ABSTRACT
Before taking to the high seas, I reckoned that in the Western countries I was bound to meet missionaries who would try to persuade me to convert to their way. If, by way of exchange, I cited from the Book of Songs or the Analects, not only would such discussions come to nought, but they could lead to conflict, and result in the loss of amity between China and the West. So I obtained their Old and New Testaments to get a gist of their teachings. As a result I came to know that the essence of the Way of Jesus was the cultivation of oneself in righteousness, which is similar to the Buddhists’ arriving at wisdom through meditation, and that the practice of the Way of Jesus was in extending the love for God to all humanity, similar to the Buddhists’ compassion. In short, these are equivalent to Chinese concepts of “wisdom” and “benevolence.” The intelligent can intuit and grasp the principles of heaven and earth, which is nothing out of the ordinary. If we all followed Jesus’ teaching, there would be no evil in the world. But the reason he was sentenced to death by crucifixion, the severest punishment in Western countries, was that he went everywhere preaching, making prophecies, and healing the sick until his followers numbered in the thousands. Moreover he created the idea of the Kingdom of Heaven and said his followers would all ascend to the heavenly kingdom and enjoy its blessings. An ordinary person, he arrogated to himself the title of the Son of Heaven and the Son of Man, gathered together crowds in their thousands who brought support for him from far and wide. It is, therefore, not surprising that the rulers of every nation looked upon him as a menace, and had him hunted down and sentenced to death. From this one can see that Jesus was an intelligent and upright person. But he failed to understand that the rise and decline of the Way is conditioned by the times and that one must be judicious in deciding when to attract attention to oneself. In vain he showed off his powers, which greatly offended against the taboos of the age and led him rapidly to a calamitous end. His disciples euphemized his death by claiming that he had risen from the dead after seven days, but there was no evidence for this. Having acquired a general idea of the purport of Jesus’ teaching, I felt that I was in a position to converse with any missionary about it, and to make him reconsider the matter for his own enlightenment.
