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Its humble devotees implicitly believed that Mahamia, the mother of Gotama, an immaculate virgin, conceived him through a divine influence, and that thus he was of the nature of God and man conjoined; that he stood upon his feet and spoke at the moment of his birth; that at five months of age he sat unsupported in the air; that at the moment of his conversion he was attacked by a legion of demons, and that in his penance-fasting he reduced himself to the allowance of one pepper-pod a day; that he had been incarnate many times before, and that on his ascension through the air to heaven he left his footprint on a mountain in Ceylon; that there is a paradise of gems, and flowers, and feasts, and music for the good, and a hell of sulphur, and flames, and torment for the wicked; that it is lawful to resort to the worship of images, but that those are in error who deify men, or pay respect to relics; that there are spirits, and goblins, and other superhuman forms; that there is a queen of heaven; that the reading of the Scriptures is in itself an actual merit, whether its precepts are followed or not; that prayer may be offered by saying a formula by rote, or even by turning the handle of a mill from which invocations written on paper issue forth; that the revealer of Buddhism is to be regarded as the religious head of the world.
Egmont possessed more of conscience than of fixed principles; his head had not given him a code of its own, but had merely learnt it by rote; the mere name of any action, therefore, was often with him sufficient for its condemnation.
It may be well to pause here to say that in the gentle art of murdering the business of taking prisoners is not elaborately worked out. They learn that by rote, rather than by note. The Canadians, since two of their men were crucified by the Prussians, take few Prussian prisoners. Here is a snap-back of the film. It is the Rue di Rivoli in Paris.
I am afraid that a great many of us often have expectations fainter than desires; and that we should be very much surprised if the thing that we ask for, in the prayers that we so often repeat by rote, were granted to us. You will hear men praying for holiness, for clean hearts, for progress in the Christian life, for a hundred other such blessings.
I can detect at once the professional whine, and am certain the story has been repeated by rote a hundred times that day; but for the life of me I cannot put out from my mind the imaginary picture of the half-furnished room in some filthy back street, with a forlorn woman with red hair stretched on a bed of straw, and half a dozen or more red-haired children piled about promiscuously.
BARRY, the painter, has left behind him works not to be turned over by the connoisseur by rote, nor the artist who dares not be just. When, in his character of professor, he delivered his lectures at the academy, at every pause his auditors rose in a tumult, and at every close their hands returned to him the proud feelings he adored.
Secondly, we have several instances of habits, which may be revived by one single word; as when a person, who has by rote any periods of a discourse, or any number of verses, will be put in remembrance of the whole, which he is at a loss to recollect, by that single word or expression, with which they begin.
Yet let his child learn by rote the speech of the Greek, where he abjures his fellow-citizens by the bravery of those who fought foremost at Marathon let him learn to say that was noble in the Greek, that is the spirit of an immortal nation!
Nearly always, in answer to my inquiries about his life, the man began, not only willingly, but eagerly, to relate the story of the misfortunes which he had undergone, which he had learned by rote like a prayer, and particularly of his former position, in which he ought still to be by right of his education. A great many such people were scattered over all the corners of the Rzhanoff house.
He learned by rote those commonplaces which all sects repeat so fluently when they are enduring oppression, and forget so easily when they are able to retaliate it. Indeed he rehearsed his lesson so well, that those who chanced to hear him on this subject gave him credit for much more sense and much readier elocution than he really possessed.
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