whole. No nation is so admirably placed as our own for the acquisition of the knowledge of the various religions of the world, for either by conquest or by commerce we come into contact with all. We would advise, then, those statesmen in our Indian possessions who are or desire to appear of serious mind, not to aim after the shallow evangelicism at present popular among them, but to prove the vigour of their thought by attempts to comprehend the religion of the peoples among whom they are situated. One inestimable advantage would immediately follow, that is, a respect for that quietism of the populations which makes them so easy to govern. Their apathy is not the result of nature so much as a dictate of their religion, which drives all the thoughts inwards to metaphysical reverie, and to the prayers by which the heavens are to be won; their ideal is placed in the world of contemplation-ours in that of action. But were the energy of their minds turned outwards, their rulers might sigh to think that the Hindoos had exchanged the quietude of a venerable religion for the furies of a worldly career. Mr. Hardy, the author of the work on Eastern Monachism, has been for a number of years a Wesleyan Missionary in Ceylon. The very title of his work promising so much more than any one can perform, may show that he has not been accustomed to what scholars understand by the word research; but he has the in some respects more valuable learning which is acquired by studying the literature of a people in the midst of themselves, and by the light of an intimate acquaintance with their manners and modes of worship. Hence we feel that his abstracts from and translations of the Budhist Scriptures can be relied upon, as faithful; and though the controversial attitude of the Missionary who desires to take all the points upon his buckler which Eastern or Western Monks can raise is too apparent, yet he has a certain natural aptitude for the study, reminding us of Adam Clarke, and we trust that his advertised work on the Life and System of Gótama Budha will not remain unprinted for want of encouragement. It would be disgraceful to the country to have in it a man possessed of such uncommon information who is not allowed the means of giving it to the world. We would advise him, however, not to swell his work by controversy and speculation, but to CHRISTIAN TEACHER.-No. 50.

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transcribe only what he has learnt from the traditions of the people, and their sacred writings.

The work by M. Burnouf is as generally interesting as it is possible to make the subject. It must be confessed that while there is nothing so interesting to men as their own Religion-their own means of ascending to the throne which is dark with excess of light-there is nothing so dull and repugnant to their feelings as the religions of others, which to them appear nothing but the blackness of darkness. A great part of M. Burnouf's volume consists in translations of the lives of Budhist saints, and though these abound in that tedium and repetition which seems peculiar to the records of the religious, we have found them extremely interesting from the novelty of character they disclose. There is indeed a peculiar delicacy, and, so to speak, fragrance in M. Burnouf's language, which makes us sometimes doubt whether he does not translate the Sanscrit into Western sentiment. Yet as the lives of men are more interesting than mere disquisition, his volume is well adapted to convey a knowledge of the spirit of the Religion.

It is to the praise of Budhism that no faith presents the essentials of a Religion in a more direct form. Its four fundamental propositions are that sorrow exists— that it is the lot of every one who is born-that it is necessary to free oneself from it, and that it is by knowledge alone that we can be freed.

The melancholy reflectingness of the Religion and the dissatisfaction with earth are readily comprehended by every one. It is the song even of the Sensualist, that

"There is not a joy the world can give like that it takes away, When the glow of early thought declines in feeling's dull decay."

But the knowledge which conquers grief and enables the Budhist to enter Nirwana, where he throws off temporal and separate existence, and is annihilated or absorbed in the being of the Eternal, is with difficulty apprehended or imagined possible by the Western Sceptic. The meaning of the word Nirwana is a theme of constant dispute. We should apply to the Budhist priests to explain the term they use; but they allow that there is no mortal now living who has had experience of the state: so that what

Gótama meant by the term must remain a matter of conjecture, and every one will interpret it according to his metaphysical leaning and spiritual experience. To us it seems probable that he meant no more than what Wordsworth sings

"Man who is from God sent forth,

Must yet again to God return."

The sending forth from, and the return to, God, which are the great facts of our existence, can never be comprehended, and all study, however prolonged, leaves the subject still in a sublime mystery. The entrancing character, the ecstacy, the rapture, of that union with God, which Gótama called Nirwana, and which he had the power so to impress on his followers that three hundred and sixty millions of people now look up to him as their spiritual pattern, can only be investigated by us as the path of one of the fixed stars which mocks the telescope.

