Topic: A question of miracles : parallels in the lives of Buddha and Jesus 1910

[Prometheus]

A QUESTION

OF

MIRACLES

PARALLELS IN THE LIVES OF

BUDDHA AND JESUS

A CRITICAL EXAMINATION of the SO-CALLED
MIRACLES SURROUNDING THE

BIRTH, LIFE AND DEATH OF BUDDHA
AND JESUS

AND THE ACHIEVEMENTS OF OTHER
MIRACLE-WORKERS

BIBLE MIRACLES HANDLED WITHOUT
GLOVES.

CONTAINS. IN CONCRETE FORM. THE ESSENCE OF THE

LIFE OF BUDDHA IN INDIA

AS SHOWN IN THOSE FAMOUS WORKS ON ORIENTAL
PHILOSOPHY AND EASTERN RELIGION

“The Sacred Books of the East”

BY

LOREN HARPER WHITNEY

OF THE CHICAGO BAR, AUTHOR OF

ZOROASTER, THE GREAT PERSIAN

SECOND EDITION

https://archive.org/details/questionofmiracls00whit


Arranged for publication in its present form, with new title page,
by DR. L. W. de LAURENCE, who is now sole owner of this wonderful work, the same to
now serve as "TEXT BOOK" NUMBER FOUR fcr“THE CONGRESS OF
ANCIENT, DIVINE, MENTAL and CHRISTIAN MASTERS"

PUBLISHED EXCLUSIVELY BY

de LAURENCE, SCOTT CO.

CHICAGO, ILL., U. S. A.

1910
THE NEW YORK

PUBLIC LIBRARY

309025B

ABTIl, LENOX AND
TH.DEN FOUNDATIONS
K   1945   L


Chapter I.

Chapter II.
Chapter III.
Chapter IV.
Chapter V.
Chapter VI.
Chapter VII.
Chapter VIII.
Chapter IX.

Chapter X.

Chapter XI.

Chapter XII.
Chapter XIII.
Chapter XIV.

Chapter XV.

Chapter XVI.
Chapter XVII.

Chapter XVIII.

Chapter XIX.

is t * •

The Wonderful Happenings in the
Life of Buddha.

Some Hebrew and Hindu Miracles.

The Miraculous Parentage of Jesus.

The Birth and Boyhood of Jesus.

Were there Miracles at Jesus’ Birth?

A Few More Parallels.

Buddha Seeks Religion in the Forest.

Buddha Rejects a Kingdom.

The Fastings and Temptations of
Buddha and Jesus.

Buddhism Known in Palestine Before
Jesus Was Bom.

Buddhism Known in Syria, Greece,
Rome, Before the Birth of Jesus.

The Miracles of Apollonius.

Buddha Against Brahmanism.

The Doctrine of Immortality in Pal-
estine and India.

Man a Protoplasm: The Corrected
Genesis.

Hindu and Hebrew Sacrifices.

Mode of Worship of the Jews: Wnat
Jesus Saw in Jerusalem.

The Heaven and Hell of Buddha and
Jesus.

The Doctrines of Jesus and Buddha.
 CONTENTS

Chapter

Chapter

Chapter

Chapter

Chapter

Chapter

Chapter

Chapter

Chapter

Chapter

Chapter

Chapter

Chapter

Chapter

XXI.   The Miracles at the Crucifixion of

Jesus.

XXII.   Contradictory Testimony Concerning

the Crucifixion.

XXIII.   Miracles in the Lives of Buddha and

Jesus.

XXIV.   Was It Resurrection or Was It Re-

suscitation ?

XXV.   The Miracles of Jesus’ Appearance to

the Disciples.

XXVI.   Death—or Syncope?

XXVII.   Matthew and Luke Take the Stand.

XXVIII.   John and His Curious Gospel.

XXIX.   Examination of Luke Resumed.

XXX.   Apocryphal Miracles as Recounted in

the Apocryphal Gospels.

XXXI.   The Apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus

Compared with the Canonicals.

XXXII.   More Apocryphal Miracles.

XXXIII.   The Apocryphal Gospel of Marcion

Compared with Luke’s Canonical.

XXXIV.   In Conclusion.
 INTRODUCTION.

Zoroaster, Buddha and Jesus were no doubt the
greatest religious teachers that ever lived.

As I have treated of Zoroaster in a separate volume,
I will here only add, that while most marvellous things
are told of Buddha and Jesus in these pages, yet in
some matters Zoroaster surpassed them both. For the
Persian Bible earnestly tells us that Zoroaster was once
so honored by Ormazd (God) that He actually sent
an Archangel to him, who told him to lay aside his
mortal vestments and visit heaven.

As Zoroaster approached the Iranian heaven, its bril-
liancy was so dazzling that there was no shadow there.

Ormazd (God) was on his throne, and he tells
Zoroaster that the first perfection of a Saint is “Good
thoughts; the next is good words, and the third is good
deeds.”

As all religions deal in the marvellous, is it any more
wonderful that Ormazd counseled Zoroaster than that
God talked to Moses and Abraham?

We shall be told in this book that an angel actually
held down the branches of a tree and thereby saved
Buddha from being drowned in the Ganges.

We shall be told that angels came and ministered

7
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

unto Jesus. So also we shall here learn that angels
frequently ministered unto Buddha.

Jesus, it is said, could actually walk on water. The
Hindu Bible tells us that Buddha, on reaching the Nar-
angana river, found it swollen beyond its banks; He
did not wait for a skiff or a canoe, but actually walked
on air, and crossed over dry shod. Jesus, it is said,
could raise his body up in the air, even after he had
been in his grave two or three days.

The Hindus insist that a star came down to wel-
come Buddha, and they name the identical star. In
Palestine, it is said, a star came and stood over the
place where Jesus was born.

Reader, this book gives you glimpses of your ances-
tors eight or ten thousand years back.

Loren Harper Whitney.

October i, 1908.
 A QUESTION of MIRACLES

PARALLELS IN

THE LIVES OF BUDDHA AND JESUS

CHAPTER I

The Wonderful Happenings in the Life of
Buddha.

Section i. It is becoming more and more apparent
every day, that at man’s advent on earth, he had
scanty knowledge of himself. In fact, he must have
looked about him and asked: Whence came I? He
knew within himself that he did not ask to come; he
found himself here, naked and compelled to battle with
the elements and the beasts of the forests for existence.
Later on, he no doubt questioned, as millions have
since done: How came I here; and what am I here
for?

At his coming, he must shortly have noticed that
he was less equipped for the struggles of life than the
wild animals of the woods.

Life was a mystery to him; and death he had never
teen. He had no language, for language is an inven-

11
 12

A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

tion, an acquisition. His food must have been gath-
ered from the roots and briers and brambles of the
forest. His couch was probably at the foot of a tree,
or by some friendly log. Such, in brief, was man at
his coming. But he possessed a brain that ultimately
gave him mastery over the beasts of the fields and the
fowls of the air. The sun gave him light and heat,
and the moon gave him light, and he was thankful to
them. They were his friends; he bowed down to
them, and at last worshiped them. Here was the
beginning of religion; man began to worship some-
thing that could do him some good. And that idea,
born perhaps twenty thousand, and probably forty or
fifty thousand years ago, has followed the race on
down to the present day. Man worships God, with
the expectation and hope that he will give him a
beautiful place on the eternal shores. But this also
must be said of man—his whole pathway is red with
wars, slaughter, brutality and misery. Even his
religions have reddened many a field. But the two
religions, Buddhism and Christianity, which today
almost control the destinies of the world, were not
in existence twenty-five hundred years ago. There
have been many old religions, which for a time flour-
ished, then faded, and finally passed away. Nor is it
probable that Mohammedanism can stand against the
softening influences of time. Christianity and Bud-
dhism now hold the stage, and it is doubtful if any
new-born faith can ever supersede them. Religions
teach of hells; but as time elapses, there is no doubt
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES   13

that the pains of the Hells, as originally taught, will
be somewhat assuaged.

Buddhism preceded Christianity by about five hun-
dred years. Its founder was Gotama, a Hindu Prince,
born in India about two thousand four hundred years
ago (1), not far from the foot of the Himalaya
Mountains.

The birthplace of Jesus, the founder of Christianity,
five hundred years later, was Nazareth, a little hamlet
in Galilee, sixty-five or seventy miles north of Jerusa-
lem. There are some who insist that Jesus was bom
at Bethlehem, a few miles south of Jerusalem. (2)

A man’s birthplace, however, has little to do with his
subsequent career.

History is full of well known names, in proof of
this; and we readily recall Alexander, Caesar and Na-
poleon; but those men were simply destroyers of their
race.

They rolled in blood; and not one of them has left
a single line or motto to improve humanity by pon-
dering it. Statesmen there have been whose names

(1)   There are those who maintain that Buddha was born 54$
years B. C. But the proof is not entirely certain. Besides, for
my purpose, a score or more of years beyond 500 B. C. is not
absolutely important.

(2)   Many people stoutly maintain that Jesus was born in

Bethlehem; because Isaiah, 750 years B. C., said a virgin should

bear a son. If the reader will examine ch. 7, Isaiah, he will see
that as Ahaz would not ask a “sign,” the Lord said he would

give him a sign, etc. Now if the sign was a virgin and a son, the

supposed happening in Bethlehem did not come about until 750

years later, and Ahaz died more than 730 years before the Beth-

lehem “sign*1 2 * * * * * * 9 came. However, as that matter is to be examined

In the body of this work, I will not extend this note further.
 14

A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

are written in many books, but most of them were
simply schemers, who planned and plotted to rob
other countries of their lands or liberties, or both.

Section 2. Buddha and Jesus were cast in vastly
different moulds from such men.

Neither Buddha nor Jesus sought self aggrandize*
ment. Nor did they use force to disseminate their
doctrines. Buddha’s teachings, as we shall presently
see, tended to ameliorate many hard conditions of the
human family. In short, he found the Sudras a
degraded, enslaved class: and his teachings brought
them freedom.

He treated them with kindness. He gave them
sympathy and love. Yet it took nearly 2,400 years
from Buddha’s day, before any statesman was found
with heart, brain and courage sufficient to write into
a great state Declaration, that “all men are created
equal.” And that statesman was Thomas Jefferson,
an American, born in a country of which neither
Buddha nor Jesus ever heard.

And a full century more elapsed before Abraham
Lincoln came forth, another great soul, who could
say to his people: “Let us go forward, with charity
for all, but with firmness in the right, as God gives
us to see the right.” The germs for these two quo-
tations are found in the Hindu bible and the New
Testament; and we shall find further along many
striking parallels in those two books, and in the lives
of the great Hindu and the great Galilean, as well.

The births of both Buddha and Jesus, if the records
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES   15

do not mislead us, were as extraordinary as their
subsequent lives were beneficent. Of Buddha it is
said he had been bom time and again in innumerable
kalpas (3); in every grade of life; yet through the
exercise of wisdom, patience, love and charity, he had
progressed upward, until as a Bodhisat, he reposed
securely in the Tusita, or fourth heaven.

But the earth was rolling in darkness; and that he
might bring salvation to man, we are told that he
voluntarily renounced his blissful abode in the Hindu
heaven, and became incarnate, to be bom a Buddha.
(4)

Whether it be true that a Bodhisat, when about to
be incarnated, can, or could, select his parents, his
time, and his country in which to be bora, also his
period of gestation, it is highly problematical; but if
Buddha made the choice herein mentioned, he was
both wise and fortunate. For at that time, 500 to
543 years b. c., Suddhodana, a raja, or prince of the
Sakhyas, held sway at Kapilavastu; an unimportant
place, fifty or sixty miles north of Benares in India.
The mighty Ganges rolled its waters a short distance
south of Kapilavastu; and here lived Suddhodana and
Maya, his Queen. Maya has a very remarkable

(3)   A Kalpa ia a vast period of time, equal to millions aad
millions of years.

(4)   The Hindus have seven heavens and the Tusita heaven
is the fourth. Our Gospels give us only three heavens. Paul
was eaught up to the third. (2 Cor. 12.) Jesus was carried up
into heaven (Luke 24, v. 51), and that, too, just after eating a
piece of broiled flah and honeycomb. (Luke 24:42.) However,
they eat and drink in the Jewish Heaven.)
 i6

A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

dream (5); and in that dream she sees a white ele-
phant hovering above her; then it vanishes, she hears
music, and beholds the devas (Hindu angels) scatter-
ing flowers about her, and she inhales their fragrance.

The seers interpret the dream, and tell her that it
means the descent of the Holy Spirit (Shing-Shin)
into her womb; and that the child to be born will be
an all-powerful monarch, ruling the world; or a
Buddha, whose mission will be to save all mankind.
When the Queen felt that her time was approaching,
she visited the garden of Lumbini, a quiet retreat,
where, it is said, with thousands of attendants and
amid flowers and fountains, her son, the future
Buddha, was born without pain, from her right side.
Angels sang for gladness, the same as they did when
Jesus was born (6) and many marvelous events tran-
spired, indicating joy at the nativity. Among other
things the star Pushya came down to welcome the
new-born wonder. It may have been the same star
that 500 years later came down and stood over another
young child, not far from Jerusalem. (7)

Section 3. The biographers of Buddha are even
more careless and extravagant in their statements

(5)   The reader should notice that in our Bible Joseph dreams
the dream. Matt. 1, v. 20.

(6)   Luke 2, v. 13.

(7)   The Hindus grow wildly extravagant about Buddha’s

incarnation and birth, and set forth that ten thousand world
systems quaked and trembled. But the most astonishing and in-
credulous thing of all is that a star should “come down,” either
in Palestine or India, to welcome either Buddha or Jesus. But I
will notice that wild statement hereafter.   ^
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

17

than Matthew and Luke; for they state that, at
Buddha’s birth, the earth was so severely shaken that
all the hilly places suddenly became smooth; that all
trees spontaneously bore fruit; that even dead trees
sprouted leaves and dowers; that great droves of lions
roamed about Kapilavastu without harming anyone,
being probably the same breed of lions that refused
to devour Daniel ( ; that the devas (angels) caused
a perfumed rain to fall on every part of the globe;
and that fountains of pure water spontaneously gushed
forth in the king’s palace; that tens of thousands of
angels thronged together in the air; and heavenly
music sounded entrancingly through all space. It will
not be very hard to believe the statement that the sun
and moon stood still at this event; because Joshua
had accustomed them to obey orders, some nine hun-
dred years before this, when he was down there having
trouble with the Amorites at Gilgal and Gibeon. (9)

Even the wicked were benefited by Buddha’s birth;
for we read that the terrors and pains in the different
Hindu hells (and the Hindus have many of them)
were assuaged for a time; and young children that
day, born deaf and blind, were at once restored to
sight and hearing. Moreover, the spirit inhabiting the
tree under which this wonderful child was bom, bent
down its branches in silent adoration. In short, if
the record sets forth the truth, some thirty odd super-
natural events occurred, to herald forth the greatness

(   Daniel 6, v. 22.

(9)   Joshua X., v. 10 to 14.

[Prometheus]

 18 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

of the occasion; the child himself adding to the
amazement of every one, by deliberately taking seven
steps, and declaring that he had been “bom to save
the world.” Mary at nine months, took nine steps. (io)

Heaven itself seemed willing to add to the joy of
the moment; for we are told that at the birth of
Buddha two pure streams of water, one warm and the
other cool, spouted forth and baptized the prodigy
without delay.

Malevolence and contentions for a time were ban-
ished from all minds; concord and good-will pre-
vailed; diseases cured themselves without medicine;
and if the angels (devas) did not shout “peace on
earth and good will toward men,” those Hindus pro-
claimed the same sentiment most vigorously. Mara,
the king of the evil world, alone objected. (11)

A seer of renown, in studying signs and portents,
predicted that the boy would either become a mighty
monarch, ruling empires in righteousness; or, as a
heavenly teacher, he would put an end to evil, and
bring universal deliverance to mankind.

Asita, another seer, at that time appeared before
the king, and said, “As I was coming on the Sun’s
way (12), I heard the angels in space rejoicing because
the king had bom to him a son who would teach the

(10)   Protevangelium, ch. 4 and 7.

(11)   Matthew, chap. 2, v. 11, says wise men brought gems of
gold and treasures. Buddha also has treasures and angels at his
birth. Vol. 10, 2nd part, Sacred Books, p. 123.

(12)   That is, from the East. In the days of Herod wise
men saw a star as they came from the East. Simeon visited Jesus
(Luke, 2:25,35). He was the Asita of the East.
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES   19

true way of emancipation from sin. Moreover, I be-
held other portents, which constrained me to now
seek thy presence.”

Asita thereupon examined the child, and finding nu-
merous birth marks foreshowing a wonderful career,
was observed to sigh and weep. The king, alarmed at
this, and thinking that the seer had observed that his
beautiful son must shortly die, besought him to forbid
it, for his father’s sake, and for the kingdom’s weal.
To this pathetic entreaty, Asita replied: “The king
desires that his son shall live, to inherit his wealth
and his kingdom. But his son is bom to bless all that
lives: he will forsake his kingdom; and he will prac-
tice austerities; he will grasp the truth; and as the
world is led captive by lust and covetousness, he has
been bom to open out a way of salvation.”

Thereupon, the seer, it is said, ascended into space
and disappeared. (13) When the child was ten days
old he was named Siddhartha, and the king ordered
a sacrifice to the gods; Samanas (priests) invoked
blessings from heaven; and, moreover, the king be-
stowed gifts upon all the poor, and opened the prison
doors and set all captives free.

But with all this rejoicing, there was one dark
cloud of sudden grief. Queen Maya, beholding her
son, with a beauty not before seen on earth, died of
excessive joy. Gotami, his aunt, thenceforth took

(13)   Hebrew writers enlarge on this, for Luke tells ns that a
anititude of angels appeared at Jens’ birth. (Lake 2, v. 10
to IS.)
 90 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

and nourished the child as her own. When old
enough, teachers were assigned to him; but at one
sitting, he surpassed them all. (14)

His father, remembering meanwhile the predictions
of Asita that the son was destined to forsake home
and kingdom, become an ascetic, and establish the
law of love and charity for mankind, sought to divert
him from his purpose with every possible worldly
allurement. Therefore, at the early age of nineteen,
he caused Siddhartha to marry his cousin Yasodhara,
the beautiful daughter of a neighboring prince.

Repressing all giddy conversation, he lived with
her a restrained, virtuous, and religious life. It is
said, “he bathed his body in the waters of the Ganges,
but cleansed his heart in the waters of religion.”

The years flitted rapidly by, and the old king was
overjoyed when Rahula, his grandson, was bom; for
he reasoned that Siddhartha would now abandon the
thought of becoming an ascetic, and devote himself to
the succession. Thus would the scepter be safely
handed down, and the glory of the kingdom be en-
larged.

Now if there be such an ungodly thing as predesti-
nation, or fixed fate, then, in Buddha’s case, that
doctrine had a firm root and grew and blossomed, as
never before or since. For at every turn his royal
father sought to allure him from his ascetic notions;

(14)   Jesus, at twelve, disputed with the scribes in the temple.
(Luke, ch. 2, v. 46 to 50.) It must not be forgotten that Asita
and Simeon are both ascetics; and both are represented as being
inspired.
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES   21

and to that end fixed beautiful gardens for him to
stroll in, musicians to charm his senses, and attendants
to anticipate his every want. But accident, or fate,
easily overcame all this; for one holiday, while riding
in his chariot, he saw at the roadside an old man,
bent and worn, clutching a stick to support his tot-
tering frame. (15) On reflection he knew, as all do
know, that life’s journey, from romping childhood to
wrinkled age, is but a steady tramp to an open grave.
Later on he saw a sick man, then a dead man; and
those objects chained his thoughts effectively. He
might well have said, “All flesh is as grass; and all
the glory of man, as the flower of the grass.” (16)

The king, knowing well that the beauty of woman
and her lustful arts, had brought many a proud spirit
to her feet, now enlisted that powerful auxiliary.
Graceful forms flitted about the prince, sweet faces
smiled upon him, and ravishing looks met him at
every turn. But the Prince remained obdurate. Then
some arranged their light drapery to catch his eye;
while others, half modestly, half amorously, with all
the little crafty arts that beauty is mistress of, strove
to move him. The prince looked on all this with a
clouded brow.

Then came Udaya, smooth of tongue, with argu-
ments unctuous yet deceptive, and urged him to get
pleasures from dalliance; for, said he, “Pleasure is the

(15)   This supposed old man was a deva (an angel) with
changed form to exhibit to the prince the certain lot of all flesh.

(16)   1st Peter, 24.
 as A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

foremost thought of all; the gods themselves cannot
dispense with it” (17) And he cited many cases
where great seers who had undergone long periods
of discipline, yet had been overcome by woman’s
wiles.

“If I were to consent,” replied the prince, “I should
defile my mind and body. It would be a hollow com-
pliance, and a protesting heart. Such methods are not
for me to follow.”

Section 4. The king, learning from Udaya that
all his arguments were unavailing, forthwith set about
devising other means to whet the prince’s appetite for
pleasure. The chariot and prancing steeds were again
brought forth; and, with a train of nobles, his father
sent him beyond the city to see if cool breezes and
charming scenes might not call away his thoughts to
lighter subjects. It was a fatal mistake.

For directly he saw the farmers working in the
fields, their bodies tired and bent, sweat streaming
from their faces, the oxen lashed to compel them to
draw heavy loads, and even young boys and girls
struggling to force from the earth a scanty subsist-
ence. Forthwith he dismissed his retinue; and, under
the shade of a Gambu tree, contemplated the whole
painful scene.

The prince beheld in miniature a picture of what is
transpiring in every part of the earth. Man, confined
on these dark shores, is a prisoner, doomed to trouble

(17)   Fo-Sho-Hing, Section 895,
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLJES

as

and death the day he is born. Neither pleadings nor
prayers will change that inexorable law. With here
and there a glint of temporary sunshine, the whole
world is pervaded with misery and sorrow.

While Gotama was thus pondering his course, it is
said an angel of the pure abode, transforming himself
into the likeness of a Bhikkhu (18) appeared before
him and said, “My name is Shaman, and being sad
at the thought of age,* disease, and death, I have left
my home to seek some way of rescue. I therefore
search for the happiness that never perishes, that heeds
not wealth nor beauty.” And, while he thus spake,
there in the presence of the prince, he gradually rose
in the air and disappeared in the heavens.

This is now the second time this unusual occurrence
has happened, and the reader will no doubt demand
some explanation of it. It is truly unique and un-
precedented; yet in Palestine people frequently as-
cended to heaven, but they generally had some means
of conveyance. Elijah was provided with a chariot
of fire, and horses of fire; and, moreover, he had a
whirlwind to give him a good fair start. (19)

(18)   After Buddha’s enlightenment, and when his ehurdi was
established, he made a rule that anyone desiring to become
Bhikkhu must first have his hair and beard cut off and put on
a yellow robe; he must then salute the feet of the Bhikkhus and
sit down squatting; then raise his joined hands and say, “I take
my refuge in Buddha, I take my refuge in Dhamma (the law),
I take my refuge in the Samgha (the church).” -This he repeated
three times.

Buddha, the law, and the church, were called the “holy triad.”
Afterwards this threefold declaration was abolished, and the
Samgha voted as to whether or not an applicant should receive
the ordination or be admitted therein*

(19)   Kings, cb* 2, v. 11.
 24   A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

And when the angel came to tell Manoah about
Samson, although he had no vehicle to make the
ascension in, the flames from off the altar (20) carried
him up without any mishap. In a very early affair, all
we have of the record is: “Enoch was not, for God
took him.” (21)

In Shaman's case, and in these others, just how
they overcame the law of gravitation I cannot tell;
and as Newton was not bom "to expound that law
until two thousand years later, the law does not seem
to have been in operation, at least in India and Jeru-
salem. I leave this matter here at present, but will
examine it further along.

Section 5. The prince, after seeing Shaman arise
and disappear in space, returned to the palace and
sought his father’s presence; from whom he begged
permission “to leave the world.” “Stop,” said the
father; “stop! you are too young to lead a religious
life. Take this kingdom’s government. Let me be-
come an ascetic. You should first win an illustrious
name, and when life’s flame bums low, seek the soli-
tudes, and devote the remnant of your years to relig-
ious duties.” (22)

“I will remain,” replied the son, “if you will grant
me life without end, no disease, nor withered age, and
the kingdom’s permanence.”

(20)   Judges, eh. 13, ?. 20.

(21)   Gen. 5.

(22)   It had long been the custom in India for the aged to
‘leave the world”—in other words, to close their lives as ascetics.
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES   25

“To ask such things provokes derision,” replied the
father, “for who is able to grant them ?” And forth-
with he ordered every avenue of escape guarded; and
sent for the nobles and all the illustrious of the king-
dom, to hasten and explain to his son the rules of
filial obedience.

All this, however, was of no avail. The decisive
hour in the prince’s career had struck. His doors had
been securely bolted, lest he escape; but a deva of the
pure abode, we are told, descended and unfastened
them. “That is something supernatural,” said the
prince; and forthwith he called Kandaka to quickly
saddle and bring him his horse.

The gates also, which were before fast barred, were
found to be broad open. (23) And while Kandaka
stood considering whether he would obey the prince’s
order, the horse came round of his own accord, fully
caparisoned for a rider.

This story, marvelous as it may seem, is not as
wonderful as that told of Peter, about five hundred
years later. Herod had arrested Peter and put him in
prison; and he was sleeping between two soldiers,
bound with two chains. And the angel of the Lord
(possibly Buddha’s deva) came, and a light shone in
the prison, “and the angel smote Peter on the side and
raised him up, saying: ‘Arise up quickly.’ And his
chains fell off from his hands. (24) And the angel

(23)   The Devas, in this instance, were probably some of the
Prince’s friends.

