SOME SCRAP QUOTATIONS by GEO. E. PRICE.

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 19, 1901

SOME SCRAP QUOTATIONS.

By GEO. E. PRICE.

GEO. E. PRICE.

(Tracadie, New Brunswick.)

FOR some time I have had two valuable quotations, or extracts, on hand which I have thought I ought to share with my fellow laborers. I have hitherto refrained from sending them because I could not see my way to work them up into suitable articles. But I give them now just as they are, and while neither may be entirely new to all our workers, yet to many they will serve as a valuable help in explaining the prophecies of Daniel:—

“The ram was long the emblem of Persia; the golden diadem of the empire was ornamented with rams’ horns; and, what seems strange, among the sculptures of Persepolis, the old capital, may still be seen the ram’s head with two horns, one higher than the other.”—“Buried Cities Recovered,” page 508, by F. S. De Hass.

The complement of this I found in the Standard Dictionary, under “Ammonite:” “The word is derived from the ancient Egyptian Amen or Amon, who was identified in the Great Oasis (el Khargeh) with Kneph or Khnum, to whom the ram was sacred, and who was there worshiped as Amen-Khnum under the form of a man with the head of a ram. It is from the form of the ram’s horns of this deity that the fossil mollusk called Cornu Ammonis derives its name. See also the Greek Ammon, a form of Zeus with ram’s horns, also called Jupiter-Ammon. Alexander the Great is represented on the coins of Lysimachus deified, with the horn of Ammon and diadem.—Amelia R. Edwards, letter to Standard Dictionary, Oct. 23, ’91.”

I have another which has recently come to hand, and which, though on an entirely different subject, I think is too good to be lost.

It is in a recent review of “Lost Essays” of the late Prof. Max Müller, of Oxford, found in Nature, July 11, 1901, page 251; and Nature, as everybody knows, is one of the very highest of English scientific journals.

“The essay on ‘Coincidences’ will be read by every one who is interested in the study of comparative religion with the deepest interest, for in it is demonstrated with considerable clearness and with incontrovertible proofs, if we accept the facts set out by Prof. Max Müller, that Christianity owes much to Buddhism. The Roman Catholic missionaries Huc and Gabet, while traveling in Thibet in 1845, discovered to their horror that the Buddhist priesthood possessed the crosier, the miter, the dalmatic, the cope, the service with two choirs, the psalmody, exorcism, and prayer beads, and that the celibacy of the priesthood, spiritual retreats, worship of saints, fastings, processions, litanies, holy water, etc., were as much the characteristics of the Buddhist as of the Roman Catholic religion. After thinking the matter over for some time, the Christian missionaries made up their minds that these resemblances were the work of the devil, who wished to lead astray any missionary who ventured to travel in Thibet, and now we know that an actual historical communication existed between Roman Catholic and Buddhist priests. It has recently been proved that the Buddhist Canon was collected at the Council held in 259 B. C. at Patna by Asoka, and that the Pāli Canon of Buddhism was written down in the first century before our era, and that the Sanskrit Canon was written down in the first century after. Thus it seems clear that if any borrowing at all took place between the two religions, the Christian borrowed from the Buddhist, and not the Buddhist from the Christian. This need cause no surprise, for, apart from the well-known historical connection which existed between the Buddhists and Nestorians in the seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries, there was undoubtedly frequent communication between Judea and Persia and Asia Minor from the time of Alexander the Great. The Buddhist religion was, like the Christian, a missionary religion, and in proof of this Prof. Max Müller has adduced some very interesting facts.”

Of course the reader will understand the use of the words “Christians” and “Christianity” in the above remarkable paragraph, as synonymous with “Roman Catholic” and “Roman Catholicism.” It is difficult to imagine what further evidence along this line is needed to show the true origin of the Roman Catholic Church, or the transcendent unlikeness between true Christianity and every form of heathenism.

In my little book now being issued by the Pacific Press Publishing Company, I have undertaken to show on scientific evidence that all the geological changes took place at the flood, as stated, or at least implied, in those precious seventh, eighth, and ninth chapters of “Patriarchs and Prophets.” I have some valuable material bearing on the subject, but I know that there is an immense amount of material of equal value that I have not yet seen. If any of my readers would kindly send to the REVIEW any facts bearing on this subject, I have no doubt the editor would open a small corner for this exchange of

ideas, and thus aid in developing an integral part of this message which calls upon this age of evolutionists to “worship Him that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters;” a message which brings to us the Sabbath as a souvenir of creation and creation’s God, and thus an everlasting protest against the fashionable evolutionary geology. A great reform on our views of science is, I believe, now due; and if we will each contribute our mite, we may soon see the Biblical story of a universal deluge demonstrated by scientific evidence beyond all reasonable cavil.

[We are at your service, in any way we can assist.— ED.]