Gotama’s sensible teachings? Moreover, if Jesus ex-
isted in the beginning ( ?), it does seem as if he ought
to have interested himself to save Eve there in the
garden; for thus both hell and transmigration—fright-
ful dreams—would never have been heard of.
 CHAPTER XXIV

Was it Resurrection or Was it Resuscitation?

Section i. Here now we come to the parting of
the roads. Buddha did not believe in a resurrection of
the body; and he did not teach that wild and senseless
doctrine. Neither did the Jews believe in it until
after the book of Daniel appeared, shortly to be fol-
lowed by Maccabees, which speaks of the dead being
raised up unto everlasting life. (i) .When Jesus came,
he found that doctrine in the world, and he did not
condemn it, but on the contrary he emphasized it, •
claiming that John the Baptist was Elias come back
to the earth. (2)

But the question is this: Was Jesus’ mortal body
resurrected?

That has been a disputed question for now nearly
nineteen hundred years, and the controversy is not yet
ended. Millions of good people firmly believe that his
body was actually resurrected; and other millions,
equally as good, stoutly deny it.

(1)   The book of Daniel was written about 166 6. C., and not,
as Bible chronology has it, 606 B. C. Br. Ency., Vol. 6, p. 805,
Edition 9, 2nd Maccabees 7, v. 9 to 36. Jos. Antiq. 18: 1, 3.

(2)   Matt. 11: v. 14; Matt. 17: v. 10 to 12; Mark 6: v. 15 to
16. Of course the sect of Sadducees did not believe in the resur-
rection.. (Matt. 22: v. 23; Luke 20: v. 27.) Neither did thf
Sadducees believe in angels or spirits. Acte 23: v. 8.
 282

A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

It is objected that if the body of Jesus, when taken
down from the Cross, was in fact a pale, ghastly, rigid
corpse, it could no more come back to life than any
other dead body. And it is said, suppose his throat
had been cut from ear to ear, or that he had been ac-
tually decapitated, and all his veins and arteries
emptied of life’s currents, could he resurrect himself?
Did he resurrect himself, and, if not, who did? Or
suppose the bones of his legs had been broken on the
cross, as were the legs of the thieves, could he have
walked until they had been set and bandaged and
grown together again? How about that?

A healthy young man with abundant vitality, as I
have heretofore shown, could survive the agonies of
the cross two or three days, and sometimes even four
days. Jesus was on the cross only about three hours,
and was dead, as the soldiers thought, even before that
questionable thrust of the spear. (3) In fact, John
is the only person who makes that assertion.

Joseph of Arimathea may have believed Jesus was
dead when he took his body from the cross, but he
himself says nothing about it. It is said he brought
some linen cloth with which to wrap it, as was then
the custom of the Jews. (4)

That day there was enacted the most shameful spec-
tacle ever witnessed on this earth, which brands for-

(3)   John 19: v. 31 to 34. John is the only one of the four
Gospel writers who says the side of Jesus was pierced by a spear*

(4)   Mark 15: v. 23 and v. 53. John 19: v. 40.
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES 283

ever with infamy those Roman soldiers, and the Jews
who were the actors in the tragedy.

Right at the foot of the cross the soldiers are divid-
ing Jesus’ garments, and casting lots as to which shall
win his seamless robe. (5) Here comes a procession
of Jews, and they wag their heads and jeer as they
pass by: “Ah, thou that destroyest the Temple and
buildest it in three days, save thyself and come down
now from the cross!”

But worse than all this, the learned of all Jerusalem,
the chief priests and scribes, doctors of the law, are
there; and they mock him: “He saved others, himself
he cannot save”; “Let the King of Israel come
down now from the cross, that we may see and be-
lieve.” (6) Would it not have been better for the
world if Jesus had actually come down from the cross,
for even those Pharisees might then have believed on
him?

If, as Luke alleges, (7) when they were mock-
ing him in his agony he was able to say, “Father,
forgive them, they know not what they do,” then he
stands upon a pedestal above every human being who
preceded him. ( Moreover, Jesus was not a cruel
man; and if those Jews who nailed him on that cross

(5)   John 19: v. 23 and 24; Matt. 27: v. 85.

(6)   Mark 15: v. 29 to 31; Matt. 27: v. 39 to 43.

(7)   Ch. 23, v. 34.

(   Some of his followers are equally devoted, as witness
Bishop Cramer, who was burned at the stake. When the flames
were consuming him, he was able to say to another sufferer:

Let us stand firm, brother, and we will kindle such a light in
England today that the world will see it.”
 284

A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

cry to him out of the pit, will he not have mercy? If
he has the power, he surely will forgive them.

A man’s mother is the first one to come to him in
distress, and the last to leave him. It was so at Cal-
vary. Jesus’ mother was there; she had followed him
from Galilee, and was at the sepulcher when the stone
was rolled to its door. (9)

Her mother’s heart was, without doubt, wrung with
anguish while watching her son’s agony on the cross.
If the spear was actually thrust into his side, she may
have seen the blood as it gushed from the wound.

Moreover, she with all those women who followed
him from Galilee, believed him to be dead, if the record
be true; for it is said they brought spices, intending
to come back after the Sabbath and anoint him. (to)
Section 2. He was taken down from the cross
probably sometime after four o’clock, probably a little
later, on Friday afternoon. Joseph had visited Pilate,
to beg the body; and when he obtained leave he
bought linen (11) to wrap it in, and it may have been
five o’clock in the afternoon, or even six o’clock. But
exactly when that stone was rolled to that door, no
human being can now truly tell. (12)

But if it was six o’clock when Joseph finished wrap-
ping the body, and no signs of returning consciousness
had appeared, that circumstance adds weight to the
claim of those who insist that he was really dead.
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES 285

And every moment beyond that point of time gives
strength to that supposition. It is all simply a guess
as to the exact time when Joseph rolled that stone to
the door of that sepulcher. But it was Friday even-
ing, Nisan 4th (April, A. D. 33).

Great things had transpired in Jerusalem in the
preceding twenty-four hours. Jesus had eaten the
Paschal supper (13); Judas had betrayed him; Peter
had denied him (14); the Scribes and elders had
arrested him; Pilate, though repeatedly saying, “I find
no fault in him,” had cruelly scourged him.

And when that Jewish mob was clamoring, “Crucify
him, crucify him!” the weak-kneed Pilate tamely
yielded; and the best man ever born in Palestine was
shamelessly nailed to the cross between two thieves.

Such a monument of infamy towers to the very
heavens. Even if we say that Jesus was only a man,
his Sermon on the Mount can never be surpassed. It
is a perpetual benediction upon all mankind, and so
it will remain forever.

Now if the record be true, all this suffering and
ignominy on the cross might have been avoided if
Jesus had so willed it. (15) For it seems as if he
really did have it in his power to escape. He knew
Judas to be a traitor. He knew the whole Sanhedrin
was arrayed against him. He could have escaped in
several ways. He could have gone back to Galilee.
He might have found shelter in the wilderness. If he

(13)   Luke 22.

(14)   Luke 23: v. 1 to 5.

(15)   John 10, ?. 17 and 18.
 286

A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

could feed five thousand with “five loaves and two
small fishes,” could he not feed himself when and
where he pleased? (16) Or did he have the brave
example of those seven glorious Maccabees before
him? (17) Or did, in fact, an angel from heaven
come to give him strength and courage? (18) If so,
it may have been one of the same angels that ministered
unto him in the wilderness. (19) Or it may have been
the angel Nanda, who fed Buddha when he was fam-
ishing.

But after all these questionable statements have
been sifted, the great fact of the nailing to that cross
stands out boldly, and unchallenged. The mournful
sublimity of that innocent sufferer, on that cross,
stands unimpeached and unimpeachable. It is a monu-
mental fact; and there it will remain sure and stead-
fast until the elements shall melt with fervent heat.
(20)

Section 3. But the resurrection of the material
body of Jesus, stands upon a very different footing.
Water, we know from universal observation, will run
down hill. People will die—in fact they are dying

(16)   Matt. 14, y. 15 to 21 and ch. 15, v. 32 to 38.

(17)   Second Maccabees, ch. 7.

(18)   This remarkable statement of Luke (ch. 22, y. 43) de-
serves observation. It is not improper to ask who told Luke about
that story of the angel. The least that can be said of it is that
there in the Mount of Olives Jesus wavered—else why does the
angel appear, if the angel did appear?

(19)   Matt. 4, xi. Nanda fed Buddha at the end of his long
fast.

(20)   2nd Peter 3: v. 10.

I
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES 287

all about us—and the proof is overwhelming that all
will die.

Both of those cases are self-evident. They are of
common observation, and happen every day in obedi-
ence to a law. But if we find that about nineteen hun-
dred years ago, four men—Matthew, Mark, Luke and
John—each wrote a book saying that in their day water
ran up hill of itself, we at once discredit such a story.
We pronounce against it, and a multitude of witnesses
will not convince us, for the reason that it contradicts a
law of universal observation.

And those same men—Luke, Mark, Matthew and
John (21)—each wrote a book, and every one of them
asserts therein that Jesus was crucified (that is not
hard to believe), and was pronounced dead, was taken
down from the cross, was wrapped with cloth, and
placed carefully in a tomb. (22)

But there is no statement by Marie, or Luke, or
Matthew, or John, that anyone, as a guard, remained
at that sepulcher that Friday night. So closed the day

(21)   Matthew and Mark were Jews. Luke is believed to have
been an Italian. John, who wrote the fourth gospel, may have
been John the Presbyter—and he may have been John, the son
of Zebedee and Salome. This John, whoever he was, is the only
person who makes any mention that the spear was thrust into
Jesus’ side. Matthew, Luke and Mark know nothing about that
spear. John says Jesus was crucified in a garden; and in that
garden was the sepulcher where Jesus was laid (John 19, v. 41);
and John makes no mention of a guard at the tomb; neither does
Luke, neither does Mark. The whole story of the guard at the
tomb depends on Matthew.

(22)   Neither Matthew, nor Luke, nor Mark seems to have
heard of the myrrh and aloes (John 19:39 and 40). John is the
only one inspired on that point.
 288 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

of preparation. The next day, Saturday, being Pass-
over, was a holy day with the Jews. Nobody all that
Saturday is watching that tomb.

A chain, let us observe, is only as strong as its
weakest link. And a link in that chain, just here, is
broken. Or to be more exact, there are here two
ends of a chain; or, if you please, two chains with no
connecting link.

