The Sacred Books and Early Literature of the - Bill Heidrick's Cross ...

26 THE SACRED BOOKS
and that we really have in it a summary of the words in
which the great Indian thinker and reformer, for the first
time, successfully promulgated his new ideas. And it
presents to us in a few short and pithy sentences the very
essence of that remarkable system which has had so profound
an influence on the religious history of so large a portion of
the human race."
This first proclaiming by Buddha of his newly discovered
Law is regarded by his disciples as the turning-point in their
faith. It has often been compared to the day of Pentecost,
the "inspiration of the tongues" of the Apostles in the
Christian faith. Buddhist literature is full of descriptions
of this scene of "the first teaching." Miraculous happen-
ings have been attached to it. As one writer describes the
scene: "The angels thronged to hear the discourse until the
heavens were empty; and the sound of their approach was like
the rain of a storm; all the worlds in which there are sentient
beings were made void of life, so that the congregation as-
sembled were in number infinite, but at the sound of the blast
of the glorious trumpet of Sakka, the king of the gods, they
became still as a waveless sea. And then each of the countless
listeners thought that the sage was looking toward himself,
and was speaking to him in his own tongue, though the
language used was Magadhi!"
Professor Davids thus sums up a scholarly view of the
importance of this event: "Never in the history of the
world had a scheme of salvation been put forth so simple in
its nature, so free from any superhuman agency, so inde-
pendent of, so even antagonistic to the belief in a soul, the
belief in God, and the hope for a future life. And we must
not allow our estimate of the importance of the event to be
influenced by our disagreement from the opinions put forth.
Whether these be right or wrong, it was a turning-point in
the religious history of man, when a reformer, full of the most
earnest moral purpose, and trained in all the intellectual cul-
ture of his time, put forth deliberately, and with a knowledge
of the opposing views, the doctrine of a salvation to be found
here, in this life, in an inward change of heart, to be brought