.
It is only by ignoring the totally different bases, and indeed the general architecture, so to say, of the two edifices of religious thought, that the resemblances of separate features are made to appear significant.
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• [Editorial Note]: Yet the fundamental “bases” of both religions—separation of ‘self’ from a timeless and spaceless and discarnate absolute (an atemporal, aspatial, aphenomenal ‘deus absolutus’ regardless of sectarian name) by virtue of being incarnate—is strikingly similar.
As briefly as possible: a devout Christian—by rights a truly remorseful sinner no less—is by simple definition asunder-apart-away-from their scriptual creator gods
⁽⁰¹⁾
and their much-coveted edenic pleasaunce
,
and pines for restoration of the prelapsarian
state of grace. Indeed, the religio-spiritual tenet of ‘Original Sin’ (being ejected
from the Garden of Eden⁽⁰²⁾
for transgression, for disobedience, in fact) essentially means one thing, and one thing
alone ... to wit: separation of ‘self’ from the timeless and spaceless and discarnate
absolute (the ‘deus absolutus’ as
revealed by the ‘deus-incarnatus’
upon which the biblical scriptures draw their sooth)
by virtue of being incarnate.
⁽⁰¹⁾Then ɢᴏᴅ said, ‘Let *Us* make man in *Our image* according to *Our likeness* and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth’. [emphases added]. ~ (Genesis 1:26; KJV).Again, it is obvious the anonymous writer knows not what Mr. Arthur Lillie is actually talking about. Maybe it is a case of either mysticism not being taught, at whatever seminary it was he obtained his academic-qualification from, or he forgot to turn up for lectures on that day.
⁽⁰²⁾Then the ʟᴏʀᴅ ɢᴏᴅ said, ‘Behold, the man has become *like one of Us* knowing good and evil
(NB.: An extraordinary exposé of the long-term effects of the biblical account of humankind’s ancestral progenitors having partaken of ‘the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil’ is re-presented in the above mouse-hover tool-tip—the yellow rectangle with the capitalised ‘I’ for info—and is well-worth perusing for its originality in concept).
(Incidentally, this is where he begins to mindlessly manifest that preposterous rationale of his—a desperate strategy, wrought out of whole cloth, about some unnamed but sneaky heathens on unenumerated dates and at undesignated locations surreptitiously slipping extracts of scriptures, parables and homilies from unidentified missionaries into their own scriptures—in order to distract attention away from all the evidence for it being ťother way round, and which is, in sooth, an abject note to finish on
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A person ignorant of horticulture might suppose that apples and pears were descended from the same not very remote ancestral tree, but they belong to distinct species.
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• [Editorial Note]: As both “apples and pears” are members of the rose family of plants (a.k.a. the Rosaceæ family) the anonymous writer would have been well-advised to consult a horticulturist before putting pen to paper. Viz.:
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• rose family (n.): a large family of plants, the Rosaceæ⁽*⁾, characterised by often showy flowers with five separated petals and numerous stamens, including fruit plants such as the *apple,* cherry, peach, *pear,* plum, raspberry, and strawberry, and ornamentals such as roses and spireas. [emphases added]. ~ (American Heritage Dictionary; 2016).
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⁽*⁾Rosaceæ (n. pl.): an order polypetalous plants, of the cohort Rosales; rose family. It is characterised by a calyx of five lobes often alternating with five bractlets; by a calyx-tube sheathed by a disk which bears the five uniform petals and the one or more complete circles of numerous stamens; and by the usually several or many separate carpels inserted at the base or throat of the calyx-tube, each with a basilar or ventral style, and usually with two anatropous ovules which are pendulous or ascending. Some yellow-flowered or white-flowered species suggest by their appearance the buttercup family, Ranunculaceæ, but their numerous stamens and pistils are inserted on the calyx or disk, not on the receptacle. The rose family is closely allied to the Leguminosæ; but in that order the fifth petal, in this the fifth sepal, is nearest the axis of the plant. The resemblance is most strongly marked between the drupaceous Rosaceæ and the acacias. The order passes gradually, through the spirmas, into the saxifrage family, but is distinguished in general by its inflorescence, its exalbuminous seeds, and its commonly numerous pistils. Its species are properly about 1,000, though over 2,000 have been enumerated. They are classed in 71 genera composing 10 tribes (Chrysobalaneæ, Pruneæ, Spiræeæ, Quillaieæ, Rubeæ, Potentilleæ, Poterieæ, Roseæ, Neuradeæ, and Pomeæ). These are often grouped in 3 subfamilies, Drupaceæ, Pomaceæ, and Rosaceæ proper. They are natives both of temperate and of tropical regions, extending southward principally in the tribes Chrysobalaneæ and Quillaieæ; 4 genera reach Australia, 4 South Africa, and 4 or 5 Chili. The chief home of the order, however, is the north temperate zone, whence it extends into the extreme north. More than 25 species occur in Alaska, while the genera Alchemilla, Potentilia, and especially Dryas, furnish characteristic arctic plants, the last affording the most common plant found by the Greely arctic expedition, forming beds covering acres in the interior of Grinnell Land, and flourishing on Lockwood’s island, latitude 83° 24′ N. The order includes herbs, trees, and shrubs, either