“Few are the men who, like Dr. Priestly, have the courage to write, “We find nothing like divinity ascribed to Christ before Justin Martyr, (A.D. 141), who, from being a philosopher, became a Christian.”
Mahomet appeared nearly six hundred years after the presumed deicide. The Graeco-Roman world was still convulsed with religious dissensions, withstanding all the past imperial edicts and forcible Christianization. While the Council of Trent was disputing about the Vulgate, the unity of God quietly superseded the trinity, and soon the Mahometans outnumbered the Christians. Why? Because their prophet never sought to identify himself with Allah. Otherwise, it is safe to say, he would not have lived to see his religion flourish. Till the present day Mahometanism has made and is now making more proselytes than Christianity.
Buddha Siddhartha came as a simple mortal, centuries before Christ. The religious ethics of this faith are now found to far exceed in moral beauty anything ever dreamed of by the Tertullians and Augustines. The true spirit of Christianity can alone be fully found in Buddhism; partially, it shows itself in other “heathen” religions. Buddha never made of himself a god, nor was he deified by his followers. The Buddhists are now known to far outnumber Christians; they are enumerated at nearly 500,000,000. While cases of conversion among Buddhists, Brahmanists, Mahometans, and Jews become so rare as to show how sterile are the attempts of our missionaries, atheism and materialism spread their gangrenous ulcers and gnaw every day deeper at the very heart of Christianity.
There are no atheists among heathen populations, and those few among the Buddhists and Brahmans who have become infected with materialism may always be found to belong to large cities densely thronged with Europeans, and only among educated classes. Truly says Bishop Kidder” “Were a wise man to choose his religion from those who profess it, perhaps Christianity would be the last religion he would choose!”
In an able little pamphlet from the pen of the popular lecturer, J. M. Peebles, M.D., the author quotes, from the London Athenaeum, an article in which are described the welfare and civilization of the inhabitants of Yarkand and Kashgar, “who seem virtuous and happy.” “Gracious Heavens”, fervently exclaims the honest author, who himself was once a Universalist clergyman, “Grant to keep Christian missionaries away from ‘happy’ and heathen Tartary!””
H. P. Blavatsky
The Mark Of God: Understanding Your "I AM Presence" 