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CHRISTIANITY, THE WORLD-RELIGION
Barrows' Xectures, 1896^97
CHRISTIANITY
THE WORLD-RELIGION
LECTURES DELIVERED IN INDIA
AND JAPAN
BY
JOHN HENRY BARROWS, D.D.
PRESIDENT OF THE WORLD'S FIRST PARLIAMENT OF RELIGIONS, AND
HASKELL LECTURER ON COMPARATIVE RELIGION IN
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
CHICAGO
A. C. McCLURG AND COMPANY
1897
Copyright
By a. C. McClurg & Co.
a. d. 1897
<-7
TO
MRS. CAROLINE E. HASKELL
THE ELECT LADY, BELOVED AND HONORED IN THE EAST AND IN THE
WEST, WHOSE LIBERALITY FOUNDED
THE INDIAN LECTURESHIP, THIS VOLUME, THE FIRST-
FRUITS OF HER ENDOWMENT,
IS GRATEFULLY DEDICATED, WITH ADMIRATION
FOR HER WORLD-EMBRACING
PHILANTHROPY AND HER BRAVE AND FAR-SEEING FAITH,
AND ALSO IN
RECOGNITION OF HER SPLENDID SERVICES
TO THE CAUSE OF
ORIENTAL LEARNING IN AMERICA
AND OF THE EXPANDING KINGDOM OF GOD IN THE
CONTINENT OF ASIA.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
EXTRACT FROM MRS, HASKELL'S LETTER FOUNDING
THE BARROWS LECTURESHIP, . . Q
PREFACE, ...... 13
LECTURE I.
THE WORLD-WIDE ASPECTS OF CHRISTIANITY, 23
LECTURE IL
THE WORLD-WIDE EFFECTS OF CHRISTIANITY, 69
LECTURE III.
CHRISTIAN THEISM, AS THE BASIS OF A UNIVERSAL
RELIGION, . . . . . .Ill
LECTURE IV.
THE UNIVERSAL BOOK, .... 157
LECTURE V.
THE UNIVERSAL MAN AND SAVIOUR, . . 201
LECTURE VI.
THE HISTORIC CHARACTER OF CHRISTIANITY AS CON¬
FIRMING ITS CLAIMS TO WORLD-WIDE AUTHORITY, 243
LECTURE VIL
THE WORLD'S PARLIAMENT OF RELIGIONS, . 293
APPENDIX—DR. BARROWS IN INDIA AND JAPAN. BY
REV. ROBERT A. HUME, D. D., . . . 33I
BIBLIOGRAPHY AND NOTES, . . . 351
INDEX ....... 407
EXTRACT FROM MRS. HASKELL'S LET¬
TER FOUNDING THE BARROWS
LECTURESHIP.
"Chicago, Oct. 12, 1894.
"To President William R. Harper, Ph.D., D.D.
"My dear Sir:—I take pleasure in offering to
the University of Chicago the sum of twenty thou¬
sand dollars for the founding of a second Lecture¬
ship on the Relations of Christianity and the other
Religions. These lectures, six or more in number,
are to be given in Calcutta (India), and, if deemed
best, in Bombay, Madras, or some other of the
chief cities of Hindustan, where large numbers of
educated Hindus are familiar with the English lan¬
guage. The wish, so earnestly expressed by Mr.
P. C. Mozoomdar, that a Lectureship like that
which I had the privilege of founding last summer
might be provided for India, has led me to consider
the desirability of establishing in some great col¬
legiate center like Calcutta a course of lectures to
be given, either annually, or as may seem better,
biennially, by leading Christian scholars of Eu¬
rope, Asia and America, in which, in a friendly,
temperate, conciliatory way, and in the fraternal
spirit which pervaded the Parliament of Religions,
the great questions of the truths of Christianity,
its harmonies with the truths of other religions, its
rightful claims, and the best method of setting
9
lo EXTRACT FROM LETTER.
them forth, should be presented to the scholarly
and thoughtful people of India.
"It is my purpose to identify this work, which
I believe will be a work of enlightenment and fra¬
ternity, with the University Extension Department
of the University of Chicago, and it is my desire
that the management of this Lectureship should lie
with yourself, as President of all the departments
of the University, with Rev. John Henry Barrows,
D.D., the Professorial Lecturer on Comparative
Religion, with Professor George S. Goodspeed, the
Associate Professor of Comparative Religion, and
with those who shall be your and their successors
in these positions. It is my request that this Lec¬
tureship shall bear the name of John Henry Bar¬
rows, who has identified himself with the work of
promoting friendly relations between Christian
America and the people of India. I hope also that
he may be the first lecturer. The committee hav¬
ing the management of these lectures shall also
have the authority to determine whether any of the
courses shall be given in Asiatic or other cities
outside of India.
"In reading the proceedings of the Parliament
of Religions, I have been struck with the many
points of harmony between the different faiths,
and the possibility of so presenting Christianity to
others as to win their favorable interest in its
truths. If the committee shall decide to utilize
this Lectureship still further in calling forth the
views of scholarly representatives of the non-Chris¬
tian faiths, I authorize and shall approve such a de¬
cision. Only good will grow out of such a com-
EXTRACT FROM LETTER. II
parison of views. It is my wish that, accepting the
offer which I now make, the committee of the Uni¬
versity will correspond with the leaders of religious
thought in India, and secure from them such help¬
ful suggestions as they may be ready to give. I
cherish the expectation that the Barrows Lectures
will prove, in years that shall come, a new golden
bond between the East and West. In the belief
that this foundation will be blessed by our Heav¬
enly Father, to the extension of the benign influ¬
ence of our great University, to the promotion of
the highest interests of humanity, and to the
enlargement of the kingdom of Truth and Love on
earth, I remain, with much regard,
''Yours sincerely,
"CAROLINE E. HASKELL."
PREFACE.
The Lectures contained in this book have
received no additions and only a few slight
changes. They are published as they were given
in India. As delivered in Japan, some slight
alterations in them were, of course, indispens¬
able. I have not thought it wise to depart from
the popular style and character of address which
seemed best fitted to the original purpose of my
spoken message.
The Indian Lectureship was fortunate in its
connection with a movement of fraternity and
conciliation which deeply touched the heart of
India. After the work which I was permitted
to inaugurate after six thousand miles of travel,
in which I crossed the Indian peninsula five
times, delivering more than one hundred and
ten lectures and addresses, meeting hundreds of
missionaries and Christian teachers, and also
many hundreds of non-Christian friends, and
speaking to thousands of restless and inquisitive
youths, my estimate of the possible usefulness
of the Lectureship, especially when it is held in
abler hands than mine, has been augmented. If
Christian lectureships are useful in Oxford,
Edinburgh and New York, they may become
13
H PREFACE.
much more useful in a country like India, where
the foundations of rational Christian faith must
be laid. I have long believed in Christian edu¬
cation as a main factor in India's evangelization.
The Lectureship comes in as a supplement to
this force. It brings a fresh speaker to the
inquiring and changing Indian life, and it secures
for him a sympathetic hearing. Furthermore,
well-known and scholarly men going to India
from Europe or America are sure to gain larger
audience than those already resident in India,
and returning to their own lands after a few
months of contact with the wondrous life of the
East, they will be able to speak with more in¬
terest and personal knowledge in regard to the
progress and the needs of Christ's Kingdom.
The subject which I selected for this inaugu¬
rating series of lectures was chosen with several
objects in view. I desired to fasten attention on
the supreme and distinctive truths which center
in Christ. It is certain that many educated
Hindus who know something of Christianity
misconceive it. They regard as supreme and
vital what is only secondary and non-essential.
Believing that the spirit and substance of the
Christian religion are found in the Christ of the
Gospels, I made my most earnest effort to con¬
centrate upon Him the constant attention of my
hearers, whether I met them in the college
halls of Calcutta or in the Town Hall of
Lahore, whether on the Malabar coast or where
PREFACE, 15
the long waves dash on the stormy shores of
Coromandel.
My second purpose was to lodge in the Hindu
mind our conviction that Christianity is essen¬
tially a universal religion, divinely adapted to the
spiritual needs of each man, whatever his race,
rank or nation. The sensitive Hindu, who for
long ages has scarcely looked beyond his own
beloved Aryavarta, is not easily disposed to favor
the claim that anything outside of India is
mighty enough to take up and include his own
land, with its great religious philosophies and its
three thousand years of intellectual history.
Christianity, although it had lingered since the
fourth century on the West Coast in the Syrian
Church, and although it had touched Southern
India in the apostolic labors of Xavier, appeared
to the Hindu mind chiefly as the religion of his
English conquerors. Then he came to regard it
as the faith belonging in various forms to the
Western world of railroads and iron steamers,
the world of fire-arms and materialistic science.
He saw clearly some of the unlovely aspects of
Christendom, and the name Christian had none
of the attractiveness for him which it possesses
for Europeans and Americans. Flattered by the
praises, sometimes indiscriminate, of Western
scholars, who unearthed for him his own sacred
literature, he began to think that he possessed
something already which rendered Christianity,
at least for him, unnecessary. Of late years.
i6
PREFACE.
during the so-called Hindu revival, he has been
strengthened in his feeling that Hinduism, re¬
formed and purified, is good enough for his peo¬
ple, and indeed possesses a glory which does
not belong to the Christian Gospel. It was,
therefore, my effort to show that Christianity,
judged by any tests which bring out its true
nature, is the universal religion. The earnest
proclamation of the essential universality of the
Christian faith was, of course, not altogether
acceptable to the proud and isolated Hindu
spirit. It has been the habit of that spirit in
recent years to claim for Hinduism every ex¬
cellence claimed by other religions. My persist¬
ent advocacy of Christ's universal claims, and
my insistence that Christianity is a missionary
religion, seeking after the whole world with its
message of life and salvation, stirred up not a
little antagonism. But I was not so much sur¬
prised at this as at the general kindness, court¬
esy, patience and attention with which my mes¬
sage was received.
The subject and treatment of my lectures
were determined by another consideration and
purpose, the desire to furnish a convenient,
comprehensive and readable summary of Chris¬
tian Evidences in the light of comparative study.
The Indians are a reading people, and India is
the country of cheap printing. And while there
are many books of Christian Evidences, and
valuable works in which Christianity and Hin-
PREFACE. 17
duism are compared, I do not know that India
is familiar with any volume wherein the su¬
premacy of Christianity is continuously set forth,
as compared not only with Hinduism, but with
the other competing religions.
It does not seem appropriate that I should fill
this preface with the names of the multitude of
friends, who, in America, Great Britain, France,
Germany, Egypt, India, Japan and the Hawaiian
Islands, contributed, in one way or another, to
the pleasure and interest of my world-pilgrim¬
age and to whatever success may have belonged
to my undertaking. I have come to feel that
the empire of good will is the most comprehen¬
sive now existing on the earth. The domain of
fraternity is practically world-wide. I have
heard the voice of kindness within the cathe¬
drals of Old England, and the bronzed and
lacquered sanctuaries of Japan. I have experi¬
enced the warmth of brotherly affection from
Roman Catholic Monsignors, Syrian Bishops,
and Greek, Coptic, and Armenian Patriarchs.
My mission to India was blessed by the prayers
of Christians in America, and welcomed by men
of all faiths in the Orient. The most famous
of scholars, Professor Max Müller, of Oxford,
gave it his kindest interest and good wishes. It
received the benediction of the venerable states¬
man of France, the late Jules Simon, and the
more venerable Patriarch of Alexandria, the suc¬
cessor of Athanasius. I have clasped the friendly
i8
PREFACE.
hands of Jain, Moslem and Parsee scholars, and
of the sages of the Buddhist and Confucianist
faiths. The garlands which the dark hands of
kindly Hindus, in accordance with the beautiful
Eastern custom, placed around our necks, have
bound our affections to the brilliant and suffer¬
ing East, and as I think of the faces which have
been upturned toward ours, faces as bright with
intelligence and good-will as they were em¬
browned by tropic suns, I realize how strong
and lasting is that pathetic appeal which Asia
henceforth makes to my grateful heart.
The welcome and hospitality with which the
Christian missionaries in India and Japan re¬
ceived us into their homes were unspeakably
kind, and one of my deepest joys in recalling
my busy months in the Orient is their constant
testimony that my mission was in some measure
a help and encouragement to their work. It
would be ungracious and ungrateful in me not
to record the names of at least five among the
many friends who aided in successfully inaugu¬
rating the India Lectureship; Hon. and Rev.
William Miller, D.D., C.I.E., President of the
Christian College, Madras; Rev. K. S. Macdon-
ald, D.D., and Principal John Morrison, M.A.,
Calcutta; Rev. P. C. Mozoomdar, of the Brahmo
Soma], and the Rev. Robert A. Hume, D.D.,
of Ahmednagar.
I can wish for my successors in the Indian
Lectureship no more interesting experiences than
PREFACE. 19
those which made my recent visit to the Land of
the Vedas a chief event in my life. However
slight a contribution to the religious discussions
of our times this book may be deemed, it must
be evident that the conception of Christianity
herein embodied is fast coming to the front, and
will more and more absorb the attention of the
friends and foes of the Christian religion. In
this conception will be found the abiding mo¬
tives of Christian missionary effort. I saw India
in a year of plague and famine, and I hope that
the readers of this volume, both in the East and
the West, may be helped by it to discover anew
or for the first time that a Divine Physician
stands ready to heal the dreadful plague of sin,
and that the famine of the soul may be removed
by Him who still says, "I am the Bread of
Life."
JOHN HENRY BARROWS.
The Seven Pines,
Island of Mackinac, Michigan.
September 6th, 1897.
THE WORLD-WIDE ASPECTS OF
CHRISTIANITY.
And nations shall come to thy light, and kings to the
brightness of thy rising. Isaiah, Ix. 3.
And they shall come from the east and west, and from
the north and south, and shall sit down in the Kingdom of
God. Luke, xiii. 29.
And ye shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in
all Judaea and Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the
earth. Acts, i. 8.
Jesus ist der Christus Israels gewesen und das Christen¬
thum ist aus der Offenbarungsreligion der Semiten geboren.
Aber die edelsten Kräfte Jafets haben dabei mitwirker
müssen. Jesus ist mehr als ein Prophet Israels gewesen,
und mehr, als Israels höchste Hoffnung von seinem Könige
erwartete. Er ist die Offenbarung Gottes für die Menschen¬
kinder. Und das Christenthum ist die Welt-religion, in der
der religiös-prophetische Geist Sems sich mit dem philoso¬
phischen und civilisatorischen Geiste Jafets vermählt.—
Grundriss der Christlichen Apologetik von Dr. Herm.
Schultz, p 84.
" A national religion," Mozoomdar said, "may be a very
fine thing; but a rational religion is grander." To which
noble words I would add: Any religion which boasts of
being national proclaims to the world the fact that it is not
the Universal Religion. As well may men ask for a national
geography or a national astronomy as for a national re¬
ligion.—Universal Religion, a lecture delivered at Banga¬
lore in Nov., 1896, by Edward P. Rice, B. A., p. 4.
FIRST LECTURE.
THE WORLD-WIDE ASPECTS OF CHRISTIANITY.
I deem it one of the chief privileges of my
life that I am permitted to inaugurate this Lect¬
ureship, which I hope may prove a bond of
brotherhood between the East and the West.
My interest in this land of India, which cradled
the old religions, and has been a theater for the
activity of the newer faiths, has continued
through years. Before the Parliament of Re¬
ligions was held I entered into correspondence
with many of those who lead in the religious
activities and developments of this people.
Some of them made the long journey to
America, and gave us their views of the prob¬
lems of human life and destiny. Before return¬
ing, these speakers at that Congress expressed
the hope that I might be able to visit India, a
hope which I fully shared, although at that time
such a visit as this seemed a remote possibility.
A year after the Parliament closed, however, a
Christian lady who had been deeply interested
in that meeting founded this Lectureship, en¬
trusting its conduct to the University of Chi¬
cago. And she accompanied her gift with the
23
24 CHRISTIANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
request that I should be the first speaker on this
foundation, and also with a statement of her
thoughts and wishes. Her purpose was to
establish courses of scholarly lectures in the col¬
legiate centers of India, in which, "in a friendly,
temperate, conciliatory way, and in the fraternal
spirit which pervaded the Parliament of Re¬
ligions, the great questions of the truths of Chris¬
tianity, its harmonies with the truths of other
religions, its rightful claims and the best method
of setting them forth, should be presented to the
scholarly and thoughtful people of India."
Mrs. Haskell, both in her gift and in her let¬
ter, has shown how broad and charitable is her
mind and how generous and loving is her heart.
Possessed of an ample fortune, she has made
large gifts to hospitals, institutions for the care
of orphan children, and for aged people, churches
of different denominations, and societies for the
prevention of cruelty to animals. Tender¬
hearted toward all suffering, she has been broad-
minded and wise in promoting the higher educa¬
tion. She has founded in the University of
Chicago a Lectureship which bears her name, on
the relations of Christianity and the other faiths,
and by the gift of more than ;^20,000 has built
the Haskell Oriental Museum, the first great
building in America dedicated entirely to Ori¬
ental studies. Her mind has taken in the whole
world, and in founding this Lectureship as a
permanent institution she has manifested her
ASPECTS OF CHRISTIANITY. 25
love to a people and a country that she has
never seen. She has desired to increase their
opportunities of becoming acquainted with that
Christian faith whose compassionate spirit she
nobly illustrates. Now in her seventy-sixth
year, she sends her blessings, through the voice
of another, to the people of India, and is calmly
confident that good results will follow this effort
to advance the kingdom of righteousness and
love by casting seeds of celestial truth on the
ancient streams of the mystic and memory-
haunted Asiatic world. She believes that you
will give a welcome and a sympathetic hearing
to generous-minded scholars, who come in the
spirit of love, and whose purpose is not so much
to pull down as to build up, and who, acknowl¬
edging that the Spirit of God has been working
everywhere, that rays of heavenly truth have
been shining everywhere, that voices of prophetic
tone have been sounding everywhere, are eager to
communicate such messages of the Spirit, such
gleams of heavenly light, such utterances of
divine consolation as have come to them in
connection with the ministration of Jesus Christ.
No wise Christian believer, it seems to me, would
uproot or destroy anything in Oriental lands
which he deems true and useful. I am sure that
the scholarly Hindus who have accepted Chris¬
tianity and are now rejoicing in what they find
in Christ still maintain their faith in all the
ethical and spiritual verities of Hinduism, adding
26 CHRISTIANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
thereto a supreme and satisfying faith in the
person and work of their Lord and Saviour.
They are not less devoted to India's welfare than
their non-Christian brethren, and they are not
less proud of all that is truly great in India's
past history.
Under the commission which I bear it is my
privilege and duty to give my message in a spirit
of friendliness and conciliation, to set forth the
rightful claims of Christianity, without forget¬
ting its points of contact with other faiths. I
have not come to India for controversy. What
I seek, and what I believe you will freely grant,
is a candid hearing to these lectures, in which I
shall propose the inquiry—"Is Christianity fitted
to become the world-religion?" This is a vital
question, and I ask you to give it your careful
consideration to the close of these six addresses.
While each lecture will treat a special part of the
theme, it will be necessary for the candid hearer,
in order to judge of the argument offered, to
take under his survey the whole field. I have
not come to India to discuss those great systems
of philosophy, which are the astonishing product
of the subtle Hindu mind.^ Matters of chiefly
intellectual interest are not grave enough to jus¬
tify the efforts, or to fulfill the hopes of this
Lectureship. The ethical and spiritual problems
are the deepest. They have a universal inter¬
est. God, man, duty, worship, escape from sin
'Appendix, Lecture I, Note i.
ASPECTS OF CHRISTIANITT. 27
and evil, triumph over the world, reconciliation,
peace through fellowship with the Heavenly-
Father, and hope which death cannot annihilate,
—these words suggest the main problems of
human life.
The present lectures deal with religion, or
man's devout attitude toward the universe, a
universe glorified by the presence of God. Man's
religion concerns the being of the Infinite Spirit,
and his personal relations to that Spirit. It is
explained by such words as reverence, worship,
duty, repentance, aspiration, love.
When we consider man, after he has risen to
the dignity of thought, we find him an inquirer
gazing into a mysterious world. He stands on an
isthmus between the oceans of two eterni¬
ties. Out of mystery he came, and into mystery
he goes. He recognizes himself, he recognizes the
world outside of himself, he recognizes also that
there is a connection between the two—some¬
thing binding them together, the great all-sur¬
rounding unity, which he calls the universe.^ He
cannot rationally divorce this creation from the
thought of creative powers, and though he has
believed in the presence of many supernatural
beings, he has generally, if often vaguely, recog¬
nized a Supreme Divinity behind all others, and,
with the disclosures of recent science, he has
reached the conclusion that there can be but one
mind back of phenomena.
2 Appendix, Lecture I, Note 2.
28 CHRISTlANirr, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
It has been truly said by Professor Drum-
mond that "the sun and stars have been found
out. If science has not, by searching, found
out God, it has not found any other God, or
anything the least like a God, that might con¬
tinue to be even a conceivable object of worship
in a scientific age."
As we study man, even in his degradation, we
find him to be a worshipful being. Pre-historic
men had their idols, and beliefs in the life be¬
yond were indicated by their burial customs.
Thus, religion is not something imposed upon
man but something that springs up within him.
The doctrine of a God, immanent as well as
transcendent, simplifies some of the questions
regarding the origin of religion.^ We trace its
birth not to the call of Abraham or to the hymns
sung by the Vedic man "under the bright sky
and beneath the burning stars of India." Its
origin is not with the priests of the Nile or the
miracles of the New Testament. It is older than
history. We say that it is "instinctive " for
men to recognize the supernatural origin and
environment of life. They may call God by a
hundred names, and the gods of the Hindu my¬
thology by a hundred thousand, but they cannot
get permanently away from the Infinite Spirit.
They learn, as one has said, that "behind all the
phenomena of nature there is a cause, that be¬
hind the apparent is the real, that behind the
'Appendix, Lecture I, Note 3.
ASPECTS OF CHRISTIANITY. 29
shadow there is the substance, that behind the
transitory there is the eternal." Man discov¬
ers, but does not make, the relations and laws which
enter into the substance of religion ; and hence
it is true that, if all the books that are deemed
sacred were burned, if the historic records were
all obliterated, if the temples and rituals and
elaborated creeds of to-day were swept out of
sight and out of mind, and if only the infant
children now living in the world were to con¬
tinue to live after this hour, though the loss
would be unspeakable—Sinai, the Mount of
Beatitudes, Calvary, all gone—still the young,
new race would learn to recognize the divine,
and build the altars of faith ; religion would
return because the old heart-hunger for God
and immortality would not be destroyed ; and
the soul, the mother of all traditions, would
build its shining ladders, behold the ascending
and descending angels, and listen once more to
the songs of the Spirit.
Religions have died, but the spirit of worship
survives. Certain forms of faith went down
into the graves of ancient empires, but the realm
of faith was never so large and luminous as to¬
day. Science is showing a deeper regard for
religion. It is far more reverent, and in closer
sympathy with faith. The time has come when
scientific minds have undertaken the study of
these vital phenomena which constitute the
main current of human progress. The whole
30 CHRISTIAN/TV, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
tendency to-day is toward a worshipful and lov¬
ing trust in the Eternal Spirit/ Agnosticism is
not so unknowing as it was twenty years ago.
"Each act of scientific examination," as one has
said, "but reveals the opening through which
shines the glory of the eternal majesty." En¬
vironment includes God, the chief force and
factor in development. God, immortality, the
spiritual origin, and direction of all things—
these are the truths, that are most consonant
with our present state of knowledge. The ac¬
ceptance of the doctrine of evolution has enlarged
the domain of natural theology and changed its
scope, though not its results. Physical and
metaphysical science are not at war. They are
not indifferent to each other. They are pursu¬
ing similar ends. It is not only true that science
endeavors to think God's thoughts after Him,
while religion endeavors to feel God's emotions
after Him, but it is also true that science is be¬
coming religious, and religion scientific.
We are living in a time when the question
asked by the present course of lectures has a
peculiar appropriateness. Many of the most im¬
portant subjects which men are considering at
the close of the nineteenth century are either
included in this inquiry or suggested by it.
Studies in Comparative Theology and the press¬
ing and very practical problems of religious effort
are closely related to it. Some thoughtful men,
^Appendix, Lecture I, Note 4.
ASPECTS OF CHRISTIANITT. 31
trained in the philosophies of the Orient, are
answering our inquiry affirmatively to this extent
that they are urging and promoting ethical re¬
forms which follow the spirit and methods of
Christian philanthropy. Does not the awakened
and expanded intellect of India and Japan look
upon Christendom with some measure of grate¬
ful appreciation, and does it not regard Chris¬
tianity, as represented by Christ and his teach¬
ings with a growingly favorable mind?
The higher principles and ideals of the non-
Christian religions touch those of the Christian
Scriptures at certain points, although not always
very closely.® Good results might follow a care¬
ful statement of these principles, common to
Christianity and each of the non-Christian sys¬
tems. By a comparison of these different state¬
ments, the elements common to all could be
discovered. This residuum, however, would
constitute an insufficient basis for that new, uni¬
versal religion which a few idealists imagine is
to spring from this common content. Scholars
have tried in vain to construct an artificial lan¬
guage which men shall adopt and use, out of
the best elements of the greatest forms of human
speech, and it is not probable that a universal
religion can be educed out of the elements com¬
mon to the mightiest forms of faith. Religions
whose origins are known have not been manu¬
factured. They have been born like children.
® Appendix, Lecture I, Note 5.
32 CHRÍSTIAN/TT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
They have sprung like trees from seeds or roots in
the past, and their development has not been
mechanical, but vital and organic. Dissection
neither discovers nor develops life. Reducing
Christianity and the non-Christian faiths to their
common principles, we bring the highest to the
level of the lowest, cut each faith off from its
history, and eliminate from each at least some of
the characteristic elements which give it energy
and endurance. The ethical and philosophical
remnant, plus the dim recognition of a super¬
natural order, cannot be considered the world-
religion for which mankind is supposed to be
waiting. Most men acquainted with the history
of religions, do not anticipate the rise of a new
faith which, gathering the best elements of the
others into a grand synthesis, is destined to sup¬
plant all present systems of belief and worship.
Educated minds are now familiar with the
leading principles, the main historic develop¬
ments, the present working forces, and the chief
moral results of the four or five religions of the
world now dividing the allegiance of its inhab¬
itants. As a matter of® fact, the faiths which dis¬
pute with Christianity the conquest of the globe
are only four: the Mohammedan, the Hindu,
the Confucian, and the Buddhist. I believe that
Christianity can be shown to include what is
best in the ethnic faiths, to have elements
which make it supreme, an authoritativeness
•Appendix, Lecture I., Note 6.
ASrßCTS OF CHRISTIANITT. 33
which makes it distinctive, and that, when de¬
veloped in accordance with its divine ideas and
modified to meet the mental and other necessi¬
ties of different nations, it will yet dominate
with its beneficent rule the entire race. It has
been the mission of the greater religions, of
those which are vertebrate with organizing truths,
to absorb the primitive, the unsystematized, the
aboriginal faiths of the world. In India, as the
hill tribes and the tribes of the jungle have be¬
come slightly civilized, they have gradually
melted their rude and cruel superstitions into
the types of the more intellectual religion. They
have changed their modes of living and their
ideas, and passed into Hinduism ''by a natural
upward transition, which has led them to adopt
the rituals of the classes immediately above
them." We know that Mohammedanism is
sweeping away the barbarous cults of central and
western Africa; that Buddhism in its wide con¬
quests has wrought similar works ; while Chris¬
tianity not only dethroned the gods of Olympus,
but has also annihilated the primitive faiths of
many of the savage islands of the Pacific.
With the dividing walls of nations broken
down and their doors of exclusion broken in, the
great religions confront each other to-day, and,
as Principal Grant has said of one higher faith
meeting another: "Victory cannot be expected
to incline to either side until there has been an
intelligent study by each of the sources of the
34 CI/BIS TIAN!Tr, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
other's strength, an appreciation of the spiritual
and social needs which it has met, and an ab¬
sorption by the one that has most inherent ex¬
cellence and power of assimilation, of all in the
other that caused it to be accepted and retained
for centuries by millions of human beings." Of
the four great religions which meet Christianity
to-day, he adds that "they have proved them¬
selves so enduring, and so suited to men on a
great scale that, if Christianity should succeed
in absorbing and taking the place of one of them,
it would be a more crowning demonstration of
its superiority than was its triumph over the
religions of Greece and Rome."
I come as a representative of Jesus Christ, the
greatest cosmopolitan, the greatest humanitarian
of all history, who, in His disclosure of God as
the universal Father, revealed the universal prin¬
ciple of human unity. His God is "the God of
all men and nations, the God who is revealed in
nature and history alike." I do not speak to
you as a man of another race, and even if I did
I should feel our essential oneness as members of
the same human family. But we are of the
same race. Long ages ago your fathers and
mine "were brothers, lived under the same
heaven, watched the same stars rise and set,
tilled the same fields, worshiped the same gods."
Culture, wealth, civilization came to your Aryan
forefathers when the ancestors of my people
were cruel savages, dwelling along the shores of
ASPECTS OP CHRISTIANITT. 35
the Elbe and the Rhine. If to-day the Anglo-
Saxon race is in the foremost ranks of civiliza¬
tion, if the Teuton is now a leader in human
progress, it is because there came to him "in his
brawny and untutored youth a gentle faith, yet
strong as gentle, and it molded him with its soft
yet plastic hands, shaped him to new and nobler
purposes, breathed into his society a purer spirit,
larger ambitions, and loftier aims." "He knows
himself a son of God, a brother of man, a free
and conscious person, sent by divine love to
make earth happier, by divine righteousness to
make man holier."
We believe that from Christianity has sprung
all that is best in our civilization, and so far as
we are faithful to Christ, our leader, we are
eager that all men should share its blessings.
But you will not appreciate a primary and
essential truth in regard to Christianity if you
think of it for a moment as a Western, a Eu¬
ropean, an American or an English religion. If
it must be described geographically it is Asiatic,
and from Asia its light has illumined, and its
gracious power has molded, the Western nations.
But the word Asiatic is misleading. For essen¬
tially it is universal ; it is that which not only
fits the spiritual needs of all races, but was de¬
signed from the beginning, and was proclaimed
by its Founder, for the spiritual good of all man¬
kind.
But what, I ask, is this Christianity of which
36 CHR/STÍAN/T2', THE WORLD-RELIGION.
I am to speak? We know that it has many-
forms and many divisions. In these lectures it
will be identified not with a part of Christendom,
like the Greek Church, the Roman Catholic
Church, or any type of Protestantism, but rather
with that in which they all agree: common,
catholic, historic Christianity, the faith delivered
once for all in apostolic times unto the Christian
saints, but not delivered as a perfect jewel
admitting of no change or growth, but rather as
a celestial seed capable of indefinite expansion
and wide variation. Historic Christianity, so far
as its fundamental truths and facts are concerned,
includes the faith in God, the Father and Creator;
in Jesus Christ, His only Son, the Redeemer
of the soul through His life, example, teachings,
death, and resurrection; in the Holy Spirit, or
the Lord of life and sanctifier of the soul; in a
Holy Universal Church of all believers; in per¬
sonal resurrection, and conscious immortality.
There have been Christian developments outside
of these limits. Noble characters have been
shaped by Christian truth, who have not accepted
in its fullness the historic faith. But I am not
dealing with exceptions, but with the rule. Chris¬
tianity is a majestic growth from the seed planted
in Palestine by Christ and his Apostles. The
truths and forces which have made Christen¬
dom are centered in Him whom the Church
reveres as the Messiah of Israel, the Son of
God, the Divine Redeemer, incarnate in Jesus
ASPECTS OP CHRISTIANITY. 37
of Nazareth for the redemption of men. Of
course, Christianity cannot be regarded as merely
the theological teachings and historical propo¬
sitions of any Christian creed. It must also be
thought of as the spirit pervading these. As
Christ created Christianity, we must know Him
in order to understand what He created ; His
conception of God as Father, gracious, merciful,
and providing propitiation; His conception of
Himself as the Mediator and Redeemer; of men
as children of God, whose primary obligations
are the filial spirit toward Him, and the fraternal
spirit toward each other; of worship as spiritual
and independent of priests and sacred places; of
the kingdom of heaven as a society founded to
universalize Christian ideas. We believe that
this, the common, historic Christianity has in it
the elements and forces which make it fit to be¬
come the world-religion, and which, for that rea¬
son, will give to it ultimate acceptance through¬
out the earth.
And what fitter time was ever known for such
discussions and comparisons as are involved in
our fundamental proposition? The investigation
required may now be conducted without mis¬
leading ignorance, without acrimony, in the
spirit of perfect fairness, and with genuine and
generous appreciation of the elements of truth
and goodness, discoverable in each of the lead¬
ing historic faiths. In a recent article in the
Deutsche Rundschau of Berlin, Professor Max
38 CHRISTIANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
Müller describes each religion as going its
own way, so convinced of its own and only
beatifical power that it hardly looks at others,
and can only with difficulty suppress a smile of
self-content when it is asked to put itself within
the same line and order with the other religions.
This description may express the general feeling
of the past, and the prevailing feeling of multi¬
tudes to-day ; but surely we have witnessed the
beginnings of a truer understanding among those
who variously represent the spiritual forces of
the earth. And there are multitudes of Chris¬
tians, profoundly loyal to Jesus Christ, who have
expressed a generous appreciation, not only of
the truths contained in the Sacred Books of the
East, but also of the devoted lives of many who
have not known the historic Christ, or who have
been blessed by Him indirectly rather than
directly—that is through lunar, rather than solar
radiance.^ A few years ago, in the Palace of De¬
light outside the fortress of Acre, there died a
famous Persian sage, named Beha Allah, the
"Glory of God,"—the head of that vast reform
party of Persian Moslems who accept the New
Testament as the word of God, and Christ as
the deliverer of men, regarding all peoples as
one, and all men as brethren,—who said to a
Cambridge scholar "that all nations should be¬
come one in faith, and all men as brothers; that
the bonds of affection and unity between the
'Appendix, Lecture I, Note 7.
ASPECTS OF CHRTSTIANITT. 39
sons of men should be strengthened ; that
diversity of religions should cease, and differences
of race be annulled; what harm is there in this?
Yet so it shall be. These fruitless strifes, these
ruinous wars shall pass away, and the Most Great
Peace shall come. Do not you in Europe need
this also? Let not a man glory in this, that he
loves his country ; let him rather glory in this,
that he loves his kind." Do not such Christian
sentiments as were spoken by this Babi saint
indicate that loving hearts are finding each other
out and reaching forth their friendly hands, now
that Heaven is calling to the truce of God?®
A fundamental principle of the Parliament of
Religions was toleration, and those who accept
the principles of the Parliament are champions
of toleration in its truest and widest sense. The
records of religious bigotry and persecution are
probably the blackest and reddest pages in the
past history of our race. The wars, hatreds and
inhumanities attributable to the intolerant spirit
in sincere men, men who worshiped their own
opinions more than the divine spirit of love and
mercy, have made the very name of religion an
offense to certain classes of unbelieving minds.
All races and all the great faiths have an evil
record to be ashamed of in this regard. We
hope that the Parliament is a signal to the
twentieth century that the persecuting ages are
over or must speedily come to an end. Tolera-
® Appendix, Lecture I, Note 8.
fo CHRISTIANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
tion means among other things that men are to
be defended in their right to worship God
according to the dictates of their own con¬
sciences, without fear or molestation. It means
that the Jew may become a Christian, or the
Christian a proselyte to Judaism, without suffer¬
ing social or religious punishment. It means
that the American may become a Buddhist, and
that the Japanese, Chinese or Hindu may be¬
come a Christian or a Mohammedan without pass¬
ing through any earthly Inferno."
The days of persecution are drawing to an
end, and the day of co-operation and friendly
intercourse has dawned ; there is in most lands,
and I am persuaded here, also, augmenting toler¬
ation of individual conviction and an increasing
spirit of fraternity. I believe that the unity of
mankind is a foremost thought in the modern
world, and that the tendencies toward unifica¬
tion in morals, laws, commerce and scientific
conceptions are stronger than ever before.
Ethical unification is happily becoming more
and more apparent. The highest minds in every
faith, when they have expressed themselves in
each other's presence, have condemned injustice
and oppression in nations, the rapacity and
cruelty of strength in dealing with weakness.
They have declared for righteousness, purity and
humanity. And they have perceived and
aihrmed that morality is not something artificial
® Appendix, Lecture I, Note 9.
ASPECTS OF CHRISTTANITI. 41
and fanciful, is not a matter of gesture, and
ceremonial and national usage. It is not con¬
cerned with the mere externals and unessentials
of life. It is something real; that is, spiritual
and vital; it belongs to the heart and conscience.
These higher minds exclaim with the old
prophet, "What doth the Lord require of thee
except to do justice, love mercy, and to walk
humbly with thy God?" But is the unification
to stop with ethics? Is it not to include the
domain of religion? If "all ideas of a family or
national God have disappeared from the minds
of civilized men," may not the idea of a merely
national religion also disappear? If human
brotherhood is universal, why may not the wor¬
ship of the common Father through a common
Mediator and Saviour become universal? With
men living under such varying conditions there
will always remain diversities wide enough to
satisfy the poet, the economist, and the phi¬
losopher. But, since all men are essentially
alike, that is, since their spiritual needs and
aptitudes are fundamentally the same, why
should they not all have access to the best that
God has given? If Mohammedanism or Hindu¬
ism, if Buddhism or Christianity has the more
perfect revelation of truth, is richer in its dis¬
closures of God, and has organized, or brought
together these truths and revelations into the
most harmonious and effective working order,
why should not the more favored religion, espe-
42 CHRISTIANITY, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
cially if it be one marked by essential complete¬
ness, supernatural authority, evident finality and
absolute perfection in its central Personage,
become the universal faith?
One reason for the gentler spirit now apparent
on the part of Christendom is a deeper love of
all truth, and a perception that scattered rays of
truth have reached every nation. There are in¬
tuitions of the Divine, clear distinctions between
good and evil, hopes of immortality, and percep¬
tions of a superhuman government, entering into
nearly all the religions. In claiming that Chris¬
tianity is fitted for the whole race, and will be
universal, we do not deny that Mohammedan¬
ism, for example, had good reasons for spring¬
ing into life, that it rebuked and chastised a
corrupted church, and that it may have sur¬
passed Christendom, at certain times and places,
in its application of ethical truths. Christian
scholars confess that the doctrine of human
equality has occasionally "received practical ex¬
emplifications in Islâm, which were sadly want¬
ing in the parallel region of Christian practice."
They point us to "the Caliph Omar, leading his
camel while his slave rides, the prophet's
daughter, Fatimah, taking her turn at the mill
with her own slaves," as "specimens of the
scrupulous observance in general paid to the in¬
junctions of the prophet." Among the followers
of Mohammed are spiritual aspirations after a
life of purity, and struggles, not always defeated,
ASPECTS OP CHRISTIANITT. 43
against the lower nature. We know that the
Golden Rule, stated negatively in the Confucian
writings, is found also in the positive form in
the Hindu Shastras, and that centuries before
the Sermon on the Mount, the Chinese sage, the
mystic and thoughtful Laoste, taught the duty
of blessing those who injure us. A true Chris¬
tian theology is not abashed, but rather glorified,
by such evidences of the working of God's
Spirit. Archbishop Trench has instructed us
that we are not unduly magnifying the light of
nature by these concessions to truth, but are
only afifirming that the Light which enlighteneth
every man has given some glimpses of His beams
to all, and that "in recognizing this brightness
we are ascribing honor to Him and not to them—
glorifying the grace of God, and not the virtues
of man."
Furthermore, let us not forget that the
severity of Jesus Christ blazed out against the
Pharisee, and not against the Pagan. "He was
royal hearted" it has been said, "in the recog¬
nition which He gave to ignorant goodness,"
like that of those who ministered unknowingly
unto Him in the least of His brethren, or that
of the man who was casting out devils in His
name. We are so far from embodying the per¬
fect truth, so far from realizing ideal Chris¬
tianity, that the temper of generous charity tow¬
ard men whose heavenly possessions seem to us
less than our own is pre-eminently becoming.
44 CHRisriANirr, the world-religion.
We believe that the perfect Christianity is the
mind, and heart, and life of Christ, but we who
have so much, are so imperfect both in our ap¬
prehensions and in our lives, and those who
appear to us to have less are at times so mani¬
festly better than their creeds that our discrimi¬
nating age, is one in which "the strife of warring
dogmatisms " is happily lessening.
Comparative Theology makes our apprehen¬
sion of God juster, our perceptions of His work¬
ings broader, by seeing in the ethnic faiths, "a
part of that divine discipline by which the race
of man has been tutored, and trained for a
higher life and fuller revelation." "Hebrew
prophecy does not claim to be the only genuine
prophecy. The Old Testament Scriptures repre¬
sent prophecy as extending beyond the range of
the chosen people in Melchizedek, Jethro, and
Balaam. It is not necessary in the interest of
the Christian religion to insist that God left all
other nations except Israel without religious
guidance." The more the leading religions are
studied in their genesis, their original teachings,
and in their relations to the loftiest spirits who
were influenced by them, the more beauty, truth
and good are discovered in them. We believe
that Christianity is to supersede all other faiths,
"not by excluding, but by including the ele¬
ments of truth which each contains." Some
Christians have been startled in discovering how
much of spiritual verity may be found outside of
ASPECTS OF CHRISTIANITT. 45
Christendom. Still, in the end, with Sir Monier
Williams, they have been more profoundly im¬
pressed with the supremacy and sufficiency of
the Christian faith. And, furthermore, such
studies as we are pursuing, will give us not only
the perception, but also the feeling of the unit-
of mankind.
In claiming and seeking universal acceptanc.
Christianity finds itself opposed by the claim,
and efforts of Buddhism and Islâm. Hinduism-
can hardly be taken out of the category of
national religions. The efforts of a few Hindu
scholars, to secure a general recognition of the
worth which they find, for example, in the Ve-
danta philosophy, do not properly place Hindu¬
ism in the ranks of the missionary faiths, seeking
by zealous propagandism to gain universal ac¬
ceptance. But Buddhism and Islâm are in very
different degrees, missionary in spirit, and every
missionary religion has in its heart the hope of
universal supremacy. Mohammedanism has
sought to bring men under the dominion of its
great formulary. And it presents to-day some
aspects of universalism, although it seems to us
defective in meeting all the needs of the human
heart. But when the representatives of Islâm
coming all the way from the center of Africa and
the borders of China, after their "long travel
under solemn suns," meet in Mecca, the end of
their holy pilgrimage, a new world-sense arises
or is strengthened in their devout souls such as
46 CHRISTIANITY, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
came to many at the opening of the World's
First Parliament of Religions. "It is this," as
one has said, "which has stimulated the devo¬
tion of susceptible and imaginative minds, it is
this which communicates to all Mohammedans
an inspiring sensation of the universality of their
religion, and exhibits with a form they can ap¬
preciate the unity of all believers." Buddhism
claims to be a world-wide religion, and thus
stands in vivid contrast with the Hinduism out
of which it sprang. Gautama's extrication of
his new enthusiasm for mankind from the grasp
of the Brahmanic priesthood, has been compared
with the work of Saul of Tarsus, in saving Chris¬
tianity from sinking into a Jewish sect. In the
present unity of modern civilization, the so-
called universal religions are using similar meth¬
ods and instruments, in diffusing their ideas.
