MOHAMMED, BUDDHA, AND CHRIST.*

Ix a popular or semi-popular lecture we do not expect the strictly scientific treatment which we look for in a more exhaustive treatise, intended for the student who wishes to investigate the subject step by step by the rigid examination of facts and authori- ties. Much must be taken on the faith of the lecturer, and the end is attained if attention and interest have been awakened and thought suggested in a wholesome direction. The four lectures now before us, entitled Mohammed, Buddha, and Christ, were de- livered at the English Presbyterian College in London, and also at other places, by Dr. Marcus Dods, a minister of the Free Church of Scotland. The author seems to have selected Moslemism, Buddhism, and Christianity as typical or representa- tive examples of three leading phases of religious growth and belief, rather on the principle of analysing and discriminating be-

* Mohammed, Buddha, and Christ : Four Lectures on Natural and Revealed Religion. By Marcue Dods, D.D. London: Hodder and Stoughton. 1877.

tween their essential differences, than upon that which forms the aim of most of the able investigators of comparative theology, now• so numerous—the tracing of their mutual analogies and resemblances—though he is far from undervaluing such specula- tions, demonstrating, as they do, how profoundly rooted in our nature is the religious instinct. He does not trouble to combat the agnostic and sceptical theories of the present day, but assumes faith to be, in its higher forms, the completion and acme of humanity ; still less does he touch upon that worn-out scepticism of the last century which looked on all religion as a popular fallacy, nourished by the selfish designs of priestcraft. His sketch of the Mahommedan creed is a skilful generalisation. Its stern

Semitic monotheism, its God, all-powerful and wise, indulgent to human weakness, but making little provision for the approxima-

tion of man to the divine perfection,—the absence of the hopeful invitation, "Be ye holy as I am holy, perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect," are dwelt upon with clearness and force

Recent investigation has brought out with considerable clearness that the Semitic conception of God is essentially different from the Aryan idea. The Aryan races have everywhere shown a tendency to think of God, and to name Him through his works. They have recognised the beneficial influence of the sun and the rain, they have trembled before the hurricane, and feeling that these forces of nature were uncontrolable by themselves, they have either worshipped them, or have prayed to some spirit who over-ruled them. Their tendency has been to find and worship the Creator in the creature. The distinction between the two has been obliterated, and the interval between heaven and earth filled up. In the luxuriant mythology of Greece it is impossible to say where the divine ends and the human begins : gods become men, and men become gods. In the Pantheism of the Aryans of India it is as difficult to disentangle the human from the divine. And therefore, as has been observed, the idea of the Incarnation was akin to the Aryan conception of God ; but it was most repugnant and antagonistic to the Semitic mind, which conceived of God as the infinitely exalted Sovereign, which named its God, the Lord, the King, the Mighty One."

In harmony with this characteristic, Moslemism has ever been a religion of opposition, living and progressing by aggression, strong while in combat and flood, but stagnating when in repose..J This is one of its radical defects, and another is, that while it arose from the wondrous energy and enthusiasm of one extremely

ignorant man, among a semi-barbarous race professing an infinite variety of creed, from the lowest fetishism up to a travesty of Neoplatonic Christianity, and Talmudic rather than Mosaic Judaism, it proclaimed itself as final and complete. Unlike the

confessedly temporary and local creed and ethics of Judaism, it had no forward look, and did not place the mind in the attitude of expectation and hope. Its rapid success depended on the loose hold which the various faiths which it dispossessed had upon the minds of their votaries, who were at once terrified and dazzled by the brilliant conquests of its followers, naturally a fighting race. This was a mere analogue of what has often occurred in history when a new race has been possessed by the passion of being master, a furor which seized the Assyrians, the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, and the Goths, and in modern times, the French. Its propagation was helped by the extreme simplicity of its creed and observances, and in the case at least of the Semitic races, by a lingering predisposition to the simple old monotheism of patriarchal times, and to a certain extent, by the appeal which, as a religion in some aspects ethical, it made to the higher instincts of some, while its sensual Paradise was in accord- ance with the low development of others. Our author's remarks on the supposed influence of the Mahommedan faith on the Arabian and Moorish races, in the great outburst of intellectual activity in the eighth century, are judicious, and suggestive of views somewhat different from those commonly advocated ; but our space will not allow us to follow him in this, nor in his discriminating and graphic picture of the personality of the Prophet.