Now, let us see: Matt., ch. 27, says, “the next day
that followed the day of preparation, the chief priests
and Pharisees came unto Pilate, saying, ‘Sir, we re-
member that deceiver said while he was yet alive,
after three days I will rise again. Command there-
fore that the sepulcher be made secure, until the third
day; lest his disciples come by night, and steal him
away, and say unto the people he is risen from the
dead.’ ” (23)

Pilate, it is said, told those Jews to go and set a
watch and make the sepulcher secure. And we are
told that they set a watch and sealed the sepulcher.

But what hour the next day did they set the watch?
(24) Here is a great gap in the evidence; we are not
told what time the next day, the chief priests and
Pharisees visited Pilate; whether it was in the fore-
noon, or in the afternoon. All that is a matter of
guess and surmise. Meanwhile the tomb is unguarded.

I have as much right to guess that it was in the

(23)   Matt. 27: v. 62 to 65.

(24)   Matt. 27, v. 62 to 66.
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES 289

afternoon that the guard was set, as you have to say
it was in the forenoon. It was not in the morning
of the next day, or we probably would be so told.
Nor was it in the evening. It was simply “the next
day,” and so the problem must remain forever un-
solved. Syncope may have seized Jesus when suffer-
ing on the cross. That counterfeit of death has mis-
led many, and may have misled those watching the
crucifixion.

Moreover the soldiers on that watch were liars and
bribe-takers, if the story told of them be true. They
took a “large sum of money,” it is said, and foiged
the lie that his “disciples came by night and stole him
away while they slept.” (25) Matthew makes no
comment about this alleged bribery; and only adds,
“this saying is commonly reported among the Jews
until this day.” Neither Mark, nor Luke nor John
seem to have ever heard of this interesting episode of
the soldiers, and the stealing of the body.

Now I am not going to assert, that as no guard was
sent until “the next day,” Jesus’ body was meanwhile
stolen. Nor am I going to insist that the body, before

(25)   This whole thing lacks probability. Those were Boman
soldiers, and for a Boman soldier to sleep on guard brought the
penalty of death. Moreover, the words, ‘‘until this day,” and
probably verses 62 to 66, are an accretion (Matt. ch. 27). This
story about the sleeping soldiers is a clumsy invention. Pilate
would probably have crucified those soldiers had they been found
sleeping while on guard. Matthew says, ‘‘The soldiers took the
money and did as they were taught,” that is they reported that
they slept while on guard! There is not an instance like this in
all Boman history!
 290 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

the coining of the guard, regained consciousness and
escaped. There is a possibility that syncope, or faint-
ing terminated his suspension on the cross.

But I do assert, that if that mortal body ever re-
gained consciousness and escaped from that tomb,
there was plenty of time for it to escape between the
hours that Joseph left it there, and the coming of the
soldiers “the next day.” Because there must have
been from sixteen to twenty hours from the time the
stone was rolled to the door of the tomb, and the
arrival of the soldiers. And in those hours there was
time enough for the disciples, if they saw fit, to remove
the body, and to remove it without detection. Further-
more, there was time enough for Jesus to recover from
a syncope, if that had given him the appearance of
death. He could then escape without assistance. Or
those “two men” which Luke mentions, may have
assisted him. (26)

The guard of the soldiers not having been men-
tioned by either Mark, Luke or John, it looks like an
accretion or interpolation. Or it may be that the
others were not inspired just then, as to this particular
matter. Moreover, it seems Jesus very shortly after
being put in that tomb, made his escape from it and
journeyed with some friends to Emmaus (27); and on
his return, being hungry, he ate some fish and honey-
comb (28), and traveled to Galilee. (29)

(26)   Luke 24: v. 4.

(27)   Luke 24: v. 13 to 16.

(28)   Luke 24, y. 42.

(29)   Matt 28, v. 10.
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES 291

Besides, if Jesus had been justly condemned, under
Leviticus 24 or under Deuteronomy 13 he should
have been stoned to death, which was less ignomini-
ous and less terrible than a death on the tree. (39)
But that his ignominy might be complete, they

(36)   Mark 15: v. 15 to 23. Matt. 27: v. 33.

(37) Deut. 21: v. 22 to 23. Numbers 25: v. 1 to 8.

(38) Mark 15: v. 7 to 12. Luke 23: v. 2 to 23.

(39)   Deut. 21, v. 22.
 26o

A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

nailed him up between two thieves, and even one
of these insulted him while on the cross. (40) But
the other repented, and, if the record be true, he is
now in the heavenly kingdom, while the impenitent
one is roasting in the furnace. The Jews, even while
Jesus was groaning on the tree, would not let him
die without taunts and jeers. They marched past him
and railed at him, wagging their heads, saying: “Thou
that destroyest the temple and buildest it in three
days, save thyself and come down now from the
cross,” and the priests and Scribes added their jeers:
“He saved others, himself he cannot save.” (41)

Pilate, who despised the Jews, wrote in bitter irony
this superscription, which he caused to be nailed above
Jesus’ head: “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the
Jews.”

The priests, when they saw this, rushed off to Pi-
late and besought him to write—“He said he was the
King of the Jews.” Pilate replied: “What I have
written, I have written,” and he refused to change a
word. (42)

Meanwhile four soldiers were on guard at the foot
of the cross, and one of them, on hearing him say,
“Eloi, Eloi, lama, sabachthani,” thought he was call-
ing Elias, and ran and filled a sponge with vinegar

(40)   Matt. 27: ?. 44, says: “The thieves,” meaning both,
bnt Luke 23: v. 42 and 43, states that one thief repented. John,
who says he was present, was not inspired on that point and says
nothing. Mark 15: v. 32, does not agree with Luka.

(41)   Mark 15: v. 28 to 31.

(42)   John 9: v. 21 and 22.
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES 361

and gave him to drink, saying, “Let us see if Elias will
come to take him down.” (43)

Directly after this, Jesus swooned away. He had
been on the cross only about three hours, and it was
now three o’clock in the afternoon, Friday (Nisan),
our April 3.

Section 7. There was an old custom among the
Jews, that the body of one who had died on the cross
should be buried that day, lest the land be defiled. (44)
Moreover, the next day being the Jewish Sabbath, the
Jews besought Pilate that the legs of the crucified
might be broken and the bodies taken away. They
broke the legs of the others, but when they came to
Jesus they found him “dead already,” and did not
break his legs; but a soldier, it is said, pierced his
side with a spear, and blood and water came forth.
John is the only one who mentions this incident of
the spear, and John is very unreliable.

It must be noticed here that Jesus was on the cross
only three hours. A young man in good health could
endure the agony of the cross for two days, and some-
times for three days, and even longer. The two
thieves were killed by breaking their legs, but Jesus,
we are told, was dead before the spear touched him.
This looks strange: he probably had swooned, only
swooned.

(43) Matt. 27: v. 46 to 49. Mark 15: v. 34 to 36. John 19:
v. 23 and 24. It was not a strong, stupefying drink. Matt. 27:
v. 34, says gall and vinegar. The drink was to lessen pain, and
gall and vinegar would not.

(44)   Deut. 21, v. 23.
 /

CHAPTER XXII

Contradictory Testimony Concerning the
Crucifixion.

There are cases where men of great physical vigor
have hung upon the cross four days, and then only
died of starvation. (i) There are cases where, after
a considerable period on the cross, they have been
taken down and restored to health. (2)

Jesus was not an invalid; he was able to cry with
a loud voice just before he “expired,” and “he cried
again with a loud voice.” (3) He was also able to
talk to his mother, and his aunt, and Mary Magdalene
and others, just before he swooned. No doubt he had
only swooned. (4)

Jesus’ last words were: “Father, into thy hands I
commend my Spirit;” and, after crying with a loud
voice, it is said he gave up the ghost. (5) There
was no sudden rupture of any vein or blood vessel,
or some mention would have been made of it Such

(1)   Eusebius, His. Eccl. VIII, 8.

(2)   Josephus, 75, vita, mentions a case where three of his
friends were hung on the cross, and, being taken down, one of
them recovered.

(3)   Mark 15: v. 33 and 37. Matt. 27: v. 46 to 50. Luke 23:
v. 46.

(4)   John 19: v. 25 to 30, is the only one of the four canonical
writers who mentions this incident of the spear. The three others
seem to know nothing about it.

(5)   Matt. 27: v. 50. Luke 23: v. 46.
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES 363

a rupture would at that instant have caused the blood
to gush from his nose and mouth. Moreover, it must
not be overlooked that John is the only one of the
four New Testament writers who makes any mention
of the supposed incident that a spear was thrust into
Jesus’ side, and that is a very important circumstance
in this world-renowned event.

This alleged sudden death of a young man thirty-
two or thirty-three years of age, after only three hours
on the cross, when taken in connection with his al-
leged appearance a few hours afterwards, when he
was traveling about the country and ate a broiled fish
and a piece of honey comb, compels me to question
his absolute decease. Moreover, when Joseph of Ari-
mathea visited Pilate and begged the body of Jesus,
it is no wonder that Pilate marveled that Jesus was
already dead, and he sent the captain of the guard to
inquire about it. (6)

Joseph, having obtained leave, took the body,
wrapped it in linen cloth and laid it in a new sepulchre.
But Nicodemus, as we shall see directly, did not bring,
as John states, any aloes; neither did he assist in put-
ting Jesus’ body into that sepulchre.

Now, as to that spear-thrust. Neither Luke nor
Matthew nor Mark seem ever to have heard anything
about it. Yet they each wrote a history of the cruci-
fixion, but as to the supposed spear incident they are
absolutely silent. And when we examine all the records
and find that John of the Fourth Gospel is the only

(0) Mark 15: v. 44 and 45.
 264 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

person of the four who tells us that story of the spear,
we trace his record back and find that he is always an
extremist and an uncertain guide. For he auda-
ciously says Jesus made the world (7), and ( tells
us that Jesus was God.

There are some other things to be noticed just here.
Matthew says Joseph of Arimathea took Jesus’ body
down from the cross and laid it in his own new tomb,
etc. (9), but he makes no mention whatever of Nico-
demus being present at the crucifixion, or of any spear
having been thrust into Jesus’ side.

Mark tells us (10) that the veil of the temple
was rent from top to bottom, but he does not mention
Nicodemus as being present either at the crucifixion,
or the placing of the body in the tomb.

Moreover, Mark is as silent as a dead man about the
thrusting of that spear. He seems never to have heard
a word about it. Luke (11) says Joseph went
to Pilate and begged the body of Jesus, and took
it and wrapped it in linen, etc, but he is silent
about any spear having been thrust into Jesus’
side He makes no mention of it. Nor does he men-
tion that Nicodemus was present at the crucifixion.

Not only was Nicodemus not present at the cruci-
fixion, but we shall see (12) that he believed Jesus had
escaped into the woods. In fact, Jesus was able to

(7)   John 1, v. 10.

(   John 14, v. 9.