We are told that Mohammedans are now em¬
ploying the press instead of the sword. "News¬
papers in Constantinople are exhorting the faith¬
ful to send forth missionaries, to fortify Africa
against the whiskey and gun-powder of Christian
commerce, by proclaiming the higher ethical
principles of the Koran." And Buddhism in
Japan has instituted "Societies of Buddhist
Endeavor, Young Men's Buddhist Associations,
well-equipped schools for their rising priesthood,
girls' schools, orphanages, a contemplated school
for nurses, and a hospital in Tokio." It has
been the habit of Buddhism in the spirit of the
ASPECTS OF CHRISTIANITT. 47
all-appropriating Hindu system out of which it
came, to borrow whatever appeared that might
be useful, and we are not surprised that "in the
fifteenth century a reformed Buddhist Church in
Thibet adopted the whole organization of the
Roman Catholic Church, and so we find there
pope, cardinal, prelate, bishops, abbots, priests,
monks, nuns; with the ritual of infant baptism,
confirmation, ordination and investiture, masses
for the dead, litanies, chants and antiphonies,
rosaries, chaplets, candles, holy water, proces¬
sions, pilgrimages, saints' days and fast days."
But, whatever may be justly said of the world-
hunger of the faiths of Buddha and Mohammed,
no one doubts that Christianity not only seeks
to become world-wide, but must do so by the
very law of its being. When Christians are
sometimes asked to cease their efforts in extend¬
ing the knowledge of Jesus Christ as the Divine
Saviour of men, and to confine their labors to
works of philanthropy and social reform, they
are requested to refuse obedience to their Su¬
preme Commander, to whom they have pledged
their loyalty, and they are asked also to throw
away the means, by which experience has led
them to think that they can best serve the moral
and social progress of men. Canon Gore has
said of Christ, "He founded a catholic religion
capable of infinite adaptation in different so¬
cieties, but appealing to the manhood which
does not change," and Christianity renounces
48 CHRISTiANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
itself and its Divine Master whenever it curbs
its out-reaching activities, and hides its heavenly
light under any ethnic bushel. As we open the
New Testament literature, we find that the idea
of a world-wide conquest lies at the foundation
of the Christian religion. The apostles were to
make disciples of all nations, and were to be wit¬
nesses of Christ, to the uttermost parts of the
earth. The world of their thought and knowl¬
edge may have been restricted to the Roman
Empire, even as the world of the Buddhist em¬
peror Asoka, who deemed himself a universal
king, was confined to India, and the world which
Confucius and Laotze surveyed was bounded
by China. But, in the expanding thought of
Christendom all national limits have disap¬
peared. It sees in Jesus Christ a redeeming
King who has made a propitiation for the sins
of universal humanity. "And the coming of
Christ coincided, under Divine providence, with
the breaking down of national barriers, and the
establishment of a cosmopolitan system of poli¬
tics and culture under the first Roman emperors;
and so, Christianity was able to leave the narrow
field of Old Testament development, and be¬
come a religion, not for one nation, but for all
mankind."
But the universalism of Christianity cannot be
understood and appreciated apart from its his¬
toric background. The Christian faith is the
outgrowth and culmination of Judaism; its doc-
ASPECTS OF CHRISTIANITT. 49
trine of a universal divine kingdom is a republi¬
cation of the teachings of Israel's greater proph¬
ets. Whatever may be justly said of the earlier
narrowness of conception which regarded Israel's
Jehovah as a tribal Deity, there is a grand uni-
versalism discoverable in the purposes that run
through Hebrew history. In Abraham all na¬
tions were to be blessed, and when he returned
from the slaughter of the kings, he was met by
a priest of the most high God, the King of
Salem, the representative of that natural religion
which has always been universal, because the
foundation on which special revelations have
been built. In Melchizedek, appearing in the
far twilight of Hebrew tradition, we behold a
priest of the Most High to whom even Abraham
gave deference and a tithe of his spoils. Here
was truly a sympathetic recognition of the world
outside the line of the chosen people. And,
later, we find the exiled Moses sojourning with
the priest of Midian, evidently beyond the pale
of the nation of Jehovah, and from him Moses
received counsel. And the writer of the book
of Job pictures for us another saint chosen for
special trial and honor outside of Judaism, a
disciple of the true God on whose sensitive heart
fell the pure white light of heaven, unimpeded
by any prisms of later error which have broken
into many-colored radiance the celestial beam.
And, in the midst of Israel's life, there grew
up into sublime proportions one of the noblest
5° CHRISTIANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
ideas that ever blossomed on the stem of Time,
the idea of the whole earth as a single, divine,
realm, a world-embracing commonwealth. And,
though the Assyrian and the Chaldean, the
Medo-Persian, the Greek and the Roman
harassed and smote down Israel, he never gave
up his magnificent and imperial hope. He set
his faith to music, and gave in the expectant
Psalms the choicest books of devotion for all
the centuries, fitted to the coming kingdom in
every period and latitude. As those majestic
statesmen, the prophets, lifted their voices in
rebuke of Israel's sin, the minds of men were
directed to the coming age with increasing hope
that the prophetic ideals were yet to be realized
in a perfect kingdom. Amos, the champion of
a down-trodden peasantry; Rosea, the prophet
of mercy; Isaiah, beholding the true kingdom
centered in Jerusalem, administered by an ideal
priest of the house of David, and yet to be real¬
ized in an endless and boundless reign of knowl¬
edge and righteousness; conceiving the king¬
dom, as centered in the righteous servant of
Jehovah, who was to come, and realized through
His vicarious sufferings; Jeremiah, seeing the
kingdom in the heart of the individual, and not
dependent on holy land or holy temple; how
richly all of these contributed to the literature
of the celestial commonwealth, and to the exalta¬
tion of Israel!
It is little wonder, then, that Israel identified
ASPECTS OP CHRISTIANiry. 51
the coming of the Messiah, and the establish¬
ment of His kingdom with the lifting up of his
own race and capital. It is no wonder that he
cherished such hopes as the English poet has put
into his sounding rhymes:—
"Rise, crowned with light, imperial Salem, rise!
Exalt thy towery head and lift thy eyes!
See barbarous nations at thy gates attend.
Walk in thy light and in thy temples bend;
See thy bright altars thronged with prostrate kings.
And heaped with products of Sabean springs! "
In their material splendors these words sug¬
gest the glory of the Messiah's final victories.
But, when the meek teacher of Galilee appeared,
while He claimed all the prophetic ideas of the
kingdom. He purified them, and founded a new
society whose principles ran athwart the gross
nationalism so dear to Israel. Breaking away
from the so-called kingdom of Heaven, repre¬
sented by the Jewish state. He launched a new
and better commonwealth, giving it laws in the
Sermon on the Mount, describing its spiritual,
and hence pervasive, character in a score of
parables, placing its sovereignty in the soul, and
lifting it out of the ancient provincialism which
was yet great enough to dream of a universal
commonwealth of God. His was
"A new established state
Greater than states and governing all states ;
Which should not have for boundaries the seas.
Mountains or streams, nor any border line
By bloody sword-point traced; and should not have
Armies nor tributes, treasuries nor palms.
52 CNRIST/AN/rr, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
But, overleaping races, realms and tongues.
Thrones, zones and dominations, lands and seas,
Should clasp in one mild confine all those hearts
Which seek and love the Light, and have the light
Shining from secret Heaven, by Him revealed.
First born of Heaven, first soul of human souls
That touched the top of manhood."
From the beginning to the end of Christ's life
we catch glimpses of the universal purpose and
character of His Messianic work. At His cradle
the representatives of the old star-worshipers of
Persia are drawn to His feet, and in the last
week of His ministry in the temple, the Greeks
who represented the universal spirit of inquiry
and of reason, the Greeks, in whose brain was
the civilization of the modern world on its intel¬
lectual side, desired to see Him. And, while
He went first to the lost sheep of the house of
Israel, His ministry was largely given to the
semi-Gentile populations of the North. He even
preached to the Samaritans, and once He de¬
parted to the Tyrian coasts, and discovered a
great heart of trustful love in a Syro-Phcenician
woman. It was of a Roman centurion that He
said: "Verily I have not found such faith, no
not even in Israel," adding that many "shall
come from the East and the West, and shall sit
down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the
Kingdom of Heaven." It was a Samaritan that
Jesus chose to illustrate what neighborly kind¬
ness is. It was an African who bore His cross
over the shuddering rocks of Golgotha; it was a
ASPECTS OF CHRISTIANITT. 53
Roman captain who, seeing the dying Redeemer,
cried out, "This truly is God's son." And
upon His cross Pilate placed a superscription
which proclaimed with significant prophecy the
Nazarene's universal kingship, for it was written
out in three languages, the Hebrew, the old and
sacred speech belonging to a people of marvelous
genius in the realm of religion ; the Greek, the
language of a race which still rules the intel¬
lectual and artistic world, the language in which
Homer sang, and Plato taught, and Demosthenes
fulmined, in which Paul and St. Chrysostom
were to preach ; and the Latin, the language of
the masterful and militant Roman, in which
Virgil and Horace had already written, in which
Tacitus was to compose his histories, and Ter-
tullian his sermons, and St. Augustine his ex¬
positions of Christian philosophy culminating in
the Civitas Dei; Latin, the sacred language of
Europe for more than a thousand years.
Thus the command which was given by the
risen Jesus on the Mount of Galilee, "Go ye
into all the world and preach the Gospel to every
creature," appears in the light of the preceding
history, as the brilliant heavenly flower of long
ages of development and preparation. Salva¬
tion, according to His teaching, was of the Jews;
from them came the world's Saviour, and with
them was the highest and purest spiritual knowl¬
edge. But the stream of salvation was not nar¬
rowed to Judaism, or, if seemingly thus confined,
54 Cfí/ÍISTIANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
it was only making ready for the wider dififusion
of God's grace. His providence is like the river
Abana, the modern Barada, the river of Damas¬
cus. High up among the perennial snows of the
anti-Lebanon, a thousand little rills are born of
the kisses of the sun, and roll their sparkling
and musical waters down the sides of the great
mountain-wall. These are mingled with torrents
that rush from natural fountains, bursting from
beneath the shelter of mighty rocks, or flowing
from the bosom of some temple-covered cavern,
all uniting in one narrow channel, along whose
course a profuse and wonderful vegetation springs
up, in striking contrast with the barrenness of
the hillsides through which it passes, willows,
poplars, hawthorn, walnut, growing along this
rushing volume of crystal water. Such was the
spiritual, and best life of old Judea, as contrasted
with the surrounding world, a river of water of
life pouring down through the rocky wilderness
of death. But, take your stand, as it was my
joy to do one April morning, upon some low
spur of the anti-Lebanon, where you can watch
the eastward-rushing stream. Soon it leaves the
last cleft in the mountain-wall, it touches the
plain of Damascus, and then spreads for thirty
miles around a wilderness of verdure that bursts
on the view like a sapphire island floating in a
desert sea. As far as the eye can reach, the
fertilizing stream has covered the sand wastes
with an earthly paradise, and there on the hori-
ASPECTS OF CHRISTIANITT. 55
zon lies the crown jewel of the Orient, Damas¬
cus, the Queen of the East, embedded in roses
and luxuriant in a wilderness of fruits, with
minarets like priestesses in prayer, stretching
their white arms heavenward, while the mount¬
ain-born stream, cut now into seven channels,
rolls beneath her streets its cooling tides, which
bathe the feet of little children in the precincts
of many a sacred mosque, and gurgle in dia¬
mond fountains, feeding the roots of orange-
trees in the courts of many a stately palace. So
the stream of Providence, born of a thousand
rills of mercy which converged into the channel
of Judaism, left that narrow river-bed at the
command of Jesus to fertilize the desert world,
rushing not eastward but every whither, through
wider and fairer gardehs than those of Damas¬
cus, while on the horizon ever appear the towers
and shining walls of the new Jerusalem, the uni¬
versal spiritual commonwealth, the city of our
God.
Within seventy years from the day when
Jesus gave their marching orders to His little
band of followers, the messengers of salvation
had penetrated every civilized land from Babylon
to Spain. The feet of Christian apostles, shod
with the preparation of the Gospel, had followed
the track of Cyrus, Alexander and Caesar, the
great conquerors of the East. The strategic
points of the Roman world had been occupied
by the soldiers of the Kingdom of Heaven.
56 CHRISTIANITY, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
Antioch, the Paris of the Orient; Ephesus, the
most illustrious of Ionian cities; Alexandria,
the chief seaport of ancient commerce; Athens,
"the eye of Greece, mother of arts and elo¬
quence;" Corinth, the luxurious, and Rome the
imperial center from whose golden milestone in
the Forum outstretched, like the spikes of a fan,
the lines of those military roads which went
forth into all the earth, these great capitals of
the old Roman World had heard some accents
of the Gospel. The life-giving word had been
preached by the pyramids and bronzed obelisks
of Egypt, in the palaces of the Caesars, and in
most of the chief cities that sentineled the shores
of the Mediterranean Sea.
From the time when Jesus commissioned His
followers to go into all the world, there took
possession of the Church, or at least of its spir¬
itual leaders, the conviction that men, who are
brothers by creation, were yet to constitute a
universal commonwealth under the sovereignty
of God. Against the thoughts and plans of
these men who proclaimed the Kingdom of
Heaven, the representatives of the kingdom of
this world hurled themselves in mortal hostility.
But the Galilean fishermen triumphed. The
Jewish temple, whose priests persecuted and
scattered them, has become a ruin. Jerusalem
is a third-rate town, the spoil of the Turkish
plunderers; the palace of the Caesars is an ivy-
covered pile of bricks on a Roman hill. The
ASPECTS OP CHRISTIAN1T2\ S1
Empire of Tiberius and Augustus is a dream of
the past ; its military roads are engineering curi¬
osities, its fortresses, which reached from Scot¬
land to India, are heaps of moss-covered stone.
The schools, where the Greek philosophers
taught, are now deserted, and beneath the plane
trees, where the pupils of Plato listened to his
golden speech, the women of Athens are wash¬
ing their garments in the shrunken stream of the
Ilissus. But the Kingdom of God is covering
the earth; the nations that accept the Christ
with His teaching of Divine Fatherhood and
human brotherhood, hold in their hands the
moral and military power, the learning, the arts,
the commerce of the globe.
A few years ago, an English scholar wrote,
"Christendom to-day is a greater fact than ever
before. You may see our Queen, head of an
Empire on which the sun never sets, kneel in
lowly obeisance at the shrine of the crucified
Nazarene ; or glance within the village church,
and see the statesman who directs the destinies
of our world-embracing dominion, humbly bend
his head as he prays in the name of Jesus. See
the young German Kaiser, as he acts as chap¬
lain to his crew, and avows his loyalty to the
Evangelical religion, which is the creation of the
Christ; or, amid the gorgeous Oriental display
of Moscow, see the Czar of all the Russias re¬
ceive his crown from a vassal of the Son of Man.
Or, in the forms of worship more simple and
58 CHRÍSTIAN/T2', THE WORLD-RELTGION.
severe, see President after President of the vast
Western Republic avow his fealty to our Lord.
The rulers of America, of the British, German
and Russian empires, proclaim themselves Vice¬
roys of the Christ. Do their territories not con¬
stitute a realm beside which the grandest em¬
pires of antiquity sink into insignificance?"
If we glance at the faiths of the world to-day,
we discover that Christianity alone presents the
aspect of a world-wide religion. Look at Ju¬
daism, the historical root of Christianity; failing
to receive the Christ, it shrank into a national
cult, and numbers, to-day, less than ten millions
of our race. Judaism doubtless teaches the
great principles of a universal faith, which Chris¬
tianity, summing them up in the historic and
ever-living Christ, has the force to make univer¬
sal. Christianity was a proclamation of the
noblest truths about God which Israel had re¬
ceived or attained. But Judaism has been the
John the Baptist, diminishing, while Christianity,
its great offspring, has increased. In some meas¬
ure, it has yielded to the pressure of Christian
forces; in Western lands it is adopting Christian
ideals and adapting itself to the various types of
Christian civilization. Only less ancient than
Judaism is the religion of the noble Parsees, the
heirs of the venerable faith of Persia. But they
have not become more numerous with time, and
from Malabar Hill, I say it in no critical spirit,
they send out no missionaries to convert a world.
ASPECTS OF CHRrSTlANITT, 59
Confucianism, which is older than historic Chris¬
tianity, has never reached after world-wide su¬
premacy ; it is simply Mongolian social ethics,
and its strongest ambition has apparently been
to keep within the national boundaries. It has
influenced with its philosophy the military literati
of Japan, but has gone little further. And, in¬
stead of furnishing the aspects of a world-wide
system of belief, it presents to-day the sorry
spectacle of the most populous of empires cor¬
rupted, humiliated, broken, and barely escaping
the shame of seeing the horses of the Mikado
stabled in the pagodas of Peking.^®
Hinduism appears to be one of the most seclu-
sive of all the faiths. Its followers are forbidden
to cross the ''black water," and while teaching
a comprehensive philosophy, it is pre-eminently
an ethnic religion. It does not feel itself con¬
strained to traverse oceans and deserts to tell
the life-giving truth to other hearts.
The voyager around the world finds only one
faith in all lands, and supreme in the most civil¬
ized and progressive nations. He meets, as we
have seen, only two other religions missionary in
character, and seeking to become universal."
One of these is Buddhism, an ethical philosophy,
humane but pessimistic, rather than a religion,
which appears now to flourish chiefly among peo¬
ples who are out of the line of the world's main
-"Appendix, Lecture Í, Note 10.
"Appendix, Lecture 1, Note 11.
6o CHRISTIANITY, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
development. It exists in Japan, divided into
rival sects. It exists in China, a part of the
amalgam of Chinese faiths. It is found in
secluded and monastic Thibet, in semi-barbarous
Corea, still barbarous, though Buddha's ''Good
Law" was established there in the fourth cen¬
tury; in Burmah, in Ceylon, in Siam, whose
monarch is the only purely Buddhistic king now
reigning, and in Cambodia over which floats the
tri-colored flag of the French Republic. It has
been driven out of its native home, and in the
countries where it now prevails, according to
Buddhistic report, "it is in a comatose state, and
its monks, with few exceptions, have failed to
influence the people, and are sadly wanting in
the desire to spread abroad the teachings of their
great Master."'^ The Buddhist philosophy is
doubtless accordant with some strong tendencies
now prevailing in Western thought, but Dr.
Fairbairn is right in saying that "you cannot
naturalize Buddhism in Europe; it would die of
the process, broken by its very contact with the
climate, the freedom, the institutions, the ener¬
gies, the wholesome nature of the brawny and
healthful West." "Islâm also is an Oriental
faith; it cannot breathe our Western air, or suit
our Western mind."
Some authorities claim that there are less than
one hundred millions of genuine Buddhists, for
they eliminate from the enormous figures which
Appendix, Lecture I, Note 12.
ASPECTS OF CHRISTIANITT. 61
are usually proclaimed, the four hundred mil¬
lions of Chinese who are to be reckoned as
Taoists and Confucianists. Mr. Gladstone has
given the weight of his judgment to the claim
that one-third of the present population of the
globe are professing Christians, and he says that
at every point of the circuit the question is not
one of losing ground but of gaining it. "Chris¬
tianity is the religion in the command of whose
professors is lodged a proportion of power far
exceeding its superiority of numbers, and this
power is both moral and material. The art,
literature, the systematized industry, invention,
and commerce—in one word the power of the
world, are almost wholly Christian." Whether
the power which belongs to Christendom, as
represented by the Anglo-Saxon, French, Teu¬
tonic, Russian, and other peoples is chiefly due
to Christianity, may be a question with some,
but not with those who see that moral forces are
supreme; that the power of the world, material,
intellectual and moral, does belong to Christen¬
dom, cannot be questioned by any.
In the partition of Africa, out of a total area
of eleven and a half million square miles, only
one million and a half have been left unap¬
propriated, and this gigantic division leaves no
important non-Christian state in the Dark Con¬
tinent. Mohammedanism as it exists in Con¬
stantinople and in Africa, is not in full sympa¬
thy with our humanitarian century. With only
62 CHR/ST/ANÍTT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
one powerful Moslem monarch left in the world,
and that ruler permitted to remain in Europe
only through the jealousies of Russia and Eng¬
land, Islâm is not in the least likely to conquer
all mankind. While it has undoubtedly splen¬
did and noble representatives, especially in
India, and while it is pushing its missionary con¬
quests among the barbarous tribes of Africa with
marvelous success, it is often linked with forms
of despotic government, which modern civiliza¬
tion is sweeping away. These two non-Christian
missionary faiths, that of Buddha and that of
Mohammed, are being penetrated, and in some
respects modified, by the Christian Gospel, while
all their attempts to carry on missionary work
among Western Christian peoples have not
reached historic importance. The nominal dis¬
ciples of Christ in the world to-day are more than
four hundred millions, while, under Christian
governments, dwelling beneath a reign of law,
and the influence of the Gospel, are more than
six hundred millions of the world's inhabitants.
Christianity seems to hold the field to-day. It
has been truly said that "the non-Christian
nations could not exclude Christianity if they
would, and the most enlightened of them would
not if they could."
Thus, more and more, it presents the appear¬
ance of a world-wide religion. A wise man must
look at the trend of events, must watch the Gulf
Stream of history, and note that to-day it is
ASPECTS OF CHRISTIANITT. 63
Christianity only which is cosmopolitan and in¬
creasingly prevalent in all lands. On every
shore, Australasian, Chinese and Siberian, Japan¬
ese, Javanese and Indian, Singhalese, Persian
and Arabian, Malagasy, Zanzibar and Egyptian,
Barbary, Syrian and Turkish, Grecian, Italian
and Spanish, Portuguese, French and English,
German, Dutch and Scandinavian, Russian, Ice¬
landic and Hawaiian, Brazilian, Mexican and
American, from the North Cape of Europe to
where the sailor beholds "the long wave rolling
from the Southern Pole to break upon Japan,"
are the manifold evidences that Christianity is a
vital and progressive force. A large work of
preparation has already been accomplished. The
world is being made ready through governments,
through steamships and railroads, through inter¬
national communication, through a better and a
friendlier feeling toward Christians, through a
new knowledge, which discriminates between
true and false Christianity, through a better un¬
derstanding of the loving spirit of the true, is
being made ready, I say, for a universal faith.
All nations and religions find in the Christian
system a common meeting ground, and some of
the ethnic and some of the so-called universal
faiths are acknowledging and adopting certain of
the distinctive truths of the Christian Gospel.
There has been no century so memorable as the
present for the increase of knowledge, for the
advance of every department of science, and for
64 CHRISTIANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
the diffusion of popular intelligence. It is vastly
significant, therefore, and in accordance with the
genius of Christianity, that the religion of Christ
has in this century of intellectual progress, when
superstitions have been dispelled by the light of
truth, made more rapid and memorable con¬
quests than in any previous period since the
downfall of Roman paganism.
But all the progress, which the nineteenth cen¬
tury has achieved, appears to many Christians
but a faint prophecy of the Christian victories
that await the twentieth. On the 23rd of June,
1861, Sir Samuel Baker and his party were sleep¬
ing in the dry bed of the Atbara, one of the
tributaries of the Nile. In this dry river-bed
they had been traveling for days. On this night
Sir Samuel Baker was awakened by a noise like
distant thunder. Soon his native attendants
rushed in upon him shouting in their terror "The
River!" and with all speed, they hastened to
the parched and sandy shore, and soon the tor¬
rent, which had gathered its volume of waters
among the snows of the mountains of Abyssinia,
rushed by, and on the morning of the 24th of
June, when the sun arose, the English traveler
looked out over a river fifteen hundred feet
broad and from fifteen to twenty feet in depth,
rolling on in freshness and fertilizing power,
moistening the roots of ten thousand palm trees,
at last to be spread over the immemorial fields
of Egypt. So the waters of Christian civilization
ASPECTS OP CHRISTIANITr. 65
have been long accumulating on the highlands
of Europe and America, and a mighty rushing
river has suddenly descended on the thirsty
African plains and over the tropic fields of India,
and the freshly opened provinces of the Celes¬
tial Empire; and the roar of the oncoming tor¬
rent appears to some of us a new fulfilment of
Ezekiel's vision of a sacred stream, which shall
go out into the east country and down into the
desert, healing the waters of the bitter sea.
THE WORLD-WIDE EFFECTS OF
CHRISTIANITY.
The science of Comparative Religion is the direct off¬
spring of the religion of Jesus. It is distinctively Christian
Science.—The Religions of Japan, Griffis, p. 4.
The secret of Jesus was the unswerving, uncompromis¬
ing, practical, idealism with which He faced the evils of life
and the darkness of death, and refused to regard them as
other than weapons in the hand of an omnipotent goodness
which, in spite of them, and through them, is irresistibly
realizing its divine purpose.—The Evolution of Religion,
Vol. 11, p. 88, Edward Caird.
The fairer comparison of civilizations and revelations is
not gained by looking down from the words of Christ to
their fruits in the government of the western world, but
by looking up from the fruits of the East to the fruits of the
West, and from the words of Confucius to the words of
Christ. Until that far-off day when words and deeds are
synonyms this is the first principle of comparison. Each
must be compared with its own kind.—The Shadow Christ,
Gerald Stanley Lee, p. 4.
The impression left upon us is one of perpetual hope.
We find Jesus eating and drinking, and taking part in the
festivities of earth, and no time warning us that desire is
evil ; on the contrary, rather encouraging us to be as full
as possible of desire, to live the largest possible life; not
bidding us reduce life to its lowest terms, and blot out
impulse, but rather to seek to be filled with His own trium¬
phant fullness.—Prof. George H. Palmer.
SECOND LECTURE.
THE WORLD-WIDE EFFECTS OF CHRISTIANITY.
In the first Lecture, I invited your attention to
the universal aspects of Christianity. Although
at one period the Roman paganism, and at a
later Mohammedanism, occupied more of the
earth's habitable surface than Christendom, and
although it is easy to overestimate the argument
for the truth and fitness of any belief from its
wide acceptance, still the great religions have
been acting upon each other and upon the world
through such a vast stretch of time, that it is
not without significance that the nations that
have accepted the Christian faith hold in their
hands the civilization and the practical sove¬
reignty of the globe.
Professor Kuenen has said that "if there is no
universal language, there certainly are universal
religions." It appears to me more accurate to
speak of these faiths, as Kuenen sometimes does,
as "international " religions, since, looked at
geographically, only one of them appears at
present to deserve the name "universal." A
few years ago, in Boston, were gathered a com¬
pany of Christian converts from many nations,
69
70 CHRISTIANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
and from all the great continents, and, in nearly
a score of languages, they sang together, in the
spirit of those early Bithynian disciples whom
Pliny mentions, a hymn in praise of the Christ.
Probably no such testimony to the wide diffusion
and spiritual unity of any other faith than the
Christian could have been offered in any period
of its history.
Christianity has already been accepted by
so many races of men, and has prevailed over so
many other religions, at least in individual cases,
that it hardly seems safe to argue with Herbert
Spencer that every religion is the best which its
followers could hold and practice in that stage of
their development. And it seems like playing
with history for another to write: "No nation
can part with its religion without destroying its
mental continuity and cutting itself off in a fatal
way from the sources of its strength." Without
denying the providential character of other faiths,
we cannot be certain that they are the best which
their peoples can at present possess. The na¬
tions among whom Christianity now prevails had
other religions which they left with moral ad¬
vantage. It may be true that Mohammedanism
"accomplished more for Arabia in a few years
than Christianity had accomplished in centuries."
But, what sort of Christianity was it, and how
generally was it received? A faith like Islâm
may make swifter progress among certain peoples
than Christianity, and it must be said regarding
EFFECTS OF CHRISTIAN ITT. 71
Mohammedanism that, while it secured sudden
progress, it was only up to a certain limit, when
it ceased to advance. After men have attained
in large measure the ideal of a religion, unless
that ideal is a continually expanding one, their
future improvement is barred. The Arabian
Moslems certainly found in Islâm something that
was good, and, as is often the case, the good
proved the enemy of the best.' Every fair-
minded student must acknowledge that the his¬
tory of all religions has been a record of good and
evil strangely blended. But whatever may
be justly said of the evil effects which have
accompanied religion, it is undoubtedly true
that all the civilizations have had some kind
of a religion as their basis. The Sacred Books
of the Hindus preceded all East Indian cul¬
ture, and the oldest monuments of Egypt
were built on the faith that man does not
spring from the dust. The literature of ancient
Greece rose out of the heart of the Greek the¬
ology. The poetry of Homer, whose blind eyes
were ever turned toward Olympus, was the
groundwork of Hellenic culture and the cradle of
Hellenic civilization. Back of the glory of Moor¬
ish art and letters were the glow and energy of
religious enthusiasm. The better conditions of
society which we now enjoy in Christendom, and
the majestic energies of science put forth in the
discovery and application of truth, have had no
^Appendix, Lecture II, Note i.
72 CHRISTIANITY, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
shallow origin. They have not risen from the
impulse which says, "Let us eat and drink, for
to-morrow we die." It is rather the spirit which
has linked man to supernal realms which has
stimulated to earnest search and benevolent
activity.
Dean Farrar, in a panegyric which it seems to
me no intelligent man would think of applying
to any other faith, calls civilization the secular
name for Christianity, and scientific students of
social progress, like Benjamin Kidd, have found
the main-spring of human advancement in the
altruistic forces of religion. How futile is the
attempt to separate from the renovating eiificacy
of the Christian faith the marvelous advances
which have been made since the savage forefa¬
thers of the Anglo-Saxon peoples roamed the
dank forests along the Baltic Sea! Englishmen
and Americans are the descendants of savages to
whom the Christian Gospel was carried by men
possessed with the spirit of Henry Martyn and
Adoniram Judson. My father's grandfather
lived in the colonial period of American history.
His grandfather was a subject of Queen Eliza¬
beth. His father at the twelfth remove, was a
Norman invader or a Saxon patriot when the
battle of Hastings was fought in 1066. His
father of the twelfth remove was either a piratical
Norseman, the terror of land and sea, or a sub¬
ject of that Saxon King Ethelbert, to whose
island the Abbot Augustine and forty other mis-
EFFECTS OF CHRISTIANITY. 73
sionaries were sent by Gregory the Great in the
sixth century. Canterbury became the cradle of
British Christianity,a center of light,such as Bêirut
is to-day to the Arabic-speaking world. Long
and weary and uncertain was the battle of Christ
with Woden, the word of God with Saxon heath¬
enism. That heathenism, Mr. Spencer to the con¬
trary, was not the best of which the Saxon people
were then capable, aided by the Divine Spirit,
working with the truth as it is in Christ. Chris¬
tian hearts in Rome brooded over the pagan bar¬
barism of England, and prayed and toiled for the
conversion of my Saxon forefathers, just as
Christian hearts in London, in our lifetime, have
brooded over the pagan barbarism of Madagas¬
car. Speaking generally, we may say that what
in large measure makes the peoples of Saxon
origin to differ from their fierce and bloody an¬
cestors who fought in the forests of England and
Germany, is the Christian labors of men who
believed, with a certain Roman citizen born in
Tarsus and converted at Damascus, that they
were debtors to preach Christ to the barbarians.
In this Lecture I shall try to indicate some of
the world-wide effects of Christianity which tend
to support the thesis that this faith is the world-
religion, peerless, supreme, final. Among other
tests which must be applied to religions is their
success or failure in bringing men into harmony
with God and into high and noble relations with
each other. But I am not at this time to con-
74 CHRISTIANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
demn a system simply because it is not the most
perfect in its revelation of the Divine Person¬
ality, for I recognize the working of the law of
evolution, and remember, from the connection
of Christianity with Judaism that "men on a
large scale are not always ripe for the highest
religion ; that there is a fullness of time which it
may take four thousand years to produce." I
would, however, limit this to nations, making
exceptions of individuals. Furthermore, I con¬
tend that Christianity must not be judged from
its eiïects upon those who have not received it,
or who have received it in some inferior form.
We may even grant, with Cardinal Newman, the
difficulty of showing, "that Christianity has at
any time been of any great spiritual advantage
to the world at large." Certainly, if the world
at large refuses to receive the Christ, and to con¬
form to His law, we may not look for spiritual
advantages of any decisive character. Still there
may be, and there may be shown to be, moral
and social effects of immense value, inseparable
from the diffusion of Christianity even among
the rejectors of its claims, just as medical mis¬
sionaries have brought many of the priceless
benefits of Western science to thousands cursed
with the superstitions, witchcrafts and unuttera¬
ble terrors linked with the practice of medicine in
Africa and China.
But still other cautions are required. One is
this, that no religion, whether Hinduism or
EFFECTS OF CHRISTIANITT. 75
Buddhism, Mohammedanism or Fetichism, is to
be judged solely by its errors and defects. Is it
not easily possible to draw such a picture of
Christendom from the revelations made by Gen¬
eral William Booth of Darkest London, and Dr.
Parkhurst of Darkest New York, and Mr. Wil¬
liam T. Stead of Darkest Chicago, supplemented
by the horrible stains of crime and unspeakable
vice which defile our recent journalism, that non-
Christian nations should sincerely regard Chris¬
tianity as a deplorable failure? The opponents
of our faith in Christian lands have often out¬
raged our sense of justice by parading the long
list of wars and crimes and persecutions and
inquisitions and superstitions and bigotries which
have marked the annals of Christendom. It
need not be said to you that all these iniquities
are transgressions of the fundamental law of
Christianity, the law of love to God and man.
We believe that Christ Himself in His life, spirit
and teaching is the substance of our faith; He
brings to us the doctrine of God's Fatherhood
and makes it real; He brings to us the doctrine
of God's spirituality, and delivers us from formal¬
ism; He brings to us the doctrine of God's right¬
eousness, and forbids our cherishing evil. He
teaches in His own life the supremacy of love,
and He illustrates the spirit of self-sacrifice. He
sets forth the dignity and divine worth of man—
of man not as one of the sexes, but as including
both. He gives a new honor to womanhood
76 chr/STíANirr, the world-religion.
and to childhood. His instruction is meant to
regenerate the household, and to remold society.
He sets forth the vital importance of fidelity, in¬
ward purity, and mutual kindness. He illus¬
trates in His life the law of forgiveness, and by
His death He makes redemption an actual thing,
an accomplished fact, for all who will receive it,
and by His resurrection He brings the life im¬
mortal into new and abiding radiance. There¬
fore, whatever, in any degree, is contrary to the
reigning spirit and the foundation principles of
Jesus Christ, is a failure to illustrate the legiti¬
mate effects of Christianity.
It must never be forgotten that the stream of
divine life has been flowing through the cor¬
rupted hearts of men. As the River Jordan,
that gushes from the rocky cavern at the base of
Mount Hermon, is of crystalline clearness,
sparkling with the joy of new-born sunlight in
the east, but when its winding course is finished,
has become a muddy stream covered at times
with driftwood rushing into the Dead Sea; so
Christianity entered a corrupt and decrepit
world, a stream of living water casting up a lux¬
uriant vegetation along its banks. But soon,
and for many years, it was compelled, as it were,
to run underground. While the Caesars ruled in
palace and Colosseum, the Church of God, the
true life of old Rome, was singing its hymns,
and burying its dead beneath inscriptions of im¬
mortal hope in the labyrinthine catacombs under
EFFECTS OF CHRISTIANITT. 77
the Seven Hills. But, at last, in God's own
time, the Church rose to the surface, the under¬
ground flood was pressed up through the polluted
soil of the city of abominations. Do you won¬
der that it was stained? And so it has been in
some measure ever since. Christendom has not
been the Christianity which lay in the mind of
its Founder. Suppose a great musician leaves
an oratorio as the transcript of his best genius
and noblest thought, and a thousand singers are
gathered together to render it, and some of
them are ignorant, and others are careless, and
others of them intentionally sing false notes, and
only one-half of the performers are in thorough
sympathy with the master's mind—what would
result? Doubtless a skilled ear could detect
noble harmonies in the midst of wretched dis¬
cords, but every just man would say, "This is
not the oratorio as it lay in the mind of Handel
or Mendelssohn. Give me faithful and sympa¬
thetic hearts, and I will pour forth a multitudinous
chorus, sweet and sublime as the angels' song in
Bethlehem." If the critics of the Christian re¬
ligion would study the genius of the Gospel,
and its ethical principles, they might gain juster
conceptions. A chemist who explores only a
poisoned atmosphere is not likely to understand
the properties of air. Suppose some brilliant
babbler in science should have the following ex¬
perience: he sits by his evening lamp,—a gust
of wind blows it out; he walks the street,—the
78 CHRISTIANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
cold air chills him ; he ascends a mountain,—the
thin air makes him gasp for breath ; he crosses
the ocean,—a hurricane imperils the ship; he
descends into an English coal-pit,—the choke-
damp endangers his life; he crosses the Cam-
pagna of Rome,—a deadly wind withers his
strength; he looks down into Vesuvius,—a sul¬
phurous gust half chokes him. Whereupon he
returns to his home, and having thought over
all his painful experiences with the atmosphere,
he takes the platform, and announces his con¬
viction that air is the great curse of the world!
Fools listen, and applaud, forgetting that in this
vast ethereal ocean, from the beginning of
recorded time man has moved and had his being,
and that without it "all life dies, death lives, and
nature breeds perverse." Religion is the atmo¬
sphere in which humanity lives, and rather than
dispense with it, we can well endure the thin air
of ritualism, the cold fogs of bigotry, and even
the noxious vapors of cruel superstition.
I put forward this plea and present these
facts not in behalf of Christianity only, but also
of that larger world of religion which still lies
outside of it. Dr. Martin, President of the Im¬
perial University in Peking, has recently written;
"In the most frigid zones of the non-Christian
world there are warm currents that rise toward
the sun, and in the warmer spiritual atmosphere
of Christendom are there not cold currents that
set away from Him?" And he adds that "It is
EFFECTS OF CHRISTIANITT. 79
a mistake to imagine that the Holy Ghost con¬
fines His operations within the forms of Chris¬
tianity. In non-Christian countries His presence
is like electric fluid in the atmosphere, while in
Christendom it is like that fluid circulating
through a network of wires, and responding to
the human touch, in producing light, heat and
power."
Many of the best religions of the world have
been treated like criminals, they have been esti¬
mated by their worst faults, and those who do
this have justly been compared to men "who
judge of the health of a people from its hospitals,
or its morality from its prisons." The fact that
the ethical codes of nearly all the great faiths
resemble each other in many things is known to
students, and, as Dr. Washburn of Constantinople
has said, ' ' so far from being discouraging to Chris¬
tians, it is one of the principal grounds of our
faith in God's purpose to redeem the whole
world."
But while religions are not to be judged solely
by their worst results or accompaniments, on the
other hand they must not be estimated merely
by the brighter and more beneficent effects
which the zealous advocate is able to discover
and point out. The Editor of The Hindu of
Madras wrote recently that if Christianity is to
be judged only by the ideal of Christ, and not
by Christendom, "let Hinduism be judged also
by its highest ideals" and, he would doubtless
8o CHRTSTIANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
add, by its highest effects. But this appears to
me an incomplete test, and hence a partly mis¬
leading one for any religion. By omitting all
the evil and emphasizing all that is more gra¬
cious and lofty in the history for example of
Islâm and of Hinduism, splendid, but after all
untruthful pictures may be drawn, and have
been drawn of these faiths.^ It is necessary in
order to understand a religion, to discover its
fundamental ideas and its working forces, as well
as the results associated with it. We must dis¬
cover what are the legitimate fruits, and what are
the incidents or the accidents of the historic
development of a faith. Other causes co-operate
with religion, and their force must be estimated.
We are not afraid to have Christianity compared
with other systems by any series of tests which
will help us to bring out the truth.® These tests
must include the fundamental ethical and spir¬
itual ideas of each faith, its incomplete and
ignoble teachings, if there be such, the spiritual
dynamics of each through which its ideals be¬
come realized, the best effects which each faith
can show, and what I may call the average
results, its working through long ages on great
masses of people, in other words its vital rela¬
tion to civilization, enlightenment, liberty and
progress.
It will thus be seen that discriminating judg-
' Appendix, Lecture II, Note 2.
^ Appendix, Lecture II, Note 3.
EFFECTS OF CHRISTIANITY. 81
ment is required in handling so complex a sub¬
ject as the world-wide effects of Christianity-
compared with those of other faiths. Not one
of them is seen in the moral perfection which is
its ideal. Of the religions which now oppose
Christian progress it may be said that the higher
principles discoverable in their sacred books sur¬
pass their attainments and their present popular
standards. At the same time, there may be
certain fundamental errors and vices, or a certain
lack of spiritual propulsion in the ethnic creed,
sterilizing the beneficent results, and crippling
the moral progress which might have been ex¬
pected from the ideal.
The divine forces of Christianity have ever
been opposed by secular, sensual, and it may be
diabolic powers and agencies, and sometimes the
lower prevails over the higher, and often the two
are mingled. Noble truths and vilest corruptions
appear side by side. Not every child brought
up in a Christian household embodies the Chris¬
tian spirit, and much that has called itself Chris¬
tian is only baptized paganism of a poor quality.
Look for example at the Christianity that is
found in Abyssinia. It is lacking in life and
energy; it is as mechanical as an ox-cart, as in¬
flexible as a granite bowlder. When compared
with an aggressive Mohammedanism it seems like
a mummy by the side of an enthusiastic devotee.
"There may be four million Monophysite Chris¬
tians in Africa " it has been said, "but so far as
82 CHRISTIANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
shaping the future of the continent is concerned
they might as well be reckoned sarcophagites. "
Christendom still is far behind the idea of Christ.
"Never," says Max Müller, "shall I forget the
deep despondency of a Hindu convert, a real
martyr to his faith, who had pictured to himself
from the pages of the New Testament what a
Christian country must be, and who, when he
came to Europe, found everything so different
from what he imagined in his lonely meditations
at Benares! It was the Bible only that saved
him from returning to his old religion and
helped him discern beneath theological futilities,
accumulated during nearly two thousand years,
beneath Pharisaical hypocrisy, infidelity, and
want of charity, the buried but still life-giving
seed committed to the earth by Christ and His
Apostles."*
Christianity in its worst aspects has been at
times inferior to other religions.® How often
have we beheld the Church arrayed in cruel
antagonism against the Jew, when the Christ
within us, like the Christ in the heavens, has
taken part with the persecuted Israelite against
an un-Christian Christendom !
But it should here be said that the Founder of
our faith expected what has occurred, the pres¬
ent condition where we see the crop of tares un-
eradicated, the noxious darnel growing beside
* Appendix, Lecture II, Note 4.
® Appendix, Lecture II, Note 5.