(24)   The twelfth chapter of Acts, quoted above, is believed
by many to be actually true, because it is so printed in the
 26   A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

said unto him, ‘Gird thyself and bind on thy sandals’;
and so he did. And he said, ‘Cast thy garment about
thee, and follow me.’ And he went out and wist not
that it was true which was done by the angel; but
thought he saw a vision. And they came unto the
iron gate that leadeth to the city, which opened to them
of its own accord, and they went out, and passed on
through one street; and forthwith the angel departed
from him.” Peter was now certain that the Lord had
sent his angel to deliver him out of the hand of Herod.

I think I ought to add that the Hindu record seems
nearer the truth than the Hebrew record. For the
former says the heavenly spirits caused the barred
gates to open, while verse io, Acts 12, says ‘‘the iron
gate opened of his own accord ”

The Hindu poet would have us believe that four
spirits held up the feet of the horse, lest his trampling
might alarm the castle; and that the Prince was
cheered on his way by a great concourse of angels and
Nagas (demigods) so that when the morning light
streamed up in the East the man and horse were three
Yoganas distant (about twenty miles).

In these cases is it not safer to believe that both
Peter and the Prince escaped solely by the help of
human hands? For how is it possible that Peter’s
chains could "fall off from his hands,” unless those
chains were unlocked or filed off? And four men, not

New Testament. But belief never makes a thing true. Moreover,
if the story of Peter and the angel had been printed in the Hindu
Bible we would discredit it entirely, at once. Are either of these
stories true?
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES   27

angels, no doubt managed the feet of Buddha’s horse
(padded them, probably) so as not to alarm the king.

God never does for man what man can do for him-
self. Moreover, it must not be overlooked that early
Hindu writers were fully as extravagant as were the
Hebrews, five hundred years later.
 CHAPTER II

Some Hebrew and Hindu Miracles.

Section i. As we have already encountered
miracles, or supposed miracles, and in the further
progress of this work shall be compelled to make
frequent mention of them, let us at once define and
illustrate that wonderful thing, a miracle. But first
let us notice that for nearly nineteen hundred years
past, no miracle, well attested, has ever taken place.
Hence the inquiry arises: Did there ever happen any-
where, at any period of the world, such a thing as a
miracle? And is there any miracle, at any period of
the world’s history, that is well attested?

What then is a miracle? It is a supernatural event,
contrary to the known or established laws of nature.
In other words, those laws must be set aside, or
annulled, for the time being, in order that something
contrary to them can take place. To illustrate: sup-
pose a man were to be decapitated, his head would roll
from his body, his blood would gush forth from his
veins and arteries, his body would soon become cold,
pale, rigid; you would be sworn that the body of such
a man was surely dead. But here comes a Thauma-
turgus, a miracle worker, who puts that man’s head

28

[Prometheus]

 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES   29

back upon that body, fills his veins with blood, causes
his heart again to beat, and breath again to come into
his nostrils. You would watch such a performance
with protruding eyes, and be amazed at the wonderful
transforming scene, if that man came back to life.
Now if such a thing could actually take place, under
careful observation, before a jury or concourse of
reputable persons known to be such, and the proofs
or verdict duly made and attested, we might reluc-
tantly give our assent. But not a single one of the
supposed miracles recorded in either the Hindu or the
Hebrew bible, took place under conditions such as
above indicated. Ignorant and superstitious people
readily give credence to supernatural wonders. Yet
God’s laws are the same and unchangeable, yesterday,
today and forever. But where a people for genera-
tions have been taught to believe in such things as
miracles, the slightest and most flimsy evidence will
suffice.

In the Hindu sacred books (1) we find the miracu-
lous story of Mendaka; who, when he wanted his
granary filled, would bathe his head, sweep out his
granary, sit down by the side of it, and cause showers
of grain to fall dmvn from the sky and fill his granary.
His wife was also possessed of very miraculous pow-
ers. She could sit by the side of a “pint pot
and vessel for curry” and dip and dip, and so long as
she did not get up, the vessel of curry was not ex-

(1) VoL 17, p. 121, Sacred Books of the East
 30 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

hausted. In fact, Mendaka’s whole family were very
miraculously endowed. Their son could take a small
bag of money and give to each serving man six
months’ wages, and so long as he held the bag in his
hand its contents were not exhausted. This easy and
comfortable way of meeting all of life’s wants soon
created such a commotion among the Hindus that
King Binbasara, so we are told, sent a minister to find
out about it. For even their slave was possessed of a
miraculous power, as when he plowed with one plow-
share seven furrows were turned over.

On reaching Mendaka, the minister made known
his mission, whereupon Mendaka bathed his head,
swept out his granary, and sat down beside it; when,
lo! to the astonishment of the minister, showers of
grain, so we are told, fell down from the sky and
filled the granary to overflowing. Mendaka’s wife
also exhibited her miraculous gift by dipping from a
pint pot until she fed a host of people.

We stoutly dispute this Hindu story because we do
not find it printed in the Hebrew bible. But many
people have no trouble in believing, and some are abso-
lutely certain, that Elijah, the Tishbite, who lived
some four hundred years before Mendaka’s time, pos-
sessed that same miraculous power.

Elijah, it seems, by the Lord’s direct command to
the ravens (2), was regularly fed by them, morning

(2) The raven is a carrion eater, and if it brought Elijah
some of its own kind of food, then Elijah’s bill of fare was hor-
rible indeed.
 3i

A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

and evening, until “the brook Cherith dried up”; then
the Lord told him to go to Zarephath, a little village
in Zidon, where he had commanded a widow woman
to support him.

On reaching Zarephath, Elijah found the widow
gathering sticks, and begged her to fetch him a morsel
of bread.

The woman replied, “I have put a handful of meal
in a barrel, and a little oil in a cruse, and I am gath-
ering these sticks that I may dress it for me and my
son, that we may eat it and die.” Elijah told her to
fear not, “for the Lord God of Israel saith ‘the barrel
of meal shall not waste, neither shall the cruse of oil
fail, until the Lord sendeth rain upon the earth.’ ”

And the widow, we are told, did as Elijah directed,
for “he and she did eat many days” (some say a whole
year) “and the barrel of meal wasted not (3), neither
did the cruse of oil fail.”

Both of these stories seem fabulous in the extreme,
but nearly one thousand years later we find one greatly
more wonderful, which was written concerning Jesus
about one hundred years after his tragical death. He
had heard of the cruel butchery of John the Baptist by
Herod, and probably fearing a similar fate for him-
self, he and his disciples took ship privately on the
sea of Galilee, and landed at “a desert place” not far
from Bethsaida. (4)

Section 2. At this time Jesus had already gained
 32

A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

the reputation of an exorcist, or healer, and the people,
learning of his hiding place, thronged after him in
multitudes, that he might cure their sick. (5)

The day being far spent, his disciples pressed him
to “send the people to the villages and country round
about, to buy bread for themselves, for they had noth-
ing to eat.”

“How many loaves have you?” inquired Jesus.
And the apostles replied, “Five loaves and two fishes.”
(6) “Bring them hither,” said Jesus (7), and he
commanded the multitude to sit down on the grass, by
fifties in a company (, and he took the five loaves
and two small fishes, and looking up to heaven he
blessed and brake, and gave the loaves to his disciples;
and they, to the multitude; and they all ate and were
all tilled.

The record says there were about five thousand men
that partook of this repast, besides women and chil-
dren. (9) And that nothing might be lost, Jesus
ordered the fragments of the feast to be gathered up,
and the fragments that remained filled twelve bas-
kets. (10)

This feeding of so great a multitude surpasses by

(5)   The story about his feeding 5,000 people miraculously, took
its present form about 100 or 120 years after his death, as we
shall see hereafter.

(6)   John, ch. 6, v. 9, says five barley loaves and two small
fishes. But John is always extravagant in his statements.

(7)   Matt. 14, v. 18.

(   Grass does not grow in a desert.

(9)   Matt. 14, v. 21.

(10)   Luke 9, v. 12 to 17.
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES   33

far Mendaka’s miracle, for here we have probably
more than ten thousand men, women and children.
And all these make a full meal of that which comes to
Jesus from a mysterious, unseen quarter. And the
fishes were cooked, for they surely would not eat raw
fish. Let us inquire who baked those barley loaves?
Moreover, that barley must have been first planted and
grown. It must have been reaped and winnowed. It
must have been ground and kneaded, baked and
brought to that “desert place.” That crowd would
have devoured more than two wagon loads of bread
alone. It would consume as much as ten full regi-
ments. Then there were the fish. Who caught those
fish? Who scaled and cooked them? Who brought
them thither? Mendaka is here very far surpassed,
and even Elijah is left a long way behind.

Did the bread and the fish pour down from the skies
in two great streams, into Jesus’ hands, after the man-
ner of grain into Mendaka’s bins ?

But I am told there is nothing impossible with God.
Yes, there are some things impossible even with Him.
It is impossible for Him to add two and two and make
the sum equal to five. He can not make this paper
upon which I am writing, all white and all black at the
same instant. He can not make two adjoining hills
without a hollow between them. He can not make two
parallel lines intersect each other. Besides, there is no
place in history where it can be shown that God ever
did anything for man where man could do for himself.
There was no necessity for those people to be thus fed.
 34

A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

They could, it seems (n), have gone into “the vil-
lages round about and bought for themselves.” More-
over, those live thousand men do not tell us that they
were thus miraculously fed. They are all silent,
mouldering in their graves more than one hundred
years, when this story of the loaves and fishes is
written about them by Matthew and others.

Jesus himself never wrote a word about it. And
right at the exact point where we want full and com-
plete information about how all those fishes and those
loaves got into Jesus’ hands, we are left in the
dark. (12)

Section 3. If the record be true, there must have
been a secret hidden spout, unseen by the multitude,
which conveyed to Jesus this marvelous amount of
food. For God can not make two small dead fishes
into a hundred or five hundred fishes, any more than
He can make two and five to be a thousand.

A seeming miracle in and of itself is not always con-
vincing, for wizards and magicians have been able to
do the same tricks; as, when the Hebrews were seek-
ing deliverance from Egypt, the Lord told Aaron to
cast his rod before Pharaoh, and the rod became a ser-
pent. (13) Pharaoh does not seem to have been as-
tounded at this, for he called his own magicians and
sorcerers, and they cast down their rods, and they

(11)   Matt. 14, v. 15.

(12) I shall not stop to mention a similar performance in
ch. 15 of Matt., v. 32 to 39; if one be true the other may be
also. Both, however, are extremely doubtful.

(13)   Exodus 7, 8 to 12.
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES 35

likewise became serpents. This curious legend is not
complete unless we mention that Aaron’s rod swal-
lowed up all the other rods. The record here discloses
more than was intended, for it makes the plain asser-
tion that magicians and sorcerers could perform mir-
acles as well as the Hebrew priests.

I mention this matter here, not for the purpose of
either affirming or denying the truth of the legend,
but to emphasize the fact that for more than fifteen
hundred years before Jesus was born, the Hebrews had
learned from their holy books, and had been taught
by their priests, so much about miracles and angels,
that such things, even if they had not become an in-
herited belief, were regarded as the particular heir-
loom of their race.

Such thoughts were in the very air, and children
from generation to generation were taught to believe
in the supernatural.

But I shall be told that no sleight-of-hand perfor-
mance or legerdemain can or could ever cause a hungry
man to be deceived as to whether he had eaten a full
meal or not. So much is true; but no one of these five
thousand men who are alleged to be present in that
desert place near Bethsaida, has ever said that he was
present, or that he knew anything about the supposed
miracle whereby he was fed.

Nor do I assert that the miracle did not take place;
but this I insist upon, viz.: that the proof to establish
it is totally insuMcient. True, there are four persons
who have written an account about that marvelous af-
 /

36 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

fair, but not one of them tells us that he saw the trans-
action. Nor do they tell us how or where he, or they,
got their information.

At most their evidence is only hearsay of the cheap-
est sort. It may have its whole foundation based upon
falsehood. Does any sane person today believe that
Aaron’s rod swallowed the magicians’ rods, even if
they were turned into serpents ?

If four of the most truthful men or greatest saints
in America were to declare that they saw a similar
transaction, in some desert place, or any place, they
would be questioned and cross-questioned until every
fact, even to the minutest particular, would be known,
and the people who partook of the feast would be called
upon to confirm or disprove the matter. There was
surely no such thing in this Bethsaida affair.

Even as in India after Buddha’s death, the mar-
velous in the Hindu bible subsided somewhat, we may
notice that in Palestine about a century, or perhaps a
little more, after Jesus died, miracles took their flight
to fairyland, from whence they came, and now
for nearly nineteen hundred years they have failed to
return. As miracles suddenly ceased with the deaths
of those two great personages, we again press the
question, Did the miracles ever have a beginning?

Section 4. Henceforth in these pages when I en-
counter the marvelous I shall simply relate what the Hin-
du and the Hebrew books tell us. And if wondrous sto-
ries are pleasing to the reader, he will be enchanted as
he passes along. However, there is one thing that we
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES   37

are absolutely certain about, viz.: that angels long since
ceased visiting this earth. And are we not just as
much in need of them as were the people in India and
Palestine twenty-four hundred and nineteen hundred
years ago ? If we could just see even one celestial Ayer,
how many doubts it would dispel!

But as we are in the land of the marvelous, let us
journey a little further. The Hindus, it seems, as well
as the Hebrews, were very fond of fairy tales, and
both these peoples wrote them in their books. We are
told that the venerable Pilindivaka once visited a park
where the children, decked with garlands, were cele-
brating a feast. But the family of the gatekeeper was
so poor that it could afford no ornaments for their
little girl, who ran about crying, “Give me a garland,
give me an ornament!” Pilindivaka heard the child,
and on learning why it wept, made a roll of grass
called a “chumbat” and told its mother to bind that on
the child’s head, which when done the roll of grass
instantly became a beautiful chaplet of gold. Shortly
thereafter the child’s father was arrested and thrown
into prison, charged with procuring the chaplet by
theft. On hearing this, Pilindivaka visited the king,
who said, “Surely the gatekeeper procured the chaplet
by theft; how else could he, being so poor, have got-
ten such a thing?” Thereupon Pilindivaka turned, in-
stantly, the king’s whole palace into gold, and asked,
“How did your majesty obtain so much gold, and so
quickly?” The king, it is said, saw the miracle, and
at once set the gatekeeper free. We justly dispute
 38 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

this foolish Hindu tale, for we feel that it is absolutely
untrue, because it contradicts and sets at defiance a law
of universal observation. (14) But if we contradict the
Hindu fable, why should we not likewise declare the
following Hebrew fable untrue ? A company of people
about nineteen hundred years ago, we are told, were
gathered to celebrate a marriage in Galilee, and they
had no wine. They loved wine and wanted some; but
all they had was six empty water pots, containing two
or three firkins each. The servants were told to fill
these water pots with water. And they filled them up
to the brim. They were then told to “draw out and
bear unto the governor of the feast,” which they did.
That water, we are told, was instantly made into good
wine; so good, in fact, that the ruler of the feast men-
tioned its fine flavor. (15)

If there ever was such a thing on earth as that a
person, in the presence of others, could make his body
invisible to them, and make it vanish out of sight, then
in that matter Buddha set an example which the Scrip-
tures tell us Jesus followed. In Vol. XI, Sacred Books
of the East, page 49, we are told that Buddha could
not only vanish away but that he could change his

(14)   Vol. 17, p. 64, Sacred Books of the East.

(15)   New Testament, John 2, v. 1 to 10. It will be noticed
that both of these alleged miracles, if they were such, took
place by reason of two feasts; the one in India being a village
feast; that in Palestine because of a feast at a marriage where
some wine bibbers lacked their usual beverage. Now if Jesua
actually turned that water into wine, he must have forgotten
Proverbs, ch. 20, v. 1, which says: “Wine is a mocker; strong
drink is raging.11

[Prometheus]

A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

color and his voice when he appeared before an audi-
ence. Moreover, he would then make such a pleasing
address that his hearers would ask, “Who is this, a
man or a God?”

Then, making himself invisible, he would vanish
away. (16) His books tell us that by virtue of his
wonderful spiritual power he could not only transport
himself, but a great congregation, dry-shod across a
river. This is just as extravagant as feeding five thou-
sand with two fishes and five loaves.

Did Jesus’ disciples, five hundred years later, copy
from Buddha? Or did the man of Galilee, in fact, pos-
sess this same marvelous power? Or are both stories,
the dreams of extravagant romancers? However that
may be, we are soberly told that when the Jews took
up stones to cast at Jesus, he went out of the temple,
through the midst of them, and thus escaped. (17)
And Luke, ch. 4, 5-30, tells us that when those
Nazarenes were about to pitch Jesus headlong
from the brow of the hill, he escaped through the midst
of them and went on his way. At another time “he
vanished out of sight.” (18) In fact, he could take
another form. (19) Were these strange occurrences
miracles? Or were Buddha and Jesus greatly gifted 16 17 18 19

(16)   Vol. 17, Sacred Books of the East, p. 104.

Fo Sho King, Tsan, King, p. 251. Vol. XI, Sacred Books
of the East, p. 21.

(17)   John 8, v. 59.

(18)   Lnke 24, v. 31.

(19)   Mark 16, v. 12.
 40

A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

beyond others? Or were these vanishings the children
of lively imaginations? Are they not from the realm
of dreams? This much is surely true; there are no
more vanishings in India, and there have been none for
twenty-three hundred years; and none in Palestine
for eighteen hundred yearn. And there has been no
case of feeding five thousand people a full meal on five
loaves and two small fishes for more than eighteen hun-
dred years. And there have been no more Mendakas
in India since our friend had his granary filled twenty-
three hundred years ago.



I
 CHAPTER III.

The Miraculous Parentage of Jesus.

Section i. Every man born into this world comes
with clenched fist and a cry of pain. He is born with-
out his asking, and goe6 hence without his requesting.
Buddha and Jesus were no exceptions. They were
born; they lived; they grew; they died. Nature did
not turn her dial either backward or forward when
they came, or when they went.

The physical world turned on its axis at their com-
ing and at their going, with the same regularity that it
would if a mouse had been born, or had died. But the
moral world, by reason of their coming, has been im-
mensely moved and improved. One of these men
was bom in a beautiful grove, amid rejoicings; the
son of a prince, the heir to a throne. The other was
the reputed son of a humble carpenter, and was bom in
the gloom of a cave (i), or the filth of a bam; and
was wrapped in swaddling clothes, and laid in a man-
ger. (2) He was supposed to be of an extinct line of

(1)   The Protevangelinm, or book of James, ch. 18, says
Mary was taken to a cave about three miles from Bethlehem, while
Joseph went for assistance.

(2)   Luke 2, v. 7* Mark’s first mention of him (ch. 1, v.
9) is that he came from Galilee. Matt. 2, v. 11, is that the
wise men found him in a ”house.” John 1, 45 and 46; Matt.
13:54; Mark 1:6 and 1:24; Acts, 2:22, designated Jesus of
Nazareth as a man. Acts 3:6 calls him “Jesus Christ of Naza-
reth.” Pilate wrote the superscription on the cross: ” Jesus of

41
 42 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

kings; and if the record be true he was early sought
that he might be slain. (3)

Buddha, as we shall see, lived eighty years and died
in peace, loved and lamented. Jesus did not reach half
that period, and swooned away in agony, an innocent
man (4) nailed to a cross by the very ones whom he
sought to befriend. Both of these men commenced
the great labor of their lives when about twenty-nine
or thirty years of age, Buddha as a hermit, and Jesus
as a preacher of a Gospel new to the Jews.

As we have told of the legends and the miraculous
at Buddha’s birth, those told of Jesus at his coming
must not be overlooked.

There is, and has been for eighteen hundred years
past, an unceasing controversy about the parentage of
Jesus. As no charge similar to that laid against Mary
has been made against any young woman for now nine-
teen hundred years, let us inquire somewhat of her
parentage and youth.

Nazareth, King of the Jews.” John 19:19; Luke 18:37; Micah,
ch. 5, v. 2, 700 years B. C., is doubtful authority. John, ch. 7,
says Jesus came from Nazareth.

(3)   There is no mention, except in Matt. 2nd, of Herod’s
slaying the innocents. Nor does history make mention of it. Mat-
thew, when he made his compilation, followed a wrong author-
ity. Moreover, the family of David had been extinct for more
than 900 years. Luke’s gospel, ch. 3, is fanciful and visionary.
But all his life Jesus was called a Nazarene, and the proof is not
wanting that he was born there.

(4)   It has been claimed that Jesus suffered justly, because hs
antagonized the law of Moses. We shall notice this when we
come to speak of his trial.
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES   43

The Book of James (5), written probably about the
time of Matthew, sets forth that Joachim was lightly
regarded by the scribes and elders, because he had no
children; and that Anna, his wife, was in grief by
reason of her barrenness. Whereupon an angel an-
nounced that a child should be born to her; and the
child, a girl, being born according to the prologue, was
named Mary. (6)

When the child was three years old she was taken
to the temple, where she remained ten or twelve years,
receiving her food meantime, it is said, from the hand
of an angel. (7)

Section 2. Girls develop early under the warm
skies of Palestine, and the record is that the Lord at
this time told Zacharias, the High Priest, to summon
the widowers with their rods; and the priest took the
rods and went into the temple to pray. On coming
out and distributing the rods, a dove flew out of the
one which Joseph took, and lit upon his head.

This was a sign that Joseph was to take the virgin;
but he objected that he was an old man, and had chil-
dren, and Mary being so young, “he would appear ri-
diculous in Israel.” ( Joseph's scruples, however,
not being hard to overcome, he took the virgin to his
home, and went away to building houses. The priests

(5)   That work is called the Protevangelium, or book of James.
Luke very evidently had that work before him when he compiled
his gospel, and he copies from it very liberally.

(6)   Mrs. Anna Joachim was therefore a grandmother of Jesus.

(7)   Protevangelium, ch. 8 and 9.

(   Chaps. 8 and 9, Protevangelium: Joseph was about eighty
years old and was the father of six children by a former wife.
 44   A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

thereafter selected Mary to spin the purple for a new
veil for the temple. (9)

Matthew says “before Joseph and Mary came to-
gether, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost;”
but Matthew fails to tell us who found her in that deli-
cate condition. (10) The Book of James (11),
however, supplies the missing link, for it says
that Joseph on returning from abroad, found her with
child and reproached her for her conduct. (12) “If I
conceal her crime, I shall be found guilty by the law
of the Lord; and if I discover her to the children of
Israel, I fear lest, she being with child by an angel, I
will be found to betray the life of an innocent person.
I will therefore put her away privately.”

Mary insisted that she knew not how it occurred.

(13)   But Luke tells a different story, for he
says an angel came and told her that she had
found favor with God, that “she should conceive
and bring forth a son,” and the angel added that “the
Lord will give unto him the throne of his father David:
and he shall reign over the house of Jacob forever.”

(14)   Mary could not understand how that could be;

(9)   Chap. 11, Book of James. If this be true Mary must
have gone back to the temple soon after her espousal.

(10)   Matt. 1, v. 18.

(11)   The book of James is as well attested as either one of
our four canonical Gospels, for in his colophon James says:
“I, James, wrote this history in Jerusalem; and when the dis-
turbance was, 1 retired into a desert place until the death of
Herod. And the disturbance had ceased at Jerusalem.99

(12)   Ch. 13 and 14, Protevangelium. The Protevangelium was
not condemned by Pope Gelasius, who was Pope A. D. 494.

(13)   Book of James, ch. 13.

(14)   Luke 2, v. 27 and 35.
 45

A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

whereupon the angel said, “The Holy Ghost shall come
upon thee; and the power of the Highest shall over-
shadow thee; and the holy thing which shall be born of
thee shall be called the son of God.” Yet this angel was
wrong; for Jesus never gained David’s throne. More-
over the Book of James also contradicts Mary; for it
says that as she went for a pitcher of water, she heard
a voice saying, “Hail, full of grace! The Lord is with
thee; blessed art thou among women.” She looked to
the right and left, but could see no one; and, fright-
ened, she went into the house and sat down to work on
the purple. Another version says: “She saw a young
man of ineffable beauty” who said, “Fear not, Mary,
for thou hast found favor with God.” Luke says, “The
angel of the Lord stood beside her” and said, “Fear
not, Mary, for thou hast found favor with God.” (15)

The High Priest seems to have known of the angel’s
visit to her, for when she finished the veil of the tem-
ple and took it to him, he said to her: “The Lord has
magnified thy name; and all the generations of the
earth will bless thee.” (16) This question here pre-
sents itself: Was Mary living with her parents, or in
the temple, at the time of the angel’s visit to her? In 15 16 *

(15)   Luke 1, v. 30. Here the two narratives are nearly the
same, except that Luke is somewhat longer. Evidently Luke
copies James or James copies Luke. In tms matter I hold with
Dr. Schleiermacher of Germany, that the evidence seems to point
to Luke as the copyist of James. Luke certainly compiles from
4 * many.11 (Luke 1, v. 1.) Was it an angel that saluted Mary, as
Luke has it, or was it a 44young man of ineffable beauty” that
said to her she had found favor with the Lord Godf Which f

(16)   Book of James, chap. 12. Luke 1, v. 28, says Mary is

blessed among women.
 46   A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

either case, how is it that neither parents nor priests
are mentioned as seeing the angel when he called?
True, the High Priest seems to heme known of the
matter, when she brought the veil to the temple; but
how did he find it out ? Was he present at the “over-
shadowing,” and if not, why was he so anxious to
have the widowers call and one of them take this
young girl by lot?

Section 3. We reach here some of the most ex-
traordinary statements in all history. There never was
anything like them before or since. Here is a young
Jewish girl, only about fourteen or fifteen years of
age, who has grown up in the temple or near there,
with the priests and scribes. At this immature age
she is betrothed in a peculiar manner, as we have seen,
to an aged widower. Joseph is not at home when the
angel visits his wife. (17) He knows nothing about
those visits. They are all on the sly, as to him. Mary,
Gabriel and the High Priest only are in the secret.
Nor is Joseph consulted about when the Holy Ghost
shall come upon his wife and overshadow her.

