Students of popular science, like Mr. Blatchford, are always insisting that Christianity and Buddhism are very much alike, especially Buddhism.  This is generally believed, and I believed it myself until I read a book giving the reasons for it.  The reasons were of two kinds:  resemblances that meant nothing because they were common to all humanity, and resemblances which were not resemblances at all.  The author solemnly explained that the two creeds were alike in things in which all creeds are alike, or else he described them as alike in some point in which they are quite obviously different.  Thus, as a case of the first class, he said that both Christ and Buddha were called by the divine voice coming out of the sky, as if you would expect the divine voice to come out of the coal-cellar.  Or, again, it was gravely urged that these two Eastern teachers, by a singular coincidence, both had to do with the washing of feet.  You might as well say that it was a remarkable coincidence that they both had feet to wash.  And the other class of similarities were those which simply were not similar.  Thus this reconciler of the two religions draws earnest attention to the fact that at certain religious feasts the robe of the Lama is rent in pieces out of respect, and the remnants highly valued.  But this is the reverse of a resemblance, for the garments of Christ were not rent in pieces out of respect, but out of derision; and the remnants were not highly valued except for what they would fetch in the rag shops.  It is rather like alluding to the obvious connection between the two ceremonies of the sword:  when it taps a man’s shoulder, and when it cuts off his head.  It is not at all similar for the man.  These scraps of puerile pedantry would indeed matter little if it were not also true that the alleged philosophical resemblances are also of these two kinds, either proving too much or not proving anything.  That Buddhism approves of mercy or of self-restraint is not to say that it is specially like Christianity; it is only to say that it is not utterly unlike all human existence.  Buddhists disapprove in theory of cruelty or excess because all sane human beings disapprove in theory of cruelty or excess.  But to say that Buddhism and Christianity give the same philosophy of these things is simply false.  All humanity does agree that we are in a net of sin.  Most of humanity agrees that there is some way out.  But as to what is the way out, I do not think that there are two institutions in the universe which contradict each other so flatly as Buddhism and Christianity.