direct relation to God, it needs to realize the belief in action, if it would not lose it. Detained too long in the fetters of nature-worship, pantheism was inevitable. The Aryan singers gradually shaped themselves into an oppressive, priestly guild; and, with the downfall of liberty and personality, of course, the power of pantheism and the priesthood obtained a still greater ascendancy. When the period came when reform should have been undertaken, it took a logical and metaphysical form under the Brahmins, and moral consciousness was completely repressed. The mind ran riot in sacrifice and prayer and license of speculation. Pantheism was destructive to the energy of the old faith, and to true philosophic thought. Very soon they no longer understood the language of their own hymns. Previous to the time of Buddha, the philosophy of the Vedantists arose in direct opposition to the Sankhya philosophy of contemplation; but, in Bunsen's view, neither was atheistic.

"Brahma was begotten before all else, from everlasting." "That which is not spoken in speech, but by which speech is spoken, this, know thou, is Brahma." "The Existent is the root of all creatures; the Existent is their resting-place; the Existent is their foundation." And, singularly enough, this word, the Existent, is that which some Jewish rabbis are beginning to claim as the most ancient and only adequate synonym of Jehovah.

It is necessary to fix a steady gaze upon the tragical unfolding of Brahmanism, the intolerable contrast between these lofty thoughts and the horrible realities of society, as well as the effects of a climate at once heating and enervating,before we can understand the character of Buddha, the germs of disintegration and reconstruction involved in his institutions, and the success which he achieved. Sâkya, the penitent, was a typical Indian; he was the son of a king, who became by choice an ascetic. He taught for twenty-one years. His character was noble, self-sacrificing, and overflowing with brotherly love. He ordered his disciples to hand down his teachings; yet up to the second Buddhist Council, held a hundred years after his death, scarce any

thing had been committed to writing. In the first assembly, held after Buddha's death, his favorite disciple, Anauda, was excommunicated as an unbeliever, so early did the work of corruption begin. The most important of the Buddhist writings, "The Footprints of the Law," was brought to Europe by Rask. In 1855, Fausböll published the Pali text in Latin type, accompanied by a literal Latin rendering. Bunsen gives three poems from this book in full, which exhibit an earnest and energetic reformer, who bases every thing on true piety and works of mercy. He did not enter into open hostility with the established religion as regarded the ancient rites connected with the worship of fire. All the castes might continue to exist; but he abolished the monopoly of teaching enjoyed by the Brahmins, by enlisting from all castes, even the lowest, a body of mendicant friars, bound by a vow to this duty. His superiority to Origen is shown by one fine saying: "If the spirit, which is the Master, be kept under control, it follows of itself that his servants will also be restrained. What does it avail if the power, but not the wish, to do wrong be vanquished?" Yet he was opposed to bodily austerities. The Nirvâna of Buddha is the utter relinquishment of self. Here is a specimen of his compromise with external rites:

"Brahma dwells in those families in which the children render complete honor to their father and mother, and faithfully serve them. . . . The Fire of the heavenly hearth is in those families in which father and mother are honored and faithfully served." Bunsen discusses the opinions of Burnouf at length, and then formularizes Buddhism in the following words:

"In the soul there is an immortal germ, the Spirit, the sole truly divine element; its finite existence rests on the perception and desire of the nugatory external world, to which also the body belongs. But the aim of human life is, that all desire should cease, that the man should die to himself, utterly and once for all; nay, even to every thought of a reward for goodness, or punishment for sin. Not till he does this will the godlike element shine forth in its native power; and this is the true divine life."

It was the weak point of this system, that it did not estab lish the conscious Eternal on its proper basis, The consequent failure to recognize the unity of mankind as a race, and its unity with God, came to assume the shape of negations, and the one-sidedness of its author that of positive denial. The religious conceptions of Aryans and Semites start from the origin of the race. The symbolizing of demiurgic forces was succeeded by Primitive Forces conceived as substances, and the contemplation of astral bodies. Among the Iranians, no new personage of creative transforming genius arose after Zoroaster. Among the Indians the first was Buddha. Had he poured his personal religion without compromise into the actual life about him, he would have regenerated the whole Aryan world. Who of all founders dared that great deed, save Christ? Let us not forget what the Asiatic Aryans have already done.

"In the first place, they have placed God really in the universe, and moreover as the Conscious Intelligence, which reflects itself again in the well-balanced human intellect; and is not only felt in the conscience, but also recognized by the reason, although restricted within the limits of finite forms of thought." Secondly, though they have not indeed founded a free polity, they have built up piety and freedom on the domestic altar, which is the type, the beginning, and the condition of all political sanctities and liberties."

