years B.C., and that fifty years after the death of Christ there
existed in Palestine a similar sect, from whom Christianity was derived.
Mr. Lillie says of these sects:

Each had two prominent rites: baptism, and what Tertullian
calls the "oblation of bread." Each had for officers, deacons,
presbyters, ephemerents. Each sect had monks, nuns, celibacy,
community of goods. Each interpreted the Old Testament in a
mystical way--so mystical, in fact, that it enabled each to
discover that the bloody sacrifice of Mosaism was forbidden,
not enjoined. The most minute likenesses have been pointed
out between these two sects by all Catholic writers from
Eusebius to the poet Racine... Was there any connection
between these two sects? It is difficult to conceive that
there can be two answers to such a question.

The resemblances between Buddhism and Christianity were accounted for by
the Christian Fathers very simply. The Buddhists had been instructed by
the Devil, and there was no more to be said. Later Christian scholars
face the difficulty by declaring that the Buddhists copied from the
Christians.

Reminded that Buddha lived five hundred years before Christ, and that
the Buddhist religion was in its prime two hundred years before Christ,
the Christian apologist replies that, for all that, the Buddhist
Scriptures are of comparatively late date. Let us see how the matter
stands.

The resemblances of the two religions are of two kinds. There is, first,
the resemblance between the Christian life of Christ and the Indian life
of Buddha; and there is, secondly, the resemblance between the moral
teachings of Christ and Buddha.

Now, if the Indian Scriptures _are_ of later date than the Gospels, it
is just possible that the Buddhists may have copied incidents from the
life of Christ.

But it is perfectly certain that the change of borrowing cannot be
brought against Augustus Caesar, Plato, and the compilers of the
mythologies of Egypt and Greece and Rome. And it is as certain that
the Christians did borrow from the Jews as that the Jews borrowed from
Babylon. But a little while ago all Christendom would have denied the
indebtedness of Moses to King Sargon.

Now, since the Christian ideas were anticipated by the Babylonians, the
Egyptians, the Romans, and the Greeks, why should we suppose that
they were copied by the Buddhists, whose religion was triumphant some
centu