MAHAYANA BUDDHISM AND CHRISTIANITY. 



He knew Dr. Timothy Richard. He went out as a missionary 

 to China to preach the Gospel. He wondered what Dr. Richard 

 thought the Gospel really was : he could have no real grasp of it, 

 or he could not have confused the two — Mahayana Buddhism and 

 Christianity. Dr. Tisdall's conclusion was emphatically right: "A 

 study of the two religions forbade us to recognize Mahayanism as 

 an Asiatic form of the Gospel of Christ." 



Mr. M. L. Rouse said that he had had the pleasure of listening 

 to a lecture from Dr. Tisdall at St. Michael's, Cornhill. Dr. Tisdall 

 said there that that which St. James had condemned, viz., saying to 

 a needy person, "Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled," without 

 giving those things which were needful for the body, was very poor 

 Christianity, but it was quite good Buddhism. 



The Rev. John Tuckwell said he was extremely grateful to 

 Dr. Tisdall for a most valuable and important paper. He had been 

 for many years interested in the Missionary Society which sent 

 Dr. Richard out to China, and he believed he was correct in saying 

 that his views when first published had excited great concern both in 

 the Committee and the Denomination to which Dr. Richard belonged. 

 But Dr. Richard had for many years been President of the "Christian 

 Literature Society of China," and was now invalided, and had very 

 little connection with any society whatever. 



He congratulated the Victoria Institute on having had such a 

 paper as that to which they had listened that afternoon. There 

 was a tendency abroad to take little studies of heathen philosophy 

 and associate them with the doctrines of Christianity under the title 

 of " Comparative Religions." But there was in truth very little 

 connection between Christianity and any other religion, or between 

 the Bible and any other " sacred books." The Buddhistic view of 

 the universe, however, appears to have much in common with the 

 materialistic view of the universe with which Haeckel has made us 

 familiar in his doctrine of Monism, by which he ascribes thought, 

 emotion and will — in fact all the principal elements of personality, to 

 his original uncreated monistic substance. Haeckel's substitute for 

 God resembles very much the indefinable " Suchness " of Buddhism 

 and the effort to correlate such heathen doctrines with the doctrines 

 of Christianity could only have the effect of belittling Christianity. 



Professor Langhorne Orchard said that they had listened to a 

 paper of profound human interest. 



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