truth.

III

_The Principles and Teachings which differentiate and separate Christ
and Buddha_

Thus far we have seen these two great leaders of men standing side by
side and revealing the same traits and principles.

But they also revealed fundamental differences which it were well for
us to consider.

Though much united them, and that when more than five centuries and
thousands of miles held them apart, we also discover that a gulf
wider than that of time or space opened between them.

Their lives and their doctrines and the faiths which they promulgated
reveal strangely diverse contentions and tendencies.

(1) First of all, and at the root of all, lies their attitude toward
the Divine Being. Jesus was preeminently a God-intoxicated Being,
while the most manifest mental attitude of Gautama was his
agnosticism. Christ never ceased speaking of and communing with His
Father in heaven. He was wont to retire regularly from human society
in order that He might enjoy the Heavenly Presence whose very radiance
shone in and upon Him daily. He declared that He did nothing without
consulting with and receiving direction from God. And this was natural
enough when we remember His declaration that He came into the world to
reveal the Father unto men. Listen to His words, "My meat is to do the
will of Him that sent me and to finish His work." "The Father that
dwelleth in me doeth the work." "The Father is glorified in the Son."
"I love the Father and go unto Him." "Believest thou not that I am in
the Father and the Father in me?" "Oh, righteous Father, the world
hath not known Thee, but I have known Thee." In all His expressions
of oneness with God, of His living unto God, and of His drawing His
daily strength from God, His experience was eminently unique. He lived
more in heaven than on earth in those days of His incarnation. Apart
from any consideration of His Divinity, He can truly be said to be a
man of God whose soul was in harmony with the Father.

How different the words and experiences of Gautama Rishi! Many have
spoken of him as an atheist. I do not believe that he denied the
existence of God. Yet it is evidently true that he has no use in his
philosophy, any more than in his religion, for a Divine Being. There
was doubtless reason for this in the conditions of his time; for it
may be regarded as the reaction of a strong mind against the extreme
spiritualism and polytheism of the day. For, in those days, the deep