The Buddhist conception goes still further and denies not only the reality of man but the reality of God. There is no reality; all is change and decay and delusion. "It is an essential doctrine," says Rhys Davids, perhaps the greatest authority on Buddhism-"It is an essential doctrine, constantly insisted upon in the original Buddhist texts and still held, so far as I have been able to ascertain, by all Buddhists, that there is nothing, either divine or human, either animal or vegetable or material, which is permanent. There is no being; there is only a becoming.'

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Personal Thought: Reflect for a moment to-day on what the value of religion would be to you if you were convinced of the truth of the doctrine of these religions-that is, that there is no such thing as a human person; that you are simply deluded when you think you exist.

1"Am. Lectures," p. 121.

STUDY III. THE DISTINCTIVE MESSAGE OF CHRISTIANITY.

"And as for thy bondmen, and thy bondmaids, whom thou shalt have; of the nations that are round about you, of them shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids." (Lev. xxv. 44.)

PART 3. VALUATION OF MAN IN THE NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS.

ACCORDING to Islam, man is not akin to God; he does not partake of his nature and essence; neither, indeed, is such a thing desirable. Man is the creature of God; he is absolutely dependent upon his Creator in everything. While theoretically he is a moral agent, practically he cannot be, for God has fixed his fate long before man comes into being. One Mohammedan writer has put it thus:

When fate has come, man cannot it avert;
Fate fails not, should he mind and sight exert.
Beyond the Lord's decree, writ by his pen,

Nor less nor more comes to his servants, men.

This conception at once takes from man all his dignity and worth. He is simply a puppet in the hands of an arbitrary God. The Hindu and Buddhist conception is far less satisfactory. According to the former, man has no distinct existence, but is simply an emanation from the divine, to which he will sooner or later return. He is not responsible, for whatever he does is the deed of the all-pervading God. This at once cuts the nerve of all high endeavor. Buddhism goes further and denies man any existence whatever. Man is simply a shadow, or, to be more exact, he is just the result of the stored-up energy of past deeds and desires. Desire, lust, longing-these are the efficient cause of existence. If

I do not put away all desire, when my being disintegrates, another being must come into existence to live out the result of the stored-up energy of my desires and deeds (karma). The horror of life, therefore, is rebirth in another form, to have new desires, only to give birth to a new existence. Man, therefore, is a creature bound to the eternal round of decay and rebirth in endless and monotonous succession. Salvation, as we shall see later, is the getting free from this wheel of destiny, the stopping of this monotonous succession of rebirths.

These conceptions do not dignify manhood. Hence in these countries the common man is nothing; he is simply a slave. Only the man who has fortune or some temporal blessing can be worthy of notice. Man is valuable not because of what he essentially is but because of something he possesses.

Religions which have no more exalted ideas of man are not apt to make provision for a very worthy salvation.

STUDY III. THE DISTINCTIVE MESSAGE OF CHRISTIANITY.

"Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity,

And cleanse me from my sin.
For I know my transgressions;

And my sin is ever before me.

Against thee, thee only, have I sinned,

And done that which is evil in thy sight;

That thou mayest be justified when thou speakest,
And be clear when thou judgest." (Ps. li. 2-4.)

PART 4. CONCEPTION OF SIN IN THE NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS.

No non-Christian religion has such a note of personal sin as that in the reference just quoted, Psalm li. 2-4.

Every religion, so far as I am aware, takes account of a man's consciousness of sin-that is, recognizes that man is out of harmony with his truer self and his environment. The form which this conception of sin takes varies greatly.

The Mohammedan conception of sin is nearest to that of Christianity. Here sin is a transgression of the will of God, and hence personal. The fundamental weakness of the conception lies in the fact that this will of God is purely arbitrary and not necessarily in conformity to any fundamental law of right or wrong. In other words, while Mohammedan sin is personal, it is the transgression of the whimsical commands of an arbitrary God. Thus, as a Mohammedan expressed it to a missionary: "If I use tobacco, God may damn me; but if I murder or commit adultery, God may be merciful." This at once throws sin into the realm of arbitrary codes and does away with its most heinous aspect-the nonconformity to a holy and loving will of a self-consistent God.

According to Hinduism, since there is no personal God, there can be no such thing as nonconformity to his will; so sin in the Christian sense is unknown. Also, in view of the fact that God is all and in all, and nothing exists beside him, all deeds are simply the deeds of the God, and hence cannot be sinful. There can be no such thing as personal transgression. In spite, however, of this philosophic unreality of sin, the Hindu religion has much to say about it. Somehow the sense of sin cannot be set aside. The chief sin is the affirmation of personal, separate existence. Thought of personality is a delusion and an error out of which arises all suffering. It is this which gives rise to karma (the influence which lives on in a new birth), which condemns one to perpetual rebirths.

Buddhist sin is closely akin to that of Hinduism. Since there is no such thing as permanent existence, either human or divine, since all is change, the chief sin is to harbor the delusion of personal existence. The first fetter which holds man from entering the eightfold path of peace is sakkaya ditthi, the delusion of self.

From this very brief statement one immediately sees that sin has no such terror for the non-Christian peoples as it has for those of the Christian faith. Sin with them is error, delusion, failure; with Christianity it is personal, willful transgression.