Buddhism is chosen not only in respect of its enormous numerical importance, but as the type of a religion which, in its original form, " can only by courtesy be called a religion at all,"—that is to say, a system of belief which, though profoundly ethical and professing to teach what is the summunt bon= for humanity, is virtually atheistic. The statement of its rise as a revolt against the oppressive ceremonialism and demoralising sacerdotalism which had gradually overlaid the original Pantheistic creed of Brahminism, according to the natural law by which these degrada- tions of religion often bring into existence beside them some system of theosophic speculation or mysticism (a phenomenon not alto- gether unknown in the history even of modern Christianity), and his sketch of the legendary career of Sakya-Muni are admirably written in relation to the purpose of the lecture, but probably contain little, either in fact or speculation, which is not known to most students.

The lecture on Christianity as "the perfect religion" is the complement of the other three. As a firm believer in revelation,.

that is, the revelation of Deity as a personal being, not only ruling, but loving, sympathising, and holding spiritual intercourse with the human spirit, and summoning it to become assimilated to itself, which is the true form of the supernatural longed for by the

religious faculty in man, the author holds that Incarnation is necessarily the central and essential idea of the highest and truest faith. Moslemism imagined a cold and distant ruler ; Brahminism, an impersonal Deity transfused throughout all forms of life ; but the unsophisticated cravings of the Hindoos demanded persona objects of worship and trust, and Brahminism, by a process at once

of elevation and degradation, fell into a varied idolatry. Buddhism began by a belief not very unlike some phases of modern Agnos- ticism—in its spirit of pessimism and almost of despair strangely reproduced in the writings of at least one distinguished leader of modern thought—and ended in like manner, by giving birth to a peculiarly degraded polytheism :—

" That religion is the best which gives us the highest idea of God and that idea of God is the highest which is at once the most satisfyingto. the intellect, most educating to the conscience, most quickening to the

spirit, and therefore, most influential on the conduct It is not pretended by any writer whose thoughts on this subject have been accepted as a distinct development of religious thought in this country, that there is any higher or worthier idea of God to be found in any religion than in Christianity. Nay, it is not pretended that there is any higher or worthier idea of God present to the mind of the most disciplined or spiritual teacher than that which was conveyed by Christ."

The central and essential idea of the highest religion being that of Incarnation, the fact that the religion possessing this central conception arose historically among a Semitic race, all whose in- stincts were adverse to that thought, affords a strong presumption that it was not of natural growth, the mere result of the Semitic- religions faculty. The Jews, indeed, were ever falling back into Ebionism and betrayed their natural tendency ; and the Semitic mind of the Arabian Prophet did not merely deny, but passionately revolted against the idea that Christ was Deity. Christianity not only gives us the highest conception of the supernatural, but also brings us into harmony with it. It sets forth as the supreme end of existence a complete personal union with God, by resemblance of character.

Such is a brief outline of the teaching of these lectures. Its general truth few reflecting Christians will doubt, and its elevating tendency nobody, Christian or unbeliever, will deny. To us this book is specially welcome, as an evidence, in addition to many others easily discernible, of a new outburst of earnest religious thought and sentiment, accompanied by a wide range of liberal culture and an honest freedom of thought, in the bosom of what has always been looked upon as the straitest branch of Scottish Presbyterianism ; and that there is a small portion of the Church of Chalmers and Guthrie which is not behind that section of the Anglican Church, which venerates the memory of Arnold and Maurice, and that school in the sister Establishment which con- tained Norman Macleod, and still rejoices in the possession of Tulloch. We have not been able to detect in this volume any direct statements which are opposed to the original confession of the Scottish Churches, but we are sure that, high as we believe its author's character stands, had it been written in the days when Irvine, Alexander Scott, and John Macleod Campbell ceased to be members of the Church of their fathers, its breadth of tone would have seriously endangered his position. If not actually " libelled," he would certainly have been handed over to certain brethren to be, in the language of his Church, "dealt with." We understand, indeed, that he has recently fallen under the censure of his Presbytery for the opinions contained (or at least for

his mode of expressing them) in a sermon which he published, and that, in deference to the recommendation of that Court,

he has withdrawn the sermon from circulation. The last lecture ends by quoting the words of a very different thinker,.

but they no doubt fully express Dr. Dods' own manly sentiment : —" The highest truth the wise man sees he will fearlessly utter, knowing that, let what may come of it, he is thus playing his right part in the world ; knowing that if he can effect the change he aims at,—well ; if not,—well alio, though not so well."