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from doing so. For, he reflected, the dog was only doing his duty in attacking him, and it would be an injustice to deprive him of his life. He, therefore, held him fast until he had aroused the inmates of the house, who came and released him from his perilous and inconvenient position. The second occasion referred to was during a voyage he was making from Leghorn to Constantinople, when the ship was attacked by Algerine pirates. He remained on deck throughout the fight, and handled one of the ship's guns with remarkable vigour, his cheerfulness and resolution inspiring all about him to a determined resistance until the pirates, getting tired of the formidable defence, retired. When asked why he did not go down into the hold and leave the defence of the ship to those to whom it belonged, he replied that it concerned no man more than himself. "I would rather," he said, "have lost my life than have fallen into the hands of those merciless infidels."

In February, 1645, Barrow went to Trinity College, Cambridge, and applied himself with great diligence to the study of literature and science, especially of natural philosophy. His scholarship gaimed him such approbation that even his undoubted cavalier sympathies could not throw him out of the good graces of the master, Dr. Hill, who was a staunch Roundhead, having been appointed to his post by the Parliament.

The master, whilst deploring his political bias, could not help approving his general character. Thou art a good lad," he said one day, laying his hand upon the student's head, "'tis a pity thou art a cavalier;" and when on Barrow's delivering an oration on the Gunpowder Plot, in which he contrasted former times favourably with his own, there was an outcry from the Fellows and a demand for his expulsion, the master silenced the malcontents by the remark, "Barrow is a better man than any of This lenient consideration of one who was open to censure from his being a cavalier or malignant, procured him in 1649 election to a Fellowship."

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In 1654 he set out on a Continental tour, and while he was away visited the Court of Charles I., at which his father was settled, 66 Bcarce hoping," it is said, "much less expecting, the King's restoration." On his return from his travels he was ordained by Bishop Brownrigg, and in 1660 he was appointed to the Greek Professorship at Cambridge, and two years later was elected Professor of Geometry at Gresham College. In 1663 he was appointed to the newly endowed mathematical chair at Cambridge, which he held until 1669, when, having decided to renounce the study of mathematics for that of divinity, he resigned his post to his illustrious pupil, Isaac Newton. He then received a small sinecure in Wales, and the Bishop of Salisbury conferred on him a prebend in that church. In 1670 he was created Doctor of Divinity by mandate, and two years later he was appointed Master of Trinity College, Charles II. saying with reference to his appointment that he gave it to the best scholar in England. In 1675 he was chosen Vice-Chancellor of the University. He died on the 4th of May, 1677, and was buried in Westminster Abbey, where a monument, ornamented by his bust, was erected by his friends. In mathematics Barrow has been held in England to be second only to Newton, though Continental critics have not conceded that position to him. It is certain, however, that he approached very near to Newton's greatest mathematical discoveries, and if he had given his life to the subject his achievements would probably have been much greater.

he did this from a mere love of opposition, it must be pointed out that this imaginary character was always one who represented the vice, the folly, and the stupidity of the time.

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Barrow was also a strictly practical preacher. Most of his sermons deal with the influence of religion and the Scriptures on the daily duties of life. They are on such subjects as the Pleasantness of Religion;" The Profitableness of Godliness;" Upright Walking Sure Walking; "The Duty of Prayer and of Thanksgiving;" "Not to Offend in Word;" Against Foolish Talking and Jesting;" Of Rash and Vain Swearing;" "Of Contentment;" "Of Industry in General, and in our Particular Calling." Barrow was extremely slovenly in bis dress, and being a thin, pale and unprepossessing man, his appearance did not greatly commend itself to strange congregations. It is related that on one occasion, being asked to preach at the Church of St. Lawrence, Jewry, in the absence of the rector through illness, the congregation, seeing him mount the pulpit, "slovenly and carelessly dressed, his collar unbottoned, his hair uncombed," hastily decamped. An eye-witness has described the scene which ensued on the appearance of the preacher. 'Immediately," he says, "all the congregation was in an uproar, as if the Church were falling, and they scampering to save their lives, each shifting for himself with great precipitation. There was such a noise of pattens of serving maids and ordinary women, and of unlocking of pews and cracking of seats, caused by the younger sort hastily climbing over them, that I confess I thought all the congregation were mad."

