points may be noticed in these
sarcastic phrases: (a) the implication of a false prophecy by our Lord;
and (b) a dishonest tampering with chronological records, reminding one
of those of Eusebius, the famous Bishop of Caesarea, who stands accused
in history of "perverting every Egyptian chronological table for the
sake of synchronisms." With reference to charge one, he may be asked
why our Sakyasinha's prophecies should not be as much entitled to his
respect as those of his Saviour would be to ours--were we to ever write
the true history of the "Galilean" Arhat. With regard to charge two,
the distinguished philologist is reminded of the glass house he and all
Christian chronologists are themselves living in. Their inability to
vindicate the adoption of December 25 as the actual day of the Nativity,
and hence to determine the age and the year of their Avatar's death--
even before their own people--is far greater than is ours to demonstrate
the year of Buddha to other nations. Their utter failure to establish
on any other but traditional evidence the, to them, historically
unproved, if probable, fact of his existence at all--ought to engender a
fairer spirit. When Christian historians can, upon undeniable
historical authority, justify biblical and ecclesiastical chronology,
then, perchance, they may be better equipped than at present for the
congenial work of rending heathen chronologies into shreds.

The "channel" the Ceylonese received their information through, was two
Bikshus who had left Magadha to follow their disgraced brethren into
exile. The capacity of Siddhartha Buddha's Arhats for transmitting
intelligence by psychic currents may, perhaps, be conceded without any
great stretch of imagination to have been equal to, if not greater than,
that of the prophet Elijah, who is credited with the power of having
known from any distance all that happened in the king's bed chamber. No
Orientalist has the right to reject the testimony of other people's
Scriptures, while professing belief in the far more contradictory and
entangled evidence of his own upon the self-same theory of proof. If
Professor Muller is a sceptic at heart, then let him fearlessly declare
himself; only a sceptic who impartially acts the iconoclast has the
right to assume such a tone of contempt towards any non-Christian
religion. And for the instruction of the impartial inquirer only, shall
it be thought worth while to collate the evidence af