(9)   Matt. 27, y. 58 to 60.

(10)   Ch. 15, v. 38-46.

(11)   Ch. 23, v. 50 to 56.

(12)   Ch. 31, v. 83.
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

26$

travel about the country as early as Sunday morning.
(13) Mark also confirms this. (14) Matthew tells
us that Jesus was able to travel about sixty miles to
Galilee within two days after being nailed to the cross.
(15) The reader must be warned that John of the
Fourth Gospel is very careless about the truth, for he
says: “They took Jesus and led.him away. He, bear-
ing his cross, went forth,” etc. (16) Matthew con-
tradicts John here, for he says they compelled a man
of Cyrene, Simon by name, to bear the cross. (17)

Mark also contradicts John and agrees with Mat-
thew that they compelled Simon to bear the cross.
(18) Luke (19) likewise contradicts John and agrees
with Matthew and Mark that Simon bore the cross.

There is no certain proof that John’s Gospel was
in existence before A. D. 140. Nor is there any cer-
tain proof that John, the son of Zebedee, ever wrote
it. (20) In truth, John’s supposed Gospel seems to
have been made up largely from an Apocryphal writ-
ing called “The Acts of Pilate.” John (21) takes

(13)   Lake 24, v. 13 to 31.

(14)   Mark 16, v. 7-13.

(15)   Matt 28, v. 7-10.

(16)   John 19, v. 16 and 17.

(17)   Matt. 27, v. 32.

(18)   Mark 15, v. 21.

(19)   Ch. 23, v. 26.

(20)   Bev. Davidson, who wrote the article on the canon for the
British Encyclopedia, tells us that the existence of John’s Gospel
before A. D. 140 is incapable of even a probable showing. It
is said that during the persecution under Domitian, John was
taken to Borne and boiled in oil. If that be true, John must be
excused for his many wild statements, for after boiling ia oil
his mind must have been shattered.

(21)   Chapter 2.
 a66 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

thirty-four lines to tell us of the turning of water into
wine. The Acts of Pilate (22) tells the same story in
twelve lines. Neither Matthew nor Mark nor Luke
seem ever to have heard of this wine incident.

The same is true of the healing of the nobleman’s
son. John (23) takes thirty lines; whereas The Acts
of Pilate tells us the same in twelve lines. Chapter XI,
Acts of Pilate, tells us exactly where John copied (24)
the story that Nicodemus came with a mixture of
myrrh and aloes, about a hundred pounds weight, and
assisted in the burial of Jesus. (25) In closing this
chapter we may notice that Jesus’ body was not dis-
posed of according to either the Roman or Jewish
custom. When a Roman suffered death on the cross
his body was left suspended until devoured by the birds.
Jesus was a Jew, and under the Jewish law he should
have been buried in some place of infamy.

(22)   Chapter 7.

(23)   Chapter 4.

(24)   This seems to be in sharp conflict with John (ch. 19: ?.
89 to 42), where John says Nicodemus assisted at the burial of
Jesus.

(25)   John 19, v. 38 to 4L
 CHAPTER XXIII

Miracles in the Lives of Buddha and Jesus.

Section i. When Buddha died we are told that
there arose, “at the moment of his passing,” a mighty
earthquake, terrible and awe-inspiring, and the thun-
ders of heaven burst forth: “That on every hand,
even up to the celestial mansions, the earth spouted
forth great flames of fire and the mountains and val-
leys shook with the roll and crash of thunder; that
from the four quarters of the earth a tempestuous
wind arose, scattering dust and ashes on crags and
hills in awful profusion.”

The sun and moon, at the same time, it is said,
withdrew their light; and murmuring brooks were
swollen instantly to great streams. All Kusinara (the
place of Buddha’s death) became immediately strewn
knee-deep with mandarava flowers from heaven. Dust
bins and ash heaps were covered with perfume dropped
from the skies.

So great was the universal sorrow that even flying
dragons, as they were hurtled through the air, dropped
tears of sympathy.

We are told, moreover, that angels (Devas) from
heaven hovered above the earth in mid-air; that,

267
 268

A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

“neither sorrowing nor rejoicing,” they watched the
impressive scene with unwonted interest. (i)

Their only grief was, it is said, that the world
would soon forget the precepts of the great teacher.
But there was one, the evil one—Mara-raga—who at
that moment rejoiced exceedingly because Gambud-
vipa (the world) was shorn of its glory. (2)

All these things are said to have happened in India,
not far from the Ganges, five hundred years before the
attempted murder of Jesus on Golgotha. And when
Jesus is taken down from the cross we meet similar
extraordinary occurrences. “The veil of the temple
is rent from top to bottom; graves are opened; and
many bodies of the Saints which slept, arise and come
out of their graves and go into the holy city and ap-
pear unto many.” (3)

At Jesus’ death, a mishap overtakes the sun, very

(1)   Vol. XI, Sacred Books of the East, p. 116, and Fo Sho,
Sec. 2104 to 2114. Of course this improbable story is utterly
unbelievable; and the Hindu who wrote it ought, if within reach,
to be punished for misleading Matthew and Luke. (Matt 28: v.
1 to 5. Luke 24: v. 50 to 51.)

(2)   The Hindu Devil had often before this begged Buddha to
die. Vol. XI, S. B. E., p. 42.

(3)   Just who opened those graves, we are not told. Neither
are we told whether those saints went back to their graves, and
climbed down into darkness again, or whether they remained
above the ground. Is this wonderful story true! Did flesh and
blood come back to those corpses f Did articulation of the bones
take placet Or did Matthew’s imagination run away with himf

Moreover, we must remember that Matthew and Luke are the
only ones of the Gospel writers who tell this improbable story.
Neither Mark nor John makes any mention of the saints getting
out of their graves. The story is too improbable for belief. A
witness in court who would tell such an inconsistent tale would
impeach his own evidence; Matthew impeaches himself. See
Matt. 27: v. 51 to 53. Luke 23: v. 45.
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES 269

similar to that which occurred in India, at Buddha’s
demise, with this difference, that in India the sun and
moon both withdrew their light. But in Palestine the
moon escapes trouble; though later on it is to be over-
taken with a great calamity, for Peter foolishly says
it “shall be turned into blood.” (4)

Section 2. Of these remarkable men, most won-
derful omens precede their coming; and their exits
are likewise extraordinary. Buddha, it is said, made
himself incarnate for the benefit of mankind; (5) and
John goes to the extreme of saying that the world was
made by Jesus. (6) There was darkness, it is said,
over the whole land for three hours when Jesus
died. (7)

When Buddha’s remains were cremated we are told
that streams of water flowed down from the skies; and
at the same moment the earth from beneath opened
wide and 'Spouted other torrents upon the funeral
pyre. (

Both of these men underwent long fasts; both were
tempted by devils, and both talked to devils. But
Jesus was tempted only forty days, while Mara-raga,
the Hindu devil, as we have seen, tempted Buddha
continuously for six terrible years. (9)

(4)   Acts 2, v. 20.

(5)   Bud. Birth Stories, p. 64 to 68, and Vol. XI, 8. B. of the
E., p. 90 and p. 216.

(6)   John 14: v. 9:   “He that hath seen me hath seen the

Father.” John 1: v. 1 to 14. John misled Paul. Philippians
2: ?. 6.

(7)   Luke 23: v. 44. Mark 15: v. 33. Matt. 27: ?. 45.

(   Vol. XI, S. B. E., p. 130, Sacred Books of the East.

(9)   Matt., eh. 4. Vol X, Sacred Books of the East; 2nd part
 370 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

learned, versed in the scriptures, fulfilling all the
greater and lesser duties, correct in life, walking ac-
cording to the precepts; until they, having themselves
learned the doctrine, shall be able to tell others of it,
make it known, establish it, minutely explain it; until
they, when others start vain doctrines, shall be able,
by the truth, to vanquish and refute them, and so to
spread the wonder-working truth abroad.” (14)

“I shall not die,” said Buddha, “until this pure re-
ligion of mine shall become widespread and prosper-
ous; until, in a word, it shall have been proclaimed
and well grounded among men.”

The devil replied: “Your religion has become all
this. Pass away now, Lord, pass away.” Buddha
answered: “Make thyself happy, O evil one. The
time of my deliverance is at hand; in three months I
shall pass to Nirvana.” (15)

A little later, Gotama and his disciples reached
Kusinara, where he wished to die. Here he was
given a couch in a grove of Sala trees; and, we are
told that, although it was out of season, those trees
were one mass of bloom, which they scattered over
and around the Tathagata.

Moreover, it is said, heavenly music and songs
sounded from the skies, “out of reverence to the suc-
cessor of the Buddhas of old.”

(14)   Sacred Books of the East, Vol. XI, p. 43.

(15)   A little later the devil appeared again and made the
same request and received the same answer. P. 53, Vol. XI, S.
B. E. The Hebrew devil talked to Jesus frequently, as we have
heretofore observed. Matt. 4: v. 3. Acts 19: v. 15.
 240 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

We must not be startled at what is told us of the
Bodhisats, who preceded the one of whom we are
writing.

For India is not tied down to any little six thousand
years since the world’s creation. The pendulum of
her time swings back prodigiously in the opposite di-
rection. They have a tradition—a foolish one per-
haps, but nevertheless a tradition—that millions and
millions of years ago (16) Gotama was a Brahman
named Sumedha, and that he then made a high re-
solve to become a Buddha. That Dipankara, the
Buddha in that far-off time, then predicted that at
the end of four Asankyes, and a hundred thousand
cycles, Sumedha would become a Buddha named Go-
tama. And Dipankara then predicted further, that
Gotama would be bom in Kapilavastu, that, after
great exertion under a bo-tree, on the banks of the
Narangara river, he would reach the throne of knowl-
edge. (17)

Moreover, it is said that the angels in ten thousand
world systems, at this happy augury, scattered flowers
and shouted their applause. (18)

(16)   The tradition is that he was born four AsanJcyas and one
hundred thousand cycles ago. An Asankya is a vast period of
time, so vast that if it should rain incessantly for three years
over the whole earth, the number of rain drops falling would
only equal the years of an Asankya. That places Gotama’s
ancestry millions and billions of years ago. But it seems he could
chdose his parents. Vol. 35, S. B. E., p. 270.

(17)   This whole supposed prediction looks very suspicious, and
was probably written long after Gotama was born.