erect or prostrate, rarely climbing. Their leaves are generally alternate, either simple or compound, often with glandular teeth, accompanied by stipules, these being free or adherent to the petiole, which is frequently dilated at the base and gland-bearing at the summit. The flowers are very often showy, commonly red, white, or yellow, but not blue, of very various inflorescence, either solitary or in racemes, spikes, panicles, or cymes. The order offers examples of widely different types of fruit, as the drupe, pome, follicle, and achene, with many specialised fruiting-bodies, as the rose-hip, the fleshy receptacle of the strawberry, and the drupetum or collection of small drupes found in the raspberry, and, with the addition of a fleshy receptacle, in the blackberry. The true berry and the capsule are, however, but seldom produced in this family. Many of the most valued fruit-trees belong here, as *the apple, the pear,* the plum, the cherry, the peach, and the apricot; and many of the most common ornamental flowering shrubs of cultivation, for which see Rosa (the type), Spiræa, Kerria, Photinia, Pyrus, Prunus, etc.; together with many weedy plants, as Agrimonia, Geum, Potentilia. [New Latin (Jussieu, 1789), fem. pl. of Latin rosaceus; see rosaceous]. [emphasis added]. ~ (Century Dictionary and Cyclopaedia; 1909).
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This literal “apples and pears” analogy is somewhat similar to the human situation as all peoples are of the same species—videlicet Homo sapiens sapiens (subspecies of Homo sapiens in the family Hominidae)—regardless any and all physiognomical distinctions and physiological differentiations.
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Until post-Christian times, when missionaries may {!sic!} have furnished the channel by which some resemblances of ritual passed over into the ritualistic system of Northern Buddhism, the development of religion in the farther East and that of which Christianity was the outcome pursued their course independently of one another.
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• [Editorial Note]: According to an 1853 article in “The Westminster Review” Mr. Arthur Schopenhauer is excessively wroth with those missionary societies who send back to India the adulterated form of a doctrine which the natives already possess in greater purity. Viz.:
• “With respect to the individual will, Schopenhauer is an absolute necessitarian, holding that the action of a certain motive on a certain character is as sure of producing a certain result, as an operation of agent upon patient in the sphere of mechanics. What may be a motive to one person may not be a motive to another, for the characters may be different; but given the character and the motive, the result is infallible. The absolute will, which lay beyond the jurisdiction of causality, has forced itself into the world of phenomena in an individual shape, and it must take the consequences, that is to say, a subjugation to that law of cause and effect by which the whole world of phenomena is governed, and which is equally potent in the discharge of a pistol and the performance of a virtuous action. *The ‘character’,* which is the Idea of the human individual, just as gravitation is one of the Ideas of matter, *is born with him, and cannot be altered.* The knowledge of the individual may be enlarged, and consequently he may be put in a better track, by learning that his natural desires will be more gratified if he obeys the laws of society, than if he rises against them; *but the character remains the same,* although the cupidity which would have made a gamester or a highwayman, may become a constituent element in an honest tradesman. *Thus every man brings his own depravity into the world with him, and this is the great doctrine of original sin,* as set forth by Augustine, expounded by Luther and Calvin, and applauded by Schopenhauer, who, though a freethinker in the most complete sense of the word, is absolutely delighted with the fathers and the reformers, when they bear witness to human degradation. *The world of phenomena is a delusion—a mockery;* and the fact of *being born into such a world is in itself an evil.* So thought the immediate apostles of Christianity—so thought the anchorites of the desert—so thought Pedro Calderón de la Barca when he wrote his play of ‘Life is a Dream’ (1636), which Schopenhauer quotes with especial unction,—and, above all, *so say the teachers of Hindostan.* If a contrary doctrine is held in Europe, it is the mere result of Judaism, which with its doctrine of a First Cause and its system of temporal rewards—that is to say, its optimism—Schopenhauer regards with the contempt of a consistent Kantist, and the hatred of a profound misanthrope. *Christianity, he thinks, is a result of Hindooism, which became corrupted in its passage through Palestine* , and he is excessively wroth with *those missionary societies who send back to India the adulterated form of a doctrine which the natives already possess in greater purity* ...”. [emphases added]. ~ (pp. 405-406Ha! ... the anonymous spokesperson for the High Church of England has less than the proverbial snowball’s chance
when it comes to tangling with a ‘great thinker’ of the German Aufklärung (i.e.,
the seventeenth-eighteenth century Age of Enlightenment).And although he conditions that preposterous rationale of his with a weaselly “may” the evidence of commerce, and its concomitant religio-cultural exchanges, betwixt the Indian sub-continent and the Mediterranean countries (including, and especially, Ancient Greece) many centuries prior to the Christian-Era, is incontrovertible (not to forget the ‘carved-in-stone’ evidence of missionary activity).