EFFECTS OF CHRISTIANITT. 83
the wheat, the poisonous weed flourishing rankly
in close proximity to the heavenly grain. All
this was not unforeseen by the Lord who de¬
clared that the good seed and the evil were to
grow together until the harvest. While Jesus
prophesied that the whole mass is to be leavened
with the Gospel, that the Kingdom of Heaven
is to compass the earth, still a state of perfect
being is not seen under the present dispensation
of the world.
Furthermore, where the aims are so high, and
the life so vigorous and profuse, the contrasts
are liable to be most vivid and startling. Eveiy
opportunity for the greatest good becomes an
occasion also for the rankest evil. Where the
lambs bleat, the wolves howl; where the herds
feed, the lions roar. And St. Augustine, who
wrote against the fiery intolerance which pro¬
claimed that the tares must be forcibly uprooted,
and that discipline must be remorselessly severe,
and that intellectual and moral heresies must not
be endured, aihrmed for our consolation that
while the Church should be holy, they only are
its true members who are in living fellowship
with Christ. Others may press upon Him as did
the thronging multitudes, but they do not touch
Him as did the believing woman on whom His
virtue streamed forth.
The hypocrites who are in the Church do not
defile the true members so long as these are not
of their spirit and activities. They are like the
84 CHRISTIANITY, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
unclean animals in the same ark with the clean,
or the goats in the same pasture with the sheep,
or chaff in the same barn with the grain, or ves¬
sels of dishonor in the same house with vessels of
honor; they are to be endured for a while, for
in the end the good shall be separated from the
evil forever. The imperfections and sins of
Christian nations are quite as evident to us as to
others. We deplore them, and fight against
them. I have seen a great Christian audience
loudly applauding a Japanese Buddhist elo¬
quently declaiming against the injustice prac¬
ticed upon his people by so-called Christian
Governments.
Not forgetful of all these cautions and limita¬
tions let us now inquire if the actual historic
results of Christianity have not been such as to
strengthen faith in its ultimate universal preva¬
lence. We shall expect, from our knowledge of
the destructive forces of sin, that the Gospel
would encounter deadliest opposition, and that,
where sin could not destroy, it would degrade it.
Therefore, a knowledge of the corruptions of
Christianity does not undermine our faith.
Beginning as a hated superstition, despised by
the leaders of the most hated and despised of
ancient races, loathed by the philosophic Greek,
and offensive to the haughty and martial Roman,
we are not amazed that the first disciples of
Christianity, entering with their Gospel of love
into a world without love, were ruthlessly as-
EFFECTS OF CHRISTIANITT. 85
sailed, and that, as their conquests spread, the
persecution became more destructive.
Yet, in spite of its Jewish origin; in spite of its
exclusiveness, for it demanded then, as it de¬
mands now, the surrender of every other system
as a means of salvation ; in spite of its relentless
antagonism to idolatry, impurity, injustice,—we
find the religion of Jesus, blessed with the grate¬
ful eulogies of many of its pagan enemies, rising
victorious out of the gloomy catacombs and the
blood-stained sands of the amphitheater to final
victory over the greajiest embodiment of human
power, wickedness and enmity which the Church
ever encountered, the Empire of Rome.® We
find it at last victorious in school and temple, in
court and camp and home. It strengthens faith
in the divine possibilities of man to read the
story of the Christian conflict with Roman
paganism, and to remember that neither the per¬
secutions under Nero and Marcus Aurelius and
Diocletian, neither the hostile legislation of Tro¬
jan, nor all that slander and hate could achieve,
was able to withstand the majestic," though
agonizing, progress of the Church. Armed only
with spiritual weapons, and baring her breast
to the spear of the destroyer, she witnessed for
Christ her King. "Those were times of awful
agony," writes the historian, "the two years of
Decius, the ten years of Diocletian, when the
powerful Roman Empire, shutting the gates of
® Appendix, Lecture II, Note 6.
86 CHRISTIANITY, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
the amphitheater leaped into the arena face to
face with the Christian Church. When those
gates were opened, the victorious Church went
forth with the baptism of blood on her saintly-
brow, bearing a new Christian empire in her fair
white arms."
Nothing more loftily inspiring can be read
than the story of the Christian victory which
issued from the Church's meager beginning. No
wonder Roman historians overlooked that be¬
ginning; no wonder that Tacitus and Suetonius
took no account of anything so insignificant as the
origin of the tiny society which the despised
prophet of Galilee gathered about Him. Nothing
formidable to Roman supremacy appeared pos¬
sible in the earliest stages of Christian history.
"At first sight," as Rénan has said, "the work
of Jesus did not seem likely to survive; the con¬
gregation seemed to have nothing before it but
to dissolve into anarchy." But the seed of the
world-wide kingdom of God was securely lodged
in a few lowly but exultant hearts. They knew
themselves to be possessed by a spirit, to be the
guardians and witnesses of a truth, to be the
representatives of a life, which the dying empire
needed. The disciples felt the stream of divine
energy which issued from their Lord's new
opened grave. They were touched by the spir¬
itual hands of celestial powers ; they went forth
in their weakness perpetual victors, even in
martyrdom. When Jesus told His first fol-
EJ^J^ECTS OF ClIRIBTIANITT. 87
lowers of the least of all seeds which sowed in a
field became a lodging place for the birds of the
air, He described the outward expansion of His
-kingdom ; its growth from land to land, the
writings of its sacred books in the tongues not
only of priestly Jerusalem and scholarly Athens
and militant Rome, but also in the speech of
Teuton and Celt, of Arab and Malay, of Mon¬
golian and western savage tribes, and above all
in the tongue of the world-colonizing Saxon.
And in His parable He gave them a prophetic
suggestion of the missionary conquests which
passed out of the gates of the Holy City, by the
ancient well of Samaria and the shell-spangled
shores of Genesareth, eastward to flowery Damas¬
cus, westward to the coasts of Cyprus, to the
harbor of opulent Corinth, still westward to Italy
and Spain, and northward through German for¬
ests, across channels and stormy expanses, till
they touched the utmost isles of the Hebrides,
uplifting and transfiguring and humanizing the
life that it reached, until, after long centuries, we
see Columbus carrying in his great heart the
embryo future of a new Christian world, Colum¬
bus, the heroic pulse of all mankind beating in
his soul, planting the Cross-banner in "far-off At¬
lantic Seas," upon islands of which the Apostles
had never dreamed, and opening to the bene¬
ficent results of the Gospel the vast continents
which even now house and nurture a large por¬
tion of that race for whom Jesus lived and died.
88 CHRISTIANITY, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
But Christianity has been the leaven as well as
the seed. Its work has not been merely expan¬
sive, the enlargement of its dominion from age
to age, it has been also intensive and spiritual.
It has been fruitful with divine activities, invisi¬
ble like all the greatest things, and carrying on
unseen transfigurations. It has been noiseless
like light, energetic like life, spiritually trans¬
forming like love, a blessed and impalpable con¬
tagion spreading from heart to heart, as well as
a celestial kingdom extending from land to land.^
The Christian victory over Greek and Roman
heathenism (as I have already intimated), was
never complete, and Christianity soon met an¬
other foe to be changed into a friend, the energy
of Northern barbarism. The Roman poets and
profligates
" Shrank with a shudder from the blue-eyed race,
Whose force rough-handed should renew the world,
And from the dregs of Romulus express
Such wine as Dante poured."
That race swept down on the Empire ; the
Christian preacher and the German savage came
face to face, and it may be said that for ten
centuries, and more, the Church of Christ was
fearfully involved with the corruptions of Rome,
and in strenuous conflict with the ferocities of a
half-tamed barbarism prevailing throughout what
are to-day the leading nations of Europe. The
Church, itself only partly Christian, attempted to
'Appendix, Lecture II, Note 7.
EFFECTS OF CHRISTIANITT. 89
absorb the Roman, and to dominate the Gothic
world. From the empire the bishop caught its
cherished ambition for universal outward su¬
premacy. The despotism of the Papacy and its
bondage to antiquated forms were legacies of the
ancient imperialism. As we read the history of
the Middle Ages, and remember that the Church
was built on the ruins of the old and newer
paganism, we feel that Christianity, as it lay in
the heart of Jesus Christ, received a very imper¬
fect illustration. And yet its fruits were not
wanting. Slavery was gradually destroyed ;
womanhood was delivered in large measure from
degradation and eastern seclusion ; learning flour¬
ished, at least among the few; and the seeds of
it were kept for the new sowings and harvestings
which were to come. Christianity, thus smoth¬
ered and perverted, had energy enough for its
own regeneration.
We never begin to understand the Christian
religion until we perceive that its fundamental
law is found in the seed to which Jesus com¬
pared it. This is the law of life, of progress, of
development and, if you please, I will add with
Rothe, the law of mutation. There is a sense
in which Christianity is the most changeable, be¬
cause the most progressive of all faiths. Christ,
it is true, left much that was unfinished, and the
imperfect beginnings of Christian history have
been contrasted with the complete, though sim¬
ple system of Mohammed. But, it seems to me.
90 CHRIS TIA NIT r, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
that the simplicity and completeness of Islâm
may be and are its imperfection. It can do all
that lies in its power in a brief time; it has no
infinite perspectives, no prolonged evolutions, no
prodigious and increasingly fruitful developments.
Christianity is the richest of religions, the
nursing mother of all the higher forms of moral
and spiritual life. Whatever darkness may
gather over Christendom, whatever winter may
set in, the sun again rises, the spring time again
flourishes, great leaders inspired by the truths of
the old Gospel go back to the original precepts
of the Nazarene Prophet, and come into contact
with His liberating life. Thus rose the six¬
teenth century Reformation. The Church which
had held the torch of knowledge above the flood
of mediaeval barbarism, and saved the records of
Biblical and classical literature to be the seeds of
modern refinement and humanity, was itself
renewed. Free thought, the right to investi¬
gate truth, individual inquiry, deliverance from
priestly domination, and all the marvels of
modern science have been the legitimate out¬
growths of that great reforming era, which
brought a multitude of men not only back to
the simple divine truths of the Christian Gospel,
but into living connection once more with the
ever-living Lord.
We gain our truest insight into Christianity
when we think of its fundamental law as the law
of life. We are told that the keynote of Bud-
EFFECTS OF CHRISTIANITT. 91
dhism is the teaching that beyond and above
every virtue is the emotionless frame of mind,
which neither sorrows nor rejoices, which neither
hates nor loves. "There is no hope of personal
immortality for the individual." He is to be
swallowed up at last. "Reward as well as pun¬
ishment must terminate," it has been said. "But
so long as men do good they deserve reward, as
they deserve punishment so long as they do
evil." According to Buddhism works of all
kinds must be got rid of, man's highest stage is
in a state of contemplative abstraction in which
nothing is done. But Christianity, undertaking
the most tremendous tasks for man and for so¬
ciety, and eclipsing all other faiths in its confi¬
dent claims, is pre-eminently a religion of
abounding life and divine energy. As an
American scholar, long resident in Japan, has
vividly said, "Buddhism, brought face to face
with the problem of the world's evil and possi¬
ble improvement, evades it ; begs the whole ques¬
tion at the outset ; prays ' Deliver us from
existence, save us from life, and give us as little
of it as possible.' Christianity faces the prob¬
lem and flinches not; orders advance all along
the line of endeavor, and prays 'Deliver us
from evil;' and is ever of good cheer because its
Captain and Leader says, 'I have overcome the
world ; go win it for me ! I have come that they
might have life, and that they might have it
more abundantly.'
92 CHRISTIANITY, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
The problem with Buddhism, as has often
been pointed out, is simply "How to commit
suicide, not of that pitiful and elusive kind,
which rids man of life in one particular form,
but which rids him of existence in every form."
Christianity looks upon life as good, and aims to
put into it, and get out of it, the greatest possi¬
ble good ; hence its law of progress and hope ;
hence its purpose to make each new age nobler
than the last ; each new life better than the
preceding life, every great moral result a proph¬
ecy of something diviner. Christendom is borne
along, like a great craft on an oceanic stream,
and wherever Christendom is most vital with
truth and love, the swifter is the advance.®
Men forget the origin and moulding force of
progress when they talk complacently about the
"nineteenth century," and bid us look at
"modern civilization " as our great benefactor,
and ask us to cease boasting of the fruits of
Christianity. But go to central China where the
Gospel has not penetrated. There is no nine¬
teenth century there. There men are still living
in the fifth century before Christ. Where is
the nineteenth century with the tribes that
swarm and suffer beneath the burning sun of
Africa, or among the people of the Grand Lama
on the tableland of Thibet? The areas where
Christian influences prevail in Asiatic lands have
seemed to me oases in the midst of deserts; cen-
® Appendix, Lecture II, Note 8.
EFFECTS OF CHRISTIANITT. 93
ters of brilliant radiance in the midst of moral
darkness. Talk about the progress of freedom!
The line of its progress follows straight down
from Him who taught the brotherhood of man
and the Fatherhood of God; His words rang the
death-knell of slavery in the Roman Empire.
Like the seeds in the Colosseum, and the vege¬
tation sprouting between the bricks in the palace
of the Caesars, gradually disturbing or upturning
the old foundations, the seed which Jesus scat¬
tered has upturned and destroyed many of the
debasing tyrannies of the past. Feudalism is
gone; serfdom is gone; the Bible has been an
emancipator; its seeds, in the minds of Wycliff
and Huss, of Luther and the German Reform¬
ers, in the souls of Scotch and English Puritans,
were wafted from the trees under which Jesus
taught on the slopes of Olivet. A chapter in
the triumphs of Christianity will tell how the
growth of free institutions is directly traceable
from the great Genevese theologian, John Cal¬
vin, down to the moral leaders of the present
century; it can be shown that the chief heroes
of emancipation, and the most influential of
anti-slavery reformers were men who, "bound
the Bible to their brows." To-day, thanks to
the Christian spirit, slavery is dead, or dying,
the world over. The movement which gave
freedom and self-government to civilized nations
was sure in the end to reach the lowest of our
race. "Christianity promotes movement, ex-
94 CHRISTIANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
pansion, growth. Compare Egypt, Turkey and
Persia with Germany, England and the United
States." Christianity prepares men even
through despotism for liberty, through tempor¬
ary restraint for freedom and progress. Its
spirit is so vital and emancipating that when even
a small portion of Christian truth is bound up in
a tyrannical government, secular or ecclesiastical,
that government is doomed. On account of its
reforming energy Christian civilization rectifies
its mistakes. The expansion of Christendom has
been attended with oppression and rapacity, with
the plunder of the innocent, and the disregard of
many human rights, but it is the glory of Chris¬
tianity that regenerating force is lodged within
it. These crimes have been brought to the bar
of Christendom, and have been condemned by
it. Their repetition has been made impossible.
And this explains why the peasant of Bengal or
Mysore now enjoys the same rights of justice and
good government as are claimed by Englishmen.
A religion like Buddhism where the law of life
and progress is feeble, seems speedily to reach
its limit of renewing power. Sir Monier-Williams
recounts a long list of benefits to Asia which
Buddhism for several centuries rendered ; the
introduction of education, the encouragement of
arts, the deprecation of war, the proclamation of
good-will, sympathy with social liberty, the
granting of Some independence to women, the
inculcation of generosity and tolerance, the for-
EFFECTS OF CHRISTIANITT. 95
bidding of avarice, the advocacy of compassion,
the promotion of progress to a certain stage.
This is a brilliant showing; but, on the other
hand. Buddhism does not seem to have per¬
manently elevated the lower forms of civilization
which have adopted it. It has not given expan¬
sion to the human soul, it has not continually
impelled man onward in the track of general
civilization and progress. Can the purest and
best results be expected of a system which makes
''celibacy the loftiest state, and mendicancy the
highest idea of life?"
Greater things should be anticipated from a
religion like the Christian, whose Founder fills
his followers with much of His own hopeful
vigor. While He laid His hand in blessing on
every passive grace. He expanded the human
soul with the inspiration to illustrate all the
active virtues of a perfect manhood.
Christianity, when not perverted by pessim¬
ism, points its followers to an unspeakably bet¬
ter earth, "with joy and love triumphing and
fair truth." I believe that one of the most
marked contrasts between the civilization on
which Christ has put his stamp, and the civilization
of Greece and Rome, which Christianity displaced,
or the civilization of much of the Orient to-day,
is the hope and energy which rule in the one,
and the hopelessness and sloth which seem to
pervade the others.
Now that men are beginning to see the might
96 CHRISTIANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
and majesty and sure-coming victory of the
Kingdom of Heaven, it becomes more difficult
for Christian believers to sink into the slough of
pessimism.
We study Christianity intelligently, only when
we see it claiming the whole of humanity, and
the whole of man as the field of its redeeming
activities, planning the redemption of the indi¬
vidual and the uplifting of society. For the
individual, it emphasizes neither the inner nor
the outer life, in such wise as to leave human
nature ill-balanced. It would develop simultane¬
ously all the various forces of the human spirit,
and not minister to thought at the expense of
emotion, nor to meditation at the expense of
active energy. It is not surprising that all the
great music of the world is the outcome of
Christianity. It is not surprising that every
department of mental and spiritual greatness and
excellence has been illustrated in Christian civili¬
zation. In these recent centuries the Christian
religion, which has been concerned chiefly with
the individual spirit, is directing its energies as
well to the social progress of mankind. It is
adding new stars to its crown of triumph in new
emancipations, mitigating the horrors of war,
and diffusing beyond its own boundaries the
growing spirit of humanity and brotherhood. I
regard the social discontent found in nations to¬
day as very largely the spirit of Jesus Christ,
demanding that His law of love be still further
EFFECTS OF CHRISTIANITT. 97
pervasive in human affairs. And, if we go out¬
side the domain of Christendom, we find the
Gospel is modifying the ideas and usages of
non-Christian peoples through the world-wide
missionary movements of our time. Commerce
is a penetrating force and a unifying power, and
the Christian's Bible goes with the English and
American ship to every shore. A chapter not
yet written'would indicate what these prepara¬
tory movements have wrought in Asia, not only
where the crescent rules; not only where Mo¬
hammedans have been led by the force of
Christian example to educate their daughters,
and by the pressure of Christian Governments to
take some initial steps toward reform ; not only
in Japan, who wins her victories clad in the edu¬
cational and military panoply of Christian na¬
tions; but also here where reforming sect after
sect has risen, and where Hinduism seems now
to claim as its own the spirit and truth which we
believe have come from Bible lands and Biblical
civilization. Christianity has been a leaven enter¬
ing into the life of nations; it has greatly affected
the political relationships of men ; it has com¬
pelled governments to be less despotic and more
humane; it has reversed the maxims of ancient
society, and made men, not the appendages and
slaves of the state, but the rightful recipients of
whatever services governments might render; it
has modified the relations which whole peoples
sustain to one another. However belligerent
98 CHRISTIANITY, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
the nations may seem to-day, the chronic and
continuing wars of ancient pagan societies have
given way to an attitude more humane and
peaceful. Two and a half centuries ago the
Dutch juris-consult, Hugo Grotius, the Christian
theologian whom Henry of Navarre called the
"Miracle of Holland," published his book on the
law of war and peace, which roused Europe to
some faint sense of international obligation.
Governments began to see that treachery and
battle and conquest do not exhaust the relations
which they might rightly bear to one another.
The light which touched the mind of Grotius
reached other minds. A body of international
law has come into being, and in recent years the
conviction has grown that arbitration should take
the place of the iron-clad and the dynamite-gun,
in settling international disputes; and within a
few years our American Capital has witnessed
the gathering of men representing seventeen
nationalities of the New World from Behring Sea
to the Straits of Magellan, met to confer in the
interests of international peace, and themselves
the heralds of that coming congress, which shall
be "the Federation of the World."
And a distinctive feature of Christian civiliza¬
tion is this, that more and more it brings its
highest blessings to every class of men, and does
not reserve its choicest favors, like the Republic
of Plato, for a limited oligarchy, dominant over
a nation of slaves. The spirit of caste is to it
EFFECTS OF CHRISTIANITT. 99
supremely abhorrent, even more so than it would
have been to the early sacred poets who wrote
the Vedas. Christianity gave the transforming
of the Roman World into the hands of a com¬
pany of Jewish fishermen, men of common
mould, and it changed them into the princes of
God. Paul speaks of things that are despised,
bringing to naught the pride of man. It has
been said of Celsus, the earliest literary assailant
of the Christian faith, that he was "a very wise
man, a physician, and philosopher, the true
child of culture, proud of the manners, the
speech, the daintiness and delicacy of the culti¬
vated." We hear him say, "See what a set of
men these Christians are ! The teachers of our
noble philosophies in our academies are culti¬
vated gentlemen, acquainted with the best
thoughts of the best thinkers, and able to give
them fit, because elegant, expression; but these
Christian preachers, why they are fishermen, and
publicans, and weavers, and cobblers, ignorant
Jews, illiterate Greeks, the veriest barbarians,
enthusiasts, without the gift of refined thought
or cultured speech." We behold some remnants
of Celsus in the feelings which dainty culture
expresses toward the earnest Christian evangel¬
ism of our day. But what of these criticisms?
Let us take Celsus at his word, accepting his
testimony as true, and what then? "Does he
not become," as Dr. Fairbairn writes, "one of
the oldest, though most unconscious, witnesses
lOO CHRISTIANITY, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
to the power of Christ? It was a new thing in
the. history and experience of men, that men,
such as Celsus described, should become grander
and mightier than any known to his academies,
possessed of ideas as to God, as to man and so¬
ciety and the state, sublimer than Plato ever im¬
agined, men wiser in their notions of civil rights
and political duties than Solon, dreaming of
more splendid achievements than ever dawned
on the soul of Alexander or of Caesar, working
at the foundations of a city infinitely nobler in
ideal, as it was to be incomparably grander in
history, than the city Athene loved and shielded,
or the city Romulus founded, and Jove guided
to universal empire."
Open the pages of the Roman historians, and
you will find there pictures of the Roman
nobility, looking upon their slaves as so many
cattle, murdering them with impunity, using
their bodies to fatten the lampreys in their lakes,
pitting them against tigers in the amphitheater.
Open the pages of the early Christian historians,
and you will see the Roman nobility and their
slaves sitting down as brethren at the Lord's
table. It was the doctrine of Jesus, concerning
the equal humanity of all men, which reversed
the maxims of philosophy, and gave the litera¬
ture of heaven to men whom Plato excluded
from his "Academy" and condemned in his
"Republic " to menialness and brutality. And
what an immense and glorious revolution the
EFFECTS OF CHRISTIANITT. loi
Christian doctrine has effected in the thought
and literature of the world! It is not rank or
place or princely wealth that gives dignity and
grace to the characters whom the masters of our
imaginative art unveil to us. The verse of
Robert Burns has made an entrance for all the
world beneath the low roof of the Scottish peas¬
ant, and the family worship of the "Cotter's
Saturday Night " may bring us as near to God
as a gorgeous service intoned within cathedral
walls. The spiritual inffuence and consolation
which Christianity has brought to the poor are
not greater than the ennoblement it brings to
our conceptions of man, in lifting us above bond¬
age to the formal and external. The soul is
sovereign over rank and dress, and the highest
art of a Christian age finds passion and suffering,
love and joy, as significant and sublime among
the miners of Cornwall and the huts of Ireland
as in the drawing-rooms of London; amid the
slave cabins of Louisiana as along the brilliant
boulevards of Paris; in Millet's portraiture of
the Norman peasantry as in Paul Veronese's
gorgeous pictures of Venetian splendor.
There have been no tribes so distant and so
debased that the touch of Christ's hand has not
reached them and lifted them into manhood.
The impossible in the case of the brutal Hotten¬
tot and the native Australian has been realized.
It is not a Christian missionary, but Charles Dar¬
win, the greatest name in science since Sir Isaac
I02 CHRISTIANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
Newton, it is Darwin, himself a contributor to
Christian missions, who wrote of the Tahitians,
that human sacrifices, unparalleled profligacy,
infanticide and bloody wars have been abolished,
and that dishonesty, intemperance and licentious¬
ness have been greatly reduced by the introduc¬
tion of Christianity. I might tell the story of
special triumphs, like that in Madagascar, where
the Bible has been enthroned, moral abomina¬
tions largely uprooted, education diffused, and a
hundred thousand souls gathered into Christian
churches. I might ask yop to look to far off
Melanesia, with Fiji as its center, and note the
fact that out of a population of a hundred and
twenty thousand, not long since cannibals, a
hundred thousand have been reached, and are
now worshipers in Christian assemblies; or I
might tell you how the power of the ever-living
Gospel in the heart of Robert Moffatt gave to
the degraded Bechuana tribes trade, literature
and civilization. Or, I might sketch the move¬
ment in Mussulman lands, which has touched
with the radiance of the Cross the Lebanon and
Persian mountains, as well as the waters of the
Bosporus, and which is the sure harbinger of
the day when Cairo and Damascus and Teheran
shall be the servants of Jesus, and when even
the solitudes of Arabia shall be pierced, and
Christ, in the person of His disciples, shall enter
the Kaaba of Mecca, and the whole truth shall
at last be there spoken, "This is eternal life that
EFFECTS OF CHRISTI AN ITT. 103
they might know Thee, the only true God, and
Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent."
It is not my purpose to deny or to belittle
the beneficent results of the other faiths. But
while determined to see the good, how great is
the good which can be discovered? "Buddhism
has made Asia -mild," we are told, but it is not
the general impression that where it prevails it
has made Asia moral. "While Buddhism," as
a recent writer has said, "made Chinese Asia
gentle in manners and kind to animals, it cov¬
ered the land with temples, monasteries and im¬
ages; on the other hand the religion of Jesus
filled Europe not only with churches and abbeys,
monasteries and nunneries, but also with hos¬
pitals, orphan asylums, lighthouses, schools and
colleges." Furthermore, while India has been
an immense theater for the activity and con¬
tention of all the religions which are really great,
while it has been the museum and the encyclo¬
paedia, and the reservoir, of these faiths,® would
it be difficult to establish a claim, which is often
made that Christianity, directly and indirectly,
"has done more for the elevation in certain re¬
spects of Hindu society in the last eighty years
than the other religions have accomplished in all
the ages of their dominion?"'® Much may be
said in praise of Confucianism, but it has not
been progressive, it has not been in a high sense
'Appendix, Lecture II, Note g.
"Appendix, Lecture II, Note 10.
104 CHRISTIANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
religious, and it has sacrificed man to the social
order. And nothing more is needed to show
that Mohammedanism is only a temporary halt¬
ing-place in human progress, than the engrafting
of polygamy into its fundamental ideas and per¬
manent system. A Scotch theologian has well
said, "that polygamy may suit a race in a certain
stage of its development, and may in that stage,
lead to purer living and surer moral growth than
its prohibition, may be granted. But, neces¬
sarily, a religion which incorporates in its code
of morals any such allowances, stamps itself as
something short of the final religion."" Pro¬
fessor Max Müller, the most famous of all the
students on these themes, has said that, "how¬
ever highly we prize our Christianity we never
prize it highly enough until we have compared
it with the religions of the rest of the world."
Men realize that in the stress and interchange
of modern civilization the best religion must
come to the front. It is the mission of Chris¬
tianity to draw nations out of their seclusion, to
generate eager inquiry throughout all the world.
The non-Christian faiths are not permitted to
remain at ease, and the ultimate result of the
agitation seems to me not in the least uncertain.
Our survey makes it clear that if we should
take away from modern civilization the intel¬
lectual, the moral, the spiritual, and the social
effects which have come, directly and indirectly,
Appendix, Lecture II, Note ii.
EFFECTS OF CHRISTIANITT. 105
from the spirit and teaching of Jesus Christ,
there would be little left to distinguish us from
that vast ocean of cruelty, superstition, and despair
in which went down the sun of Rome. Take
out of modern life the forces which make for
liberty and order, for enlightenment, progress
and brotherhood, which owe their origin to the
spiritual dynamics of the Christian Gospel, and
the area of moral darkness would be vastly
widened, the domain of spiritual hope and splen¬
dor would be so shrunken and obscured that men
everywhere would be dreaming of a fabulous
golden past instead of toiling for an actualized
golden future. Marred and blackened though
our civilization is, the law of progress, the law
of life, the law of hope run their golden threads
through its entire organism. We are not mov¬
ing in fatal cycles round and round, coming back
to the same place, and making no true advance.
An increasing purpose runs through the Christian
ages. And, in spite of a backward turning now
and then, the stream rolls forward its fertilizing
flood, with such ,force that obstacles do not pre¬
vail against it. Indeed the energy of this ad¬
vancing life argues the supernatural origin which
the church has always claimed for Christianity.
It may well be believed that if the head-sources
of the River of Salvation were found in some
foot-hills which have but a slight elevation above
the plain, if our Religion had its origin in one
who ranks in being, only with the founders of
Io6 CHRISTIANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
other faiths, there would not be force enough to
push the stream of redemption with such vigor
and volume over the long, wide, desert wastes of
human history. May we not believe that be¬
cause the Fountain Head of the Gospel is high
up among the eternal hills of God, because the
stream issues from beneath the cross and tomb
of a divine Saviour, nothing has been able in
nineteen centuries of strenuous antagonism to
withstand its progress or, at least, permanently,
to push it aside? I would that Christendom
were better, but compared with the non-Chris¬
tian world it appears to me as noon-day to dark¬
ness, and before my observations of Oriental life
I never realized so keenly the truth of Tenny¬
son's line:
"Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay."
The development of Eastern civilization has
continued through more centuries than there are
decades in my own country. If this long de¬
velopment has produced results far inferior to
those of our brief American history, India should
seriously ask the reason why.'® And if the fruits
of Christianity have not been worthy of its
Founder, and commensurate with its opportuni¬
ties, still they have been so wondrous and world¬
wide that, to some minds, they furnish a more
persuasive argument than the most skillful apolo¬
getic. We feel that Christendom, on the whole,
demands a favorable judgment for the Christian
Appendix, Lecture II, Note 12.
EFFECTS OF CHRISTIANITT. 107
faith. We feel, with St. Hilaire, that "to con¬
demn Christianity, one must fail to comprehend
it." Seen in its true spirit, apprehended as the
fulfillment of all the best thoughts and aspira¬
tions of what Schölling has called the "wild-
growing religions," grasped in its central Power
and Person, we believe that Christianity will yet
appear to the disciples of Buddha, Confucius and
Mohammed, and to the worshipers of Krishna,
in its peerless supremacy and distinctive char¬
acter, and that they will be ready to exclaim,
with the greatest of Christian Apostles, "When
that which is perfect is come, then that which is
in part shall be done away.
CHRISTIAN THEISM, AS THE BASIS
OF A UNIVERSAL RELIGION.
Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.—
Matthew vi: 9.
Is God the God of Jews only ? Is He not the God of the
nations also ? Yea, of the nations also.—Romans iii: 29.
Grade der Pantheismus kann dem unbedingten Werthe
der sittlichen Arbeit niemals gerecht werdeii. Die Wissen¬
schaft aber muss in dem Streite zwischen Pantheismus und
Theismum ihre vollständige Incompetenz zugestehen.—
Christliche Apologetik von Dr. Herm. Schultz, p. 18.
The water of stagnant Buddhism is still a swarming mass,
which needs cleansing to purity by a knowledge of one God
who is Light and Love. Without such knowledge, the
manifold changes in Buddhism will but form fresh chap¬
ters of degradation and decay.—The Religions of Japan,
Griffis, p. 223.
Theology has no falser idea than that of the impassability
of God. If He is capable of sorrow. He is capable of suf¬
fering; and were he without the capacity for either, He
would be without any feeling of the evil of sin or the
misery of man. The very truth that came by Jesus Christ
may be said to be summed up in the passability of God.—
The Place of God in Modern Theology, Fairbairn, p. 483.
No ! such a God my worship may not win.
Who lets the world about his finger spin,
A thing extern ; my God must rule within,
And whom I own for Father, God, Creator,
Hold nature in himself, himself in nature;
And in his kindly arms embraced, the whole
Doth live and move by his pervading soul.
—Goethe.
THIRD LECTURE.
CHRISTIAN THEISM, AS THE BASIS OF A
UNIVERSAL RELIGION.
I have often looked, with profound emotion,
in one of the parks of my own city, on St. Gau-
dens's famous statue of Lincoln, whose uncon¬
genial task it was to employ the national power
against his own countrymen ; he stands there be¬
fore us, "with malice toward none, with charity
for all " beaming from his sad and thoughtful
face ; and I have felt that there is in the man
thus embodied something diviner than the power
symbolized by the folded fasces behind him,
something greater than the wise logic with which
he is about to speak. There is a majestic ten¬
derness, which left out of its comprehensive be¬
nevolence no one of his people, down to the
assassin that slew him and to the slave that saw
in him an earthly saviour. But in the temple
of God's Word, according to devout Christian
faith, another and greater statue is unveiled for
the glad eyes of all mankind. The living em¬
bodiment of God's forgiving and long-suffering
mercy is there disclosed. Divine love has been
revealed and crowned ; not its physical embodi¬
ment, as by the Trojan prince on Mount Ida of
III
112 CHRISTIANIT7', THE WORLD-RELIGION.
old, not the heavenly maiden of the mystic's
vision, bending above the bars of Paradise; but
love's divinest self. We behold her transcend¬
ent beauty, with which not for a moment is to
be compared the earthly loveliness of the Grecian
Helen,
" The face that launched a thousand ships
And burned the topless towers of Ilium."
We see in her a love that agonizes to bless
even through suffering. Words of forgiveness
seem breaking from her lips; her eyes are founts
of compassion, and though at her feet rest the
thunderbolts of omnipotence, and her brow is
radiant with the awful diadem of celestial holi¬
ness, we see the fingers of her hand whitening
around the Cross, and we bow before her as the
emancipator and redeemer of the soul and the
queenly sovereign of all mankind. The victories
of Christianity have been the triumphs of the
Cross—the conquests of the God of Redemption.
The proposition which I offer to-day is this:
that the Christian theism thus hinted at, the
doctrine of God contained in the Scriptures, is
an adequate basis for a Universal Religion. The
God who is the Universal Father is a boon to all
the world. The God who is one mind, of abso¬
lute perfection, is a blessing to peoples still dis¬
tracted and degraded by polytheism. The God
who is personal and holy needs to be known by
those still shrouded in the mists of pantheism.
The God who is merciful as well as mighty, and
CHRISTIAN THEISM. 113
whose mercy has been revealed and personalized
in the redeeming Christ, has a mission of un¬
speakable good to all who, consciously or uncon¬
sciously, are sunk in guilt, error and degrada¬
tion. The God who became incarnate that men
might at last know His nature, and gain spiritual
restoration, release and harmony, is the fulfill¬
ment of the prayers and hopes and vague long¬
ings of a hundred peoples and a hundred genera¬
tions of men.
I have thus far argued the Universalism of
Christianity from its present aspects, as the only
religion flourishing among all races and nations;
and from its beneficent and world-wide effects.
Our theme to-day requires that we should look
into the varied and fragmentary conceptions of
God which have prevailed in other faiths as find¬
ing, so far as they are true, a perfect fulfillment
in Christian theism. It requires, especially, that
we should clearly understand what are the dis¬
tinctive, or, at least, the supreme elements in the
Christian revelation of God, as now taught by
the instructed minds of Christendom. The light
which will thus be thrown on our fundamental
proposition that Christianity alone is the world-
religion will not, I earnestly believe, be found
feeble and flickering. It is interesting to note
that already, in the non-Christian faiths, among
enlightened spirits, there is an eager disposition
to claim the Christian doctrine of the divine
Fatherhood. The newest Hinduism, traversing
114 CHRISTIANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
two millenniums of polytheism, recalls the early
Aryan Dyaush-Pitar — the Sanskrit Heavenly
Father, corresponding with Zeus Pater and
Jupiter—and erects into living form this primeval
foreshadowing of Christ's Pater-noster. We all
remember that the Congress of the World's
Faiths asserted "with a most marked conviction
and reiteration the Fatherhood of God, the
brotherhood of man, and the solidarity of the
race." As one participant has said, "It united
often in the Lord's prayer, and by implication
committed itself to the universal religion which
that universal prayer expresses." As another
participant in that Parliament has written, "It
intensified the conviction that our God is no
geographical Deity, like the local gods of Egypt,
the tribal gods of Greece, the pantheon gods of
Rome, the national gods of Palestine, the eccle¬
siastical God of Christendom." And it requires
no prophet to see that Divine Fatherhood, more
or less clearly apprehended, will yet be pro¬
claimed as a tenet of all the historic faiths. You
may recall the legend of the Christian and the Jew
who once entered a Persian temple and saw there
the sacred fire. You remember that the Jew in¬
quired of the Parsi priest, "Do you worship the
fire?" "Not the fire," was the answer; "it is
only an emblem of the sun." "But do you
worship the sun?" "No; that is but the em¬
blem of the invisible light which preserves all
things." Then the Persian inquired, "How do
CHRISTIAN THEISM. 115
you name the Supreme Being?" And the
Israelite answered, "We call Him Jehovah
Adonai, the Lord which was, and is, and shall
be." "Your word is great and glorious," said
the Persian, "but it is terrible." Then the
Christian approached and said, "We call him
Abba, Father." Whereupon the Jew and the
Gentile eyed each other in surprise, and said,
"Your word is nearest and highest, but who gave
you the courage to call the Eternal thus?"
"The Father Himself," was the answer; and
then he explained to them the Gospel of Re¬
demption, and they believed and raised their
eyes to Heaven and said, "Our Father," and
joining hands called each other brethren. This
legend became at the Congress of the Creeds
historic fact. And the fact is surely prophetic,
and must give every expoundér and preacher of
Scriptural theism a new feeling of the fitness of
His Gospel to meet the deepest wants of the
whole race.
No Christian Apostle or Missionary, I think,
ever went to a non-Christian people without the
feeling that he had a knowledge of God purer,
higher, completer than has ever been obtained or
held with vigorous faith by the most famous of
non-Christian saints and philosophers. Some
scholars have held that the Stoic conceptions of
God and duty, as taught by Seneca, were strik¬
ingly similar to those of the apostle Paul ; but
Bishop Lightfoot, who regarded the Academy of
Il6 CHRIST/ANITT, THE WORLD-RELTGION.
Plato as a vestibule to the Church of Christ, has
shown that the basis of the Stoic theology is a
gross materialism, relieved sometimes by a vague
mysticism, and thus does not come into the same
theistic category with the Pauline teaching.
When the Christian messenger goes to-day to
Arabia or to China, to the islands of Japan or
to the schools of India, he believes, with what
seems to him the best of reasons, that he has a
completer, higher and more potent disclosure of
the supreme and infinite Spirit than has been
recorded in any sacred book of the Orient.
It appears to us that it is a terrible experience
to live without faith in the one God. It stirs
the most earnest missionary spirit to enter by
sympathy into the consciousness of those multi¬
tudes in the great Eastern world who have not
yet fully learned the monotheism of science or
the monotheism of religion. A student of
Asiatic thought has said: "Faith in the unity
of law is the foundation of all science, but the
average Asiatic has not this thought or faith.
Appalled at his own insignificance, amid the sub¬
lime mysteries and awful immensities of nature,
the shadows of his own mind become to him real
existences."^ "Just so far as Christianity has
accustomed the world to its radical doctrine of a
changeless and omnipotent God, it has given to
science an undecaying basis and impulse."
Students of Japan have seen what a poisonous
' Appendix, Lecture III, Note i.
CHRISTIAN THEISM. 117
and corrupting element in Japanese life has been
the rude pantheism which branches out into
polytheism and idolatry. The scientific educa¬
tion which that wonderful people has welcomed
has done much to "remove the incubus, to re¬
place and refill the mind," but "for the cultured,
whose minds waver and whose feet flounder, as
well as for the unlearned and priest-ridden, there
is no surer help and healing than that faith in
the Heavenly Father which gives the unifying
thought to him who looks through creation."
Now Christianity, we believe, has a perfect
theism with which to emancipate the bewildered
intellect, and more than this it has a loving God
with Whom to satisfy the restless and sin-bur¬
dened heart. Doubtless the doctrine of the
divine unity is not the exclusive possession nor
the original discovery of Christian teachers.
Rude sorts of monotheism are discoverable in
the ancient faiths of Japan and China. The
testimony to the existence of a vague primeval
monotheism, Egyptian, Vedic, Zoroastrian,
Chinese, Mexican, is neither slight nor weak.^
There is certainly a very ancient Hellenic be¬
lief in the unknown God whom Paul unveiled at
Athens, the God "whose foot-prints have been
found on the shifting sands of remote history."
The early poetry of Greece is not lacking in
glimpses of a supreme spiritual Zeus "before the
ideal had been degraded by the myth-making
2 Appendix, Lecture III, Note 2.
ll8 CHRISTIANITY, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
fancy." In the Varuna of the Hindu hymns we
have what has been termed the earliest picture
of the unknown God. But, how different is the
occasional, unstable monotheism which in later
Hinduism becomes pantheistic and polytheistic
from that proclaimed to Israel, "The Lord our
God is one Lord." Christian theism, wherein
the divine unity is warmed by an indwelling
Fatherhood, is in vivid contrast with the cold
and stern Deity of the Greek philosophers, too
cold and stern to be the God of the multitudes,
and lacking the highest ethical elements "even
unselfish love and child-like purity." Zeus, the
father of the Greek gods, is far from being the
loving Father of all men. The philosopher Lotze
deemed the God-consciousness of the classical
world as a rivulet matched with a rushing river
by the side of the God-consciousness of the He¬
brew; and when we reflect that Jesus purified
and perfected even the best knowledge of God
which came to the prophets, we recall the obser¬
vation of Pascal, that "Christianity is so divine
that another divine religion was only its founda¬
tion." "The Old Testament knew God as the
Father of a nation: Christ knew Him as the
Father of the individual soul."
Still we make a mistake to underrate that
knowledge of the Divine Nature which the whole
providential training of Israel was designed to
give. The stirring and eventful history which is
the background of the Old Testament revelation
CHRISTIAN THEISM. 119
was God's school for the chosen people, to lift
them from the grossness of idolatrous worship
into true conceptions of Himself and especially
of His unity and spirituality. God meant some¬
thing great and wonderful, not only for Israel,
but for universal humanity, when He called
Abraham, and from him raised up a peculiar
people; when He brought Israel out of idola¬
trous Egypt; when He led them forty years
through Arabian sands that they might forget
the fascinations of Egyptian polytheism. He
meant something by the decree that every male
Jew should wear between his eyes, and bind upon
his hand, and write upon the posts of his house
and the gates of his city, the sublime declara¬
tion, "The Lord our God is one Lord." Deep
down beneath the seven-fold ruins of Jerusalem
lie to-day the foundations of that temple in
which was no graven image or painted Deity
such as Egypt and Athens adored, but in whose
holiest sanctuary, void of light and empty of
human contrivance, the High Priest communed
with the one invisible Jehovah. Providence
never took so much pains to teach any other
lesson as that of the divine unity; the schooling
lasted two thousand years, from the call of
Abraham to the destruction of Jerusalem. When
the house of Jacob deserted the God of Bethel,
He brought down upon it the flails of Egypt and
Babylon. From the Nile and the Euphrates
He summoned His ministers of correction, and
I20 CHRISTIANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
frightened eyes saw the vales about Jerusalem
which had been polluted with heathen altars,
bright with the scarlet shields of Assyrian horse¬
men. The Holy City was laid in heaps, and in
long captivity Israel relearned the lesson which
Abraham and Moses and David and Jeremiah
had taught, which Jesus reafhrmed in Judea,
and Paul reproclaimed in the commercial and
intellectual capitals of Greece.