(18)   The Hindus believe there were tens of thousands of
world systems; that our world system was only one among many.
(Hardy’s Manual, p. 8.) On that point 1 agree with them. This
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES 241

Most marvelous stories are told about the Buddhas
of old. One of them, back several thousands of years
ago, when visiting a Buddha’s shrine, wrapped a
thousand wicks about his head and body and set them
on fire. Thus he spent the whole night, walking about
the shrine, and lo! in the morning not a hair of his head
was singed. (19)

For pure imagination and impudent assertion, the
Hindu and Hebrew bibles surpass all modern fiction.
Genesis would have us believe that Noah and the old
patriarchs lived from six hundred to a thousand years,
all of which is unbelievable. But it dwarfs to nothing
by the side of Hindu exaggerations, which set forth
that the Buddhas of old lived from sixty to one hun-
dred thousand years; and their bodies are alleged to
have been equally enormous, ranging in height from
forty to ninety cubits. Truly “there were giants in
those days.” (20) and it may be that Genesis is only
a faint reflection from the East. However, it is cer-
tain that India always surpassed Palestine in the num-
ber and quality of its spirits. The very air at times
was filled with them; some were large and some were
small; and to.the Sala grove, where Gotama was rest-

world of onn is, I believe, only one among mflUona of worlds.
But as it only takes six days to make a world, the Lord has
had plenty of time, if diligent, to make millions of them. See
story of Sumedha, in Buddhist birth stories.

(19)   The three Hebrew children, it seems, were likewise im-
pervious to'the flames, for although in a very hot furnace, not a
hair of their heads was singed. Of course both of these stories
are utterly untrue. (Daniel, ch S: p. 34, Jatoka tales.) Both
are monumental falsehoods.

(20)   Genesis, 6: v. 4. Birth Stories, p. 8 to 40.
 343   A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

ing, the day before he died, they came from far and
near to behold the dying Tathagata. Some of those
spirits, we are told, were so small that a dozen or
more could stand on the tip of one’s finger.

Section 3. “Now today, in the last watch of the
night,” said Gotama, “the death of a Tathagata will
take place. There are spirits in the sky, of worldly
mind, who will dishevel their hair and weep—who will
fall prostrate on the ground and cry out, ‘Too soon
has the blessed one passed away.’ (21) But those
who are self-possessed will see the impermanence of
all earthly things—that whatever is born contains'
within itself the germ and certainty of dissolution.”

Buddha then proceeded to state that there were four
places that believing hearts, with feelings of rever-
ence, ought to visit:

The birth place of a Tathagata, the spot where he
attained supreme insight, the place where the king-
dom of righteousness was established, and the place
where he finally passed away. And he added, that
“if any believing one shall die while on such a pil-
grimage, he will be re-born into the happy realms of
heaven.”

When asked what should be done with his remains,
he replied: “Treat them as men treat the remains of
a King of Kings.” Ananda, his favorite disciple,
when told that Buddha would soon pass away, com-
menced to weep: whereupon Buddha said to him:

(21)   The reader must not overlook the statement that spirits
in the sky will fall on the ground and weep. It is a picture of
earth, not heaven.
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES 243

.“Ananda, let not your heart be troubled. (22) Do
not weep; have I not told you that it is in the very
nature of things that we must leave those most dear
to us? That whatever is bom contains within itself
the seeds of dissolution?” And he adds: “For a long
time, Ananda, you have been very near to me, by
words and acts of love beyond all measure: go now
and inform the Mallas of Kusinara that the last watch
of this night, Tathagata will pass finally away.” (23)

When the Mallas learned of this they were sorely
grieved. Some of them wept, some dishevelled their
hair, and others fell prostrate on the ground in an-
guish of heart. Then they came in great numbers,
with their wives and children, and bowed down rev-
erently at Gotama’s feet.

A little later came also Subhadda, a monk of an-
other sect, questioning whether his teachings or those
of Gotama were right. Buddha replied that in any
doctrine in which the noble eight-fold path is not
found, no true saint can be found; “that if the noble
eight-fold path is found, in any doctrine, there will
also be found saintly men and women, living the life
that is right.”

Section 4. Buddha’s last moments were now fast
approaching, and he told Ananda that when he was
gone the rules of the order, as laid down, were to be
the teacher to all the brethren. His disciples, the

(22)   Vol. XI, Sacred Books of the East, p. 96. John, ch. 14:
v. 1, quotes this very sentiment and almost the exact words.

(23)   Page 101, Vol. XI, Sacred Books of the East.
 244 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

Bhikkhus, now in great numbers came to visit him, and
he told them to inquire freely as to the truth, the path
or way, while he was face to face with them. But not
one questioned him. (24)

Turning then to Ananda, he said: “Here is fullness
of faith. In this assembly of five hundred brethren,
there is not one who doubts; they have all become
converted, are no longer liable to be bom in a state
of suffering and woe; they are assured of final salva-
tion.”

Addressing the Bhikkhus, Buddha added: “Behold
now, brethren, I exhort you, decay is inherent in all
component things; work out your salvation with dili-
gence.”

These were the last words that Buddha uttered.
Then, lapsing into unconsciousness, he soon there-
after expired. (25)

At that moment, we are told, a mighty earthquake
shook the earth terribly, and a crash of thunder rent

(24)   On the noble eight-fold path, which leads to the ‘"life
that is right/’ one must have “1. Bight or correct views, free
from superstition or delusion. 2. Bight aims, high, noble, intelli-
gent, worthy of an earnest man. 3. Bight speech, kind and
truthful to every one. 4. Honest, pure and peaceful conduct at
all times. 5. So live as to bring hurt or pain to no living thing.
6. Bight effort, in self-training and self-control. 7. Mindfulness;
a watchful, active mind. 8. Bight contemplations, earnest thought,
on the great problems and mysteries of life. Searching for the
unknowable.” Does not this eight-fold path cover every possible
point in the New Testament f Some may say it does not tell yon
to love God, but if one is honest, pure, peaceful, kind and truth-
ful, doing hurt to no one, living a saintly life—what thenf Will
such a man fall into a furnace even if he does not believe the
man of Galilee to be the only Savior of the world f

(25)   Vol. XI, Sacred Books of the East, p. 114.
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES 245

the heavens. (26) But the sun was not darkened,
nor did any of the dead come out of their graves.
Yet Ananda says: “There was terror, and the hair
stood on end;” that worldly-minded spirits, both in the
sky and on the earth, fell prostrate and moaned in
anguish; but those who were free from passion bore
their grief with calm, self-possessed minds.

When the Mallas (27) of Kusinara heard of Go-
tama’s death, they honored his remains by gathering
flowers and perfumes, and making wreaths and cano-
pies ; and with music, song and dancing. Thus for
six days they paid homage and respect to the departed
Great One. Then they treated the remains as they
treat the remains of a King of Kings. They wrapped
the body in five hundred successive layers of new cloth
and cotton wool; then placed it in an oil vessel of iron
and covered it; and afterward built a funeral pile on
which to cremate.it.

Meanwhile, we are told, that all Kusinara was
strewn knee-deep (28) with mandarava “flowers from
heaven,” and that spirits from the skies paid honor,
reverence and respect to the body of the Blessed One.

On the seventh day after Buddha’s death, eight

(26)   Philippians, ch. 2, v. 12, and Vol. XI, S. 6. E., p. 114.
There was a similar earthquake, it is said, when Jesus died;
graves also opened at his death, the sun was darkened and the veil
of the temple was rent. Luke 23, v. 45; Matt. 27, v. 51 to 54; Fo
Sho, See. 2108, says the sun and moon withdrew their shining, but
I doubt very much whether the sun or moon was affected by the
death of either Buddha or Jesus.

(27)   The Mallas were a religious sect friendly to Gotama.

(28)   If that be true, they must have a great profusion of
flowers in heaven.
 246 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

Mallas chieftains bathed their heads and clad them-
selves in new- garments, intending to carry the body to
the funeral pile, but were unable to lift it up. They
were amazed at this, and, questioning the reason,
Anuruddha, one of the disciples, told the Mallas that
the spirits desired the body to be carried out by the
north gate, “while you would carry it by the south
one.”

Then they carried it out by the north gate to the
funeral pile, and here another curious incident oc-
curred. They were unable to set the funeral pile on
fire. (29)

Again Anuruddha explained the reason: “Kassapa,
a disciple,” he said, “is journeying to Kusinara with
five hundred of the brethren, and the funeral pile will
not catch fire until he has reverently saluted the feet
of the Blessed One. Such,” he said, “is the purpose
of the spirits.”

When Kassapa arrived, he clasped his hands and
thrice walked round the funeral pile; then, uncovering
the feet, he bowed down. And when the five hundred
brethren had likewise bowed at the feet of the de-
parted one, we are told that the funeral pile caught
on fire of itself. (30)

Section 5. When the body had been burned, it is
said that streams of water poured down from the
skies and burst from the earth beneath, to extinguish
the flames. On examination it was found that every

(29)   Yol. XI, Sacred Books of the East, p. 128.

(30)   VoL XI. Book of the great decease.—page 129.
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES 247

particle of the body was consumed, save only some of
the bones, and at once a strife arose for their pos-
session.

The king of Magadha desired a portion of them,
because Gotama belonged to the soldier caste; and he
promised to celebrate a feast and erect a sacred cairn
in their honor.

Many other people from different places made sim-
ilar requests and promises, but the Mallas of Kusinara
insisted on keeping them all.

Finally, Dona, a wise old saint, told them that such
a strife was unseemly, and he suggested a division of
the bones into eight parts, so that cairns might be
erected in many lands.

This being approved, the division was thus made;
but others, coming later and desiring a memento, even
scraped up the ashes and took them away.

Dona himself took the iron vessel in which the body
was consumed, and built a great Thupas or cairn
above it.

Such, in brief, were the life and the obsequies of a
man who founded a religion which at one time came
near being the faith of the world. Moreover, a thou-
sand years after his death, a curious circumstance
placed his name among the saints of the Roman Cath-
olic Church, and it happened in this wise: A Christian
monk, who was subsequently known as St. John of
Damascus, living either in Palestine or close by, com-
posed a highly wrought religious romance, entitled
“Barlaam and Joasaph.” The hero of this romance
 348 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

was Joasaph, a Hindu prince, who was converted to
Christianity by Barlaam.

Under a thin veil, St. John draws a picture of this
Indian prince, who is none other than Buddha. The
picture was faithful in all its details, and the story
soon became so popular that it was published in seven
or eight different languages.

Joasaph, the pious Indian prince, was merely a mis-
spelling of Bodhisat, one of the Buddha’s numerous
titles. People finally came to accept and believe the
whole romance as absolutely true. Thence it crept
into encyclopedias and the “Lives of the Saints.”
And thus, about two thousand years after Buddha’s
death, Pope Sixtus V. canonized “the Holy Saints,
Barlaam and Joasaphat of India, whose wonderful
acts St. John of Damascus has described.”