Golly, it even features in Christianity’s “Holy Bible” (1 Kings ix. 26-28 and 1 Kings x. 11-12 & 22) with a brief but significant mention of the nautical enterprise undertaken by King Solomon/ Sulaymān (a.k.a. Jedidiah) in conjunction with King Hiram, the Phoenician sovereign of Tyre.
The readers of The Church Quarterly Review now have it on good authority that the expedition sailed from Elath at the head of the eastern arm of the Red Sea, and returned after an absence of three years, bringing gold, silver, precious stones, ivory, apes, peacocks, and ‘almug’ trees, that is sandal-wood. Note how the Hebrew words for ‘apes’, ‘peacocks’, and ‘sandal-wood’ are by origin Sanskrit, while the things denoted, as well as ivory, are products of India, peacocks and sandal-wood being products of no other country. From the mention of gold, which might have been brought from the upper Indus, it is inferred that there was a regular traffic from the inland country to the coast; and from the fact that sandal-wood only flourishes in the tropical land of Malabar, there is a similar inference with regard to traffic with south-western India.
These inferences with regard to traffic, combined with the fact mentioned above, that certain products of India are exported under names which the Indians have given them, imply a long-standing system of commerce.
Ha! ... there is nothing quite like utilising the anonymous writer’s own evidence (from pp. 93-94 further above
).¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
We have only to recall to mind the grand conception of the Supreme Being and of His relation to His creatures—a conception which, though expanded and developed, continued essentially identical throughout the course of Biblical history—to assure ourselves that this was the case.
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• [Editorial Note]: Well, well, well ... to finish with an approbation of the (mercurial
hence unforeseeable) “grand conception of the Supreme Being”,
as above, along with an endorsement of the (capricious hence unpredictable) nature of “His
relation to His creatures” rhetoric—both commendations
surging forth from the anonymous writer’s copiously flowing pen as if coming from
some complacent canon who has misguidedly taken a brain-flatus
to be a divine-afflatus—looks
suspiciously like the fall-back position resorted to, when all else fails, of
invoking, and, no doubt, stoutly asserting, the hoary “God moves in mysterious ways
His wonders to perform” argument-from-faith.And thus doth this unhelpful ‘Church Quarterly Review’ apologetics
cometh to a miasmal
end (its mephitic
vapouring withal).What cannot be dismissed out-of-hand, however, is the irrefragable
carved-in-stone evidence—sculptured in marble, in fact, in this instance—from the
time of Emperor Asoka (273-232 BCE). Viz.:
• [Mr. Arthur Lillie]: “At the date of Asoka (B.C. 260) there was a metrical life of Buddha (Muni Gatha), and the incidents of this life are found sculptured in marble on the gateways of Buddhist temples that precede the Christian epoch. This is the testimony of Sir Alexander Cunningham, the greatest of Indian archæologists. He fixes the date of the Bharhut Stupa at from 270 to 250 B.C. There he finds Queen Mâyâ’s dream of the elephant, the Rishis at the ploughing match, the transfiguration of Buddha and the ladder of diamonds, and other incidents. At the Sanchi tope, an earlier structure (although the present marble gateways, repeated probably from wood, are fixed at about 19 A.D.), he announces representations of Buddha as an elephant coming down to his mother’s womb, three out of the ‘Four Presaging Tokens’, Buddha bending the bow of Sinhahanu, King Bimbisâra visiting the young prince, and other incidents”No last-ditch appeal to some nebulous “grand conception” contained in the inscrutable mind of the forever unknowable ‘deus absolutus’ of biblical lore and legend—a conception which, “though expanded and developed”, can nevertheless still be somehow deemed (read: stoutly asserted) as remaining “essentially identical” all throughout a vaguely indicated aeonic period—is ever going to trump Mr. Lillie’s ace.
So endeth the lesson.
—««o0||Finis||0o»»—
Full Disclosure.