All the natural attributes which belong to a
true conception of the Deity have found in the
Old Testament their grandest expression; and
the higher elements of the divine nature. His
righteousness and mercy, burn like a line of fire
through the Hebrew Scriptures. And many of
the highest conceptions of the supreme splendor
of the Divine Personality and righteousness have
grown up under the fervent teachings of law¬
giver and psalmist and prophet. The ancient
Scriptures employed all earthly types and rela¬
tionships to actualize and illuminate our concep¬
tions of Him in whose mind all earthly phenom¬
ena lay as ideas before the world came into
being. According to Biblical theism God is a
person, and not Matthew Arnold's "stream of
tendency." Doubtless personality in God does
not denote being with the limitations of human
personality, but for popular speech any other
representation is excluded. "God cannot be
thought of as a personality by the side of others,
but as the personality embracing all other per-
CHRISTIAN THEISM.
121
sonalities in conscious freedom." And we do
not spiritualize our conception of Him by think¬
ing of the God-head as a vague something
diffused through the universe, reaching on
through immensity, not altogether here nor alto¬
gether there, but pervading all things like a sub¬
tle ether. If this be true, then only an infinitesi¬
mal part of God can be in one place at a time.
God is divided if partly here and partly a thou¬
sand miles away. But spirit cannot be divided.
It is the Biblical representation that God is
wholly present everywhere. God is immanent,
in Nature, as well as transcendent, above Nature.
To the Christian theist, as to the Hindu pan¬
theist, the world is transfused with God like a
globe of crystal in which the light dwells. The
universe, as one has said, ''is a handful of dust
which God enchants " — a thought which has in¬
spired all the greater poets. Martineau has
written that "beneath the dome of this universe
we cannot stand where the musings of the eter¬
nal mind do not murmur round us and the vis¬
ions of His loving thought appear." "Nature,"
as Emerson says, "is too thin a veil, for God is
all the while breaking through." Human life
and all life are too wonderful for us to keep
out of them God, "the mysterious magic that
possesses the world." Our modern studies have
shown us the omnipresence of thought and
adaptation in the universe, so that we look upon
the earth as having apparently been made to be
122 CHRISTIANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
a school-room, a work-shop, a home, a temple
for man. We look upon the universe and find
intelligent order everywhere apparent. We per¬
ceive that the idea of each created thing must have
existed before the thing itself came into being, as
it did in all probability through that process which
we call evolution, a doctrine which, as Professor
Drummond has well said, ' ' has not affected except
to improve and confirm it, the old teaching that
all things have been created on a plan." The
presence of mind is manifest in the numberless
adaptations everywhere discoverable, and the
deeper we go in order to inspect the beginnings
of life, the more startling are the disclosures of
divine activity and intelligence. God is evi¬
dently directing the movement and development
of the original cells out of which spring oaks,
oxen, olive trees, the rose, the lion, the vulture,
and all the marvels of organized existence, weav¬
ing the various tissues of this living tapestry.
An everywhere-present God is essential to the
carrying on of universal life, spanning the clouds
with rainbows, painting a thousand landscapes
on the wings of butterflies, marshaling the hosts
of the suns, directing the infinite armies of the
atoms. The universe is one blazing wheel
within other blazing wheels, all rushing with in¬
conceivable rapidity and testifying by the omni¬
presence of motion to the omnipresence of
that Mind that created and upholds all things,
and without whose continued activity the very
CHRISTIAN THEISM.
123
thought of universal motion is inconceivable and
inconceivably absurd.
Modern Science, the handmaid and helper of
Christian Theism, presents also to our attention
the fact of the universality of law, the want of
caprice in the motions of the universe, the un-
deviating submission of all things to intelligent
regulation, so that the winds do not blow with¬
out method nor the waves roll disobedient to
the divine mathematics. But law is inconceiva¬
ble except as the working of a willing mind.
Self-made or self-executed it is an absurdity, as
much so as a proposition made to an organ that
it should compose and render the Hallelujah
Chorus or any other great piece of music; so
that when we have extended the domain of law
so as to embrace the rushing and shining host
of the stars, and when we have found law every¬
where executed, we have only announced the
omnipresence of Him who said to Jeremiah,
"Am I a God at hand, and not a God afar off?
Do I not fill heaven and earth?"
And furthermore, wide and careful observation
brings before us the omnipresence of conscience,
the solemn fact that the moral law cannot be
escaped ; that though we may put oceans be¬
tween us and courts of justice, infinite space can¬
not separate us from conscience. Neither
heaven nor hell nor the uttermost part of the
sea is beyond the immediate action of the moral
law. There are great distinctions, such as right
124 CHRISTIANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
and wrong, expressed in all languages, perceivable
in all nations. Men everywhere are under obli¬
gation to choose what is good and to shun what
is evil, and they have felt that in their moral
choices they have had the approval or disapproval
of some one above themselves. What is the ex¬
planation of these facts and convictions? If you
ask History, she answers, God. Pointing to the
smoke of countless sacrifices and to unnumbered
temples of worship, she declares that men have
deemed themselves accountable to a Supreme
Being whose approval they desired, whose disap¬
proval they feared. The moral law written on
the human heart is one of the sources and occa¬
sions of all religion. If you ask Philosophy what
it means, she repeats her sublime axiom, that
every effect must have an adequate cause. The
moral law is a stupendous effect, and only the
rudest materialism denies that it points, together
with all lower effects, to a Great First Cause,
for whose existence, as Herbert Spencer affirms,
"we have a greater degree of evidence than for
any other truth whatsoever." If you make your
appeal to the moral sense itself when touched by
the feeling of guilt, you find an answer in the
penitential psalms of all religions, or in the words
of remorseful David, "Against Thee and Thee
only have I sinned." It is sometimes said that
God is in the world, but it is truer to say that
the world is in God, for in Him we and all
things move and have our being, and thus the
CHRISTIAN THEISM. 125
universe becomes what Sir Isaac Newton called
it, "the vast sensorium of Deity," with God
vital and throbbing in every part of it.
The enlightened Christian has no need to seek
refuge in pantheism to find the teaching which
brings God home to his daily thought and life.
The immense and continued fascination of pan¬
theistic systems has been vividly apparent in
India. When Gautama Buddha rejected the
doctrine of God or gods, and substituted law in
their stead, when he emptied the Hindu pan¬
theon of its divine intelligences, he sounded the
death-knell of Buddhism for the land of its birth.
It has been said that Brahmanism has never for¬
given Buddhism for ignoring the gods, and the
Hindus finally drove its followers out of India.
The one doctrine which the philosophic Hindu
of to-day defends, and in which he finds his
strength and his consolation, is his doctrine of
God. The best truth that can be found in pan¬
theism, namely, the Divine immanence, is found
in the Christian idea of God, coupled with the
best truth that can be found in Jewish monothe¬
ism, God's personality and control over nature.'
To the Christian theist the Hindu pantheism
with all its fascinations is a golden fog, blotting
out many a star of truth and hope, because the
divine personality is obliterated or obscured.
Judaism intensified the thought of God's indi¬
viduality, His separateness from nature, which is
® Appendix, Lecture III, Note 3.
126 CHR/ST/AÄVTl', THE WORLD-RELIGION.
yet His living garment, as Goethe says, and
there is lasting truth and comfort in its manifold
representations of God as Father, Mother, Hus¬
band, King, Fortress, Sun, Shield, Rock, and
Star.
But ancient historic Judaism failed to teach a
perfect theism. The Jew made the mistake of
believing that, as God's worship had been local¬
ized and restricted it must always remain so.
God had been localized on ]\Iount Sinai, where
the law was given ; in the pillars of cloud and
fire, the symbols of His guidance and glory; in
the tabernacle and the temple, at Shiloh and
Jerusalem. God had had a special people with
a special worship and a peculiar revelation of
Himself. And the Jew did not understand that
when Jesus appeared, the hour had come for a
wider disclosure, when the true worshipers were
to worship Him. in spirit and in truth. Judea
had been the cradle of the highest spiritual
knowledge, but Christ came to send it forth as a
strong man armed to all nations. Back of this
localization of Deity, back of all these visible
manifestations, was the Infinite One whom the
heaven of heavens cannot contain, whose chil¬
dren were to be the spiritual followers of that
Abraham who believed God and was accepted of
Him, before one altar had been piled at Shechem
or Bethel, and when Canaan was no more sacred
than the unpierced wilds of America. To this
higher truth Israel was blind ; to this higher
CHRISTIAN THEISM. 127
truth the Christian world has sometimes been
blind, having fallen from the height of the Mas¬
ter's teachings. But if the early proclamation
of the Gospel meant anything in the realm of
Theism, it meant the bringing home to men's
hearts the spiritual truths and forces which came
from the teaching, the person, and the work of
Christ. It meant the truth that God is love,
that God is light, that God is spirit. Christianity
in its purity has held the human heart and mind
to the great truths which make spiritual worship
possible, and which make idolatry a degradation
of man's nobler self.
The Christian theist has learned the secret of
worship. He has learned that he himself is
spirit; that the soul which works through the
hands and looks through the eyes, which thinks,
and loves, and wills, which has a mysterious
relation to the brain, is distinct from its bodily
servants. The human spirit refuses to submit to
the measuring-line and the microscope and to
the tests of the chemist and the mathematician.
Man is spirit, and may discern and worship God.
God is spirit, hidden to the eye, inaudible, in¬
tangible. He is love, which has a thousand
manifestations, shining in the dew and glowing
in the heavens, resplendent in household affec¬
tions, dazzling at the Cross, but itself only dis¬
cerned by that love in man which is also invisible
to the eye. God is righteousness, evidenced in
the crumbling of an empire, and in the sting of
128 CHR/STIANIT2', THE WORLD-RELIGION,
a child's remorse, but revealed only to that con¬
science which no crucible can analyze — to that
spiritual substance in man which is as much more
ethereal and sensitive than light as the rustle of
the star-beam is more delicate than the roar of
Niagara. God is wisdom, shown forth in the
changing seasons, in the cleansing rainstorm,
manifest in Providence and in supernatural reve¬
lation, but thus shown forth only to that reason
in man which sends its invisible thoughts from
star to star and binds with invisible cords the
footstool and the throne of God. God is spirit,
and His worshipers must adore Him through the
mind and by the medium of truth. He dwell-
eth not in temples made with hands, as Paul
said to the bewildered people of Athens; neither
is He worshiped with men's hands, as we are
endeavoring to persuade the bewildered people
of Asia. It is only by the activity of those
faculties which take hold of God, it is only by
an individual appropriation of the truth through
the ministry of the Divine Spirit, that the human
soul is purified, and thus fitted for true worship.
Christianity goes to the nations to-day, and
begins the uplift and regeneration of the spirit
by teaching that God's true temple is in the
hearts of men. Their souls must be made holy,
for God is a God of perfect righteousness, of un¬
spotted holiness. Christianity taught the an¬
cient Greek, and would teach the modern Hindu,
to be ashamed of deities who are not adorned
CHRISTIAN THEISM.
129
with ordinary human virtues. Did not Lord
Bacon instruct us that it is better to have no
conception of God than one that is unworthy of
Him? Holiness is God's diadem, the crown of
His perfection, without which power and wisdom
and love itself lose their highest glory. The
Christian messenger instructs men that the God
who now commandeth all to repent has never
committed the slightest wrong, that all His ways
are righteous, that all His acts are perfect, and
that if any vice existed in the character of God,
the worshiping universe must be dumb. Seraphs
would veil their faces, not in adoration but in
shame, and the multitudinous symphonies of
Heaven would die out in a dismal and discordant
wail, and the pure-shining stars, musical with
praise, must cease their spheral chimes and hide
their holy splendors, for the light had forsaken
the brow of Jehovah, and all His realms were
darkened to their utmost bound.
The Christian goes to men with the teaching
that since God is holy, the way of life is the way
of holiness. While Christianity is a spiritualism
that does not despise Nature and a monotheism
which does not separate God from His world, it
is also a morality which neither divorces the
inner from the outer life nor breaks "the
organic bond between the individual and so¬
ciety." As the God whom Christianity discloses
is ethical, He is honored by an ethical life, which
includes a fraternal spirit toward men and a filial
130 CHRISTIANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
spirit toward God. "All ethical conduct is
grounded in religion, and all religious conduct is
determined ethically." The Power not ourselves
that makes for righteousness is intensely con¬
cerned in regard to the interior dispositions of
men. He dwells only in the hearts of the pure,
the merciful, the meek, the righteous, and the
loving, and the lowliest savage of the African
forest, the humblest pariah of the Hindu jungle,
may construct for God a temple more acceptable
to Him than any miracle of beauty that ever
topped the hills of Attica or is to-day embow¬
ered in ilex trees beneath the snowy cone of
Fujijama. It has been the aspiration of peoples
and the ambition of kings to embody their
thought of the Supreme One in enduring and
costly stone. Through the centuries has breathed
the spirit that
" Roofed Karnak's hall of gods, and laid
The plinth of Philae's colonnade."
We bow before the religious genius that raised
the many-pillared fanes of antiquity. We be¬
hold with wonder how the vigorous faith of the
Middle Ages blossomed out in the Christian
cathedral. Piety has yearned for an earthly
habitation. Beneath the dome of St. Peter's
Church in Rome you feel the uplifting joy of
being where it seems worthy that God should
dwell. You enter the great vestibule and push
aside the heavy curtain and slowly absorb the
suggestiveness of a scene which sometimes
CHRIS TI AN THEISM. 131
dwarfs and dims the spaciousness and splendor
of the outer universe. You walk the conse¬
crated pavements where armies might move with
freedom. There is no oppressiveness in this
grandeur, no gloom in this solemnity. The
cheerful light falls tenderly through the ever
balmy air, on marble and mosaic, on bronze and
gold. With exultation you move toward the
central shrine of St. Peter. Everything magni¬
fies as you approach. The pilasters expand into
pillars, which seem mighty enough to uphold the
crystal arches of the heavens. Slowly the ma¬
jestic dome opens to your vision, a sculptured
and emblazoned poem, lifting the aspiration to
sublimer heights, while its vastness seems lov¬
ingly to enclose and shelter your greatest thought
of God. But while your heart is thus opened
by the sensuous imagination, the Divine Spirit
finds His home, not amid those luminous spaces
but in the worshiper's soul, and without irrever¬
ence he may say, with Christ, there is something
here "greater than the temple." Here is love
which interprets love and renders praises which
are more acceptable than the adornments of the
world's cathedral. The architecture of man is
the plaything of time. The sanctuaries of
human pride disappear. The road from Delhi
to the Kutub Minar is strewn far and wide with
ruinous domes and broken columns, the traces
of three religions. On Mount Gerizim the
Samaritan worships at a broken shrine. The
132 CHRISTIANITY, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
wild stork perches on the columns of Ephesian
temples. It is the whiteness of a shattered
beauty which the Parthenon now lifts into the
violet ether of Athens. " And the time will come
when the golden lamps about St. Peter's tomb
shall be extinguished, and the miracle of Michael
Angelo shall mingle in the dust of ancient Rome,
but the architecture of God abides. "Ye are
the temples of the Holy Ghost." "Fairer far
than aught by artist feigned, or pious ardor
reared," are the holy places of the soul. The
Divine One has tabernacled in humanity, and
made it sacred. In the believer's heart, accord¬
ing to the New Testament, Christ dwelleth, the
hope of glory.
But besides this unity and spirituality there
is still another supreme fact in the Christian
revelation of God which pre-eminently makes it
fit to become the universal faith qf mankind.
Christianity alone reveals the Divine One as con¬
tinuously and mercifully seeking after mankind.
It shows us God standing by the side of fallen
man at the beginning, with gracious purposes that
overtop the curse and outrun the consequences
of transgression. It shows us God inaugurating
a system of redemption and recovery, and lifting
above the red flag of the primeval anarchy the
banner of His love. From first to last the
Bible is the call of God to His earthly children.
The Saviour of mankind expressly declared that
He had not come to condemn the world. He
CHRISTIAN THEISM. 133
came to reveal the God of all grace ; and a most
difficult work of the messenger of Christ, whether
in Canton or Calcutta, is to persuade men, who
have thought of God as remote and impersonal,
that He loves them with an affection overpassing
their utmost imaginations. When we get any-
faintest glimpse of the Divine Fatherhood which
is the background of Christ's redeeming work,
and try to measure with our limited vision the
immeasurable pity of God, a compassion which
was not brought into being when the angels first
choired the heavenly songs of Bethlehem, we
learn, often slowly, to trust, in the midst of all
the perplexities and griefs of life, that divine
heart whose pulse-beats, as the Christian believer
feels, are the life of the universe. And we be¬
lieve and strive to make others believe, not only
as Abraham did, that the Judge of all the earth
will do right, but that the Father "who would
rather suffer wrong than do it," will never see
one slightest shadow of injustice darkening the
glory of His great white throne. The Christian
Bible is the enfranchisement of hope; it is the
word of Him who came to destroy the works of
the devil, and who did not fail; it lifts the Cross,
with its disclosure of the bleeding heart of in¬
finite pity, above the troubled life of humanity,
and fills the whole sunset horizon of our faith
with the jeweled splendors of the New Jerusa¬
lem. It is the gracious and helpful attitude of
God toward human sin and sorrow which it
134 CHRISriANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
seems to us that men the world over need to
apprehend. Among the ten thousand difficul¬
ties of the Christian teacher in China to-day, not
the least is really to open the heart of the people
to the central truth of redemption—God's love in
Christ. Preach to them hell, and they believe
in that already, and they have gone far ahead of
Dante in making it horrible. They will tell you
of eighteen tiers of hells, a hell eighteen thou¬
sand miles in circumference and a thousand miles
high, an iron city, a metropolis of direst tor¬
tures, fire falling from above and ascending from
below; they will tell you of caldrons of burn¬
ing oil and lakes of blood, and hills of knives,
and dungeons of bubbling filth, and bridges of
snakes, and cylinders of eternal fire. But the
God of Calvary, who stretched out His hands to
death from love to the guilty, and who carries
the heaven of grace in His heart. Him they are
slow, alas! in knowing; the God who is full of
gentleness and patience and long-sufïering; the
God who is able to lift the Celestial Empire out
of its spiritual bondage and set it forward on the
path of progress; the God who can inform with
celestial life the strong, stolid intellect of China;
the God whose love floods the universe with
blessings, and who holds out from His eternal
throne the golden scepter of mercy.
The classic text of Christianity in its world-
embracing efforts is that verse of the fourth Gos¬
pel which begins, "God so loved the world."
C///Í/ST/A.V THEISM. 135
The illustrious sage of China did not say that,
and to-day we are informed that the Christian
preaching of love to God, as a response to His
love toward us, sounds outlandish to the men of
Chinese minds in the Middle Kingdom, who seem
to think "that it can only come from the lips of
those who have not been properly trained."
Confucius did not claim to know much of the
power that rules in the heavens. Prince Sid-
dartha, driven into practical atheism, never
uttered any message of divine love, and so the
Gospel of Buddha, which modern scholars are
compiling and printing, seems to Christians a mis¬
nomer. Such is man's need of worship that the
agnosticism with which Buddha began was not
forever continued with all his disciples. "The
preacher of atheism became himself a god."
Friendly students of the prophet of Islâm have
sometimes affirmed that Mohammed's God is
savage, aggressive, almost cruel. The Koran
speaks much of the Merciful One, but that mercy
is dimmed by other attributes, and is not made
real and credible; Islâm is truly the crescent, a
pale, lunar sickle of gracious truth in the sky of
religion. I know that we may discern the lumi¬
nous shadow faintly rounded out, but the light is
narrow and not intense. Allah is a God afar off.
He does not satisfy the yearnings of the soul,
and as Kuenen has said, "The people, therefore,
make a new religion at the graves of its saints ;
it seeks compensation for the dryness of the
136 CHRIS TIA NITr, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
official doctrine and worship ; true universalism is
to Islâm in virtue of its very origin, unattainable.
As to Hinduism,* while it has shown for more
than two thousand years man seeking, by devious
ways and through golden mists or deadly vapors,
the face of God, it seems, until modified by
Christianity, to have known little, although it is
rich in fabulous incarnations, of the Supreme
Love actually in some historic manifestation
seeking fallen man with divine pity and the pur¬
pose of complete redemption. Other faiths, as
I have intimated, may appropriate to-day the
Christian idea and revelation of God's universal
Fatherhood, finding expression in acts of mercy,
but we must not forget that what is giving this
great truth its general acceptance is the teaching
and work of Christ. There is something rather
odd in the methods of some Indian reformers
who, as one of your able journals has written,
"appropriate the doctrines and motives of Chris¬
tianity and fling them in triumph at Christians."
How Jesus toiled to inspire in men who were
out of the way the confidence that He is the
God-ordained Saviour of mankind! For this He
strewed His journeys with beneficent miracles
which drew the attention of the stupidest; for
this He showed the tenderest regard for the
most afflicted and despised; for this He touched
the whitened skin of the leper and sat at meat
with publicans and permitted the loving atten-
^Appendix, Lecture III, Note 4.
CHRISTIAN THEISM. 137
tions of outcast women. For this He denied
Himself, in one long series of sacrifices, from the
shadowing of His divine glory in the darkened
stable of Bethlehem to the culmination of the
divine tragedy beneath the murky skies of Gol¬
gotha. What is there within the omnipotence
of Deity which He did not do to show that sin
is not beyond the reach of God's victorious de¬
livering mercy? He fastened men's minds on
Himself, that they might know God's radical
dispositions. His unspeakable and infinite com¬
passions, so that seeing Jesus as He beheld with
all-pitying eyes the shepherdless multitudes of
Galilee, we get a glimpse of the heart of God's
love, that glows over all His numberless stray¬
ing children in all lands, from Arctic ice to
equatorial palms, and down all the sorrowing
ages, and that, with a fullness of fire compared
with which the sun himself is an enfeebled and
half-smothered flame, burns along the horizon or
high up in the zenith of our daily life.
I hope that by what has been thus far said I
have given no impression that outside of Chris¬
tianity the Divine Spirit has been comparatively
inactive. God, I find in all the great religions
and higher philosophies, not only in the modern
sage who said, "O God I think thy thoughts
after thee," but in the songs of the ancient
Vedas where it was written of God that "through
Him the sky is bright and the earth firm, the
heaven was established, nay the highest heaven.
138 CHRISTIANITY, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
and who measured out light in the air." He is
present in the life of all His creatures. As
Phillips Brooks once said, "Everywhere through¬
out the world God has made Himself known to
His children; He is making Himself known to
His children to-day." Paul did not underrate
or despise the spiritual knowledge which his
Greek and Roman hearers already possessed; he
frankly confessed the glimpses of truth discov¬
erable in their systems, and while he presented
the most scathing arraignment of Roman vices
to be found in literature, yet with his discrimi¬
nating love and intelligence he perceived and
felt how much of truth God has given to all
men's consciences and understandings. The
youthful Buddha felt and said, "There must be
some supreme intelligence where we could find
rest ; if I attained it, I could bring light to man ;
if I were free myself, I could deliver the world."
Why may this not have been the working of the
Spirit of God, and prophetic, like so much which
we find in Greek, Persian, and Hindu thought and
hope of Him who was free, and who through
the disclosure of God's mercy has brought de¬
liverance to the world? Foreshadowings of the
great facts of incarnation and atonement appear
in the sacred books of the nations. Many have
regarded certain strange sentences in the Vedic
hymns and in the laws of Manu as being "traces
of the revelation once made to mankind of the
promised atonement for the sins of the world."
CHRISTIAN THEISM. 139
But how fragmentary and feeble are the best
representations of the God of all mercy to be
found in other literature compared with the
mighty and full-orbed truths of the Christian
Scriptures! The supreme disclosure of the divine
nature as redeeming love is seen in the Incarna¬
tion of the Son of God. This is the climax of
all disclosures. The Christian doctrine of God
in Christ is not merely that a human being at¬
tained the loftiest height of spiritual knowledge
and remained there through life in the holy of
holies of religion. The Christian teaching is
that God's personality, God Himself, took pos¬
session of the temple of the human spirit, so that
Jesus could say "I and my Father are one,"
and so that "Jesus has for us the religious value
of God." This Christian teaching remains un¬
shaken. No other faith in history "has been so
continuous and invariable." And the inspiration
of the Church's activities to-day, like the foun¬
dation of the Church's hope in the beginning,
has been this faith that He who was equal with
God voluntarily withdrew Himself from the un¬
speakable fellowships of the Godhead and took
a human form and a human nature for our salva¬
tion. The faith of the Church has involved the
unity of Christ with God and the unity of the
Holy Spirit, Christ's personal representative in
the world, with God. "All the higher philoso¬
phies have held to a possible Trinity." The
doctrine of the Trinity was simply an attempt.
140 CHRISTIANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
as one has said, "to give richness, variety, in¬
ternal relations, abundance, and freedom to our
ideas of God." "Christianity gives us a con¬
ception of a Godhead which has all the constitu¬
ents and conditions of real intellectual, moral,
and social existence," thus saving us from "the
deism which shuts up God within the limitations
or impotences of His own infinitude, and from the
pantheism which loses Him within the multi¬
tudinous and fleeting phenomena of an ever-
changing universe." But the working force of
Christianity has not been the Trinity, but the
Incarnation of the Son of God for the redemp¬
tion of man.® This revelation of God in Christ
making atonement for sin is a force of truth and
of life, and a message of historic fact by which
the Christian Church has actually delivered men
from the power and defilement of sin, and by
which the Church purposes to redeem the world
from the guilt and love of sin.
I look around the world to-day and find no
other religions which seriously attempt the work
of redemption—"they have no healing for the
sin-stricken soul." Christianity makes much of
sin, because the vivid consciousness of sin leads
to a higher sense of personal responsibility and
to a closer union with God. The pantheism
which identifies man with his Creator, making
the Divine Being the ultimate cause of all evil,
weakens this and almost eradicates the sense of
® Appendix, Lecture III, Note 5.
CHRISTIAN THEISM. 141
the personal element.® "Pantheism can never
do justice to the unlimited value of moral toil."
We are not surprised that Spinoza looked
upon human freedom as a dream, and rubbed off
the sharp distinction between good and bad.
Nor are we surprised that Strauss, when he went
over into the ranks of materialism, thought the
hope of individual immortality a delusion.
While Christianity presents in a holy, personal,
omnipresent, merciful God an object of worship
infinitely more satisfactory than any shadowy,
impersonal Absolute of German or Hindu specu¬
lation, it never degrades man, as pantheism
always does, "into a fleeting manifestation of
the great impersonal spirit of nature." It seems
to us that here in India one of the finest and
most religious of races has sunk into hopeless¬
ness before the problem of delivering the world
from sin, and that one of the reasons of its fail¬
ure and despair has been the gradual elimination
of the thought of sin. Indian philosophy has
almost destroyed the sense of personal guilt, and
thus has weakened the will. Not that men have
been delivered from fear and the desire to do
many things to placate the Heavenly Power, in
order, through self-torture, to be reborn into
some higher existence, and at last to reach the
painless calm of Deity. The world over, what¬
ever be their philosophy, we hear men crying
out, "Can any human arm deliver us?" and one
® Appendix, Lecture III, Note 6.
142 CHRISTIANITY, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
is stirred, it has been said, "with a deeper,
broader sympathy for mankind, when he wit¬
nesses this universal sense of dependence, this
fear and trembling before the power of the un¬
seen world, this pitiful procession of the un¬
blessed millions ever trooping on toward the goal
of death and oblivion. And from this stand¬
point, as from no other, may one measure the
greatness and glory of the Gospel of Jesus
Christ."
Christianity, while bringing God and man
very close to each other, never destroys the
personality of either, and while it deepens man's
conviction of his alienation from God, and his
personal unworthiness, it reaches to him a re¬
storing and delivering hand. Through convic¬
tion of sin the world is taught to look to Christ
as its Redeemer. As one has said, "It needs
only to rekindle in man the hunger and thirst
after righteousness in himself or in the world, in
order to bring Christ near to him, and to teach
him to look upon His person with different
eyes." It is not surprising that in Asia thus
far men have so little comprehension of some
aspects of Christian truth ; it is no wonder that
they are so slow to accept fhe love of God an'd
to yield to Him a personal affection. With
them God is remote, or, if not remote, imper¬
sonal, or, if not impersonal, not an object of
grateful love, for they have not seen Him as He
is revealed in the face of Christ. "To love God,"
CHRISTIAN THEISM. 143
it has been said, "would no more occur to a
Japanese gentleman, than to have his children
embrace and kiss him," which is considered to be
"bad form " and never permitted. But Christian¬
ity's first command is to love God supremely, and
the disposition and ability to obey it are found in
the primary disclosures of the Gospel. The mes¬
senger to-day, like the great prophet on the
banks of the Jordan, exclaims, "Behold the
Lamb of God, who removes the world's sin."
Look lovingly at the great historic revelation of
Him who is the sin-bearing Redeemer, embos¬
omed in the highest divinity. The revelation of
the Lamb is the strong red cord which binds
into unity this blessed Book of Life. God has
identified Himself with the long-suffering ten¬
derness, the pardoning love, and redeeming grace
which are centered in the meek sufferer who died
on Calvary. It is historically certain that wher¬
ever the Gospel has gained a strong and vital
hold of non-Christian peoples, it has been
through the preaching of the Cross, as the su¬
preme manifestation of the suffering love of
God.^ And evermore the strength of the Church
has been not the disclosure of a human virtue so
eminent as to be called divine, but the revelation
of a divine nature so loving as to become human
in its limitations, in its lowliness of spirit. If
the Church has read the Gospels aright, it has
made no mistake in claiming that humanity is
'Appendix, Lecture III, Note 7.
144 CHRISTIANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
not to be lifted by any virtuous energy within
itself, but that God's life is to enter the decay¬
ing and decrepit race through Jesus, the Son of
Man, who died for human sin, and re-create the
whole. The Church of Christ was not to rise
from the bones of martyred saints and to be filled
with the memories of a merely human sanctity.
Such a Church would not have survived the tre¬
mendous assaults of evil in the first three cen¬
turies. The Christian temple was to rise from
the foundation of God's own nature disclosed in
the Man of Nazareth, and its altars were to flame
with offerings made to the crucified Lord of
glory. Men who are struck with sin and smitten
with moral death and overwhelmed with despair,
listen with feeble interest to the story of a fel¬
low-man who, whether his name be Socrates or
Buddha, in a distant age rose above the wretched
conditions around him to a lofty height of vir¬
tue. But the world is to be regenerated by the
story of Him who was the Son of God dwelling
among men, and who, for love's sake, humbled
Himself unto the death of the Cross.
It is the critical and decisive intellectual and
moral judgment of human life, the conclusion
reached in regard to the nature of Jesus and
those New Testament declarations which seem
opposed and contradictory. We read of His
humiliation. His dependence on the Father, His
subjection to the will of the Father. At other
times we behold Him claiming oneness with
CHRISTIAN THEISM. 145
God; we see Him exercising divine powers, for¬
giving sin and arrogating the authority of uni¬
versal judgment. What shall we say to these
contradictions? Is it a human being naturally
limited and subordinate, or the Divine One Him¬
self laying aside His glory and taking upon Him
the restrictions of our fleshly state? Was Christ
from below ascending heavenward, or was He
from above descending earthward? Is Christ a
finger pointing toward God, or is He also and
chiefly the hand of God reaching down toward
us? Jesus Himself, according to the Johannine
record, answers and says, "No man hath
ascended up into Heaven but He that cometh
down from Heaven." And Paul speaks of
Christ as "God over all, blessed forever." "He
that hath seen Me hath seen the Father," is the
solemn declaration of Him who spake as never
man spake. Wherever this truth of the divinity
of Him who suffered for human sin has been
received, there and there alone has the Church
presented a doctrine strong enough to cope with
pantheism and to give the soul its full deliver¬
ance and enfranchisement. "There is something
in pantheism," it has been said, "so deep that
naught in bare deism can meet it. Deism is not
so deep. And pantheism may well keep the
house, till a stronger than deism comes to take
possession of it. In Jesus Christ I find the only
true solution of the mystery."
This doctrine once received, we can explain in
146 CHRISTIANITY, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
part the opposing evangelic statements. We
cannot expect in a far-northern hot-house all the
splendor and luxuriance of the vegetation that
borders the Amazon ; we cannot condense the
torrid zone, with all its vegetable wonders, into
a glass cage, in our northern winter. And so
Christ taught of the divine nature that hedged
about and restricted and humiliated in the
prison-cage of our human flesh, as He was, all the
unspeakable glories of Heaven and of Him who
is from everlasting to everlasting, were not re¬
vealed in the Man of Nazareth. In Him was
the fullness of the Godhead bodily, and pre¬
eminently His moral completeness, so far as
the body can enclose and disclose the divine
nature.
Thus we learn that we are not to dissociate
from the heart of God, from the very spiritual
substance of Jehovah, either the person or the
sacrificial work of Christ. He is the Lamb of
God, and tells us of a sinlessness which is joined
to lowliness and humility; a limitless capacity to
suffer for love's sake, the wide-reaching, all-
clasping sympathy of God,—a sympathy as ten¬
der for the darkened children of Africa as for the
proud races of Europe; a sympathy which em¬
braces the famine-smitten millions of this land as
well as the dwellers in England and America; a
sympathy out of which, as out of the store¬
house, the workshop, and the garden of the Al¬
mighty, have come Bethlehem, Calvary, the
CHRISTIAN THEISM. 147
Man of Sorrows and acquainted with grief, the
hands which turned leprosy into purity, and
distress into joy, the white brow of death with
the acanthine crown more lustrous than Caesar's
diadem, the suffering heart pierced with the
spear, the uplifted mercy-seat, the immortal
Cross burdened with a heavenly Victim who be¬
came thereon more than an earthly Victor. No
wonder that while the world moves round the
Cross stands firm. No wonder that to the Chris¬
tian all the light of sacred story and human hope
gathers round it. No wonder that it has become
the giant hinge of the gate which divides the
empire of old night from the growing splendors
of the Christian day. No wonder that St. Am¬
brose saw in its form the image of a destroying
sword thrust into the earth: the upper end is
the hilt about which is clasped almighty power;
the outstretched arms are the guard ; and its
body is the sharp blade driven down into the
head of the Old Red Dragon of sin.
What other faith has such a clear, decisive
and satisfying message to carry into the fear-
haunted and defiled sanctuary of the human
spirit? Nothing else has answered the question,
"How can the heart and hand that have been
crimsoned by sin be cleansed?" Other remedies
do not go to the root of the disease, but Chris¬
tianity does. It undertakes and accomplishes
the greatest of all tasks. How it does it we
may not adequately tell. That it does it we
148 CHRISTIANirr, THE WORLD-RELIGION,
surely know. And indeed we may now rightly
appropriate and adapt to our use the old legend
of the man fallen into the pit. The modern hu¬
manitarian comes along, and, seeing his distressed
brother, reaches to him a hand of help; but the
arm is too short and the strength too feeble. One
class of teachers comes along, and says: "You
are not really fallen ; there is no lapse or apos¬
tasy; it is only one stage of the cycle of evolu¬
tion; but, as you believe that you are in peril
and in misery, I recommend, as efficacious reme¬
dies, pilgrimages to holy places, giving food to
priests, and repeating the name of the Deity."
Then Confucius comes along, and says: "Help¬
less sufferer, it is good enough for you ; you have
not kept the laws of society, you are receiving
your own deserts, in part at least, for what may
be beyond I do not know. When the archer
misses the center of the target he turns round
and seeks for the cause of his failure in himself."
And he goes away. Then Mohammed comes
along and says: "You are predestined to this
fate unless you repeat my formula and espouse
the cause of Islâm." Then Buddha comes along
and says, "Make the best of the situation you
are now in; be patient, subdue desire, have no
desire for release. Desire is a great evil when it
is suppressed. Nirvana awaits you. Do not
trouble yourself about the forgiveness of sins; all
things are under the dominion of inexorable laws;
your sin will find you out; and the idea of par-
CHRISTIAN THEISM. 149
don must be given up."® Then Christ comes
along with a face of brotherly kindness, with
words of tenderness and hope, brought from the
bosom of the Godhead, and with a hand of divine
deliverance, mighty with the power which girt
the heavens with stars, and He lifts him out of
the horrible pit, and puts a new song into his
mouth, that song which is the most gladsome
music that earth ever hears, and shall blend at
last with the anthems of those who sing in
Heaven the song of Moses, the servant of God,
and the song of the Lamb.
Christianity delivers men with a real emancipa¬
tion through Christ. It does not reconcile man
with God, as pantheism attempts, simply by
obliterating all that makes him man.® Chris¬
tianity brings to men a message of divine love
which can be criticised only by saying that it is
too good to be true. Christ may be said to
have lived and taught and died to contradict
any such criticism. Human speculations have
never exhausted the significance of Christ's sacri¬
ficial service to mankind. His moral power over
men has become supreme by those sympathetic
sufferings through which He has honored the
divine law.
He has glorified the perfections of God's holi¬
ness and mercy by His death on the Cross; that
Cross in its known and unknown elements of
spiritual power sums up the Gospel message to
® Appendix, Lecture III, Note 8.
'Appendix, Lecture III, Note 9.
150 CHRISTIANITY, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
mankind. It shows us God, not inaccessible,
but near; not unmerciful, but gracious. It is
only through Christ that men have ever gotten
worthy and complete conceptions of God's
nature. A great modern theologian, speaking
of the monotheism of Islâm, has said: "Indeed
the defects of Mohammed's idea of God suggest
to us to inquire whether it is possible to con¬
ceive worthily of God's holiness, except by see¬
ing it expressed in a perfectly holy human life,
or of His love, except by seeing God incarnate,
emptying Himself and as a man dying for men
that they may be one with Him forever." The
foremost need of mankind is to know that God
is love ; and Christianity supplies that need as it
appears to us no other religion does, by setting
forth God in Christ reconciling the world to
Himself. We will not accept any vindication of
God, any release from the weary weight of this
unintelligible and sorrow-laden world, which like
pantheism is immoral, enervating to spiritual
energy and to a holy life. We may rightly point
men, bewildered and in doubt, to the fact that
God's world is one of evolution; that the divine
picture is still unfinished, though, from what has
been completed, we may also bear down on all
pessimistic critics of God with the unchallenge¬
able fact that men are themselves largely respon¬
sible, through misdoing, for the greater part of
the world's misery. But, more than this, Jesus
Christ is our theodicy, our vindication of the
CHRISTIAN THEISM. 151
divine government. As one has written: "He
did not satisfy our minds with arguments; He
did not solve objections, or show us why pain
and sacrifice are necessary throughout creation ;
nay, He did not declare God's love as a dogma
and prove it by miracle. The Gospel lies in His
person. He took upon Himself all that tells
against divine love—all that has ever wrung from
men's hearts the bitter words of unbelief, or the
more chastened cry of agonizing inquiry, 'My
God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken me?'
He took it all upon Himself, and, as the Man of
Sorrows, made it, in His passion and death upon
the cross, the very occasion for expressing the
depth of the divine self-sacrifice." And I add :
That the redemption which Christ offers is, not for
time only, but for the great world to which all
men hasten, which lies beyond. The redeeming
mercy which Christianity associates with His dis¬
closure of God reaches into the life immortal. It
illumines the darkness of the grave with a light
which neither Buddha, Confucius, Mohammed,
nor any Hindu seer or poet ever held in his
hands, and it makes immortality, the power of
an endless life, an uplifting, inspiring, purifying,
comforting, restraining force in the sorrowing
and tempted life which men live to-day.
After what has been said do I need to put to
you the question whether or not the Christian
revelation of God in His unity, spirituality, holi¬
ness, and redeeming mercy made real through
152 CHRISTIANITY, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
His Son, is a satisfactory basis for a universal
religion? Is not Christ, through whom God be¬
comes near and actual to us, the desire of all the
nations? And do not the stories of the Incarna¬
tion, which are found almost everywhere, evi¬
dence, as Neander said, "a wide-spread desire
and expectation of a divine Saviour taking upon
Himself a human form?" Let me enrich this
lecture and your lives with the words I take great
delight in, of the French statesman and theo¬
logian, De Fréssensé, which I believe are a mes¬
sage that might well be carried to every child of
our race as a true summary of the Gospel and
as an eloquent portraiture of all those hopes and
dreams which are at last fulfilled by the Incarna¬
tion.'" "The Deliverer is at length come!—He
for whom the old Chaldean was yearning when,
with terror-stricken conscience, he used the in¬
carnation of his seven demons and, weeping for
his sins, called upon a God whom he knew not.
The Deliverer is come ! whom Egypt foresaw
when she spoke in words which she understood
not of a God who was wounded in all the
wounds of his people. The Deliverer is come !
for whom the Magi strained their eyes, looking
for a Saviour greater than Zoroaster. The De¬
liverer is come! for whom the India of the Vedas
panted when she was lifted for a moment above
her pantheism by the intuition of a Holy God—
One who could satisfy the burning thirst for par-
Appendix, Lecture III, Note 10.
CHRISTIAN THEISM. 153
don which none of the springs of her own
religion would avail to quench. The Deliverer
is come! the true Son of God, who alone can lead
mankind to battle with full assurance of victory;
the God whose image dimly discerned, had floated
in fantastic incarnations through the waking
dreams of the Brahman. The Deliverer is come!
He who can have compassion on the sufferer,
and on all who are desolate and oppressed, with¬
out plunging Himself and the whole world into the
Buddhist sea of Nirvana. The Deliverer is come!
He whom Greece had prefigured at Delphi and
at Eleusis,—the God who saves because He also
has suffered. The Deliverer is come! He who
was foretold and foreshadowed by the holy
religion of Judea, which was designed to free
from every impure element the universal aspira¬
tion of mankind."
THE UNIVERSAL BOOK.
They (the Scriptures), as it were, so impersonate, im¬
mortalize, and universalize the conciousness of Christ, that
it can exercise everywhere and always its creative and
normative functions. — The Place of Christ in Modern
Theology, Fairbairn, p. 49g.
In the presence of a multitude of religions such as are
represented in this Parliament, we are tempted to believe
that the ultimate religion will consist in a bouquet of the
sweetest and choicest flowers of them all. The graves of
the dead religions declare that not selection but incorpor¬
ation makes a religion strong; not incorporation but recon¬
ciliation, not reconciliation but the fulfillment of all these
aspirations, these partial truths in a higher thought, in a
transcendent life. The system of religion here represented,
or to come, which will not merely elect but incorporate, not
merely incorporate but reconcile, not merely reconcile but
fulfill, holds the religious future of humanity. — Professor
George S. Goodspeed.
If the dream of a universal religion be true—and we
have but one science of the universe; and if the Fatherhood
of God and the Brotherhood of man be true, there can be
but one bond of spiritual union for such a family—that re¬
ligion cannot possibly be based on the Upanishads. If you
make them your religion, then you must be content to see it
confined to a small corner of the globe, and to a select
coterie even in that corner. F or if, as it has often been urged,
this ancient system can be properly understood only in the
original Sanskrit, then true religion, at its highest, depends
not only on superior intellect, but also on special linguistic
talent, and talent to study a dead language! The thing, at
lowest, is impracticable. — Studies in the Upanishads, T. E.