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A proceeding of this sort would have utterly discomfitted many a preacher, but it made no impression on Barrow. The courage which had enabled him to confront undismayed the fury of a savage dog, and the fierce onslaught of murderous pirates, did not desert him at this juncture. Taking no notice of the disturbance, he calmly gave out the text, and delivered his sermon to the handful of people that remained. Amongst these happened to be Baxter, the eminent Nonconformist divine, who, in a visit he afterwards paid to the rector, spoke very highly of the sermon, and declared that he had never heard a better discourse. An apprentice, too, who was in the congregation, accosted the preacher as he was coming Sir," he said, "be not dismayed; for I assure down from the pulpit. you 'twas a good sermon." Barrow was not insensible to the consolation thus offered; for when he was asked what his opinion of the apprentice he replied, "I take him to be a very civil person, and if I could meet with him I'd present him with a bottle of wine."

W88,

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Some of the worthy citizens who had fled from the Church were not satisfied with showing their discontent with the preacher in that way, but went afterwards in a body to their rector, to complain that he should have given the use of his pulpit to "an ignorant, scandalous fellow," as they described him. They wondered, they said, that he should permit such a man to preach before them; one, they said, who looked like a starved cavalier, who had been long sequestered, and out of his living for delinquency, and who had come up to London to beg, now that the king was restored. The rector was fortunately prepared for this visit; for Baxter was engaged in extolling the sermon to him when his parishoners arrived, and was still with him. He answered them, therefore, rather sharply. "The person you thus despise," he said, "I assure you is a pious man, an eminent scholar, and an excellent preacher." In support of his statement he appealed to Baxter, who declared that Dr. Barrow preached so well that he could willingly have listened to him all day long. At this the citizens were both amazed and ashamed. As soon as they had recovered their composure they apologized for their conduct, and finally begged the rector that he would ask Dr. Barrow to preach to them again, when, they promised, they would bring their wives and children, manservants and maid-servants, and enjoin them not to leave the Church till the blessing was pronounced. The rector acceded to their request, and gave Barrow an invitation to deliver another discourse. But Barrow was deaf to all appeals. Nothing could induce him to preach again in a Church where he had been so insulted.

His mathematical training impressed itself upon his preaching. As the chief characteristic of the preaching of Donne was its poetic beauty, that of Barrow was its exhaustiveness. His sermons are distinguished by their weighty reasoning, their comprehensiveness of treatment, and the elaborate construction they display. "Every sermon," said Professor Wall, in his sermon on him, June 17th, 1877, "is like the demonstration of a theorem. It seems to conclude with a quod erat probandum,' which was to be proved,' and to develope into a problem, quod est faciendum, 'which must be done.' There is no escaping from this vigorous athlete, this master of the whole science of logical and rhetorical attack and defence. He pursues his antagonist into every corner of the ground, allows him, with the utmost fairness, to avail himself of all conceivable As might be expected in so exhaustive a preacher, Barrow was in the defences, and breaks them all down, one after the other, with irresistible, habit of delivering long sermons. On one occasion when he was preachand sometimes, it may be, only too numerous blows. He has no idea of ing at Westminster Abbey, the servants who conducted visitors through giving quarter in intellectual warfare." With regard to the last sentence the Cathedral became so impatient at the length of his discourse that in the preceding quotation, "that he has no idea of giving quarter," it they caused the organ to be struck up and kept it playing until they had may be said that that combativeness which was seen in his early days silenced him. Another sermon he delivered at the Abbey occupied an is seen also in his preaching. Selecting some imaginary character, he hour and a half in delivery; yet it was only half of what he had preassails him with uncompromising hostility; but lest it should be thought | pared, and which he would have preached had not the Dean requested

him to omit the second part. In Easter week in the year 1671 he preached a great sermon at the Spital, "On the Duty and Reward of Bounty to the Poor," which tradition says lasted three hours and a half. Like Donne, Barrow was an indefatigable student, and it may be mentioned that, as in the case of many distinguished preachers, he was a great smoker.

The Press

ON THE

RELIGIOUS QUESTIONS OF THE DAY.

BUDDHISM AND CHRISTIANITY.

