Читать книгу Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons - Arabella M. Willson - Страница 17

"Buddhism in its moral precepts is perhaps the best religion ever invented by man. The difficulty is, its entire basis is false. It is a religion of Atheism. Instead of a Heavenly Father forgiving sin, and filial service from a pure heart, as the effect of love—it presents nothing to love, for its Deity is dead; nothing as the ultimate object of action but self; and nothing for man's highest and holiest ambition but annihilation."

"Their doctrine of merit, leaves no place for holiness, and destroys gratitude either to God or man." It also ministers to the grossest pride, for the very fact of his being now a man, assures the Buddhist that in numberless former unremembered transmigrations, he must have acquired incalculable merit, or he would not now occupy so distinguished a rank in the scale of being.

Their system of balancing evil with good, reduces all sin to a thing of little importance. "If any man sin" in Burmah, his religion tells him of no "advocate with the Father" on whose altar he may lay the tribute of a believing, penitent, obedient and grateful heart; but instead, it tells him he may repeat a form of words, he may feed a priest, he may build a pagoda, he may carve an idol, and thus balance his iniquity with merit. If any man suffer in Burmah, his religion points him to no place where "the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest," and where "God himself will wipe away all tears from all faces;" but it dictates a proud submission to unalterable fate, and flatters him that his sufferings here may purchase immunity from torment in some unknown future existence; and finally if any man die, in Burmah, his religion tells him of no Saviour who has "passed through the grave and blessed the bed," and "swallowed up death in victory;" but it threatens degradation, perhaps into a soulless brute; or at best, a place of expiatory misery;—in short, "living or dying," the Burman may be said emphatically to be "without hope, and without God in the world."

Such was the stupendous system of superstition and ignorance, which two feeble missionaries armed like David when he met the Philistine with "trust in the Lord his God," ventured to attack, and hoped to subdue.