Nature of Symbolic Language. Before proceeding with the interpretation of this wonderful book, it will be necessary for us to pause and make inquiry concerning the nature of the language employed in its prophecies and concerning the mode of its interpretation. It will be seen at a glance that it is wholly unlike the common language of life; and it will be useless for us to undertake to ascertain its signification unless we understand perfectly... more...

I SLAV ORTHODOXY THE HOLY SYNOD AND TOLSTOI. When Count Tolstoi was excommunicated by the Holy Synod of Russia because "he preached the teachings which are contrary to the Christian faith," the world was divided in opinion and sympathy into two parts. The partisans of Tolstoi were in the majority in the Western world; those of the Holy Synod in Russia and the Orthodox East. Yet Holy Russia rejected Tolstoi with much more compassion than... more...

THE RELIGIOUS SITUATION. (From the North American Review.) "I express myself," says Bishop Butler, "with caution, lest I should be mistaken to vilify reason, which is, indeed, the only faculty which we have to judge concerning anything, even revelation itself; or be misunderstood to assert that a supposed revelation cannot be proved false from internal characters." "The faculty of reason," he says, "is the candle of the Lord within us against... more...

PREFACE Lord Gifford in founding his lectureship directed that the lectures should be public and popular, i.e. not restricted to members of a University. Accordingly in lecturing I endeavoured to make myself intelligible to a general audience by avoiding much technical discussion and controversial matter, and by keeping to the plan of describing in outline the development and decay of the religion of the Roman City-state. And on the whole I have... more...

CHAPTER I.—INTRODUCTION. SOURCES.—DATES.—METHODS OF INTERPRETATION.—DIVISIONS OF SUBJECT. SOURCES. India always has been a land of religions. In the earliest Vedic literature are found not only hymns in praise of the accepted gods, but also doubts in regard to the worth of these gods; the beginnings of a new religion incorporated into the earliest records of the old. And later, when, about 300 B.C, Megasthenes was in... more...

Buddhism is geographically divided into two schools[FN#1]—the Southern, the older and simpler, and the Northern, the later and more developed faith. The former, based mainly on the Pali texts[FN#2] is known as Hinayana[FN#3] (small vehicle), or the inferior doctrine; while the latter, based on the various Sanskrit texts,[4] is known as Mahayana (large vehicle), or superior doctrine. The chief tenets of the Southern School are so well known... more...

CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY. To summon a dead religion from its forgotten grave and to make it tell its story, would require an enchanter's wand. Other old faiths, of Egypt, Babylon, Greece, Rome, are known to us. But in their case liturgies, myths, theogonies, theologies, and the accessories of cult, remain to yield their report of the outward form of human belief and aspiration. How scanty, on the other hand, are the records of Celtic religion!... more...

THE RELIGION OF NUMA Rome forms no exception to the general rule that nations, like individuals, grow by contact with the outside world. In the middle of the five centuries of her republic came the Punic wars and the intimate association with Greece which made the last half of her history as a republic so different from the first half; and in the kingdom, which preceded the republic, there was a similar coming of foreign influence, which made... more...

PREFACE. It requires no profound knowledge to reach the conclusion that the time has not yet come for an exhaustive treatise on the religion of Babylonia and Assyria. But even if our knowledge of this religion were more advanced than it is, the utility of an exhaustive treatment might still be questioned. Exhaustive treatises are apt to be exhausting to both reader and author; and however exhaustive (or exhausting) such a treatise may be, it... more...

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION—SOURCES AND SCOPE The conditions of our knowledge of the native religion of early Rome may perhaps be best illustrated by a parallel from Roman archæology. The visitor to the Roman Forum at the present day, if he wishes to reconstruct in imagination the Forum of the early Republic, must not merely 'think away' many strata of later buildings, but, we are told, must picture to himself a totally different... more...