Slater, p. 72.
FOURTH LECTURE.
THE UNIVERSAL BOOK.
It was my fortune, one July day in 1879,
pass by the Library of the Andover Theological
Seminary, in Massachusetts, in which at that
time were gathered a company of American
scholars engaged in revising the translation of
the New Testament, a part of the greater com¬
pany busy over the entire Christian Scriptures.
Had I said to these men, "Is there any real de¬
mand for such an immense amount of scholarly
toil over that ancient Book? Why should a
hundred famous scholars, working for ten years,
lavish on this version more of labor than was
ever before expended on a single volume?"—
they might have answered, "This is deemed
the Word of Eternal Life for one hundred mil¬
lions of our English-speaking race, soon to be
two hundred millions, already encompassing the
globe, and, within a century, to shape its des¬
tinies. We believe that no labor is ill-spent
that shall make it a better transcript of the
originals. We expect that our work will be a
new bond holding together the nations of com¬
mon faith, and that it will greatly stimulate the
157
158 CHRISTIAN/T7', THE WORLD-RELIGION.
zeal for Biblical study, which is already a hope¬
ful sign of the present time. Outgrown or obso¬
lescent, did you say? The Christian Bible has
only begun its beneficent mission. In the hands
of the two leading nations speaking the English
tongue, and those of kindred faith, it is to shine
like a newly-risen sun over a darkened globe."
Leaving the Theological Library, I might have
chanced to meet that venerable theologian. Pro¬
fessor Edwards A. Park; and had I put to him
the question, if the Bible was not losing its hold
over the modern world, he might have an¬
swered: "I have no faintest quiver of fear that
this book has been undermined or disintegrated
in an age when it is better understood than ever
before. It is an anvil which has worn out many
hammers. The geologist's pick and the as¬
tronomer's telescope and the archaeologist's
spade and the biologist's microscope were once
thought to have disproved Scripture; Darwin's
first great book was claimed by many to have
sounded the death-knell of Revelation, but the
most fruitful third of a century that Biblical
Christianity has ever known followed the publi¬
cation, in 1859, of D^win's "Origin of Species."
Then, pointing to the brick dormitories of the
old seminary, he might have said: "From those
buildings, in my own time, hundreds of young
men have gone forth to preach the Word of Life
in every land from the Columbia to the Ganges.
They have given the Scriptures to many nations
THE UNIVERSAL BOOK. 159
in their own tongues, and there is no man living
who knows enough to read the alphabets of the
languages into which, in my day, Andover stu¬
dents have translated the Bible."
Thus, at the outset, I bring before you this
distinctive feature of Christianity ; that it is giv¬
ing to the world its Bible. It gives it in a mul¬
titude of languages. The Moslem offers his
Koran in one. The representatives of the other
faiths are not eager to furnish Christendom with
translations of their own sacred books. Some
of them do not even scatter them widely among
their own people. The latest writer on the re¬
ligions of Japan has said: "The Buddhist scrip¬
tures were numerously copied and circulated
among the learned class, yet neither now nor
ever, except here and there in fragments, were
they found among the people. For although
the Buddhist canon has been repeatedly im¬
ported, copied by pen, and in modern times
printed, yet no Japanese translation has ever
been made. "
Having endeavored, in my first Lecture, to
show some of the Universal Aspects of Chris¬
tianity; and having in the second Lecture pointed
to some of the World-wide Effects of the Chris¬
tian faith on individual and national life; and
having in the last Lecture considered Christian
Theism as the Basis of a Universal Religion,— I
ask you now to consider, in a large way, the
Christian Scriptures, which I have called the
l6o CHRTSTÍANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION
Universal Book, although, with the late Professor
Blackie, I prefer to describe the Bible as "a col¬
lection of books, with a backbone of history and
biography of the highest kind, stretching over a
period of more than three thousand years."
Christianity presents, as its text-book, its rich
and abundant message, the Universal Bible, a
volume of well-defined proportions and contents
like the Koran, distinguishable clearly from the
glosses and comments and parasitic growths
which have expanded both the Brahmanic and
Buddhistic Scriptures into immense and varying
proportions. Speaking generally, and not for¬
getting the Protestant and Catholic divergence
over the Apocryphal Books, we may say that
the Christian Scriptures are a well-defined col¬
lection of sacred writings, fitted, as we believe,
for the spiritual instruction, and sure, final, au¬
thoritative guidance of mankind, in connection
with which we must not forget the most im¬
pressive fact, that the experience of nineteen
centuries has produced nothing worthy to be
added to them.
The position which the Bible holds in Chris¬
tian faith is depicted in Kaulbach's cartoon of
the Era of the Reformation. Gathered in an
ample portico are the chief men of the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries, the theologians, the
poets, the artists, the philosophers, the discov¬
erers—a noble group—in one of the greatest ages
of Christian history; but in the center of them
THE UNIVERSAL BOOK. l6l
all stands the German monk of Wittenberg,
Martin Luther, with arms upraised and holding
the open vçlume of God's Word, whose pages
seem to be the light illumining the illustrious
assembly. But ours, far more than the Luth¬
eran, is an age of Biblical enlightenment. At
International Expositions some of us have had
put into our hands a small pamphlet, in which
the most precious verse of the third chapter of
John's Gospel was printed in nearly three hun¬
dred languages and dialects, and we have thus
gained a new feeling of the universality of the
Christian faith. In the last fifty years the
Book which we reverently name the Word of
God has secured admission into almost every
part of the globe; has crossed the Rio Grande
into Mexico, and the Orinoco and Amazon into
the heart of South America; has entered the
gates of Japan, China, India, and has become a
torch of light which is illumining the Dark Con¬
tinent. More than two hundred millions of
copies in all of the great and most of the minor
tongues of men, have told the Story of Redemp¬
tion the wide world round. And we believe it
to be just as life-giving to-day as when it first
entered into the spiritual blood of the English
nation, or when, in the fourth century, Con-
stantine ordered the writing out of fifty costly
manuscripts of the Bible for the churches of
Byzantium.
It is with reverence and amazement that we
162 CHRISTIANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
think of this unique and wondrous Book. To
some of us the most imposing building in Lon¬
don is not Westminster Abbey, that sacred meet¬
ing-place of religion and renown ; or the Parlia¬
ment Houses, with their memories of political
strife and achievement; or the British Museum,
the chief treasury of the world's learning; or
St. Paul's Cathedral, the greatest of Protestant
churches: more impressive still is the building
of the British and Foreign Bible Society, within
which we have seen this Book in nearly all the
languages of the earth ; where we could pur¬
chase it, not as our ancestors were compelled to
do before the days of Gutenberg, as the costliest
book in the world, but the New Testament for
an English penny, and the whole Bible for a
sixpence; where we could lay our hands on
copies of the Book which the poor and the per¬
secuted had treasured as the choicest gifts of
Heaven; and where we could meditate on the
far-reaching empire of British commerce which
tends towards the ultimate prevalence of Biblical
Christianity. As you stand by the Bank of
England, in the heart of the richest of capitals,
and see about you the commercial houses of Cal¬
cutta, Melbourne, and Canton, the Banks of
America, New Zealand, and Australia, Canada,
India, China, and, as you look up at the Royal
Exchange, above whose architrave is the statue
of Commerce, on either side of which are figures
of English, Chinese, Negro, Greek, Indian, Per-
THE UNIVERSAL BOOK. 163
sian, Turkish, and Arabian merchants, while be¬
low is the inscription "The earth is the Lord's
and the fullness thereof;" or, as you walk down
the Thames to the port of London, and let your
imagination tell the stories of those ships which
do business in the great waters; as you think of
the masts which have shuddered amid the ice¬
bergs of Labrador, or have caught the gleam of
the Southern constellations "in the long twilight
of the Antarctic seas;" as you remember that
these barks have borne to the world's center the
cotton of Egypt, the teas of the Celestial Em¬
pire, the wheat of America, the spices of Cey¬
lon, the oranges of Sicily, the timber of New
Zealand, the coffee of Brazil, the ivory of the
Congo, and the furs of Hudson's Bay,—you have
been thankful that you have seen also the
treasures of England's great Bible House, and
that, with those world-wide conquests over land
and ocean by which Great Britain has become
the first of commercial nations, are joined the
power and the disposition to carry around the
globe the knowledge of the True God contained
in His Word, that God of Righteousness and of
Love to whom, according to the prophet, the
abundance of the seas shall yet be converted.
Those who have carried the Bible to the non-
Christian nations have accomplished a great work
in opening up the world to our sight. Without
them the greatest of modern geographers, Carl
Ritter, confesses that he could not have written
164 CHRISTIANITY, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
his chief book. They have rendered more real
service to geography than all the geographical
societies. Oriental linguistic learning has been
largely indebted to these Christian heralds, trans¬
lators, and teachers of the Bible, who have en¬
abled "the German in his closet" to compare
more than two hundred languages.
All great books are surrounded in time with
veneration and kindle noble enthusiasm. Classical
literature has had its devotees and its martyrs.
Virgil was the object of Dante's fervent devo¬
tion. St. Chrysostom slept with the comedies
of Aristophanes under his pillow. Alexander
reposed his head on the resounding lines of
the Iliad. Petrarch searched sea and land for
ancient manuscripts, and wept because he could
not read Homer in the original. Lady Jane
Grey, as Macaulay loved to mention, sat in the
lonely oriel, fixed to Plato's story of the death of
Socrates, unmindful of the blowing horn and
rushing steed without. Byron died for Greek
liberty from devotion to Greek learning, with the
name of Greece upon his lips. But such inci¬
dents are over-matched a hundred-fold by Chris¬
tian devotion to the Bible, and the sob of the
great Italian sentimentalist because he could not
read Homer in Greek, is meaningless beside the
moan of the slave girl, sorrowing that she could
not read the words of Jesus in her own tongue.
Thousands have endured martyrdom for the
verities of this Book. The earth is rich with the
THE UNIVERSAL BOOK. 165
blood of those who would not sell this truth for
their lives.
We know how pathetic oftentimes has been
the patriotic enthusiasm of the Israelite for that
part of the sacred Scriptures which he deems
divine, and regards as his own national posses¬
sion. There is a devotion among Moslems to
the Koran which is strangely thrilling and sug¬
gestive, but with the Jew and the Christian the
Bible is not a charm or an amulet, but a fount¬
ain of life. While the Moslem may tell you of
negro boys on the banks of the Congo who are
able to repeat in Arabic the Prophet's holy book
from the first Surah to the last, without under¬
standing a word of it, the Christian will point to
millions upon millions of men, women, and chil¬
dren poring every Lord's day intelligently over
the pages which tell the great story of God's
love in man's redemption.
The sacred literatures of the world are almost
immeasurable. Recent scholarship has given us,
in fifty volumes of translations, the Oriental
Bibles, but they might have been expanded into
four hundred volumes. In the sacred writings
of the nations there are treasures which are
valuable to the student of extinct religions, like
the Book of the Dead, captured from Egyptian
sepulchres, useful in the knowledge of the
thought of ancient Egypt which it furnishes,
but by the side of all living scriptures indeed a
Book of the Dead. There are the old Akkadian
166 CHRISTIANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
and Assyrian hymns; there are the sacred writ¬
ings of the Farsees, the Avesta, the records of
the old Iranian faith, prayer-books, rituals of an
almost extinct race, which have been called "the
ruins of a religion." There is the ancient Kojiki
of Japan, a mosaic of myths joined together
oftentimes with indecent love-stories. But we
reach a loftier level or come more closely to the
realm of life, when we note the ancient books of
the Chinese, the works of Confucius, the Chinese
classics, or the treatises of the philosopher
Laotze, those books of poetry and of history, of
political economy and those maxims of ethics
by which Chinese thought has been held with
iron rigidity for ages. Then there are the Tri-
pitaka which contain the abundant doctrines,
metaphysics, ethics, and legends of the Buddhist
faith, expanded in Thibet into three hundred
and twenty-five folio volumes, found in shorter
form in Siam, but even then more than five
times as voluminous as our Scripture, Buddhist
writings, in the midst of whose metaphysics and
legends we discover an abundance of lofty
thought and noble sentiment. Then there are
the Vedas, the popular songs of the ancient
Aryans, sung long ago in the fair fields of the
Indus and by the streams of the Punjab, the
early Vedic literature, which according to Indian
orthodoxy is inspired in every line, the work of
the Deity, writings supplemented, as we know,
by what has become much more potential than
THE UNIVERSAL BOOK. 167
the ancient oracles, the Brahmanas and the phi¬
losophies of the Upanishads, together with the
eighteen Puranas, followed by the sacred and
semi-inspired and enormous poems which have
exercised for ages such a spell over many mil¬
lions, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata,
whose stories are the delight of the Hindu fes¬
tivals. Then there is, perhaps the only one of
the world's sacred books worth naming that is
younger than the New Testament, unless I ex¬
cept the Bible of the Sikhs, the Mohammedan
Koran, which the faithful deem the only miracle
needed to authenticate their religion as ultimate
and divine. Doubtless a "measure of inspira¬
tion" belongs, as Mr. Balfour has written, "to
the ethico-religious teachings of the great Ori¬
ental reformers;" "these things," he says, "are
assuredly from God, and whatever be the terms
in which we choose to express our faith, let us
not give color to the opinion that His assistance
to mankind has been narrowed down to the
sources, however unique, from which we im¬
mediately and consciously draw our own spiritual
nourishment."
But, in the Lecture this afternoon, I shall
hope to indicate some of the reasons for holding
that the Christian Bible, and that alone, is worthy
to be called the universal sacred Book of hu¬
manity. And at the very outset we are con¬
fronted by the interesting fact that the Jewish
and Christian Scriptures originated in a land
168 CHRISTIANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
which was itself an epitome of the whole world.
The configuration of Palestine, its immense
variations of natural scenery, its vast range of
climate, tell a unique and wonderful story, for in
that little realm of sacred history, scarcely
larger than Wales or New Hampshire, we dis¬
cover the scenery of the entire globe. The
region where the writers of this Book lived and
wrote is no Arabian desert, like that from which
the Koran came forth, though deserts fringe its
eastern and southern borders. It reproduces the
geographical features of the whole earth, and in¬
dicates, it would seem, that this Book was meant
to meet the wants of all mankind. It is full of
the imagery of the sea, and is fitted to be the
companion and friend of those whose lives are
spent on the great waters. Cowper's cottager
reads it on a quiet English shore, and the sailor
in the storm thinks of Paul on the Mediterran¬
ean, and of Him who calmed the Galilean waves.
The Bible is full of pastoral imagery. It tells of
a God who is a shepherd, of a darling king who
came from the sheepfold, of a Saviour whose
advent was announced to the keepers of flocks,
and the multitude who ply the shepherd's trade
on Scottish Highlands or western prairies find it
preeminently the shepherd's book. But the
Bible is warm with the breath and brilliant with
the light of the Eastern clime. It tells of gar¬
dens and spices and pomegranates, of roses and
lilies, and jewels and palms. Its imagery is
THE UNIVERSAL BOOK. 169
oriental in its richness, and is it not, in this re¬
spect at least, the book for the teeming millions
who dwell beneath the tropic sun? But it is
also a book of mountains and snow and ice ; the
hoar frost of Lebanon is on it. The snowy
splendor of Hermon casts a cold light on its
pages; and is it not the book for the Alpine
herdsman, and even for the far-off tribes that
watch the unsetting sun amid the white and
ghastly solitudes of the North?
But this Book which Christians deem the pre¬
eminent divine revelation, reflects not only the
outer life of the world, but also the whole inner life
of humanity. We know that primarily the Bible
is a story, the story of redemption, interwoven
with fascinating biographies, and almost every
variety of literature. Nothing stirs the mind
and heart like action, dramatic, heroic, progress¬
ive, human action. Can anything be found in
literature which, for the delight of the young
and the instruction of the aged, is equal to the
stories in the Old and New Testaments? The
Bible is the history of man on all sides of his
nature, in every aspect of his character, from the
vilest to the holiest. When understood, as the
best Christian scholarship now understands it, it
is not exposed to the objections which scornful
unbelief has often flung against it. The Bible is
the literature, the spiritual and choice literature,
of a great and heaven-guided people, a literature
resplendent with universal moral and spiritual
lyo CHRISTIANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
truths, full of elements human and divine, per¬
fectly adapted to its supreme work of restoring
the soul, not a treatise of science or history by
the pen of the Almighty and All-wise, but the
inspired human record of prophets, kings, patri¬
archs, seers, apostles, warriors, poets, fishermen.
It is colored by the prismatic hues of many
minds; it is not the product of one generation,
but of nearly fifty, not in one language but
mostly in two, the simple and fervent Hebrew
for the Old Testament, the literary and phil¬
osophical Greek for the New. The divine in¬
spiration comes to us from rabbis and shepherds,
from the statesman-like Moses, the visionary
Isaiah, the practical Peter, the argumentative
Paul, the mystical John. The word spoken is
for children and for the aged, for women and for
men, for the rich and the humble, for the sove¬
reign and the subject, for the magistrate and
criminal, for the exile, the sorrow-laden and the
dying. The Spirit of God reaching us through
such various channels appeals to gratitude and
hope, to fear and to love. As one who denied
its divine origin has written, "It goes equally to
the cottage of the plain man and the palace of the
king. It is woven into the literature of the
scholar and colors the talk of the street. It blesses
us when we are born ; gives names to half Chris¬
tendom; rejoices with us; has sympathy with
our mourning; tempers our griefs to finer issues."
It tells the story of one who was carpenter and
THE UNIVERSAL BOOK. 171
king, peasant, and Redeemer, child and youth
and man, and the Son of God, the story which
charms the evening fireside and consoles the
heart of the dying believer.
Remember that the Biblical literature has not
come to us under any monotonous form, not as
a collection of precepts, strung together like those
of the Confucian and Buddhist scriptures, and
not as the production of a single mind, like the
Koran, where the chapters, excepting the first,
which is a brief prayer of thanksgiving, are
arranged mechanically, beginning with the
longest and ending with the briefest. Our Bible
has greater variety even than the Hindu sacred
books, which resemble it in this respect, but it
is not a voluminous and almost endless encyclo¬
paedia of undefined and interminable extent,
which even a company of scholars, working for
two decades, would not fully explore. It is a
book which a ten-years child may read in a fort¬
night, and which is now brought within the reach
of the poor, both in India and America, and yet
it is a book which a lifetime of study never
begins to exhaust. It has almost infinite variety,
scores of authors living through a period of per¬
haps fifteen centuries contributing to it, and
writing in different styles and tongues their
different kinds of literature. We have dramatic
poetry like Job, which many of us deem with
Carlyle "the greatest of human compositions,"
epic poetry, which is really history, like the
172 CHRISTIANITY, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
story of Joseph and David, tragedies which
Shakespeare and the Greeks have not surpassed
in terror, in the fate of Absalom and Ahab, of
Jezebel and Judas and Ananias; pastorals like
Ruth, with which Dr. Johnson amazed and de¬
lighted a fashionable circle of ignorant sceptics
in London ; love songs like that attributed to
Solomon, sententious precepts like the Proverbs;
grandest oratory like the writings of Isaiah,
which Milton loved and praised; fascinating
biographies like the Gospels, grave practical let¬
ters like those of Paul, profoundest principles of
statesmanship running through the Old Testa¬
ment prophets, missionary annals like the Acts
of the Apostles, visions of earthly and heavenly
victory over evil like the Apocalypse.
And to prove its universal adaptation still
further, the Bible is a book which, unlike some
other sacred scriptures, can be readily trans¬
lated. Its loveliness and its inspiring power do
not lie, as with the Koran, in the original text.
The Bible can be put into all tongues and be¬
come, like Luther's translation into the German,
or like the King James version into the Eng¬
lish, the noblest product and conservator of a
great modern speech. Into hundreds of the
minor languages and dialects the Bible has gone
and has not lost its glory, and sometimes it lifts
those languages and their people with them, put¬
ting noble conceptions into the place of debasing
ideas. Where its truths have been preached, in
THE UNIVERSAL BOOK. 173
the last fifty years, a thousand church spires rise
above the vanishing idolatries of the Pacific
Archipelago. Going to new nations, the Bible
has introduced them into the noblest intellectual
companionships; has made them contemporaries
with the vast and wonderful history recorded in
its pages; has placed them with Adam in the
primeval garden amid the trees of Paradise ; with
Abraham on the mysterious mount of sacrifice;
with Moses before the majesty of Egypt and the
infinite glory of Jehovah; with Jesus on the
mount of Beatitudes, the awful summit of Cal¬
vary and the peaceful hill over which bloomed
the skies of His Ascension, thus widening their
intellectual horizon until it has become conter¬
minous with God's purposes of love to His chil¬
dren.
Does it not appear to you that, in comparison,
the ministry of other sacred books has been
limited to national areas? Much of the best
modern poetry, where the beauty depends so
much on the artistic expression, cannot be suc¬
cessfully put into most other tongues, but the
poetry of the Psalter, for example, is primarily
in the thought, and thought can go everywhere.
Expert scholars inform us that the Bibles of other
peoples when translated into English are as
variant from the original form and melody as can
well be imagined. Many Mohammedans deem
it a sacrilege for the Koran to talk in infidel
tongues ; the very words which the prophet die-
174 CHRISTTANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
tated, and which his scribes wrote down on palm-
leaves and shoulder-blades, must be learned in
the Arabic and repeated in the original. But
there can be no life-giving power in such exer¬
cises. An intelligent world is not to be per¬
manently influenced by superstitions. But the
Bible, entering as life and truth, justifies its
claims by what it has wrought for the savage and
civilized races of men. It has lifted the mind
and transformed the life, enlarged the horizon
and given to human darkness the bright atmo¬
sphere of celestial worlds. To the ancient Greek
the knowledge of the Old Testament and the
New brought fresh constellations to his sensitive
and ever-expanding intelligence; and, surveying
the effects which the Bible has wrought on some
modern peoples, like the Japanese, ambitious to
get out of the primitive stages of civilization, one
writer, using a thoroughly modern metaphor,
tells us that the "translation of the Bible is like
building a railroad through the national intel¬
lect."
Mr. Lowell has said that the only universal
authors are Dante, Shakespeare, Cervantes, and
Goethe. They translate well, both from their
style and from their broad humanity. But the
four magnates of literature whom he eulogizes,
when compared with the writers of the Scrip¬
tures, reach but a few, and they do not speak or
claim to speak with any authority on the chief
themes of human concern, and we may say with-
THE UNIVERSAL BOOK. 175
out contradiction, that the most popular poet in
all the world to-day is none of these, but David
of Bethlehem, using that name to represent the
succession of singers who gave us the chief de¬
votional book of the world. And I think we
may safely argue the permanent influence of the
Biblical literature on the modest ground that it
is literature, and not a book of science, law, or
systematized theology. Books of science are
left behind in the march of progress, while the
great poets are always in the vanguard of human
life. But the Biblical literature abides also, be¬
cause it speaks through object lessons to the
child-heart, which comes back to earth with each
new generation, living in its own paradises and
delighting in the pictures which bring immortal
truth to youthful eyes, and furthermore, be¬
cause, while thus addressing the soul of child¬
hood, it reaches the depths of all human need,
keeping ahead of the most disciplined mind and
luring the imagination on and on with dreams of
the infinite and eternal. I say that it fits into
all men's needs, those old and ever-returning
spiritual wants which belong to men not as mem¬
bers of a nation, but as members of a race.
And yet, by its vastness, variety, and constant
revelation of new truths and adaptations, it
keeps abreast of the eager intellect and yearning
heart with every new occasion and epoch of his¬
tory. What an inspiring power, preeminent
among all books, this volume has had over the
176 CHRISTIANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
intellectual life! The most radiant and productive
period in the literary history of England,,the
century extending from the birth of Shakespeare
to the close of Milton's life, was that wherein,
according to perhaps the wisest of English his¬
torians, the people became the people of one
Book, and that book the Bible. This is no sur¬
prise. The Bible presents a series of unequaled
literary phenomena. Paul has left us profounder
analyses of character, of the human soul in its
conflicts with sin, than we can discover else¬
where.
A Book which contains the Gospel of John,
which Schaff called "the most important literary
production ever written by man;" a Book which
has given to mankind all the pure and strong and
vigorous monotheism now prevailing in our race,
among nations as diverse as those who dwell in
Scotland and those who dwell in Arabia; a Book
whose prolonged history was a manifest prophecy
of the Messiah, culminating in the matchless
person and teachings of Jesus Christ, and through
whose record there runs by the side of human
sin the current of divine redemption; a Book
which opens with creation's story, written long
before the birth of science, and conformed to that
theory of development from the simple to the
complex, and from the lower to the higher,
which science now wears as its most lustrous
crown ; a Book which deals with those stories of
the earth's origin and of the earth's destruction
THE UNIVERSAL BOOK. 177
by a deluge in such a way as to demonstrate its
moral superiority above the other traditions and
accounts which have been left to us; a Book
which has furnished in its Psalms, written more
than two thousand years ago, the one devotional
volume most acceptable to the enlightened
nations of to-day; those Psalms on which John
Bright declared he would be content to stake the
question whether there is or there is not a Divine
revelation ; a Book which has furnished mankind
the authority for that Sabbath of rest, without
which civilization would rapidly sink into phy¬
sical decay and moral barbarism ; a Book which
through its flaming insistence on righteousness,
its doctrine of retribution and its disclosures of
the Christ, oppose the degrading and downward
tendencies of sin, and is lifting great portions of
our race into a better manhood, and which car¬
ries on the forefront of its Gospel the priceless
truth of immortality, making our earth in spite
of its sorrows and transgressions, the suburb and
gateway of celestial life,— shines so pre-emi¬
nently, that many Christians feel disinclined to
bring it in comparison with other sacred writings.
Robertson Smith has said, ''We have no need
to go outside of the Bible history to learn any¬
thing of God and His saving will toward us."
Because the Bible alone is sufflcient, it seems to
us that it will ultimately supplant other sacred
literatures. Unlike them it is unified by a
divine purpose, a historic continuity running
178 CHRISTIANITY, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
through it all. The various books in the library
of our Scriptures are held into oneness by the
prophetic character of the older volumes, and
the historic consummations of the later. Or we
may find the unity of the Scriptures in the pro¬
gressive ethical development which culminates in
Jesus Christ. Or we may say that the Bible is
unified by the revelation of the kingdom of God
which runs through its pages. Or, looking at
the Scriptures as a history of Redemption, we
may say that Christ is the unifying principle of
this multiple volume, and that from Abel's altar
to the coronation of the Lamb, there is a gradual
and glorious progress of redemptive disclosure.
We may find in it the truths which are cherished
by all earth's sages and saints, the best which
Socrates and Seneca gave to Greek and Roman,
and every higher principle and precept of the
Koran, and all that is true in every cherished
writing of Indian philosopher and poet and
moralist; but far more than this it is distin¬
guished from other literature, as one has written,
"Because the noble truths which exist every¬
where as scattered fragments are here to be
found purified and centralized, even as the silver
from the earth is tried and purified seven times
in the fire." The doctrines which the human
mind and heart have guessed at, and, it may be,
involved in much of error, are found in the
Scriptures, freed from all weakness and defile¬
ment. The Biblical teachings in regard to God
THE UNIVERSAL BOOK. 179
and immortality, incarnation, and the atonement
bear the brightness of celestial truth.
I rejoice with another "at the richness of the
Biblical element in non-Christian literature."
For example, the Indian Missionary, John Laza¬
rus, of Madras, in his dictionary of Tamil prov¬
erbs, says; "Many of these sayings can bear
comparison with those of the greatest sages the
world has ever produced ; some are worthy of
the divine Teacher Himself.'" I feel the sacred-
ness of human aspiration after God everywhere
and of the deepest human thought about duty.
One has said: "Let the student really master a
philosophy like Confucianism, and he will better
illustrate the Christian grace of humility."
The prophets of that elder day,
The slant-eyed sages of Cathay,
Read not the riddle all amiss
Of higher life evolved from this ;
Nor doth it lessen what He taught,
Or make the Gospel Jesus brought
Less precious, that His lips retold
Some portion of that truth of old.
The domain of revelation is world-wide, but
while we grant this, there is no need of our con¬
founding the "mixed, uncertain whisperings,
with the articulate voicings of the Word." Non-
Christian literature shows that men everywhere
have been groping after the perfect, and, though
they have seen it only in fragments, they will yet
rejoice in the pleroma, the fullness which is found
^Appendix, Lecture IV, Note i.
I So CHRISTIANITY, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
in the Christ and in His Word. Mohammedan¬
ism has been a tremendous force, and Islâm
gained something at least from the Old Testa¬
ment Scriptures. Kuenen described Islâm as
''the kernel of Judaism transplanted to Arabian
soil." But the human heart needs for its purest
and highest life not fragmentary but full-orbed
spiritual truth, and the Bible rightly interpreted,
the Bible in its "total impression," is the Word
of Him in whom are all the riches of wisdom and
knowledge.
The instructed Christian does not believe in
the Scriptures as a sacred charm or rosary, where
each bead is as holy and beneficent as the rest.
The writers of our Bible were not mere types in
the hand of the divine printer. The truth is
that the Bible is an organic growth like the hu¬
man body. All parts of it may be essential to
perfection though all are not essential to the
continuance of vitality. Hence questions about
the perfection of different portions of the Scrip¬
tures are like inquiries about the perfection of
different members of the body, and more still,
like questions about the perfection of different
stages in the same growth. The man of fifty is
a completer revelation of humanity than the
child of ten, but the child may be as perfect for
that stage of development as the man for his
period of growth. So the earlier books of the
Bible may be considered the childhood of reve¬
lation, and are as perfect for their stage in the
THE UNIVERSAL BOOK. l8l
progress of the Scriptures, as the New Testa¬
ment is for the later disclosures of God. They
were the great foundation stones that must be
laid solid and deep before the splendid super¬
structure could lift its pinnacles toward the sky.
Hard discipline was required to teach funda¬
mental truths. God took Israel in hand and by
the hand. He is revealed in signs and terrible
wonders; He is made real by anthropomorphism.
These representations, figurative, bold, passionate
and poetical, have misled both the unimaginative
theologian and the burlesquing unbeliever; but
because they are passionate and not coldly
scientific, bold and not guarded, these descrip¬
tions made enduring impressions on the hard
heart of Israel, and the constant picture-lessons
in tabernacle and altar, in temple and solemn
feasts are not useless in the world's moral educa¬
tion to-day, for dull and gross humanity in part
remains. The world needs the whole Bible, the
earlier revelation is necessary to the support and
explanation of the later. The New Testament,
it has often been said, "canonizes the old," and
the deeper we study them both, the stronger I
think will be the conviction that this Book in its
entirety is fitted to universal need, and that to
divide it into fragments, is to diminish its
power.
Under the Biblical training we do not behold
any retrogression, as in some other sacred litera¬
tures, to lower conceptions ; but rather a steady
182 CHRISTIANITY, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
advance to an ethical monotheism, crowned by
the Messianic Revelation in Christ. Under the
tuition of the Bible there is no down-sinking to
inferior standards.^ The thoughts of men are
rectified, moralized and increasingly spiritualized
along the line of progressive development. Why
did not the religion of Israel "sink to the level
of common Semitic heathenism and perish like
the religions of other Semitic peoples" except
for the energizing and uplifting power which God
gave to the great prophets in the Assyrian and
Babylonian periods? In Israel we behold a
unique phenomenon, prophecy not sporadic,
occasional, and comparatively feeble, as among
other peoples, but historic and continuous, an
institution shaping the life of the nation. I
know not where else to find a race and succession
of moral reformers of such lofty stature, com¬
bining ''a message for the present, a body of
truth for all time, and a foregleam of the eternal
future. "
I know that the objection is occasionally
offered that the coarse strength of the prophetic
word often unfits it for us. When the complaint
is made by fastidious men that the Scriptures
are not always adapted to the spiritual refine¬
ment and sensitiveness of our time, the proper
answer is "By their fruits ye shall know them."
The Bible faces things as they are in a world
gone wrong, and as the scenes in human life are
^Appendix, Lecture IV, Note 2.
THE UNIVERSAL BOOK. 183
not arranged with the elegant luxury of a French
salon, where every object attracts and pleases
the sensitive and critical eye, so the Bible, the
Book of Life, is not a dilettante's book. It
presents many things that are common, ugly
and terrible, and uses the plain language, the
straightforward speech of the simple ages of
mankind. It aims not to flatter the drawing-
room fastidiousness, which cares for words rather
rather than for things, and is more shocked by a
breach of conventional etiquette than by the
breaking of the statutes of Mount Sinai. Speak¬
ing of those works which are vulgarly called
coarse, Hamerton once wrote: "The combination
of the highest mental refinement with some
roughness of material accompaniment, is as
natural as that other very common combination
of perfect visible finish with low intellectual cul¬
ture." Surely we perceive the truth of this in
our observations of men. It is true with litera¬
ture, as witnessed in Dante and Shakespeare.
It is true in the Bible, whose refinement is not a
superficial polish, but the inner light of holiness.
The Bible is an honest book, reflecting the ages
when it was written, and recording the crimes and
errors of its own heroes. If it is compelled to
paint the vices of men, it makes them appear
unlovely. It does not set out, like Hogarth, to
depict the sins of mankind, but when sins are
painted they are brought out, in honest Ho¬
garth's way, so as to repel and never to attract.
184 CHRISTIANITY, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
What an unspeakable difference between all this
and the classic and other poetry which relates the
immoral escapades of gods and demi-gods!
Max Müller has drawn attention to the fact
that in the sacred books of the East by the side
of so much that is "fresh, natural, simple, beau¬
tiful, and true," is so much that seems to him
"not only unmeaning, artificial, and silly, but
even hideous and repellent." But surely, we
who hold that to our Scriptures were given a
peculiar inspiration and final authority over the
human spirit have no difficulty in suggesting an
explanation of this phenomenon. We find in
our sacred literature the main stem or stream of
God's self-revelation and we do not expect to
discover in those national religious developments
which are only auxiliary to it or a preparation
for it, such continuous energy, such ethical prog¬
ress and purity of moral life.
We believe that man is a being capable of
receiving such a divine revelation as was given
to Israel; we believe that man needed such a dis¬
closure from heaven, not to teach him the
secrets of chemistry and zoology, not to unveil
the mysteries of light and electricity, but to
assure him that God is love, that God has
mercy, and that God has provided a home for
His children beyond the tomb. We believe that
the claim, contained in the Scriptures, that their
origin is supernatural, is justified by the un¬
paralleled moral dignity of Christ, who laid His
THE UNIVERSAL BOOK. 185
hand in divine authentication upon the Old
Testament, and is Himself the life and sub¬
stance of the New; we are encouraged in our
faith by the moral results which have followed
the reception of this Book as the Word of Life;
we believe that the Bible has upon it a stamp
from above, a supernatural seal, especially in the
evangelical history which gives us the life, death,
and resurrection of Jesus Christ; we believe that
there runs through this Book a stream of pre¬
diction, which, drawing our conclusions from the
fulfillments already made, as for example from
that conspicuous and ever present illustration,
the Jewish people, could have had no other
origin than the mind of God Himself.
When we say that the Scriptures are from
God, we certainly do not mean that they came
to earth as an aerolite which dropped from an¬
other sphere. The Book is thoroughly human
as well as truly divine; God spake through the
prophets as well as to them ; they preserve their
natural differences and the Book is man's record
of God's revelation. That record has its human
peculiarities and limitations, by which it is more
perfectly adapted to our needs. But there are
in the Book elements of such dignity, truth, au¬
thority, power, universality of application, unity
most marvelous in the midst of diversity most
conspicuous as to set it apart from and above all
other writings. Even if you could prove that
the authors of the Scriptures had made mistakes
186 CHRISTIANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
in zoology and chronology, you would not de¬
stroy the supreme value or stain the peerless
splendor of our Bible. A signboard that points
the traveler with unerring certainty toward vir¬
tue and heaven, is the most precious thing on
earth, even if should you discover that it had
been erected by unscientific hands and painted
by unskilled fingers. Those devout literary
critics whose investigations are now stirring so
much eager controversy, find the Bible not less
but greater, not weaker but stronger, more in¬
tensely human and more truly divine than be¬
fore. Enthusiasm for the Scriptures will not be
lessened by the results of devout criticism.
Martin Luther did not intend to bind men as
slaves to the letter of the Scriptures, nor to any
theory of their literal infallibility in every minor
particular. The doctrine which the brilliant
Professor Huxley approved in the champions of
the Scriptures, the teaching that the least error
in the most unimportant matter of science or
history is inconsistent with a true theory of in¬
spiration and is subversive of the Bible; the un¬
tenable claim, against which he loved to couch
his lance and which binds our hopes of salvation
to the absolute accuracy of the itinerary of
Israel's wanderings through the wilderness, is
more of a hinderance than a help in the present
generation. The Bible is not the Christian's
dictator, but his gracious illumination, his wise,
gentle and suihcient guide. It does not dwarf
THE UNIVERSAL BOOK. 187
the powers of humanity and thwart its develop¬
ment by taking away the stimulus to energetic
work which is furnished by the exhaustless
domain of explored truth. It does not cripple
those faculties whose life is in their activity, or
bid men to stultify reason. We might question
a book which when all nature was saying to
man, ''Examine, explore, search, conquer,"
lifted up its voice, and said, "Vain and needless
labor. Open my pages; all truth is here." But
what does this volume say? "The fear of the
Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and to depart
from evil is understanding." The Bible is a
witness to this fundamental truth, and while its
store is so rich that poet and statesman and phi¬
losopher may find in its golden treasury much
that is of priceless worth, still the Word of God
is primarily a Book of Religion ; it reaches down
far below and rises far above all other knowl¬
edge. It appeals to the innermost nature of
man, and when human wisdom has confessed, as
Solomon did and Goethe has done, that all is
vanity and vexation of spirit, it enters the heart
like a torch into a darkened cavern. "The en¬
trance of Thy word giveth light;" by it men are
brought back to the Supreme Truth around
which, like the wandering globes around the sun,
all other truths revolve. The law of the Lord is
perfect, restoring the soul.
All men need a perfect moral standard. Ex¬
amine the Ten Commandments given in the
188 CHRISTIANITY, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
dawn of recorded history; see there a divine
hand smiting down idolatry with ail its accom¬
panying degradations.® See there a divine hand
building up the institution of the family. See
there God's thought of purity and of the sacred-
ness of life and of possessions; see there the
divine idea of truth, of regard for human rights,
and then open the New Testament and read the
Sermon on the Mount, the fulfilling of the old
Law, and then put to yourself the question:
''Can I discover elsewhere so perfect a standard?
Can I find a moral legislation which covers so
mercifully and completely all human life?" I
look around the world, and discover that wher¬
ever this Book has gone, men, though clinging
to other scriptures, have been awakened out of
moral lethargy—they have felt themselves at
once challenged and condemned, even though
they hold in their hands the scattered gems of
ethical and spiritual truth which gleam from
other sacred books than the Christian.* Where,
outside of the area which is blessed by the Bible,
will you find true honor and high privilege
granted to womanhood ? The greatest of all
emancipations, that by which the Christian ideals
of the family have superseded the non-Chris¬
tian, whether savage or civilized, is co-extensive
with the influence of the Christian Scriptures.
I might tell the story of what this Book has done
^ Appendix, Lecture IV, Note 3.
* Appendix, Lecture IV, Note 4.
THE UNIVERSAL BOOK, 189
for the souls of women: how in Zululand, girls
who were to be exchanged for cattle have
learned that they were bought by the precious
blood of Jesus Christ, always and everywhere
the friend and helper of womankind ; how in
Syria, those who had been left in mental and
moral babyhood have learned from the New
Testament the liberating truths of the Gospel;
how in Japan, the daughter, who, for the sake of
her parents, has sold herself to shame, and is
made the theme of many a praiseful story—
where "no one ever thinks of questioning the
right of a parent to make this sale any more
than he would allow a daughter to rebel against
it"—has learned from Mary's Son that there is
earthly and heavenly enfranchisement for her;
how in China, where, from the cradle to the
grave, her life is one long-drawn woe, whose
great teacher never thought of remedying misery
by delivering woman from polygamy and social
inferiority; and in India,^ where often the sor¬
rows of her lot in enforced widowhood, would
melt any heart not dead to generous feeling—in
India, where hundreds of non-Christian social
reformers have at last risen up to fight the con¬
secrated cruelty, old at least as the laws of Manu,
—woman is finding the Bible an emancipator
which, while breaking the chains of earthly
bondage lifts her imprisoned soul to heights and
hopes beyond the stars. When her children
® Appendix, Lecture IV, Note 5.
190 CHRISTIANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
expire in her arms, or are torn from her love to
be murdered, as in China, and that grief which
makes many a little grave so sacred wrings her
heart, she is not left to mourn in utter desolate-
ness of spirit, for she has heard of One who
loves and shepherds her lost lambs in fields
Elysian, and declares that of such is the king¬
dom of heaven.
What a wondrous ennobling power this Book
has had over all willing to receive it ! What we
call Puritanism was one of the greatest efforts
ever made to get the Bible enshrined into social
law and national habits, and to it are due the
liberty and purity of English-speaking nations.
Even conservative Oxford, from her chair of his¬
tory, has said that England's progress for two
hundred years on its moral and spiritual side,
was due to Puritanism. The idolatrous Mala¬
gasy gets the Bible into his heart and suffers
death by torture rather than surrender it or hîs
faith in it. Professor Drummond goes to Africa,
and finds illustrations of Christian character
among newly-converted believers in God's Word
which appear to him among the finest in the
world. A native preacher, holding up a copy of
the Scriptures before some of the Christian in¬
habitants of the South Sea Islands, exclaims
"This is my resolve: the dust shall never cover
my Bible, the moth shall never eat it, the mil¬
dew shall never rot it, my light and my joy."
And late in his life, the all-accomplished poet
THE UNIVERSAL BOOK. 191
and philosopher, Coleridge, who had ranged so
widely through literature, withdrew from his
usual studies and took with him in his travels
only a small English New Testament, saying to
his friends "I have only one Book, and that is
the best."
But we may believe with Ewald that "in the
New Testament is all the wisdom of the world,"
and with Sir William Jones that "in the Bible
are more true sublimity, more exquisite beauty,
more pure morality, more important history and
finer strains of poetry and eloquence than can be
collected from all other books, in whatever age
or language they may have been written," and
yet not discover that the chief secret of the Bible
is not truth, so much as life, or rather life through
the medium of truth. It appears to possess or
to be accompanied by a divine energy working
unparalleled miracles. Even sceptics are im¬
pressed by it. One who sees no difference worth
mentioning between the theology of Christ and
the theology of Mohammed, wrote not long since
in the Fortnightly Review: ' ' Look at what Chris¬
tian missionaries have done in the Pacific
Islands, New Guinea, and Madagascar. In that
latter island British evangelists really fought out
the battle of civilization without costing a penny
or a drop of blood to any European government.
