BUDDHISM AND CHRISTIANITY
A PARALLEL AND A CONTRAST
PREFACE
In endeavouring to sketch in so limited a spaceeven the most salient features of the many-sidedreligion of Buddhism it is possible thathere and there I may have misrepresented it.
If so, I hope the fault will be attributed to inadvertence,or rather to disadvantages under whichI have worked. The sacred beliefs of any sectionof mankind are entitled to receive at our hands notonly justice but kindly consideration, and a religionso vast and in some respects so wonderful asBuddhism ought to have much to commend it toour sympathy. Long and patient study of it hasindeed greatly modified opinions originally formedconcerning it, but it has only tended to increaserespect for so earnest an effort of the intellect tosolve the mystery of human life and destiny.Even Christians may have something to learnvifrom Buddhists. The divers and seemingly antagonisticChurches of Christendom help to educateand reform each other, and non-Christian religionsmay perform a similar office to Christianity inbringing into prominence some universal truthswhich its creeds have allowed to slip into forgetfulness.Our perception and apprehension of whatChristianity really is will be all the clearer andfirmer for an impartial study of the systemformulated so long ago by Gotama the Buddha.
The aim of the Lecture has not been to use theextravagances of Buddhism as a foil to set off theexcellencies of Christianity. That Christianity asa religion is immensely superior to Buddhism goeswithout saying, unless in the case of a very smalland conceited and purblind minority. I have triedby a fair exposition of what is best and highestin this religion to discover its feeling after somethingbetter and higher still, and to suggest ratherthan indicate the place which it occupies in thereligious education of humanity. As
so Christianity, while having in it in fuller measureand clearer form every truth that has vivified anyother religion, has in it, as the new creation to whichviithe long travail of the soul under every form offaith has from the first been pointing, somethingpeculiar and contrasted—which is the Divine answerto all th