341 
ranked, in this aspect, with Shakspeare, Tennyson, and Omar Khayyam, 
in Dean Plumtre’s Appendix to his Commentary on ‘ Ecclesiastes.’ But 
beyond this Buddhism gives us only partial help in the study of the origin 
of religions, because it perpetuates only one aspect of religion. I mean the 
ethical, which, moreover, it has confused and overlaid with Hindu meta- 
physics. Buddhism is only a religion in the same sense in which some 
modern sect might form a religion, if we could call it so, by taking the Book 
of Ecclesiastes out of the Bible, entirely ignoring the rest of its books, and 
framing upon that book alone a system embracing whatever the imagination 
might conceive as possibly agreeable to it. 
Is not a profounder comparative study of religions, through history, 
teaching us that the earliest known families of mankind worshipped one 
God, the Infinite, the Creator, the Light of the world, the Self-existent (see 
Canon Cook, on ‘Ahura,’ Zend ; ‘ Asura,’ Sanscrit)* : and that they had a 
religious worship and sentiments, the vestiges of which are still scattered 
among the nations ; but that no nation has ever been seen to raise itself in 
the religious scale ?” 
* Origins of Religion and Language, by Canon Cook. 
ERRATA. 
* 
Page 50, note, for “ Name of God in the lesson books” read ‘ Word of 
in God the lesson hours.” 
*,* Jn Australia it is anxiously desired that the Colonial Government 
should permit the same liberty for the Bible in schools as is found under the 
London School Board system. 
Page 180, line 28, for “ Charles” read “St. Chad.” 
Page 143, line 20, for “ Charles” read “ James.” 
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