The same work is in its inception in the center
of Africa. Who first put steamers on Lakes
Tanganyika and Nyassa? Who first explored
192 CHRISTIANITY, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
the great affluents of the Congo? A little
steamer of the Baptist Mission Society." This
materialist has no sympathy with the motive
forces which are back of Christian missions, but
as a political economist he is glad in the interests
of education and civilization to encourage the
work of a Biblical Christianity- ''China and
Japan may send delegations to America to study
our ways and take back the force of our institu¬
tions and models of our industries, but one mis¬
sionary will do more to start the living currents
of civilization than all the delegations, simply
because he begins further back in his teachings
and awakens conscience and the sense of self¬
hood and the dignity of human nature. He
goes to a nation, with the Bible in his hand, a
simple and pathetic figure, less than a drop in
the ocean; but he sinks in the depths only to
reappear in some other form—the Bible has
grown into a charter of freedom and of true
national life. He seems to be doing little, but
like the Norse god, who drained his drinking
horn, and lo! the sea was narrowed, he often
finds himself, in the midst of results miraculous
and great." Always and everywhere the Bible
brings life; its principles, which are universal,
touch the springs of love and hope and fear,
and are in the greatest contrast with any system
which "fills the whole course of life with
punctilious minutiae of observances."
Englishmen and Arnericans are racially akin
THE UNIVERSAL BOOK. 193
to the men who wrote the Vedas and drew out
those astounding compositions, the philosophical
treatises of the Upanishads, but we have found
our Bible in the writings of another race; it
comes to us not through Aryan but through
Semitic prophets and apostles. And I know not
how to set forth the supremacy, the vigor, and
the predestined universalism of the Bible so
effectively as by pointing to its majestic work
in moulding the English-speaking nationalities.
In the American Republic, humanity, according
to Professor Bryce, has reached the highest
level, not only of material well-being, but of in¬
telligence and happiness which the race has yet
attained. Within a hundred years, according to
Mr. Lowell's prophecy, this will become "the
most powerful and prosperous community ever
devised and developed by man." But it is his¬
torically certain that America was "born of the
Bible." From it came, in the sixteenth cen¬
tury, the strongest impulses which colonized her
shores. Out of Biblical precepts, and especially
out of New Testament examples, sprang the
simpler forms of self-government in town and
church, which have gone with civilization in its
westward march. From the Bible came the
Christian teaching which exalted man above the
state. From it came the observance of the
Lord's day, the bulwark of our freedom, "the
core of our civilization," and from it came the
teaching of spiritual truth to the young, which
194 CHRISTIANITY, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
"has done more to preserve liberty than grave
statesmen and armed soldiers." The Bible was
the first Book which the types of Gutenberg ever
printed, and that Book is the foundation of the
educational system of the New World. From it
came its public schools, and more than three
hund.red Christian colleges, stretching from the
elms of Cambridge to the great lakes, and far
over prairie and mountain to where "the haunted
waves of Asia die on the shore of the world-wide
sea." From the Bible came the better elements
of our national institutions. It was an echo of
the Scriptures that Jefferson sounded in the
teaching that all men are created equal in their
right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of life's best
good. From the Bible has come the salt of
righteousness which has thus far withstood the
wastings of corruption.
In America has the Word of God had a free
field for its divine energies. And it is vastly
significant, and the fact ought to be blown by
trumpet-voices to the ends of the earth that the
progress of Biblical Christianity in America, in
spite of the forces of materialism and the sudden
inrush of all nationalities, has been far greater
than the unparalleled increase of population.
Opening the pages of the recent national census,
we learn that there are more than twenty millions
of church communicants in the United States of
America, and that according to Dr. Carroll, the
careful superintendent of the Department of
THE UNIVERSAL BOOK, 195
Churches, the Christian population numbers
nearly fifty-seven millions, leaving only five mil¬
lions belonging to the non-religious and anti-
religious classes. We learn that while the popu¬
lation increased twenty-four per cent, between
1880 and 1890, the communicants in the churches
increased over forty-two per cent., and, as in¬
dicating the swifter gowth and ampler conquests
of those churches which regard the Bible as a
supernatural revelation, designed to be authori¬
tative over all men, may be mentioned the fact,
that the evangelical communicants in the United
States are to the non-evangelical as one hundred
and three to one. The Church in America "is
devoted to the temporal and eternal interests of
mankind. Every corner-stone it lays, it lays
for humanity, every altar it establishes, it estab¬
lishes for the salvation of souls. What is there
in the world to compare with the Church in its
power to educate, elevate and civilize mankind?"
Those Christian believers who hold the Bible
in their hands are making the most extensive
conquests to-day in the field which is the world.
The victorious march of a Biblical Christianity
seems predicted by such signs as these: that the
English language is now used in part by more
than one hundred millions of people, that the
nations speaking the Teutonic tongues are in¬
creasing, and that forty-two million square miles
of the land-surface of the globe are to-day
guarded by Christian powers,
196 CHRISTIANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
No movement of the century has been more
significant than the wide extension of the En¬
glish-speaking peoples. Christian England has
not failed to make her Biblical faith a beneficent
power wherever her wide commerce has ex¬
tended. When we go beyond the British Islands
to the greater Britain of her colossal possessions,
and watch the course of Christian advance in the
many lands over which waves the red-cross flag;
when we note the ample domain of Canada, the
new and wondrous world of Australia, the Eng¬
lish mission stations in every corner of the
earth, and on the great islands of the sea; and
especially when we study this mighty empire
where, during the Victorian Era, according to
Sir Bartle Frere, the "changes have been more
important thaii those in modern Europe," we
gain a new impression of the extent of that
Biblical dominion, which seems likely to cover
the earth.® It is certain that the English-speak¬
ing nations will soon control the destinies of
mankind. England has seven flourishing states
in Africa; and who can doubt, asks John Fiske,
the American historian, "that the African Con¬
tinent will be occupied by a mighty nation of
English descent, covered with populous cities
and flourishing farms?" He points to New Zea¬
land, "with its climate of perpetual spring, where
the English race is multiplying faster than any¬
where else in the world, unless it be in Texas
•Appendix, Lecture IV, Note 6.
THE UNIVERSAL BOOK. 197
and Minnesota." In a century and a half the
population in North America will reach seven
hundred millions. English colonies will occupy
the vast Oceanic, African, Indian worlds, and
the day is at hand when the great majority of
the human race will trace their pedigree to Eng¬
lish forefathers. Are not these tremendous
facts a prophecy that the coming man is likely
to read his books, not in two hundred languages,
but in the tongue of Bacon and Bunyan, of
Burke and Webster; and have we not here a
prophecy, confirmatory of all else that we have
discovered, that the coming man will find his
sacred literature in those Scriptures which "prin¬
cipally teach what man is to believe concerning
God and what duty God requires of man?"
When Queen Victoria, on the fiftieth anniver¬
sary of her coronation, walked the .aisles of West¬
minster Abbey, she crossed the grave of Living¬
stone, on which are inscribed the words of Christ,
"Other sheep I have which are not of this fold."
These words on that heroic grave are surely a
sweet great prophecy of the gathering of all na¬
tions beneath one spiritual banner. Of that
majestic kingdom whose outlines already appear,
the Universal Book is the harbinger, symbol,
and moulding power, more luminous, attractive,
and divine, than our present imperfect and
divided Christendom. With that Book we go to
the Moslem and recall to him that his own Koran
pays high and unstinted homage to the Old and
198 CHRISTIANITY, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
New Testaments as the Word of God. With
that Book we shall go to China, and holding up
a standard which accords with her best political
and social ideals, shall reveal to her tough-fibered
people the true King of Heaven. With that
Book we come to India, and, not denying her
own deepest doctrine, the omnipenetrativeness
of the Deity, declare the God who was in Christ,
the incarnate and atoning Redeemer, reconciling
the world unto Himself. With that Book we
shall come to all who linger in the twilight of
Asia, and flash from these pages the Light of
the World—until, through the Universal Book,
men shall see the Universal Man and Saviour,
and shall be brought into harmony with proph¬
ets, apostles, martyrs, who have kept the say¬
ings of this Book, and now stand robed in white,
before Him whom John saw with vesture dipped
in blood, whose name is called The Word of
God.
THE UNIVERSAL MAN AND SAVIOUR.
The truth of the Incarnation, the reality of the intro¬
duction of the mind of God into the world in the conscious¬
ness of Jesus, is the creative source of all theology.—The
Christ of To-day, Gordon, p. 175.
Das Höchste, was man auf diesem Gebiete denken
kann, wäre eine menschliche Persönlichkeit, welche mit
ihrem ganzen Wesen und Erleben selbst zum vollen und
klaren Ausdrucke des Willens Gottes mit den Menschen
würde.—Christliche Apologetik von Dr. Herm. Schultz,
p. 21.
The confession of the divinity of our Lord is the asser¬
tion that all the scattered rays of light which shine in the
world are gathered up in Him and radiate from Him again.
—The World as the Subject of Redemption, W. H. Fre-
mantle, p. 22.
We may, therefore, say that the basis of the thought of
Jesus is the consciousness that good is omnipotent; that
what the soul of man recognizes as the highest ideal is at
the same time the deepest reality of the world; and that
man is not merely the creature but the son of God.—The
Evolution of Religion, Vol. II, p. 139, Edward Caird.
But it is only of One that we know that he united the
deepest humility and a purity of will with the claim that He
was more than all the prophets who were before Him: the
Son of God. Of Him alone we know that those who ate and
drank with Him, glorified Him not only as their Teacher,
Prophet and King, but also as the Prince of Life, as the
Redeemer and Judge of the world.—Christianity and History,
Adolf Harnack, p. 37.
FIFTH LECTURE.
THE UNIVERSAL MAN AND SAVIOUR.
I am simply speaking demonstrable fact when
I say that the one magnetic center in the world
of thought and religion to-day is Jesus Christ.
This course of Lectures has brought us to a
theme before which I might well keep silent,
acknowledging what I profoundly feel, the utter
inadequacy of any speech which I am able to
offer. I have endeavored to set forth the Uni¬
versal Aspects of Christianity, as indicating its
ultimate universal acceptance. I have shown
some of the World-wide Effects of Christianity,
which point to its rightful supremacy and world¬
wide prevalence. We have seen in Christian
Theism a basis for a Universal Religion, and have
considered together the Universal Book. It is
surely appropriate that we should compare Chris¬
tianity with the ethnic and the would-be-uni-
versal faiths. It is appropriate, also, that we
should place the Christian Bible by the side of the
other sacred Scriptures. But we advance to-day
a step further and a step higher. Christendom
is great and wonderful, but Christ is infinitely
greater. Matched with Him, the best golden
20I
202 CHRISTIANITY, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
acres of His kingdom are as moonlight unto sun¬
light. The Bible is surpassingly great, but He
is the Light which flashes from its pages. He
is the priceless pearl within its sacred casket.
The Bible has well been called only "the Chris¬
tian's score-book, while Christ Himself is our
song, concrete, vital, expressive, rhythmic, uni¬
versal." And while we may compare the sacred
books of the world with each other, the believer
in Christ shrinks back almost from naming his
Saviour and King, even in the august company
of the founders of other religions. We may
compare Moses, Zoroaster, Socrates, Confucius,
Buddha, Mohammed, among themselves,and with
a long list of other great personages; but when
we mention before a company of Christians the
name of Jesus Christ, who for them has the
spiritual significance of God, we feel that wor¬
ship supplants criticism and comparison, and that
an act of homage in praiseful hymn or grateful
prayer is the first commanding duty.
We have now arrived at what is essential in
Christianity and what is most distinctive. Chris¬
tianity is Christ. More and more it is identified
with its Founder, and the preservation of His
life as the supreme historical reality is the final
vindication of the Christian religion. If men ask
us what is the substance of the Christian belief,
we point them to Christ, as predicted by the
prophets, as disclosed in the Gospels, as inter¬
preted by the Epistles, and as living to-day in
THE UNIVERSAL MAN. 203
the hearts of His people. He is the Alpha and
the Omega, the beginning, middle, and end of
Christian faith. To the believer He is the Mar¬
vel, the Mystery, the Glory, the Explanation of
the world, standing out singular, unique, alone.
He sustains the most opposite characters as the
Sufferer and the Sovereign, the despised of men
and the adored of angels, the Victim and the
King, the Stone of Stumbling, and the Bright
and Morning Star, the Child of Mary, the Son
of God. The greatest poetry and a golden treas¬
ury of holy hymns have been laid at His feet.
There is no form or degree of love which He has
not touched. Where else will you find a love
which covers and absorbs the whole of life like
that which Jesus has called forth? The love
which is born of gratitude He certainly has in¬
spired ; the love which is linked with perfect
admiration He surely has commanded; the love
which delights to pour itself out in lyric ecstacy,
the love which is filled with pitiful sorrow for
great suffering, the love which bows in adora¬
tion, the love which inspires men to endure hard¬
ships, traverse oceans, brave dangers from savage
tribes and wasting pestilence, submit to shame
and despise death in its direst forms: all these
manifestations of love appear like a band of radi¬
ant angels about the Christ. This love to Him
has given joy to a faith which persecution could
not conquer and has produced those tender con¬
fidences between the soul and its Saviour which
204 CHRISTIANITY, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
have marked the lives of some of the wisest and
sweetest of our race. It beat with strong pulses
through the mighty, generous, and oft-burdened
heart of Martin Luther; it was a tender under¬
song beneath the stern life and iron theology of
John Calvin; it is the ever-burning lamp over¬
hanging the feast of heaven which Thomas à
Kempis sets before us in his Imitation of Christ.
The great epic poet of England was sustained by
it in all the sorrows that covered him, and it
burns, not only in the stately grandeur of his
poetry, but through the equal majesty of his
prose. This is the love which explains the joy
of the missionary and the martyr, and which
forbade and prevented the betrayal of Jesus in
the persecuted Christian of Madagascar, who
saw his wife and brethren and children bound
and thrown down the rocks, and who bravely
followed them to death in a sublime confession.
This love gladdened the heart of the all-accom¬
plished Van der Kemp amid the degraded Hot¬
tentots; it moved the soul of Henry Martyn in
his life of heroic sacrifice ; it cheered the weary
labors of the American scholars who gave the
Arabic Bible to the race of Mohammed; it was
the inspiration of Neander, as with incredible
toil, he unrolled anew the past record of the
Church; it comforted the great heart of Dorner
as, in his History of the Doctrine of the Person
of Christ, he traced through the centuries the
manifold and majestic impression which His
THE UNIVERSAL MAN. 205
august personality has made upon men. But
while He enkindles the heart, He equally
illumines the mind of the believer, who per¬
ceives in Him the goal of prophecy and the
turning point of History. In Correggio's pic¬
ture of the Infancy the light streams from the
face of the new-born King in the lowly stable,
and Christian faith beholds in it the light of
love and truth, and hope, and Messianic ex¬
pectation that illumined the sad pathway lead¬
ing the exiles of Eden out of the lost Paradise.
It was the radiance which brought comfort to
the Father of the Faithful in the supreme moment
of his life; it was the pillar of light which led
Israel out of Egypt ; it was the gleam of hope
which shone amid the altar fires of tabernacle
and temple ; it was the splendor which appeared
on the breast-plate of Aaron, the high priest,
and the crown of David, the king; it was the
stellar glory which illumined the souls of proph¬
ets, becoming at last the rounded fullness of the
Sun of Righteousness; it was the light which,
five centuries before Bethlehem cradled the
King, had illumined the soul of the Indian prince
Siddartha, who may be classed among those
prophets that dimly saw what was yet to fill all
the world with its gracious illumination.
And Christian faith has seen, in the coming of
the Christ, the starting-point of the world's
greater history. He appeared at a time when
peace covered the nations, and there seemed to
2o6 CHRISTIANITY, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
be a pause in the on-goings of humanity, when
His own people were helpless and craving a
Deliverer, smitten from without and torn from
within. They had scattered their synagogues
over the Roman Empire, little dreaming that in
them the messengers of Jesus of Nazareth were
to find their first listeners to the glad tidings of
a Messiah come. As little did the Romans im¬
agine that along the military roads which they
had stretched from land to land, the ambassa¬
dors of the Prince of the House of David were to
herald a new Kingdom, which should eclipse
and outlast the monarchy of the Caesars. Just
as little did the disciples of Greek learning, who
in that age were found in all the great cities
of the East, dream that their language was to
be the vehicle of a literature coming from Judea,
which was to rival the riches of their own phi¬
losophers, and was to ultimately become intelli¬
gible and life-giving to a thousand tribes of the
children of men ; a literature to which all the
chief intellectual luminaries of eighteen hundred
years should repair, from its founts of holy
splendor filling their golden urns. "Speaking
the tongue of Homer and of Plato, the Jewish
preachers of a universal Christian Redemption,
made their way along the undeviating roads by
which the Roman legionaries had made straight
in the desert a highway for our God." There
are no accidents in history. A wondrous time
matched and fitted the coming of Him who is
THE UNIVERSAL MAN. 207
the wonder of all time. Standing to-day in His
light which streams all around us, we feel
that no mortal can with Him compare among
the sons of men. He sustains different relations
to the Christian spirit from those sustained by
the founders of other religions to their disciples.
Men who are guilt-smitten and tortured with
agony, are quieted and transformed by His
Name and Word. Moses never stood, or
claimed to stand, on any celestial height. Bud¬
dha and Confucius may be ranked with saints
and sages, and Mohammed may be deemed a
prophet who clearly saw the unity of God, but
the world, as it seems to the Christian, has only
one Saviour, who brings the same hopes, fashions
the same characters, commands the same grateful
homage among nations as remote from each
other as the Greenlanders and the native Aus¬
tralians, the dwellers by the Oregon and the
dwellers by the Ganges; as distant in time as
those who assembled in an upper room in old
Jerusalem from those who sing His praises to¬
day in stately cathedrals or the barracks of the
Salvation Army.
We may say of Him, that He is the strength
and substance of the religion bearing His name.
We cannot say of Mohammedanism that it is
Mohammed, though he is certainly a part of it,
the temporary strength, and, as we believe, the
ultimate disintegration of it as a system. We
cannot say of Buddhism that it is Gautama Bud-
2O8 CHRISTIANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
dha, for not only does that protean faith recog¬
nize many Buddhas, but even in the beginning
it was "Nirvana and the Law," rather than the
gentle saint himself that his loving disciples
preached. Hinduism is associated with the
names of poets, saints, reformers, none of them
supreme and all-inclusive. We cannot say of
Confucianism that it is Confucius, for the
Chinese sage was a scribe and historian of the
ancients, a transmitter, and not a creator. While
he represents China, and is venerated by millions,
and while temples are dedicated and sandal-wood
papers are burned to him in every Chinese city,
he is the symbol rather than the ever-living em¬
bodiment of the faith which he taught. But in
Jesus Christ His followers find the truth person¬
alized, knowing whom they know God, man,
atonement, resurrection, redemption, immor¬
tality. Our creed is not merely Christ's sermons
and parables, not merely what Jesus said, but
also what He was and did. The teaching of
Christ, which is adequate, holds up His radiant
person, sets forth His matchless utterances, and
relates the story of His life, death, and resurrec¬
tion; it proclaims what Jesus was, what. Jesus
said, what Jesus did. In the first we have
theology, in the second we have ethics, in the
third we have the Gospel, and in all together we
have salvation for the individual and for man¬
kind. He is the living embodied truth, the
knowledge of whom is eternal life. Men have
THE UNIVERSAL MAN. 209
formulated masterly statements regarding Him,
but He is larger than our creeds, and He has
the life-giving quality possessed by no formula
however true. Such, according to Christian
faith, is the personality whom I shall endeavor
to set forth as the universal Man and Saviour,
That Christianity is the World-Religion has
been argued in the previous lectures on the
various grounds on which thus far we have
stood. But now I summon your thought to the
claim that Christianity alone presents in its
Founder and Central Personage the Universal
Man and Redeemer, who meets at once the
need, the temper, the intellectual and the spir¬
itual demands of all peoples. He rules, as we
know, the occidental nations, but He is no more
occidental than oriental; the East may claim
him as well as the West. We remember how
Keshub Chunder Sen, in his lectures, rejoiced
that Jesus Christ was an Asiatic, that His dis¬
ciples were Asiatics, that all the agencies pri¬
marily employed for the propagation of the Gos¬
pel were Asiatic, that "in Christ we see not only
the exaltedness of humanity, but also the grand¬
eur of which Asiatic nature is susceptible.' "And
we remember with what beautiful and loving
sentences Mozoomdar has pictured the oriental
Christ, the bathing, fasting, praying, teaching,
healing, feasting, Prophet of Nazareth. When
Jesus is received into the heart. He is as much
^Appendix, Lecture V. Note i.
210 CHRISTIANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
at home in the Universities by the Ganges as in
those by the Isis and the Cam, in the cities by
the Indus and the Nile, as in those by the Hud¬
son and the Clyde. We cannot think of a west¬
ern Mohammed. We can hardly think of a
western Buddha, but you discover nothing local
or provincial about Jesus Christ. It makes not
the least difference where men preach His Gos¬
pel : to the most cultivated Europeans or the
most barbarous Africans, to the thoughtful
Hindus or to the North American savages,
among the naked Hottentots or among the fur-
clad Esquimaux; He finds a true home in the
hearts of all who receive Him because He is the
Universal Man, and even the three hundred
names given Him in the Scriptures do not ex¬
haust His million-sided personality.
We know very well that such a complex being
as man requires a Saviour and Leader who shall
answer to all his intellectual and moral needs.
The Teuton requires a captain, a hero, in whom
is every quality of heroic manliness and splendid
leadership. The Asiatic demands a reasoner, an
expounder of abstract truth who can formulate
universal principles. Men whose minds are
Greek in their intellectual aptitudes cannot be
satisfied with a teacher who is not analytic, and
I may add Socratic, in his methods. And there
are poets in the world, in whom imagination is
the central light of the soul, who commune with
nature because they see in the outer world a
THE UNIVERSAL MAN. 211
reflex both of humanity and of divinity. Further¬
more, most that is good in human life is found
in the family, in society, and the world needs a
prophet who shall be familiar and friendly and
sympathetic, who shall bless the little children,
and share the wedding feast, and stand with
tear-wet eyes at the open grave. The most
familiar character on the stage of human life is
the suiïerer, who is conscious of sin and who is
smitten with grief, and the perfect Man and
Saviour must meet his innermost need. Christ
alone is adequate to all these demands.
As we open the Gospels, and read the words
of Jesus therein recorded, we discover in them a
body of wisdom, the loftiest in spirit, the most
astonishing in their completeness, and the
calmest in their absolute assurance of authority
which the world possesses. These words fell
from the lips of Jesus talking with fishermen,
soldiers, women, Pharisees; and they seem the
natural and easy expressions of One who was
Himself greater than what He said, flakes of
gold crumbling off from their very richness,
sparks struck out by His contacts with men,
snowy petals shaken by the breezes of discussion
from the blossoming boughs of the tree of life,
with a naturalness and ease like that of a virgin
prairie covering itself in May-time with grass
and flowers. A lawyer, feeling ill at ease by
the reply of Jesus to his question, put to Him
the inquiry, "Who is my neighbor?" And in-
212 CHRISTiANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
stantly came forth from the lips of Christ the
parable of the good Samaritan, and all literature
furnishes nothing equal to this extemporised
allegory by which Jesus rebuked the Pharisaic
and cruel hypocrisy of His time and identified
His cause with the most gracious humanities of
all the future. No Hindu sage, or Greek
logician, or Hebrew prophet, could possibly
crave anything keener, more searching, more
humbling, more inspiring. It illustrates a
method of teaching that can never be provincial
and can never become obsolete. This is one of
those amazing parables by which He, who is
confessedly the greatest of Teachers, brought
His message home to the common, the universal
mind. Whoever taught like this man? The
simple, sublime, picturesque pedagogy of the
Gospels has evoked the enthusiasm of the chief
instructors of the race.
In our Christian libraries we point to the
wealth of sermonic literature which has been
worth preserving, and which has been inspired
by the Christ: the works of South and Jeremy
Taylor, and Bunyan, and Whitfield, and Chal¬
mers, of Robert Hall and Robertson, of Bush-
nell, and Spurgeon, and we say, "From these
tomes we will show you miracles of eloquence
and wisdom which you cannot rival in the mas¬
terpieces of the Senate and the Forum." But
we who know the Christ, would no more think
of comparing the best speeches of Cicero or
THE UNIVERSAL MAN. 213
Burke with the Sermon on the Mount, than we
should of comparing the fine jewelry of a king's
diadem with the unwasting fires of the Milky
Way. The printed sayings of Christ you can
read in an hour, and if you ever take pains to
go over them thoughtfully at one sittting, you
may feel like a man permitted in some ethereal
body to step from burning constellation to burn¬
ing constellation, round the whole infinite breadth
of the Zodiac.
But remember that the conversations of
Jesus, containing all this wisdom, are not the
hard-wrought elaborations which scholars admire
in Walter Savage Landor; they are not the rea¬
sonings of the philosopher, collating, as Sir Wil¬
liam Hamilton did, the opinions of a thousand
thinkers in a half score of languages, and slowly
digesting the vast materials before offering the
labored result to the criticism of mankind. They
were spoken with the familiarity of the break¬
fast table, and yet with the authority of Mount
Sinai. The free utterances of this Nazarene
Prophet do not recall the frenzy of Elijah nor
the ardor of Isaiah, who appear to us lifted by a
divine breath greater than themselves. Still less
do they remind us of the experiences of Mo¬
hammed, whose nervous system was overstrained,
and whose struggles and agonies were accom¬
panied by delusions of the senses, before he came
out into the calm assurance that he was a divine
messenger commissioned to utter one specific
214 CHRISTIANITY, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
truth. Nor does Jesus remind us of Buddha,
who, after long years of vain search, and many
agonizing disappointments, at last gained the
vision by which his life was thereafter attended.
There is in Jesus a divine, self-qontained calm¬
ness and sweet authority distinguishing Him
from all others. And we find in Him, not what
we discover in Aristotle and John Stuart Mill,
thought and language welded together through
disciplined thinking, for Jesus speaks rather with
the fine free utterance of the poet whose vision
of God is unclouded.
If all men need a perfect teacher, one who has
a perfect message which grows not antiquated,
where else shall they discover him?^ Does not
Jesus meet the mental and spiritual needs of
humanity both by the contents of His disclosure
and the method of His speech? Let no one be
eager to mention Buddha as a possible rival, for
Buddha was blind to that truth which glowed
ever in the heart of Christ, the Fatherhood of
God. And Jesus not only taught the divine
Fatherhood, but He made God real to men, not
merely by words spoken about God, but by tak¬
ing the veil, as it were, from the face of the
Father, and showing us God in Himself. He
taught that obedience is the one principle in the
universe which makes for life and peace; He
taught that men must get into harmony with the
moral law. So far as his teaching was ethical,
® Appendix, Lecture V, Note 2.
THE UNIVERSAL MAN. 215
it reached down to the centre of human char¬
acter, demanding truth in the inner parts, not
compromising with any darling sin, as did Mo¬
hammed, leaving us satisfied with no fragmentary
virtues, as Confucius did ; and confessing no
agnosticism with regard to the power that rules
in heaven; exalting humility, enthroning meek¬
ness, laying its benedictory hand on aspirations
after holiness, holding out promises to the mer¬
ciful; placing a diadem on the spirit of martyr¬
dom, searching out the hiding places of the
hypocrite, rebuking the spirit of display in alms¬
giving and the habit of meaningless repetition in
prayer, lifting the earthly life heavenward, teach¬
ing a supreme trust in the Father's goodness and
personal care, magnifying the duty of brotherly
kindness on earth, and yet pointing to rewards
and sufferings in the life beyond as supreme
objects of human thought and fear.
Think of the pulpits in which Christ spoke,
and gain a new sense of His adaptations to all
human life. To no seated congregation, under
no one roof, were His divine discourses given to
men. He seized the occasions as they came to
Him, now on the sea-beach of Gennesareth, call¬
ing His chosen disciples or instructing the multi¬
tude in a series of matchless parables; now at
Jacob's Well, conversing with an audience of
one, and pouring into her mind the heavenliest
truths concerning the Father's nature and the
obligations of spiritual worship ; now on the
2I6 CHRISTIANITY, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
mountain-top of Galilee, with the blue sky for a
dome, the green earth for a carpet, and a mixed
multitude for an audience, breathing over the
attentive crowd such syllables of wisdom and
tenderness as grateful hearts could not let die;
now opening the Scriptures in the synagogues of
Nazareth or Capernaum; now standing in the
courts of the temple and calling day after day
to the multitudes at the feast of tabernacles;
"If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and
drink;" now speaking at the tomb of Lazarus
those words which have enlightened the dark¬
ness of the grave; and, at last making a pulpit
of His own cross of agony, from which His
seven-fold utterances have floated down through
time, to reveal to men His forgiving love, His
filial affection. His entire humanity, the pain of
His atoning sacrifice, and the completion of His
atoning work.
The words which He spake, into whatever
lands they have gone, are still spirit and life.
Our hungry minds find in Him a truth which is
not a geometric proposition, a grammatical rule,
a philosophical statement, a historical fact, or a
scientific principle, but is truth ethical, person¬
alized, spiritual, radiant with divine light and
love. The Beatitudes, pondered daily and heard
in the silence of the spirit as the voice of Jesus
speaking to us; the parable of the Lost Sheep;
the story of the Lost Son ; the blessed invitation
"Come unto Me"; the promises of eternal life;
THE UNIVERSAL MAN. 217
the words of ringing cheer, which still sound to
His disciples like a mellow blast from an arch¬
angel's trumpet; the solemn parables of the final
judgment; His sentences of inspiring command,
bidding us go out of ourselves and tell the entire
world about Him: these, taken home into the
mind and conscience and affection, are still
celestial food to the soul. Nurses in the hos¬
pital, like Dora Pattison, soldiers like Chinese
Gordon on the eve of battle, girls at school learn¬
ing of sickness and sorrow at home, mothers
looking into the cradles or coffins of infant chil¬
dren, tired men of business harassed with cares,
scholars grown weary of the world of books, re¬
formers beset by angry wickedness. Christian
preachers amid the suffering and crime of dark
cities, have thus been made strong by com¬
munion with Jesus. And many of us will for¬
give Matthew Arnold for much imperfect and
even ignoble criticism of the Church and the
Bible, as we read again that best of his sonnets
"East London," which seems to have been in¬
spired by the spoken words of Christ :—
" 'Twas August, and the fierce sun overhead
Smote on the squalid streets of Bethnal Green,
And the pale weaver, through his window seen
In Spitalfields, look'd thrice dispirited.
I met a preacher there I knew, and said:
'111 and o'erworked, how fare you in this scene?'
'Bravely!" said he, " for I of late have been
Much cheered with thoughts of Christ the living bread.'
O human soul, as long as thou canst so
Set up a mark of everlasting light
2I8 CHJÍISTÍANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
Above the howling senses' ebb and flow,
To cheer thee, and to right thee if thou roam.
Not with lost toil thou labourest through the night;
Thou mak'st the Heaven thou hop'st indeed thy home."
But when we rise above the qualities of Jesus
as a teacher, and approach His moral nature, we
have no apologies to offer like those with which
Mohammedan scholars are obliged to defend the
Arabian prophet. We have no limitations to
concede, like the Israelite in his panegyric of
Moses. We discover in Christ absolute freedom
from the consciousness of sin, and stainless purity
in an age when society was corrupt at both ends,
when license and cruelty ruled in the multitude,
and hypocritic formalism in the spiritual aris¬
tocracy of Judaism. He stands on a moral height
quite above anything which other religions have
to offer. "He stands as high above us as He
did above His first disciples—a perfect Master,
the supreme head of the fellowship of all true
religion." I often think the greatest theological
discovery of our generation, has been Jesus the
Christ, by which I mean that many obstructions
have been removed, many obscurities have
been wiped away from the first Christian cen¬
tury, and some theological and other clouds have
been dispelled, so that He stands above us in
His solitary pre-eminence as perhaps He was
never presented before to the minds of men.
"He leads captive the civilized peoples; they
accept His word as law, though they confess it a
law higher than human nature likes to obey;
THE UNIVERSAL MAN. 219
they build Him churches, they worship Him,
they praise Him in songs, interpret Him in phi¬
losophies and theologies; and they deeply love
for His sake."
The tide of humanity, even according to the
confessions of those who have striven to pluck
from Him the crown of His divinity, has not
since risen so high as it rose in Jesus Christ.
"All admit, and joyfully admit," said Channing,
"that Jesus, by His greatness and goodness,
throws all other human attainments into ob¬
scurity." And even Strauss confessed of Him:
"He remains the highest model of religion
within the reach of our thought ; and no per¬
fect piety is possible without His presence in the
heart." Theodore Parker realized that no
church has yet mastered His conceptions and
fully comprehended and applied His methods.
Now, I ask, does not human nature need a moral
hero in whom men can implicitly trust, to whom
they can give unreserved devotion, and who is
an ever-living presence and power? "Leadership
was natural to Jesus. To make disciples He
needed only to say, 'Follow me!' His will was
resistless. Enemies could not override Him,
Satan could not baffle Him, Death itself could
not defeat Him. No experience, coming ever
so suddenly, could disturb His balanced equi¬
poise. Standing alone against the world, there
was majesty and supremacy in every attitude
and aspect of His life."
2 20 CHRISTIANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
I grant joyfully that there have been with
many an immense inspiration and fascination in
the personality of Gautama Buddha, in his self-
sacrifice and gentleness, his calm wisdom, his
long life of devotion. Like Confucius, he
reached more than four-score years. We may
agree with St. Hilaire that, excepting Christ
only, there is no figure among the founders of
religions more pure and touching than his. But
who will say that Buddha is either proclaimed or
believed in as a personal, inspiring presence now
among the millions of Asia? "We are touching
on no disputed point, when we assert that
according to the Buddhist Scriptures the per¬
sonal, conscious life of the founder of that
religion was extinguished in death," While I
am grateful for the sweet spirit of him who
threw away the splendors of royalty and traveled
through India as a beggar, and did not shrink
from the companionship of the poorest; while I
bless God for the noble example of one who
gave himself to the service of others, and who,
I believe, will be numbered among those who,
as Jesus said, "shall come from the east to sit
down in the Kingdom of Heaven," still I know
that Buddha is gone, and that no voice comes
from him to the millions revering his name.
But He who marches at the head of Christen¬
dom, travailing in the greatness of His strength
is, according to Christian faith, and I may add.
THE UNIVERSAL MAN. 221
Christian experience, the living Christ, "the
same yesterday, to-day, and forever."
And He only, among all historic characters,
can justly be said to have lived with no con¬
sciousness of moral unworthiness. When we
consider the weakness and wickedness of human
life, recall the universality of sin, reflect that no
week passes with us, even when we are striving
with the utmost prayerfulness after the highest,
that we do not fall below our ideal; when we
consider what a record of imperfection, of one¬
sided development, of unbalanced attainment,
is every human career that we know; when we
remember how conscious of personal sinfulness
the purest men have always been ; when we see
such natures as those of Pascal and Jonathan
Edwards scanning with angelic insight the Law of
God, and trembling like an electrometer in a thun¬
der-storm, the moral wonder of this Galilean
Peasant, who never uttered a prayer for forgive¬
ness, who never betrayed the faintest conscious¬
ness of imperfection or moral demerit, becomes
more and more astounding.
His freedom from sin was apparently not the
result of prolonged and painful effort; His vir¬
tues were not like ours, the hard and finished
products of discipline, restraint, asceticism, and
sorrowful experience. We rise "on stepping-
stones of our dead selves to higher things."
We advance, as Paul did, by resolutely forget-
222 CHRISTlANirr, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
ting the errors and follies of the past, and press¬
ing with heroic determination onward toward the
higher goal; but with Jesus we find no tears of
penitence, no prayers for pardon, no betrayal of
any suspicion of error or iniquity, for the past
was never to Him a time for forgetfulness, but
only for delightful remembrance. The Gospels
give us one glimpse of it in the glory He had
with the Father before the world was. "The
most perfect unity reigns in His life; He ad¬
vances according to the circumstances in which
He lived, but His change produces in Him no
change in character or design ; everywhere he is
animated by the same spirit." How different
with Mohammed before and after his agonizing
experiences in the cave and desert, and how
different with Gautama Buddha before and after
his great enlightenment beneath the Bo-tree in
Gaya!
Without self-seeking, in the age of Augustus
and Tiberius Caesar; without the least taint of
sensuality, when the world reeked with corrup¬
tion ; without falsehood, shortly before the
Stoic emperor, Marcus Aurelius, declared that
truth had taken flight from the earth ; without
injustice, in the midst of a Jewish legislation
which, as perverted, defended many kinds of
cruel inequality; unique not only when com¬
pared with all that went before, but when com¬
pared with all that followed Him ; manifestly in
all things as Rénan confessed, "superior to His
THE UNIVERSAL MAN. 223
disciples and not created by them;" on the one
side of Him appearing John the Baptist, who
declared himself unworthy to unloose His san¬
dals; and on the other side of Him the greatest
of apostles, claiming nothing except what he ob¬
tained from Christ; on the one side of Him in
heathenism appearing the orator and statesman
Cicero, declaring that a perfect sage he had
never found, and on the other side the phi¬
losopher Seneca, who mournfully affirmed that
innocence had fled away from the earth ; there
rises in the midst of them all this young vil¬
lager, this incomparable man, this "purest
among the mighty, and mightiest among the
pure," whose pierced hand, as Paul Richter
said, "has lifted empires from their foundations
and turned the stream of history from its old
channels," and for whom, as the sagacious Na¬
poleon, whose brain Victor Hugo called "the
cube of the human intellect," once affirmed,
"millions were now ready to die."
But Jesus appears to us not only completely
innocent, as His friends and enemies affirmed—
Xenophon said of Socrates that he was without
impiety—but positively and completely holy.
The crystal goblet was not only stainless, it was
also filled with the wine of absolute goodness.
His moral teaching was perfect, and was per¬
fectly illustrated in His own life, thus contrast¬
ing with us, and contrasting with the best of the
prophets and saints whose confession so often is
224 CHRISTIANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
that of the Roman poet, "I see and approve the
better and I follow the worse." He saw, ap¬
proved, followed the absolute best. Moses was,
perhaps, the greatest of all the sons of men, and
his was a noble nature, but he was conscious of
weakness, full of mistakes, acknowledged his
sins, and was punished for his sins; he was both
rash and self-distrustful, hasty in the beginning,
going before he was sent, and his presumption or
his distrust of God was so offensive on one occa¬
sion, that he was forbidden to enter the Land of
Promise. Moses prayed as a sinner, and shed
tears of sorrow for himself, as well as for his peo¬
ple. Great and splendid were his virtues, but
compared with those of Christ, they seem like
stars that peep through the clouds here and there
in a darkened sky, instead of the unveiled and
spotless heavens, lighted with the glory of all
the constellations. Moses struggled from below
upwards. Jesus appears to descend from a
higher sphere, and to shed abroad the light and
perfume of celestial worlds.
While Paul, the most illustrious of Christian
preachers, cried out, "Evil is present with me;"
while the great Greek philosophers sanctioned
some of the worst vices; while the founders of
other religions have given a composite of snatches
of divine inspiration with immense textures of hu¬
man guesswork and invention ; while Christian
poetry finds its pathos in the stream of penitence
which runs through its melodies, Jesus not only
THE UNIVERSAL MAN. 225
asked "Which of you convinceth me of sin?"
but he could say "I am the truth," and in His
prayer for His disciples in the parting hour could
exclaim, "I have finished the work Thou gavest
Me to do." Can I bring you still nearer to
Him? His heart was ever open toward God
and man, with an apparent consciousness of per¬
fect oneness with both. It was His daily bread
to do His Father's will. His piety was abso¬
lute, and His life toward men was unbroken
love. Moving among all classes, from the fish¬
ing boat to the throne, talking with the twelve,
and with the thousands, with children and with
priests, everywhere, at home or on the dusty
road, in the temple or by the seashore, he is
always the same gracious, inspiring, lofty, yet
familiar friend, brother, teacher. With a good¬
ness which felt for physical suffering. He com¬
bined a faith in the possibilities of human nature,
which not only led Him to proclaim the highest
spiritual truth to an outcast woman, but also to
commit His Gospel and kingdom to His dis¬
ciples, leaving to His followers the work of teach¬
ing the nations, with no constitution, no laws, no
written documents in their hands, sending them
to their colossal task with no fixed and definite
rules with regard to Church government or
methods of administration, giving them the
liberty of forming Christian societies and adjust¬
ing themselves to ever-changing circumstances,
and entrusting them, under His spiritual guid-
2 26 CHRISTIANirr, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
ance, with the majestic mission of evangelizing
the earth.
Jesus, as we know, rose above the formalism
of the Pharisee and the sceptical looseness of the
Sadducee. He rescued the Mosaic statutes
from their accumulated errors, and declared love
to be the whole law. He splintered the granite
walls of dead observance, and announced that
the Sabbath was made for man's good. Ascend¬
ing above local and national prejudice He pro¬
claimed Himself to the Jews' most hated enemies,
the Samaritans. He lived and died with the
consciousness of the whole world's needs in His
heart and, while filled with the loftiest purposes
for all mankind, was He not lovingly faithful to
those nearest His own life? It has been said of
Rousseau that his creed combined love to man¬
kind in general, with hatred to every individual
he met, but Jesus was not only compassionate
to the world, but charmingly affectionate to
every little child. Galilee found in Him a
friend and physician; our race finds in Him a
brother. There was nothing exclusively Jewish
about Him excepting His dress and His speech.
Other great men seem to belong to some nation
or age. Moses was a Hebrew, Socrates an
Athenian, Confucius a Chinese, Buddha a Hindu,
Mohammed an Arab, Luther a German, not only
in blood but in spirit, but Jesus belongs as much
to the West as to the East, to America, as to
Palestine, to the dying martyr at Smithfield as
THE UNIVERSAL MAN. 227
to the dying thief on the cross. It has been
said of Him, that ''He found disciples and wor¬
shipers among the Jews, although He identified
Himself with none of their traditions; among
the Greeks, though He proclaimed no new system
of philosophy; among the Romans, although He
fought no battles and founded no worldly em¬
pire; among the Hindus, who despise all men of
low caste; among the black savages of Africa,
the red men of America, as well as the most
highly civilized nations of modern times, in all
quarters of the globe." O Nazarene! Thine
empire overleaps all kingdoms, as Thy full orbed
manhood embraced all virtues. In Thee was
found the perfection of opposing graces, meek¬
ness and majesty, feminine tenderness and manly
strength and childlike innocence, with a courage
above that of Athanasius, an equanimity eclips¬
ing that of William of Orange, a moral intensity
deeper than Dante's, a self-sacrifice more won¬
drous than Sakya Muni's, and a benevolence at
whose fount of fire John Howard and Florence
Nightingale lit their torches. Thou didst
scourge the hypocrite and forgive the outcast,
and weep for Thy dead friend, and die for Thine
enemies; in Thee we behold the equilibrium of
ethics and piety, the harmony of God and man,
the sweet marriage of contrasting virtues. Our
prisms may analyze the beam of Thy glory, and
our eyes may gaze on the nine-fold wonder, but
if the white splendor of Thy very self fell upon
228 CHRISTIANITY, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
US, we should hide our faces before its insuffer¬
able beauty. Well did the old saint of Christian
art, Fra Angélico the blessed, paint Thy face on
bended knees; we too can but worship, for, as
we look through the fair curtain of Thy perfect
humanity, there dawns on our faith the adorable
radiance of Thine undimmed divinity.