But when he finds her in a delicate situation, he up-
braids her and reproaches her, as we have already seen.
But he does not act rashly; he considers carefully, and
concludes that, as she is so very young, he will not
make her a public example, but will “put her away
privately.” (18) And while Joseph was ponder-

(17)   Neither Matthew, Mark nor John names the angel; but
Luke mentions the angel Gabriel. (Ch. 1, v. 26.)

(18)   Matt. 1, y. 19.
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES 47

ing those things, he fell into a sleep; and in his
dream the angel of the Lord appears unto him, and
says: “Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take
unto thee Mary, thy wife, for that which is conceived
in her is of the Holy Ghost.” Whether the angel
awakened Joseph in talking to him we cannot say: but
“on being raised from his sleep he did as the angel of
the Lord had bidden him.” (19) In other words,
Joseph overlooked and forgave what he must have
considered, to put it mildly, a very serious youthful
indiscretion. Dreams are gossamer things to build a
gospel upon: but such is the superstructure of our
religion. “And Mary, it is said, arose in those days,
and went with haste unto the hill country, a City of
Judah” (20) to visit her cousin Elizabeth. The
book of James (ch. 12) tells us that Mary went
to her home and hid herself from the children of Israel.
Which is right?

Section 4. As to the parentage of Jesus, it would
seem that one or the other of the following proposi-
tions must be true: First: he was the son of Joseph
and Mary: or, secondly, he was the son of God and
Mary: or, thirdly, he was the son of Mary and some
unknown father. We have already seen that Chapter
One, Verses 18 to 20, of Matthew, disputes the pater-
nity of Joseph, and sets forth that he was only recon-
ciled to the situation by what the angel said to him in

(19)   Matt. 1:15 to 25. How did Matthew find out that the
angel appeared to Joseph in a dreamt

(20)   Luke 1:39.
 48

A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

his dream. Luke fully and explicitly agrees with Mat*
thew (21), save only as to Joseph’s peculiar dream
and the reconcilation which it effected.

Mark and John are both as silent as the tomb about
Joseph’s troubles and the angel’s visit to him, and the
paternity of Jesus. I can account for this only on the
ground that they were not inspired on that point.
Or they may have been wiser than the others, and be-
lieved that a man is what he is, in and of himself, and
not what his father or mother is or may have been.

Matthew, however, as to the quarrel between Joseph
and Mary, is sustained by the book of James (22),
except that James supposed that Mary was with child
by an angel.

Moreover, if we follow the genealogy given by Mat-
thew, Jesus was not a descendant of David. It is true,
some blind men called him a son of David (23); and
some people, amazed at a cure he effected, said, “Is
not this the son of David?” But Jesus made no reply.

Now, while it is true that Isaiah, some seven hun-
dred years before Jesus was bom, made a prediction
that “there should come forth a rod out of the stem
of Jesse,” he also said that the wolf should dwell with
the lamb, and the leopard lie down with the kid, and
the lion eat straw like an ox. Yet twenty-six hundred
years have slipped by since Isaiah made this prediction,
and no part of his prophecy is yet fulfilled. (24)

(21)   Luke 1:26 to 35.

(22)   Protevangelium, ch. 14; Matt. 1, v. 18 to 20.

(23)   Matt. 9:27; Lnke 18:28; Matt. 12: v. 23.

(24)   But Isaiah probably did not write Chapter 11.

[Prometheus]

 49

A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

He also said a virgin should conceive and bear a
son: but he spoiled its application to Jesus, because he
declared that the son so born must eat butter and
honey, that he might know to refuse the evil and
choose the good. (25)

Section 5. Let us dismiss prophecy as something
bordering on the miraculous: for how can any sane
person believe that the most pure saint that lives, or
ever lived, can or could look seven hundred years into
the future, and tell the happenings of that coming day?
If there ever were such things in the world as prophecy
or fortune-telling,—for they both travel the same road,
—and if they were good things for the people twenty-
six hundred years ago, they are probably good today.
Moreover, were there never any prophets outside of
Palestine, and the Hebrews? Are there not the same
needs of prophets today as ever? Or did the volume
of mystery close for good when the angel announced
to Mary that she should bring forth a son?

But even prophecies do not always turn out as
announced: for no rod has as yet come out of the stem
of Jesse: unless Luke and Matthew are both mistaken.
Even angels are not always true prophets. For Luke’s
angel who foretold that the Lord would give to Mary’s
son the throne of his father, David, did not hit the
mark.

The throne was not given to him, but instead a
crown of thorns. The dream and hope of all the

(25)   Ch. 7, Isaiah, has no possible application to Jesns. Even
a strained construction will not make it apply to him.
 SO A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

Jews for generations had been that some great descend-
ant of David, or some one of their kings, would arise,
and not only punish their enemies but bring back the
glories of David’s or Solomon’s reign. The Jews
waited and looked for a great earthly king, and not a
great teacher to show them the paths of love, justice
and mercy.

The paternity of Jesus has been, and perhaps always
will be, a disputed question. It is possible that its
very mystery calls attention to him, and thereby to
his gentle qualities of mind and heart However that
may be, we are certain that his meekness and his love
and charity for mankind can never be surpassed.
 CHAPTER IV.

The Birth and Boyhood of Jesus.

Section i. The birthplace or home of a truly great
and extraordinary man is always of importance and
interest to us. If near such a spot, we turn our foot-
steps thither, and linger about it. If distant from it,
we visit the place in imagination, and picture to our-
selves, as best we can, the home and the country
where the great soul towered above the people, as a
lofty mountain towers above the valley at its base.

Such a place is immortal in history; Shakespeare
and the Avon will never be forgotten. Will Mt.
Vernon and its canonized sleeper ever fade from the
memory of men? And there is Nazareth, in the land
of Zebulon, once so wicked that the enquiry was made,
“Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” (i)
But, O Nazareth, Galilee, and Palestine! thou art as
immortal as the rock-ribbed hills. The love of a great
soul has enshrined these names in all memories.

Once in thy fury, Nazareth, thou didst thrust Him
forth, and would have flung the great one headlong
from a precipice to his destruction. But he escaped
thy rage, (2) and has made that deed, and thy name, 1

(1)   John 1: ?. 48.

(2)   Lake 4: ?. 29.

61
 52   A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

known for all time, to the uttermost parts of the earth.

Roll back, ye centuries! and let us see Nazareth
nineteen hundred years ago. (3)

Here on an elevated plateau, on the side of a hill, is
a small village of probably less than two thousand
souls. Its population is made up of Jews, Arabs, and
Phoenicians, with a generous sprinkle of Greeks. At
this period these Nazarenes were so utterly secluded
and unknown that no mention had ever been made of
them in history. Even the Old Testament is silent
about them. These Nazarenes speak a Syrian Dialect*
the language of Palestine.

The streets of this village, with hardly a shade tree,
are crooked and narrow; its houses are flat-roofed,
small, unfloored, irregular and squalid. Chairs they
have none; they squat or recline upon the earth, or
on a mat. Their tables are simply dressed skins, laid
upon the ground, sometimes on a low stool. Knives
and forks are unknown to them, and for plates they
use thin, round cakes, made of coarse material. They
were but little more advanced in civilization than were
our Indians one hundred years ago.

If we ascend one of the higher hills, and look off
to the southeast, we shall see Mount Tabor about six
miles distant, and yonder, dimly outlined against the
western sky, is Mount Carmel, whose base is lashed by
the waves of the Mediterranean. Jerusalem, on the

(3)   The chronology of the Christian era should have been
dated four yean earlier.
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES   53

borders of Benjamin, is yonder to the south, sixty or
seventy miles beyond our vision.

Schools, such as we have today, were not known in
Palestine nineteen hundred years ago; nor in any part
of the earth. In Nazareth, as everywhere in Pales-
tine, the synagogue was the place where the sons of
the seers, and the great men, met to study the Thora.
(4) The instruction was oral, the children standing
in a row; whereupon the teacher recited a line, and
they repeated it and repeated it after him, until they
learned it by heart. Buddha, five hundred years be-
fore this, was taught the laws of Manu in the same
way. (5)

Section 2. From this sleepy, poverty-stricKen
mountain village of Nazareth, a great and incompar-
able man is to come forth. Joseph and Mary are there;
and Jesus is there with them. All his life he is called
“Jesus of Nazareth.” Here in Nazareth he grows
from babyhood to boyhood—

"Turning to mirth all things of earth
As only boyhood can.”

Here, undoubtedly, Jesus played marbles, and ran
foot races with the little boys of this mountain village.
And if he could say in his mature years, “Suffer little
children to come unto me, and forbid them not,” he
surely must have loved them when he himself was a
child. Perhaps when he was in the Synagogue, some

(4)   The Law of Moses. The Pentateuch.

(I) John, ch. 7., t. 15, says Jesus was not leaned.
 54

A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

larger boy scratched him or struck him, and we won*
der whether as a boy he was ready to turn the other
cheek to be smitten also. (6)

If there was a creek or a pond nearby, he no doubt
went in swimming with his playmates, and had a fine
time. For somewhere he became very expert in
aquatic sports, as later it is said he actually could
“walk upon the water.” (7)

Joseph, this boy’s father, or stepfather, was a car-
penter ; and the boy, no doubt, often picked up shavings
and blocks for the family fire. We can believe that he
frequently ran errands for his mother; brought water
from the spring or well; and as the boys of Nazareth
all ran about bare-footed, Jesus was probably often
ordered to wash his feet before going to bed. This
little boy, all unconscious of the mighty destiny before
him, may sometimes have trudged over the mountains
to Lake Gennessaret. And there stood Chorazin, and
Bethsaida and Capernaum, upon its shores; to be de-
nounced by him, at a later day, as wicked and
unrepentant. (

We long to catch glimpses of the daily life of this
wonderful boy; but no word is vouchsafed to us until
he is twelve years old, unless we follow the gospel of
the infancy. (9) We see no miracles whatever, no

(6)   Matt 5, v. 39.

(7)   Mark 6: v. 48; Matt 14: v. 25.

(   Matt. 11, 21.

(9)   The gospel of the Infancy tells us of the flight into Egypt,
the same as Matt. 2, v. 14. But Matthew makes no mention of
the miracles Jesus performed when a child in Egypt. I shall
lunre something to say of this later on.
 55

A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

extraordinary happenings in his life—nothing beyond
the ordinary, humdrum days of those other Nazareth
boys that grew to manhood in Jesus’ time. There is
no question but that he was brought up in Nazareth
after his return from Egypt. Luke expressly affirms
it in chapter 4, v. 16, and it is not denied except in the
gospel of the Infancy.

I have purposely said this about Jesus, before men*
tioning the legends and the miraculous stories con-
cerning his birth, that gathered around his name com-
mencing about the year A. D. 80 or 100, and extend-
ing on towards us for a century and more.

Section 3. In a supposed prophecy concerning
Jesus, about 740 years B. C., Rezin, the king of
Syria, and Pekah, the king of Israel, went up to-
ward Jerusalem to make war against it and put a
king of their own in Ahaz’s place. Thereupon the
Lord sent Isaiah, a prophet, to tell Ahaz to be quiet,
the thing should not come to pass (10); and to con-
firm Ahaz that his Kingdom should not be overthrown,
the Lord said he would give him a sign. “Behold, a
virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his
name Immanuel, and before the child shall know to
refuse evil and choose the good, the land thou abhor-
rest shall be forsaken of both her kings.” (11)

This prophecy, if it be one, plainly has reference to

(10)   Isaiah, ch. 7, verses 1 to 17—see also eh. 8, Isaiah.

(11)   Isaiah 7:14: But if the Virgin did not bear a son until
Jesus was born, how could it be a sign to Ahazf He would
bo dead more than seven centuries.
 56   A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

a time more than seven centuries before Jesus was
born.

Moreover, the very next chapter of Isaiah tells us
that he went in unto the prophetess, and she conceived
and bore a son, and that before the child could say
“My Father,” the riches of Damascus and the spoil of
Samaria would be taken away.

Nevertheless, Matthew sets forth the peculiar con-
ception and birth of Jesus, and Joseph’s very strange
dream, and all this was done, he says, “that it might be
fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet,
saying, ‘Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall
bring forth a son, and they shall call his name
Immanuel.’ ” (12)

How can any honest thinker, or any fair-minded
man, believe that Isaiah had a vision of Mary and
Jesus in his mind when he penned those lines to com-
fort Ahaz?

But that is not all; Matthew interprets the word
“Emmanuel” and says it means “God with us.” (13)
That makes Jesus a God. Is not that Polytheism?
John is even more extravagant than Matthew, for he
says the world was made by Jesus. (14) But neither
John nor Mark makes any mention about Isaiah’s
prophecy and the birth of Immanuel.

Section 4. Was Jesus born in Bethlehem?

Here again we encounter the same old supposed

(12)   In Isaiah the son is called Immanuel; eh. 7, v. 14.

(13)   Matt. 1:23.

(14)   John 1:10; John 6, v. 41 and 51; John 8, v. 58. This is
more absurd than anything I ever read in the Hindu bible.
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

57

prophecies which have been curiously twisted to mean
what Micah and Malachi never intended. Micah, 710
years B. C., is telling what he saw “concerning
Samaria and Jerusalem.” And he says Samaria shall
be as a heap of the field, and her graven images beaten
to pieces; that Zion is built up with blood, and Jerusa-
lem with iniquity (15) ; that the heads thereof judge
for reward, that the priests teach for hire, and the
prophets divine for money. For those sins, Zion is to
be plowed as a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps.
“But in the last days the house of the Lord shall be
established,” and “nations shall beat their swords into
plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks;
neither shall they learn war any more; and every man
shall sit under his own vine and fig tree.”

In that day, unto you shall come the first dominion,
and when many “nations are gathered against her,”
then “her horn shall be iron, and her hoofs brass; and
she shall beat in pieces many people.” (16) When
siege is laid against those in Zion, “they shall smite the
Judge of Israel with a rod upon his cheek.” Micah,
it must be remembered, was a prophet of Judah; and
he was against Samaria; and her judge is to be smit-
ten on the cheek. But when he turns to the insig-
nificant village of Bethlehem, near which he himself
lived, see how to the skies he extols it.

“But thou, Bethlehem, though thou be little among
the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall come

(15)   1 Micah 1:6 and 7.

(16)   3 Micah, 10 to 12.
 58

A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

forth a ruler in Israel, whose goings forth have been
from everlasting.” (17)

And this man, he says, “shall be the peace, when
the Assyrian shall come into our land,” and with the
shepherds and princes “shall waste the land of Assyria
with the sword.”

Micah closes one part of his prophecy with these
lurid words:   The Lord will execute vengeance in

anger and fury upon the heathen, such as they have not
heard. (18)

How can this prophecy, if it be one, have any ref-
erence to Jesus, who was bom more than seven hundred
years later? Yet Matthew (19) quotes it with appro-
bation, almost word for word. But I shall be told that it
was a spiritual ruler that was to come out of Bethle-
hem ; not some great warrior, or governor. My reply
is that Micah, in verses 5 and 6, chapter 5, says, “that
man (this ruler) is to be the peace, when the Assyrian
shall come,” and he and the shepherds and princes
“shall waste the land of Assyria with the sword.” The
world has waited twenty-six hundred years and more
since Micah’s day, and no governor or ruler from Beth-
lehem has made his appearance in all this time. More-
over, the Assyrian hath not yet come.

Suppose some old Hindu, seven hundred years be-

(17)   Micah 5:2 to 6. But Jesus was never a ruler in Israel;
and there is now no Assyrian to invade Palestine; and the swords
have never yet been beaten into plow-shares; nor have the spears
yet been made into pruning hooks; it would be a blessed thing
if they were; may Heaven hasten that happy day!

(18)   Micah abridged from 5 to 15, ch. 5.

(19)   Matt 2, v. 6.
 • A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

59

fore Buddha was bom, had said that a ruler should
come forth from (naming some insignificant village in
India), would his saying necessarily cause the child to
be bom there?

The place of a man’s birth is not an indispensable
part of his make-up. Would not Jesus have been just
as useful, just as lovely, just as great, if he had been
bom in Samaria? For the Samaritans were surely ex-
pecting a Messiah. (20)

Section 5. The last clause in Micah’s supposed
prophecy must be noticed. After mentioning that a
ruler in Israel is to come from Bethlehem, he adds:
“Whose goings forth have been from of old, from ever-
lasting?’’ Does not this make Jesus a God? Was he
truly here before the mountains were brought forth,
or the earth formed? If so, then why the necessity
that he be bom in Bethlehem or anywhere else?

But it is said an order from the governor of Syria
compelled every person to be taxed in his own city;
that therefore Joseph and Mary went from Nazareth
to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; “and
while there, Jesus was bom, in the days of Herod, the
King.” Luke is in error, here, as to the date of
this taxing or census, for it took place nine or ten
years after the period he fixes for the Birth of Jesus.
(21) Moreover, when Jesus was born, Herod was on

(20)   John 4, v. 25.

(21)   Matt., ch. 2; Luke 2:1 to 6. The census took place
after Archelus was deposed, and after Herod had been in his
grave several years. It is barely possible that Herod ordered
the slaughter of the children, though history makes no mention
of it, but it surely was not at the time of the taxing by Cyrenius,
and there is no sufficient proof of two taxings.

[Prometheus]

 60   A QUESTION OF MIRACLES .

his death bed, sorely troubled over the conspiracy of
his brother, Pheroras, and his son, Antipater. Herod,
it is true, was wicked and cruel enough to have order-
ed the slaughter of the children, for his whole life was
drenched in blood. He murdered his wife, the beauti-
ful Mariamne. He caused Aristobulus, his brother,
to be treacherously drowned. He caused his two sons,
by Mariamne, to be strangled. But his nemesis was
about to overtake him. On his deathbed, tossing in
torments of pain, word was brought to him of the
conspiracy of his son and brother. But his hands
were red with blood to the last, for, while panting for
breath, he ordered the death of Antipater, his son.
This bloody-handed murderer died the year before
Jesus was born, or the very same year. It is certain
that he died between the years 4 B. C. and 3 B. C. He
was alive March 12, 4 years B. C., as he burned some
Jewish Rabbis that day for causing the destruction of
his golden eagle. (22)

Jesus, at this time, may have been six weeks or two
months old. But I find no sufficient proof, outside of
Matthew and some of the Apocryphal gospels, that
Herod, red-handed as he was, ever sought to destroy
him. (23)

(22)   Jos. Antiq. 17:6. 4 and 17:8, 4.

(23)   Matthew, unwittingly now for nineteen centuries, has
held up Herod’s name to the contempt and scorn of the world.
And it will probably go down loaded with execrations, to the
latest day. See also section 2, chapter 5, this work.
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

61

Nor was Jesus bom December 25, Christmas (24),
in Bethlehem: for it is not likely that Joseph would
set out to travel with Mary on an ass or mule (25)
seventy or seventy-five miles in a downpour of rain,
merely to be taxed. (26) If bom in Bethlehem, it
must have been late in February, B. C., 3. But, if bom
there, it is strange that the four gospels continually
mention him as “Jesus of Nazareth.” (27)

(24)   Christmas is a Christian holiday, but it was not known
or kept as such, until the third or fourth century A. D., when
it happily succeeded pagan festivals and the saturnalia of Home.

(25)   The book of James, ch. 17, says he saddled an ass and
placed her on it.

(26)   December the 25th, in Judea, is the very height of the
rainy season. Even the sheep and shepherds then seek shelter.

(27)   John 1:45 and 46, mentions him as “Jesus of Nazareth.’9
Matt. 13, v. 54, says “he came to his country” (Nazareth).
Mark 6: “Jesus came from Nazareth to be baptized.” Acts
2:22, “Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God.” Acts 3:6,
“Jesus Christ of Nazareth.” Pilate wrote the superscription
on his cross—“Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews”—John
19:19. Luke 18:37, “Jesus of Nazareth passeth by.” Per
contra, John 7:42, tells us that the scripture saith “Jesus shall
come from Bethlehem.” Matt. 2:1 says Bethlehem. Did Jesus
not live some years in Egypt f Matt. 2, v. 13, gospel of infancy,
chapters 10 to 22, says he was three years in Egypt.
 CHAPTER V

Were There Miracles at Jesus' Birth?

Section i. Jesus was either a God or a man; or he
was half God, and half man; his grandmother at all
events was Mrs. Anna Joachim, and his mother was
Mary Joachim, a fifteen or sixteen year old Jewish girl.
If not half a God, he was simply a very religious man
who sought to give the world a better religion than the
old Jewish superstition. And, all honor to his name,
he succeeded gloriously.

He preached to the Jews the gospel of peace, and
there was sore need of it; yet his audiences have been
millions, in lands to him unknown, and in tongues then
unborn. He preached less than three years, but his
name is upon the lips of more people than that of any
human being; Buddha alone excepted, (i)

These two men (2) began their ministries when
they were each about twenty-nine or thirty years of
age. Buddha preached fifty years, and died in peace,

(1)   Jesus has of Catholics and Protestants about one hundred

and seventy millions of followers. 3uddha has upwards of four
hundred millions of followers.   '

(2)   I call Jesus a man. He was born and grew like any other
mortal from childhood on to maturity.

62
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES   63

surrounded by friends; the Jews, more barbarous and
blood-thirsty than the Hindus, condemned Jesus to the
cross, but their very cruelty has only served to empha-
size and immortalize his life. Each of these men
brought a better faith into the world than any their
own people had ever before known. And after their
deaths, most marvelous stories began to gather about
their names.

Of Jesus, it is said some wise men came to Jerusalem
saying they had seen his star in the East, and had come
to worship him. (3)

And “Lo, the star,” it is said, “which they saw in
the East, went before them, till it came and stood over
where the young child was.” Of course, when Mat-
thew wrote that line, he had no conception of what a
star is, or was. He must have supposed that it was
a little luminous lump of nebula, about the size of a
man’s fist. He certainly did not know that the nearest
star to the earth is many millions of miles distant, and
that if it should approach us, as that star is alleged to
have done, there would be such a crash of worlds that
there would be no further use for any religion what-
ever. Jesus and Bethlehem would instantly have been
crushed out of existence. (4)

(3)   Who those wise men were, we cannot tell, as neither their
names nor country are given. Nor are we told whence they
came, nor whither they returned. In fact, they at once drop
as completely out of sight as if the earth had opened and swal-
lowed them.

(4)   I shall be told that it was something that had the appear-
ance of a star. I answer, that the record says “it was a star."
Matthew (ch. 2) would have saved his reputation, if he had
said it had the appearance of a star.
 64

A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

Section 2. The Hindus went to even greater
lengths; for they specified the particular star “Pushya”
as the one that came down to welcome Buddha. But
both of these star stories must at once be set aside and
dismissed as utterly improbable.

The wise men, we are told, found Mary and the
baby in a “house,” and they “fell down and worshipped
him,” presented him treasures, etc. They must have
remained over night, for they were warned of God in a
dream “not to return to Herod.” (5) And when they
departed, the angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in
a dream, wherein he was told to take the child and his
mother, and flee into Egypt, and remain there until the
angel brought him word, lest Herod destroy the
child. (6)

The necessity was seemingly so great, that, it is said,
Joseph and Mary fled by night with die child into
Egypt. (7)

We are next told that “Herod was exceeding
wroth” that the wise men did not return* and there-
upon “he sent forth and slew all the children in Beth-
lehem, and the coasts thereof, from two years old and
under.” (

(5)   Matt. 2, v. 12.

(6)   This trip to Egypt is made because Hosea 760 yean be-
fore this, had said, “Out of Egypt have I brought my son.”
(Hosea, ch. 11, v. 1.) Is it not somewhat hazardous to lay the
very foundations of our faith on dreamsf (Matt. 1, v. 20, and
Matt. 2, v. 13.) Who told Matthew of these remarkable dreams Y
I shall mention this again when I come to speak of apochryphal
gospels.

(7)   Matt. 2:14.

(   I have shown in my preceding chapter, section 5, that
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES   65

In regard to this monstrous order of Herod, (if he ,
ever issued such a one) it is passing strange that
neither Mark, Luke nor John makes any mention of it
whatever. Is it not reasonable to suppose that a deed
so awful, detestable, and cruel beyond description, com-
mitted against the little innocents, would call from
those writers a stinging condemnation, if such a thing
really happened?

Luke, in his story of the birth, says that some shep-
herds were keeping watch over their flocks, when an
angel came unto them, and gave them a fright; but the
angel told them to “fear not, for he brought them good
tidings.” “A Saviour,” he said, “is this day born in
the city of David” and they would “find the babe
wrapped in swaddling clothes lying in a manger.” (9)

We have seen how the angels sang for joy when
Buddha was bom, (10) and Luke tells us “that sud-
denly there was with the angel, and shepherds, a multi-
tude of the heavenly host, praising God, and saying
‘peace on earth, and good will toward men.’ ” And
when the angels were gone away into heaven (11) the

there is a lack of proof that Matthew is right as to “the slaugh-
ter of the children,” but if we can rely upon the Protevangelium,
ch. 18 and 21 and 22, then Matthew does not stand alone. The
gospel of infancy, ch. 9, says Joseph was to start for Egypt at
the crowing of the cock, but it nowhere mentions the slaying of
the babes. But those who hold to the three canonicals, refuse
to credit the Protevangelium, or the gospel of the Infancy.

(9)   Luke 2:8 to 20.

(10)   Ch. 1, sec. 1, ante.

(11)   Luke 2:10 to 21. It is remarkable that neither Matthew,
nor Mark, nor John have anything whatever to say about that
multitude of angels which Luke mentions (Luke 2, v. 15) as
going away into heaven.
 66

A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

shepherds went with haste, and found Mary and the
babe, as the angel had told them.

