no doubt as to His mission, for He was the Sent and "Who was to come," and the Kingdom was at hand and among them, and, though He must die, still would He "come," and the Kingdom still should come and come. When He commissioned the Twelve as evangelists, it was with the promise, “Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel, until the Son of Man be come." When He instituted the supper at the Paschal feast, He declared, "I will not henceforth drink of the fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new with you, in my Father's Kingdom." He was to come with "power and great glory, with His angels, in the glory of the Father, to reward every man, according to his works." He would ever be with His disciples, in holy presence, "all the days, even unto the end of the world." His Coming should be as lightning, and Himself as a householder gone into a far country to return again unexpectedly. In His Coming He should judge all nations. And all this was to happen in this generation, and some then living should see the glori ous consummation.* Their watchwords were therefore to be, "He cometh! Watch!" That these predictions were no interpolations, shoved into the text by subsequent enthusiasm, appears in the fact that the apostles, after the death of their Master, immediately showed themselves completely possessed by this series of thoughts. Their battle-cries were, "He has come!" and "Behold! He cometh!" and each one of them hoped to be of the fortunate who would survive to see these things fulfilled.† And subsequent ages have wept and laughed -wept in grief of hope deferred, laughed in scorn of prophecy made vain. * Math. 10:23, 16:28, 24:34, 26:29; Mark 9:1; Luke 21: 32; John 16:16, 23 ("a little while"); 1 Cor. 7:29, 31; 1 Thess. 4:15. † 1 Cor. 7:29; 1 Thess. 4:15, 5:2 CHAPTER XIV IN THESE TEACHINGS WAS JESUS A THE first Catholic missionaries who went into Tibet were astonished to find the worship of that country an exact parody of their own Romish theology and ritual. There were popes, bishops, abbots, monks, and nuns; temples, monasteries, and convents; bells and rosaries; images and holy water; feast days and processions. The priests were shaven and held confessional. In the native creed was taught an Incarnate God-man, a worshiped Virgin, and a Purgatory; while, as in Italy, the government was despotic, ecclesiastics numerous, idle, and lazy, thought suppressed, and the populace kept poor and ignorant. This was Buddhism gone to decay, and it was marvelously like the corrupt Christianity the missionaries had brought with them. While those dismayed priests were crossing themselves and reporting to Rome that Satan had surely prepared for their confusion a mockery of the true faith, European scholars fell to work upon the more subtle likenesses of the two systems which underlay the superficial similarity, and there resulted a scholastic surprise as keen as the horror of the ecclesiastics. It was found that not only the superficial adjuncts and excrescences of the two beliefs touched at innumerable points, but that in many essentials of dogma and method they ran parallel. Since which time the title of this chapter has been one of the world problems of religious history. To make this plain, we must remind the reader of a few now well-known facts in the story of the rise of Buddhism. It came as a reformation of Brahmanism, in India, about four hundred years before the time of Christ. The founder was Gautama, a prince of an ancient line of rajahs, who had spent his youth in the luxury common at courts, and who, at thirty, not strange to relate, was worn by dissipation and weary of life. Possessed of a naturally refined disposition, the pleasures of the palace satiated and disgusted him, and in this mood he began to afflicting the common people. observe the ills He commenced to spend his time brooding over human misery, over disease, and over death. An ineffable pity for his kind sighed deeply within him. He went apart to think out this dark problem, he mused, he fell into deepest reverie, he commenced to see visions, he heard a call from within, he left all, he fled. Having taken a covert farewell of his young wife and babe, whom he loved, with some hope of a return in the indefinite future, like Jesus he went into the wilderness to wrestle undisturbed with himself, with the problems of life, and with the demands of duty. In time, self conquered, the world in him subdued, his soul triumphant, he came forth from solitude, calm and resolute, as did Jesus from the wilds of Judæa, and calm and resolute he preached a new religion and turned a wide world upside down. The dawning consciousness of mission, the call, the struggle, the decision, the |