Thus, the Christian believer may go to all
nations, and may say, "Behold the man, the
bright consummate flower of the race, the Son of
Man, the Son of Humanity." We may say with
one of his disciples, "He is the universal Homo,
blending in Himself all races, ages, sexes, tem¬
peraments. He is the essential Vir, from the
hem of whose robe virtue is ever flowing. He,
Himself, realized Auguste Comte's majestic
dream of the Apotheosis of Humanity." Is
there one word of intellectual or moral eulogy
that does not befit His name, who not only was
all that we adore, but did all that man needs as
his Saviour and Captain of Salvation? To His
perfect moral glory He added the majesty of
suffering, and He bore the manifold indignities
of malice and cruelty and ingratitude, not with
Stoic hardness, but with more than womanly
sensitiveness, and with a calmness which was a
benediction of peace to His followers.® Nearly
every step of His ministry was beset with oppo¬
sition, contradiction, and grief. In the ribald
blasphemy of His foes He was linked with the
' Appendix, Lecture V, Note 3.
THE UNIVERSAL MAN. 229
Prince of Devils. He trod the winepress of His
agony alone, forsaken in His darkest hour by
His own disciples. But, sustained by the might
of love, with quietness unbroken by a murmur,
calmly as the falling sun of eventide, He passed
up the tragic slopes of Golgotha, and with for¬
giveness for His murderers He closed His life of
transcendent and spotless virtue with the im¬
mortal infamy of the Cross.
O friends of truth, may not all men rightly
look to Him, and exclaim "Our King!" And
may not Christians go to men everywhere and
say, "This matchless personality is worthy of all
your faith and affection. He is to be believed
in what He said of Himself; He is the ideal and
Universal Man, and He is the Son of God. The
perfection of His wisdom shows that He was not
deluded, and the perfection of His holiness that
He was not a pretender; therefore men are
bound to accept His interpretation of Himself.
He could say, "Before Abraham was, I am,"
"He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father."
He could pardon sin in His own name. He
could rightly call Himself the light of the world,
and make Himself the center of His own revela¬
tion, with a self-assertion which would be blas¬
phemy in any other. He could declare Himself
the judge of the living and the dead, and, with
spirit unsubdued, expiring on the Cross, with a
mighty host about Him hideous with brutal joy
over His shame and apparent defeat, He could
230 CHRISTIANITY, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
tranquilly speak to the penitent robber at His
side, and proclaim Himself the Lord of that
mysterious realm lying beyond the boundaries
of the tomb. There need be no hesitation,
therefore, or uncertainty in receiving His de¬
claration that He transcended the saints and
prophets, the priests and kings of the Old Testa¬
ment. When he declared, as one has written,
that "He is the living bond of unity necessary
to fellowship among men and the worship of
God"; that "He is sufficient for every human
need, and becomes through His death only the
more mighty"; that "He is universal, no local
or provincial person, but one who invites all, and
promises rest to all he invites"; and that "He is
directly accessible to all;" His august character
vindicates every claim, while the record He has
made in history is a second divine authentica¬
tion establishing his every word as truth and life.
Surely His Gospel, centering in such a person,
has this peculiarity, among others, that it can
be preached and made the theme of a life-giving
instruction which is never exhausted. It has
established in Christendom an institution no¬
where else discoverable, the pulpit, which has
become the seminary and seed-ground for all the
higher elements of civilization. While Bud¬
dhism can be explained and can be disseminated
by the living voice, it has never built up a pulpit
like that which distinguishes the world of Chris¬
tianity. It has no such literature of spoken elo-
THE UNIVERSAL MAN. 231
quence and power as that by which the living
Christ is brought home to living hearts to-day.
Would a library fully set forth the pre-eminent
and undying influence which goes out from Him,
who was the Word made flesh and dwelling
among men, and who is made real and mighty
by His Spirit wherever His truth is proclaimed?
Did you ever think how all the great conver¬
sions, by which vast energies have been set in
motion, have had direct relation to the Christ?
Paul, gaining at the gates of Damascus his vision
of the Nazarene; St. Augustine, flnding in Jesus
the attraction in whom all souls may secure
peace; Luther, discovering the way of life in the
Erfurt monastery; John Bunyan finding, like
his own pilgrim, the secret of the Cross; John
Wesley, learning from a Moravian missionary
the emancipating truth of free salvation through
the Redeemer's grace; Mozoomdar, under the
grim old seasum tree in the Hindu College com¬
pound, with his sudden vision of Jesus as a
strange, human, kindred love, becoming at his
time of deepest need the most sympathetic of
friends,—what are these but symbolic illustrations
of the working of that majestic divine presence,
through whom God has become real to the heart
of humanity?
And while we may rightly believe that in
Christ are all possible ethical reforms, the forces
of all social progress, the spiritual energy that
shall yet assimilate to its own divine quality the
232 CHRISTIANITY, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
nations and institutions of men, I always feel
His greatest victories have been within the soul,
and we are not surprised, therefore, that Chris¬
tianity has produced, among the more highly
gifted, characters of such force and radiance as
we find in every age from the days of Paul to
those of Livingstone. Asiatic scholars coming
to America and Great Britain have expressed to
me their admiration and surprise at the character
of the Christian women whom they have seen—
women possessed of force and culture quite equal
to that which they have known in the men
among whom they have been wont to associate.
Any adequate knowledge of Christian lands and
of Christian history must fill the non-Christian
mind with amazement at the variety and force of
that manhood and womanhood which are the
supreme results of the Gospel. It is a many-sided
character that the all-sided Man,through His spirit
and truth, has fashioned. Oh, what a galaxy shines
in the heaven of Christian civilization! the king-
liest men and the queenliest women of all time clus¬
tering around the Star which has become the Sun !
There is the heroic Apostle to the Gentiles, so
great that through him perhaps we gain our best
ideas of the moral grandeur of Paul's Master.
There is John, transfigured in the light which
shone upon him from the days of his young
manhood to the beautiful old age, out of which
he passed into eternal youth. There is the
greatest of the Latin Fathers, his eyes fixed on
THE UNIVERSAL MAN. 233
the Cross. There is he who held out alone
against the world, and with whose name we ever
associate the supreme declaration of our Lord's
divinity. There is Bernard of Clairvaux, his
whole life a passion for holiness. There is the
Florentine poet, illumined in the radiance which
he climbed through three worlds to see. There
is St. Francis of Assisi, the most loveable of all
the mediaeval saints. There is the greatest of
German reformers, whose manhood is rugged
enough to be symbolized by mountains, whose
heart is tender enough to be likened to the
brooks gushing from the mountain side. There
is the sublimest figure in the literary history of
England, in whom the passion for liberty and
righteousness glowed like the fires of /Etna., lift¬
ing his planetary orbs of song like clashing
cymbals above his head, in praise of the Son of
God. There are all the great reformers and
evangelists of English annals from Wycliff to
Wesley, whose consecration to the spiritual bet¬
terment of England's poor brings them into line
with the true Apostolic succession. There are
men like Thomas Arnold, whose soul moulded a
generation, and like Maurice, whom Gladstone
called a spiritual splendor. There are states¬
men beneath the shadow of whose kindness and
moral kingliness nations have rested securely.
There are all the greatest artists, from Michael
Angelo to Rembrandt, and all the greatest
musicians from Palestrina to Beethoven, and a
2 34 CHRISTIANITY, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
shining host of the poets, from Bernard of Cluny,
to Tennyson, the Brownings,and Whittier. There
are the humble souls whom God has made lofty,
and the lofty souls whom Christ has made lowly,
—not a few hundreds only, but scores of thou¬
sands, living to-day, and living always, to know
whom is to get some fuller knowledge of the
Prince of Glory, and whose deeds of mercy and
words of truth and love keep alive the spirit of
the Man of Galilee.
Christian missionaries go to other lands and
find among their peoples a knowledge of truth,
corresponding in a measure with Christian truth.
When they bring to others the lofty message in
regard to God, they find that other faiths speak
of Brahma and Allah and Shangti, and Mani¬
tou, the Supreme Spirit of Heaven and Earth.
Hinduism has its trinity, and the Moslem has his
Bible, which speaks in no uncertain praise of the
Christian Scriptures. The Farsee points to his
sacred Zendavesta, full of spiritual sublimity,
while the sacred Books of the Hindu, the Bud¬
dhist, and the Confucianist, far surpass the
Christian Scriptures in number and extent.
Other religions have their prophets and sages, as
numerous as those of the Hebrew and Christian
tradition, their sacred cities, their temples,
almost equaling the grandeur of St. Peter's, their
priests, their propitiations, their incarnations,
their doctrines of Heaven, Nirvana, and Hell.
The missionary goes to a world pre-occupied by
THE UNIVERSAL MAN. 235
religion; but the reason that he has in many
lands made such progress, though heralded by
no blare of trumpets, and confronted by im¬
memorial priesthoods and prejudices, and hin¬
dered by the divisions of Christendom, is that he
has been able to show that all the truths of other
religions are found in Christ's Gospel, and found
there in completer and purer form; and, be¬
cause, supported and inspired by the Holy
Spirit, he has been able to show that in Jesus
Christ, who lived among men and died for our
sins; in a Saviour who is the Son of God, illus¬
trating every human virtue and glorifying our
earth by His sinless and holy presence,—there is
lodged a divine power and love, able to save, as
one has said, "to the uttermost ends of the
earth, to the uttermost limits of time, to the
uttermost periods of life, to the uttermost lengths
of depravity, to the uttermost depths of misery,
and to the uttermost measure of perfection."
Thoughtful men in India perceive in Christ
the reconciler of the religions of the world, and
have rendered the race a service by fastening the
mind on one truth, that all the great faiths find
in Jesus their fulfillment. As Christ blends in
Himself "all race-marks, and illustrates in Him¬
self all essential human capacities;" and as by
His death on the Cross He has given to Jew and
Gentile, to Greek and barbarian, to bond and
free, to man and woman, the one central, shin¬
ing object of moral sublimity; as by His teach-
236 CHRISTIANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
ing of love and neighborhood, of humanity and
of mercy, He has made Himself the brother of
all men, so the world may discover in His per¬
fect faith, as another has said, " all that is good
in all other religions, the symbolism of India,
the aspiration of Egypt, the estheticism of
Greece, the majesty of Rome, the hopefulness
of Persia, the conservatism of China, the mys¬
ticism of India, the enthusiasm of Arabia, the
energy of Teutonia, the versatilities of Chris¬
tendom.
As we look around the world to-day, we dis¬
cover no universal church having one outward
organization. But there is unity in Jesus Christ.
All claim and worship Him. To Him the
Greek Catholic Church, rich in the memories of
Clement, Origen, Chrysostom, bows in adora¬
tion. To Him the Roman Catholic Church,
starred with great names, Ambrose, Fénelon,
Bossuet, Xavier, Newman, renders divine hom¬
age. The Anglican Church, in all its wide con¬
stituency, builds on the Christ a main hope of
the reunion of Christendom. To that Christ the
Lutheran and Reformed Churches, and all their
progeny, give loving worship as to the Son of
God, in whom dwelt the fulness of the Godhead
bodily. There are many words of fear and
doubt "rattling in the throat of our dying cen¬
tury," but one brave word of faith rings out as
never before, Christ ! Christ ! I see agitation,
unrest, progressive movement in all the denomi-
THE UNIVERSAL MAN. 237
nations, among all peoples, in all social organ¬
isms; there is no quiet anywhere, and all seem
to be looking toward one goal. There is move¬
ment among Baptists, and Presbyterians, and
Congregationalists, and Lutherans, and Metho¬
dists, and Roman Catholics, and Episcopalians.
Some of them are losing their hold of cherished
dogmas and practices. Some are feeling unrest
on account of the barriers which keep them from
uniting more perfectly with other disciples. A
new age is being born out of the gestation of our
times. And what a stir we begin to discover in
the camps of the non-Christian systems! They
look forward to impending changes. They feel the
contact with Christendom and are absorbing Chris¬
tian ideas as if they were aboriginal truths of their
own philosophies. And what means this wide
social restlessness, men seeking a fairer heritage,
a larger place, a fuller share of this world's
opportunities, except that the Christian idea of
manhood and its worth, of brotherhood and its
claims, is gaining ampler acceptance? In all
these bodies the lines of movement are forward ;
but strange to tell the lines are not parallel, but
convergent, and they all bend toward the teach¬
ing and the person and the work of Jesus Christ,
who is the one bond and the one goal. All the
light of human hope gathers more and more
about Him, and the closer men get to each
other, the closer they get to their King. "If,"
says Dean Fremantle, "the human race is one,
238 CHR/STlANITr, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
and is to be drawn into unity, it is impossible
that there can be ultimately different religions."
He declares that "the recent Parliament of Re¬
ligions in Chicago has widened our knowledge of
other faiths and our sympathy, and has done
much to remove the antagonisms of theology,
and to bring men to apply the great general prin¬
ciples underlying all religions, but of which the
character of Christ is the supreme expression, to
bear upon the general life." Truly Christ is the
meeting place of humanity; I can discover no
other.* Who can ever forget that in that great
assembly, out of which this Lectureship sprang;
who can forget, as another has written, "that
amid all that was said, there was one name that
towered conspicuous in its sublimity? We
criticised not only the theology, but the motives
and characters of Buddha, of Confucius, and
Mohammed, but not one voice from the far-off
East breathed one word against the character of
Him who is the King of Kings and Lord of
Lords. "
His kingdom is yet to come; the uttermost
parts of the earth shall be given to Him for His
possession. The prayer which he taught is yet to
be fully answered. For the establishment and
expansion of His empire have been the on-go-
ings of history. For this the Word was given,
the Lord speaking to prophets and training a
chosen nation ; for this the light which enlight-
^ Appendix, Lecture V, Note 4.
THE UNIVERSAL MAN. 239
ened every man has been shining in human
hearts the world over, so that Greek philosophy,
and Mosaic legislation, and Buddhistic thought,
and Roman law, and Hindu doctrines of the
incarnation, and nineteenth-century science, may
all of them be seen at last to be schoolmasters
leading to Christ. For this the heavens broke
open and revealed, in the Universal Man, ''in
man at his climax," the saving God. For this
the Son of Man descended into the gloom of
Gethsemane, and offered Himself on Calvary, a
propitiation for the sins of the whole world.
For this the Holy Ghost was given on that Pen¬
tecostal day, when Parthians and Medes, Africans
and Jews, Arabians, and strangers from Rome,
received the glad tidings of forgiveness and
reconciliation. For this were the missionary
toils of the Apostles, and the martyrdoms of
Ignatius and Perpetua, and the long agonizing
conflict which destroyed the ancient paganism and
placed the Cross on the standards of Constantino.
For this have been the revolutions and triumphs
of the waiting and suffering ages. All the
achievements of modern invention, all the
accumulations of wealth and the enterprises of
commerce, the building of great universities, the
extension of the empire of science, the rehabilita¬
tion of old nationalities, are significant and
luminous as they contribute to the fulfillment of
the prayer, "Thy Kingdom Come." Emanci¬
pation in America is seen to have connection in
240 CHRISTIANITY, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
the mind of Providence with Evangelization in
Africa. The pen which wrote freedom for the
slave God shall change into the sword that is to
destroy the degrading spiritual bondage of the
African queen. The Universal Man shall yet be
the Universal King; He shall yet stand upon the
earth, while many crowns from many lands, with
many stars, the emerald splendors of the Pacific
and Indian seas, the lustrous coronet of Ethiopia,
and the impearled and priceless glories of the
gorgeous Orient shall be laid at His feet, and
the nations, having wrought out the divine pur¬
pose, shall be no more, for the kingdoms of this
world shall have become the Kingdom of our
Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign for
ever and ever.
THE HISTORIC CHARACTER OF CHRIS¬
TIANITY AS CONFIRMING ITS CLAIMS
TO WORLD-WIDE AUTHORITY.
So ist ohne Wunder und Mysterium im wahren reli¬
giösen Sinne keine Offenbarung Gottes denkbar.—Christ¬
liche Apologetik von Dr. Herm. Schultz, p. 22.
The whole substance and meaning of religion—life in God,
the forgiveness of sins, consolation in suffering—she [the
church] couples with Christ's person; and in doing so she
associates everything that gives life its meaning and its per¬
manence, nay the Eternal itself, with an historical fact;
maintaining the indissoluble unity of both.—Christianity and
History, Adolf Harnack, p. 17.
Für die Jünger des Herrn sind zweifellos die Erschein¬
ungen des Auferstandenen der entscheidende Beweis für
ihn als den König des Reiches Gottes und als die vollkom¬
men Offenbarung Gottes gewesen und die Thatsache
dieser Erscheinungen kann für keinen Vernünftigen zweifel¬
haft sein, so mannigfaltig auch unsere Berichte über die
einzelnen Vorgänge dabei in Widersprüche verlaufen.
—Christliche Apologetik von Dr. Herm. Schultz, p. iio.
It follows that the Perfect Man, embodying the pre¬
cepts and ideals of the Perfect Religion, must be a real
historic character, exposed to all the trials and temptations
of mortal man, yet triumphing over them—one who has left
his impress large on the page of history. The story must
thus be on the one hand capable of examination and veri¬
fication by the scholar, and on the other hand capable of
apprehension by the child.—Universal Religion, a lecture
delivered at Bangalore, in November, 1896, by Edward P.
Rice, p. 7.
SIXTH LECTURE.
THE HISTORIC CHARACTER OF CHRISTIANITY
AS CONFIRMING ITS CLAIMS TO WORLD¬
WIDE AUTHORITY.
There is no other form of art which is so in¬
wrought with human history as architecture.
In the adornment of a great building, the choicest
work of the sculptor and painter may find a con¬
genial place, and by such a structure man illus¬
trates his conquests over Nature and over Time.
By means of it he endeavors to show that he has
a perpetuated life on the earth ; by means of it he
tells to after generations the story of his thought ;
but when the building is meant to embody the
idea of worship, when it is so constructed as to
lift the heart in hope and aspiration heaven¬
ward, when it is so massive and stately as to
"fill the mind v/ith awe and shut the soul up
in tranquillity," and when it is so linked with
the life of a great people as to be the symbol
of national unity and power, then it becomes
an object of grandeur over-topping the Apen¬
nines and the Alps. Such a building, pre-emi¬
nently, is the now finished Cathedral of Cologne,
the noblest monument of Gothic architecture in
the world, its two completed spires stretching
243
244 CHRISTIANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
their long shadows in the evening twilight across
the Rhine.
I would have you look upon this Cathedral as
a majestic, but yet inadequate, illustration of the
historic character of Christianity. The Christian
religion is a religion intertwined in its life and
teachings with a prolonged and impressive historic
development. It has a great past. It is not the
creature of a day. Into it the nations have
brought of their glory and honor. It is associated
with prophets, apostles, kings, sages, saints, and
martyrs. The story of war and of conquest, of
sin, of agony, disappointment, delay, hope,
aspiration has been woven into its essential life.
Its history has proceeded on a divine plan toward
adivine consummation, and its records are revela¬
tions, its events are truths, its miracles are parables
radiant with the golden light of celestial love.
Alone of all the religions of the world, in a sense
which I shall hereafter explain, it is historic.
More than six hundred years ago were laid
the foundations of the Cologne Cathedral. Only
a small portion of the massive structure was
ready for use in the thirteenth century. De¬
layed by poverty and war and national discord,
the sublime idea of the unknown architect had
a slow materialization. But when, after six
long centuries, the work was completed amid the
rejoicings of Germany, it was in accord with the
original plan of that marvellous mind, who, from
another sphere it may be, had patiently watched
CHARACTER OF CHRISTI AN ITT. 245
the slow flowering into stone of his lofty con¬
ceptions. Upon a slight eminence, made of the
débris of old Roman buildings that stood there
in the times of the CiEsars, the massive founda¬
tions were planted forty and sixty feet in depth.
This was to be no frail and yielding fabric, but
one wherein should be illustrated, so far as man
can do it, the security and eternity of God Him¬
self. It was no flimsy and faltering trust in the
Unseen which could undertake and, after dis¬
heartening delays, at last complete such a monu¬
ment of Christian Faith. It wearies the mind
merely to contemplate the patient toil which
must be continued for a decade, just to add a
few more string-courses to this mighty anthem
in stone. Great cities are burned and destroyed
and rebuilded with ampler magnificence, but the
hammers are still smiting and the chisels are
still ringing in the workshops of Cologne, where
generations of artisans are educated into artists,
that the work may go on. The quarries of
Drachenfels and Caen yield their treasures of
rock, to be floated down the Rhine or carried
by means which to the old Archbishops would
have seemed almost supernatural; dynasties rise
and fall, new continents are discovered, new
faiths spring up to threaten the old ; the soldiers
of Napoleon desecrate the unfinished building;
a new Germany comes to life and demands that
the old Gothic wonder be finished; the needle
guns of Sédan complete the restoration of Ger-
246 CHRISTIANITY, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
man unity; French cannon are molten into a
chime of bells for the gigantic towers; upward,
upward grow the blossoming and leafy stones
till the last is laid, the scaffoldings are taken
down, the broken sculptures are replaced, the
rubbish is removed, and the princes and kings of
the German Fatherland join in solemn and sub¬
lime Te Deums in praise of Him, whose only is
the Kingdom and the Power and the Glory.
Have we not here a parable in history of the
Christian Revelation, of its majestic foundation
in the Old Testament, and of its immovable
basis also on the great truths of natural religion ;
of the slow progress and unfolding of the King¬
dom of God through Hebrew history, and of its
glorious consummation in the commonwealth
which Jesus founded and sent forward on its
march through the centuries? Who shall ade¬
quately describe the majesty and grace of the
Gothic Cathedral by the Rhine? It almost re¬
quires an education to get any real conception
of it. It seems like a product of nature, some¬
thing that grew of itself, it is so light and up-
springing, so lovely and delicate in proportion
and detail. But when you ascend, and walk in
and out among those graceful flying buttresses
and beautifully sculptured pinnacles, they ap¬
pear as solid and massive as mountains. Stand¬
ing before the double western port, and looking
upward five hundred and twenty-five feet, till
your eyes rest upon the topmost stones, the
CHARACTER OF CHRISTIANITY. 247
finíais which crown the spires, they seem to you
like leafy and cruciform ornaments, which you
could have placed there with your own hand ;
but each one of those finials, when put in posi¬
tion, had the weight of a hundred thousand
pounds. As you examine and study the re¬
moter parts of this miracle in stone, you are
fascinated by the faithfulness which wrought out
the hidden ornamentation with the same pious
care that delights you in the multitudinous
sculptures on which the passer-by may place his
hand. And when at last you venture within,
and walk the spacious floors, flooded with rain¬
bow light from the windows, which are the work
of old-time artists, or the recent splendid gifts
of Bavarian King or Prussian Crown Prince or
Imperial Kaiser, all of whom have passed into
the unseen world, how wondrous are these lofty
vaults toward which instinctively and perpetually
the eyes are upturned ; how solemn the deep¬
ening aisles, how beautiful the massive, flowering,
clustering columns, a forest of stone recalling the
primeval temples of humanity, the leafy fanes
within which Druid priests and Gothic savages
may have offered their worship to Odin, Frija,
Thor! And that nothing may be lacking to
inspire and teach and uplift, how wondrously, in
elaborate sculpture within and without, and how
splendidly in gorgeous panes, stained with dyes
that are as "precious as the blood of kings,"
is pictured and unfolded the story of man's
248 CHRISTIANirr, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
redemption. Patriarchs, prophets, missionaries,
martyrs, angels, and the Man Divine pass be¬
fore us in sublime procession; the one building
epitomizing the life of humanity and lifting our
thoughts above man's fall and above his present
greatness, to that future in which the redeemed,
gathered in the temple of God's own building,
shall share the glory of Him in whose name this
Cathedral rises like a Psalm to heaven. And so
Christianity is a structure to which all beauty
belongs, as well as all massiveness—a structure
crowned with the Cross and adorned within and
without with images of sainthood and blazonries
of unmatched historic devotion and achieve¬
ment. It is a sacred edifice which shelters and
illustrates the chief historic development of man¬
kind; it is itself the story of man's redemption,
through divine mercy ; and it alone points, with
sure promise, to the house not built with hands,
eternal, in the heavens.
No other religion could be symbolized by the
Cologne Cathedral. Hinduism might find its
symbol in some rock-hewn temple of Hindustan,
finished a thousand years ago, and now, as I
hear Indian scholars saying, fast falling into
decay ; and Buddhism may be likened to a
painted and tiled pagoda; and Islâm to some
aspiring, crescent - crowned and minaretted
mosque ; but Christianity is the only historic
structure whereon is written the whole life of
humanity; the only temple of faith which sym-
CHARACTER OF CHRISTIANITY. 249
bolizes the story of man's redemption; the only
house of worship which shelters the peace, the
trust, and the hope which are furnished by a
divinely authenticated Revelation; the only
sacred edifice crowned by the Cross and re¬
splendent with the light that streams from the
New Jerusalem. The proposition which I offer
in this closing Lecture is this: That Christianity
alone is a religion of historic facts, a system of
faith not built upon a philosophy, or merely the
ethical teaching of some saintly founder, but
resting on what is surer and more abiding, a
historic basis which has remained unshaken for
nineteen hundred years. That foundation, that
history, is the very life of the Christian religion,
a history centering in a supernatural Person who
sums up the truths and vital forces of Chris¬
tianity. Any one familiar with certain forms of
Oriental thought will realize that much which
has been set forth in the preceding Lectures
might be acknowledged and accepted without
changing the mental and spiritual attitude of
the Eastern thinker. He would say, and he is
learning to say, " My faith is broad enough to
accept truth from every source;" and so we find
that Christian ideas are being taken up and swal¬
lowed by elastic and omnivorous systems. There¬
fore, to be true to the whole truth which Chris¬
tian believers, from the beginning, have set
forth, it must be shown that Christianity is fitted
to become a world-wide faith, demanding not
250 CHRISTIANITY, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
the giving up of any spiritual truth, but the
renouncing of other schemes as methods of salva¬
tion, because it, and it alone, is a religion of
supernatural historic facts; the supernatural
history which it has proclaimed from the first
is true history. The believer in some other
religion may remain outwardly loyal to it, and
accept the Fatherhood of God, the humanities of
Jesus, the ethics of the New Testament, except
where they interfere with artificial social distinc¬
tions, the Christian doctrine of immortality, and
I know not what besides; but let him accept the
incarnation of God in the Jesus of the Gospels
as an actual historic occurrence; let him believe
that Christ came from Heaven to earth as the
culmination of God's previous revelations of
Himself to men; let him believe the supernatural
signs which accompanied the ministry of Christ
as actual events; and, if he follows his convic¬
tions, Christ Himself will be accepted as the
divine, authoritative, final Teacher and only
Saviour of the race. Therefore, it is supremely
important in the present Lecture, to show that
Christianity alone is a religion centering in such
historic facts as are contained in the New Testa¬
ment. It is, also, a faith set in the midst of a
great history, reaching back through prophets,
sages, kings, patriarchs, toward the beginning
of recorded annals. It is a religion inwrought
with the changing and advancing life of the most
wonderful of peoples. It is the historic flower
CHARA C TER OF CHRIS TI AN ITT. 2 51
of Judaism. "The revelation, recorded in the
Bible, is a jewel which God has given to us in a
setting of human history. The love of God to
His people now is a continuation of that which
He showed to our fathers. . . . To deny
that Christianity can ultimately be traced back
to such acts of revelation, taking place at a
definite time in a definite cycle, involves in the
last resort a denial that there is any true religion
at all, or that religion is anything more than a
vague subjective feeling. " " Revelation itself has
become a force in human conduct only by first
becoming a factor in human history." '
But beyond these general considerations which
are true and important, it is essential that we
see that Christianity centers in the character,
person, teachings, in the life, death, and resurrec¬
tion of Jesus Christ. The facts of the Gospels,
truly interpreted, make the Gospel the divine
evangel which we believe is giving life to the
world. The New Testament history is the life
of the Christian religion, and it is a history em¬
bodied in the Person who sums up the truths and
vital forces of Christianity. If Christ, as revealed
in the Gospels, is a historic delusion or fabrica¬
tion, then our faith is vain, and we have believed
a lying legend or a delusive myth. If the his¬
toric foundations are gone, then the Christianity
of the future will no more resemble the Chris¬
tianity of the past than a shattered church,
'Appendix, Lecture VI, Note i.
252 CHRISTIANITY, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
whose underlying basis has sunk into quicksands
and whose walls are crumbling, resembles the
Cathedral of Cologne. Take away the Gospel
history, and our divine religion becomes only a
scheme of human devising or a system of morals,
mingling with other schemes and systems, and
losing all distinctive, commanding, victorious
power.
In the preceding Lectures we have been
brought face to face with most commanding
facts. We have found one religion, and only
one, presenting the aspects of a vigorous faith in
all lands and among all races. We have found
the Christian religion, claiming a supernatural
origin and preaching the supernatural Christ,
working such effects in individual and national
regeneration as to add strength to its claims.
We have found a unique phenomenon in the
Christian Bible, absolutely the only universal
Book, unified by its doctrine of the kingdom of
God and by its disclosure of the purposes of
Redemption. We have found it a volume speak¬
ing with strong, clear words to the heart of every
spiritual need, and adapting itself, as no other
book does, both by its contents and its form, to
the mental and moral peculiarities of all races.
We have also seen in the Christian doctrine of
God as one—as spiritual, omnipresent, holy,
merciful—a God revealed through His Son as the
Redeemer of the world. We have found in
this Christian doctrine of the Supreme Being,
CHARACTER OF CHRISTIANITY. 253
an adequate basis for a Universal Religion. We
have found that Christianity presents in the
Christ the Universal Man and the only Saviour.
We have seen in it the completion and fulfill¬
ment of all the scattered and fragmentary ideals,
hopes, and longings of the nations. And thus
we have gained the right vantage-ground from
which to survey the definite claim which Chris¬
tianity has always made, that its record of super-
naturalism is historically true. From a broad
survey of humanity we have, I hope in some
degree, become convinced that man needs re¬
demption, and that we can look nowhere else,
except to the Christian religion, for the satis¬
faction of his profoundest spiritual needs.^ I
have endeavored to make it reasonable to be¬
lieve, that if God purposed to set a supernatural,
authoritative seal on one religion as designed for
all the world, it can only be the Christian ; on
any book, it can only be the Bible; on any one
person, it can only be Jesus Christ; on any one
doctrine concerning Himself, it, can only be on
the radiant, matchless elements of Christian
Theism.
Christianity is the only religion now existing
among men which squarely, unflinchingly, and
with undisturbed serenity on the part of the
great preponderating majority of its intelligent
votaries and expounders, bases itself on a super¬
natural history. Mohammedanism, Christianity's
'Appendix, Lecture VI, Note 2.
254 CHRISTIANITY, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
chief rival in the reformation of Africa, is not in
the same sense a historic religion or a religion of
facts. It centers in a book of precepts, in the
teachings of the Koran ; and it has no superna¬
tural story to tell as its chief message to men,
like that which gives such interest and splendor
and authority to the Christian Gospel. Passages
can be shown from the Koran that testify to the
authenticity of the Christian Scriptures, which
show that prophecy and revelation are with the
children of Israel, and which point to the divinity
of our Lord Jesus Christ; and whenever Chris¬
tianity makes any serious inroad into the citadel
of Islâm, it may possibly be through the gateway
of those Koranic passages which acknowledge
and confirm, rather than deny and oppose, the
supreme and central facts of the Christian re¬
ligion. It need scarcely be said that Confucian¬
ism is not a religion centering in supernatural
occurrences, but is rather a collection of instruc¬
tions in regard to social ethics. Hinduism cer¬
tainly does not center in any creative personality
living at a definite time and miraculously reveal¬
ing God's truth and love to men. It is well
known that nothing is more averse to the Hindu
spirit than definite history.
What has impressed itself most deeply upon
the first and every succeeding generation of
Christians has been the person of the historic
Christ as revealed in the Gospels. The case is
not similar with Buddhism, although it is indeed
CHARACTER OF CHRISTIANITY. 255
more of a personal religion than the others.
Buddhism is a system of ethics rather than a
divine evangel. "Christ's mission, even more
than His message; His deeds of love and mercy,
His patient suffering, His self-sacrificing death,
above all. His resurrection from the dead, and
His subsequent ascension into heaven,—this was
the subject-matter of the proclamation first made
by His followers to the world. On the other
hand, it was the system thought out by Buddha,
the discourses which he delivered, and his rules
for the guidance of his disciples that appeared to
them of paramount importance. They thought
of Him mainly as the teacher, whereas the
primary conception of the early Christians was
of our Lord as the Saviour, who had accom¬
plished, not merely taught, the salvation of the
world." It is well known that we have no life
of Buddha. The main divisions of the Buddhist
canon are discourses, the rules of discipline, and
metaphysics. In the fragmentary notices of his
personal history, we find that information is
given "solely as an introduction to a conversa¬
tion or discourse ; here, as elsewhere, the system
obscures the man." The gentle sage of Asia
lived and died, we know not exactly when, for
the date of his death is placed by some scholars
in the year 543 B.C., and by others in the years
477, 430, 420, 412, or 370. The working force
of Buddhism is not found in the life about which
so little is known. When the early preachers of
256 CHRISTIANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
"Nirvana and the Law," journeyed in their
saffron robes from land to land, they told the
world of the eight-fold path to enlightenment,
of the maxims which Gautama uttered, of his
regulations for the discipline of his disciples; and
their reverence for the Indian saint was primarily
for him as a teacher, and was not like the wor¬
shipful devotion of the early Christian for his
Saviour, who came from the bosom of the God¬
head to the rough and cruel deathbed of the
Cross, and who, lying down in the grave, burst
the stony sepulchre and came forth with the
light of immortality upon his white and radiant
brow.
Thus we have seen, that the Christian faith
alone is proclaimed as primarily a religion of his¬
toric fact; neither Confucianism nor Buddhism
nor Mohammedanism is built upon a similar
foundation, and that religion, which is in many
respects greater than all the other non-Christian
faiths, Hinduism, is likewise unhistoric. Its
sublime and mystic ideas, and its innumerable
idolatries, are associated, it is true, with legends
of gods and heroes, but these legends "live no
longer in the faith of reason," even in the land
which gave them birth, while the Christian
Church, in all its great divisions, and most of its
minor sects, is practically united in that historic
faith which is embodied in the so-called Apos¬
tles' Creed. When men ask Christian disciples
to unite with the believers in other religions on
CHARACTER OF CHRISTIANITY. 257
the basis of what all have in common, or what
is fundamental to all, the just answer is: "We
are glad to co-operate for common, ethical pur¬
poses, and we believe the co-operation will be
much larger and more fraternal than it ever has
been, but what is fundamental with Christianity
is that which is distinctive to it—its supernatural
history." This is the one thing peculiar to our
faith ; it has gone to men from the beginning, it
goes to men now, with a history revealing divine
incarnation and redemption as verifiable facts; it
presents that history as centering in a matchless
person; it furnishes the amplest evidence that
Jesus the Christ lived, suffered, died, and rose
again, thereby laying His hands with divine au¬
thentication on His messages of mercy. It holds
up the life, character, and work of One who has
moulded already the mightiest nations to His will,
who is to-day the supreme figure and force in
the domain of religion, and who towers higher
and higher above the loftiest intellects, and the
largest souls. Christianity discloses the advan¬
tage of a historical over a purely philosophical
faith—the advantage of authority, of interest,
of adaptability, of trustworthiness, of spiritual
power. Christianity, a religion of facts, is not
wanting in doctrine, in ethics, and philosophy.
It has a philosophy, perhaps as deep and com¬
prehensive as that which lies in the vast world of
the Hindu scriptures, and certainly much less
ethereal and infinitely more consistent; and it
358 CHRISTIANITY, THE WORLD-RELIGION,
presents an ethics confessedly more vigorous,
vitalizing, and complete than that which was
taught by Buddha, the most famous of all Hin¬
du sages. But Christianity is primarily a series
of miraculous and redemptive occurrences, em¬
bodying a divinely perfect ethics, verities of
celestial fragrance and potency, and all these
are wrapped up and made life-giving by the
divinely perfect Teacher and Redeemer who is
set forth in the Gospels. I know that some
scholars of our time, possessed by the philosophy
which rejects the supernatural, have eliminated
from their faith what has always been considered
the very essence of Christianity, and have still
clung affectionately to the ethics of Jesus. The
scheme of Hegelianism, revised or unrevised, is
to reject the supernatural in history, in order to
get easy, unembarrassed sweep for its idea of
growth and development. But what, after a
short life, has been in Germany, England,
France, America, the usual history of move¬
ments within the Church which have cast out
the supernatural? Free religion, spiritualism,
irreligion, rankest unbelief, and materialism, dis¬
trust of all schemes that imply God,—these are
some of the natural results, appearing after a
short course of development from a plan of spir¬
itual life which denies the supernatural in Jesus
and in His Church. "Without miracle and mys¬
tery, in the true religious sense, no revelation of
God is thinkable." "A religion without miracle
CHARACTER OF CHRISTIANITT. 259
may turn out to be a religion without God."
Some have gone with their new Christian Gos¬
pel to the working people of great cities, and
have accomplished something, but not much in
comparision with the historic achievements of
the original Gospel among the poor. There is
no reason for believing that a message which
can give no assurance of divine love and forgive¬
ness, which sinks Jesus to the level of any noble
philanthropist, which cannot point with any cer¬
tain faith to a world of blessedness beyond, will
bring to sad hearts the comfort, and to broken
lives the help, of that Gospel, which is preached
to-day in the thousand missions of the world's
great cities.
From the beginning of Christian history until
now there has been substantial agreement in the
Church as to the supernatural personality of
Christ, as to the signs which He and His apos¬
tles carried with them, and as to His glorious
resurrection ; and out of this catholic, historic
faith of the Church, has sprung a certain distinc¬
tive and noble type of Christian character. It
seems plain to so wise a man as Mr. Gladstone,
that if you cut away this faith and destroy these
roots, the distinctive type of character will soon
die out. As that type is not found where Chris¬
tianity has never been, why should it continue
when Christianity is uprooted? Now that the
Gospel of Christ has created great areas on this
planet "where a decent man can live in decency.
26o CHRISTIANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
comfort, and security, educating his children un¬
spoiled and unpolluted; where age is reverenced,
infancy protected, manhood respected, woman¬
hood honored, and human life held in due re¬
gard, ' '—how do we know that when the essential
elements of the Christian Gospel, as Paul and
Luther, as Pascal, Chalmers, Bishop Heber,
Edwards, Wesley, Thomas Arnold, Spurgeon,
Robertson, Dr. Duff, and Livingstone would have
deemed them, are exscinded, it will continue, age
after age, to work its old-time wonders? Because
a number of scholarly men and women have been
led to accept a philosophy of history and nature,
which forbids them to believe in the miraculous,
shall we therefore call upon the Church, girding
itself for triumphs to-day as never before, com¬
passing all lands with its missionary army ; shall
we call upon the Church to reconstruct its the¬
ology by taking out of it what the Church, in all
its branches, has always believed? Such an ap¬
peal is a summons to discord. It is asking a
victorious army, in the thick of battle, to throw
away its long-tried weapons and manufacture
new ones. Two mistakes are made by the dis¬
ciples of other religions regarding Christianity.
In the first place they so look at the divisions of
Christendom as to forget the spiritual and intel¬
lectual unity which prevails with regard to what
is fundamental—namely, the truth of the Gospel
history and the conditions of salvation. In the
second place, the non-Christian faiths overrate
CHARACTER OF CHRISTIANITT. 261
the weight and importance of the philosophic
dissent from historic Christianity in Christian
lands. Comparatively speaking that dissent
represents fragments, asteroids—and not Jupiter,
Saturn, and the Sun.
This conflict within the pale of Christendom,
or rather within the regions where Christianity
has extended itself, between faith in the historic
character of the Gospels and unbelief, is not
new. Every generation goes over, with more or
less of repetition, the ground which has been
tramped for ages, and it would seem that every
wise and healthy mind, in coming to a settled
belief, must take into account, at least, the gen¬
eral conviction of the centuries. Now the
solemn voice of the Christian ages, whether it
comes to us in the claim which Jesus made, that
his miraculous work bore witness of Him as sent
from God ; or whether it be the earnest declara¬
tion of Paul in the Epistles, which even Strauss
and Baur and Rénan affirm that Paul wrote
within thirty years after the death of Christ, that
Jesus rose from the dead; or whether it be that
which comes from the early-formed and gener¬
ally-accepted Apostles' Creed,—that voice, which
was not smothered in the catacombs or silenced
in the Colosseum ; which persecution could not
choke in Clement and Polycarp and Tertullian;
which has sounded in Christian hymns or martyr-
testimonies from the days when the smoke of
heathen sacrifice rose from the seven hills by the
202 CHRISTIANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
Tiber; and which finally burst from the lips of
Chrysostom in the capital of an empire which
had chosen the Cross of the Galilean peasant as its
triumphal battle-sign ; that solemn voice of the
centuries, which breaks on our ears from the
ancient Councils of Nice and Chalcedon, and
from the latter assemblies of Dort and Augsburg,
from Greek basilica, and Romanist temple, and
Protestant cathedral ; heard amid the ranks of
Crusaders storming Jerusalem, and Puritans
fighting for liberty on the plains of England, and
Pilgrims touching the icy shores of the New
World; coming to us from the cloister of the
recluse and the study of the scholar, sounding be¬
neath the storied arches of Westminster, and
among the dusky tribes on distant shores, who
have learned to sing the faith of all the Christian
ages ; that voice which breathes its grandeurs into
the music of Handel's oratorios and whispers ce¬
lestial solace into the heart of dying believers; a
voice speaking to-day from nearly all the thou¬
sand Christian colleges of the world, and from
most of its four hundred thousand pulpits, and
which gives no sign of being silenced,—every¬
where affirms as its grand first announcement,
that the Christian Gospel is a disclosure of God
manifest in the flesh, in Jesus Christ, His only
Son, who lived a sinless life and displayed His
divine nature and commission in miraculous
signs from heaven, crowning all by His resur¬
rection from the dead.