́O reader of Mr. Huc's pleasant story of his Journey through Tartary, Thibet, and China, can be unaware that there are at least many curious external resemblances between Buddhism and Christianity, especially in its Roman Catholic form. Dr. Clarke, in the paper he has contributed to the North American Review on "Affinities of Buddhism and Christianity," has dealt in an interesting way with what is certainly an interesting subject, though we do not know that be has much which is actually new to scholars to communicate. The closer intercourse between Europe and the East, as well as the revived interest in religious and quasi-religious questions and the modern tendency to apply the "comparative" method to their discussion, has conspired of late years to draw attention to what is in fact the most widely-spread religious system in the world, for its votaries largely out-number the entire aggregate of professing Christians of every class. Schopenhauer again, as we had occasion to point out last year (May 6, 1882), was strongly attracted, not of course to the Christian but to the negative and atheistic aspects of Buddhism, and may be said to a considerable extent to have shaped his own philosophy upon it, though he perverted and, as has been observed, "vulgarized" it in the process. With that side of the question, however, we are not here immediately concerned. Dr. Clarke begins by referring to the outward and ritual resemblance which cannot fail to strike even a casual observer. Thus e.g. Buddhist priests are monks, bound by three vows of chastity, poverty and obedience, and mendicants like the Franciscans and Dominicans. They are tonsured, and in Thibet, as Huc pointed out, the Grand Lamas wear mitre, cope, and other insignia of the Latin episcopate. Rozaries, incense, candles, processions, litanies, chanted psalmody, and holy water find place in Buddhist worship; in some places in China there are even images of a Virgin Queen of Heaven with an infant in her arms holding a cross; there are relics, pilgrimages, and a kind of saint worship. But the resemblance is by no means a merely external one, nor is it confined to details peculiar to Latin Christianity. In one sense indeed, as Dr. Clarke remarks, Buddhism may be said to bear an analogy to Protestantism, as being a reform of an older system. It is more important to note that, like Christianity, it is derived from a personal founder, not a national tendency, and that both religions are "catholic, not ethnic; that is, not confined to a single race or nation, but by their missionary spirit passing beyond these boundaries, and making converts among many races." As Christianity, when rejected by the Jews, established itself among the Aryan races of Europe, so Buddhism, beginning among an Aryan people—the Hindus-when expelled from Hindostan, found a home among the Mongol races of Eastern Asia. Moreover "both the Christian and Buddhist Churches teach a divine incarnation, and worship a God-man." The question thus naturally arises, whether these resemblances are purely casual or denote real affinities; whether, in other words, either oreed is derived from the other, or both from a common source. But of such mutual or common origin history bears no trace. Buddhism grew out of Brahmanism, as Christianity may be said to have grown out of Judaism, and Judaism and Brahmanism have few analogies. But if there are curious resemblances, there are also marked differences between the two religions.

In placing first among these differences "the striking fact that Buddhism has been unable to recognise the existence of the Infinite Being," and therefore "has been called atheism by the majority of the best authorities," the writer is touching on a confessedly-difficult problem, or rather on what is the great crux to a student of the Buddhist system. We remember once hearing the question directly propounded to two educated and sincere Buddhists, whether their religion did or did not recognise a Deity, and their answer-evidently from no intention on their part to perplex or mislead-left us very much where we were before. It almost seemed as if they failed to grasp the meaning of such an inquiry, and were honestly unable to offer any definite reply. Dr. Döllinger contents himself with saying, in reference to Buddhism, that "it is an oppressive thought that from 400 to 500 millions belong to a religion which connects with a doctrine of transmigration of souls that of the Nirvana,' holding forth to man as his supreme end a condition of passive and otiose unconsciousness, and commending to him, as the truest and highest virtue, the negation of activity, will, desire, or thought." Dr. Clarke cites a writer who, while anxious to vindicate the system from such an imputation, adds, “An Agnostic school of Buddhism without doubt exists. It professes plain Atheism, and holds that every mortal, when he escapes from rebirths and the causation of Karma by the awakenment of the Bodhi or gnosis, will be annihilated. This Buddhism, by Eugène Burnouf, Saint-Hilaire, Max Müller, Csoma de Körös, and I believe, almost every writer of note, is pronounced the original Buddhism—the Buddhism of the South." At the same time, if the system be atheistic, it is atheistic with a difference. What can atheism pure and simple want with magnificent temples, elaborate ritual, priesthoods, religious orders, and all the outward semblance of apparently genuine devotion? Dr. Clarke explains the seeming paradox by saying that, if a system is atheistic which sees only the temporal and not the eternal, which acknowledges no Divine Creator and Ruler of the universe, and regards all but the finite as unknowable, then Buddhism is atheism; but then also much of the polytheism and idolatries of the ancient world mast be called atheism, and yet no one "calls the Greek worshippers atheists." To most Buddhists and Buddha, though “a finite being, who has reached Nirvana and will one day be superseded by another Buddha, yet is for the time the Supreme being, Ruler of all the worlds, the object of worship and really divine, in a subordinate sense." That is perhaps the best philosophical explanation that can be given of the difficulty; the practical explanation, if we may judge from the testimony of those familiar with countries where Buddhism prevails, we take to be simply thisthat for the learned few it is a scheme of atheistic philosophy, for the unlearned multitude, who have the common craving of humanity for supernatural aids, it is a form of more or less refined or debased idolatry. A popular religion, as has been justly observed, is always to some extent a corrupt religion, else it would not for the populace be a religion at all. They are indeed, as Dr. Clarke himself says, a minority of Christians who "fully realize the infinite and eternal nature of the Deity." What. however, among Christians is an acknowledged defect may be called s rule in Buddhism. "In the reaction against Brahmanism, the Brah manic faith in the infinite was wholly lost. In the fully-developed system of the ancient Hindoo religion, the infinite overpowered the finite, the temporal world was regarded as an illusion, and only th external was real. The reaction from this extreme was so complete a to carry the Buddhist to the exact opposite. If to the Brahman all the finite world was only maya, illusion, to the Buddhists all the infinite unseen world was unknowable, and practically nothing." But still to the ordinary Buddhist bis creed is not a mere agnostic philosophy, but s religion and a cult-the worship of a "Supreme being, a mighty ruler, governing all things by his will."