Section 3. Matthew, as we have seen, (12)
hurries Joseph off to Egypt, by night Luke says,
“When the days of her purification, according to the
laws of Moses, were accomplished, they brought Jesus
to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord.” (13) Forty
days therefore elapsed from the birth, to the time they
brought him to the temple.

Bethlehem being only five or six miles southeast of
Jerusalem, if Jesus’ life was in danger, why did they
bring him to Herod’s very door? If Herod was then
alive, would he not know of this? How easy for him,
even if on his death-bed, to send a trusted messenger
and learn the whereabouts of Jesus. Devout old
Simeon, we are told, was at the temple, and took Jesus
in his arms; and Anna the prophetess was there, and a
pair of turtle doves, or young pigeons, were offered as
a sacrifice. “And when all these things were per-
formed.Luke says, “they returned unto Galilee, to
their own city, Nazareth.” (14)

Here, now, is a flat contradiction between two gos-
pel writers. They both cannot be right. One or the

(12)   Ch. 2:5, 14.

(13)   Luke 2, v. 21 to 25; Leviticus 12:2 to 4. If a woman
bore a man-child, she was unclean seven days, and on the eighth
day, the child was circumcised. After that she must continue
in the blood of her purifying 33 days.

(14)   Luke 2:39. Matthew hurried Joseph and Mary and Jesus
off to Egypt by night. (Matt. 2, v. 14.) Luke and Matthew
seem to have been inspired differently on this point. Does a man
have to be inspired to write down sober facts!
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

67

other is surely wrong. The Protevangelium, ch. 18,
says: “Mary heard the children were to be killed, and
she wrapped the child in swaddling clothes, and laid
him in an ox-manger,” but not a word is said about the
flight into Egypt.

The gospel of the infancy says that “when Jesus was
in the temple, the angels, praising him, stood round in
a circle,” like life guards around a king, (15) but it
makes no mention of the slaughter of the children.

The flight into Egypt, and a residence there of three
years, is set forth in the gospel of the Infancy, together
with many wild and extravagant miracles performed by
Jesus as a child. It is said that a bride who had be-
come dumb, on taking Jesus in her arms instantly re-
covered her speech; (I will mention this more fully
when I come to speak of apocryphal gospels, near the
close of this book ) (16) ; that a girl whose body was
white with leprosy, was cured by sprinkling upon her
some water wherein Jesus was bathed; and a tree,
whose bark was used for healing, bent down its
branches and worshiped him, as he approached it. It
may have been the same species of tree that bent down
in silent adoration to Buddha, at his coming. At

(15)   Infancy, ch. 5. Here we come across the first mention
of the mother as “Lady Mary.99

(16)   Eusebius, a dishonest historian, in writing of these things
about A. D. 325, sets them down as sober facts. He is mislead-
ing about Herod. Acts 12, v. 21 to 23. Josephus says, “Herod
saw an owl sitting on a rope, which he said was an evil omen,
and a severe pain arose in Herod’s belly, and he fell sick, and
said to those who called him a God and Immortal: ‘Alas, I am
soon to be hurried away by death.’ ” Antiq. Book 19, ch. 8,
sec. 2.
 68   A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

Buddha’s advent, we are told that even dead trees put
forth leaves and flowers. There is, no doubt, just as
much truth in one story as the other.

Zoroaster, a great religious teacher, who preceded
both Buddha and Jesus by centuries, was likewise wel-
comed in a peculiar manner. We are told that for
three days and nights before he was born the whole
village became luminous, and a divine radiance, sur-
passing the brilliancy of the sun, encircled his father’s
house. Moreover, we are told that Zoroaster laughed
outright as he came into the world. The Herod of
that day was a wicked Karap, or wizard, who sought to
kill the child by placing him in front of a herd of
cattle. But an old ox, it is said, stood guard over him
until the herd passed by. Failing in that the wizard
sought to burn the child, but the fagots would not take
fire. Then Zoroaster is flung into a wolf’s den, but two
angels, Srosh and Vohuman, close the wolfs mouth,
and he is saved. They seem to have had miracles in
Persia, as well as in India and Palestine. (17)

Section 4. We shall see further along how angels
ministered to both Buddha, Jesus and Zoroaster. In
one place it is said an angel actually held down the
branches of a tree and thereby saved Buddha from be-
ing drowned in the Ganges. We shall be told how
Jesus fasted forty days in the wilderness, and that
angels came and fed him. And that an angel actually

(17)   See Whitney’s Zoroaster, chapter 3. And Dinkard, eh. 3,
sec. 16 and 46, and Dialeard, p. 146, vol. 47, Sacred Books ot
the East.
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES 69

introduced Zoroaster to the Almighty. But now, for
many centuries past, this wicked and perverse world
has not either seen or heard so much as the rustle of
an angel’s wing.

The Bethlehem incarnation and birth, we must re-
member, was preceded more than one thousand years
by the incarnation and birth of the Hindu God,
Krishna or Vishnu. Bhagavat Purana tells us of
Vishnu’s miraculous conception and birth; that he was
bom in a dungeon, the walls of which, at his birth,
were • strangely illuminated; that a chorus of devas
(angels) welcomed his advent, and as soon as born he
had the power of speech and conversed with his mother.
Buddha, as we have seen, possessed at his birth the
power of speech and said to his mother, “I have been
bom to save the world.” Krishna (Vishnu), like
Jesus, was cradled among shepherds.

We are told that Cansa, the ruler of the country,
fearing the loss of his kingdom, sought the life of
Krishna, and the child was only saved by being hurried
away at night and concealed in a distant region. Cansa,
the Herod of the East, finding himself “mocked”
(18) slaughtered all the young children in his king-
dom. (19)

Krishna, even when a child, we are told, performed

(18)   Matt. 2, y. 16.

(19)   I have followed in this matter Rev. Thomas Maurice, in
his history of Hindostan, vol. 2; he insists on the vast antiquity
of the Hindu scriptures. That great scholar, Sir William Jones,
says the birth of Chrisna is many centuries before Jesus. Col.
Wilford puts the time 1300 B. C.; others, several centuries later.

[Prometheus]

70

A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

many miracles. He raises the dead to life, he strangles
a huge serpent, he cures lepers. While still a boy the
other boys choose him King. In the gospel of the In-
fancy (ch. 41) we are told that Jesus ranked the boys
together as if he were a king and they spread gar-
ments for him to sit upon and crowned him with flow-
ers. Is it not very remarkable that the happenings at
Jesus' birth so nearly resemble or duplicate those of
Krishna, who preceded him by more than a thousand
years?

Section 5. The lavish supply of angels in Persia,
Judea and Palestine seems to have completely ex-
hausted the entire stock. And now for nearly twenty-
four hundred years in India and three thousand years
in Persia and nineteen hundred years in Palestine, not
a single blessed flyer has ever put in an appearance.
Why have we been so slighted? Do we not need their
presence and counsel as much as those men of Pales-
tine and India and Persia? But it is said we have the
scriptures, and do not need them. I reply that I have
just shown that Matthew and Luke tell two very differ-
ent stories on an important point, and I am not certain
which is right; they both may be wrong. And others
may be wrong too. Moreover, the Jewish mind for a
thousand years had been sedulously taught to believe
all such improbable things; They were fireside say-
ings. They had written them in their books as true.
The people of India and Persia in such matters led the
way. The Jews simply copied the extravagances of
the East. In fact, all religions two thousand years ago
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES   71

preached the improbable, and the improbable has come
down to us.

Let the reader understand me. I do not say that
angels did not appear, as Luke says (20), and
that then they went away into heaven. For I was not
there to see that remarkable phenomenon. Luke him-
self was not an eye witness of that of which he writes.
He admits this, for in the very first verse of his first
chapter he says that “many” having taken in hand to set
forth the things believed, it seemed good to him, also,
having had a perfect understanding, to write. In truth,
he had manuscripts, some think more than a dozen,
before him, from which to make up his gospel; and no
doubt he tried to sift them and reach the truth, just as
I am doing as I write these lines. If there was a divine
influence at his elbow to guide his pen aright, I pray
that the same influence be not withheld from me.

Section 6. Here now I must digress a little and say
a few words about John the Baptist, the predecessor,
and, as it were, the teacher of Jesus. John, who was
a little older than Jesus, was a Nazir from his birth.
That is, he was of the Priestly class (21) and sub-
jected to a vow of temperance and chastity. (22) The
first certain glimpse we catch of him, he is preaching
to great audiences in the wilderness of Judea, clothed
only in a raiment of camel’s hair, and his food, it is
said, was locusts and wild honey. (23) He must have

(20)   Ch. 2, V. 15.

(21)   Luke 1, v. 5.

(22)   Luke 1, v. 15.

(23)   Matt 3, v. 1 to 5.
 72

A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

been an orator of wonderful power, for people flocked
to him in great numbers, from “Jerusalem and all
Judea.” They came to him from as far north as
Nazareth in Galilee. Even Jesus was drawn to him
and received baptism at his hands. (24)

Some of the Pharisees and Sadducees having been
sent as spies to watch John, he pointed to them and ex-
claimed : “O generation of vipers, who hath warned
you to flee from the wrath to come?” (25) His
austere life led many to believe that he was Elias,
returned to the earth (26), and in truth there was a
striking resemblance between the two. It is possible
that later influences may have caused the Baptist to
lead his anchorite life; for the Essenes or Therapeutae
were grouped in plentiful numbers not far from John’s
scene of activity. It is highly probable that the story
of Buddha’s solitary life in the forests of India had
reached John; as Babylon, long before Jesus was born,
was seething in Buddhism. In fact, Buddha’s doctrines
had reached Syria and Asia Minor two centuries be-
fore John the Baptist’s time. Ezekiel sprinkled dean
water upon his converts. (27) Buddha, however,
allowed his people to follow the customs of their own
family (28), but they must, before admission to the
order, remain four months on probation. (29)

(24)   Matt. 3, t. 13 to 16.

(25)   Matt. 3, v. 7; Luke 3, v. 1 to 7.

(26)   Malachi 4, v. 5. Matt. 11, v. 14.

(27)   Ch. 36; v. 25.

(28)   Max Muller; Sanskrit Lit., p. 50.

(29)   Yol. II, Sacred Books of the East, p. 109, and vol. 13, p.
109.
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES 73

With Subhadda, the last convert which Buddha re-
ceived just before his death, the four months’ probation
was omitted and the following ceremony took place:

Subhadda was taken on one side and his hair and
beard shaved off; then they poured water over his head
and clad him in yellow robes, and had him repeat: “I
take my refuge in the blessed one; I take my refuge in
the Dhamma (the law) and in the fraternity of Bhik-
lchus.” John the Baptist did not follow this plan; he
led those who sought baptism down into the river Jor-
dan and washed them; and it is thought that after he
had poured water on their heads he finally plunged
them under the water. One of his strict conditions
was that the sinner must repent. (30)

Now, while John was baptizing unto repentance,
Jesus came; but why the need of his baptism if he was
a sinless being? unless it was to show that thereby he
severed his connection with the Pharisees, or possibly
as an example to others.

Jesus, it must be remembered, was born a Pharisee,
and the Jews never practiced confession and immer-
sion; but the Essenes, on the Eastern shores of the
Dead Sea, not far from John, practiced both. Ablu-
tions were familiar to the Jews, but confession of sins
and total immersion never until John; and he no doubt
caught his inspiration from the Essenes. And when
Jesus began to preach, his first words are borrowed

(30)   Matt. 3, v. 11.
 74

A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

from John: “Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven
is at hand.” (31)

John preached against the rich and said: “He that
hath two coats let him impart to him that hath none.”
(32) Jesus preached the same doctrine. (33) Con-
cerning John’s diet on “locusts and wild honey,” the
locusts were simply a bean or seed taken from the
locust trees which grew near the western shores of the
Dead Sea. The wild honey was a gum made from the
sweet leaves of shrubs, which were plentiful in that
vicinity. The juice of these leaves was called by the
people “wild honey.” The seeds or beans of the locust
tree, stewed with the sweet leaves, made not an unpala-
table diet.

John’s ministry, unfortunately for the world, was
cut short in the midst of its great usefulness. There
is an old Persian tradition that Zoroaster lived for
twenty years in the wilderness on cheese. But locusts
and wild honey with cheese added, would seem to be a
slim diet to build a religion upon.

The evil eye of Herod was upon John, and he bound
him and cast him into prison. The whole wretched
story is told in ch. 14, Matthew, and Mark 6, v. 17
to 26. But in reading ch. 11, Matthew, v. 2 to 6,
there is a sorry disagreement with ch. 3, Matthew, v.
14 to 17. Observe that John makes no mention of
that voice from heaven. (34). Moreover, while in

(31)   Matt. 3, v. 2, 3, 17: Mark 1, v. 15.

(32)   Luke 3, v. 11.

(33)   Matt. 5, v. 40, 43.

(34)   Matt. 3, v. 17.
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES   75

prison he sent two of his disciples, who asked Jesus:
“Art thou He that should come, or do we look for
another?” (35) Does not this prove that John did
not know who Jesus was at the time of the baptism ?
If he knew before the baptism, why this inquiry later
on? Josephus, Antiq., Book 18, ch. 5, tells us that
Herod caused John to be beheaded lest his wonderful
eloquence win so many followers that he would ulti-
mately raise a rebellion. But no mention whatever is
made of his being cast into prison and thereafter be-
headed on account of his criticism of Herod for having
married Herodias. John’s note of warning to the
world (36) will probably never fade from the memory
of man.

(35)   Matt. 11, v. 1 and 2.

(36)   Matt. 3. y. 2.
 CHAPTER VI

A Few More Parallels.

Section i. It may seem strange to the reader that
miracles most marvelous are alleged to have taken
place at the natal hours of both Buddha and Jesus, and
that, thereafter, all exhibitions of the supernatural im-
mediately subsided in both cases for nearly thirty years,
(i)

It is mentioned of Buddha that, when twelve years
old, he was sent to some teachers for instruction, and
at one sitting he surpassed them all. Jesus, when
twelve years of age, went on a trip with his parents
from Nazareth to Jerusalem, to be present at a feast
of the Passover. The caravan, after traveling a whole
day on its return, missed the lad, and at the end of
a three days’ search he was found in the temple, we
are told, with the doctors of the law, both hearing and,
answering questions. “Thy father and I have sought
thee sorrowing (2),” said Mary, as she discovered him.

(1)   We have already noticed the miracles at Zoroaster’s birth.
See section 3, ch. 5, ante.

(2)   Luke 2:41 to 48. Mary here calls Joseph the fatter of
Jesus, and she ought to know.

76
 77

A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

Buddha lived in luxury in his father’s palace until
nineteen, when he married the beautiful Yasodhara,
who bore him a son.

Jesus never married, and, no doubt, lived in “neces-
sity’s hard pinch” all his life, for he was later on heard
to say, “the son of man hath not where to lay his
head.” (3)

Section 2. We have already seen the snares and
allurements that were strewn in Buddha’s path to en-
tice him from a religious life and make him an earthly
king. (4) His royal father spared no pains to win
him to the luxuries of an oriental kingship.

In a chariot bespangled with jewels and drawn by
prancing steeds, the streets scattered with flowers, hung
with canopies and silken banners, the people all re-
ceiving the Prince with gladness, and whispering ad-
miration of him, ministers of state attending him;
the Prince rode through it all, silent, respectful,
thoughtful.

His rooms were filled with fragrant buds and flow-
ers; and at night, with music and dancing, beautiful
women, some lavishly clad, were urged upon him, to
entrap him, and win his heart to wickedness. In all
this earth, for three thousand years, this scene no-

(3)   Matt. 8, v. 20.

(4)   Oh. 1, sec. 3 and 4, ante. We are told that when Buddha
was about to depart from his father’s eastle, the Hindu devil
promptly appeared and offered to make him sovereign over four
continents and two thousand adjacent isles in seven days if he
would just remain. Buddha’s answer was, “I will make ten
thousand world systems shout for joy.” Birth stories, p. 84.
 78

A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

where has had its counterpart. There have been many
old men who have abdicated thrones, and many, both
old and young, have been forced to such an act But
here is a prince, in the early flush of manhood, hardly
twenty-nine years old, his kingly father loving him,
fairly doting on him as his successor, the people loving
him and glad to salute him as their future king; but
his mind is not on the carnival; he is looking be-
yond the present; he sees the impermanence of all
earthly things. He turns a deaf ear about getting
an illustrious name. Great thoughts have taken pos-
session of his soul. Fortunes, palaces, empires, a life
of ease and luxury, are in the balance against religion;
and they all fly up in the scale as though they were
only a feather.

He is going in search of a pearl of matchless price,
to the swarming millions of India, and he is firm.
“I am resolved,” he said, “if I obtain not my quest,
that my body shall perish in the wilderness.” He is
now, as we have said, twenty-nine years old, and he has
renounced the world and is homeless in the forests with
the ascetics. Here he remained six years in a great
struggle, wrestling with the flesh that he might reach
perfect purity of heart and establish here on earth
the kingdom of Righteousness. (5) We leave him
here and turn back to the man of Galilee.

Section 3. After Jesus was found in the temple he

(5)   Vol. 13, Sacred Books of the East, p. 96, and Vol. 11, pp.
146 and 243. St. Paul had a similar experience: Romans, ch. 7,
?. 20 to 25.
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

[Prometheus]

79

returned to Nazareth, and was thereafter “subject to
his parents.” Immediately after this episode, he drops
out of sight utterly for eighteen years. (6) No mir-
acles, no signs, no portents of a remarkable and un-
surpassed future follow him. The world moves on
the same as if he were not in existence. His daily
life was probably that of many other young men in
Nazareth, who have now slept for nineteen centuries
in unmarked graves.

Joseph was a carpenter, and Jesus, no doubt, assisted
him in building houses. We wonder if he ever caught
a vision of the mighty future before him. Did Geth-
semane and Golgotha, grim specters, never stalk across
his pathway? Did he ever read Isaiah (n, v. i to 6),
or suspect that He was the rod (7) that should come
out of the stem of Jesse, or that he was the Lord’s
anointed, the Prince of Peace, the Wonderful Coun-
selor, the Redeemer ( ? Was his strange paternity
ever mentioned to him ? Did he know anything about
the “overshadowing” of his mother? Did any one in
Nazareth ever talk to him about the Holy Ghost?
Was the slaughter of the Bethlehem children a house-
hold shudder? Did his brothers and sisters ever men-
tion his escape from it ? Did Mary ever tell him about
wrapping swaddling clothes about him and hiding him

(6)   Luke, ch. 2, v. 45 to 52. Did he visit India in those
eighteen yearsf

(7)   Isaiah 61:1, 2, 44 and 24.

(   Matt. 1:22, says, save his people (meaning the Jews) from
their sins. Matthew was a Jew and his vision is limited to Jewry.
 80   A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

from Herod’s wrath, in a manger? As he grew to
manhood, was he all unconscious that he was to save
his people from their sins? About all these matters
he is silent, and nowhere makes any mention of
his birth and his lowly couch in the manger; nor of his
enemy, Herod, nor of Bethlehem as his birthplace.

(9)   While assisting Joseph, the carpenter, did he ever
suspect that he was to be the Saviour of the world?

(10)

He was undoubtedly of such steady, even deport-
ment that mothers with marriageable daughters looked
upon him with favor. Did those Nazarene girls never
ogle him? Did they never try to get up a flirtation
with him ? Such a thing is not improbable, but we have
no record whatever that those Nazarene people saw in
Jesus anything different from any other sober, modest,
quiet, orderly young man. Why, therefore, should
he not receive the same attention as others of his
age, habits and sex? Both Mary and Martha seem
to have thought much of him. (11) Those Nazarenes
saw him, probably daily, in his carpenter’s apron,

(9)   I have seen it published that Jesus visited India, and
there learned his creed; that he was there from the time he was
twenty until near thirty years of age; but the proof; so far, is
not absolutely convincing, although it is a mystery as to where
he spent those intervening years. With all due respect to his
memory; it would seem that if Jesus was all-wise he would not
have chosen such a lot of wicked men for his apostles; Judas be-
trayed him; Peter thrice denied him (Matt. 20, v. 70); all of
them forsook him.

(10)   Luke 2, v. 11.

(11)   John 12, v. 1 to 3.
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES   81

toiling at the bench with Joseph. They did not
know, as John, in his wild extravagance, after-
ward said, that this Nazarene boy had made the world

(12)   , and they would not have believed John if he had
gone there and told them so.

Section 4. John would probably have been jeered
at and scoffed at for his absurd and silly assertion

(13)   . Those Nazarenes were not unfamiliar with
Genesis, which says, “In the beginning God created
the heavens and the earth.” They would have pointed
John to the very first line of Genesis, which impales
him on a barbed point.

Concerning Jesus’ education we know but little. But
if at twelve years of age he was able to discuss the
Thor (the law) with the doctors in the temple, he must
have given it much attention. Books were not then,
as now, on every hand; they were few; they were cost-
ly; and his poverty precludes the idea that he possess-
ed anything more than a copy of the law of Moses;
but with that law, his subsequent sermons show him to
be thoroughly conversant. Jesus could write, yet he
never wrote a line in the New Testament, but we are
told that when a certain woman, charged with a serious

(12)   John, ch. 1, v. 10, contains one of the most wild and
wicked statements that I ever read. How can any sane man be-
lieve such stuff f Nothing that the ignorant Hindus ever put forth
equals it in exaggeration, and they very frequently excel belief.

(13)   Where did John get this special information about the
creation of the world f Who told himf Jesus himself never
made such a foolish claim; and that silly stuff was not written
until about one hundred years after Jesus escaped from that
Sepulcher. It is even possible that John did not write it.
 82   A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

offense by the scribes and Pharisees, was brought be-
fore him, they cited him to the law of Moses, which
condemned her to death. And they said, “Master,
what sayest thou?” Jesus was more than equal to
the emergency, and stooping down, he wrote with his
finger on the ground. (14)

There was a great audience in the temple, and
Jesus had been sitting there, teaching the people, when
this terrified woman was pushed through the throng
and thrust into his very presence. She is trembling
with fear; terror is stamped upon every lineament of
her face. The scribes insist that the proof of her
guilt is beyond all possible question. Now, if he con-
demns her, they will charge him with cruelty and bar-
barity. If he lets her go, then he himself is teaching
in open defiance of the Mosaic law. Turn which way
he may, the Pharisees think they have him completely
cornered. They look about triumphantly. They ques-
tion him: “Master, what sayest thou?” Jesus is
writing on the ground. They press about him, and
look over his shoulder to see what he has written.
These men claim to be strict keepers of the law; {hey
pay their tithes; they are conspicuous at the Passover;

(14)   I am indebted to Professor Gregory, of Leipsic, Saxony,
for an ingenious solution of this mystery of what Jesus wrote,
though I am not entirely certain that he is right. But Professor
Gregory cannot be far out of the way, for it can hardly be con-
ceived that words less truthful and convicting could have scat-
tered those Pharisees as did those words written on the ground,
for the law violated by the woman, Levit., ch. 20, v. 10, and
John 8, v. 1 to 10,
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES   83

they claim to be sinless; they think Jesus is beaten. But
what is he writing?

These are his ominous, convicting words:

“Eldad killed his friend, Modar, in the wilderness.”

“Horan cheated Bunam’s widow out of her house.”

“Arved’s wife was compelled to yield to the power
of Muman.”

Consternation has siezed the woman’s accusers. El-
dad supposed his sin was unknown, and as he reads
of his crime, his face blanches as did the woman’s a
moment before.

Horan, who claimed to be honest and pious, is
amazed to see his fraud written out, so that all could
read it.

Muman’s guilt is even greater than that of the wo-
man he seeks to have stoned to death.

There is a shuffling in the crowd. Eldad is pressing
his way out. Jesus now turns upon the woman’s ac-
cusers: “He that is without sin among you, let him
first cast a stone at her.”

Again he writes upon the ground. Muman is squeez-
ing through the throng to hide; mortification and
fear are stamped upon his face. Horan, crestfallen
and conscience-smitten, is striving to reach the door.
One by one, all the other accusers slink away. Jesus
and the woman are left alone. Jesus looks up, “Wo-
man, where are those thine accusers? Hath no man
 84

A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

condemned thee?” “None, my Lord.” “Neither do
I condemn thee; go, and sin no more.” (15)

There is no record that Jesus ever wrote another
line; yet his name and fame fill the whole world with
fragrance.

(15)   John 8, y. 10 and 11.
 CHAPTER VII

Buddha Seeks Religion in the Forest.

Section I. If I could paint Buddha and Jesus as
compared with other men, I would paint two mighty
mountains, reaching from earth to heaven; the top of
one in India, its base reaching the other in Palestine.
On the top of one I would write the word “Jesus,”
on the top of the other “Buddha.” At the foot of
each of these mountains I would raise two insignificant
hills, scarcely perceptible, and on each crest write the
word “self-love.” These men so loved mankind that
they both devoted their lives to the welfare of the race.
The mountains represent their complete unselfishness,
the mole-hills their self-love. One of these men, after
a short and brilliant career, was cruelly nailed to a
cross; the other toiled to his dying hour to guide his
people into a sure haven of rest and peace. No man
can be truly great whose very soul is cankered with
selfishness. Greed of wealth—in other words, selfish-
ness, in one form or another—stains the whole calendar.
Some men, selfishly and unjustly, wring millions from

86
 86

A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

the people, and then to gain the name of being generous
and liberal donate a bagatelle to some university or
library. This has been done in America. In truth,
such men are only gigantic robbers under the forms of
law; but,

"Despite their titles, power and pelf,

The wretches concentered all in self,

Living, shall forfeit fair renown,

And doubly dying shall go down
To the vile dust from whence they sprung;
Unwept, unhonored and unsung ” (i)

Such men forget that Jesus said: “Love thy neigh-
bor as thyself.” They never heard (nor would they
have heeded if they had heard) that Buddha preached
and urged that “men should be kind and peaceful,
bringing hurt to no one; and that all should be truth-
ful, pure, honest, just.” (2)

Section 2. Both Jesus and Buddha, as we have
seen, are said to have come down from heaven to bless
the race; but I shall treat them simply as men "of the
very highest type; supreme in love and mercy and all
the great moral attributes. (3) 1

(1)   I have changed Sir Walter Scott’s inspired stanzas to hit
the coal robbers, the oil thieves, the steel swindlers, and I might
greatly prolong the list, including all trusts and all unlawful
combinations. There are plenty of the thieving brood in Amer-
ica.

