Note (return) — Chapter VII · - RIYŌBU, OR MIXED BUDDHISM

What, however, chiefly concerns the critic and student of religions is to inquire how far the process has been natural, and the efforts of those who have brought about the union have been honest, and their motives pure. The Bible pages bear witness, that Israelites too often tried to make the same fountain give forth sweet waters and bitter, and to grow thistles and grapes on the same stem, by uniting the cults of Jehovah and the Baalim. King Solomon's enterprises in the same direction are more creditable to him as a politician than as a worshipper.3 In the history of Christianity one cannot commend the efforts either of the Gnostics or the neo-Platonists, nor always justify the medieval missionaries in their methods. Nor can we accurately describe as successful the ingenuity of Vossius, the Dutch theologian, who, following the scheme of Euhemerus, discovered the Old Testament patriarchs in the disguise of the gods of Paganism. Nor, even though Germany be the land of learning, can the clear-headed scholar agree with some of her rationalists, who are often busy in the same field of industry, setting forth wild criticism as "science."