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and love. And probably from Persia, after the captivity, this view of Satan entered into Jewish theology. In the Old Testament, indeed, where Satan or the Devil as a proper name only occurs four times,* in all which cases he is a subordinate angel, the true Devil does not appear. In the Apocrypha he is said (Wisdom ii. 24) to have brought death into the world. The New Testament does not teach a doctrine of Satan, or the Devil, as something new and revealed then for the first time, but assumes a general though vague belief in such a being. This belief evidently existed among the Jews when Christ came. It as evidently was not taught in the Old Testament. The inevitable inference is that it grew up in the Jewish mind from its communication with the Persian dualism.

But though the doctrine of a Devil is no essential part of Christianity,† the reality and power of evil is fully recognized in the New Testament and in the teachings of the Church. Indeed, in the doctrine of everlasting punishment and of an eternal hell, it has been carried to a dangerous extreme. The Divine sovereignty is seriously infringed and invaded by such a view. If any outlying part of the universe continues in a state of permanent rebellion, God is not the absolute sovereign. But wickedness is rebellion. If any are to continue eternally in hell, it is because they continue in perpetual wickedness; that is, the rebellion against God will never be effectually suppressed. Only when every knee bows, and every tongue confesses that Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father; only when truth and love have subdued all enemies by converting them into friends, is redemption complete and the universe at peace.

Now, Christianity (in spite of the illogical doctrine of everlasting punishment) has always inspired a faith in the redeeming power of love to conquer all evil. It has

* Job i. 6, 12; ii. 1; Zech. iii. 1; 1 Chron. xxi. 1.

In the passages where Satan or the Devil is mentioned, the truth taught is the same, and the moral result the same, whether we interpret the phrase as meaning a personal being, or the principle of evil. In many of these passages a personal being cannot be meant: for example, John vi. 70; Matt. xvi. 23; Mark viii. 33; 1 Cor. v. 5; 2 Cor. xii. 7; I Thess. ii. 18; 1 Tim. i. 20; Heb. ii. 14.

taught that evil can be overcome by good. It asserts truth to be more powerful than error, right than wrong. It teaches us in our daily prayer to expect that God's kingdom shall come, and his will shall be done on earth as it is in Heaven. It therefore fulfils the truth in the great dualisms of the past by its untiring hope of a full redemption from all sin and all evil,

§ 5. Christianity and the Religions of Egypt, Greece, and

Rome.

The Religion of Egypt. This system unfolded the truth of the Divine in this world, of the sacredness of bodily organization, and the descent of Deity into the ultimate parts of his creation. Its defect was its inability to combine with this an open spiritualism. It had not the courage of its opinions, so far as they related to the divine unity, spirituality, and eternity.

Christianity also accepts the doctrine of God, present in nature, in man, in the laws of matter, in the infinite variety of things. But it adds to this the elevated spiritualism of a monotheistic religion, and so accepts the one and the all, unity and variety, substance and form, eternity and time, spirit and body, as filled with God and manifesting him.

The Religions of Greece and Rome. The beauty of nature, the charm of art, the genius of man, were idealized and deified in the Greek pantheon. The divinity of law, organizing human society according to universal rules of justice, was the truth in the Roman religion. The defect of the Greek theology was the absence of a central unity. Its polytheism carried variety to the extreme of disorder and dissipation. The centrifugal force, not being properly balanced by any centripetal power, inevitably ends in dissolution. The defect of Roman worship was, that its oppressive rules ended in killing out life. Law, in the form of a stiff external organization, produced moral death at last in Rome, as it had produced moral death in Judæa. Now Christianity, though a monotheism, and a mono

theism which has destroyed forever both polytheism and idolatry wherever it has gone, is not that of numerical unity. The God of Christianity differs in this from the God of Judaism and Mohammedanism. He is an infinite will; but he is more. Christianity cognizes God as not only above nature and the soul, but also as in nature and in the soul. Thus nature and the soul are made divine. The Christian doctrine of the Trinity expresses this enlargement of the Jewish monotheism from a numerical to a moral unity. The God of Christ is human in this respect, that he is conceived of in the image of man. Man is essentially a unit through his will, in which lies the secret of personal identity. But besides will he has intellect, by which he comes into communion with the universe; and affection, by which he comes into communion with his race. Christianity conceives of God in the same way. He is an omnipresent will as the Father, Creator, and Ruler of all things. He is the Word, or manifested Truth in the Son, manifested through all nature, manifested through all human life. He is the Spirit, or inspiration of each individual soul. So he is Father, Son, and Spirit, above all, through all, and in us all. By this larger view of Deity Christianity was able to meet the wants of the Aryan races, in whom the polytheistic tendency is so strong. That tendency was satisfied by this view of God immanent in nature and immanent in human life.

races.