(2)   Vol. 11, Sacred Books of the East, p. 144, and Vol. 13,
p. 95.

(3)   I do not say as a matter of fact that they did not come
down from Heaven. 1 simply affirm that the record seems to
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES   87

Their followers have given them many endearing
names. Buddha is called The Great Samana, The
Blessed One, Bodhissatta, Tathagata, Gotama, The
Enlightened One, The Master, The Holy One, The
Lord of the World, The Redeemer, The Great King
of Glory, etc.

Jesus is called The Son of God, The Redeemer, The
Saviour, The Lamb of God, The Prince of Peace, The
Everlasting Father, etc.

As Buddha preceded Jesus r;bout five hundred years,
let us follow his fortunes for a time. We have seen
him at the edge of the forest, where he dismisses
Kandaka, his servant, with the injunction that he tell
his father, the king, to stifle every feeling of affection
for him, as he has entered the mountain wilds, where
he expects to undergo a painful discipline in seeking
true religion. Again we have seen him in that great
struggle for perfect purity of heart. (4) He is now in
the forest, and a new world opens on his astonished
vision. He found men undergoing the most terrible
austerities, hoping thereby to gain, at the end of life, a
birth in heaven. Some subsisted on roots and twigs;
others captured their food and ate it, as did the
birds. (5)

Some were letting water drip continually on their

be faulty. Such proof would not stand a moment in a Court
of Justice. In truth, they were born the same as other children.
Their bodies therefore did not come down from heaven, or go
up to heaven. In fact, Buddha, as we shall see, was cremated.

(4)   Ch. 1, sec. 5, and ch. 6, sec. 2.

(5)   Fo Sho Hing, Varga 7, verseB 513 to 526.
 88

A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

shaven heads; while others submerged their bodies in
water and lived as near as possible as the fishes live.

No wonder the prince regarded those men with pity
and was staggered to think that such suffering must
be endured “in quest of heavenly reward”; thus, in the
circle of birth and death, “enduring affliction that they
might attain a felicity not granted on earth.”

Those Hindu ascetics believed that in some former
births great sins had been committed by them, and that
they were thus atoning for them. The Jews, a thou-
sand years before Buddha was born, invented a much
more convenient way of atoning for their wickedness.
Once a year they brought a bullock without the camp
and burned him in the fire to make an atonement for
all their sins. (6)

The Jews were told to wail and moan. They girded
themselves with sackcloth and scattered ashes on their
heads (7). This was common even in Jesus’ day (,
and the Catholic Church has brought it down to a very
recent period.

Section 3. Those ascetics which Buddha found in
the forests went to awful extremes in mortifying the
flesh; they punished it terribly with every kind of afflic-
tion; all in the interest and name of religion. But
Gotama said to them: “If you regulate the mind, the
body will spontaneously go right.” (9) Whether he
uttered those words then, I know not; but they were,

(6)   Levit., ch. 16, v. 27 to 34.

(7)   Joel 1, ?. 13; Isaiah 22:12.

(   Matt. 11:21.

(9)   Fo Sho Hing; Varga 7, v. 627.
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES 89

and are, everlastingly true. The mind is the master;
the carnal body, the servant; and to macerate the ser-
vant is not “regulating the mind.” Paul copied
Buddha five hundred years later, when he said: “The
weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but we bring
into captivity every thought.” (10)

There were still other rites performed by those
ascetics, such as sacrificing to fire, sprinkling butter
libations and chanting mystic prayers at the close of
the day; for all of which the prince could see no sense
or reason. They chanted mystic prayers until the sun
went down. (11)

“The law which you teach,” he said, “you inherit
from former teachers; but I seek a law more in accord
with human reason; therefore this is no halting place
for me.” And as he turned to go, the company all
followed him and besought him to remain. There-
upon he was told to visit Arada, a most wise teacher,
a great man, who could explain the laws of life and
death to him. Such was the inauspicious opening
chapter of the greatest religious ferment that up to
that hour this wicked old earth had ever seen. Buddha
himself probably never dreamed that twenty-four hun-
dred years later he would have nearly one-fourth of the
whole religious world in his train.

Meanwhile, at the palace, which the prince had de-
serted, there was great commotion. Kandaka, his

(10)   2nd Corinthian*, ch. 10, ?. S to 0.

(11)   That silly old custom was also prevalent with the He-
brews. It is said they could actually walk through Are. Isaiah
42:2.
 90

[Prometheus]

A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

servant, was charged with taking him away. “Not
so,” he replied, “he sent me back. I lovingly followed
him, but he put upon himself the religious garb and
with shaven head entered the sorrowful grove.”

Gotami, his aunt, who had been a mother to the
prince, on hearing that he had become a recluse, was
broken with grief. “Oh, how can his tender feet,” she
cried, “tread the stones and thorns of the wilderness?
Nourished in the palace, clad in garments anointed
with perfumes, now shivering with the blasts of night
—how can my son endure all this?”

Then Yasodhara, his wife, broke in:   “You two,”

she said, “went forth together; where is he, thou vic-
ious reptile ? You were in league against him; go and
bring him safely back to me.” Kandaka tearfully re-
plied : “The Gods are in this" “The City Gates, on
his going forth,” he said, “wide opened themselves.
(12) The whole roadway, along which he rushed,
was strangely lighted.” On hearing this Yasodhara,
with moans and tears, flung herself upon the ground.
“My Lord,” she said, “has deserted me. The Brah-
man law requires the husband and wife together to
take part in religious rites; but my Lord has fled, to
wander alone in the rugged wilds.”

I “Can he forget Rahula, our son? Or has he fled
from jealousy to find a nymph of the woods or moun-
tains?”

(12)   It was a miracle, similar to the one mentioned in Acts,
ch. 12, where the iron gate opened of its own accord, to let Peter
out of prison.
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

9i

Section 4. The king, on learning all this, was so
filled with grief that he at once fasted and prayed the
gods to restore his wandering son. “He was my
hope, my only joy,” he said, “yet he is gone. Here
am I, in this great palace, solitary, alone, while he
wanders footsore in the wilderness. I care no longer
to govern; but I cannot die. Once my will was stead-
fast, difficult to move as the chained hills; but now my
mind is dazed. I am tossed to and fro like a ship on
a changing tide. There is one only hope: go, my
ministers, search him out; break down his resolution
and bring him quickly back to me.” (13)

The ministers made haste to leave, and were greatly
shocked to find Gotama in a lonely forest, with his
head already shaven, his garments so soiled that they
scarcely recognized their once bejeweled prince. They
told him of his sorrowing father; how sleep had fled
from his eyelids, and that night and day the tears
streamed down his cheeks; that he had sent them hither
to urge his quick return. “Religion,” they said, (14)
“does not require wild solitudes; a thoughtful mind
and a devoted heart will bring you inward peace.”
They mentioned Gotami, the aunt, who had reared
him from infancy; her grief and her distress; that
Yasodhara had fallen in a swoon when she learned
that he had fled to the woods; that the king, the court
and the common people would all exceedingly rejoice
at his return.

(13)   Fo Sho, Varga 8, verge 662.

(14)   Fo Sho, Varga 9, verse 688.
 92   A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

These words, most kindly meant, and calculated to
shake a very firm purpose, only brought to Gotama a
most distressful state of mind. “Whoever neglects
careful consideration of the present life,” replied the
prince, “puts his all in jeopardy. I pity my kingly
father in his fathomless grief, but in this life the ties
of blood are often severed. We are born, we love, and
are loved in return; but every changing hour leaves
his mark upon us all. We grow old, wrinkles come,
we fade, and in the end death claims us.

“You would make me king, and it is hard to resist
your pleadings. You would surfeit me with sensual
pleasures; but my destiny and delight are in religion.
I renounce the kingly estate, which my father and you
would thrust upon me. I turn my back upon kingly
leadership. Shall I return to lust, passion and ignor-
ance, having once thrust them forth? To wear this
hermit vestment was my firm purpose when I left my
father’s palace. To now go back to the soft dalliances
of love would be to miss my mission.”

The ministers rejoined:   “Man’s duty is to the

present. It is a question yet in suspense whether there
be, or be not, a hereafter. If there be nothing beyond
this life then you miss all present pleasures and gain
nothing. But if there be an after world, what proof
have you that your hermit garb will fit you for it better
than the mild scepter of a faithful king? Hereafter
is, or is not. But there is no certain proof of any-
thing beyond the present solid earth. All beyond is
vague, uncertain conjecture. .We may hope, we may
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

93

dream, we may pray, we may speculate, we may argue,
but old age and disease come at last, and death, like
a robber with a drawn sword, follows us all and finally
cuts us down. The curtain falls. Now tell me, what
is behind that curtain? Is it a curtain or is it a wall?
Is there truly anything but hope? But suppose there
be a hereafter? Where is if to be? Have the gods
contrived another world, different from this? If so,
will not a high moral life, which you can lead in your
father’s palace as well as in these woods, equip you for
that world? In the universe, if there be a million
worlds, truth, morality, virtue, justice and mercy must
be the same in all of them. Other princes and even
kings have for a time dwelt in these mountains; but
they returned and ruled wisely.

“How can it be wrong for you now to return, and by
your wisdom advance true religion with all your
people? Remember that every day you wander here
your royal father is sighing for your return; that
Yasodhara mourns your absence; that Gotami is in
tears; that Rahula will fly to your arms; that all the
people will give you joyful welcome.”

The prince replied briefly: “The sun and the moon
may fall to earth (15), lofty Sumeru may melt away

(15)   Buddha says the sun and moon may fall to the earth; but
he ought not to have misled Jesus; for Jesus says the stars shall
fall from heaven, etc.: Matt. 24, v. 29. However, it may be that
Isaiah, who lived about two hundred years before Buddha was
born, was the first transgressor, for he says the stars shall not
give their light. Isaiah misled Mark, for Mark says the stars
of heaven shall fall. (Mark 13, v. 25.) Astronomers tell us
that there are more than three hundred and fifty millions of
stars up to the twelfth magnitude. Now some of those supposed
 94 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

and disappear, and yonder snowy mountains sink
down; but my purpose shall not change. I have en-
tered on my course, and neither fierce fire nor freezing
cold shall move me from it.”

With that the prince rose and walked slowly away,
and the ministers, seeing their mission utterly hopeless,
went sorrowfully back to the king.

stars are suns; vastly larger than our Sun. Moreover, the
nearest fixed star is twenty billions of miles distant. And for
?uch stars to fall to the earth, at the rate of twenty thousand
miles a day, it would take so long that a child bora when they
began to fall, would be a graybeard long before they reached
the earth.
 CHAPTER VIII

Buddha Rejects a Kingdom.

Section i. After leaving the ministers, Buddha took
up his march for Vulture Peak, about 180 miles dis-
tant from his father’s palace at Kapilavastu. On en-
tering the village at the Peak, the people were so struck
with the exceeding comeliness of his person that they
swarmed after him, and some hastened to pass him,
that they might turn back and gaze upon his hand-
some features.

We have already passed by many such incidents,
and, as we shall encounter them again, I shall here
briefly describe Buddha, as well as possible, from the
many pen pictures found in the Indian books.

The old Rishi (prophet) at Buddha’s birth, observed
that he was a most excellently endowed child. “His
eyes,” he said, “are bright and expanding; the iris a
clear blue; his face surpassingly beautiful, and so
formed as to give promise of superiority in the world.”

Gotami, his aunt, who nursed him when a child, men-
tions his dark, glossy locks (i); his broad shoulders 1

(1)   Of course, as a recluse, these were shorn off.
 96 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

and his lion step; broad between eyes deep and pierc-
ing, as if they would look through all the worlds.
Others have described him with a well moulded and
capacious head; a body straight as an arrow; his whole
make-up at once commanding and attractive.

He was probably a little more than six feet tall,
and of athletic build; but with a disposition mild,
gentle, winning. Such a person, among any people,
becomes at once a leader, without his seeking. It was
soon noised about that this majestic looking person
was none other than a prince of the Sakya race, now
a recluse. Whereupon Binbasara Raga (king) order-
ed his royal equipage to pay him a visit; and on see-
ing him could not understand why the descendant of
an illustrious family should leave a palace, where at-
tendants waited upon him, and where perfumed gar-
ments and anointings were his portion. Just how
he could put all these aside, and wander in the woods,
houseless, in the coarse garb of an ascetic, the king
could not understand.

“Your hand,” said the king, “instead of taking its
little stint of food, ought to grasp the reins of em-
pire.”

Binbasara then entered into a long argument to
convince Buddha that his course was wrong, and, as
an inducement to change it, offered to divide his em-
pire with him. “You are young and lusty,” added the
king; “now is the time to enjoy yourself. When
age wrinkles your brow, and desire fails, then seek
the solitudes and perform your religious duties, as have
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES 97

the kings who have gone before and are now receiving
their reward in heaven.”

Section 2. The prince respectfully replied that the
king’s liberality and kindness were known to the farth-
est limit. “You, O King, would have me go back
to the wealth of a kingdom, or take a part of yours.
But I seek neither the kingdoms nor the riches of this
world. What, at best, is wealth? It is no more to a
wise man than a chip, a feather or a stone. It is trash.”
Yet, how painfully do men toil and scheme after it!
This world has gone stark mad in pursuit of it. O,
covetousness! how many crimes hast thou committed.
Thou hast robbed the unsuspecting, and plundered the
innocent. (2)

And there is lust, its wicked brother. Those two
wretched outlaws ride triumphantly through the world,
robbing innocence of its portion, and purity of its
charm. “You, O King! have asked me to share with
you the dignity of your realm. In return, I beseech you
to go with me in search of that which will put an end
to birth, disease and death.”

“We have been taught to offer sacrifices, to appease
the Gods; but why destroy life to gain religious merit ?
Does pure religion require that we must wade through
slaughter to obtain it ? Will the slaying of that which
lives, open the portals of heaven to us? There are
those who, with great austerity, practice those rites;
yet they neglect the rules of moral conduct. How can
it be that by killing an animal and burning it, some fu-

(2)   Varga 11, verse 867 and following, Fo-Sho-Hing.
 98 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

ture or present good shall come to us? This world is
draped in sorrow, and there has been in the past mudi
wasting of life to banish it. Yet it pursues us unceas-
ingly. I seek a mode of escape as yet untried. Slaugh-
ter and religion are opposites. They are enemies.
They cannot go hand in hand. I pray thee, O king,
put an end to slaughter.”

These words of the prince so filled the king with
new emotions, that he at once, with great reverence, re-
plied :

“Go seek that of which you are in quest; it is worthy
of all endeavor. If you obtain it, then quickly re-
turn, and in mercy let me become an early partaker of
it” (3)

Section 3. In Gotama’s severe denunciation of bloody
sacrifices, his vision must have reached beyond the con-
fines of India, for the Indians, long before he came
upon the stage, had abolished it. That senseless and
wicked abomination, the Hebrews seem to have clung
to and followed with greater pertinacity than any
other people. Less than four hundred years before
Buddha came, the King of Moab offered his eldest son
upon the walls of a city as a burnt offering to his god,
that he might win a victory over Israel and Judah.
(4)

And only about two hundred years before Buddha
and Binbasara held their conference, Ahaz, the king
of Judah, sacrificed his own children by burning them 3 4

(3)   Sacred Books of the East, vol. 19.

(4)   2nd Kings, ch. 3, v. 27.
 99

A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

in the valley of Hinnon. (5) Those kings may have
copied Abraham, who bound Isaac upon the fagots, and
would have offered him up had not a ram just then
became tangled in the bushes. (6) However that
may be, we are certain that centuries before Moab and
Ahaz burned their children, the Hindus, being less
given to blood and more to contemplation than the He-
brews, invented a much easier method. They substi-
tuted a horse; later on, an ox; then, a sheep, and finally,
a goat. The sacrificial essence, passing on down, at
last slipped from the goat and entered the ground,
from which rice and barley sprung up. (7) Thence-
forth they offered rice cakes, milk and clarified butter.
Even when Jesus was presented to the Lord in the
temple at Jerusalem, they sacrificed two young pig-
eons. (

Thus while rice cakes were being offered as a sac-
rifice in India, the Hebrews were using divinations
and enchantments in Palestine, and were worshiping

(5)   Second Chron., ch. 28, v. 3.

(6)   Max Muller, Anc. Sanskrit Lit., 419, says:   “Human

sacrifices are not incompatible with a high stage of civilization;
especially by a people who never doubted the immortality of
the soul.’9 How any sensible man can make such a reprehensible
statement, is at least astonishing. Human sacrifices had their
origin among barbarous tribes. The Hebrews, nowhere in the
Pentateuch, nor in Kings or Chronicles, teach the immortality of
the bouI. Moreover, no people in a high stage of civilization
will permit human sacrifices.

The Hindus offered up a mock-man (Kimpurusha). Some say
Kimpurusha was a monkey; others that Kimpurusha means a
wicked man.

(7)   See pages 47 to 52, vol. 12, Sacred Books of the East;
also section 5 of chapter 2, part second, Whitney’s Zoroas-
ter, p. 216, on Brahmanism and the Mosaic religion compared.

(   Luke 2, v. 24.


 ioo A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

[Prometheus]

idols, and causing their sons and their daughters to
pass through consuming flames. (9) The logic of
these sacrifices, as blind old Homer tells us, was that
the gods were persuaded by gifts. Think of it! that
Almighty God could, or can, be moved by burning a
man, or a bull or goat, or rice cakes and butter! Yet
we continue to publish those old heathenish records
as a part of our Holy Bible. 9

(9)   Second Kings, ch. 17, v. 19 to 17.
 CHAPTER IX

The Fastings and Temptations of Buddha and

Jesus.

Section i. Did Jesus and Buddha, as asserted by
their followers, come down from heaven to bring salva-
tion to the race? Of Buddha, it is said he was bom for
the good and blessing of the world. (i) Jesus said,
“The Lord hath anointed me, to preach the gospel to
the poor.” (2)

Both of these men are alleged to have voluntarily
undergone an incarnation, that they might teach
righteousness to the remotest comers of the earth.
Both fasted; but that was not strange, for fasting was
then practiced in nearly all religions, and in some even
yet. Moses, it is said, fasted for forty days and forty
nights, without either bread or water. (3) He was
then up there on Sinai, we are told, with the Lord,
fixing up the ten commandments; but why it was nec-

(1)   Vol. 10, Sacred Books of the East, p. 123, 2nd part.

(2)   Luke 4, v. 18, quotes Isaiah 61, 1. But whether Jesus
quoted Isaiah is not certain; neither is it certain that Buddha
used the words attributed to him in Fo Sho Varga, 26, section
1991. Both of these men were establishing new religions^ and
their followers made, and still make, great claims in their behalf.

(3)   The reasonable supposition about Moses9 fast, is that he
was there writing upon those two tables of stone; but why the
writer of chap. 24, Exodus, y. 23, should state that he faeteS
all that time, is hard to understand.

101
 102 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

essary for him to fast for nearly six weeks has never
yet been explained.

The fasting of Jesus for forty days was probably
copied from Moses, but he did not in that matter, as
in many others, copy from Buddha; for Buddha, at the
utmost, only fasted four weeks; and some claim that
his fast barely extended seven days. Nor did Jesus
copy from Buddha the long and severe penance which
the latter endured in the forest of Uravila. Here,
for nearly six years, Buddha strove to repress every
bodily passion; and with purity of heart gave himself
up to meditating upon the great problems of life; the
impermanency of all things, age, disease, death and,
after the death of the body, Nirvana.

He subsisted for a time, it is said, on a grain or two
of hemp seed per day, and this he continued until
his limbs became so weak and wasted that they could
scarcely support his attenuated body. His fame as a
persistent ascetic was, meanwhile, spreading far and
wide. A Burmese writer says: “It was like the sound
of a great bell hung in the canopy of the skies.”

On further consideration Buddha concluded that
the withering of his body was not the true way of sal-
vation. Another method must be tried. He would
bathe his body, refresh it with food, and by a composed
mind seek that ecstasy which emaciation and mortifica-
tion could never bring. At his feet flowed the Naran-
gana river; and into this he plunged for a bath. On
seeking to leave it, his exhausted strength gave way,
and he fell back hopelessly into the stream.
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

103

But just then when death seemed about to snatch
him, an alleged miracle takes place. A heavenly spirit,
we are told, is close at hand, and seeing Buddha’s
peril, reaches a branch to him, which he grasps, and is
safely drawn from the water. (4) Then an angel
(perhaps the same one) told Nanda, the daughter of a
nearby herdsman, to bring Gotama some rice and milk,
which, when brought, she bowed low at his feet and
offered to him.

This renewed him, but his critics were near; they
were then, as now, always at one’s elbows, ready to
pull one down. In Buddha’s case they were the five
Bhikkhus who had lived with him in the forest. For
this sensible act they said his religious zeal was Bag-
ging. And they deserted him and went back to
Benares.

Section 2. A sublime purpose of a great mind is
never thwarted by small obstacles. Buddha was now,
after six years of persevering penance, alone in a lonely
forest, barefooted, poorly clad, nothing but an alms
bowl in his possession, to call his own. Yet this man,
thus situated, thus equipped, is ultimately to shake
the whole Eastern world!

Looking back now twenty-four centuries, we seem

(4)   This is the first miracle since the escape from the palace.
I suppose the angel was some person who happened to be near.
Angels from this on will be numerous. It may have been the
same angel that helped Jesus later on. (Luke 22, v. 43; Fo Sbo
Hing, verse 1017.) Arthur Lillie, in his “Buddhism in Chris-
tendom,” tells us that Mara, the Hindu devil, appeared in the
air at this moment and begged Buddha to return to his father’s
palace; that if he would return, he would become a universal
monarch in seven days.
 104

A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

to see that strange figure there on the banks of the
Narangana river, wandering on until he finally sits
down beneath that Bodhi tree. His whole capital in
this world’s goods consists simply in a sublime resolu-
tion. If God ever rules in the affairs of men—and
sometimes it looks as if he did; then again, it seems,
to our short vision, as if he just let things go as best
they may—he at least has not frowned either upon
Buddha or his mission. For the followers of that man
under that Bodhi tree, are greater in number than
those of any other four religions on this earth today,
combined.

The time possibly may come in the distant future,
when the man of Galilee may surpass him; but as both
religions teach a rigid morality, and that love only can
conquer hate, it may be that they will yet flourish, and
not clash, upon any part of the earth. “Love, kindness,
patience, charity; do no wrong to any one” is the
keynote to both religions.

Section 3. Both Buddha and Jesus had their temp-
tations. Buddha’s is now at hand. We are told that
the heavenly Nagas (angels), or sinless beings, seeing
Buddha firmly resolved to seek deliverance for the
world, were filled with joy. Mara, the evil one, alone
was dejected and sorrowing. This Hindu devil, we
must notice, is very much like the one in Jerusalem
five hundred years later. In both cases, they seek to
thwart the good purposes of man. The Persians, like-
wise, had a devil, and he was of the same piece of cloth.
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES 105

Moreover these devils are all great linguists. The
one in Eden understood Adam’s tongue completely;
the Persian devil was well up in all the ancient Aryan
texts, as his diatribes with Zoroaster plainly show; and
this Indian fiend could wax eloquent in the Pali dialect.
(5) The devils of Palestine spoke Aramaic fluently,
and were likewise masters in bribery, or graft, which
is the same thing.

The Hindu devil divined at once that Buddha’s pur-
pose was the overthrow of his kingdom, and forthwith
he threatened him with all manner of vengeance. Not
being able single-handed to move him, Mara sum-
moned a great army of goblins to his assistance. The
appearance of those monsters was enough to strike
terror to the stoutest heart. Some, it is said, were
lion-headed; some, as tigers, snarled at him; serpents
hissed at him; others filled the air with startling
sounds. Hell itself seemed to have vomited forth all
its furies.

It was in this case exactly as it is even to this day.
Withstand temptation, and help will come to you.
Here, around Buddha, it is said, there were gathered
a host of devils; enough to shake heaven and earth.
Yet he remained firm. Then, as a last resort, a win-

(5)   Gotama preached in the Pali tongue, one of the dialects
of ancient India. It was spoken at Kapilavastu, where he was
born. Pali has long been a dead language. The Singhalese of
Ceylon is, however, closely allied to it. It is said that the Genius
of Buddha raised the standard of Pali to the rank of a classic.
This Hindu devil, as we shall see, was a master of Pali also.
 io6 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

some woman, in lustful garb, and sweet of speech,
sought to entice him into devious paths. But she
failed; and just as this last tempting bait was rejected
we are told that voices from invisible forms (6) in the
air were heard praising the great Muni. (7) Paul de-
scribed a Muni exactly when he said: “He that over-
cometh evil,” and Paul, as we shall see further on,
heard a voice in the air calling to him. (

We are told that Mara’s army of goblins, hearing
those voices and seeing no one, were filled with alarm
and, throwing away their arms, fled in utter rout and
confusion.

Section 4. The statement about those Hindu voices,
“voices from invisible forms,” is not believed by Chris-
tians to be true. In fact it is utterly and completely
disbelieved, and by some laughed at and sneered at.

