This undeserved condemnation of the Jesuit Fathers is not the only error into which Prof. Müller’s dislike of Catholicity has betrayed him. On page 190, he speaks of the Buddhist ceremonies, and in a foot-note refers to the work of the Abbé Huc in which he describes his travels in China and Thibet, and remarks the curious coincidence between the rites of the religion of the Grand Lama and the forms of Catholic worship. Our author tells us that the Abbé Huc pointed out the similarities between the Buddhist and Roman Catholic ceremonials with such naïveté that, to his surprise, he found his delightful Travels in Thibet placed on the Index. We confess our surprise at this information. We never heard of the abbé’s work having been signed with “the black mark of Peter,” but we have heard the book very highly praised by persons who would hardly have praised it had there been anything in it to merit the censures of the church. We have too at hand a copy of the Index coming down to six years after the publication of the Travels in Thibet, but after a careful search have not been able to find in it the name either of Abbé Huc or of this work. Moreover, it strikes us as very unlikely that this writer should have suffered for what has been stated pointedly by authors of the church from the first ages down to our time. Had Prof. Müller turned his attention to Tertullian’s book, De Præscriptione Hæreticorum, he would have found at § 40 the following passage:
“Who is to interpret the sense of what may further heresy? The devil, forsooth, whose office it is to distort the truth; who rivals by the mysteries of the idols the very actions of the divine sacraments. He too baptizes some as believers and faithful; he promises the putting off of sin by the laver; and, if I remember aright, Mithras there signs his soldiers on the forehead, celebrates the offering of bread, and uses the image of the resurrection, and gains the crown through the sword (martyrdom). What shall I say more? that he destines his high-priest for the nuptials of but one (wife)? that he has his virgins? that he has his celibates? But if we consider the superstitions of Numa Pompilius, if the priestly duties, emblems, and privileges, the sacrificial service and instruments, and the vessels of sacrifice, and the strangeness of their expiations and votive gifts, has not the devil manifestly imitated the observances of the Jewish law?”
In the seventeenth century Natalis Alexander, in his Ecclesiastical History (vol. ii. diss. iii. art. 3, § 3, No. vii.) replying to the objections of Spencer, in his Dissertation No. 3 on the Ritual Laws of the Hebrews, says: “It is far more probable that the devil, the rival of God, inspired the heathen to use in the rites of their divinities, or to carry about with solemn pomp, arks or mystic vases containing something hidden (arcanum),” than that the Israelites took their idea from them; and further on: “Who does not see that the conclusion can be drawn by just and better right? Therefore, the beaten vases had their origin in the rivalry of the evil spirit seizing on all that was splendid in the worship of God, and turning it to his own worship.” There are besides several rites well known to have existed among the heathen after the coming of Christ that bear so close a resemblance to Christian and Jewish forms, that we are warranted in following those archæologists who attribute them to imitation of the usages of revealed religion. Take, for instance, the taurobolium or criobolium, or baptism by the blood of a bull or goat. In this ceremony the person undergoing it was placed in a pit with a kind of sieve over his head, through which the fresh blood of the animal was made to fall upon his whole body. What is this but the corruption of baptism, the idea of redemption through blood, and of the sprinkling with blood that took place by divine command in the old law? It stands to reason that as the Christian religion gained influence, paganism would, by seizing on what was marked in it and perverting it to its own uses, strive to regain its credit by an imitation which in some way would deceive the ignorant. Prof. Müller can see from this that Catholics are not unaccustomed to making such contrasts, and that they are far from fearing them. And as for the case in point, history tells us that St. Thomas evangelized India and very probably the countries adjacent to it, while we know that St. Francis Xavier, as narrated in his life, found decided traces of Christianity among some of the Indians, though they had not the priesthood. This being the case, we can readily comprehend how the followers of Buddha should have adopted many of the forms in use among Christians, even the recitation of psalms, which we know from the New Testament to have been in use among the apostles, who, we are told, “went out from the supper-room after reciting a hymn with their Master.”
Such are the remarks we have thought well to make in the interest of truth in regard to these volumes of Prof. Müller, which, aside from these objectionable features, are full of learning and of interesting information, imparted in an easy and elegant style. They will be of value to the scholar, especially to those whose occupations do not allow them to consecrate much time to researches such as those in which the professor is engaged. They will have the effect of confirming the believer in the truth of Christianity, and of making him thankful for the gift of a faith that has saved him from such fearful enthralment of mind and body as he beholds his fellow-men condemned to in the many forms of Eastern paganism. It is true those who are not favorable to positive religious teaching will wrest not a little of what is said to their own damage—a danger we have tried to point out. Still, the learned author will, after all, be justified in remarking that, if such be the case, it is but another exemplification of the fact that the serpent draws poison from the same plant from which the bee sips its honey.
TO WORDSWORTH.
Great poet, I have tasted and admired
These many years, but known thee only now—
With nine-and-twenty winters on my brow,
And much beside that oft thy page inspired.
I find in thee a freshness long desired:
And take thy song as migrant bird a lake,
Which first she shunn’d, yet could not all forsake,
Till, last, she nests there—never to be tired.
To nature I have ever turn’d with love,
But now more fondly, from the world of men.
’Twas erst for sympathy: with Byron then:
But now, with thee, religiously—to prove
The sweets of contemplation, and emove
In other minds high thought and holy ken.
May, 1872.