Judaism and Mohammedanism, with their more concrete monotheism, have not been able to convert the Aryan Mohammedanism has never affected the mind of India, nor disturbed the ascendency of Brahmanism there. And though it nominally possesses Persia, yet it holds it as a subject, not as a convert. Persian Sufism is a proof of the utter discontent of the Aryan intellect with any monotheism of pure will. Sufism is the mystic form of Mohammedanism, recognizing communion with God, and not merely submission, as being the essence of true religion. During the long Mohammedan dominion in Turkey it has not penetrated the minds or won the love of the Greek races. It is evident that Christianity succeeded in converting the Greeks and Romans by means of its larger

view of the Deity, of which the doctrine of the Trinity, as it stands in the creeds, is a crude illogical expression.

§ 6. Christianity in Relation to Judaism and Mohammedanism. The Monad in all Religions.

There are three religions which teach the pure unity of God, or true monotheism. These three unitarian religions are Judaism, Christianity, and Mohammedanism. They also all originated in a single race, the Semitic race, that which has occupied the central region of the world, the centre of three continents. It is the race which tends to a religious unity, as that of our Aryan ancestors tended to variety.

But what is pure monotheism? It is the worship of one alone God, separated by the vast abyss of the infinite from all finite beings. It is the worship of God, not as the Supreme Being only, not as the chief among many gods, as Jupiter was the president of the dynasty on Olympus, not merely the Most High, but as the only God. It avoids the two extremes, one of making the Supreme Being head of a council or synod of deities, and the other of making him indeed infinite, but an infinite abstraction, or abyss of darkness. These are the two impure forms of monotheism. The first prevailed in Greece, Rome, Egypt, Scandinavia. In each of these religions there was a supreme being, - Zeus, Jupiter, Ammon, Odin, but this supreme god was only primus inter pares, first among equals. The other impure form of monotheism prevailed in the East,-in Brahmanism, Buddhism, and the religion of Zoroaster. In the one Parabrahm, in the other ZeranaAkerana, in the third Nirvana itself, is the Infinite Being or substance, wholly separate from all that is finite. It is so wholly separate as to cease to be an object of adoration and obedience. Not Parabrahm, but Siva, Vischnu, and Brahma; not Zerana-Akerana, but Ormazd and the Amschaspands; not the infinite world of Nirvana, nor the mighty Adi-Buddha, but the Buddhas of Confession, the finite Sakya-Muni, are the objects of worship in these systems.

Only from the Semitic race have arisen the pure monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Mohammedanism. Each of these proclaims one only God, and each makes this only God the object of all worship and service. Judaism says, "Hear! O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord!" (Deut. vi. 4.) Originally among the Jews, God's name as the "Plural of Majesty" indicated a unity formed from variety; but afterward it became in the word Jahveh a unity of substance. "By my name Jehovah I was not known to them" (i. e. to the Patriarchs).* That name indicates absolute Being, "I am the I am."†

Ancient Gentile monotheism vibrated between a personal God, the object of worship, who was limited and finite, and an infinite absolute Being who was out of sight, "whose veil no one had lifted." The peculiarity of the Mosaic religion was to make God truly the one alone, and at the same time truly the object of worship.

In this respect Judaism, Christianity, and Mohammedanism agree, and in this they differ from all other religions. Individual thinkers, like Socrates, Eschylus, Cicero, have reached the same conviction; but these three are the only popular religions, in which God is at once the infinite and absolute, and the only object of worship.

Now it is a remarkable fact that these three religions, which are the only pure monotheistic religions, are at the same time the only religions which have any claim to catholicity. Buddhism, though the religion of numerous nations, seems to be the religion of only one race, namely, the Turanic race, or Mongols. The people of India who remain Buddhists, the Singalese, or inhabitants of Ceylon, belong to the aboriginal Tamul, or Mongol race. With this exception then (which is no exception, as far as we know the ethnology of Eastern Asia), the only religions which aim at Catholicism are these three, which are also the only monotheistic religions. Judaism aimed at catholicity and hoped for it. It had an instinct of universality, as appeared in its numerous attempts at making proselytes of other nations. It failed of catholicity when it refused to accept as its Christ the man who had risen t Exodus iii. 14.

* Exodus vi. 2.

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