ion do not depend
upon the form of religion they profess, but upon their native energy and
intelligence and the level of freedom and knowledge to which they have
attained.

It is because organised and authoritative religion opposes education and
liberty that we find the most religious peoples the most backward. And
this is a strange commentary upon the claim of the Christians,
that their religion is the root from which the civilisation and the
refinement of the world have sprung.

CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS

Christianity, we are told, inaugurated the religion of humanity and
human brotherhood. But the Buddhists taught a religion of humanity and
universal brotherhood before the Christian era; and not only taught the
religion, but put it into practice, which the Christians never succeeded
in doing, and cannot do to-day.

And, moreover, the Buddhists did not spread their religion of
humanity and brotherhood by means of the sword, and the rack, and the
thumb-screw, and the faggot; and the Buddhists liberated the slave, and
extended their loving-kindness to the brute creation.

The Buddhists do not depend for the records of their morality on books.
Their testimony is written upon the rocks. No argument can explain away
the rock edicts of King Asoka.

King Asoka was one of the greatest Oriental kings. He ruled over a vast
and wealthy nation. He was converted to Buddhism, and made it the State
religion, as Constantine made Christianity the State religion of Rome.
In the year 251 B.C., King Asoka inscribed his earliest rock edict.
The other edicts from which I shall quote were all cut more than two
centuries before our era. The inscription of the Rupuath Rock has the
words: "Two hundred and fifty years have elapsed since the departure of
the teacher." Now, Buddha died in the fifth century before Christ.

The Dhauli Edict of King Asoka contains the following:

Much longing after the things [of this life] is a disobedience,
I again declare; not less so is the laborious ambition of
dominion by a prince who would be a propitiator of Heaven.
Confess and believe in God, who is the worthy object of obedience.

From the Tenth Rock Edict:

Earthly glory brings little profit, but, on the contrary,
produces a loss of virtue. To toil for heaven is difficult
to peasant and to prince, unless by a supreme effort he gives
up all.

This is from the Fourteenth Edict:

Piyadasi, t