And to this hour, Buddha is worshiped as a Reman
Catholic saint.
 CHAPTER XXI

The Miracles at the Crucifixion of Jesus.

Section i. It has not been my purpose to write
a consecutive life of either Buddha or Jesus, bpt only
to make some comparisons between them—the two
greatest religious teachers the world has ever seen. I
have heretofore passed by many interesting events in
the life of Buddha, and have followed the same rule
concerning the Man of Galilee. But now we reach the
last and most important epoch in any one’s life—the
closing scene.

Jesus is now about thirty-three years old, and is on
his last visit to that rebellious, priest-ridden, cruel old
city—Jerusalem.

of different lengths, but the lengths and the rigors of
the punishments were terrible in every one of them,
as a further illustration will show. Kakaliya, a
Bhikkhu, falsely and without cause accused Sariputta
and Naggallana, Buddha’s two chief disciples, of hav-
ing fallen into evil desires.

He was told that he was wrong, and that their lives
were pure. But he repeated the slander again and
again, and each time was told of his error.

Soon thereafter Kokaliya was struck with boils, and
died. Sahampati, a wise Brahman, having said that
Kokaliya had gone to the Paduma hell for backbiting,
Buddha was asked: “How long is Paduma hell?” and
he replied:   “Take a load of Sesamum seeds, and

every one hundred years throw away one seed; that
load will dwindle to nothing before even Abbuda hell
is reached.” He then proceeds to name nine interven-
ing hells. Paduma hell is the tenth.

Meanwhile millions and millions of years are pass-
ing, during all which time Kokaliya is tossing in tor-
ment for backbiting. The Hindus say that sometimes
backbiters are laid on “spread embers.” (32)

Buddha now proceeds to lecture his followers upon
the sin of lying, of evil doing, of covetousness; all
these, he says, will go to the pool for a long time;
that a man’s evil deeds will follow him into the other
world, where he will suffer as if struck by red hot balls
of iron. Sometimes the wicked, he says, are struck

(32)   Abbuda bell is the shortest one. Vol. 10, S. B. E., p. 117
to 121. Luke 16, y. 24: His hell has tormenting flames.
 218 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

with iron hammers, and go to dense darkness. Some-
times they are boiled in iron pots. Thereafter, the
wicked Hindu reaches a dark abyss, and while vainly
striving to cross it, he is slashed with sharp knives, and
jackals tear him; his tongue is seized with a hook, and
Hell’s watchman pounces upon him and mangles him
further. (33)

Section 6. The reader should not overlook the
fact that the hells of both Buddha and Jesus are mate-
rial hells, and that the bodies of the wicked are sent
there. (34)

Besides, there is not much difference in the punish-
ment of the wicked in India and in Palestine. Buddha
boiled them in iron pots “for a long time,” and Jesus
roasted or broiled them in “a furnace of fire that never
shall be quenched.” (35)

Even angels were sent “down to hell’ from Jeru-
salem, and bound in “chains and darkness.” (36)

There were devils without number in both Palestine
and India; but Jesus had this advantage over Gotama
—he could cast them out, and the record is that he
cast out many. (37)

But the curious thing about the Jewish hell is, that
while the “flames” are fierce and “tormenting,” they

(33)   VoL 10, Sacred Books of E., p. 122.

(34)   Manu, it will be remembered, made a strong body for the
wicked, but it was a material “strong body.” (Manu, p. 142,
p. 500.)

(35)   Mark 9, v. 43.

(36)   2nd Peter, eh. 2, v. 4, Jesus’ hell (Mass. 25, v. 41) was
everlasting fire.

(37)   Matt. 9, v. 32 to 33; Luke 11, v. 14; Mark 3, v. 15.
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES 219

yet do not extinguish the eyesight of the sinners, for
they can see across “a great gulf.” (38) The ques-
tion has been asked: From whom did Buddha get his
ideas of hell? The answer is easy. He learned it
from that old code of Manu, a moral code in existence
more than a thousand years before he was bom. Manu
las twenty-one hells. (39) Buddha abridged the num-
ber somewhat. No doubt Jesus obtained his ideas
of hell from Esdras and the Essenes, but possibly
from the Buddhists. Second Esdras, chapter 7, con-
tains the key note of Jesus’ hell, and Esdras
must have learned it from the Essenes, who
imported it from India. But what did any one, or all,
of those men know about hell, any more than the
reader of these lines? Were they inspired about hell?
Or was this whole thing bom in a poet’s brain? Yet
when all this is said, it may well be asked: if there be
such a place as heaven, shall thieves and murderers
and all the evil brood enjoy it equally with the pure
in heart?

I answer: No, by no means. But just how long,
and what intensity of suffering the wicked will meet,
is not given to man, here and now, to know. There
are many problems unsolvable to us. A man may be
bom of a line of wicked ancestors. There is a vicious
strain in his blood for which he is not to blame. He
is bom without his consent. He is bom, as it were, in

(38)   Luke 16, v. 19 to 31. A real fire, we know, would destroy
the eye utterly. The Hindus, more philosophical than the Jews,
made a strong body. (Manu, ch. 12, 8. 16.)

(39)   Manu 4, s. 87.
 900

A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

the gutter; he lives in the gutter, and dies as he has
lived. Possibly he dies under the black hood, a mur-
derer.

Shall he suffer in a furnace of fire, for millions and
millions of years? Shall he boil in an iron pot for
countless ages? I answer: No; but if God is his judge,
the judgment will be exactly just and right.
 CHAPTER XIX

The Doctrines of Jesus and Buddha.

“Is there a land of pure delight, to saints immortal
given?”

Section i. Two hundred years before Jesus was
born, the Jews in their religion had no certain place
called heaven into which the pious soul could go, at
the death of the body, to enjoy eternal bliss. True a
department of eschatology, more than two thousand
years B. C., had been organized in several nations—
notably the Egyptians, Persians and Hindus; yet the
Hebrews gave no heed to it.

Not until long after the Babylonish captivity did
the idea of a life beyond the grave begin slowly to
filter into the reprobate Jewish mind. Even then it
was not welcomed with hearty approval or admitted
as an article of faith. But about 160 or 170 years
B. C., the apocalyptic book of Daniel (1) appeared;
and, after telling that fabulous story about three He-
brews who were flung into a hot furnace of fire and
not a hair of their heads singed, he states in his last 1

(1)   The book of Daniel, written about 167 jean B. C., is as
sorely apocryphal as Tobit and Wisdom and Maccabees, Vol. 21.
Br. Ency. P. 645.

221
 222 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

chapter, that after a time of trouble, many of them
that sleep in the dust shall awake, some to everlasting
life and some to everlasting shame and contempt.

In Tobit, another apocryphal work, angels and
devils appear: and Asmodeus, one of those devils, is
a great destroyer of the human race, for he killed
several newly married men. (2)

Then follows Esdras second, wherein he says the
Lord will give the discomforted Jews the kingdom of
Jerusalem, the everlasting tabernacles, the tree of
life, and he will raise the dead and bring them out of
their graves; that if they will defend the orphan, give
to the poor, clothe the naked and judge for the father-
less, the Lord will give them the first place in the
resurrection. (3)

Still Esdras was not satisfied, for he lamented that
we pass “out of this world like grasshoppers, and
that our life is an astonishment and fear.” But he
finally reaches the conclusion that “the righteous shall
inherit the immortal fruit of heaven; but that the
ungodly shall perish.” (4) Esdras is something
of a philosopher, for he tells Uriel, the angel,
that it had been better not to have given the earth to
Adam, or “else to have restrained him from sinning;
for, as it is, men live in heaviness, and after death look
for punishment.” And he asks, “Why is there prom-

(2)   Tobit, ch. 3, v. 8.

(3)   Second Esdras was written about 80 to 100 years B. C., see
Ch. 2, also Ch. 7. The reader will notice that the Jew has to be
paid for defending the orphan, feeding the poor. etc.

(4)   Ch. 7, v. 17.
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

223

ised an everlasting hope, when we are filled with wick-
edness? Why is there a paradise, and medicine, and
security, and fruit, that endureth forever, since as we
have walked in unpleasant places, we can not reach
it?” Then Uriel, the angel, answered: “This is the
condition of the battle: man that is born upon earth
shall fight. If he be overcome, he shall suffer after
death; but if he gain the victory, his face shall shine
above the stars.” And the angel added, “The Most
High hath made this world for many; but the world
to come, for few. There be many created, but few
shall be saved.” (5)

That there might be no mistake about the many
who will be lost, Esdras says, “As a wave is greater
than a drop, so there be many more who perish than
of them which be saved.” (6) And he closes
his book with this lurid warning: “Woe be unto
them that are bound with their sins, and covered
with their iniquities, like as a field is covered with
bushes and thorns; left undressed, it is cast into the
fire to be consumed.”

Here is where Jesus found his first Jewish authority

(5)   We have here the Persian idea of battle. It is the doctrine
of struggle. There is no escape from the pit, except to win in
the contest. He that overcometh reaches the kingdom; but if he
be overcome, hell is his portion. No ante-natal defects will be
considered. Tou must win the fight, or suffer with the damned.
He that overcometh shall inherit (Rev., ch. 12, v. 17). But is the
rule exactly just ? The terrible law of heredity is active, and
makes many a soul “blacker than darkness.” It is handicapped
from the beginning; and thus wages an unequal battle, and is
overcome. The ancient Hindu was more wise than Esdras, who
ought to have studied Manu.

(6)   2 Esdras 9, v. 15.
 *84 a QUESTION OF MIRACLES

lor his heaven and his hell. Likewise here is the bud
from which sprouted that hateful and abominable doc-
trine of foreordination and predestination, preached
by Peter and Paul. (7)

Section 2. The reason that both Buddha and
Jesus failed to graphically describe heaven is because
they knew nothing about it. They had never visited
it, except in imagination. ( And even now, with
all side lights turned on, there is no certain agree-
ment about it. Some think it a kind of high-grade
summer resort, where people sit by sparkling foun-
tains and watch the birds of paradise in the branches
of the tree of life. Others believe that Jesus will
stand by Matthew’s straight and narrow gate, and
shake hands with every fresh arrival. (9)

Paul, walking by faith, thought heaven was a great
house or temple in the skies, where the just would
dwell in peace forever. But before they were certain
of their fate, every one was obliged to appear before
the judgment seat and receive according to the deeds
done in the body. (10) This is all that Paul can tell
us, though he says he was caught up into the third
heaven, and heard unspeakable words. (11)

Jesus follows Buddha in dividing the whole world

(7)   Second Esdras, ch. 9: v 7 and 8. Romans, ch. 8: v. 29.
First Peter, ch. 1: v. 20. Ephesians, ch. 1: v. 5 and 11.

