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"They have rolls or cylinders inscribed with their prayers, which they twirl round on an axis, continually pronouncing these mystic words, and they believe that all the prayers on these rolls are virtually pronounced at each turn of the roll; The religion of the Dalai-Lama, is a branch of the Shamanian and Braminical superstitions, and has for its foundation the Manichaean doctrine of the two principles, which Manes attempted to incorporate into the Christian religion, so that it is no wonder the practices of the followers of the Dalai-Lama should resemble those of the Manichaean and Nestorian Christians."
The world will grow tired of pretending to admire Manichaean pictures in an age of natural science; and Art will let the dead bury their dead, and beginning again where Michael Angelo and Rafaelle left off work forward into a nobler, truer, freer, and more divine school than the world has yet seen at least, so I hope. And all this has grown out of those foxhounds. Why not?
The poor man will be tempted franctically to oppose his selfishness and unbelief to the selfishness and unbelief of the rich, and clutch from him by force the comfort which really belong to neither of them, in order that he may pride himself in them and misuse them in his turn; and the clergy will be tempted, as they have too often been tempted already, to fancy that reason is the enemy, and not the twin sister of faith; to oppose revelation to science, as if God's two messages could contradict each other; to widen the Manichaean distinction between secular and spiritual matters, so pleasant to the natural atheism of fallen man; to fancy that they honour God by limiting as much as possible His teaching, His providence, His wisdom, His love, and His kingdom, and to pretend that they are defending the creeds of the Catholic Church, by denying to them any practical or real influence on the economic, political, and physical welfare of mankind.
But it will seem to us somewhat Manichaean to believe that the world is ill made, mankind a failure, and that all God has to do with them, is to set them right here and there, when they go intolerably wrong. But we can hold all this, surely, and equally hold all which natural science may teach us. Hold what natural science teaches? We shall not dare not to hold it. It will be sacred in our eyes.
Christianity had a hard battle with Gnosticism and Manichaeism, both of Persian origin, and did not come out unscathed. No Grecian system of philosophy, except Platonism, entered into the Christian system so influentially as the disastrous Manichaean heresy, which Augustine combated.
From Armenia in the eighth century came the Manichaean sect of Paulicians into Thrace, and for twenty generations played a considerable part in the history of the Eastern Empire. In the Bulgarian tongue they were known as Bogomilians, or men constant in prayer. In Greek they were called Cathari, or "Puritans."
But seeing in the same no practical or moral bearing, I confined it to the schools of philosophy. A more thorough revolution in my philosophic principles, and a deeper insight into my own heart, were yet wanting. Augustine's faith from the same error aggravated by the far darker accompaniment of the Manichaean heresy.
For if any one an hungered, not a Manichaean, should ask for any, that morsel would seem as it were condemned to capital punishment, which should be given him. And Thou sentest Thine hand from above, and drewest my soul out of that profound darkness, my mother, Thy faithful one, weeping to Thee for me, more than mothers weep the bodily deaths of their children.
"That he owed it to Achilles, who was unable to speak for himself, to lay stress on what he conceived to be the dog's Manichaean views, which he had been most unwillingly forced to infer from his practice of suddenly barking indignantly at the Universe, in what certainly seemed an unprayerful spirit." "It was only Mr. Torrens's nonsense.
He also notices the Manichaean idea of Zambi-a-Nbi, or bad-God, drawing the fine distinction of European belief in a deity supremely good, who permits evil without participating in it. Zambi is the Anyambia of the Gaboon country, a vox et praeterea nihil. Dr.
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