Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 28, 1917.djvu/320

 2 88 Persistence of Priuiitive Beliefs in Theology.

ing paria desiinata ah initio sosciili ; Cain, Abel ; Pharaoh, Abraham ; Philistines, Isaac ; Esau, Jacob ; Magi, Moses ; Tempter, Son of Man ; Simon Magus, Peter (iii. 6i) — in the end there will be a climax of the duel, Anti-Christ and Christ in a last struggle. The names of these successive manifestations of the Divine Spirit differ, as we might expect, from time to time : the Seven Pillars of the world are often represented as Adam, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and once again in the end of the ages as Christ. How this system gathered up all the sectarian tenets of Syria and the amalgam of Sumerian and Chaldean traditions may be seen in this : the Clementines are nothing but different forms of 'literary dress,' for a Gnostic Ebionism ; of Essene Ebionism, Elkesai and his book were but a step in development ; and it is impossible to doubt that the final influence upon the Essenes was, not the ]\lazdeism of Zoroaster or any syncretist Hellenism, but Buddhism.

10. Whatever may have been the subtle imper- sonalism and technical ' No-Soul ' doctrine which Gautama taught to his inner circle, it is quite certain that it had nothing to do with the prodigious vogue of his school. As a propagandist religion, Buddhism had two or three main doctrines ; that there was a law universally valid (dharnia), that man's happiness consisted in knowing and observing it, that every now and again there appeared a great teacher who had discovered this cosmic secret and could impart it to his age. There was a whole series of ' buddhas ' ; Gautama never pretended to be either the first or the last, and the East has very largely taken him at his word.^ Thus the impersonal side is much more impor- tant than the personal ; the man is but the temporary vehicle of the Law.- The same kind of union of the two

1 A very great proportion of Buddhists are really worshippers of Maitreya the coming Buddha, and are quite indifferent to the liisioric Gautama.
 * Cf. my Religious Thought, 212-228.