glow of hope and joy
with which the Sun of Righteousness has flooded the world, and the
fatherly love and compassion with which the Old Testament and the New
are replete, the divine plan of redemption, the psalms of praise and
thanksgiving, the pity of Christ's words and acts, and his invitations
to the weary and heavy-laden. In one view it is strange that pessimism
should have comfort in the fellowship of pessimism, but so it is; there
is luxury even in the sympathy of hate, and so Buddhist pessimism is a
welcome guest among us, though our Communistic querulousness is more
bitter.

Once more, Buddhist occultism has found congenial fellowship in American
spiritualism. Of late we hear less of spirit-rappings and far more of
Theosophy. But this is only the same crude system with other names, and
rendered more respectable by the cast-off garments of old Indian
philosophy. There is a disposition in the more intellectual circles to
assume a degree of disdain toward the crudeness of spiritualism and its
vulgar familiarity with departed spirits, who must ever be disturbed by
its beck and call; but it is confidently expected that the thousands,
nay, as some say, millions, of American spiritualists will gladly
welcome the name and the creed of Buddha.[89] It will be idle therefore
to assume that the old sleepy system of Gautama has no chance in this
wide-awake republic of the West.[90]

I have already called attention to the special tactics of Buddhists just
now in claiming that Christianity, having been of later origin, has
borrowed its principal facts and its teachings. Let us examine the
charge. It is a real tribute to the character of Christ that so many
sects of false religionists have in all ages claimed Him either as a
follower or as an incarnation of their respective deities. Others have
acknowledged his teachings as belonging to their particular style and
grade. The bitter and scathing calumny of Celsus, in the first
centuries of our era, did not prevent numerous attempts to prove the
identity of Christ's teachings with some of the most popular
philosophies of the heathen world. Porphyry claimed that many of
Christ's virtues were copied from Pythagoras. With like concession
Mohammedanism included Jesus as one of the six great prophets, and
confessedly the only sinless one among them all. Many a fanatic in the
successive centuries has claimed to be a new incarnation of the Son of
God. Hindus have named Him as an incar