(   I place no reliance whatever on John, ch. 3: v. 13, and
John, ch. 6: v. 51, unless in chapter 6 we take what is said about
the “bread” as figuratively meaning the gospel, the truth.

(9)   Matt. 7, v. 13.

(10)   2nd Corin., ch. 5: v. 4.

(11)   2nd Corin., ch. 12: v. 2 to 4.
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES 235

into two distinct, wide-apart classes, “the well doer
and the wrong doer,” and he mentions the meek, the
merciful and the pure in heart, who are certain to
reach the happy eternal shore. (12) Buddha told his
followers that their hearts must be filled with deep-
felt love for every one; that pity and sympathy, far-
reaching, must pervade them, and that as Brahma
(God) was free from anger, free from malice, pure
in mind, they, to become united with him at the death
of the body, must become like unto him.

The riches of this world, as Jesus viewed them,
were dross, were dust, not worth caring for; and he
said to his followers, “Lay not up for yourselves treas-
ures upon earth, but lay up treasures in heaven, where
thieves cannot break through and steal.” (13)

Buddha, centuries before this, had flung away a
kingdom and wealth untold. And to his disciples he
said, “Seek not to store wealth, or gather gain; ab-
stain from the getting of silver or gold; abstain from
the getting of flocks and herds, lands and fields.” (14)

“Love your enemies,” said the man of Galilee. (15)

“Be kind to all that live,” said Buddha. (16)

Jesus desired that his followers should be perfect,
even as their heavenly Father was perfect. (17)

(12)   Yol. 17, p. 100, Sacred Books of the Bast. Matt., ch. 5.

(13)   VoL XI, p. 202, S. B. Matt. 6: v. 19 and 20.

(14)   Vol. XI, p. 191, Sacred Books of the East. Fo Sho, sec.
2029.

(15)   How a man can love hie enemies is more than I can see.
Even God does not love his enemies—he punishes them; and
Jeans himself roasts them in a furnace of fire.

(16)   Fo Sho, sec. 2024.

(17)   Matt. 5: v. 48.
 aa6

A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

Buddha long before this had told his disciples to
“walk in the perfect way, with steadfast aim.”
“Keep your hearts,” he said, “carefully, and earnestly
practice every good work.” (18)

“Seek ye the kingdom of God and his righteous-
ness,” said Jesus. “Proclaim a consummate, perfect,
pure life of holiness,” said Buddha. (19)

Jesus, after appointing twelve disciples, selected sev-
enty others, and he sent the seventy, two and two, “as
lambs among wolves,” into all the cities round about,
to preach the gospel And he gave them power over
devils; and if they trod on serpents and scorpions,
their sting could do no harm; nothing could hurt
them.

Buddha, when he had sixty-one followers, called
them before him and said, “Go ye now, O Bhikkhus,
and wander for the gain of the many, for the welfare
of the many, out of compassion for the world; for
the gain and for the welfare of God and man. Let
not two of you go the same way. Preach the doctrine,
glorious in letter and in spirit, the doctrine of a holy,
pure, chaste life.” (20)

Such was the feeble beginning of the two greatest
religions that have ever been preached on this earth.
Yet, strange as it may seem, both of them have been

(18)   To Sbo, se. 1978 to 1981.

(19)   Matt. 6: v. 33. Vol. 13, p. 113, Sacred Books of the
East.

(20)   Vol. 13, p. 112, Sacred Books of the East. Luke 10: v. 1.
Jesus sends his disciples two and two; Buddha sends each one
alone.
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES 227

driven from the countries of their birth. The Brah-
mans of India battled Buddhism fiercely for fourteen
hundred years before they expelled it; but it found
lodging places in China, Japan, Thibet, Assam and Cey-
lon. Nor is it too much to say that, had it remained
master of India, we would have no missionaries bring-
ing back silly idols which the people there worship.
Buddha preached against idols. He ridiculed them.
Not only that, but he condemned the foolish practice of
sacrificing even rice cakes to the gods. Buddha sent
his followers from house to house (21) ; Jesus told his
disciples not to go from house to house. (22)

The seventy were greatly pleased to return and
report to Jesus that even the devils were subject unto
them. (23) In India the head devil (Mara), it
is said, came to Buddha and told him that he
had him bound in such strong fetters that he
could not escape; that he must.give up his religion
and go back to the world. Buddha confronted that
Hindu devil so resolutely that the devil, “sad and af-
flicted vanished away.” (24) Jesus believed in devils,
but he could cast them out whenever he chose. (25)
The Hindu devils all possessed the gift of speech, but
many of the Jewish devils were dumb, and sometimes
blind. (26)

(21)   S. B. E., p. 112, Vol. 13.

(22)   Luke 10, v. 7.

(23)   Luke 10, v. 17.

(24)   Vol. 13, p. 116, S. B. E.

(25)   Matt. 6: v. 13, and Matt. 8: v. 16. Vol. 13, S. B. E., p.
116.

(26)   Luke 11: v. 14. Matt. 12: v. 22.
 aa8 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

Section 3. Buddha, more than twenty-three hun-
dred years ago, said: “Few only, go to heaven.” (27)

The heaven of Jesus is also a very difficult place to
reach; the way there being so narrow, we are told,
that few only can find it. But the way to hell is
broad; so broad, in fact, that it is filled with
“many.” (28) In other words, a great procession is
continually on its march, night and day, towards that
awful “furnace of fire,” where they wail and gnash
their teeth (29) “and gnaw their tongues for pain”
(30), and “the smoke of their torment ascendeth for-
ever.”

Moreover the furnace of fire is to burn everlast-
ingly, for it was, and is, especially prepared for the
devil and his angels. (31)

Jesus, therefore, to save his followers from such
a terrible fate, said, “If thy right eye offend thee,
pluck it out and cast it from thee.” It is better that
one member should perish than “that thy whole body
should be cast into hell.”

And if a man’s hand offend, he should cut it off
and cast it away, rather than that his whole body be
cast into hell. (32)

It must not be overlooked that Jesus puts the body,

finished only a few years before Jesus was bom, at a
vast outlay of money and labor. A thousand wagons
hauled the white stones for it, and ten thousand men
polished them and put them in place. Yet it was com-
pleted in one year and a half. (17) But the Temple
itself occupied only a small portion included in the dif-
ferent enclosures or courts. The Royal Porch alone
was six hundred feet long, studded with one hundred
and sixty white marble columns, each forty feet high.
The Court of the Gentiles was wide and roomy, but
here a warning was carved, where all could see it, for
it was death for any Gentile to pass beyond it (18)

The whole space occupied by the Temple, the outer
court, the royal cloisters, the court of the Gentiles,
court of Israel, the woman’s court, priest’s court, the
Holy of Holies, the cattle yards, the sheep pens, the
dove cotes, the slaughter houses for the victims, the
stalls or booths for the money changers—all these cov-
ered about eighteen or nineteen acres. Moreover, the
Jews never sacrificed for any but circumcised Jews.

Just before the Feast of the Passover and the feast
of the Tabernacles and Pentecost, the lowing of cattle
and the bleating of flocks of sheep and the plaintive cry
of lambs were heard everywhere in the surrounding
hills, as they approached the Temple to be sacrificed to
appease God’s wrath toward the Jews. Herdsmen were

(17)   That means the Temple proper—the Jews told Jesus it
was forty-six years in building. (John, eh. 2, v. 20.)

(18)   Paul was arrested and came near losing his life, because
he took some Greeks beyond the court of the Gentiles (or heathen)
—that included every one not a circumcised Jew. (Acts 21.)
 198

A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

there, driving bargains, haggling about prices for sacri-
ficial animals; money changers were also on hand yell-
ing, “Here’s your shekels for the sanctuary.” (19)

At every feast great numbers of Jews came without
the proper sacrificial offering, hence the custom of
keeping in the Temple, sheep, oxen and doves for sale.

This custom was less repulsive to the Jews than it
would be to us, because the whole Temple was used in
a manner that would utterly shock the sensibility of
men educated in Christian churches.

“Thousands and tens of thousands of sheep, at every
Passover, as well as at every Pentecost and every feast
of the Tabernacles, were borne into the Temple, and
carried or driven into the court of the priests, and
there slain, the blood being caught by the priests in
bowls and dashed upon the altar. Hour after hour,
the whole day long, this spectacle continued. The
secret channels down through the rocks towards the
king’s garden, gurgled with blood. It was blood,
blood, blood; nor can a modern man imagine how it
could be other than intolerably shocking. We cannot
conceive how even familiarity would abate the repul-
siveness of the altar, incessantly flowing with blood,
and of the pavement and walls dripping with gore.”
(20)

Section 3. Jesus’ parents went to Jerusalem every

(19)   A Jew could not pay the Temple tax in foreign coin,
hence the money changers. (John, ch. 2, v. 14.)

(20)   Beecher’s Life of Jems, ch. 10.
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES 199

year to the feast of the Passover, and when he was
twelve years old he went with them (21) and
probably between the ages of twelve and thirty years
he saw the slaughter of animals in the Temple many
times. He surely did, if he acted in obedience to the
law of Exodus (chapter 23), for that required every
male to appear there three times each year.

Yet we have no record, except one Passover, that
he ever set himself so decidedly against the Jewish
mode of worship as to drive the sheep and oxen out of
the Temple, and overthrow the tables of the money
changers. He also branded the traffickers as a den of
thieves. (22)

To all appearances, the outer courts of the Temple
were great noisy bazaars. The altar was a reeking
slaughter house. And here I must not omit to men-
tion that Jerusalem and the Temple, at the time of the
great feasts, and in fact at all times, were probably as
filthy and disgusting places as could be found any
where on earth.

The Jewish mode of worship, both before and after
Jesus denounced the traffickers as thieves, was an un-
surpassed abomination. No heathen people anywhere
had a greater agglomeration of filth and downright
absurdity in its religious observances than the Jews of
Palestine. John the Baptist must have witnessed the
same horrible sight, for he preceded Jesus in preach-

(21)   Luke 2.

(22)   .Luke, ch. 19, v. 46; Mark 11, v. 15 and 16.
 200

A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

ing the baptism or repentance (23), and it is no
wonder that John branded them as “a generation of
vipers.” (24)

Section 4. The episode in the Temple with the
hucksters and money changers drew upon Jesus the
evil eye of the Sanhedrin. From that hour the Phari-
sees took counsel how they might destroy him. (25)
They asked him if it was lawful to give tribute to
Caesar? Now if he answers no, he can be executed
as a traitor. But he perceived their design, and told
them to “render unto Caesar the things which are
Caesar’s.” (26) Defeated in their scheme, they re-
tired in confusion, only to enlist every Pharisee against
him, even unto the cross.

