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LECTURE IV.
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what of the raiment of goat-skins? Within thee there is ravening, but the outside thou makest clean?'
In no religion are we so constantly reminded of our own as in Buddhism, and yet in no religion has man been drawn away so far from truth as in the religion of Buddha. Buddhism and Christianity are indeed the two opposite poles with regard to the most essential points of religion: Buddhism ignoring all feeling of dependence on a higher power, and therefore denying the very existence of a supreme Deity; Christianity resting entirely on a belief in God as the Father, in the Son of Man as the Son of God, and making all men children of God by faith in His Son. Yet between the language of Buddha and his disciples and the language of Christ and His apostles there are strange coincidences. Even some of the Buddhist legends and parables sound as if taken from the New Testament, though we know that many of them existed before the beginning of the Christian era.
Thus we read of Ânanda, the disciple of Buddha, who, after a long walk in the country, meets with Mấtangî, a woman of the low caste of the Kândâlas, near a well, and asks her for some water. She tells him what she is, and that she must not come near him. But he replies, “My sister, I ask not for thy caste or thy family, I ask ,only for a draught of water. She afterwards becomes herself a disciple of Buddha 2.
1 See Luke xi. 39. Now do ye Pharisees make clean the outside of the cup and the platter; but your inward part is full of ravening and wickedness.
2 Burnouf, Introduction à l'Histoire du Buddhisme,' p. 205.