The author of this examen—the writer typing these editorial notes—has insider information on matters pertaining to religio-spiritual enlightenment/ mystico-metempirical awakenment as, day in and day out
for eleven years (1981-1992), he lived that/was that
acausal, atemporal, aspatial, aphenomenal alterity of an ‘utterly other’ nature
which the sammāsambuddha rediscovered,
whilst resolutely sitting under an assattha/ pippal tree (‘Ficus religiosa’)
some two and a half millennia ago, and spoke so eloquently about for nigh-on fifty
years.Furthermore, the writer typing these very words is in the truly unique position of having gone beyond that religio-spiritual/ mystico-metempirical altered state of consciousness—in an edifying moment of manumission
whereupon an actual freedom from the human condition
ensued at that definitive event—and
can ‘look back’ in an absolutely non-autocentric
manner, and, thusly, readily access the heart of these matters in a way no human being
has ever been able to before.Hence the detailed explications throughout the inline editorial notes of this examen are not only of a nature neither spoken nor written for two thousand years and more—all what has been available for sincere seekers of truth, for buddhistic practicians, for christocentric pietists, and the ilk, to incorporate into their daily life has been hackneyed rehashes of multitudinous miss-the-mark iterations as propagated by the many and various unenlightened/ unawakened
theologians, eschatologists, metaphysicians, metempiricists, palingenesists, and the
ilk—but also are verily nonpareil
in their depth and scope.Now here is a curious thing: actualism
dynamically delivers unto daily life what those anattāvādans (falsely)
believe their buddhistic scriptures do—there is no cognitive-affective-intuitive ‘self’
in any way, shape, or form whatsoever in actuality—as well as what a prelapsarian’s
much-coveted edenic pleasaunce is but a religio-spiritual facsimile of ... to wit: the
pristine purity of the actual world,
the empirical world of sensorial experience, the corporeal world of sensitive
perception, the sensational
world, as-it-is in actuality, throughout the sentiency-field (i.e., the material world
of physical mass and energy a.k.a. the world of minera and flora and fauna) where
flesh-and-blood bodies only have ubiety.Ain’t life grand!
—««o0o»»—
Addendum II:
“The Church Quarterly Review”, 1875-1900.
A Marked File and Other Sources; Josef L. Altholz
Victorian Periodicals Review
Vol. 17, No. 1/2 (Spring - Summer, 1984), pp. 52-57
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press on behalf of the ‘Research Society for Victorian Periodicals’.
[www.jstor.org/stable/20082103].
[www.jstor.org/stable/20082103?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents].
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• “The Church Quarterly Review is thought of in the Twentieth Century as “the most serious” Church of England journal, not the organ of an ecclesiastical party; but it began as a distinctly High Church periodical. The principal instigator appears to have been Richard William Church (1815-1890), Dean of St. Paul’s, for it was at his Deanery that a group met in 1874 and issued a circular proposing “a sound high-class periodical” such as had been missing since the end of the ‘Christian Remembrancer’ in 1868. On 5 February 1875, a second circular appeared, signed by Dean Church and Sir Alexander James Beresford Beresford Hope (1820-1887), the ritualist spokesman in Parliament, definitively announcing The Church Quarterly Review, “to be worthily representative of the teaching and position of the Church of England”. The first issue appeared in October 1875, with its first article by Gladstone.
The first two issues may have been edited by a committee, while the conductors waited for their chosen editor, Canon Arthur Rawson Ashwell (1824-1879), to disengage himself from ‘The Literary Churchman’ which he had been editing since 1864. Ashwell came onto the board in 1876, but died prematurely in 1879. The names of his successors *remain unknown*, until Arthur Cayley Headlam (1862-1947) became editor in 1901. *The authors were, in the somewhat out-moded Victorian convention, anonymous*, except for two signed articles in the first two issues; *anonymity was a matter of policy*, established apparently by Ashwell and not changed until the reorganisation of 1907: “in the case of questions of policy *it is both convenient and desirable for the utterances to be that of ‘The Church Quarterly Review’ rather than any individual contributor”*.
A retrospective article after the first quarter-century gave the first public identification of a few authorships; but even here discretion ruled, *the identification being of authors now dead or where the authorship was generally known*. This 1900 article was supplemented by a more substantial listing *(though still only of deceased authors)* in 1907, in an article both retrospective and prospective which announced the changes then being introduced in the magazine. Recognising that “the majority of those who wish to read the Church Quarterly Review will always be clergy” and that clerical incomes had declined sharply in the last quarter-century, the proprietors halved the price—from 6 shilling to 3 shillings a copy, or from £1 to 10 shillings a year {£1 in 1907 = £145, or $290 in 2023 currency values}—to attract subscribers. It was also realised that anonymity had deterred prospective readers who might have been attracted by prominent names, and so authors’ names would henceforth be published selectively. These changes had not been made until the editor had consulted (by letter, with a form for replies) with the existing subscribers.
The modified stodginess and high-churchmanship of ‘The Church Quarterly Review’ continued until 1920. In that year the private publication of the review ceased, and it was “Published for the Proprietors by the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge”. From 1921 Headlam ceased to be editor, the masthead reading “Edited by Members of the Faculty of Theology, King’s College, London”. Since the ‘Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge’, and King’s College were broadly representative of the Church of England, the specially High Church character of ‘The Church Quarterly Review’ came to an end...”. [emphases added].
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