Then the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrec-
tion, came to him and said: “A certain man married
and died, leaving the woman and no issue. It is our
law that his brother shall take her. Now there were
seven brothers, and they each, in turn, took her to wife,
and died without issue. In the resurrection, whose
wife is she?”

Jesus answered them quickly: “The children of the
resurrection neither marry nor are given in marriage.
They who are accounted worthy to obtain that world

(23)   Luke 3.

(24)   Matt. 8:7.

(25)   Jesus made at least three visits to Jerusalem. (John 2,
v. 13 to 16; John 1, v. 5; Matt. 4:5.) After driving out the
traffickers, he went to Bethany, but returned. (Matt. 21, v. 12
to 24.) Luke, ch. 19, v. 47, says he taught daily in the Temple.
John, ch. 7, says he went secretly to the feast of the Tabernacles.

(26)   Matt. 22, v. 15 to 23; Mark 12, v. 18.
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES 201

are as the angels in heaven.” (27) He had probably
heard of the Hindu doctrine, that the devas (angels)
in the highest heaven are opapatika; that is, they come
into existence without the intervention of parents,
which is a sufficient reason that “they neither marry
nor are given in marriage.”

In that great surging crowd at the Temple, Jesus
and his corporal’s guard of Galilean followers must
have been as a few sands only on the shores of the
ocean.

We seem to see him there watching the persistent
slaughter of cattle, sheep, goats and pigeons; and as
he looked upon the bloody altar it must have impressed
him as a senseless, awful burlesque—not only on re-
ligion, but on common sense as well. Yet that out-
rageous proceeding found its complete authority in the
alleged inspired Pentateuch.

Now if Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuter-
onomy were and are inspired of heaven, then Jesus was
not justified in scourging the traffickers out of the
Temple. (28)

But we answer, those books never were inspired, for
it cannot be possible that an all-wise Being, the ruler
of millions of worlds, would ask or require such
idiotic performances. Does any one believe that God
inspired the Rishis of India to bake a cake of rice for

(27)   Luke 20, ?. 27 to 38; Mark 12, 19 to 25, also Vol. 11,
8. B. E., p. 213.

(28)   I must here state that I utterly disbelieve in the inspira-
tion of the Pentateuch. Moses commenced life as a murderer.
(Exodus 2.)
 303 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

him? Yet the Indian priests in their holy Bible, the
Veda, have preached that doctrine to the Hindus for
fifty or sixty centuries.

Buddha twenty-four hundred years ago told his fol-
lowers not to practice the low arts of divination, and
not to sacrifice to the gods. (29)

Section 5. In Jerusalem, the man of Galilee—that
most wonderful combination of heart, brain and con-
science this world has witnessed for nineteen hundred
years—opened up a new chapter in the history of man-
kind.

His visit to the Temple impressed him with the
truth that the old Mosaic religion was wrong; that the
doctrine of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth”
was the law of vengeance, and that true religion was
to love one’s enemies, do good unto them that hate
you, etc. (30)

Such radicalism the Jew could not stand. It would
uproot and overturn all his ancient notions. Moreover,
it was clearly against the law of Moses, and therefore
the Jew said it must be wrong.

The Scribes, Pharisees and Sadducees quickly saw
that they would be “pushed from their stools,” hence
their instant and bitter opposition. On the other hand
Jesus felt that such sacrifices as he had witnessed were
almost, if not quite, impious.

The law of bloody sacrifices must be changed, re-

(29)   Maha Silam, vol. 11, Sacred Books of the East, p. 196;
and vol. 20, S. B. E., p. 152, Kullavagga.

(30)   Matt., ch. 5.
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES 203

pealed, abolished, and in its place must be set the doc-
trine of love, and with pure heart they were to pray
to the Father—but not standing on the comer of the
streets, as the hypocrites (Pharisees) do. (31)

India, long before Moses was bom, had without a
struggle abolished bloody sacrifices, and had fallen
back upon rice cakes. But the Jew, being a man of
blood, had no regard for animal life, and little, if any,
for human life. Hence his determination to destroy
the man of Galilee, and thus put an end forever to the
new heresy. Jesus’ doctrine was to the Jews a terrible
heresy, which they determined to punish.

Here is the issue. Jesus said the law and prophets
were until John (32), and in His sermon on the moun-
tain he said he had not come to destroy the law, but to
fulfil it. But he soon found that He could not put
“new wine into old bottles,” (33) for the new wine
would burst the old bottles, and the new piece of cloth
put upon an old garment would not agree with it. In
other words (and he was right about it), his new wine
(new doctrines) would rend asunder the old Mosaic
faith. We of the twentieth century, standing here and
calmly looking back, wonder at his temerity. The
Jewish mind, always narrow and bigoted, was ready
to persecute, even unto strange cities (34), any one
who assailed the old Mosaic superstition. That very
superstition was the pride of their clan. Nothing good

(31)   Matt. 5.

(32)   Luke 16, v. 16.

(33)   Luke 5, v. 36 and 37; Matt. 9, v. 16 and 17.

(34)   Acts, ch. 26, v. 11.
 304 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

had ever come out of Nazareth (35) and here was a
young Nazarene, scarcely thirty years of age, virtually
pulling down the Temple about their ears.

A greater battle than that between David and Go-
liath is to be fought Jesus stands there teaching the
doctrine, “love thy neighbor, do good unto others,”
and he wants that published to all nations. (36) The
uncharitable Jew would brand every man as a heathen
who was not of his clan. This contest has been going
on now for nineteen hundred years; and the Jews are a
scattered, unlovely race. That young Nazarene,
though not a God, is devoutly worshiped by an hun-
dred and fifty millions of people.

(85)   John 1, v. 48.

(86)   Mark 13, ?. 10.
 CHAPTER XVIII

The Heaven and Hell of Buddha and Jesus.

Section i. “Shall I exist during the ages of the
future, or shall I not? What shall I be, and how shall
I be, in that distant time?” asked a questioning Hindu
500 years B. C. (1) Job, in a beautiful line, asks:
“If a man die, shall he live again ?” Shakespeare says:
“To die, to sleep, and in that sleep of death, perchance
to dream—aye, there’s the rub.” Socrates said: “The
soul is uncompounded, incorporeal, invisible, indissolu-
ble, immutable, and therefore immortal.” But how
did Socrates know that the soul was uncompounded,
indissoluble and immortal? (2) “The body,” he adds,
“serves, the soul commands, therefore it is akin to the
divine.” The Upanishads, a philosophical Hindu work
composed about three thousand years ago, says the
body is mortal and always held by death, but it is the
abode of self, or soul, which is immortal, and without
body. The Hindus went so far as to claim that if the

(1)   Buddha told that Bikkhu ho was still bound by tho fatten
of delusion. (Vol. 11, p. 299, 8. B. E.) Asava: love of life.
The Bhikkhu was told he must do good for its own sake alone.

(2)   Socrates must have used the word “soul” in the sense
of “mind.” See Plato’s Fhaedo, voL 19, Br. Eney., p. 199.

305
 206 a QUESTION OF MIRACLES

soul chiefly practiced virtue (and vice only in a small
degree), it obtained bliss in heaven. (3)

Buddha changed that plan, and had seven heavens
and ten hells: a saint or a guilty culprit, on the other
side, reached a place exactly fitting his merits or de-
merits. Moreover, his conversion was vastly different
from St. Paul’s. We have been told that Paul, on his
journey to Damascus to persecute the Christians, saw
at midday a great light from Heaven, and from the
clouds Jesus (who had been crucified some years be-
fore) spoke to him in the Hebrew tongue (4) and told
Paul that he had come to make him a minister unto the
heathen. (5)

Paul forgot, when he made that statement, that
Jesus never spoke Hebrew—he spoke Aramaic.

Buddha, when he commenced his life work, devoted
six years to strenuous penance and fasting, as we have
heretofore seen, so that at times he was wasted to al-
most a shadow. During those six years he carefully
contemplated the woes and the mysteries of the human
soul. Penance, fasting, mortification of the body, he
felt certain would not win Heaven. At last in wander-
ing about, as already mentioned, he reached the banks
of the Narangana river, (6) and sat himself down

(3)   Laws of Manu, ch. 12, v. 20.; Upanishads, vol. 1, p. 140.

(4)   Jesus while on earth spoke Aramaic. He then did not
understand Hebrew. Revelations punishes the wicked with fire
and brimstone, forever and ever—that is, eternally. (Ch. 14, v.
10 and 11.)

(5)   Acts 26, v. 14 and 15.

(6)   It is now called the Phalgu, and is in Behar. That tree is
called the Bodhi tree.
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES 207

and legs and hands, but they were covered with some-
thing; yet the man and woman were naked. The
monkeys chattered together and seemed happy. (17)
They were putting something in their mouths; and
the man drew nearer and watched them. It was not
“ap”—that he could plainly see. Directly a young
ape, more mischievous than the rest, threw something
at the man. Fortunately it missed him and fell at his
feet; he picked it up and, imitating the monkey, he
tasted it. At once he offered it to the woman, who
seized and ate it, then held out her hand towards the
ape as if begging for more. The man took her hand
and led her cautiously toward the monkeys, which,
seeing them advance, must have concluded that they
were to be assailed.

For, after chattering a moment, they skipped off to
some trees further away (18) and left the first Aryans,
our Grandfather and Grandmother of ten thousand
generations back, in full possession of the field.

At this point Genesis and this Aryan legend agree,
for the woman found that “the tree was good for
food,” and she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat,
and her husband did eat also. (19)

Now if there be such a hateful and horrible thing

(17)   Professor Garner has proven that monkeys have a lan-
guage of forty-five or more words; and, as before observed, they
were much better provided by their maker than man, except as
to brains; but brains have won and will always win.

(18)   I have never yet been able to learn what kind of fruit
that was; it was not an apple, as apples do not grow in hot
climates; it may have been a sweet Mango—not the stringy, sour
kind. It may have been a banana, which it probably was.

(19)   Gen. 3, v. 0.
 178 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

in this world as predestination, then it is possible that
when the foundations of the earth were laid it was
predestined in the councils of Heaven that that young
Ape should fling a piece of fruit at our first parents,
when they were in sore straits for sustenance.

Three things were there in conjunction: the ape,
the man and woman, and the fruit. Yet something
else was wanting, viz.: the mischievous act of that
young monkey. A believer in predestination must
hold that “in the beginning” God did know that that
young ape would cast that fruit at that juncture, and
that the man and woman would be there at that pre-
cise moment to profit by it.