The Fourth Book treats of "The religious consciousness of the Aryans in Asia Minor and Europe previous to the Christian era."

What have the Greeks possessed and transmitted to us of the nature of Divine superintendence? We must endeavor to acquire some notion of that afflatus of religious feeling with which Hellenic existence is saturated, and of that peculiar gracefulness which softens the severity of the abstract idea. The authors of the Greek Epos and Drama interpreted for us the dream of life. Homer no more invented his incidents than Shakspeare; but he stamped upon them the personal impress of a free creative mind. The Hellenic faith was the offspring of its civil liberty. Among the Ionic colo

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nies, in the flush of their youthful bloom, the Homeric Epos sprang to life. Two generations later, the Sacred Epos of Hesiod crystallized in a permanent form. These represent the first phase of Hellenic religion, the Ionic. The Drama is of Attic parentage. Hesiod's story of Uranos and Kronos is in fact of Semitic origin: only Zeus is Aryan. Kronos devours a stone instead of his child, an exhibition of the pressure of physical nature upon the human soul. When Divine Wisdom, the Thinker, has been united to Zeus, he takes for his wife Themis, or Legal Order. The three daughters of Light and Order are the three Horæ, corresponding to the three seasons of the Hellenic year. Diké is Justice; Eunomia, Progress; Irene, Peace. And from the same wedlock spring the three fates, bound three in one by freedom and necessity. There is no intervention between Zeus and the human spirit. Reflective Reason is his daughter, without admixture of natu ral causes: she steps forth into the world, and utters the pregnant dictate, that "the highest tribunal upon earth is the collective conscience of humanity." What a sense do we get of the Divine element in the development of a free fellowship among men! How low, in comparison, is the aspect of the political life of what we call the Christian world! But God is still afar off! The men of the brazen age sprang from the ash-tree; that is, they came down from the hills, with spears made of it in their hands. Hesiod found ready the story of the flood, joint heritage of Semitic and Aryan.

There is one forcible contrast in the Hebrew and Hellenic stories of the creation. In the one narrative, God said, "Let there be light;" in the other, the Powers of Light rise to natural ascendancy. The names of Iapetos (Japhet) and Prometheus figure in both; and from this point Aryan and Semitic lines of thought diverge, as it would seem, for ever. Prometheus is a Titan (Tatan), the Egyptian designation for every creative divinity, more especially for Ptah, moulder of man. The arbitrary reign of Zeus could not endure for ever: when he devoured his pregnant wife, and incorporated Wisdom with his own essence, he postponed, but could not change, his destiny. When he marries "Legal Order" for his

second wife, the predestined son will be born, and reign over the earth instead of necessity. Bunsen thinks Iapetos was originally conceived as a world-creating Titan, hence called "the opener" (of the universal ice). According to the Greek conception, the greatest of mysteries is the oneness of the race of gods and men. Nemesis signifies our moral indignation at presumption: it is the recognition of the universal conscience. This kernel of religious belief is the precursor of the religion of the spirit. Among the Aryans, the declaration that conscience is the basis of all religions was made with a depth and thoroughness unsurpassed. The sanctity of moral energy revealed to the Greek his Epos and Drama; it conducted him to political freedom, and gave to him the same support that the Hebrew found in the idea of the Eternal. We should hardly be justified in placing the rise of the Thracian mystics-such as Orpheus, Musæus, and Linusin post-Homeric times. Aphrodite was neither Mylitta nor Astarte; and blood-thirsty Moloch was not only the antagonist of Jehovah, but the opposite of Zeus, God of the bright Ether.

In reference to oracles, Bunsen says, "The term 'Sibyl' is Greek. In the Eolic, it signifies à decree of Zeus. The great sceptic, Heraclitus, believed in the Sibyls. The Sibylline prediction was evidently that of a clairvoyante. A step forward had been taken, when men no longer read auguries in the entrails of a victim, but took them fresh from the "beholding mind." In the time of Aristotle, the Orphics were already a kind of fakirs, strolling musicians, and diviners. The first attempt to link the myths together into a system of thought was made by Pherecides of Syra, the master of Pythagoras. Pythagoras said that the best part of a man's life was that which he devoted to the worship of God,true Orphic saying. The indelible stamp of holiness which he sought to impress on Greece is closely connected with the circle of ideas which we are considering. He was the first man to say "Kosmos" in the modern sense. We possess none of his writings; he stood midway between Zoroaster and Plato. Bunsen believes that we owe to him one letter of

a