“CHRIST AND HIS KINDRED”

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 436, 11 January 1890, Page 5

“CHRIST AND HIS KINDRED”

Auckland, Jan. 6. i Under this title the Rev. E. H. Gulliver delivered an interesting address to a good audience in the Temperance Hall last night. He said that possibly the title he had chosen might have been misunderstood by some as referring to the physical relations of Christ, but it was only of His spiritual kindred that he wished to speak. In external nature we saw distinct grades in all natural objects. In mountains, plains and seas there were gradations of extent and height, and so in human life we saw individuals towering above their fellows in the various gifts or faculties of humanity ; among sculptors, painters, orators we all recognised certain names as standing high above the rest in these departments of human life. In mere physical strength we had men like Captain Webb, able to swim the English Channel, while others had scarce strength enough to carry them through the routine of daily life. So also with regard to morals, we often meet men whose very faces told us that we might trust them implicitly, while the look of others caused us instinctively to button up our pockets and look after our spoons. Among military men the name of Napoleon at once rose to our lips as that of a master in the art of war ; but history told us that Julius Cresar, Hannibal, and Alexander the Great were no less famous in their day, and so we mentally set them side by side and say these men resembled each other. If we took oratory we could not mention even the great names of Gladstone and Beaconsfield, without admitting the claims of Demosthenes and Cicero to equal rank ; and so in all the walks of life we naturally and instinctively group together the leading men in each. But when we came to the religious world we found a remarkable difference. We knew that nineteen centuries ago a Man lived whose life, in its purity, morality and self-devo-tion, rose high above His follows, as the Matterhorn or some majestic peak of the Andes rises above all surrounding heights. We see that in His particular line He was a veritable king. How is it that in this case we do not act as in the other cases ? Why is it said that Christ stands alone and that no comparison is admissible ? The answer i 3 very simple. It is because the whole weight of the vested interests associated with the popular religion, coupled with the influence of early training, forbid it. There were few who were competent to form an impartial judgment in religious matters—the majority rather resembled “ bowls,” for they had received a certain “ bias ” in their childhood by means of conventional thoughts inculcated from infancy, and from that particular “ bias ” they could rarely entirely free themselves. Until a very few years ago we were generally agreed in setting Christ simply by Himself, and never for an instant thought of instituting any comparison between Him and any other personages. We simply took Him as the one grand example and saviour of humanity ; but, as knowledge extended, it was recognised that in different parts of the world at different times there had been numerous instances of men being accounted “divine,” among others Zoroaster, Orpheus, Krishna, and Buddha. There was, of course, a large mass of legends associated with these names, so that absolute accuracy of detail could not be expected ; but the main facts were clear enough, and these were, that every One of these deified men exhibited the same love for humanity, the same devotion of self, the same purity and nobility of character, which in each case lod their fellow creatures to invest them with divine attributes. We thus see a group of men who are truly the kindred of Christ, a brotherhood who lived only for the good of mankind and all laying down the same lofty moral teaching. But still more remarkable was the significant fact that in each case we found almqst the same legendary stories related of each of these men. Mr Gulliver then read parallel histories of Krishna,Buddha, and Christ, showing the points of resemblance to be so closo and so numerous that it appeared impossible to resist the inference that they were all connected in some way or other, It was seen in each of these cases that although Krishna preceded Buddha by a long though uncertain interval, and although Buddha preceded Christ by about 540 years, yet around each of these there had gathered similar storiesof miraculous birth from virgin mothers—of incarnation—of membership of a Trinity, of angels and stars announcing the miraculous birth, of wise men coming from afar with gifts, of fasting and strife with temptation, of preaching holiness and working miracles, of victory over a serpent, of the crucifixion, of glorified divinity, and subsequent worship. Such were the parallel histories of these threo divine men; they varied in matters of detail, but the resemblance was none the less striking and unmistakable, and it applied to other characters reaching still further back into the distant past. The orthodox party had at first tried to explain this resemblance by saying that the stories had been borrowed from the life of Christ, but later research and fuller knowledge had proved conclusively the greater antiquity of the stories of Krishnaand Buddha, and it was therefore simply absurd to say that they were taken from the life of Christ. What then must be our conclusion on this subject? Thel most obvious and natural conclusion was that there existed then, a 3 now, in the hearts of men, a want which characters such as these men possessed alone could till ; characters radiant with human sympathy, purity, love, and self-devotion, and thus they were recognised as divine and, accepted a? eavioura of men, It might appear to some that by this comparison we were detracting from the beauty, the glory and the divinity which we had heen accustomed to associate with the name of Christ, but were vre not rather adorning Him with a glory greater atiff-r-tbe glory of truth ? It was quite impossible to resist the obvious inferences wbieh must be drawn from the similarity of the accounts ; but yet from the lives of these divine saviours (for so we might still call them) we learnt that man had within him a germ which might well be

called divine, and that by crushing down his lower nature he might rise to ever higher levels in a glorious life of which none could tell the destiny or the end. It was fabled of old in the days of Plato and Pythagoras, that the stars in their courses gave forth a solemn music, but that the ears of common mortals were too gross and carnal to catch that “ music of the spheres.” Might they not say that a still grander music was audible now, for those who strove to listen and understand, might hear the inspiriting music of the onward and upward march of man.