On the other hand the Hindus do not believe that
Brahma (God) saluted Jesus as he came up out of
the water from his baptism, by saying:   “This is my

beloved son, in whom I am well pleased.” Nor do the
Hindus believe that the “heavens opened” and that

(6)   Mark 1:11, says that God himself spoke from the skies,
when Jesus was baptized. Who told Mark that? and who told
that Hindu writer about those voices t Both statements seem
highly improbable. Matt. 3, v. 17, is likewise imaginary.

(7)   Muni: a man who has overcome all desire; one who has
weighed both sides, and has chosen the good; one who has over-
come evil. Paul to the Bomans, ch. 12, v. 21, says the same.
First Epistle of John, ch. 2, v. 13, also ch. 5, v. 4, describes per-
fectly a muni.

(   Acts 22, v. 7.
 ' A QUESTION OF MIRACLES 107

something like a dove descended and lit upon Jesus,
even though John says he saw it. (9)

The story of the dove and the temptation of Jesus
is a curious piece of theological writing. (10) It has
been set aside by many as a wild and improbable Jew*
ish legend. But, on the other hand it has been stoutly
defended by great intellects; and there are about one
hundred and sixty millions out of sixteen hundred mil-
lions of people on our globe who strenuously insist that
the story as told in the gospels is not only almost, but
is altogether, true. It is simply a question of belief,
but belief never changes facts.

The “heavens opened” and the spirit descended, or it
did not descend; but what is even more curious is that
immediately thereafter that same spirit “drove or led”
Jesus “up into the wilderness,” and “he was there with
the wild beasts forty days.” What for? Simply to
be tempted by the devil. Now, if Jesus was the son
of God, and God had just said he was pleased with
him, God knew exactly how the temptation would end.
What earthly, or heavenly, good to send Jesus among
the “wild beasts for forty days?”

(9)   John, eh. 1, v. 32,, if lie made such an assertion, would not
today be believed in a Court of Justice. Matt., cb. 3, v. 16 and
17; Mark, ch. 1, v. 10; Luke 3, v. 22. Tbe simple naked assertion
of any one man about such an extraordinary occurrence, would
be passed by as a foolish exaggeration.

(10)   John the Baptist did not know who Jems was when he
baptized him; for he afterwards sent two disciples to make in-
quiry. (Matt. 11, v. 2 and 3.) Now if Jesus was a sinless be-
ing, why the necessity of His baptism 1 John was baptizing
unto repentance. What had Jesus done that he must needs re-
pent f
 lo8 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

Perhaps these wild beasts were some of Mara’s gob-
lins imported from India.

No doubt the writers of our Gospels had heard of
Buddha’s temptation and his triumphant victory, some
five hundred years before. It is not improbable that
they had; and I shall show further on that Jesus Him-
self knew of Buddha and his religion.

But where was that wilderness unto which Jesus
was led? Mark says Jesus came from Nazareth of
Galilee, to be baptized in the river Jordan. Luke tells
us He “returned from Jordan and was (then) led by
the spirit unto the wilderness, where He was tempted
forty days and did eat nothing.” (11) Later on Jesus,
like Buddha, changed his mind about fasting and did
not believe in it. (12)

The temptation, therefore, took place at, or near,
Nazareth, where Jesus had been brought up; and is it
not a little strange that he should stay out there in the
wilderness and not go home to dinner? (13)

According to the record he was there for the express
purpose of being tempted; but the angels did not forget
him, (14) though Luke says: “In those forty days he
did eat nothing.” (15) How then did the angels
minister unto Him? Did they give him a piece of
bread and butter, or a cup of water, or did they furnish
Him a blanket to keep the chill of night from him ? In

(11)   Luke 4, 1 and 2.

(12)   Matt. 9, v. 14.

(13)   Mark 1, v. 12.

(14)   Mark, ch. 1, v. 13; Matt. 4, y. 11.

(15)   Luke, ch. 4, v. 1 and 2.
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES 109

some of those ways they must have served Him. (16)

The devil was on hand also, and seems to have
known God’s power, for he said: “If thou be the son
of God command that this stone be made bread.” Is
it possible that Jesus could have turned that stone into
a good wholesome loaf? We are certain, at least, that
he did not try it.

Section 5. This devil understood Aramaic, the lan-
guage of Jesus, for he talked to him, and Jesus under-
stood the devil, for he answered back.

But all this is not so astonishing as that the devil
should take Jesus into Jerusalem, the Holy City, and
set him conspicuously upon the pinnacle of the temple.
(17) Can the reader imagine how those two famous
personages (18) marched up through the streets of
Jerusalem ? The inference is that the evil one escorted
Jesus, for the record says, “the devil took him.” Did
they walk? Did they go arm in arm? Or did the
devil (the master of ceremonies on that occasion) call
for a conveyance and ride up to the temple in fine
style? How is this? Would not every one like to
know all about it? Here is a great transaction, world-
famous forever—the arch enemy of the human race

(16)   The angel, in Buddha’s case, as we have seen, was Nanda,
who gave him some rice and milk. In fact, both religions are
well supplied with angels. Ten thousand Hindu angels (Devas)
appeared at Buddha’s birth, and more than twelve legions of
angels were subject to Jesus’ command. (Matt. 26, v. 53. P.
345, vol. 19, Sacred Books of the East.)

(17)   Luke, ch. 4, v. 9: “He brought him to Jerusalem,” etc.
Matt., ch. 4:25.

(18)   I say “personages,” for the Gospels make the devil a
person as much as they do John the Baptist.
 no A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

is passing up the streets of Jerusalem to the temple,
with Jesus, the great unselfish lover and friend of man-
kind—they reach the temple and together climb the
stairway leading to that high and exposed point, the
pinnacle, and here the devil gives Jesus a seat. (19)
What is all this for? The devil himself tells us. He
wants to test a verse or two in the ninety-first psalm,
written by David, or some other poet, a thousand years
before Jesus was born. And he tries to get Jesus to
“cast himself down” from the pinnacle, to see whether
the angels will “in their hands, bear Him up,” and
not allow him to be crushed by the fall. It must be
noticed that this devil is not only a linguist, but is a
Hebrew scholar and a lover of poetry, for he quotes
that beautiful ninety-first psalm correctly.

[Prometheus]

Jesus quoted part of a verse found in Deuteronomy
(20): “Thou shalt not tempt the Lord, thy God.”
But he is careful not to cast himself down; thus show-
ing that He has no faith that the angels would save
Him harmless in the fall.

This reply of Jesus is, moreover, most startling; for
when he says, “Thou shall not tempt the Lord, thy
God,” does He not virtually say: “I am the Lord, thy
God”? (21)

Did Jesus actually say that, or have those words
been put into His mouth for a purpose? Neither
Mark nor John mentions this affair of going to Jerusa-

(19)   Matt., ch. 4, v. 5 and 6, and 91st Psalm, v. 11 and 12.

(20)   Ch. 6, v. 16.

(21)   Dent., ch. 6, v. 16.
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES hi

lem and sitting on the pinnacle. Mark leaves Him in
the wilderness, with the angels ministering unto Him
(22), and John does not even know about the trip to
the wilderness. Nor does anyone of the four Gospel
writers tell us how the devil got Jesus down from that
pinnacle, and thence through the busy streets of Jeru-
salem, to that “exceeding high mountain.”

This was, and is, a world-famous journey, of which
everyone would like to have all the incidents, even the
smallest, noted down with great particularity; yet we
are cut short in a few brief sentences. Was that
journey actually made as stated; or is it a weak copy
of Buddha’s temptations? (23)

Section 6. Luke says that the devil took Jesus up
into a high mountain; and Matthew emphasizes that by
saying it was “an exceeding high mountain.” (24)
But neither of them specifies the particular one. Now,
the mountain near Nazareth which surpasses all others
in height is Mount Carmel, on the shores of the Medi-
terranean. If Jesus stood on Mount Carmel when the
evil one, in a moment of time showed him “all the
kingdoms of the world and the glory of them,” there
was surely spread out before him a most entrancing
panorama. The blue waters of that great inland
ocean, the Mediterranean, met his vision on the west.
To the north those old cities, Tyre and Sidon, famous

(22)   Mark, ch. 1, v. 13.

(23)   Sec. 3 of this chapter.

(24)   Luke 1, ?. 5; Matt., eh. 4:8. Matthew takes him into
Jerusalem before going to the mountains, but Luke gets him to
the mountain before going to Jerusalem.
 112 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

a thousand years before His day, reposed sleepily, their
inhabitants never dreaming that from the heights of
Carmel the great enemy of mankind was trying to bar-
gain them off with the rest of the world upon a false
and fraudulent consideration. For the devil did not
own a single thing of all that he proffered. Jesus,
moreover, must have known that the devil could not
deliver any of the kingdoms he was offering.

To the east the Jordan rolled its swift and turbid
waters; and there was the sea of Galilee, and on its
shores stood Capernaum and Chorazin, villages where
Jesus afterwards dwelt, Southeast of Carmel all the
hills and valleys of Samaria, green with verdure,
spread out; and beyond them, dimly outlined it may
be, against that southern sky, rose the spires of that
famous temple of Jerusalem; famous then, but hence-
forth to be canonized in all history for all the years to
come.

Moreover, the confined, stinted borders of Palestine
were only as a leaf in the forest, compared to “all the
kingdoms of the world,” which the, devil said, “had
been delivered unto him” that he might give them unto
whomsoever he pleased. (25) That devil, we must
observe, did not tell the truth when he made that propo-
sition to Jesus. But he seems to have known that
Jewish blood was in Jesus’ veins; and therefore
thought that, like that race in those days, he could be
bribed or bought for a consideration; and so he

(25)   Luke, ch. 4, v. 5, says he showed all the kingdoms of the
world in a moment. Matt., ch. 4, v. 9.
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES 113

promptly offered Jesus “the whole world” if He would
just fall down and worship him.

Jesus’ answer, “Get thee behind me, Satan,” is as
immortal as the stars, and ought to be stamped upon
men’s minds and hearts until the evening of the last
day. Thereupon the devil “for a season” left Jesus;
and thus ended one of the most remarkable dialogues
(if it is a dialogue) in all history. (26)

Section 7. I cannot close this chapter without re-
marking that both of these temptations have a weird
and unreal aspect. Are those devils real living things?
Or are they simply creatures of the poet’s brain? Did
old Satan really take Jesus and set him on that pin-
nacle; and also take him up into that mountain? Yet
however much we may speculate on this matter, it is
plain that Jesus believed that there were devils (27)
and He prayed God to keep evil (devil) from His
disciples (28); and Jesus, it is said, afterwards cast
out many devils. (29)

The followers of the man of Galilee persistently set
aside all other writings and pin their faith to the New
Testament; but only two men, Matthew and Luke, in
all this world, tell us that these episodes of the pin-
nacle and the mountain actually took place. In this I
omit, of course, the Apocryphal gospels.

But where did Matthew and Luke get their facts?
Matthew was a tax collector at the time Jesus is said

(26)   For a season. Luke, eb. 4, v. 13.

(27)   Matt. 6:13.

(28)   John 17:15.

(29)   Matt. 8:16.
 114

A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

to have been in company with the devil on the moun-
tain ; and Luke never was a disciple, and never at any
time saw Jesus. The best authorities now agree that
the four gospels were composed from older writings
founded on old traditions.

A story, we know, gains and never loses anything in
its travels. I shall not declare that these things did
not happen on the mountain and pinnacle, but simply
add that the evidence offered to prove them seems
lamentably deficient.

It may be, however, that all those explicit state-
ments and colloquies were, and are, merely subjectives,
in order to teach us that no matter what the tempta-
tion one should always stand firmly for the right, for
justice and for truth. If such was the object of
Matthew and Luke, they struck the keynote for all
men, for all time.
 CHAPTER X

Buddhism Known in Palestine Before Jesus Was

Born.

Section I. In some former chapters I have said that
Jesus probably copied certain things from Buddha and
the Hindus. As that statement is likely to be con-
troverted by narrow-minded people who think that
nothing pertaining to religion ever happened beyond
the stinted confines of Palestine, I will now proceed to
show that he not only probably followed the great
Hindu teacher in many things, but will make the proof
so strong that to every fair and unprejudiced mind it
will truly equal absolute certainty.

In fact the proof will be nearly as absolute and cer-
tain as that Jesus preached in Capernaum. First it
must be borne in mind always that Buddha was born
in India about five hundred to five hundred and forty-
three years before Jesus appeared in Galilee.

If now I show that India and Palestine were en-
gaged with each other in friendly commerce centuries
before Buddha was born, I shall have established'the
possibility, yes, even a probability, that the religions of
those two peoples were more or less known to each
other.

It is certain that Palestine, India and the islands of
118
 Il6 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

the sea, as far back as the days of Solomon (one thou-
sand years B. C.), were engaged in friendly commerce
with each other, along the coasts of Malabar, and as
far south as Ceylon, and perhaps even beyond that.
My proof is found in those old Hebrew records, which
tell us that Solomon made a navy of ships in Ezion-
geber, on the shores of the Red Sea, and that navy,
which was called “the Navy of Tarshish,” made distant
voyages, lasting three years, and brought back gold,
silver, apes and peacocks, from India or Ceylon or
both, (i) Those ships reached Ophir, and Josephus
says Ophir was in India (2), and as they returned
freighted with merchandise, including cassia and
cinnamon, peacocks and apes, we are sure that they
must have visited such hot sultry coasts as Malabar and
Ceylon, for cassia and cinnamon were not then pro-
duced west of there.

Hiram, the famous king of Tyre, was at that time
engaged in the same business. He likewise brought
cinnamon and cassia from Malabar. His ships of
Tarshish sailed every sea. (3)

Moreover, the Egyptians, long before Solomon’s
day, must likewise have sent fleets to Malabar, as cin-
namon and cassia, in the time of Moses, is mentioned
as constituting a part of the holy anointing oil. (4) 1

(1)   1st Kings, ch. 9, v. 26; also 1st Kings 10, ?. 22. Of course
it is well known that peacocks are natives of India and Ceylon,
and they were brought from there to Palestine.

(2)   Joa Antiq. Book 8, ch. 6.

(3)   1 Kings 10, v. 22.

(4)   Exodus, ch. 30, v. 22 to 25; Bev. 18, v. 13.
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES   n7

Babylon at a later day also traded in the cinnamon
and odors and ointments of Ceylon and Malabar.

When two nations or communities of people are
found trading together in a friendly way, and the same
people continue to occupy the same original territories
and produce from the soil the same products for ex-
change, the reasonable supposition is that their friendly
exchanges continue. A temporary interruption, even
war itself, we know, is never a perpetual bar to com-
merce. Those people were not only trading along the
coast in ships of three year voyages, but they also had
a land and water route, from near the mouth of the
Indus, up the Persian Gulf, and across Arabia, thence
up the Red Sea, to the present town of Akabah. (5)
From Akabah the line of travel passed northwest, not
far from the Dead Sea, where John the Baptist
preached in the wilderness. Moreover, the Phoeni-
cians, 600 years B. C., circumnavigated Africa, a much
more dangerous voyage and longer than to reach
India. (6)

Section 2. Now let us go back to India and see
what happened there after Buddha came. Within two
hundred and sixty years after his birth his doctrines
had so far supplanted the old Brahmanic religion as to
become, in the reign of King Asoka, the state religion
of a people occupying a territory greater than all
Europe, Russia alone excluded. India then had a pop-

(5)   Ezion-Geber, where Solomon built his ships, is near
Akabah, but is now submerged in the Sea. What a remorse-
less destroyer is old time!

(6)   Vol. 18, Br. Eney., p. 807.
 Il8 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

ulation forty or fifty times greater than Palestine; and
the same disparity in numbers continued after Jesus
was bom, and so continues to this day.

Before Jesus’ birth, Buddhism had crossed the
Himalayas and was welcomed in Tibet (7); and the
swarming multitudes of China had approved it. Dago-
bas (churches) had been erected from the Punjab to
the mouth of the Ganges; Assam and Burmah had felt
its influence and surrendered to its mild sway; it had
penetrated the Indian Ocean and hoisted its victorious
banner triumphantly over Ceylon.

In fact, all that vast and populous region from the
Yellow Sea to Persia was, two hundred years B. C.,
under the religious sway of Buddhism. It is true that
the old Brahmans still offered serious opposition; but it
was ineffectual to check the rising flood. Moreover, a
great event which took place about three hundred and
thirty years B. C. had opened the gates for its migra-
tion further west.

Alexander, that great Macedonian butcher, on his
march to conquer Persia, founded a city named for
himself on the southern shores of the Mediterranean ;
and those old lines of intercourse with India, by sea,
were called into requisition more frequently than ever
before.

Towards this new city of Alexandria people of all
classes, from every known quarter of the globe, flocked

(7)   Tibet held firmly to Buddha’s religion for five centuries,
when Lamaism (which is partly religious and partly political)
crept in (Br. Ency., vol. 14, p. 226).
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES 119

in great numbers, and they were welcomed without
regard to their nationality or their religion.

Greeks came with their gods and their philosophy;
Egyptians with their worship of animals and their pe-
culiar ritual for the dead; Persians with their Zend
Avesta (their bible), which taught that hell was a cold,
frozen place, where the wicked suffered for a time;
and the Jew with his Thora (law), which left out both
heaven and hell, but allowed slavery and permitted
polygamy. ( He here offered his bloody sacrifices
without hindrance or objection. All these came early
and were simply magnets which drew others to them.

Two hundred years B. C. this new city had so grown
and flourished that it was the commercial metropolis
of the world.

Does anyone suppose that this could happen and
India remain unmoved amid all this trade and tumult?
If so, let us see what Alexander himself did to open
new lines of intercourse with India. After conquering
Persia he entered the Punjab, the land of the seven
rivers; crossed the great Indus, and at the river Jhelum
.defeated Porus, an Indian King, but lost his famous
war horse, Bucephalus.

From here Alexander sent Nearchus, one of his ad-
mirals, down the Indus, with orders to examine the
route for traffic along the Indian Ocean to the mouth
of the Euphrates, and later went himself down that
great river, where, near its mouth, he planned a new

(   Exodus 21:2; Leviticus, ch. 25, v. 39 to 44. The Jews
would even bay their own brother*. Levit. 25, v. 89.
 120 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

Alexandria, to trade with the one at the mouth of the
Nile.

He had encountered Buddhism in Bactra and Kabul,
but in northwest India its Samanas (priests) and its
Dagobas (temples or churches) were found in sur-
prising numbers. It is said that his officers, and even
the private soldiers of his army, were greatly interested
in Buddha’s religion. From the mouth of the Indus
Alexander turned toward Bactra, and a year or two
later died, as we know, in a drunken debauch at Baby-
lon. But he had opened up a new line of communica-
tion with India, which from that day to this has never
been closed.

After Alexander’s death Bactra and India fell to the
portion of Seleucus Nicator, one of Alexander’s gen-
erals. But meanwhile Chandra-Gupta, a Buddhist ad-
venturer, had formed a principality in the Ganges val-
ley in the present territory of Oudh, and so stoutly op-
posed Nicator’s pretensions that war followed. (9)

Section 3. Nicator found his way to the Syrian
throne beset with such serious difficulties that he
offered Chandra-Gupta peace, and all northwest India,
including the Greek settlements founded by Alexander,
on condition that he would send him five hundred ele-
phants.

Chandra agreed to accept this if Nicator would give
him his daughter in marriage. The bargain was struck,

(9)   Chandra Gupta was the Grandfather of Asoka, the King.
The Greeks called him Sandrocottus. I will add that the land
of Ophir was no doubt in India. There was also a great over-
land route from India west by way of Palmyra and Mesopotamia.
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

121

and thus a Greek princess became a Hindu’s wife,
and all of Alexander’s Greek colonists became Indian
subjects. Nicator moreover sent to this Ganges court
Megasthenes, that clear headed ambassador, who, in
writing his impressions of India gave to the world a
most interesting piece of history. “The people,” he
said, “are brave, truthful, industrious, sober, not quar-
relsome, and so honest that they require no locks on
their doors.”

But that which first struck his attention and called
forth his admiration was that in India men and women
could not be bought and sold. Buddha’s teachings
had set the last captive free. “Slavery,” said Megas-
thenes, “does not exist there.” This was three hun-
dred years before Jesus came.

At that time all the known world, India alone ex-
cepted, was engaged in the nefarious traffic of buying
and selling human beings. Nations then unborn af-
terwards engaged in it, and it is only ninety-eight years
ago that England abolished it. America, my own
loved country, extinguished it barely forty-five years
ago; and then only after a long and bloody war.

But India herself, before this, and under Brahmanic
rule, had been severe. When Buddha came he found
seven classes of slaves (to), and the poor Sudras were
so ground down that they were not allowed to learn
even a text or a line of the Veda.

(10)   Captives in war; he who serves for his daily food; born
slaves, purchased slaves, inherited slaves those given, and those
enslaved for punishment.
 122 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

[Prometheus]

Buddha taught that a man does not become low
caste by birth; nor by birth does one become high caste.
“High caste,” he said, “is the result of high actions.
By actions man may degrade himself to a caste that is
low.” The first move that Buddha made against slav-
ery was to take the degraded Sudra into his Samgha
(church). And here I must observe that Buddha’s
religion, like that of Jesus, found its first adherents
among the poor and the lowly. The rich Pharisees in
Jerusalem scorned the teachings of Jesus; so also the
lordly Brahman of India confronted Buddha at every
turn.

Section 4. Let us now pass on to a little later
period. About 224 years B. C., Asoka, a zealous
Buddhist, the grandson of Chandra-Gupta, came to
the throne of Gupta’s kingdom. (11)

Asoka was as intensely zealous for Buddhism as was
St. Paul afterwards for Christianity. But Asoka had
one great advantage over Paul—he was a king, and he
wielded his kingly scepter in behalf of his religion with
such amazing effect that to this day some of his edicts
are found deeply and plainly graven upon rocks and
pillars, stretching over a territory from Afghanistan on
the west to the great Brahmaputra on the east, a dis-
tance of more than two thousand miles.

Whatever Asoka did, he did systematically. First
he called a grand council, and settled the cardinal
doctrines of the Buddhist faith. Next, he published 11

(11)   I shall not stop now to mention the different conncils of
Buddhists, bat take that np in a subsequent chapter.
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES 123

his edicts, warmly commending the faith to his sub-
jects and commanding their obedience thereto. He
sent priests and missionaries in every direction to
spread it. He founded great numbers of monasteries;
and it is said he supported from his royal revenues
more than sixty thousand priests. He set up memorial
columns in every province, and in short made it an
active, flourishing state religion. That the purity of
its doctrines might not become corrupted, he estab-
lished a department, and appointed a minister of jus-
tice and religion, to look after the morals of his people.
Asoka’s religion consisted in works, as well as faith;
he caused wells to be dug for the poor; he beautified
their grounds and the highways, by planting trees and
shrubbery. He furnished medical aid to the sick,
and won converts by kindness, and not by war. He
sent Mahinda, his son, and a band of missionaries, and,
later, his daughter and a company of nuns, to Ceylon
to convert that people. And considering the slow and
toilsome means of travel then, it was a longer and more
tedious journey than to circle the globe today. Mahin-
da’s labors, and those of his missionaries and nuns,
were not in vain, for the history of Ceylon tells us
that the pure doctrines of Buddha yet live in hearts
and minds of the people. In truth, Asoka did more
to push and extend Buddhism, than did Constantine
(A. D. 325) in behalf of Christianity. The chasm
between those two is noteworthy. Asoka’s reign was
permeated with charity and kindness. On the other
hand, Constantine’s hands were stained with blood.
 124 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

He murdered Licinius, and put to death Cripus, his
own son. He also murdered Licinius, his nephew.
While it is true that he helped, rather than hindered
Christianity, yet all that he did for it was done from
motives of statecraft. (12)

The religion which Mahinda taught the people of
Ceylon, was to eschew falsehood, intemperance, dis-
honesty, anger, pride and covetousness, and to forgive
injuries, practice chastity, contentment, patience and
cheerfulness.

Asoka’s activity in behalf of Buddhism was so great
that he sent his missionaries to all barbarian countries,
and ordered them to intermingle with Brahmans and
beggars and unbelievers of every class in India, and in
all foreign lands. He not only sought to spread the
faith, but he published its doctrines in book form, in
the Magadhi dialect, and that canon, for more than,
twenty-two centuries, has been held sacred by the
southern Buddhists.

This Hindu King, who styles himself the beloved of
the Gods in one of his edicts, says he wishe^Jror all
creatures forbearance, justice and clemency. He wants
no conquest, only by the good Danamma (the law, or
religion of Buddha). And he mentions the King of
the Yavanas (the Greeks) and Antiyoga (Antiochus),
his neighbor; everywhere he wants Buddha’s good law
followed. “To make that peaceful conquest,” he says,

(12)   Eusebius, who was more of the courtier than a Christian,
wrote a flaming biography of Constantine, but it is partial and
untruthful.
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES 125

“fills him with joy.” The only thing of worth, he says,
is that which has reference to the Beyond. He wants
his sons, and his grandsons, to the end of time, to avoid
contests; but if a contest comes, they must exercise
mercy and clemency; and they shall only regard
conquest by the law (Law of Buddha). “Such a con-
quest,” he says, “brings Salvation here to you. The
joy is in the effort. This brings Salvation here and
beyond

In my next chapter, I shall offer proof that
Buddhism was known, not only in Syria and Palestine,
but also in Rome.
 CHAPTER XI.

Buddhism Known in Syria, Greece, Rome, Before
the Birth of Jesus.

