Note 292 — LECTURE XVIII. Buddhism contrasted with Christianity.

A Buddhist writer in a Buddhist magazine, published in Ceylon, has lately taken me to task for asserting in a recent speech that Christianity denies the all-sufficiency of good works as an instrument of salvation. It is easy to quote passages, such as those in the epistle of St. James, in support of his one-sided view of this question, but I need scarcely say that the writer has much to learn as to the true character of our Bible, in which no text has full force without its context, and no part can be taken to establish a doctrine without a comparison with other parts, and without the balancing of apparent contradictions in both Old and New Testaments.