Though the Buddha passed through intellectual crises such as the biographies of Christ do not hint at, yet in other matters it is he rather than Christ who offers a picture and example of peace.  Christ enjoyed with a little band of friends an intimacy which the Hindu gave to none, but from the very commencement of his mission he is at enmity with what he calls the world.  The world is evil and a great event is coming of double import, for it will bring disaster on the wicked as well as happiness for the good.  “Repent ye, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.”  He is angry with the world because it will not hear him.  He declares that it hates him and the gospel according to St John even makes him say, “I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me[400].”  The little towns of Galilee are worse in his eyes than the wicked cities of antiquity because they are not impressed by his miracles and Jerusalem which has slighted all the prophets and finally himself is to receive signal punishment.  The shadow of impending death fell over the last period of his ministry and he felt that he was to be offered as a sacrifice.  The Jews even seem to have thought at one time that he was unreasonably alarmed[401].

But the Buddha was not angry with the world.  He thought of it as unsatisfactory and transitory rather than wicked, as ignorant rather than rebellious.  He troubled little about people who would not listen.  The calm and confidence which so many narratives attribute to him rarely failed to meet with the respect which they anticipated.  In his life there is no idea of sacrifice, no element of the tragic, no nervous irritability.  When Devadatta meditated his assassination, he is represented as telling his disciples that they need not be uneasy because it was physically impossible to kill a Buddha.  The saying is perhaps not historical but it illustrates Indian sentiment.  In his previous existences, when preparing for Buddhahood, he had frequently given his life for others, not because it was any particular good to them but in order to perfect his character for his own great career and bring about the selflessness which is essential to a Buddha.  When once he had attained enlightenment any idea of sacrifice, such as the shepherd laying down his life for the sheep, had no meaning.  It would be simply the destruction of the more valuable for the less valuable.  Even the modern developments of Buddhism which represent the Buddha Amida as a saviour do not contain the idea that he gives up his life for his followers.

Gotama instituted a religious order and lived long enough to see it grow out of infancy, but its organization was gradual and for a year or two it was simply a band of disciples not more bound by rules than the seventy whom Christ sent forth to preach.  Would Christ, had he lived longer, have created something analogous to the Buddhist sangha, a community not conflicting with national and social institutions