Section i. In the preceding chapter I mentioned
the sending of Mahinda and others to convert Ceylon.
But just before, or about that time, Asoka sent
Maharakita at the head of a missionary delegation to
Egypt and Greece. There were most certainly amica-
ble relations between India and Greece, for Antiochus
Theos, the grandson of Seleucus Nicator, and Asoka,
the grandson of Chandra-Gupta, about 250 years B.
C., made a friendly treaty with each other. (1)

In short, those two people were then, and later, upon
such a firm footing of peace that Asoka’s inscriptions
of Buddhist texts upon the rocks at Guzerat, were not
only allowed to remain unobliterated, but on the same
rocks the name of Antiochus the Great likewise ap-
pears.

Here is one inscription:   “Moreover, within the

dominions of Antiochus, the Greek King, of which his
generals are the rulers, Asoka’s double system of
medical aid is established; both medical aid for men
and for animals, together with medicants of all sorts
which are suitable for men and animals.” 1

(1)   Br. Ency., Vol. 12, p. 788, 9th edition.

126
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES 127

This is a Greek inscription. The storms and beat-
ings for more than twenty-one hundred years have
not yet obliterated it. This ancient landmark yet tells
its historic story. Another piece of history, deeply
engraven upon these rocks, was, and yet is, as fol-
lows : “The Greek King has been, moreover, induced
to permit the people, both here and in foreign coun-
tries, everywhere, to follow the doctrines of the re-
ligion of Asoka wheresoever it reacheth” (2). This
last incision on those rocks is especially noteworthy
in that it permits the Greeks and all others under that
flag to give up their gods and their religions and adopt
Buddhism. The Greek king here “permits” his people
to adopt or accept the Buddhist faith, and a permit
from the king to do a certain thing in those days was
the equivalent of a request, if not a command. It
should also be remembered in this connection that this
rock carving was made when the old Mosaic religion
was the only one professed by the Jews. And that
faith never did commend itself to the Greeks. Jesus
did not appear until more than two hundred years
later.

With the Greeks, therefore, it was simply a choice
between their old gods and the mild and more sensi-
ble faith of the Buddhists. We are told that somewhat
later than those rock engravings, on the erection of a

(2)   King Asoka was called Deva-Nampiya, the loved of the
good Devas (angels). He sent his proselyting missionaries to
every nation, including Palestine, where the Jews were following
the old Mosaic code, and buying their brothers for bond-men.
Leviticus 25, v. 39 to 44.
 128 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

great tope, or monument, over some Buddhist relics
in Ceylon, a large number of Bhikkhus, or Monks,
journeyed from the vicinity of Alassada (Alexandria)
to witness those ceremonies (3). In fact, Buddhism
had so impressed itself upon India that it was ready
to attempt distant fields. For that purpose Nagasena,
one of its devotees, about 190 years B. C., challenged
Greeks and Jews alike to a public discussion of their
and his religion in Antioch, the capital of Syria.
Palestine then formed a part of the Syrian empire, and
Jews, Greeks and Egyptians had so flocked to this new
capital that even before this discussion the city had
been compelled to enlaige its borders. Jews, no doubt,
heard that debate and probably engaged in it, but from
all that appears, they clung doggedly to their old
Mosaic superstitions.

Section 2. In further proof that Palestine before
Jesus came was in touch with Buddhism and was not
ignorant of its religion, I will cite the fact that twen-
ty-two years before Jesus was bom an elaborate Indian
embassy came as far West as Rome and presented its
credentials to Augustus. Those credentials were
written on the skins of animals, and that embassy, with
Its Buddhistic faith, was graciously received there. (4)

Pliny (5), the elder, likewise tells us that Buddhist
missionaries, generations before his day, were settled
in Palestine not far from the Western shores of the

(3)   Alassada was the Buddhist name of Alexandria.

(4)   Br. Ency., 9th edition: Title, India: yoI. 12, p. 788.

(5)   Pliny, born 23 A. D., died A. D. 72.
 129

A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

Dead Sea. The doctrines of Buddhism were there-
fore taught in Palestine before Christianity was heard
of, or even dreamed of. The Essenes of Palestine
were Jews by birth, and they and the Therapeutae of
Alexandria seem to have copied, at least in part, their
doctrines from Persia and from India, for they be-
lieved in the immortality of the soul, and the Old
Testament makes no certain statement or promise of
such a thing.

It is true that in the last chapter of Daniel there
is a sort of prediction that at a time of great trouble
many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall
awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame
and everlasting contempt (6). Moreover, the Essenes
and Therapeutae did not copy entirely any prevailing
religion.

They punished with death anyone who blasphemed
Moses, and at the same time they went beyond Moses
and taught that the wicked will suffer eternal punish-
ment. Perhaps here and in Tobit is where Jesus ob-
tained His idea of eternal punishment for the wicked
(7). But the Essenes followed Buddhism in teaching
the impermanence of the body and the immortality of
the soul. After the apocryphal book of Tobit ap-

(6)   Daniel, eh. 12, v. 1 and 2; the hook of Daniel was written
about 164 or 166 jean B. C.—that is, centuries after the exile:
and many think it has a Persian origin, but the Essenes learned
also from India, as we Bhall see.

(7)   The reader should notice that when the book of Daniel
was written, the department of Hell had not been fully organ*
ized; as the sinner was not then consigned to a furnace of fire,
but only to everlasting contempt.
 130 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

peared, thenceforward we have devils and Hell and
angels without number. Jesus, it would seem, was
familiar with those doctrines in Tobit.

The Persians and Jesus taught the resurrection of
the body, but backsliders from Buddhism were simply
excommunicated. The Essenes did the same. The
Essenes taught that bodies are corruptible and imper-
manent, but that souls are immortal and live forever;
that the souls of the righteous when released from
their bodies, as from a vile prison house, mount up-
ward rejoicing, and reach a beautiful land beyond the
great ocean, where there is neither excessive heat, nor
freezing cold; that there they are fanned and refreshed
continually by gentle'breezes blowing from off the
ocean, and there they live in immortal vigor. But the
souls of the wicked, at the death of the body, are
rushed off to a dark, tempestuous den, where they
suffer a never-ceasing torment (

But here again the Essenes did not follow Buddha,
for he taught transmigration; that the wrong-doer,
devoid of rectitude, is full of anxiety when he dies,
and after his death is reborn into some states of dis-
tress and punishment—a state of woe; that the well-
doer, strong in rectitude, dies without anxiety, and
after his death is reborn into some happy state in
heaven. (9)

(   Josephus, Wars of the Jews; Book 2, ch. 8, sections 9 to 12.

(9)   VoL 17, Sacred Books of the East, p. 100. There are
those who falsely state that Buddha did not teach of heaven for
the just, or punishment for the wicked.

They might just as truly say, that Jesus did not teach of a
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES 131

The Buddhists did not offer bloody sacrifices; and
the Essenes in that matter utterly rejected the old
Mosaic ceremony and followed the Indian method.

The Bhikkhus (monks) of India wore yellow gar-
ments and had everything in common; and here the
Essenes followed them completely, except that their
garments were white.

Section 3. That doctrine or method of having
everything in common, which the Essenes and
Therapeutae learned from India, the Apostles and their
followers adopted for a short time, but when Ananias
held back a part of his possessions, the whole Jewish
superstructure collapsed at once, and has never been
heard of in Palestine since. (10)

The Bhikkhus practiced a very severe asceticism; so
also did the Essenes and Therapeutae. We have al-
ready seen that Buddha’s teachings abolished slavery
in India. The Essenes condemned it in Palestine.
The Bhikkhus practiced the strictest rules of celibacy;
the Essenes and Therapeutae did not marry, but
adopted children and reared them to their own modes
of life and thought The Bhikkhus rejected pleasure
as an evil; so also did the Essenes. The Therapeutae

heaven for the just. Buddha taught a re-birth for the wicked,
where after a long period of discipline, they could have a new
opportunity to gain heaven by good deeds. In other words, ha
gave the wicked another chance. What earthly—or heavenly-
good to consign a wicked man to eternal flames t Punishment
should be, in the last analysis, to reclaim, to improve, to reform.
An eternal punishment makes the punisher worse than the wicked*
est.

(10)   Acts, ch. 2, v. 43 to 45, and ch. 4, v. 32 to 35, and ch. 5,
V. 1 to 10.
 132 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

and Essenes believed in angels; so did Buddha and the
Bhikkhus, but the former were careful to write down
the names of their heavenly messengers, and they
charged their proselytes under oath to preserve them,
(n) The Buddhists laid great stress and emphasis
on speaking the truth at all times; and in this, also,
the Essenes and Therapeut* followed them. Buddha
preached the Gospel of love and peace, and Jesus
afterwards did the same.

Now it is but reasonable to believe that as the
Buddhists preceded the Essenes by centuries in teach-
ing their asceticism, their strict love of truth, their
rejection of slavery, their community of goods, their
fastings, their prayers, their vegetable diet, their aboli-
tion of animal sacrifices, their belief in the immortality
of the soul, their doctrine of angels, and that the souls
of the wicked are punished after the death of the
body, and that, moreover, there was a beautiful place
called heaven where the souls of the righteous live in
everlasting enjoyment; that it was wrong to do harm
to any living thing; that riches were to be despised;
that, in short, as all these doctrines were in the world
and openly taught in India (12) centuries before the

(11)   Josephus, Wars of the Jews; book 2, ch. 8, sections 2 to
10. At the time of Daniel, 166 B. C., the Jews had only two
angels, whom they knew by name—Michael, an Irish angel, and
Gabriel, whose nativity is uncertain.

(12)   But some of these matters were not original, evta with
the Buddhists; for a thousand years before Gotama came, the
Brahmans, in their code, had set forth that no one must appro-
priate (steal) the goods of another, nor injure another in any
way; that he who gave false evidence should be deprived of his
sight, shorn and tumbled into Hell. (Manu., ch. 8, sec. 93.)
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES 133

Essenes or Therapeutae came, we must conclude, there-
fore, that they were imported or learned from the
Buddhists, possibly in part from the Persians. For
when an invention is once in the world, either in re-
ligion or anything else, no patent ought or should be
granted to the later arrival. More especially is this
true if those doctrines have been simply transplanted
from some old faith, well rooted in a distant field.
Judaism, we know, combated most of those things.
(13)

[Prometheus]

Section 4. Our next inquiry is as to the time when
those religious doctrines were carried from India into
Egypt and Palestine. The date is not absolutely cer-
tain, but it is highly probable that Asoka’s missionaries
about 240 years B. C. led that peaceful crusade. It
was a stubborn, prolonged contest, and bore fruit
slowly, for the Jewish law punished apostates with
death.

Here may be found the reason why the Essenes
claimed to hold to the law of Moses—it saved their
necks; for in truth they held to very few things in that
old bloody Mosaic code.

The Jews being a trading, trafficking people, thirst-
ing for gain, lived mostly in cities. But the Essenes,
with their more strict morals, were safer in the coun-
try. They therefore became husbandmen, and it was

Moreover, the Brahmans used water for purificatory purposes at
least seven hundred years before Ezekiel wrote his chapter 36,
v. 25 to 30, and ch. 37 or ch. 13, Zachariah.

(13)   Ctesias, a Greek historian, wrote a history of India and
her religion in the fifth century B. C. Buddha was then living.
 134

A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

perhaps a full century after Asoka’s missionaries
visited Palestine before they had gained numbers
numerous enough to be designated as a religious sect.
(14)

In stating that the Essenes of Palestine and the
Therapeut* of Egypt learned their rites from India, I
follow that great classical scholar, the late Dean Mil-
man of the English Church, who, after sifting all the
evidence, was forced to the conclusion that Buddhist
missionaries, 200 years B. C., were their original
teachers. In fact, Babylon, long before Jesus’ day,
had been a hot focus of Buddhism. Syria was com-
pletely permeated with it. (15)

At this point I reach the enquiry: Were the Es-
senes the vanguard of that great religious revolution
inaugurated by John the Baptist and Jesus?
Epiphanius says they who believed on Jesus were
called Jessaie, or Essenes, before they were called
Christians, either because Jesse was the father of

(14)   There are some who claim that the Therapeut® and
Essenes imbibed their doctrines from the Pythagoreans, as those
people practiced celibacy, abstained from animal food, and at
one time had a community of goods. Pythagoras was born about
586 years B. C., but his system was rather philosophical and
political than religious. We are told by Ennemoser that Thales,
Pythagoras and others visited Egypt and India for the purpose
of studying theology and philosophy. Whether Pythagoras had
previously encountered Orphism or not is uncertain. Egypt and
India were then teaching the transmigration of souls, and thence-
forward that doctrine was approved by Pythagoras and his fol-
lowers.

(15)   I am supported also by such thinkers as Schopenhauer,
Benan, Bohlm, Schelling and others, and, in fact, a long list
of scholars; and am only opposed by narrow-minded theologians.
Benan ’a History Gener., Des Langues Semitiques.
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES 135

David, or from Jesus, the name of our Lord, because
they were His disciples and derive their constitution
from Him; or from the name Jesus, which in Hebrew
signifies the same as Therapeutae; that is, savior or
physician. (16)

There is not a bit of doubt that John the Baptist’s
teachings were very similar to those of the Essenes,
for when he came preaching in the wilderness of
Judea, there were in Palestine only three religious
sects; (17) the Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes;
and the Baptist, when he saw some of the Pharisees
and Sadducees at the Jordan, where he was baptizing,
called them “a generation of vipers.” The followers
of the Baptist were surely not Sadducees, for the Sad-
ducees say there is no resurrection, neither Angel nor
Spirit. (18) The Pharisees confess both, but
claim that all things are done by fate. (19) The
Baptist assailed fiercely every religious order in Pales-
tine, except the Essenes and Nazarenes. He was, in
fact, an ascetic, living in the wilderness, clothed in
the skins of beasts; Jesus believed him to be Elias bom
again and returned to earth. (20)

(16)   Epiphanius. Cited also by Judge Waite in bis History of
the Christian Beligion, p. 73.

(17)   Josephus, book 18, ch. 1, Antiqs. of the Jews, mentions
also Judas as a Galilean, but he mostly agreed with the Phari-
sees.

(18)   Acts 23:8.

(19)   Jos., Antiq., Book 18, ch. 1, sec. 3.

(20)   How could Jesus make the statement in Matt. 17, v. 12,
unless somewhere he had learned about the doctrine of Buddha9*
transmigration f For if Elias had returned, had he not transr
migrated?
 136 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

Josephus makes John an orator of wonderful power,
whose fiery eloquence drew to his standard great
masses of people. (21) John preached charity, almost
communism, and when the soldiers demanded what
they should do, he quoted from Buddha, and said:
“Do violence to no man.” (22)

His scene of activity was very near where the Es-
senes for generations had lived in the greatest num-
bers. The simplicity of the Baptist’s diet was remark-
able; so also was that of the Essenes. They did not
drink wine or strong drinks; neither did John. (23)

Moreover, John’s mode of baptism, as we have here-
tofore observed, was by immersion, the sinner thereby
confessing his sins; and in this he followed the Essenes.

John being a Nazarite, his followers were called
Nazarenes, which was simply another name for Es-
senes. Paul, later on, was called a Nazarene, and
designated as “the ring leader of the sect.” (24)

And Jesus, when He came to John, to be baptized
in the Jordan, being a Nazarene by birth, was in faith
and belief an Essene, for in His very first sermon
He preached their doctrine, when He said: “Lay not
up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth
and rust doth corrupt, and thieves break through and
steal.” (25)

This same thought, though clothed in different lan-

(21)   Jos., Antiq., Book 18, ch. 5, see. 2.

(22)   Luke 3, v. 14.

(23)   Luke 1, v. 15.

(24)   Acts 24, v. 5.

(25)   Matt. ch. 6, ?. 19.
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES 137

guage, had been uttered by Buddha nearly five hun-
dred years before, when in preaching to his disciples,
he said: “Keep pure your body, words and conduct;
put from you all concerns of daily life, lands, houses,
cattle, storing of wealth or hoarding gain. All these
avoid as you would a fiery pit”
 CHAPTER XII
The Miracles of Apollonius.

Section i. I have already shown that the people of
India and Syria, including Palestine, were in friendly
communication centuries before Jesus was born, and
that even Rome itself had graciously received an em-
bassy from India. The proof is equally plain that
Apollonius of Tyania, a town of Cappadocia, visited
India and was received there royally by princes and
kings.

Who was this Apollonius who was thus honored
and feted ? Let us see.

He was bom two or three years before Jesus was
found in that manger, and for more than three hun-
dred years was worshipped as a God. We of this
age would hear only a faint echo of Apollonius, had
not Julia Domna, the wife of the Emperor Servius, be-
sought Philostratus, a distinguished scholar of the em-
pire, to compose a life of him. When that work was
composed, Apollonius had been in his grave one hun-
dred years or more. Still that is no objection to its
accuracy, for biographies of Jesus have been written
even to the present time.

138
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES 139

Philostratus found a wealth of materials from which
to compose a biography, for Apollonius had corre-
sponded with kings and learned men in Egypt and
India, and with scholars in many places. Moreover
Damis, his friend, the Assyrian who had accompanied
him to India, had written a full account of the people
they had met, their customs, their religions, their
laws.

Dreams in ancient times had much to do with the
births of great men. And a dream, we are told, pre-
ceded Apollonius’ strange birth. His mother, when
near her time, was “warned in a dream” to go to a
certain meadow and gather flowers. Here, fanned by
gentle zephyrs, she fell asleep on the grass, and a flock
of swans gathered about her and sung in chorus while
she slept At that moment Apollonius, her famous
son, was bom. In our Bible it is Joseph who
dreams. (1)

As Apollonius grew up, the people said he was the
son of Jupiter, but he insisted that he was the son of
Apollonius. It was soon apparent that he possessed
a prodigious memory and was studious and thoughtful.
At an early age he became a devoted follower of
Pythagoras, and as his disciple he maintained a strict
silence for five years. The fruits of the earth were his
exclusive diet, and he resolutely declined to eat any-
thing that had ever possessed animal life.

Having resolved at the end of his long silence to 1

(1)   Matt. 1, ?. 20.
 140

A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

visit foreign lands, he became very active in reform-
ing religious worship wherever he went.

Section 2. On visiting Babylon he was honored
by the king, but refused to join him in the sacrifice of
a horse to the Sun, lest he should be guilty of the
shedding of blood. But while the king was sacrificing
the horse, Apollonius offered frankincense as an obla-
tion. At the conclusion of his visit to Babylon, he
turned his face towards India, saying to Damis, his
companion, that it was his duty to go “where wisdom
and his guardian angel led him.” On reaching India
he was kindly received by King Pharotes, who offered
him a generous supply of gold, and, moreover, showed
him every possible courtesy. Near the king’s palace
was a wonderful hill, occupied by the Brahmins, and
here Apollonius won all hearts by freely participating
in their oblations and ceremonies.

But here is a statement most incredible, for Philos-
(ratus relates that when several Brahmins, standing
together, struck the earth with their staves or rods
they made the earth rise and fall and swell like the
waves of the sea, and they themselves were elevated in
the air two or three feet.

Iarchus, the chief of the Brahmins, after intently
gazing at Apollonius, declared that in a previous life
he had been the pilot of an Egyptian vessel. And we
are told that Apollonius admitted this to be true. The
king later on gave the Brahmins a great feast, to
which Apollonius was cordially invited. Here he wit-
nessed cupbearers, similar to the Ganymedes of the
 141

A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

Greeks. And it is said that bread and fruits of the
season came of themselves already prepared, in better
order than they could be by the cooks. Even second
courses likewise came of themselves. And curiously
enough this strange occurrence in India happened at
about the same time that Jesus was feeding five thou-
sand men, besides women and children, in a desert
place near Bethsaida. After much careful research,
(2) I am unable to tell which of these two famous
occurrences happened first. But I am reasonably safe
in saying that they were not three years apart.

Moreover we are told that Iarchus, the chief of the
Brahmins, was a miracle worker, similar to Jesus. For
after the feast which we have just mentioned, the lame
and the blind and the diseased, with every various ail-
ment, were brought to him, and Iarchus at once healed
them all. Now this statement about Iarchus healing
the lame and the blind, is either true or it is false.
This much is at least certain: the blind Hindu needed
his sight; if Iarchus in India was healing the blind
and the sick, Jesus about the same time was healing
the blind and the sick in Palestine. (3)

Section 3. When Apollonius’ visit to India and
the Brahmins ended, he started on his return, going
South to the Sea, and taking the same route that
Alexander did on leaving India, some three hundred
years before. A great plague was at this time raging

(2)   Luke, eh. 9, v. 10 to 17. Matt 14, v. 13 to 21. John 8,
y. 5 to 13.

(3)   Luke 7, v. 6 to 10. Luke 8, v. 27.
 >42 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

at Ephesus, and Apollonius had only reached Smyrna.
But the Ephesians having learned of his presence there
sent a deputation earnestly entreating him to come to
their assistance. Here now the improbable again ap-
pears. For Apollonius replied: “I think the journey
is not to be delayed,” and immediately on his uttering
these words, we are told he appeared in Ephesus, where
he put an end to the plague. (4)

On reaching Athens, a young man was brought to
Apollonius, possessed of an evil spirit. The demon
raved and swore, and Apollonius rebuked him and
commanded him to come out.

Section 4. Jesus about this time (whether before
or after, I cannot tell) found a man in the synagogue
“which had a spirit of an unclean devil.” (5) Jesus
- rebuked the Palestine devil, and commanded him to
come out. Now both of these devils it seems, were
gifted with fluent speech. The Hindu devil under-
stood the language of his country, and the Palestine
fiend raved furiously in the Galileean dialect.

The Jewish devils, in Paul’s time, were warriors
also; we are told that about twenty-five years after
Jesus’ death, one Palestine devil overcame six men, so
that “they fled out of the house naked and wound-
ed.” (6)

On being invited to a wedding, Apollonius saw at

(4)   For more than five hundred years before Jesus’ day, there
had been continued struggles between Eastern and Western man-
ners and religions.

(5)   Luke 4, v. 33.

(6)   Acts 19, v. 13 to 16.
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES 143

once that the intended bride was a fiend in human
form. And on his making this known, all the jewels
and gold and silver vessels vanished in a flash out of
sight. This strange occurrence, we are told, hap-
pened in the central part of Greece, and was known
to many.

One day Apollonius met a funeral procession on its
way to bury a beautiful young bride, and every one
was in distress and in tears, and was condoling with
the young husband. “Set down the bier,” said Apol-
lonius, “and I will dry your tears.” He took the
young woman’s hand, then spoke a low word in her
ear, and she began to breathe; and if she was really
dead, she came back to life, to the astonishment and
joy of her weeping friends.

The historian honestly adds that it was raining at
the time, and the rain falling on the young woman’s
face may have revived her. But to all appearances,
the vital spark had fled.

In Luke, chapter 7, v. 11 to 15, a similar story is
told of a young man, who also was being carried to
his grave, and as Jesus met the procession, he came
and touched the bier, and said: “Young man, I say
unto thee, arise,” and he that was dead sat up and
began to speak. (7)

Section 5. After visiting Egypt and many cities
in Africa, Apollonius took up his residence in Smyrna,

(7)   Are both, or either of these amazing stories true? One
happened in Borne, if it happened, and the other in Galilee. Bat
as near as I can compute, Apollonius * miracle, if it was such,
preceded Jesus’ miracle by about three or four years.
 144

A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

where he discoursed on fate and necessity, and he in*
sisted that the most absolute tyrants could not over-
come or reverse the decrees of fate. Domitian, the
then emperor of Rome, on learning of this, cited Apol-
lonius to appear before him. On reaching Rome he
was accused of being an enchanter and was thrown
into prison and loaded with chains, his friend Damis
being imprisoned with him. “When will you regain
your liberty?” asked Damis. “Tomorrow,” replied
Apollonius, “but this instant if I choose.” With this
he drew his leg out of the chain, and said to Damis:
“You see I am at liberty now.” Then he put his leg
back in the fetters and waited.

When brought before the emperor, Domitian asked
him, “Why do men call you a god?” “Because every
truly good man,” replied Apollonius, “is entitled to be
called such.” The emperor seems to have been afraid
that his prisoner possessed some secret book or charm
or amulet, and he was ordered to leave all such behind
and to look at his majesty. But instead, the prisoner
fixed his eyes on the vaulted arch above him.

A proceeding similar to that which there took place
before Domitian, would, in the United States of Amer-
ica, be considered a mockery and a travesty upon jus-
tice. The first question was, “Why is it, Apollonius,
that you do not wear the same kind of garments as
other men?” “The earth,” he replied, “supplies me
with raiment, and by wearing the garments it fur-
nishes, I offer no injury to the dumb brutes of the
fields.” Apollonius had foretold the plague at Ephesus,
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES 145

[Prometheus]

and that was another charge against him. “How did
you do that?” he was asked, and he replied: “By liv-
ing on .a lighter diet than other men.”

Some other questions having been asked by the
emperor, which Apollonius readily answered, “I acquit
you,” said he, “of the crimes charged against you, but
shall detain you here for the present.”

“You can detain my body,” was the reply, “but not
my soul, and I will add, not even my body. Thy
deadly spear cannot slay me.” At this, we are told,
that, to the amazement of the emperor and all present,
he vanished out of sight.

His friend Damis had gone to Penteoli, a three days’
journey from Rome, and while Demetrius, the philos-
opher, and Damis were walking on the seashore and
lamenting with much sorrow, never expecting to see
Apollonius again, he suddenly appeared before them.
They thought it was an apparition, and Damis wished
to know if Apollonius were still living, whereupon
Apollonius stretched forth his hand and said, “It is I
myself; I am surely alive.”

