In comparison
with the philosophers of the East, we may say that modern Europe
has yet given birth to none. Beside the vast and cosmogonal
philosophy of the Bhagvat-Geeta, even our Shakespeare seems
sometimes youthfully green and practical merely. Some of these
sublime sentences, as the Chaldaean oracles of Zoroaster, still
surviving after a thousand revolutions and translations, alone
make us doubt if the poetic form and dress are not transitory,
and not essential to the most effective and enduring expression
of thought. _Ex oriente lux_ may still be the motto of scholars,
for the Western world has not yet derived from the East all the
light which it is destined to receive thence.
It would be worthy of the age to print together the collected
Scriptures or Sacred Writings of the several nations, the
Chinese, the Hindoos, the Persians, the Hebrews, and others, as
the Scripture of mankind. The New Testament is still, perhaps,
too much on the lips and in the hearts of men to be called a
Scripture in this sense. Such a juxtaposition and comparison
might help to liberalize the faith of men.
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