MYSTICAL BUDDHISM. 37 
ON A FEW OF THE CHIEF CONTRASTS BETWEEN THE 
ESSENTIAL DOCTRINES OF BUDDHISM AND OF 
CHRISTIANITY, BY SIR M, MONIER-WILLIAMS, K.C.LE. 
“Tt is one of the strange phenomena of the present day, that even 
educated persons are apt to fall into raptures over the doctrines of 
Buddhism, attracted by the bright gems which its admirers cull out 
of its moral code, and display ostentatiously, while keeping out of 
sight all the dark spots of that code, all its triviality and all those 
precepts which no Christian could soil his lips by uttering. 
It has even been asserted that much of the teaching in the 
Sermon on the Mount is based on previously current moral precepts, 
which Buddhism was the first to introduce to the world, 500 years 
before Christ. But this is not all. The admirers of Buddhism 
maintain that the Buddha was not a mere teacher of morality, but 
of many other great truths. He has been justly called, say they, 
‘the Light of Asia,’ though they condescendingly admit that 
Christianity, as a later development, is more adapted to become the 
religion of the world. 
Nore.—Those who have observed the progress of modern thought 
in regard to Neo-Buddhism will appreciate the insertion of the above 
remarks as a sequel to the Address: they were delivered at a 
public Conference this year, and have been revised for the Institute 
by the author. Another distinguished Member of the Institute 
writes :—“ It has always seemed to me that the important point 
to keep in view as to Neo-Buddhism is that the sentiment in 
Arnold’s Light of Asia is utterly false; that the conceptions 
there are borrowed from Christianity; that Buddhism has not 
merely failed in practice, but is, essentially the bare hollow 
emptiness that Sir M. Monier-Williams describes, and offers nothing 
but metaphysics and superstition; that, in fact, as to the first 
Schopenhauer is a better leader for those who wish Nihilism, and 
that the whole of Esoteric Buddhism is a fraud.”—Ep 
