escape the terrible round of transmigrations and end at last in Nirvana. His system began in nothing and ended in nothing. From beginning to end it was thoroughly atheistic. He not only repudiated the gods of Brâhmanism, but the medatized gods, the Asuras, Sarpas, Nâgas. The worlds of the gods, together with the gods and the spirits who, in the circle of births, have raised themselves to the world of the gods, he asserted, must perish at the end of every Kalpa. The Brâhmans, their Védas, Mantras, Brahmanas, and all of their so-called "sacred" lumber, he also repudiated, and planted himself on his own personal resources independent of God or man. He did not, like Christ, pretend to derive authority from One higher than himself. Himself was the sole authority he recognized. As the spider spins his web, so Buddha spun his theories from his own personal substance, and his long tentacles have borne his atheistic independence into the nineteenth century and made it a factor in the popular thought of to-day. Such was Buddhism as it came fresh from its founder. What was Buddhism in its manhood, and what is it now in its decline? Whitherward did it lead? The true answer to these questions is significant and startling, though historically true. Buddhism led straight back to idolatry! Shortly after the death of Buddha his disciples began to "long for the fleshpots of Egypt," and in a very little time the foundations of a Buddhistic pantheon were laid that was destined to successfully rival not only the pantheon of the Brâhmans, but the most opulent pantheons of Paganism. Its gods, with Buddha at the head of them, were immensly multiplied; and, to-day, there is no superstition on earth more stupendous and degrading, particularly where it is unadulterated and unaffected by other cults. In India, its birthplace, it has no organized following, and is nowhere to be found in its native purity. It has gone on its own natural highway to destruction, the destiny of all things that have not the "eternal God" for their sole refuge, and are not upheld by "the everlasting arms." Buddhism is now mixed with the multitudinous forms of Brahm anism, and scarcely can be distinguished from them. It has spent its force. Its bow is broken; its quiver empty. It is an unanswerable demonstration that the goal of pure intellection is idolatry! It has no power of self-recuperation nor of selfdeliverance. 66 The third stage of idolatry is developed in multiplicity of disintegration. An error cannot be preserved by compactness; because it is not the nature of error to be compact. Its centrifugal tendency is greater than its centripetal, and by immutable law it disintegrates and falls apart. The religion of the Hindu people has experienced precisely this fate. First, Védic, then Brâhmanic, then Buddhistic, and now split into a multitude of sects, it is called "Hinduism." This word stands for every modern form of Hindū idolatry. Diversity is its very essence, and its proper manifestation is sect,-sect in constant mobility, sect in a state of division that nothing similar was ever seen in any other religious system." Hinduism, in some form, is now embraced by 180,000,000 of people. It may be classified under four general heads: 1. Védantism; a system ascribed to Vyasa, the supposed compiler of the Hindu scriptures. Its professors are comparatively few. 2. Vishnuism; a system which exalts Vishnu as the supreme deity. 3. Sivaism; a system in which Siva is regarded as supreme. 4. The Saktas; or sects exclusively devoted to the worship of the female deities, the wives of the gods, Saraswati, wife of Brahma; the many forms of Radha, Sita, Kali, Parvati, Durga, Lakshmi. Besides these are the Jains; worshippers of Jina, a sort of second Buddha; also the twenty-four Trithankaras, or deified mortals. The Hindus reckon ninetythree divisions all told. But as Sir Alfred Lyall says; "The religion of the non-Mohammedan population of India is as a tangled jungle of disorderly superstitions, ghosts, demons, demigods, deified saints, household gods, tribal gods, universal gods, with their countless shrines and temples, and the din of their discordant rites; deities who abhor a fly's death; deities who still delight in human sacrifice." Besides these idolatrous sects and we take India as an ex ample, because it represents the rise and decline of idolatry everywhere, there are others of recent date that may be styled deistical, or rationalistic. 1. The Brahma Samâj, or Divine Society. The founder of this society was Ramohun Roy, born in 1774. He compiled from the New Testament "The Precepts of Jesus," and translated portions of the Védas and Upanishads. 2. The Adi Samâj, or Original Society. This was a secession from the Brahma Samâj. Keshub Chundra Sen was at the head of this movement. 3. The Sâdhâran Samâj; or Universal Society, with which Keshub Babu was connected. 