154 
for I fully and thankfully acknowledge that there is a great deal of good in 
them. I have received a great deal of kindness from them, and I should he 
really sorry to think that I had stood before a Christian meeting as their 
accuser. I will say that there is no class of converts with whom I have had 
to deal — and I have had a great deal to do with that happiest of all works, 
the work of a missionary — there is no class of converts whom I have found 
so valuable as those from Buddhism, which is, I think, a great testimony to 
Buddhism itself. I have had the happiness and privilege of ordaining some 
twenty of the natives of Ceylon, and, out of those twenty, I assure you that 
not more than two ever disappointed me, and those disappointed me not by 
becoming anything scandalous or vile, but by becoming indolent, and puffed 
up with the idea that they were admitted to something higher than they had 
been before. I could declare, when I left that island, that there were 
converts working in that mission there who were as faithful ministers of Jesus 
Christ as I ever knew in my life. 
The Rev. C. A. Row. — I want to get an additional amount of information 
on the question of Buddhism, which is a very practical one. I am not 
unfrequently called upon to deal with it in Bradlaugh’s Hall of Science, 
where I am told that the morality of Buddhism will bear comparison with 
that of Christianity. There is also a very wide-spread belief among these 
unbelievers that the story of Jesus Christ is actually borrowed from the 
Hindoo story of Krishna,* — one of the most surprising things which can be 
asserted by rational men. I should like to hear Bishop Claughton’s opinion 
as to the real difference between Pantheism as taught in Strauss’s recent 
work, and as taught in the leading precepts of Buddha ; and also his 
opinion as to the value of Sir John Bowering’s work on Ceylon, which 
treats largely of Buddhism. The bishop, no doubt, has also read another 
book — the travels of the Abbe Hue in Tartary, — and I should like to ask him 
whether that work faithfully depicts the theology as well as the practice 
of Buddhism in the countries which it describes. There is nothing that we 
want more than an English book to which we can appeal, in reference to the 
origin and character of Buddhism, with as much confidence as we can to 
Sir George Cornewall Lewis’s work on the credibility of Roman history. 
I own that I am ignorant of the real historical value of the common views 
which are popularly placed before the public on the subject. I want to know 
the values of the authorities on which the original history of Buddha pro- 
fesses to rest, and whether they rest on an historical foundation. I know 
that the authorities are not contemporary, but I wish to know whether there 
is any reason for believing that the real history of Buddha has been handed 
down by a faithful tradition during the centuries that it remained unwritten. 
I am not acquainted with any work in England which thoroughly investigates 
# Mr. W. R. Cooper, of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, has drawn 
my attention to Mr. Hardy’s statement in his “ Manual of Buddhism,” that 
recent investigations point to the fact that certain travesties of the Christian 
religion first appeared as a part of the Buddhist faith in the second century 
of the Christian era. — Ed. 
