Forlong - Rivers of Life

14
Rivers of Life, or Faiths of Man in all Lands.
APPROXIMATE AGE OF RELIGIONS AND BIBLES.
BRAHMANS—the Vedas, B.C. 1500 to 2400 JEWS and CHRISTIANS—Old
ZOROASTRIANS—Zenda Vesta or Vesta-Zend, 1600 Testament,
TIME OF CHRIST
JEWS, parts of Talmud and some
JEWS—Mishna (Rab. Jordan’s) A.C. 190
Psalms. 800 to 1100 CHRISTIANS—New Test.—Origen’s collection, 250
Do. first 14 books Old Testament, 650 Do. Jerome’s Vulgate, 400
LAOTSEES or TAOISTS—Taoteekeng. 560 JEWS—Gemara—“Babylonian.” 437
BOODHISTS—Tripitaka, 543 Do.—Talmud proper.—“Jerusalem,” 470
CONFUCIANS—Lykeng, 470 MAHOMEDANS—The Koran 630
JAINS—The Sootras 450 SEEKS—The Granth, 1500
JEWS and CHRISTIANS—Part of Old
CHRISTIANS—Printed Bible, 1516
Testament, the LXX. 250-130
Of these books I shall have much to say hereafter, but here I must allude to them
briefly to bring out clearly what follows. They all contain much that is true and good
and lovely. They picture, as in a mirror, the whole growth of our race, more especially
when we look closer into the families of man; some are poetic and cultivated,
others though noble in parts, are yet elsewhere coarse and grovelling,—all are
growths with many features in common.
The “All Father” God stands prominent throughout, as far back as history yet
permits us to trace Him.—He becomes somewhat hid by other gods, and especially in
all nations by a Trinity of which we have the essence in Vedic days, or about 2200
years B.C., and later by prophets or great men, of whom Zoroaster leads the way in
1600 B.C., and the long list, which many in Hindoostan, Arabia, England and America
hope will yet be longer, rests for the present with Mahomed, the Seek Gooroo, and
similar leaders.
Through all Faiths these mighty men, the leaders of thought in their age and
country, run the same course; first hated and despised, then reverenced and beloved,
they are finally worshipped as Divine, if not by the learned men of Earth, at least by
the ignorant masses.
Every Faith is full of incongruities, inconsistencies and anomalies, and to say
otherwise, is to say it is unnatural. The Church of England say in one of her
“articles of Faith,” that the true God is “without body, parts or passion,” but in
another, for infringing which she has just turned out one of her most devout clergymen,
that “we are to worship Christ as God,” for does not a writer in the New Testament
say that He is “one with the Father” (though he does not mean what the Article
here does), created all things, and will return to judge all the nations of the earth.
Yet he had parts and passions, and grew in body, mind, and learning; he ascended, says
the New Testament, into heaven with his body of flesh and bone, clothed in man’s apparel,
and the Christian is told that “this same Jesus shall so come in like manner.”
The writer in Dr. Smith’s Bible Dictionary shows us under the head “Septuagint,”
that in the 3d century B.C. the Jews had become somewhat ashamed of their personal