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of the preceding sentences, every touch in this odious portrait, has been taken, to the best of my ability, word for word, or at least meaning for meaning, from the 'Book,' the truest mirror of the mind and scope of its writer.

"And that such was in reality Mahomet's mind and idea is fully confirmed by the witness-tongue of contemporary tradition."

CHAPTER XII.

THE TEN RELIGIONS AND CHRISTIANITY.

§ 1. General Results of this Survey. § 2. Christianity a Pleroma, or Fulness of Life. §3. Christianity, as a Pleroma, compared with Brahmanism, Confucianism, and Buddhism. § 4. Christianity compared with the Avesta and the Eddas. The Duad in all Religions. § 5. Christianity and the Religions of Egypt, Greece, and Rome. § 6. Christianity in Relation to Judaism and Mohammedanism. The Monad in all Religions. § 7. The Fulness of Christianity is derived from the Life of Jesus. §8. Christianity as a Religion of Progress and of Universal Unity.

WE

§ 1. General Results of this Survey.

E have now examined, as fully as our limits would allow, ten of the chief religions which have enlisted the faith of mankind. We are prepared to ask, in conclusion, what they teach us in regard to the prospects of Christianity, and the religious future of our race.

First, this survey must have impressed on every mind the fact that man is eminently a religious being. We have found religion to be his supreme and engrossing interest on every continent, in every millennium of historic time, and in every stage of human civilization. In some periods men are found as hunters, as shepherds, as nomads, in others they are living associated in cities, but in all these conditions they have their religion. The tendency to worship some superhuman power is universal.

The opinion of the positivist school, that man passes from a theological stage to one of metaphysics, and from that to one of science, from which later and higher epoch both theology and philosophy are excluded, is not in accordance with the facts we have been observing. Science and art, in Egypt, went hand in hand with theology, during thousands of years. Science in Greece preceded the latest forms of metaphysics, and both Greek science

and Greek philosophy were the preparation for Christian faith. In India the Sánkhya philosophy was the preparation for the Buddhist religion. Theology and religion to-day, instead of disappearing in science, are as vigorous as ever. Science, philosophy, and theology are all advancing together, a noble sisterhood of thought. And, looking at facts, we may ask, In what age or time was religion more of a living force, acting on human affairs, than it is at present? To believe in things not seen, to worship a power above visible nature, to look forward to an unknown future, this is natural to man.

In the United States there is no established religion, yet in no country in the world is more interest taken in religion than with us. In the Protestant denominations it has dispensed with the gorgeous and imposing ritual, which is so attractive to the common mind, and depends mainly on the interest of the word of truth. Yet the Protestant denominations make converts, build churches, and support their clergy with an ardor seemingly undiminished by the progress of science. There are no symptoms that man is losing his interest in religion in consequence of his increasing knowledge of nature and its laws.

Secondly, we have seen that these religions vary exceedingly from each other in their substance and in their forms. They have a great deal in common, but a great Ideal that is different. Mr. Wentworth Higginson,* in an excellent lecture, much of which has our cordial assent, says, "Every race believes in a Creator and Governor of the world, in whom devout souls recognize a Father also." But Buddhism, the most extensive religion on the surface of the earth, explicitly denies creation, and absolutely ignores any Ruler or Governor of the world. The Buddha neither made the world nor preserves it, and the Buddha is the great object of Buddhist worship. Mr. Higginson says: "Every race believes in immortality." Though the Buddhists, as we have seen, believe in immortality, it is in so obscure a form that many of the best scholars declare

*The Sympathy of Religions, an Address by Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Boston, 1871.

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that the highest aim and the last result of all progress in Buddhism is annihilation. He continues, "Every race recognizes in its religious precepts the brotherhood of man." The Koran teaches no such doctrine, and it is notorious that the Brahmanical system of caste, which has been despotic in India for twenty-five hundred years, excludes such brotherhood. Mr. Higginson therefore is of opinion that caste has grown up in defiance of the Vedas. The Vedas indeed are ignorant of caste, but they are also ignorant of human brotherhood. The system of caste was not a defiance of the Vedas.

Nothing is gained for humanity by such statements, which are refuted immediately by the most evident facts. The true "sympathy of religions" does not consist in their saying the same thing, any more than a true concord in music consists in many performers striking the same note. Variety is the condition of harmony. These religions may, and we believe will, be all harmonized; but thus far it is only too plain that they have been at war with each other. In order to find the resemblances we must begin by seeing the differences.

Cudworth, in his great work, speaks of " the symphony of all religions," an expression which we prefer to that of Mr. Higginson. It expresses precisely what we conceive to be the fact, that these religions are all capable of being brought into union, though so very different. They may say,

"Are not we formed, as notes of music are,

For one another, though dissimilar?

Such difference, without discord, as shall make
The sweetest sounds."

But this harmony can only be established among the ethnic religions by means of a catholic religion which shall be able to take each of them up into itself, and so finally merge them in a higher union. The Greek, Roman, and Jewish religions could not unite with each other; but they were united by being taken up into Christianity. Christianity has assimilated the essential ideas of the religions of Persia, Judæa, Egypt, Greece, Rome, and Scandinavia; and each of these religions, in turn, dis

appeared as it was absorbed by this powerful solvent. In the case of Greece, Rome, Germany, and Judæa, this fact of their passing into solution in Christianity is a matter of history. Not all the Jews became Christians, nor has Judaism ceased to exist. This is perhaps owing to the doctrines of the Trinity and the Deity of Christ, which offend the simplistic monotheism of the Jewish mind. Yet Christianity at first grew out of Judaism, and took up into itself the best part of the Jews in and out of Palestine.

The question therefore is this, Will Christianity be able to do for the remaining religions of the world what it did for the Greeks, the Romans, and the Teutonic nations? Is it capable of becoming a universal religion?

§ 2. Christianity a Pleroma, or Fulness of Life.

It is evident that Christianity can become the universal human religion only by supplying the religious wants of all the races of men who dwell on all the face of the earth. If it can continue to give them all the truth their own religions contain, and add something more; if it can inspire them with all the moral life which their own religions communicate, and yet more; and, finally, if it can unite the races of men in one family, one kingdom of heaven, then it is fitted to be and will become the universal religion. It will then not share the fate of those which have preceded it. It will not have its rise, progress, decline, and fall. It will not become, in its turn, antiquated, and be left behind by the advance of humanity. It will not be swallowed up in something deeper and broader than itself. But it will appear as the desire of all nations, and Christ will reign until he has subdued all his enemies error, war, sin, selfishness, tyranny, cruelty under his feet.

Now, as we have seen, Christianity differs from all other religions (on the side of truth) in this, that it is a pleroma, or fulness of knowledge. It does not differ, by teaching what has never been said or thought before. Perhaps the substance of most of the statements of Jesus may

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