The daily morning journal and courier., 1894-09-04

causes which produce this new being are said to be trishna, or thirst. and upadana, or yearning,
 The Buddhists do not say that Gauta- ma first discovered this conception of the transmigration of character. but they maintain that he received addi- tional light on four great truths. First, that suffering exists wherever there Is life; second. that life is caused or rather sustained by volition and de- sire; third, that release from suffering can only be obtained by the extinction of conscious life; fourth. that this ex- tinetlon can only be obtained by fol- lowing In the path" This extinction is called Nirvana. which. literally trans lated is annihilation of the Buddhist. It Is the fana Of the Persian Mystic, which also means extinction. It Is the lahut of the Arabian Mystic, which also means annihilation. It Is the absorp- ton of the Hindu. which Is expressed by variety of terms; but of course It Is impossible for the Hindu to say that soul Is annihilated when 1t Is ab- sorbed Into the self-existing Brahm.
 Buddhist writers always liken Mir vana 10 the going out of the flame of lamp. We westerns would naturally say that when the flame of a candle is extlnguished that the flame Itself Is annihilated; but not so with the eastern Mystic. for with him nothing ceases to exist The Persian Mystic, as I have said, likens the ultimate expiration of the soul to the return of a drop to the Tn v,,lnHG that lrnn nf water has ceased to exist as drop. It Is. therefore. useless for European and American scholars to assert. as they do, that Nrvana Is not extinction. No Hindu or Buddhist writer maintains, so far as know, that In the transit of life from one body to another, that the mind, or Altman Uhey do not speak of the souD, retains its Individuality; but Gautama distinctly taught that 1t re- tained it's character, and retained it's thirst and yearning to live. To extin- gush this life and this desire of life should be the object of every human being. This can be most effectually obtained by such practices as will serve to depress the thirst, yearning or desire of the mind. Such as fixing the eyes intently and necessarily on the tip of the nose, or, what perhaps is better, to sit cross-legged on the ground and en- gage in abstract contemplation of the navel. The devotee who thus seeks to extinguish life is found among the yogis of the Hindus, the monks of the Buddhists, and the fakirs of the Sufis.
 In these teachings the soul Is likened to a traveller and the transit of the soul to the path. One teacher marks four stages in this path; humanity, spiritu- ality, power and eXtinction.. Another teacher will divide the path into seven stages; service, love, seclusion, knowl- edge, ecstasy, truth and union with divinity.
 Professor Max Muller, Professor Childers, Professor Oldenberg, Profess sor Davids, and others, have written much to show, with warm eloquence," that Nirvana is the completion and not the extinction of being. But it is merely a war of words. There is, in Hindu and Buddhist thought. no such thing as extinction of being, and it does not need the scholarship of learned professors to tell us that. But these very scholars admit that the word Nirvana does literally mean lex tinction," and no Persian or Arabic scholar doubts that the words fana and lahut also mean extinction; and we surely must give the ancients credit for understanding what they intended to imply by these words. The doctrine of Metempsychosis is certainly nihilis- tic It is doctrine which conveys no belief in God and the human soul. It is without the hope of future exist ence. It is pessimistic, looking upon life as an ocean of suffering. quietistic in ethics, and finding comfort only in the expectation of final extinction into nothingness.
 It is a remarkable circumstance that while so large proportion of the hu- man race held this doctrine of Metem- psychosis, with the exception of a pos sible reference to it in St. John ix., g.: Who did sin, the man or his parents?' there is absolutely no trace of it eith- CT in the Old Testament or in the New. On the contrary, Jesus Christ, who brought life and immortality to light through the gospel, seems to have dis tinctly taught the perpetual existence of the Individuality" of the soul life. God is not the God of the dead but of the living-the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob. The souls of the departed are as the angels of heaven; and the Lord Himself is described by the apostle as having preached to the spirits in prison.
 THOMAS P. HUGHES, D. D.