To this radical flaw, however, "the absence of the inspiration which comes from belief in an eternal world," the writer traces with much show of reason the fatal defect in Buddhism which helps so far to neutralize its nobler elements and makes it "an arrested religion, while Christianity is progressive," so that "the word Christendom is synonymous with a progressive civilization, while Buddhism is everywhere connected with one which is arrested and stationary." The positive side of its ethical teaching has in the main been excellent. It has taught benevolence, patience, self-denial, charity, toleration; its defects spring inevitably from its negative aim, the desire to get rid of sorrow and evil by sinking into apathy rather than to triumph over them. As to Buddha or Sakyamuni

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himself, of whom it may truly be said that " he went about doing good," there are remarkable analogies in his life and that of the Founder of Christianity, and we fully agree with the writer as to the absurdity of attempting to reduce his unquestionably historical personality- however overlaid with later fabulous traditions-into a solar myth. This solar myth theory does certainly prove too much; it is a solvent powerful enough to dissolve all history. But there is one curious fact about the biography of Sakyamuni, pointed out by Professor Max Müller in his Chips from a German Workshop, which Dr. Clarke does not notice. Under the new nomenclature of St. Barlaam and St. Josaphat he has found his way into Christian hagiology. The story of these saints who still, we believe, hold their place both in the Greek and Roman Calendar, is ascribed (rightly according to Professor Max Müller) to St. John of Damascus, the last great theologian of the Eastern Church, and became extremely popular during the middle ages, being translated into all the principal languages both of Eastern and Western Christendom. There were indeed doubts felt about its authenticity, though Bellamine put them aside as profane; Leo Alextius thought it had possibly been embellished, and the learned Bishop Huet of Avranches was inclined to be sceptical; but as the names of the saints occur in the Martyrology, and St. John of Damascus had himself invoked their intercession, he felt that he had no right to doubt. That the story is taken from the legendary life of Sakyamuni in the Lalita Vistara no one who compares the two can entertain a moment's doubt. And this circumstance helps, of course, to confirm the analogy, which has been dwelt upon, between the ethical standards of Buddhism and Christianity. Besides, however, these real and very remarkable resemblances, others are sometimes alleged, which it would be scarcely possible to explain except on the hypothesis that one system was derived from the other. Such, for instance, are the pre-existence of Buddha in heaven, his birth of a virgin, salutation by angels, presentation in the temple, baptism by fire and water, dispute with the doctors, temptation in the wilderness, transfiguration, descent into hell, and ascension into heaven. But the Lalita Vistari, from which these stories are taken, was composed, according to Mr. Rhys Davids, the Hibbert lecturer of 1881, between six hundred and a thousand years after the time of Sakyamuni, and, therefore, also some time after the introduction of Christianity into the world, by some Buddhist poet in Nepaul. "As evidence," he observes, what early Buddhism actually was, it is of about the same value as some medieval poem would be of the real facts of the Gospel history." The best critics are indeed unanimous in declaring that there is no evidence of Christianity having borrowed anything from the older religion. Nor does it appear that, with the exception perhaps of some later and accidental details, Buddhism has borrowed from Christian precedents. The coincidences are certainly very remarkable, and one may be disposed to say with Professor Max Müller, after recounting the strange tale of the transformation of the founder of Buddhism into a Catholic saint, that, "if he lived the life which is there described, few saints had a better claim to the title than Buddha." The ethical superiority of Buddhism to some of the great religions of the world, such e.g. as Mahometanism, may perhaps be due in no small measure to its setting before its followers, like Christianity, not simply a rule of life, but a high personal exemplar.--The Saturday Review.

T

PALMER ON THE RUSSIAN CHURCH.

