ssiah, p. 250.

[302:1] Beal: Hist. Buddha, p. vi.

[302:2] Ibid. pp. x. and xi.

[302:3] Ibid. pp. vii., ix. and _note_.

[303:1] Bunsen's Angel-Messiah, p. 50.

[303:2] Quoted by Prof. Beal: Hist. Buddha, p. viii.

[303:3] Rhys Davids' Buddhism, p. 86.

[303:4] Science of Religion, p. 243.

[303:5] Rhys Davids' Buddhism.

[303:6] Ibid. p. 184.

"It is surprising," says Rhys Davids, "that, like Romans worshiping
Augustus, or Greeks adding the glow of the sun-myth to the glory of
Alexander, the Indians should have formed an ideal of their Chakravarti,
and transferred to this new ideal many of the dimly sacred and half
understood traits of the Vedic heroes? Is it surprising that the
Buddhists should have found it edifying to recognize in _their_ hero the
Chakravarti of Righteousness, and that the story of the Buddha should be
tinged with the coloring of these Chakravarti myths?" (Ibid. Buddhism,
p. 220.)

[303:7] In Chapter xxxix., we shall explain the _origin_ of these myths.

CHAPTER XXX.

THE EUCHARIST OR LORD'S SUPPER.

We are informed by the _Matthew_ narrator that when Jesus was eating his
last supper with the disciples,

"He took bread and blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to
the disciples, and said, Take, eat, _this is my body_. And he
took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying,
drink ye all of it, _for this is my blood_ of the New
Testament, which is shed for many for the remission of
sins."[305:1]

According to Christian belief, Jesus _instituted_ this
"_Sacrament_"[305:2]--as it is called--and it was observed by the
primitive Christians, as he had enjoined them; but we shall find that
this breaking of bread, and drinking of wine,--_supposed to be the body
and blood of a god_[305:3]--is simply another piece of Paganism imbibed
by the Christians.

The _Eucharist_ was instituted many hundreds of years before the time
assigned for the birth of Christ Jesus. Cicero, the greatest orator of
Rome, and one of the most illustrious of her statesmen, born in the year
106 B. C., mentions it in his works, and wonders at the strangeness of
the rite. "How can a man be so stupid," says he, "as to imagine that
which he eats to be a God?" There had been an esoteric meaning attached
to it from the first establishment of the _mysteries_ among the Pagans,
and the Eucharistia is one of the oldest rites of antiquity.

The adherents of the Grand Lama in