with attributes resembling those of the Triune God of the Christians, and by the tenth century it had five trinities with One Supreme Adi-Buddha over them all.  Everyone may judge for himself whether these later interpolations of the system were borrowed from the New Testament Trinity, which had been proclaimed through all the East ten centuries before.  Buddhism is still absorbing foreign elements through the aid of its various apologists.  Sir Edwin Arnold has greatly added to the force of its legend by the Christian phrases and Christian conceptions which he has read into it.  Toward the close of the “Light of Asia” he also introduces into the Buddha’s sermon at Kapilavastu the teachings of Herbert Spencer and others of our own time.

But altogether the most stupendous improbability lies against the whole assumption that Christ and his followers based their “essential doctrines” on the teachings of the Buddha.  The early Buddhism was atheistic:  this is the common verdict of Davids, Childers, Sir Monier Williams, Kellogg, and many others.  The Buddha declared that “without cause and unknown is the life of man in this world,” and he recognized no higher being to whom he owed reverence.  “The Buddhist Catechism,” by Subhadra, shows that modern Buddhism has no recognition of God.

It says (page 58):  “Buddhism teaches the reign of perfect goodness and wisdom without a personal God, continuance of individuality without an immortal soul, eternal happiness without a local heaven, the way of salvation without a vicarious saviour, redemption worked out by each one himself without any prayers, sacrifices, and penances, without the ministry of ordained priests, without the intercession of saints, without divine mercy.”  And then, by way of authentication, it adds:  “These, and many others which have become the fundamental doctrines of the Buddhist religion, were recognized by the Buddha in the night of his enlightenment under the Boddhi-tree.”  And yet we are told that this is the system which Christ and his followers copied.  Compare this passage with the Lord’s Prayer, or with the discourse upon the lilies, and its lesson of trust in God the Father of all!  I appeal not merely to Christian men, but to any man who has brains and common-sense, was there ever so preposterous an attempt to establish an identity of doctrines?

But what is the evidence found in the legends themselves?  Several leading Oriental scholars, and men not at all biased in favor of Christianity, have carefully examined the subject, and have decided that there is no connection whatever.  Professor Seydel, of Leipsic, who has given the most scientific plea for the so-called coincidences, of which he claims there are fifty-one, has classified them as:  1, Those which may have been merely accidental, having arisen from similar causes, and not necessarily implying any borrowing on either side; 2, those which seem to have been borrowed from the one narrative or the other; and 3, those which he thinks were clearly copied by the Christian writers.  In this last class he names but five out of fifty-one.