66 of

HIS volume is a remarkable one for many reasons. The late Mr. William Palmer, eldest brother of Lord Selborne and Archdeacon Palmer, was a noticeable figure in the Oxford world of forty years ago. That he possessed in an eminent degree the noble and winning personal qualities ascribed to him by Cardinal Newman we have no doubt; even those who were but slightly acquainted with him could not fail to recognize and respect his manifest simplicity and sincerity of character. But to outsiders he was chiefly-and so far correctly-known as one who had made it the special work of his life to study the history and actual condition of the Eastern Church, both Greek and Russian, and that not from a merely antiquarian or speculative interest, but with the hope of promoting a reunion of the separated portions of the Christian Church. A great deal has been said during the last few years about the union of Easterns and Anglicans, and an Association has

actually been formed for the furtherance of that; object, but we need hardly say that forty years ago the idea was a wholly novel one to both parties alike. Mr. Palmer's interest in the subject was not at all diminished by his subsequent reception into the Church of Rome. To the last he devoted himself to the same studies, and he had collected about him in his lodgings at Rome-for his health had long made habitual residence in England impossible to him-a library of some thousands of volumes bearing on the Eastern Church. He knew probably much more about it than any other man living-certainly much more than any other Englishman, not excepting the late Dr. Neale, and he has left behind him several works on the subject. It seems strange therefore that he should never himself have undertaken the publication of this journal of his visit to Russia, in spite of the urgent solicitations cf his friend Cardinal Newman; but he bequeathed all his papers by will to the Cardinal, who has now discharged the task, at once as a labour of love due to the memory of his departed friend, and because he thinks the volume will "prove interesting and useful to Christian readers generally." There can be no doubt that he has judged rightly. The book cannot fail to have an interest in various ways, even to many who may not exactly share the views of the writer, and not least for the vivid picture it presents to us of the actual condition of the Russian Church, gained without effort by the author's familiar intercourse with priests and laymen, and with the population generally. Cardinal Newman thus summarizes, fairly enough, the record of Mr. Palmer's enterprise and its result :

Mr. Palmer demanded communion, not as a favour, but as a right; order to become a Catholic, but because he was a Catholic already. not as if on his part a gratuitous act, but as his simple daty; not in Now, if in refusing him they had confined themselves to the reason which they did also give, that, till he had anathematized the Anglican Articles, they could not be sure he was not a Lutheran or a Calvinist, they would at least have been intelligible; or, if they had simply urged, cedents for the case of an individual, and that Synods must meet, as they also did, that they could not commit themselves to new preand formal correspondence ensue, and authoritative canons pass, on the part both of Russia and England, before any acts of communion could take place, that too was a prudent and sensible course, and would give hopes for the future; but, instead of keeping to ground so clear and so easily maintained, some of their highest prelates and officials go out of their way to deny altogether, or at least to ignore, the Catholicity of the Church as recognised in the Creed, as if their own time-honoured communion was but a revival of the ancient Donatists. They say virtually, even if not expressly, "We know nothing about Unity, nothing about Catholicity; it is no term of ours; it had indeed a meaning once, it has (because it came from the East, whence Divine Truth has ever issued), Our church is not Catholic, it is Holy and Orthodox; also it is Oriental. We know of no true Church besides our own. We are the only Church in the world. The Latins are heretics, or all but heretics; you are worse; we do not even know your name. There is no true Christianity in the world except in Russia, Greece, and the Levant; and as to the Greeks, many as they are, after all they are a poor

none now.

lot.

Not indeed that Mr. Palmer met with anything like personal coldness or discourtesy on the part of any distinguished personages, lay and clerical, to whom he was accredited; on the contrary, little as they could at first understand his motives in coming amongst them, they gave him a cordial welcome, listened with interest and earnestness to what he had to say, and were as frank and communicative in their conversations with him as he was with them, so that they parted at last with a mutual good understanding, and warm expressions of a hope on their part that his charitable labours might not have been thrown away. Cardinal Newman expresses his own strong conviction that “such labours are, in a religious point of view, never wasted, never lost," and thinks that something at least has been done to promote a closer union between "men of good wil," now seaparated from each other, in the future. But when he proceeds to recall the words of “a leading Russian authority" addressed to Mr. Palmer-M. Mouravieff, a lay official of the Holy Synod to the effect that, "If England would approach the Russian Church with a view to an ecclesiastical union, she must do so through the medium of her legitimate Patriarch, the Bishop of Rome," one or two obvious comments at once suggest themselves, Would the Pope be content to sink his more ambitious claims in those of a Western Patriarch? And meanwhile, would the Russian Church be at all more disposed to receive the advances of the Anglican as a portion of the Latin communion, which they are repeatedly found in this volume de

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