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 lovingkindness 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 Rupuâth 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, the friend of the Devas, values alone the harvest of the next world. For this alone has this inscription been chiselled, that our sons and our grandsons should make no new conquests. Let them not think that conquests by the sword merit the name of conquests. Let them see their ruin, confusion, and violence. True conquests alone are the conquests of Dharma.

Rock Edict No. 1 has:

Formerly in the great refectory and temple of King Piyadasi, the friend of the Devas, many hundred thousand animals were daily sacrificed for the sake of food meat, . . . but now the joyful chorus resounds again and again that henceforward not a single animal shall be put to death.

The Second Edict has :

In committing the least possible harm, in doing abundance of good, in the practice of pity, love, truth, and likewise purity of life, religion consists.

The Ninth Edict has:

Not superstitious rites, but kindness to slaves and servants, reverence towards venerable persons, self-control with respect to living creatures, ... these and similar virtuous actions are the rites which ought indeed to be performed.

The Eighth Edict has :

The acts and the practice of religion, to wit, sympathy, charity, truthfulness, purity, gentleness, kindness.

The Sixth Edict has :

I consider the welfare of all people as something for which I must work.

The Dhauli Edict has :

If a man is subject to slavery and ill-treatment, from this moment he shall be delivered by the king from this and other captivity. Many men in this country suffer in captivity, therefore the stûpa containing the commands of the king has been a great want.

Is it reasonable to suppose that a people possessing so much wisdom, mercy, and purity two centuries before Christ was born could need to borrow from the Christian ethics? Mr. Lillie says of King Asoka:

He antedates Wilberforce in the matter of slavery. He antedates Howard in his humanity towards prisoners. He antedates Tolstoy in his desire to turn the sword into a pruning-hook. He antedates Rousseau, St. Martin, Fichte in their wish to make interior religion the all in all.

King Asoka abolished slavery, denounced war, taught spiritual religion and purity of life, founded hospitals, forbade blood sacrifices, and inculcated religious toleration, two centuries before the birth of Christ.

Centuries before King Asoka the Buddhists sent out missionaries all over the world.

Which religion was the borrower from the other— Buddhism or Christianity?

Two centuries before Christ, King Asoka had cut upon the rocks these words:

I pray with every variety of prayer for those who differ with me in creed, that they, following after my example, may with me attain unto eternal salvation. And whoso doeth this is blessed of the inhabitants of this world; and in the next world endless moral merit resulteth from such religious charity.—Edict XI.

How many centuries did it take the Christians to rise to that level of wisdom and charity? How many Christians have reached it yet?

But the altruistic idea is very much older than Buddha, for it existed among forms of life very much earlier and lower than the human, and has, indeed, been a powerful factor in evolution.

Speaking of "The Golden Rule" in his Confessions of Faith of a Man of Science, Haeckel says:

In the human family this maxim has always been accepted as selfevident; as ethical instinct it was an inheritance derived from our animal ancestors. It had already found a place among the herds of apes and other social mammals; in a similar manner, but with wider scope, it was already present in the most primitive communities and among the hordes of the least advanced savages. Brotherly lovemutual support, succour, protection, and the like-had already made its appearance among gregarious animals as a social duty; for without it

the continued existence of such societies is impossible. Although at a later period, in the case of man, these moral foundations of society came to be much more highly developed, their oldest prehistoric source, as Darwin has shown, is to be sought in the social instincts of animals. Among the higher vertebrates (dogs, horses, elephants, etc.), as among the higher articulates (ants, bees, termites, etc.), also, the development of social relations and duties is the indispensable condition of their living together in orderly societies. Such societies have for man also been the most important instrument of intellectual and moral progress.

It is not to revelation that we owe the ideal of human brotherhood, but to evolution. It is because altruism is better than selfishness that it has survived. It is because love is stronger and sweeter than greed that its influence has deepened and spread. From the love of the animal for its mate, from the love of parents for their young, sprang the ties of kindred and the loyalty of friendship; and these in time developed into tribal, and thence into national patriotism. And these stages of altruistic evolution may be seen among the brutes. It remained for Man to take the grand step of embracing all humanity as one brotherhood and one nation.

But the root idea of fraternity and mutual loyalty was not planted by any priest or prophet. For countless ages universal brotherhood has existed amongst the bison, the swallow, and the deer, in a perfection to which humanity have not yet attained.

For a fuller account of this animal origin of fraternity I recommend the reader to two excellent books, The Martyrdom of Man, by Winwood Reade (Kegan Paul), and Mutual Aid, by Prince Kropotkin (Heinemann).

But the Christian claims that Christ taught a new gospel of love, and mercy, and goodwill to men. That is a great mistake. Christ did not originate one single new ethic.

The Golden Rule was old. The Lord's Prayer was old. The Sermon on the Mount was old. With the latter I will deal briefly. For a fuller statement, please see the R.P.A. sixpenny edition of Huxley's Lectures and Essays, and Christianity and Mythology, by J. M. Robertson.

Shortly stated, Huxley argument was to the following

effect:

That Mark's Gospel is the oldest of the Synoptic Gospels, and that Mark's Gospel does not contain, nor even mention, the Sermon on the Mount. That Luke gives no Sermon on the Mount, but gives what may be called a "Sermon on the Plain." That Luke's sermon differs materially from the sermon given by Matthew. That the Matthew version contains one hundred and seven verses, and the Luke version twenty-nine verses.

Huxley's conclusion is as follows:

"Matthew," having a cento of sayings attributed— rightly or wrongly it is impossible to say-to Jesus among his materials, thought they were, or might be, records of a continuous discourse, and put them in a place he thought likeliest. Ancient historians of the highest character saw no harm in composing long speeches which never were spoken, and putting them into the mouths of statesmen and warriors; and I presume that whoever is represented by "Matthew," would have been grievously astonished to find that any one objected to his following the example of the best models accessible to him.

But since Huxley wrote those words more evidence has been produced. From the Old Testament, from the Talmud, and from the recently discovered Teaching of the Twelve Apostles (a pre-Christian work), the origins of the Sermon on the Mount have been fully traced.

Agnostic criticism now takes an attitude towards this sermon which may be thus expressed:

1. The sermon never was preached at all. It is a written compilation.

2. The story of the mount is a myth. The name of the mount is not given. It is not reasonable to suppose that Jesus would lead a multitude up a mountain to speak to them for a few minutes. The mountain is an old sun-myth of the Sun God on his hill, and the twelve apostles are another sun-myth, and represent the signs of the Zodiac.

3. There is nothing in the alleged sermon that was new at the time of its alleged utterance.

Of course, it may be claimed that the arrangement of old texts in a new form constitutes a kind of originality; as one