5. The Dharma Samâj, or Society of the Law. But taking them all together, their membership is insignificant. The census returns for 1884 show 173 Samâjas, 1500 enrolled members, and about 800 adherents. They may possibly be helpful to Christianity; but it is evident that the Samâj is not destined to solve the problem of idolatry. Nor is pure rationalism, whether it be called Samâj, or by some other name, destined to solve the problem. We have seen whitherward pure rationalism tends; and the prospect is not a pleasant one. Idolatry will solve its own problem by absolute disintegration and dispersion; but nothing short of pure Christianity can gather up the dispersed particles, cleanse them, and fuse them into both “unity of the faith" and "unity of the spirit," and set them in their true place in "the Church of the living God." The abundant and emphatic assertions of Scripture that man has been the subject of a fall from spiritual innocence and purity, and from a knowledge of "One living and true God," seems, therefore, to find ample warrant in the historical and rational statement of the facts herein outlined. The Winchester Profession of Faith is also justified in asserting "the final restoration of man to holiness and happiness." Bearing upon this point, and "worthy of all acceptation," we are glad to cite the opinion of two men ; one an eminent churchman, the other equally eminent as a scholar and philosopher - Cardinal Wiseman and Frederick Von Schlagel. With their testimony we will conclude: • Wilkins' "Modern Hindustan," pp. 106-120. "The reflection says Cardinal Wiseman" that nature, or rather its author, will place his creatures in the state for which he intended them; that if man was formed in body, and endowed in spirit for a social and domestic life, he can no more have been cast originally into a desert or forest, savage and untutored, than the sea-shell can have been first placed on the mountain's top, or the elephant been created amidst the icebergs of the pole; this reflection must exclude the idea that the savage state is any but a degradation, a departure from the original destiny and position of man." Says Schlagel: "When man had once fallen from virtue, no determinable limit could be assigned to his degradation, nor how far he might descend by degrees, and approximate even to the limit of the brute; but as from his origin he was a being essentially free, he was, in consequence, capable of change, and even in his organic powers was most flexible. We must adopt this principle as the only clue to guide us in our inquiries, from the negro, who as well from his bodily strength and agility, as from his docile, and in general excellent character, is far from occupying the lowest grade in the scale of humanity, down to the monstrous Patagonian, the almost imbecile Peshuerais, and the terrible cannibal of New Zealand, whose very portrait excites a shudder in the beholder. So far from seeking, with Rosseau and his disciples, for the true origin of mankind, and the proper foundation of the social compact, in the condition of the best and noblest savages, we regard it, on the contrary, as a state of degeneration and degradation.' " 8 The theory here maintained violates no natural law, nor disregards a single historical fact. It is much to say in its behalf that it rationally interprets history. It also invests man with a dignity and destiny worthy of his undeniable powers, his sublime origin and destiny. G. T. Flanders. 7" Sci. and Rev. Relig." Vol. 2.. p. 194. ARTICLE XXIX. The Civilization and Religions of Ancient Mexico, Central America and Peru. THE results of foreign expeditions and explorations among the mounds and tombs and various buried cities of the Old World have been so interesting and important as to have aroused a great enthusiasm for this work in our own country. The Wolfe expedition of four years ago prepared the way for others,. which operated with more or less success, in Persia, in Assyria, and now Philadelphia has sent out to Babylonia an expedition, provided with all the means which money can furnish ; with a director of unusual executive skill, and a large corps of enthusiastic young men, well-drilled in archælogical lore to do the work. It seems impossible that the fruits of so well-organized an expedition should fail to be important. The recent announcement of the remarkable character of the tablets found last winter in upper Egypt, written in Babylonian characters, and dating from the century before Moses, containing, as they do, reports and letters sent to the King of Egypt from Palestine, Phenicia, and from Babylonia itself, must act as a spur to this new American expedition. The researches resulting from this general archælogical awakening, it is interesting to know, are not to be confined to the Old World. This continent also has its share in the archælogical interest which has been evoked. Ruins hidden in deserts, in almost impenetrable forests, and buried in the depths of the earth, in Arizona, in Mexico, in the States of Central America, and in countries farther south, are giving up their secrets to the zealous explorers who are sparing neither money nor labor in their efforts to learn what old Earth has to reveal. Among the most earnest of these experts is M. Raville, a professor in the College of France, whose recent book devoted to the civilized peoples of ancient America, is of high and absorbing interest. It has been a popular impression that the |