Spirit of the age. [volume] (Woodstock, Vt.) 1845-1913, 1883-04-18
SACRED BOOKS.
The Bible as Known to the Ancients.


The following brief sketch of the 50
cred books of the world is from a Bibl
class lesson by Prof. II. A. Ford, in
New York mission Sunday school:
Certain religious instincts, as th'
consciousness of a Supreme Being, o
a life beyond the grave, of future re
wards and punishmcnts, of u sense o
sin and the need of sacrifice, are com
mon to humanity. So also, wherever
a nation has had a literature, its rcli
gion has usually based upon ,sacre(
books--there is the assertion of writ
ten revelation. Every great religion
has its Bible.
The best known of these books, save
the Jewish and the Christian, is the
Koran Of Mohammed. The title OF
this means "The Reading" from the
Arabic verb for "to read Other
names are AL Kitab, or the book; Al
Moshaf, the volume; Al Dhikr, the adj
monition or reminder; and AL Forhan,
or the salvation. The III suras or
chapters of the Koran were profesSedly
given to Mohanmed during the twenty
three years Of his residence at Mecca
and Medina, by the angel Gabriel in
human form, as an inspiration from
Aleah, or the Almighty They were
written upon leaves, bits of leather or
paper, shoulder-blades of mutton and
whatever else was at hand and thrown
loosely into a box, from which they
were taken a year after the prophets
death and put together with equal
looSeneSs and disregard to connection
OF topics, in volumes. The chapters
bear such titles as The Cow, The Fig.
The Star, The Towers, The Congcaled
Blood, and the like, giving some hint
OF contents. Each begins thus: SIN
the name of God, the merciful, the
compassionate" and a note is made of
the revelation at either Mecca or
Medina. Not only is the God of the
Christians recognized, but also Jesus,
but not as the Son of God, and Abra-
ham, Jacob and Mary and the Old
Testament worthless. The style of the
Koran is of singular elegance and
beauty constituting it the classic of
Arabic speech 1t is the text book of
Moslem faith and likewise of civil GOV
ernment in all the Moslem countries.
Copies of it are greatly revered and are
sometimes written in gold and Jewels.
1t is never held by the believers below
the girdle or touched without previous
puriiicaton. Nothing is more hateful
to the Mussclman than to see a copy in
the hands of a giaour or inlidcl.
A much more ancient collection of
writings is the Ncdas, the oldest books
in the llind0o literature, and dating
far back of the time of Christ. The
oldest hymn Of the oldest book, the
Rig Veda, is thought to date from
b. c. 24OO. The Upanishads, or treat
ises of theology, are LATER and are al
most the only part Of the Vedas now
read. The four divisions of the Vedas
contain in all 1910 hymns, which every
Brahmin must learn by heart. They
are recognized by the Laws of Maun,
which form the textbook of Brahmin-
ism. They were written in twelve
books ten to nine centuries before
Christ. The mythology of the Hin
docs is comprised mainly in two great |
epic poems, the Ramavana and the |
Mahabharata, containing respectively
$4,000 and 10000 lines, and together
illing eighteen large volumes. These |
are now almost exclusively read as the
sacred books of India, with the Puranas,
of similar character but much later date.
The Shasters or ShaStras ("bOoks") is Il
general term for all the authoritative re-
ligious and legal works of the IIindoos
The Buddhist sacred books are also
very numerous, but find no name for
them except the "pitchas," or Buddhist
scripture, in the Pale language found
in Ceyion.
The Zend-Avesta (i. e., the text or
scripture with zend, orcommcn-
tary) is the bible of the an
cient Parsees or fire worshpers. 1t is
to have been written in Bee
tria or eastern Persia, 1850 to 1900
years before Christ, by Zoroaster or
LarathuStia. Unlike most other Sa-
cred books, it is not a body of divinity
or dogmatic religion, but it is Il liturgy,
a collection of prayers, hymns, invoca-
tions and thanksgivings to many del
ties. 1t is a manual of worship to be
recited by the priests in public, and
read privately by the laity. The
Budde- Ncsch is a later book of the
same religion, and details the Parsee
doctrine from texts now lost.
The religion of Confucius, the prin,
,ipal faith of China, is taught in the
i've and four books of the Kings
King" in Chinese, means simply u
web of cloth, or the warp that holds
threads of cloth in their place. The
i've Kings contain history, poetry and
he rites of religion They seem to
laye been in existence before Confu-
'ius, whose last years were devoted to
IS editing. His own teachings are
otherwise embodied in the four Kings. {
which were promulgated after his t