ia, we find in Brahmanism and Buddhism two systems of
religion that are related to one another exactly as are Judaism and
Christianity. The analogue of the Old Testament is a group of priestly
hymnal writings known as the Vedas, which date back to about the
fourteenth century before Christ lived. Their objects of worship at first
are numerous invisible beings that actuate the things of the world, as in
Greek theology, but later one of them assumes preeminence as the
all-pervading essence of things,--Brahma. The precepts of Brahmanism
enjoined adoration of the unseen powers and of their works, as well as
practical rules of human conduct, such as those which divided a man's life
into the four periods when he should be successively a student, the head
of a family, a counselor, and a religious mendicant who should renounce
the world of social activities and human desires. In earlier writings, the
immortal state is a kind of heaven, but later it meant simply an
absorption into Brahma, the eternal impersonal being.

Buddha was an orthodox Brahman reformer of the sixth century before our
present era, just as Jesus was an orthodox Hebrew reformer. The essential
creed of Buddha made his religion far more ethical than earlier forms, and
placed it on a plane even above Christianity of later centuries. This
creed relates to the element of human responsibility particularly, the
other two remaining much as they were found by Buddha. According to his
teachings, a man rested under an obligation to live nobly in the truest
sense, and he acquired merit--_karma_--or lost it, in proportion to his
deserts. At death a human soul is reincarnated, in a lower form of animal
or even in a being residing in one of a series of unseen hells, if
punishment is due; if a higher state is merited, progress is made through
thousands of existences until perfection is rewarded by an eternal fusion
with the essence of Brahma. It is because there is no escape from just
punishment that Buddhism in its original form is properly denoted more
ethical than a religion which teaches that sacrifice of any kind will
exempt the sinner from deserved penalties and bring about the bestowal of
unearned rewards.

Polytheism is the name given to a religion such as that of the Greeks or
Romans, who believed in many gods and spirits of greater and lesser power.
These supernatural beings, each in its own sphere, immediately directed
the processes of nature and controlled the li