Note 229 — LECTURE IV. THE DHARMA OF BUDDHA:[180] THE GOSPEL OF JESUS CHRIST.

T. W. Rhys Davids, in the Introduction to his translation of the Keto Khila Sutta (Barrenness and Bondage), Sacred Books of the East, vol. xi. p. 222, says that in reading it he was irresistibly reminded of 2 Peter i. 5-9. The barrenness referred to in the Sutta is lack of successful effort to be free from “the Ten Fetters” which bind man to existence, chief of which is hankering after immortality in any form, or without form. How contrasted is this to St. Peter’s thought! “Give diligence to provide in your faith earnestness,” that it may be an overcoming faith; but as faith without knowledge is superstition, and earnestness misdirected will do harm, provide in earnestness “knowledge”; and as knowledge ungoverned will degenerate into conceit, provide in it “temperance”; but temperance must be inspired with “patience,” bent on God’s glory, not personal gain; “godliness” thus attained, “brotherly kindness” will manifest itself, and then “charity” toward every creature—that is the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the summum bonum, the knowledge in which we are neither to be barren nor unfruitful. No more forcible illustration of the utter contradiction between the two religions could be found than this verbal analogy of “barrenness and bondage.”