Another curious story told about him is that on the
day and at the very moment that Stephanus assassi-
nated Domitian at Rome, Apollonius was walking and
talking with many friends in a grove at Ephesus, more
than one hundred miles distant. Directly his voice fell
to a lower key; then he became silent. Then suddenly
he cried out, “Strike the tyrant! strike!” There were
many Ephesians present, and they were all greatly
astonished at this. Directly Apollonius added, “Keep
 146 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

up your courage, O Ephesians! for this day the tyrant
is killed. At this very moment, while the words are
in my mouth, I swear it by Minerva, the deed is done.”
Dion Cassius, who at one time branded Apollonius as
an impostor, tells this story of him: “On the very day
that Domitian was assassinated, as it was afterwards
known, upon a most exact search into the matter,
Apollonius got up in the city of Ephesus, upon a very
high stone, and calling the people together cried out
with a loud voice:   ‘Courage, Stephanus! courage!

Strike the murderer! Thou hast struck him. Thou
hast wounded him. Thou hast killed him.’ ” And
Dion Cassius adds: "As incredible as this fact seems
to be, it is no less true.” (

Section 5. A few lines back, it is stated that Apol-
lonius vanished from the presence of Domitian. Now
I do not write that down as a sober fact that I believe;
for it seems impossible that the body of a human being,
composed of flesh, bones and blood, could or can van-
ish or melt away and disappear as stated above. (9)
And to say that Apollonius, who was more than one
hundred miles distant at the time of the assassination
of Domitian, could know of it at the moment that it
occurred, is beyond belief. He may have been told of

(   Manning’s Dion Cassius, vol. 2, p. 92.

(9)   It is said that Buddha could and did vanish, Vol. 11,
Sacred Books of the East, p. 21 and p. 51. It is said that Jesus
vanished out of sight, Luke 24, v. 31. Buddha, we are told, could
change his color and vanish, Vol. 11, Sacred Books of the East,
p. 48 and 49. Jesus, it is said, vanished, or made himself in-
visible and escaped (Luke 4, v. 30), when they were about to
pitch him headlong from a precipice.
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES 147

the tragedy very soon thereafter, but not, as Baronius
supposes, by a demon.

This much may truly be said of Apollonius: he firm-
ly believed in the immortality of the soul, and he in-
sisted that nothing ever perishes. Birth was, in his
opinion, only a change of essence into substance.
Death was simply a vanishing of substance into es-
sence. Life, he said, is merely substance coming into
sight, and at death it vanishes but is not destroyed. In
fact, he said nothing is ever created or destroyed.

In one of his letters to a friend (10) he speaks with
contempt and disdain of riches and gaudy display; but
he mentions with pleasure his love for science and his
abstinence from the use of animal foods.

One writer, in pouring out the vials of his wrath
against Apollonius, insisted that Satan was his assist-
ant. The devil, he said, may know things of the past,
and he may know what is transpiring at distant places;
and he might have made known those things to Apol-
lonious. (11)

As against such criticism I will quote a few lines
from Apollonius’ letter to his friend Hestius: “The
truth is not concealed from us; how beautiful it is to
have all the earth for one’s country; and all men for
brothers and friends; and that those who derive their
origin from God, are all endowed with one and the
same nature, with a community of reason and affec-

(10)   Sidonius, in writing of Apollonius about four hundred
years after bis death, thinks all antiquity fails to equal him.

(11)   Sebastian Tillemont, a French ecclesiastical historian, bom
1637.
 148 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

tions; and that wheresoever anyone may be or in
whatever manner bom, whether Greek or Barbarian,
he is still a man.”

It was the firm belief of Apollonius that nothing
ever perishes; that matter changes, and is ever chang-
ing; that it comes into sight -and disappears, but it
is not annihilated. These things, he says, “are done
and permitted by the Eternal God, who is all in all, and
through all, and who if He should clothe Himself in
names and forms, would suffer damage in His own
nature.”

Section 6. As to the alleged miracles of Apol-
lonius, it is exceedingly doubtful if he, or any other
man, at any time or place ever performed one. How
can or could man, by his puny word, at any period of
the world contravene or overthrow the laws of God?
It is true that the supposed miracles of Apollonius
were extensively believed in for more than three hun-
dred years after his death; but a belief, as I have said
elsewhere, never changes a fact. I know that we are
told that a great personage, living in the time of Apol-
lonius, could and did by his word change six water
pots filled with water, of two or three firkins each, into
good wine. But we must remember that only one man
in all the millions that have ever lived, and he is of
doubtful character, tells that improbable story. (12)

Moreover, such wildly extravagant things as
miracles, having taken their flight for now nineteen

(12)   John of the 4th Gospel. John 2, v. 6 to 10.
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

149

hundred years, we may justly question whether there
was ever, at any time or place, such a thing as a
miracle performed by Apollonius, or anyone else.
Now while it is true that Apollonius was worshiped
as a god well into the fourth century, and that even
Christians believed that he wrought miracles, we of
this age know that he was not a god, and we are very
certain that he never performed a miracle. Neverthe-
less divine honors were paid him; and a temple at
Tyana was built to commemorate him, and his statue
was placed among the gods. In fact, his name was in-
voked for centuries as a god.

As to the manner and place of his death, there are
conflicting stories. Some writers tell us that he en-
tered a temple at Lindus, and was seen no more. Oth-
ers insist that he died at Ephesus, attended by two
handmaids, one of whom he set free.

History relates that there was a young man of
Tyana, who very seriously doubted the immortality of
the soul, and Apollonius had often tried to convince
him of his error. “After your body is dead, if you
will appear to me,” said the young man, “I will be-
lieve you.” And we are soberly told that after Apol-
lonius died, he appeared to his friend, who in amaze-
ment cried out, “I believe you now! I believe you!”

The last glimpse we catch of this extraordinary man
is at a temple in Crete, where great riches were stored
under the protection of a pack of watch dogs, trained
to guard the treasure. But when Apollonius entered
 IJO A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

the temple, they did not bark, but fawned upon him as
if he were an old friend or their master.

The priests observing this, rushed out and seized
Apollonius and bound him, thinking him a robber. But
before morning he cast off his fetters, and calling the
priests before him, convinced them he was not a robber
and that he did nothing in secret. Then going to the
gates, he found them open. On passing through, it is
said the gates shut of themselves. Acts 12, v. 10, tells us
that “an iron gate opened of its own accord’’ and let
Peter and an angel out. (13)

As Apollonius makes his exit from that temple,
many voices were heard in unison singing: “Leave
the earth, and come to heaven. Come, come, come!”

(13)   Acts 18, v. 23, and Acts 5, v. 19.
 CHAPTER XIII

Buddha Against Brahmanism.

Section i. No one will perhaps deny that Gotama
and Jesus each sought to overthrow, or at least to im-
prove, the ancient religions of their people. Buddha’s
life struggle was against Brahmanism, and its iron-
bound caste system; and, moreover, he disbelieved in
the inspiration of the Veda, the Brahman Bible.

Jesus found in the Thora (law) of Moses, the doc-
trine that if one plucked out the eye of another, his
own eye should pay the penalty; in short, Moses’ doc-
trine was, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for
hand, (i) Jesus, to his immortal honor be it said,
gave to the Jews and to the world a milder and better
faith than the old Mosaic doctrine of revenge. He
said: “Be reconciled to thy brother, do good unto
others, love thy neighbor,” and thy neighbor was all
the world. Buddha said: “By love alone we can con-
quer wrath,” and he said, “Do unto others that which
you would have them do unto you.” Jesus said the
same five hundred years later. (2)

It is curious to note that both the Brahmic and
Mosaic religions were claimed by their founders, and 1

(1)   Ex 21, 24.

(2)   Luke 6, v. 31

161
 153 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

are claimed to this day by their followers, to be of
divine or heavenly origin. The ancient Hindu believed
that Brahma breathed forth the Rigveda; hence it
was divine. The Brahmins in their inspired Bible, the
Veda, insist that they heard (sruti) Brahma’s (God’s)
voice, telling them in what manner to sacrifice their
oblations. The Veda is therefore, they said, by rea-
son of its divine origin, paramount to all reasoning
and beyond all questioning. He who assailed it was
a heretic and was scorned and banished. (3) Its foun-
dations were laid so far back in the dim and misty past
that it was, and is, truly venerable with hoary age. It
is the oldest composition probably on the face of the
earth. It is older than the Iliad and the Odyssey, older
than Genesis; older, probably, than the pyramids—so
old and so venerable that the very names of the
Rishis (poets or seers) who composed it, are lost in
the great ocean of oblivion.

The ancient Hindu looked about him and questioned
why he was here. He was jtaught that this passing
world would, if he led a pious life, give place to a seat
with the Gods in heaven. (4) Death to him was as
the birth of a real and happy life. He believed that
there was somewhere in the universe a self-existent
Divine Being, from whom his Atma (soul or self) had
become detached; but at the death of the body it would
return to Brahma (God) and be at rest. The body

(3)   Mann, 4:30, and 9:225; Vedanta Sutras, page 20, Vol. 34,
Sacred Books of the East.

(4)   Rigveda, vol* 12; Br. Ency., p. 780; title, India,
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES 153

was, he thought, simply the temporary husk or shell
where the spirit or self made its abode for a time. But
the spirit or soul was immortal and without body, but
attached to the body like a horse hitched to a cart. (5)

“It is with us,” said Yajanavalkya, “when we enter
into the Divine Spirit, as if a lump of salt had been
flung into the sea. It becomes dissolved into water,
from which it was produced, and is not to be taken
out again. As the water becomes salt, and the salt
becomes water again, thus the Divine Spirit appears
from out the elements, and disappears into them again.
When we have passed away, there is no longer any
name.” (6) This was an extreme view which Buddha
did not adopt

The Hindu was more wise than Job, for Job said:
“Though after my skin, worms destroy this body, yet
in my flesh I shall see God. Mine eyes shall behold
Him!” (7) As I have said, all of the Hindus did not
believe that they would, at death, be like a lump of
salt thrown into the ocean. Some of their thinkers
anticipated Bishop Butler by more than three thousand
years, for they taught that this life is as the life of an
embryo in the womb that “death might put us into a
higher and more enlarged state of life, as our birth
does.” (

Section 2. Now I ought, without further delay,

(5)   12th Khanda Upanishads—the Soul or Spirit was the Ego.
the I, the self.

(6)   Max Mailer’s Sanskrit Lit., p. 24.

(7)   Job, ch. 19, v. 26-27.

(   Butler’s Analogy, written 1776.
 154 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

to say a few words concerning the general character of
the Indian people. They have heretofore been treated
as a despised, good-for-nothing, cowardly race, clear
down at the foot of the ladder. On the contrary, they
were a learned and thinking people. They were a
nation of philosophers. They delved into the science
of language, and constructed a Vyakarana (grammar)
with nouns and verbs, pronouns and adverbs, particles
and conjunctions, syntax and prosody, and an exhaus-
tive Niruka (etymology) all complete at a time when
the Greeks had only learned the distinction between
nouns and verbs. But all this labor to construct a
grammar was probably brought about by the growth
and progress of their language, which was changing
the very idiom of their original speech.

They studied Siksha (phonetics), letters, accents,
etc., so as to give the same pronunciation to the Sacred
texts as the sages of old. They did not invade and
conquer distant nations; but, ignorantly, they were
practicing the precepts of Buddha and Jesus, when they
lived quietly at home, doing ill to no one. Students
spent from twelve to forty-eight years memorizing and
repeating the texts they had learned from their holy
books. They claimed that all that has reference to
virtue and final beatitude was taken from the Veda.
They spent their whole lives in studying religion and
philosophy.

Had they been a war-like people, and marshalled
mighty armies, they might have overrun and con-
quered Europe. That would have given them a great
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES 155

page in history; possibly they might have changed the
whole current of huiftan affairs. They were not
cowards and afraid to die, for death, they considered,
was a release from a degrading bondage to the body.

In the earlier stages of their religion they wor-
shiped the sun, the earth, fire, water and heaven.
They had gods, many of them, but their chief ones
were Indra, Agni, Soma and Varuna; then Prajapati,
the father of all the gods, and lastly Brahma (God).

Back many thousands of years, they offered bloody
sacrifices to their gods, and there is some evidence
that this included human sacrifices. (9) But later on,
as we have seen, a horse was substituted, then an ox,
than a sheep, then a goat. At last all bloody sacrifices
were put aside, and rice cakes, barley and clarified
butter were offered to the gods, for they said: “Who-
soever exists, he is born owing a debt to the gods, to
the Rishis, to the Fathers, and to Men.” (10) Their
rice-eating ceremony corresponded somewhat to ours
concerning infant baptism. (11)

[Prometheus]

Section 3. Buddha did not believe that God either
ordered or desired any sacrifice whatever to be offered
him, except a pure mind and a heart devoid of evil.

After six years of study and penance, this unsur-
passed genius attacked the infallibility of the old

(9)   I have said elsewhere that the man was Kimpurasha, a
mock man or monkey.

(10)   Satapatha-Brahmana, p. 190, vol. 12, Sacred Books of the
East.

(11)   Grihya-Sutras, and Max Muller, anc. Sans, Lit., p. 50;
also vol. 11, p. 1, S. B. E,
 156 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

Brahmanic faith. His first onslaught was against the
growing abuses of the Priests,-as they legislated for
their one Gati (caste), and to protect their own exclu-
sive privileges.

They said, “the very birth of a Brahmana is an
eternal incarnation of the sacred law; that he is bora
as the lord of all created beings; that whatever exists
in the world is the property of the Brahmanas; that
other mortals subsist through his benevolence; that he
sanctifies any company which he may enter, and he
alone deserves this whole earth.” (12)

They said, moreover, that by “Sruti” (revelation) is
meant the Veda, and by “Smriti,” the institutes of the
sacred law; and these two must not be called in ques-
tion in any manner; that he who treats with contempt
those two sources of the law must be cast out as an
atheist and a scoraer of the Veda.

Here then was the issue: for Gotama, in attacking
those laws, flatly denied their divine origin. This
made him, according to the Brahmanic code, an
atheist and an outcast, whose conduct was reprehensi-
ble in the extreme. The priests of the Veda did not
crucify him, but they sought in every possible way to
thwart him and to beat back the rising flood. They
would overlook his doctrine of being and non-being
and all other matters, if he would only admit the
divine origin of the Veda. On one point, however,

(12)   Laws of Mann, ch. 1, sec. 98 to 105; also sec. 10 to 11,
ch. 2, Laws of Mann. That work is at least 2,900 years old and
possibly 3,300 years old.
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES   157

there was no clashing of opinions between Buddha
and the Brahmans, and that was as to the doctrine of
the transmigration of the soul.

Transmigration, according to Herodotus (2: 126),
was an ancient belief, originating in Egypt. But as
the Egyptians are the children of the Hindus, we may
well ask: Were the first germs of that old faith trans-
planted from the Ganges, or was it the creation of
some philosophic mind on the banks of the Nile?

Perhaps we shall never know to a certainty just
where the doctrine originated, but philology may yet
unlock the door; for while we can learn but little of
the history of India from its literature, and but little
from its inscriptions on carved temples, language
comes to our aid. Those fugitive and airy sounds,
which seem so fleeting and so changeable, prove to
be more durable monuments than brass or granite.
The study of the Sanskrit language has told us a long
story concerning the origin of nations. It has taught
us who were the ancestors of the nations of Europe;
and has told us that one great family, the Indo-
European, has done most of the work of the world.
“It shows us that this great family consists of seven
races—the Hindoos, Persians, Greeks and Romans,
who emigrated southwest from their ancestral home,
and the Celts, the Teutons and Slavonians, who en-
tered Europe on the northern side of the Caspian Sea.
A comparison of languages has made this too plain to
be questioned.”

In these seven linguistic families, the roots of the
 158 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

most common names are one and the same. The
grammatical constructions are also the same (13), and
no scholar longer doubts that those seven lan-
guages all came from one ancestral tongue—the
Aryan.

The Laws of Manu, in existence at least five or six
hundred years before Solomon built his temple, men-
tioned all the lands from the Eastern or Indian Ocean
to the Western Ocean, as the country of the Aryans.
Manu adds: “Let the twice bom man who seeks to
dwell there sanctify his body, and purify it with holy
rites, and make it fit for a union with Brahma.” (14)

I have said that the Egyptians were the children of
the Hindus. They were certainly not Negroes. The
Negroes have never yet, to this day, built a city or
floated a ship. How then could they build the pyra-
mids? Moreover, the religion of the Egyptians was
similar to that of the Hindus in that both those peo-
ples believed the human soul to be of divine origin;
that this whole life is a warfare of good and evil. In
short, the Egyptians are Indo-German. In that great
migration from the cradle of the race in the far East
they found a home at the delta of the Nile, where they
have lived for at least eight and probably ten thousand
years. Some of their kindred were migrating, per-
haps at the same time, on parallel lines, farther north;
and the descendants of that northern stream are today

(13)   J. T. Clark’s Ten Great Beligions, chapter on Brahman-
ism.

(14)   Mann, 2:22 to 28. It is barely possible that the Western
Ocean, mentioned above, may have been the Mediterranean Sea.
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES 159

in Germany, in France, in England, and in the last
four hundred years have crossed the Atlantic, and
have only halted, in my own America, at the Golden
Gate, on the shores of the distant Pacific.
 CHAPTER XIV

The Doctrine of Immortality in Palestine and
-India.

Section i. When Jesus was bom, there were in
Palestine, as we have seen, three religious sects; the
Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes. Of these the
Pharisees were the most numerous and aggressive.
The origin of the sect is not surely known, but they
were probably the descendants of the returned exiles
(Benehaggola) from Babylon. They were certainly
separatists; which their Hebrew name signifies (Phar-
isee : to separate) ; and Ezra, when he returned from
Babylon about 458 B. C., spent fifteen years in getting
those Jews who had not been carried into exile, to
“put away” the wives whom they had married from
surrounding tribes. (1)

But whatever their origin, the Pharisees, in Jesus’
day, were greatly puffed up with pride and self-con-
ceit. They affected uncommon sanctity, but their
hypocrisy was so apparent that John the Baptist
severely denounced both them and the Sadducees. (2)

Their religion, if it was a religion, consisted in
bloody sacrifices and useless ceremonies. Yet they

(1)   Ezra, ch. 10.

(2)   Matt. 3, v. 7.

I

160
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES 161

criticised Jesus (3) for eating with “publi-
cans and sinners.” They were so vain of pomp and
parade that Jesus rebuked them, and told his follow-
ers that when they went to give alms, to sound no
trumpets before them in the streets and synagogues
to have glory of men (4), as the hypocrites do.
They have been called the slaves of lust, avarice
and pride; yet they believed in the immortality of the
soul.

“Under the earth,” they said, “there will be rewards
and punishments, according as one has, in this life,
lived virtuously or viciously.” (5)

The wicked, they claimed, would be detained there in
an everlasting prison. The souls of the good, they
believed, would transmigrate into other bodies, and
live on again in this world in a blissful state. (6)

The Pharisees were full of inconsistencies and con-
tradictions. They would not walk upon the grass on
the Sabbath, lest some seeds might be shelled out, and
that would be threshing. They made broad their
phylacteries; but they laid grievous burdens on the
people, and would not lift a finger to help them, and

(3)   Matt. 9:11.

(4)   Matt. 6, v. 2.

(5)   Jos., Antiq., Book 18, ch. 1, see. 3. We shall see further
on in this chapter, that the doctrine of the Immortality of the
soul was a new importation among the Jews, from Zoroaster’s
teachings to the Persians; or from Egypt; or from India,
Buddha’s home.

(6)   The removing of Souls into other bodies (Book 2, Wars
of Jews, ch. 8, sec. 14) looks as if some one had heard from
India, Egypt or Babylon. St. Paul (Acts 24:15) **hoped” that
the just and unjust would all be resurrected.
 162

A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

they sought the best rooms at the feasts, and the chief
places in the synagogues. (7)

Luke justly told them they kept “the outside of the
cup and platter clean, but left the inward part full of
raving and wickedness.” (

Moreover, the Pharisees claimed that fate deter-
mines all things, yet not sufficiently to take away free-
dom of the will to act virtuously or viciously as one
chooses. They stuck in the letter of the Law, and
lost its Spirit; for if a flea bit one of them and he
killed it on Sunday, that was hunting.

Section 2. It is easy to determine why the Sad-
ducees were a less numerous sect than the Pharisees;
for the latter preached a hope for the soul beyond the
grave. The Sadducees followed Epicurus (9), who
taught that the soul “is only a finer species of body,
spread through this frame, and that the death of the
body is the end of everything.” In short, the Sad-
ducees said: “There is no resurrection, neither angel
nor spirit.” The Pharisees confessed both. (10)

The Sadducees said there is no such thing as fate,
but that each man is his own master; that the good
which comes to him, and the evil which befalls him,
are caused by his own wisdom or folly; and they had
scripture for their doctrine.

(7)   Matt. 23, v. 4 to 8.

(   Luke 11:39.

(9)   Epicurus, bom in Samos, Greece, about 340 years B. C.
His philosophy resembled Buddha’s teaching somewhat, i. e., the
mind should be composed and the body free from taint.

L (10) Acts 23, v. 8, and Matt. 22, v. 23.
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES 163

They that plough iniquity and sow wickedness, they
said, reap the same. He that goeth down to the grave
shall come up no more; he shall return no more to his
house. (11)

The Sadducees were strict constructionists. They
found in the Hebrew scriptures no certain and explicit
mention of the immortality of the soul. They fol-
lowed the letter of the law, and not finding the im-
mortality doctrine taught there, they utterly rejected it

Having mentioned the Essenes in chapter XI. sec-
tion 2, I will say no more of them here, but think I
ought to state that quite a large number of both Phar-
isees and Sadducees have survived the vicissitudes of
time and country, and can be found, without much
serious search, in many parts of America, England and
Russia today. But they are as sheep without a shep-
herd.

Life, it is true, is an unsolvable mystery, and death
is a still greater enigma; yet the doctrine of the im-
mortality of the soul is old and moss-grown with age.
Two thousand three hundred years before Jesus was
bom, the Egyptians had solved that mysterious prob-
lem satisfactorily, at least to themselves (12), and had
established a court to fix the future of the dead.
Osiris and his triad were there to judge the departed,
and Set and his devils were on hand to snatch the

(11)   Job 4:8; also Job 7, v. 9.

(12)   To be exact, Professor Lepsiua fixes the date 2,380 years
B. C., but M. Marietta goes back about 3,000 years B. C., and
M. Chabas thinks 4,000 years elapsed before the first dynasty
was formed in Egypt. That would be about 9,000 years ago.
 164 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

wicked. The Egyptian doctrine had been in vogue
about four hundred years when Abram “went up out
of Egypt.” (13) Yet no unequivocal mention and ap-
proval of it appears in Jewish writings, until centuries
after the Babylonian exile. Then it is first dimly dis-
cerned in the apocrypha, and in Daniel.

Section 3. Moreover, the doctrine of the soul’s im-
mortality was taught in India more than a thousand
years B. C., and some think far beyond that limit.
Buddha found it in the Upanishads (14) and for fifty
years he preached it with vigor and success. He had
evidently heard of the Moses fable about “seeing God
face to face” (15), and when one day two
Brahman students became engaged in a hot dis-
pute as to which was the true faith leading to a state
of union with Brahma, Buddha pursued the same
method of reasoning that Socrates did a few years
later in Athens. (16) Gotama asked Vasettha, one of

(13)   If Genesis, ch. 13, is right as to date, the journey of
Abram was about 1,920 years B. C. Abram during his sojourn
in Egypt must have learned of the belief in the immortality of
the soul. But he makes no mention of it, nor does the Penta-
teuch. It is probable that Moses did not believe in the immor-
tality doctrine, else why his silence f

(14)   The Upanishads are the philosophical speculations of
Hindu philosophers 800 to 1000 years B. G. about the soul or
self, and they teach that the soul is immortal. They say that
the Upanishads are Sruti—that is, revealed from heaven—but of
course they were no more revealed than a ‘ ‘ Thus said the Lord ’1
in the Pentateuch.

(15)   Exodus 33, v. 11.

(16)   It was the same old dispute 2400 years ago in India, that
we find in America. There were the Addharya Brahmans, the
Tittviya, the Khandokas and others. Here we have Methodists,
Catholics, Baptists, Unitarians, etc., and like the Brahmans, they
•11 claim the right path.
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES 165

the students, if each Brahman teacher claimed that
his special school taught the true saving path to a
union with Brahma (God). “Yes,” said Vasettha,
“they teach different paths, but each one claims his
path to be the true one.”

“Have any of those teachers versed in the three
Vedas,” asked Buddha, “ever seen Brahma face to
face?” “They do not claim to have seen him,” re-
plied Vasettha. “Do any of the Brahmans back seven
generations, say: ‘We know Brahma, we have seen
Brahma, we know where Brahma is?’ ” he asked. (17)

“No, they do not, even up to the seventh generation,
say that they have ever seen Brahma face to face,”
replied Vasettha.

“Even so,” said Buddha, “nor did the Rishis of old,
the authors of the Veda, which the Brahmans now
carefully intone and recite—even they did not pretend
to'know whence or where Brahma is. How, then, can
they say we will teach the strait path that leads to
Brahma?”

“Impossible!” replied Vasettha, “and that being so,
it follows that the Brahmans talk foolishly. That
which the Brahmans do not know, having never seen
Brahma; is it not like a string of blind men, the blind
teacher leading the blind student?” Jesus had a sim-
ilar saying, that if the blind lead the blind, they would
both fall in the ditch. (18)

(17)   Brahma, the eternal, self-existent, is said to be imper-
sonal. Tevigga, Vol. 11, Sacred Books of the East, p. 172.

(18)   Matt. 15:14.
 I<56 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

“Even if they could see Brahma, as we see the sun
in the heavens, can they,’’ asked Buddha, “point out
a safe path that leads to the sun?”

The colloquy then proceeds on the supposition that if
a man should say he loves and longs for the most
beautiful woman in India, yet when asked of her
family and her name, her complexion, and where she
dwells, he knows nothing about her, how then could,
or how can he love her? (19)