As the precepts of Gótama Budha were not written down till from 500 to 600 years after his death, no literal exactness can be supposed to exist in the record and in the legends of his life. But the following outline, drawn up by Mr. Hardy, in all probability preserves the spirit if not the facts of his existence :

"The father of Gótama Budha, Sudhódana, reigned at Kapilawastu, on the borders of Nepaul; and in a garden near that city the future sage was born, B.C. 624. At the moment of his birth he stepped upon the ground, and after looking around towards the four quarters, the four half quarters, above and below, without seeing any one in the ten directions, who was equal to himself, he exclaimed, ‘I am the most exalted in the world; I am chief in the world; I am the most excellent in the world; this is my last birth ; hereafter there is to me no other existence.' Upon his person were certain signs that enabled the soothsayers to foretell that he would become a recluse, preparatory to his reception of the supreme Budhaship. Five days after his birth he obtained the name of Sidhártta, but he is more commonly known by the name of Sákya or Gótama, both of which are patronymics. When five months old he sat in the air, without any support, at a ploughing festival. When sixteen years of age he was married to Yasodhará, daughter of Suprabudha, who reigned at Kóli. The father of the predicted Budha having heard that it would be by the sight of four signs

decrepitude, sickness, a dead body, and a recluse,-that he would be induced to abandon the world, commanded that these objects should be kept away from the places where he usually resorted; but these precautions were all in vain. One day, when proceeding to a garden at some distance from the palace, he saw an old man, whose trembling limbs were supported by a staff. Attracted by the sight, he asked his charioteer if he himself should ever be similarly feeble; and when he was told it was the lot of all men, he returned to the palace disconsolate. Four months afterwards he saw a leper, presenting an appearance utterly loathsome. Again, after the lapse of a similar period he saw a dead body, green with corruption, with worms creeping out of the nine apertures. And a year after the sight of the aged man he saw a recluse proceeding along the road in a manner that indicated the possession of inward tranquillity; modest in his deportment, his whole appearance was strikingly decorous. Having learned from his charioteer the character of this interesting object, he commanded him to drive on rapidly to the garden, where he remained until sunset, in unbounded magnificence, a vast crowd of attendants ministering to his pleasure, amidst strains of the most animating music. In the course of the day a messenger arrived to announce that the princess had been delivered of a son. This was the last occasion in which he indulged in revelry. On his return to the city, the most beautiful attendants at the palace took up their instruments, upon which they played in the most skilful manner, but the mind of the prince wandered away to other objects; and when they saw that they could not engage his attention they ceased to play and fell asleep. The altered appearance of the sleeping courtesans excited additional contempt for the pleasures of the world; as some of them began to gnash their teeth, whilst others unwittingly put themselves in unseemly postures, and the garments of all were in disorder, the splendour of the festive hall seemed to have been at once converted into the loathsomeness of a sepulchre. Roused by these appearances, Sidhártta called for his favourite charger, and having first taken a peep at his son from the threshhold of the princess's apartment, who was asleep at the time, with her arm round her babe, he retired from the city, and when he had arrived at a convenient place assumed the character of a recluse. In the forest of Uruwela he remained six years, passing through a course of ascetic discipline; but as the austerities he practised led to no beneficial result, he reduced his daily allowance of food to a peppercorn, or some equivalent minimum, until his body was greatly attenuated, and one night he fell senseless to the ground from exhaustion. After this he went to another part of the forest, and under a Bo-tree, near which Budha Gaya was afterwards built, received the supreme Budhaship.

"In births innumerable, previous to this present state of existence as a man, he had set the office of a Budha before him as the object of his ambition; and in all the various states of existence through which he passed, animal, human and divine, had accomplished some end, or exercised some virtue, that better fitted him for its reception. Whilst under the Bo-tree he was attacked by a formidable host of demons, but he remained tranquil, like the star in the midst of the storm, and the demons, when they had exerted their utmost power without effect, passed away like the thundercloud retiring from the orb of the moon, causing it to appear in greater beauty. At the tenth hour of the same night, he attained the wisdom by which he knew the exact circumstances of all the beings that have ever existed in the infinite worlds; at the twentieth hour he received the divine eyes, by which he had power to see all things within the space of the Infinite systems of worlds, as clearly as if they were close at hand: and at the tenth hour of the following morning, or at the close of the third watch of the night, he attained the knowledge by which he was enabled to understand the sequence of existence, the cause of all sorrow, and of its cessation. The object of his protracted toils and numerous sacrifices, carried on incessantly through myriads of ages, was now accomplished. By having become a Budha, he had received a power by which he could perform any act whatever, and a wisdom by which he could see perfectly any object, or understand any truth, to which he chose to direct his attention."-Eastern Monachism, p. 1-4.

The attitude therefore in which Gótama stood to the world, was not that of a man lost in sin and pain, and who is seeking salvation from Eternal death; but that of one educated in all the highest pomp and splendour, who finds that the temporal cannot satisfy him, and who gives up all to seek the Eternal, and as a sign lives a beggar on the scraps given in charity. The same renunciation is the burden of the histories of other Budhist Saints. For instance, that of Rathapála, who deserted home and fortune to become a mendicant: coming with his alms-bowl one day to his father's house, he was recognised, and was entreated to return.

"His father displayed before him all his wealth, and said to him, This is the property of your mother; this belongs to your father; the rest was inherited from our ancestors. Illustrious Rathapála, take possession of all this, become a laic once more, and gain merit by the giving of alms.' But he replied, 'If my advice were followed, all this gold, and all these jewels, and this wealth, would be placed upon waggons, taken to the Ganges or the Yamuna, and thrown into