Buddhism and Catholicism.
By J. H. WAGGONER
On Sunday evening, April 8, Rev. E. L. Rexford preached in San Francisco on the religion of Buddha, and drew the following parallel between it and Romanism:— “If the people of England and America were to enter a Buddhist church or temple, and witness the service, I venture that five out of every ten would suspect that they had stepped into a Catholic church, and were witnessing the Catholic worship. The Buddhist churches bear a striking resemblance to the earlier Catholic churches, and it is a well known fact already that the forms of service in that religion are very similar to the Catholic forms. I have had occasion to refer before to some of these resemblances, but I shall be pardoned a reference now to the same facts again. The Buddhist clergymen, like the Catholics, are forbidden to marry, and in their services of the sanctuary they are robed very similarly to the Catholics. There are double choirs employed, and you will find the incense and the lighted candles at the altar. You will find the worshipers wearing their strings of beads. Prayers are chanted and the cross appears everywhere. Religious retirement, vows, the worship of saints, fasts, processions, litanies and holy water—nearly all the ceremony, the imagery and custom of the Catholic church you may find if you enter any country where this religion of Buddhism prevails.” “So strikingly similar are the Buddhist and the Catholic worship and general custom, that Father Bury, a Portuguese missionary, when he saw the Chinese bonzes or priests tonsured and using rosaries, kneeling before images and praying in an unknown tongue, exclaimed, ‘There is not a piece of dress, nor a sacerdotal function, not a ceremony of the Court of Rome, which the devil has not copied in this country.’ But for one slight circumstance, this charge preferred against the devil might be sustained; unfortunately for Father Bury’s statement, these very customs and forms existed in India before they existed in Rome. The original work was done under the directions of Buddhism for at least four hundred years before Christ came into the world. If the devil has copied anything, he copied for the benefit of Rome rather than for Buddhists. Say what you will, that the forms have been borrowed, or that there is an instinct in man that teaches him to adopt certain forms and customs for conveying his religious impressions, this elaborate system of forms and many of the doctrines existed in the ancient East before Rome assumed any control of the destinies of religion.” In this is found but another evidence that the religion of Rome is the lineal descendant of Paganism, and it is fast eliminating from itself the faint resemblance it has heretofore had to Christianity, by substituting the sole worship of Mary for the worship of God. And yet the tendency of the English church is toward Rome, even as the tendency of all the popular religions of the age is toward formality, and destitution of the power of godliness. “From such withdraw thyself,” is the injunction of inspiration.