Section 4. If the monkey, and the fruit, and the
man were all predestined, as above stated, then the
culmination of the matter was happy beyond all meas-
ure for that man and woman. For, having appeased
their appetite, they wandered back to the brook, where
they drank again, and then, without a care in the
world, lay down in the warm sunshine and went to
sleep. Children of a few hours require much sleep.
When they awoke they saw the Sun was disappear-
ing, as it had before; and, that it might not escape
them again, they started off briskly to find where it
hid. Of course, that was impossible; and to their
grief it left them once more in darkness.

These children of a day knew neither logic nor
poetry; in fact, as we have already said, they did not
know themselves. But instinctively they loved the
Sun—that is to say, they wanted it to stay with them,
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES 179

though they knew not what it was, or why it left
them, nor why it had once come back to them.

With many misgivings they turned back and sought
the log of the first night, again covered themselves
with the friendly leaves and slept the sweet sleep of
childhood.

The next morning was an object lesson to them, for
the Moon had not gone down in the West when the
Sun came streaming up in the East. Thus they found
they had two friends; and, as near as we can now de-
termine, the Sun and Moon were the first objects of
man’s adoration. How many generations it was be-
fore they worshiped them as deities, no one can truly
tell. The next chapter will show the absurd lengths
to which Sun and Moon and Fire worship extended.
But I cannot leave this new man and woman, my dis-
tant relatives, without a feeling of depression and
sympathy for the hard and toilsome lives before them
and their children. And the same hard fate will con-
tinue until the “elements melt with fervent heat.” I
must also add that I do not find, even after much seri-
ous study, that God, at the coming of man, revealed by
any natural or supernatural means any of the essen-
tials of religion. It would seem to be more necessary
to reveal a plan how to get something to eat and to
wear. Suppose an angel had been sent to talk to this
new man and woman about Heaven and a pure life.
Their lives were pure, and, as to heaven, will not a
pure life win it? If not, what will?

Read Chapter 20, Exodus, and you will find not a
 180 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

single one of the ten commandments that this new man
and new woman could break. As I have heretofore
said, every animal on the face of the earth was better
equipped to live, when it came, than was man when he
came. He was cast by a seeming cruel fortune naked
upon a friendless shore.

The horse and the dog were, and are, more favored
than man; for when they die there is no hell for them.
All their troubles are over. But man is commanded
to love a being whom he never saw; and, if he fails in
that, he is to roast in an everlasting fire (20) where
there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. (21) And
there is a law that when man would do good, evil is
present (22) to pull him back. But if he is bom with
goodness paramount in his nature, and holds to it
without wavering, he is finally blest beyond all measure
in a paradise of glory far exceeding all his merits. At
least, so I have been taught. (23)

(20)   Matt. 25:41.

(21)   Lake 13:28.

(22)   Romans 7, v. 21 to 24.

(23)   The latter part of this chapter is simply a bit of imagi-
nation, yet it seems to be more nearly exact than some parts of
Genesis.
 CHAPTER XVI

Hindu and Hebrew Sacrifices.

Section i. There are persons who are absolutely
certain that the Hindu Bible was composed by men;
and that their sacrifices, to obtain the favors of their
Gods, were the inventions of scheming priests. But
the Hindus insist that it was Sruti (heard) from
heaven by their Rishis (prophets). In short, that
their Bible (the Veda) was divinely inspired from on
high. Here is one of the reasons why our mission-
aries make such slow progress in converting them to
Christianity. Their Bible, they say, is as truthful and
as perfect as ours; that ours is in two parts; and one
of our Gods, they say, was killed because he did not
conform to or preach the doctrines of Judaism (the
first part of our Bible). They claim, moreover, that
our Bible was composed by men and translated by
men, and they produce the very names of the men
who composed it and translated it.

If we reply that it was inspired from heaven, they
answer back that the two parts of our Bible do not

181
 182 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

agree; that if the old part (the Pentateuch, etc.) was
inspired, then, as God changed his mind, some nineteen
hundred years ago, He may change it again. If we
insist that the Hebrew Bible is inspired, is there really
any reason that can be shown why, if God actually
spoke to Moses, he should not also speak to the chil-
dren of India? Both of these peoples were men and
women of His own “making”; and if He marked out
the road to heaven for one race, why leave the other
to grope its way in darkness?

As both India and Palestine were once given over
to sacrificings to appease God and gain his favor, let
us see how things were when Buddha and Jesus came
to preach reformation.

People living in this twentieth century would think
it downright foolishness—absolute idiocy—if they were
to witness multitudes of men and women wor-
shiping the Sun and the Moon. Yet such were the
facts for thousands of years. Even so late as five hun-
dred years B. C., Anaxagoras, a Grecian philosopher,
was sentenced to death at Athens, the college of Asia
and Europe, for teaching that the Sun was only a mass
of blazing metal, about as latge as the Peloponnesus.
And it required all the eloquence of the great Pericles
to modify his sentence to banishment.

The Hindus, being the Fathers of the race, led in
this, to us, useless and senseless ceremony; and our
sensibilities are deeply wounded when we consider that
Hindu and Hebrew—in fact, all old religions—were,
and are, stained alike with human sacrifices. The
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES 183

Hindus, in their early savage state, were probably
the first to offer such oblations; they were likewise the
first to abolish them. The Hebrews immolated their
human victims a thousand years, and possibly much
more than a thousand years, after the Hindus had
ceased even animal sacrifices, and had fallen back upon
rice cakes, milk, barley and butter. The object sought
in all sacrifices, and in all religions, was, and yet is,
to gain the favor of heaven. The Aryans brought
oblations of “first fruits” to their Gods—barley in the
Spring and rice cakes in the Autumn. And the He-
brews, a thousand years later, brought “first fruits”
into the house of the Lord. (1)

As the powers of nature, the Sun and Moon, were
visible objects which brought light and comfort, it is
probable that they were the first to receive the adora-
tion of the infant world. Afterwards Agni (fire) was
added as a Deity, but it must have been centuries later,
at least; for Prometheus never stole any fire from
heaven for the Hindus. (2) Moreover, they do not
have fire in heaven, but in the other place.

Fire was obtained either by rubbing the end ®f a
hard perpendicular stick through the groove of a
softer one, or, perhaps, a bolt of lightning may have
struck and set on fire a dry tree. Whichever way it

(1)   Exodus 23, v. 16 to 19; and Satapatha, Brahmans, p. 369,
?. 12, 8. B. E. Were both of these peoples inspired, or did the
priests inspire themf

(2)   Prometheus is the child of a Grecian poet’s brain—Hesiod,
who lived about 900 years B. C. Besides, later investigations in
philology offer the solution that Promantha, in Sanskrit, means
“the fire stick of the Hindus,” p. 808, vol. 19, Br. Ency.
 184 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

came, it was shortly elevated to the dignity ol a God,
by reason, no doubt, of the services it rendered to man.
Even now we would almost worship it, rather than
have it taken permanently from us.

Section 2. The worship of the visible forms of
nature was at first simple and informal, but it resulted
ere long in giving birth to a sacerdotal class which
claimed to be divinely inspired, and thereupon it pro*
ceeded to hedge itself about with a cumbersome code
of rules which they themselves could only repeat.

If the forms and ceremonies of India worship were
simply the inventions of men, and as ours follow in
their wake, is it not true that ours are only copies? (3)
Did not the Hindus simply lead the way? For they
probably had their new and full moon sacrifices thou-
sands of years before there was any Jewish clan or
nation whatever.

All the stupid details of Indian sacrifices would re-
quire a volume of more than seven hundred pages, and
offer little to interest the general reader; but as they
form a part of the early religious history of the hu-
man race, they claim at least a brief notice.

When a Brahman led his bride from her Father’s
house the nuptial fire was brought along, and it be-
came the duty of the family to keep it ever burning.
Should it at any* time become extinguished, the house-
holder must expiate the offense by an oblation to the
Gods. The new and full moon sacrifices were more

(3)   In my next chapter I shall show the old Jewish worahip
when Jesus visited Jerusalem and the Temple.
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

185

exacting and more costly. The hearth was first care-
fully swept, then lines were drawn at right angles,
from East to West, and North to South. There were
three fires built, and the Adhvaryu (4) changed them
around twice, and when a log was put on any one of
the fires the priest muttered a text: “Let there be
luster at my invocations, O Agni! ”

The garhapatya (householder) and his wife, previ-
ous to this, were required to take a vow that they
would abstain from meat and all carnal pleasures, and
observe strict silence while the oblations were being
offered.

When about to take the vow the householder dipped
his hands into a vessel of water, which was their early
mode of baptism, and thereby he became sacrificially
pure. He then prayed to Agni, the God of fire, that
he might keep his vow. Thereupon the Adhvaryu
(Priest) took a blade of grass and flung it towards the
South, the abode of the Rakshas (evil spirits), and
with that act he said: “Expelled is sin; this I proclaim
at the command of the divine Savitri (God). May the
sacrificer be on the vault of heaven! This I proclaim
to fire, wind and earth, O Lord of the world! Lord
of this great universe, we choose thee for our Brahma;
wilt thou lead in this sacrifice? ” (5)

The ceremonies of the full moon sacrifice often lasted
two days. Moreover, the devout Brahman, every

(4)   Adhvaryu is the priest who performs the principal part
of the sacrifice.

(5)   The formula iB very long, and I have necessarily abridged
it greatly. I have also abridged their formnla to expel evil
•pints.
 186   A QUESTION OF MIRACLES

morning before sunrise and every evening after sun-
set, made a burnt offering of fresh milk. This was
called his Agnihotra, and he was expected to perform
Agnihotra every day to the end of his life.

The priest’s fee for a Hindu’s first new moon sacri-
fice was a cow or pair of cattle, but if a cow she must
be four years old.

Section 3. It is beyond question that India pre-
ceded Palestine by a great many centuries, in its belief
in devils or wicked spirits. And they named them
Rakshas and Asuras. Goblins, they said, roamed
about in the air, unfettered in all directions, and Hindu
goblins could talk. The devils in Palestine later on
could also talk. In India they were always on hand to
interfere in the sacrifices, and sometimes actually for-
bade it. (6) It is said that the Gods perceived that
water was a thunderbolt which could be used against
the Rakshas, and thereafter it was employed freely as
a sort of amulet (7)

The reason, it is said, that the Asuras and Rakshas
interfered in the sacrifices was that they were contend-
ing for the supremacy.

They claimed, as did the Gods, to be the children of
Prajapati, and in the two moon sacrifices the Gods
entered upon the one that waxes and the Asuras the
one which wanes. (

(6)   Satapatha Brahmana, vol. 12, p. 9 and p. 12, Sacred Books
of the East.

(7)   Of course the Gods, in this case, were the scheming priests.

(   Vol. 12, page 198, Sacred Books of the East
 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES 187

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)

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.
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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
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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.
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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