbers, or strength. It is clear that neither the deductions of the first nor second men are right; neither has read the mind of his fetish. So it is with the half educated theologians of our own day, who think and talk as glibly of God and Satan, as if they were personal acquaintances, who make no secret either of their deeds or their motives of action.
Once more we return to the Dhammapada and find,
248. "O, man, know this, that the unrestrained are in a bad state; take care that greediness and vice do not bring thee to grief for a long time." We do not here seek to find any parallel passage in the bible, but we turn to history, remote and collateral, and compare the priesthood of Buddha with that of Jesus. Does travel tell us of any set of teachers more self-denying than the individuals who devote themselves as religious Buddhists? Can history, on the other hand, tell us of any hierarchy more greedy and vicious than the Christian priesthood in the middle ages, and down to a comparatively recent period? We will not accuse them of vice, but even now is there in the whole world a more grasping set of men than those who have received what they term "holy orders" from the descendants of Jesus or of Peter? I trow not. If, therefore, a doctrine is to be known by its fruits, in one respect at least Buddhism is superior to that which we call Christianity, by which term I do not mean the exceptional practice of a few, but the general habits of the majority of the bishops, priests, &c., of Christendom. Once more let us contrast the doctrine of Buddha with the practice of Christians. He says—
Da. 256, 7. "A man is not a just judge if he carries a matter by violence; no, he who distinguishes both right and wrong, who is learned, and leads others, not by violence, but by law and equity, he who is a guardian of the law and equity, he who is a guardian of the law, and intelligent, he is called just." Our histories tell us of Christians persecuting Christians; Trinitarians endeavouring to extirpate Arians; Franciscans torturing Dominicans; of Jews slaughtered by those whose master said, "Father, forgive them;" we see brutal Spaniards exterminating, under the shadow of the cross, whole nations in the new world who had never harmed them, and in the old world we find Crusaders, under the guise of piety, murdering and robbing the dwellers in Palestine. There is scarcely a large town in Europe which has not witnessed the ferocious violence of Papal, yea, and Protestant, hierarchs. Even in recent times we have seen bishops and their congeners, in our so-called civilized nation, oppose violence, and the popgun thunder of excommunication, to a learned prelate, and to an humble priest. Judged by the standard of Buddha, our divines are unjust and unrighteous. I cannot discover any standard by which they can be regarded as "praiseworthy," except that embodied in the two sayings, "Get what you can, and what you get hold;" "Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise." We may say of such persecutors, in the words of the Dhammapada—
260. "A man is not an elder because his head is grey; his age may be ripe, but he is called old in vain," and many would at once be able, if they tried, to remember the names of some who, in a Christian community, have abandoned their principles, or their learning, as soon as they became bishops or elders of the church. I have no doubt Popes have done so. There is a saying, that however clever a man is, you make a fool of him by placing a mitre upon his head.
The following is, perhaps, more curious than our previous quotations, as it tells of the pre-Christian antiquity of a common Romish custom:—
264. "Not by tonsure does an undisciplined man, who speaks falsehood, become a Sramana; can a man be a Sra-mana who is still held captive by desire and greediness?" The Sramana is a word equivalent to our "priest," literally, "a man who performs hard penances" (see Dhammapada, Note 265, p. cxxxii.).