CHARACTER OF CHRISTIANITV. 263
There are those who do not believe in the
supernatural origin of Christianity, and on whom
is imposed the task of explaining away the Gos¬
pel narratives on the ground of fraud or delusion;
of trying to break the force of the testimony
sealed with the heroic, unselfish, suffering lives
and martyr deaths of those who declared that
they were witnesses of Christ's supernatural
signs and of His risen person. To them is given
the task which has perplexed and bafified the
sceptical scholarship of a hundred years. To
that scholarship we owe a large debt of grati¬
tude. It has widened our knowledge of the first
century. It has removed much of error and
uncertainty. It has conducted its investigations
with amazing ingenuity and ample learning;
but, "starting from a philosophy which forbade
it to accept much of the substance of the Gospel
narrative," the sceptical investigators have
proved themselves often to be the least trust¬
worthy historical critics. As Mr. Balfour has well
said: "It has been a great, though common, error
to describe these learned efforts as examples of
the unbiased application of historic methods to
historic documents. It will be more correct to
say that they are endeavors, by the unstinted
employment of an elaborate, critical apparatus,
to force the testimony of existing records into
conformity with theories, on the truth or falsity
of which it is for philosophy, not history, to
pronounce." The unbelievers must give a
264 CHRISTTANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
rational account of the person of Jesus on the
theory of His being a fallible, and sometimes
deluded and imperfect man—an undertaking in
which Renan made such a brilliantly grotesque
failure—they must explain away the universal
Christian faith in Christ's resurrection, a faith on
which even Strauss acknowledged that the
Church was built ; a faith which was not de¬
stroyed by the Jewish authorities in Jerusalem,
not because they were unwilling, but because they
were unable. They must tell us how the early
Church, with no appeal to make, like Moham¬
medanism, to pride and human passions, but
with lowliness and purity as its distinctive vir¬
tues, and, as they assert, with no supernatural
signs attesting their message, and beset by such
constant and remorseless antagonism on every
side, was not at once extinguished. After their
failure in this undertaking (and the confusion
and contradiction in their ranks, and the steady
advance and conquest of historic Christianity in¬
dicate a failure), men are apparently more will¬
ing to ponder the evidences on which Christian
faith is built, and which have proved so impreg¬
nable.
It is not a marvel that so many Jews and
others rejected the claims of the crucified Naza-
rene Prophet : that so many accepted them is the
wonder. "The reception of Christianity by
them," it has been wisely said, "shows prejudice
overcome by something, and the que.stion is, by
CHARACTER OF CHRISTI AN ITT. 265
what?" The undeviating Christian faith has
been that prejudice and opposition were over¬
come in part, at least, by the supernatural ac¬
complishments of the early Christian message.
The survey which we have made together of
the faiths of mankind, of their strange mixtures
of truth and error, has indicated that man needs
such a revelation from God as has come through
Jesus Christ. The dim guesses of the non-Chris¬
tian world have not contented the mind. The
fatal deficiency, it has been said, of Plato's doc¬
trine of immortality is "that he does not know."
"We will wait," said Plato, "for one, be it a
God or God-inspired man, to teach us our re¬
ligious duties, and as Athene, in Homer, says to
Diomed, take away the darkness from our eyes."
And again he exclaims: "We must lay hold of
the best human opinion, in order that, borne by
it as on a raft, we may sail over the dangerous
sea of life, unless we can find a stronger boat or
some word of God which will more surely and
safely carry us." The sacred literatures show
clearly that men have needed more certain, au¬
thoritative guidance. They need to know more
fully the character of God, especially in that
which is hardest to credit to Him, mercy. They
need to escape from the terrible guilt and slavery
of sin and to find one able to deliver. They
need some solace or relief from the awful pres¬
sure of human sorrow. The New Testament re¬
veals the divine character as embodied in Jesus
266 CHRIS T/AmTT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
Christ. It illumines and makes surer all the
truths of God, dimly revealed in the light of
nature.^ It provides a remedy for the malady of
sin, which the testing of centuries has shown to
be adequate. It brings God home to our affec¬
tions in the person of His dear Son. It lifts a
future world, with all its vast and vivifying
power, before the vision of the human soul. It
links the practice of the most perfect ethics with
devotion to the person and kingdom of a divine
Redeemer. Such merciful and lofty purposes on
the part of God were, not without the most rea¬
sonable warrant, accompanied by signs from
heaven attesting the messenger or messengers
commissioned to first teach the heavenly doc¬
trine.
Canon Gore has defined a miracle as "an
event in physical nature which makes unmistak¬
ably plain the presence and direct action of God
working for a moral end."^ "Miracles,'' he
says, "are God's protests against man's blind¬
ness to Himself, protests in which he violates a
superficial uniformity in the interests of deeper
law." "If," he adds, "God is personal, if His
being is better expressed in human will and
character than in mechanical motion and uncon¬
scious law, miracles with adequate cause are
neither impossible nor unnatural." Of course,
if God is immanent in nature, a miracle cannot
^ Appendix, Lecture VI, Note 3.
^Appendix, Lecture VI, Note 4.
CHARACTER OF CHRISTIANITT. 267
rightly be called an interference. It is certainly
irrational to say that miracles are events without
an adequate cause. God is their cause, and He
surely is adequate.® Why should any thought¬
ful man feel that the Author of nature can never
act for moral ends on what He has created,
especially if He has overwhelmingly important
reasons for such action; if He wishes to show
that He is working in the world not as a blind
force, but as a personal will, having the highest
moral ends in view? We, ourselves, for com¬
monest practical ends, act on nature in such a
way as to overcome or modify her laws. We
throw a stone into the air, and temporarily over¬
come gravitation : we ride in a car, and forces
under human control overcome inertia. As one
has said: "Whoever bakes a loaf of bread brings
into being a thing which the bare forces of na¬
ture, not controlled and assisted by man's will,
could not have produced." If the human will
may thus act, why not the divine will? Mr.
Gladstone has well said: "It can be neither phi¬
losophical nor scientific to proclaim the impossi¬
bility of miracles, until philosophy or science
shall have determined a limit beyond which this
extraneous force of will cannot act upon or de¬
flect the natural order."
It is unreasonable to attack miracles on the
ground of their improbability, coupled with the
probability that the testimony to them is un-
® Appendix, Lecture VI, Note 5.
268 CHRISTIANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
trustworthy. Many improbable things are all the
while taking place. Has not Whately shown
that the history of Bonaparte contains a much
"greater amount of gross and glaring improba¬
bilities than any equal portion of Scripture his¬
tory?" All will agree that the old Greek spoke
wisely who said, "It is probable that many
improbable things will happen." Our lives are
filled with such events. This is a wondrous uni¬
verse, and it may be no more an antecedent
improbability that supernatural signs should
inhere in God's revelation of His redeeming love
to the world than that men two thousand miles
apart should speak to each other, or that the
same subtle force should light and lift and drive
a car, or that Lisbon should have been suddenly
destroyed by an earthquake, or that the mid¬
night should be illumined by suns of inconceiva¬
ble magnitude and unimaginable remoteness.
But we are told by Professor Huxley (and by
Hume before him) that "human testimony to
miracles is not to be trusted." He did not
reject miracles because they are so mysterious
and improbable, for, as he wrote to an English
divine, "The mysteries of the Church are child's
play compared to the mysteries of nature. The
doctrine of the Trinity," he says, "is not more
puzzling than the necessary antinomies of phy¬
sical speculation ; virgin procreation and resusci¬
tation from apparent death are ordinary phe¬
nomena for the naturalist." Therefore, the only
CHARACTER OF CHRISTIANITY. 269
question at issue is this; Is the testimony to the
Gospel miracles conclusive; are the evidences
that the Apostle told the truth sufficient to re¬
move all reasonable doubt? And surely this
question is not to be answered by impugning
human testimony in general, for every one of us
believes many improbable things on human testi¬
mony- Because some testimony is likely to be
false are we to conclude that all testimony is?
Some books are trash. Plato's Republic and
Shakespeare's Tempest are some books. There¬
fore, these great works of the two best heads in
two thousand years are trash ! The scepticism
which lumps together in indiscriminate condem¬
nation and distrust the weak and doubtful testi¬
mony to the so-called miracles of mediaeval
times, and the testimony to our Lord's resur¬
rection, which the Apostles sealed with their
blood, is not grounded on rationality. That
poetical pessimist, the late Matthew Arnold,
may have concluded that historical Christianity
rests on a fairly tale, but his greater father,
Thomas Arnold, a man of sounder judgment,
who made himself a great name in sifting the
legendary from the true in the history of ancient
Rome—this man, according to Dean Stanley,
"placed the supernatural inspiration of the sacred
writers on an imperishable historical basis." And
Niebuhr wrote that ''^the fundamental fact of mir¬
acles must be conceded, unless we adopt the not
merely incomprehensible but absurd hypothesis
270 CHIilSTIANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
that the Holiest was a decçiver and His follow¬
ers either dupes or liars." But dupes or liars
could not have given us such a portrait of per¬
fect personality as shines from the Gospels.
Matthew and John, the publican and the fisher¬
man of Galilee, unless painting from life, would
have left some action or omission to act to stain
the fair picture of an incomparable being, "per¬
fect beyond what the most gifted impostors could
fabricate and beyond what the most enthusiastic
fanatics could have dreamed." We should not
be ready to eulogize every man as a philosopher,
simply because he endeavors to place a miracle
recorded in the Gospels, the chief book of the
world, in connection with such a character as
that of the Universal Man and Saviour, in con¬
nection with such a revelation of divine truth
and love as that which fulfills and completes all
the imperfect and scattered messages of all
eaitil's seers and prophets; a miracle-, recorded
by several men, who were known to be eye-wit¬
nesses, and re-affirmed by many others who had
personal knowledge of the event—men who have
every air of candor and every mark of good
sense, and who made this, and other similar
miracles the substance of their preaching and
testimony through lives of self-sacrifice ending
in martyrdom ; to place such a miracle, I say, on
the same level of improbability or imposture with
an isolated portent, recorded in some mediaeval
chronicle by some one who heard that such and
CHARACTER OF CHRISTIANITY. 271
such a thing occurred, or claimed to have seen
it, but about whose careless testimony there
gathers no such a combination, such a steel-
linked net of weighty probabilities, arguments,
evidences, concurrent, independent, mutually
supporting, confirming, and conclusive, as has
been shown over and over again in connection
with the Gospel narratives. To rank the resur¬
rection of Jesus with the story of a "centaur
trotting down Regent street, in London," and
to compare such an isolated and monstrous and
unmeaning phenomenon with the event which
gave the Church of Christ its being and its
hopes of immortality, and to attempt to dis¬
parage the testimony to the resurrection by ask¬
ing what testimony would make the appearance
of the centaur credible to us, is only to show
that intellectual smartness does not always go
hand in hand with moral depth and serene saga¬
city.
I have said before that we have no authentic
life of Buddha; but we have three, and, if we
add the Gospel of John, four authentic lives of
Jesus the Christ. John's authorship of the fourth
Gospel has been seriously attacked only in the
last sixty years; and, after such defenses of its
Johnanine authorship as those of Weiss, Meyer,
Godet, Ewald, Lightfoot, Professor Ezra Ab¬
bott, Westcott, Sanday, and a score of others,
there is every reason to believe that the author
was a Christian of Jewish origin, that he was a
¿72 CHRISTIANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
Jew of Palestine, that he was a contemporary of
Jesus, that he was an eye-witness of what he
recorded, that he was the disciple whom Jesus
loved, that he was John, the son of Zebedee.
Sceptical scholarship has been forced to put the
proposed date of its authorship farther back than
Baur thought necessary. It is not congruous
with any literature which we have from the
second century. And no one has answered the
question. How could a book of this kind be
palmed off on the churches, including the Church
of Ephesus, where John lived, so soon after his
death? If he did not write the Gospel that
bears his name, how did these disciples in the
churches come to believe he did? Eusebius was
aware of no dispute regarding its authorship.
Origen accounts it among the only undisputed
Gospels of the Church of God under the whole
heavens. There is no defect in the external
evidence, and it bears the marks of being an auto¬
biographic record of a profound and affectionate
soul who had come to believe, and who desired
others to believe, in the supernatural nature
of the Messiah. If, as the testimony of John,
it were not so powerful in establishing the celes¬
tial authority of Christ's mission, the anti-super-
naturalists would not have so violently assailed
it. Traveling back toward the Apostolic age,
we find these four books quoted in numerous
writers as the works of those whose names they
bear; we find them cherished by the early Church
CHARACTER OF CHRISTIANITY. 273
which had no means of knowing whence they
came ; we find them distinguished from other
Christian literature and immeasurably superior
to it ; we find them affirmed to be coeval with
the churches themselves; we find the same evi¬
dences, only more definite and numerous and
strong, for believing them to be genuine, that
we have for believing that Tacitus and Livy
wrote the works which bear their names. And
opening these brief, artless narratives, where the
silences are as wonderful as the things said, we
find, as one has written, that "they abound in
allusions to places, local customs, characteristic
ideas, and feelings, such as no counterfeiter,
writing at a later day, could have brought into
the narratives."
It was not until six hundred years after Bud¬
dha lived that the Tri-pitaka, (boxes or baskets),
were committed to writing in the Pali language.
In a word, as it has been said, "Buddhism knows
nothing of sacred documents or a canon of
Scripture contemporary with its first disciples."
Professor Romanes calls our attention to the sig¬
nal victory for Christianity in the great textual
battle of the last hundred years, making certain
the publication of the Synoptics, at least, within
the first century. The early date of Paul's great
Epistles was, of course, the death of the myth¬
ical theory- Moreover, myths belong to the
dawn and not the decadence of nations, and the
Jewish disciples, if the myth-making fancy had
274 CHRISriANITT, THE WORLD-RELÍGION.
been brought to life, would have created a Christ
essentially different from Him who appears in
the Gospels and who disapproved so many of
their cherished ideals.
Now there are some things that all will
admit :—that Christianity is probably the greatest
fact with which the world has to do ; that it had
an origin; that it originated with Jesus, aman
springing from a nation that was expecting a
Messiah; that one Saul of Tarsus, a persecutor
of Christians, was persuaded that Jesus had risen
from the dead, and gave his life to publishing
this new faith ; that the Christians so multiplied,
in spite of attacks on every hand, that in the reign
of Nero, in the year sixty-four, a great number,
as Tacitus tells us, were killed or tortured by
that monster in Rome; that in the year iii,
according to Pliny, these Christians were so
numerous in Pontus and Bithynia that the
heathen altars were nearly deserted, and that
early in the fourth century Christianity became
the religion of the Roman Empire. It is ad¬
mitted, that the Gospels and the Acts are his¬
tories, giving a generally truthful account of the
beginnings of Christianity, leaving out as dis¬
puted the miraculous elements. But the mir¬
aculous elements alone are adequate to account
for the conquering energy of the disciple's faith
and the success which followed the tremendous
claims of Jesus. They would naturally belong
to the powers and the mission of such a person
CHARACTER OF CHRISTIANITT. 275
as Christ is represented to have been. He cer¬
tainly claimed to be the divine Messiah. The
claims of Buddha and Mohammed were on
an infinitely lower level. He asserted super¬
natural authority. And how could He reveal
Himself so as to be known as the Messiah, un¬
less by some supernatural tokens, and how could
the Apostles, except by the same evidences,
prove His Messiahship? As one has said: "Here
were no victories, no conquests, no revolutions,
no surprising elevation of fortune, no achieve¬
ments of valor, of strength, or of policy to ap¬
peal to, no discoveries in any art or science, no
great efforts of learning or genius to produce.
A Galilean peasant is announced to the world as
the Divine Lawgiver. A young man of mean
condition, of a private and simple life, and who
had wrought no deliverance for the Jewish na¬
tion, was declared to be their Messiah. This,
without ascribing to Him, at the same time, some
proofs of His mission (and what other but super¬
natural truths could there be?), was too absurd a
claim to be either imagined or attempted or
credited." The system of truth which originated
with a Jewish Carpenter and a few fishermen
could not have made its way to such wide, early
acceptance, against the hostility of Jerusalem,
Athens, and Rome, against synagogue and philos¬
ophic school and armed antagonism, against all
the external forces of imperial civilization, and
against the obdurate wickedness of the human
276 CHRISTIANITY, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
heart, unless it had been accompanied by the
signature of the Almighty. The conquest of
Mohammedanism and Buddhism may be ex¬
plained in other ways, but not that of Chris¬
tianity.
In looking at the historic conditions of our
faith we must not forget that these biographies,
which are the literary basis of Christianity, give
us the impression of truthfulness, and so strong
an impression that frequently the best tonic for
enfeebled faith is to read and ponder with rever¬
ent heart, these simple and self-evidencing nar¬
ratives. The Gospels give no impression that
the writers were either weak-minded, fanciful, or
untruthful. The Church challenges attention to
these records. ''It is the test of Christianity's
legitimate tenure, that it can encourage free in¬
quiry into its title-deeds." These records were
given to the Church in an age of civilization, of
clear and searching inquiry; and the impression
of truthfulness which the Gospels make is
always deepened when one turns from them to
read the legends of Hercules and Krishna, the
grotesque stories in the sacred book of the
Shinto, the confused accounts of the life of
Buddha, and the accretion of myths which fol¬
lowed the performances of mediaeval miracle-
working saints or the so-called Apocryphal Gos¬
pels, where the writers give reckless scope to
their fancies in ascribing fictitious marvels to
Jesus of Nazareth. I scarcely see how better
CHARACTER OF CHRISTIANITY. 277
witnesses of historic fact could have been chosen
than those whom Jesus summoned to His side
and trained for their life-mission. "They are
qualified as witnesses because free from all pre¬
occupation with ideas and systems; they were
plain men who could receive the impress of
facts, who could tell a simple, plain tale, and
show by their lives how much they believed it ;
and they were trained to be witnesses. Jesus
Christ intended His Gospel to rest on facts; and
in correspondence with this intention the whole
stress in the Apostolic Church was laid on wit¬
ness." Then remember how the evidence of the
four evangelists is strengthened by the impor¬
tant testimony of the apostle Paul, who, in his
Epistles, which are earlier than the Gospels, nar¬
rates in detail the various appearances of Christ
after the resurrection, and refers to many of the
chief facts of the Gospels as well known and uni¬
versally received among churches reaching all the
way from Italy to the heart of Asia Minor.
Paul, writing in the midst of the men who knew
Christ personally, nearly five hundred of whom
were living witnesses of the resurrection, whose
names were known and who could be found and
questioned, this Apostle, in various literature
which cannot be disputed, gives his mighty ad¬
ditional testimony to the truth of the Gospel
History-
How can this universal faith in the historic
character of the life and resurrection of Jesus as
278 CHRISTIANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
we have it, this faith which permeated the early
Church, be explained without granting the truth
of the Gospel narrative? A recent writer has
said that "several have tried their hands at a
solution of the hard problem, each in turn
criticising his predecessor's theory, and alto¬
gether by their mutual criticisms making the
work of refuting sceptical views on this subject
a comparatively easy task for the apologist."
On the eve of the crucifixion the Church was virtu¬
ally annihilated. The disciples were scattered,
fearful, hopeless. On the day of Pentecost the
Church is victorious, uplifted, having a world-
victory in its heart of hopeful faith. During
these fifty days "something happened" to work
the mighty transformation; "something hap¬
pened" to turn cowards into heroes, shirks into
apostles; "something happened" to lift a com¬
pany of timid, heart-broken men and women into
the regenerators of mankind ; whose lines of spir¬
itual energy have gone out into all the earth,
whose arms of loving force have toppled down
ancient systems, girded the world with hands of
splendor and lifted torches of spiritual light on the
mountains of Europe, America, India, China,
Japan, Africa, which have become the beacon-
fires of a universal faith! What that "some¬
thing" was, no Christian on the earth doubted
on the day of Pentecost. The Church believed
with all its heart, and proclaimed with tongues
of fire, that Jesus had risen from the dead.
CHARACTER OF CHRISTIANITV. 279
Primitive Christianity cannot be explained with¬
out this belief. Channing has said: ''A history
received by a people as true, not only gives us
the testimony of the writer, but the testimony
of the nation among whom it finds credit."
The earliest disciples, in the capital of Judaism,
appealed to the enemies of Christ for the truth
of Christ's miracles; and this appeal was not
contradicted by the Jews, as it unquestionably
would have been had these miracles been an in¬
vention of a few followers of Christ. Peter said
on the day of Pentecost, within seven weeks
from the time of Christ's resurrection, "Ye men
of Israel, hear these words; Jesus of Nazareth,
a man approved of God unto you by mighty
works, and wonders, and signs, which God did
by Him in the midst of you, even as ye your¬
selves know."
In his two letters to the Church in Corinth, in
his letter to the Church in Rome, in his letter to
the Church in Galatia, Paul calls attention to
the fact of Christ's victory over the grave as the
central fact of faith and of life. The truth is that
the life-blood of every book in the New Testa¬
ment is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. In the
four Epistles of Paul referred to, and which re¬
morseless criticism, has left untouched, letters
written within about twenty-five years of the
death of Christ, letters which are, in time, as
near to the resurrection of Jesus as we are to the
close of the Franco-German war, Paul communi-
28o CHRIS TIANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
cates with the churches in Asia, Italy, and Greece,
among whom the fact of Christ's resurrection
was unchallenged. This is a part of the historic
foundation on which Christendom is built. It is
fortunate that men have tried to undermine it,
because these attempts have not only shown the
impregnability of our rock, but they have called
the attention of the Church away from its
ecclesiastical divisions to Him who is the unify¬
ing factor in Christendom, and who is our
strength, and life, and common heritage. All
the explanations by which the materialists and
rationalists would explain away this supreme
event, the various theories propounded and urged
with subtlety and ingenuity, to the effect that
Christ did not die, but that His ghastly, emaci¬
ated body, just recovering from its swoon, came
forth on the third day to inspire his stricken fol¬
lowers and make them feel that He was the
glorious Lord of Life; or that His body was
stolen by the disciples, who founded the Church
on fraud ; or that the body was stolen by His
enemies, who refused to stamp out the early faith
in the resurrection, as they might easily have
done, and as, in their merciless hate, they cer¬
tainly would have done; or that the risen Jesus
was only a fancy created by the imagination of
the hysterical Mary Magdalene, or was a crea¬
ture of the faith of the other disciples, who felt
that their hero could not die,—all these, and
other theories, do not explain ; they signally fail
CHARACTER OF CHRISTIANITT. 281
to account for the intense, invincible, primitive
faith, and leave the early history of the Church
an unsolved enigma. This may be said, even
of the theory of Keim, who admits that the
appearances of Christ were not hallucinations,
and who claims that Jesus produced, from His
spiritual state, manifestations which the Apostles
and others mistook for bonâ fide corporeal mani¬
festations! He gave them spiritual apparitions
to assure them that He was still alive; sent them
telegrams, as it were, and thus cheered them,
and stirred in them new hope," Of course,
this telegram hypothesis goes," as Dr. Bruce
has said, "beyond the limits of naturalism," but
the theory "has the disadvantage of being
obliged to tamper with the Gospel narratives,"
and besides, it makes Christ responsible for de¬
ceiving his followers into believing the resurrec¬
tion a historic fact. "If the resurrection be an
unreality, if the body that was nailed to the tree
never came forth from the tomb, why send
messages that were certain to cause the apostles,
and through them, the whole Christian Church,
to believe a lie? Truly, this is a poor founda¬
tion to build Christendom on, a bastard super-
naturalism as objectional to unbelievers as the
true supernaturalism of the Catholic creed, and
having the additional drawback that it offers to
faith, asking for bread, a stone."
The early Church, believing with all its heart
and soul in the great facts of the Gospel, would
282 CHRISTIANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
not have braved and suffered so much for a his¬
torical uncertainty; such men and women would
not have died for a guess or a ghostly vision or
an idle tale. The rapid progress and triumph of
the Church not only evidenced the fervor of
their faith, but indirectly the truth of the history
on which the Church's faith and life was founded.
There probably never was so unequal a contest
as that between Christianity and the Roman
world. And when we ask why Christian men
were so zealous and successful in spreading the
new doctrine which brought them only disrepute ;
why they had such self-denying enthusiasm, and
were pervaded by such profound faith in immor¬
tality, and in that Christ who had brought life
and immortality to light ; why in that age of
utter selfishness, they were so loving and self-
sacrificing; why they were so confident in regard
to the future, when the world generally had be¬
come so sceptical; why they manifested such
virtues, far above the men about them, and lived
as brethren in their church-life in the midst of a
hate-ridden world, and were able to mould at last
the hard and cruel Roman Empire to their
thoughts; we strike, immediately, their faith in
that wonderful history which was the substance
of their preaching, their belief in Christ's resur¬
rection, the supreme evidence of immortality; we
strike their belief in a divine Person, who was
their risen and redeeming King, to whom they
were bound by a deathless love, who inspired in
CHARACTER OF CHRISTIAXITT. 283
them every active and passive virtue, and before
whose majesty all were equal and all should be
loving.
Whoever, by his philosophy, denies the pos¬
sibility of miracles, not only begs the question in
advance, not only turns the early history of the
Church ''into a batch of insoluble problems,"
following the footsteps of men who have tried by
miracles of interpretation to disprove and dis¬
place the miracles of Jesus, but he also darkens
and narrows the sphere of his own thinking, the
horizon of his own hopes, and gradually or sud¬
denly robs his soul of that divinest conception of
God which has ever gladdened and glorified our
race, a God revealed in Him of Nazareth. But
that we cannot rationally tear out the miracles
is evident from the fact that they are recorded
with the same air of truthfulness and utter can¬
dor with the other events; they are a chief part
of books in which the writers, who are evidently
not simpletons or frauds, relate many things to
their own discredit, how they contended with
their Master, how they quarreled, how they for¬
sook their Leader in His hour of trouble ; from the
fact that when men invent the miraculous they
fall into the silliness of the Apocryphal gospels,
which are no more like the tone of the true ones
than the Book of Mormon is like the Sermon on
the Mount; from the fact that many of the
recorded sayings of Christ, which are evidently
genuine, involve the reality of the miracles, as
284 CHRISTIANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
where Jesus said, "Go and tell John the blind
receive their sight, the lepers are cleansed, the
dead are raised up;" from the fact that while
miracles were valued as signs from heaven, they
were not over-valued ; from the fact that the
Apostles and first witnesses, having every oppor¬
tunity to know the truth about Jesus, staked and
gave up their lives in prolonged and solemn
attestation of what they assuredly knew; from
the fact that there was not among them or
among the people, an easy and universal ten¬
dency to believe in the miraculous. The Apos¬
tles were slow to accept the chief of the miracles,
the resurrection. The people were awe-struck
by some of the miracles. "Since the world be¬
gan it has not been heard that any one opened
the eyes of one born blind!" "No man," said
the learned and cautious Nicodemus, "can do
these miracles that Thou doest, except God be
with Him." There was among the Apostles no
appetite for the marvelous, no spirit that would
beget credulity, as is plain from the wonderful
simplicity and quietness of their records. If
they had been forgers, or crazy for miracles,
why did they record their own failure to work a
miracle, and why not connect some miracle with
so marvelous and great a prophet as John the
Baptist, the herald of their Messiah, whose testi¬
mony they so highly valued? We cannot tear
out the miracles from the Gospels without sink¬
ing the Apostles to the level of fools or deceivers,
CHARACTER OF CHRISTIANITY. 285
a conclusion which is irrational, both from what
they have written, from the lives they lived, and
from the incomparable grandeur of the portrait
they have drawn of Jesus Christ.
A thousand Shakespeares could not have im¬
agined such a character, and dupes and liars could
not have given us such a picture of a perfect
personality as shines from the evangelic pages.
Those men of practical and almost prosaic minds
were not equal to the work for which a hundred
Dantes and Miltons would have been incom¬
petent, that is if Christ as portrayed in the Gos¬
pels, is not true to history. That character was
evidently drawn from the life, and this alone "is
sufficient to demonstrate the truth of the Gospel
history." His presence in it for ever vindicates
its reality. It was natural that such a being as
the sinless Christ, who, with all his genuine hu¬
manity, manifestly did not belong to the world ;
it was natural that the Holy One of Nazareth,
whose touch is the life of our civilization to-day,
whose spirit is the very breath of God, should
do the works of the Father. Supernatural signs
are the jewels which naturally adorn the brow of
this celestial King. He who spake with the ten¬
derness, the holiness, and the authority of God,
and with assertions of His super-human origin
and power, is to be believed when He claims to
do the works of heaven.
Therefore, we conclude with Peter, that "we
did not follow cunningly devised fables when we
286 CHRISTIANITY, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
made known to you the power and coming of
our Lord Jesus Christ." And John adds:
"That which was from the beginning, that which
we have heard, that which we have seen with
our eyes, that which we beheld, and our hands
have handled, concerning the Word of Life
—these things we write unto you," and the
church, with firm voice, answers: We believe in
God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and
earth, and in Jesus Christ His only Son, our
Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost,
born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius
Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried; He de¬
scended into Hades; the third day He arose
again from the dead ; he ascended into heaven,
and sitteth at the right hand of God the Father
Almighty; from thence he shall come to judge
the quick and the dead. We believe in the
Holy Ghost, the Holy Catholic Church, the
Commmunion of Saints, the Forgiveness of sins,
the Resurrection of the body, and the Life Ever¬
lasting."
We believe that the forces which command
the future of the world are already marshalled,
and shall yet be harmonized, purified, and victori¬
ous. The creed of historic Christianity has
known eighteen hundred years of discussion ; it
has never known defeat, and it does not purpose
now to revise its doctrine by abandoning the
heart and brain of the Christian confession.
The Church of God, built on the Incarnation
CHARACTER OF CHRISTIAXFTV. 2S7
and Resurrection, and holding from her temple's
topmost spire the Cross, has seen imperial do¬
mains, and hoary superstitions, and theologies of
error, and ten thousand airy speculations disap¬
pear, while she steadily expands her sheltering
walls, and opens her shining gates to encompass
all nations.
Oh, where are kings and empires now
Of old that went and came?
But Lord, thy Church is praying yet,
A thousand years the same.
We mark her goodly battlements,
And her foundations strong.
And hear within the solemn voice
Of her unending song.
Unshaken as eternal hills
Immovable she stands,
A mountain that shall fill the earth —
A house not made with hands!
I am grateful for the kind sympathy with
which you have followed me over the mountain
peaks and down into the valleys in our swift
progress through this course of Lectures. I
have endeavored to speak the truth in love.
While setting forth the claims of Christianity,
I have not intentionally done injustice to the
teachings of Mohammed, to the ethics of Con¬
fucius, nor to whatever is true and beautiful in
the sacred literatures of India. You will bear me
witness that I have rejoiced in the excellences of
doctrine taught by the prophets of many faiths.
This Lectureship has endeavored to enter sympa-
288 CHRISTIANITl', THE WORLD-RELIGION.
thetically the heart "of the tired and dust-stained
pilgrim praying earnestly to the thousand-handed
goddess of mercy" at the shrines of Japan. It
has looked for the true and good everywhere,
and has seen in the less perfect religions prophe¬
cies of that glorious fullness of truth and grace
found in the Christian Gospel. I have com¬
pared the kingdom and revelation of Christ to
the majestic Cathedral of Cologne. If the great
cathedral of historic Christianity, whose archi¬
tecture I have described to-day, enshrines the Son
of God, then it is a temple which must cover the
earth. If Christianity, as revealed in the Gos¬
pels, is true, then it must become universal.
It is said that the Hindu girls make from the
shell of the cocoanut a little boat, place a small
lamp and flowers within it, and launch it on the
Ganges. If it floats out of sight with its lamp
still burning, the omen is propitious: if it sinks,
the love of which it questions is ill-fated.
Float on, float on, my haunted bark! Above the midnight
tide,
Bear softly o'er the waters dark the hopes that with thee
glide.
Float on, float on; thy freight is flowers, and every flower
reveals
The dreaming of my lonely hours, the hope my spirit feels.
Float on, float on, thou shining lamp! The light of love is
there;
If lost beneath the waters deep, that love must then despair.
Float on; beneath the moonlight float the sacred billows
o'er.
Ah! some kind spirit guides my boat, for it hath gained the
shore!
CHARACTER OF CHRISTIANITY. 2S9
So Christian love has sent out its boat upon
the Ganges and upon all the streams which glide
by the mosques and temples -and tombs of the
land of the sun. The lamp of God's word is
within that bark. It has been tossed on many
rough waves, it has seen buried beneath the
waters many saintly souls; but it is surely guarded
by Him who held of old the seven stars in His
right hand, and who walketh now among the
seven golden candlesticks of the churches. It
shall touch millennial shores.
THE WORLD'S PARLIAMENT OF
RELIGIONS.
God is no respecter of persons; but in every nation he
that feareth Him and worketh righteousness is acceptable
to Him. Acts X. 35.
Not many events a century hence will be found to have
exerted a more wide-spread influence than this coming
together of the representatives of the world's religions.—
President William R. Harper, D.D.
I can think of nothing more impressive than such an
assemblage of the representatives of all the children of our
Heavenly Father, convened to tell each other what witness
he has given them of Himself, what light He has afforded
them in the awful mysteries of life and death.—Whittier.
I dreamed
That stone by stone I reared a sacred fane,
A temple; neither Pagod, Mosque, nor Church,
But loftier, simpler, always open-doored
To every breath from Heaven; and Truth and Peace
And Love and Justice came and dwelt therein.
—Tennyson "Akbar's Dream."
The results of this gathering will be more manifold
than any single eye can trace; interest has been aroused,
sympathy evoked, truth brought to light, devotion quick¬
ened, and the immense fact of the practical universality of
religion and the vast diffusion of certain great primary ele¬
ments of faith has received a demonstration of significance
such as it never won before.—Professor J. Estlin Car¬
penter, D.D., Oxford.
SEVENTH LECTURE.
THE WORLD'S PARLIAMENT OF RELIGIONS.*
It has been my pleasure to speak to many
hundreds of the Native Christians of India who
represent in so large a measure the future of this
wondrous land. When I remember the environ¬
ments of their lives, the inherited prejudices, the
tyrannical caste-customs, the atmosphere of
superstition and hostility, I regard these Chris¬
tian communities as more wonderful exhibitions
of the power of God, our gracious Father and
Creator, than the majestic heights of the Hima¬
layas; and I deem it one of the chief privileges
of my visit to India that I am able in any meas¬
ure to bring encouragement and inspiration to
these, my fellow-disciples, whose allegiance to
Christ has often shown itself heroic.
There is one theme of constant and vital inter¬
est to the people of India on which I have fre¬
quently spoken in other cities, and which is to
be the subject of my remarks to-night. Having
given time during four years to promoting, or¬
ganizing, and conducting the Parliament of Re-
* An address before the Native Christian Conference of
Madras.
293
294 CHRÍSTIANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
ligions, and to preparing and publishing its
proceedings, and having had occasion and op¬
portunity to read what has been written about
that meeting, in all parts of the world, I am able
to speak of its purposes, spirit, and result with
accurate knowledge. It seems important that
correct information should be diffused, since mis¬
leading and ridiculously inaccurate reports are in
some places current. At the very outset let it
be understood that Christian America, as repre¬
sented by most of the leading Christian journals,
and the great body of her more eminent Chris¬
tian scholars, has approved the Parliament from
its inception until now. Nothing would appear
more absurd to well-informed people in my own
land and in Great Britain than the assertion that
churches had been closed and Christian faith
shaken by the advocacy in Western Christen¬
dom of the claims of Oriental faiths. There is
nothing more grotesque and ridiculous in any of
the mythologies than the rumors as to the wide
acceptance in America and England of Oriental
philosophies as substitutes for Christianity. The
courtesy and curiosity of the American people
have been misunderstood. The apostles of non-
Christian faiths have been received with interest
and with admiration, and they have done some¬
thing to quicken a desire for further knowledge
of Eastern modes of thought. I believe that
America will always be hospitable to persons and
to ideas. But to affirm that American Christianity
JVOIÍLD'S PARLIAMENT OF RELIGIONS. 295
has been shaken by the Eastern speakers at the
Parliament of Religions is as absurdly incredible
to every one who knows, as to say that a child's
hand has pushed back the current of the Ganges.
Almost a half-million new members last year
espoused the cause of Christ in the Protestant
churches of the United States. The progress of
the Christian faith in America has been as marked
as ever before. And the interest in foreign
missions and the willingness to give were never
greater. And I have yet to hear that, notwith¬
standing the recent revival of Hinduism, Chris¬
tian progress in India has been less marked than
formerly. I believe, with one of the Arcot
missionaries, that the revival of Hinduism is "a
hopeful rather than a discouraging sign." Spir¬
itual lethargy ''has at last yielded to the power¬
ful influence of Christianity, and it is only
natural that waking from their long sleep they
should first turn to the old religion to satisfy
their spiritual wants." I have believed, and I
am glad to find my faith shared by so many mis¬
sionaries, that we should joyfully and thankfully
recognize all elements of truth and goodness dis¬
coverable in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islâm.
The sympathetic method of approach is Pauline,
—wise, necessary, and fruitful of best results.
The Parliament of Religions should be looked
at with no narrow or one-sided vision. It should
not be judged solely from what we deem the
accuracy or inaccuracy, the worthiness or the
296 CHRISTIANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
unvvorthiness, of the representation made in Chi¬
cago by the advocate of that particular non-
Christian faith in which we are most interested.
It should be considered in a large way, with a
full knowledge of its generous and lofty pur¬
poses, its noble constituency made up of men
and women of many nations, the full reports of
its public proceedings, and a wide acquaintance
with its chief results.
The Parliament of Religions was not like the
Emperor Asoka's conference, a meeting of In¬
dian Buddhists only; it was not like the Emperor
Akbar's little debating society, where rival
priests of several faiths contended before him,
like mediaeval knights, in no spirit of fellowship
and fraternity, each anxious for an imperial ver¬
dict in his favor.^ The Parliament was the first
meeting in history where the representatives of
the world's chief religions, coming from many
lands, conferred together in a great public assem¬
bly, with full liberty to utter their deepest
thoughts and convictions with the assurance of a
calm and sympathetic hearing. The objects pro¬
posed for this meeting by those who conducted
it, were so large and generous as to win the
favor of thousands of the leading minds among
many nations and many faiths. Chief Rabbi
Adler, of Great Britain, suggested the words of
the prophet Micah, as the motto for the meet¬
ing, "Have we not all one Father? Hath not
' Appendix, Lecture VII, Note i.
WORLD'S PARLIAMENT OF RELIGIONS. 297
one God created us?" The Christian scholars
who co-operated with the Parliament, often
quoted the words of the Apostle Peter: "I per¬
ceive that God is no respecter of persons, but in
every nation he that feareth God and worketh
righteousness is acceptable to Him." Christian
theologians of wide knowledge, beholding the
elements of good in all religions, remembered
the declaration made in the Fourth Gospel, that
Christ is the original light, enlightening every
man that cometh into the world. We believe
that God is the God, not only of one people,
but of all peoples; that He is the loving Father
of all mankind; and that His children, more or
less enlightened, should live together, and there¬
fore have the privilege of meeting together as
brethren. Those of us who devoutly hold to
the supremacy and sufficiency of Christianity,
the Christianity of Christ, took for our guide the
courteous and sympathetic spirit of the Apostle
Paul when he addressed the non-Christian think¬
ers of Athens.
Among the objects proposed for the Parlia¬
ment were these: To deepen the spirit of human
brotherhood without fostering any temper of in-
differentism ; to show men what are the com¬
mon truths of different religions; to set forth
the distinctive truths of each; to inquire what
light one religion may throw upon another; to
indicate the foundations of theism and the rea¬
sons for faith in immortality; and to strengthen
298 CHRISTIANTTT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
the forces adverse to materialism. Here was
surely a large field into which Christianity might
enter with joyful and exultant confidence. It
is no wonder that with such ideas and purposes
the organizers of the Congress secured the ad¬
hesion of many of the foremost men of Christen¬
dom, including Christian statesmen, like Mr.
Gladstone, leading divines of all Christian na¬
tions, missionaries and missionary secretaries of
high repute. Christian poets like Tennyson and
Whittier, and many eminent ecclesiastics, in¬
cluding the Roman Catholic hierarchy of Amer¬
ica, and twenty-three Bishops of the Anglican
Communion.'^ With these ideas and feelings the
promoters of this great religious council toiled on
year after year, finding helpers in nearly all
lands, and nowhere more earnest and generous-
hearted friends than in India, among men be¬
longing to different Confessions. On the eleventh
of September, 1893, our labors and hopes reached
their fulfillment. With representatives of ten
religions gathered beneath one roof, and with a
Catholic Cardinal repeating the universal prayer
of the world's Saviour, the Parliament opened.
It was indeed a meeting of brotherhood, where
"the Brahman forgot his caste, and the Catholic
was chiefly conscious of his catholicity;" and
where in the audience "the variety of interests,
faiths, ranks, and races was as great as that found
on the platform." As the representatives of
^Appendix, Lecture VII, Note 2.
WORLD'S PARLIAMENT OF RELIGIONS. 299
China, Japan, Russia, Germany, Hindustan,
Sweden, and Norway, Greece, France, Africa, the
United States, and the all-clasping Empire of
Great Britain, from England to India and New
Zealand, uttered their thoughts and feelings,
multitudes entered anew into the spirit of the
Nazarene Prophet, who seemed always to include
the whole world in His purpose and affection.
Nearly all great events to-day are the result of
the ages which have preceded, but the special
preparations for this meeting were the almost uni¬
versal prevalence of Christian missions, the rise
and study of comparative religion, the wide use
of the English language making such a confer¬
ence possible, international facilities for travel,
the attractive opportunity afforded by a World's
Exposition, much hard work, extending over
more than three years, and ample religious free¬
dom in America. So-called liberal Christians
naturally looked upon it as one of their triumphs,
but they alone could not have gained the co-op¬
eration of historic Christendom. Liberal-minded
Jews saw in it the fulfilment of the prophecy
that the knowledge of Jehovah should cover the
earth, but Judaism alone could not have achieved
a convention of Christians. The Brahmo-Somaj
of India regarded the Parliament as fulfilling the
ideas of the New Dispensation,^ but the Brahmo-
Somaj would have been unable to draw together
the representatives of the great faiths. No
® Appendix, Lecture VII, Note 3.
30Ü CHRISTIANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
Christian missionary society could have achieved
the Parliament, for the fear of aggressive propa-
gandism would have kept out the non-Christian
world. No ecclesiastical body in Christendom,
whether Catholic, Greek, Anglican, or Lutheran,
could have assembled the Parliament. No
kingly and imperial government in which the
church and state are united could have gathered
it, and no republican government, where church
and state are separated, would have deemed it a
part of its ofhce to summon it. But, as one
element of an international exposition, and con¬
trolled by a generous-minded and representative
committee under no ecclesiastical dictation,
appealing in the spirit of fraternity to high-
minded individuals, the Parliament was possible,
and was actualized.
I believe that the forces which, working
through ages, culminated in this conference of
the world's faiths are the intellectual and spir¬
itual movements which make the Gulf Stream of
history. These forces come, as I believe, from
the Bible, which is the text-book of a universal
religion; they come from the Christ, the Unifier
of Humanity, who offered Himself for the life of
the whole world; these forces are linked with
that growing spirit of brotherhood which is
breaking down the walls of caste and of national
antipathy. And when on that September morn¬
ing the hopes and toils of years were realized,
and the President of the World's Congress
WORLD'S PARLIAMENT OF RELIGIONS. 301
Auxiliary and the President of the Columbian
Exposition, accompanied by a Catholic Car¬
dinal of America, and a Catholic Archbishop
from New Zealand, and a Greek Archbishop
from Zante, by representatives of the imperial
government of China, by Buddhist priests and
scholars from Ceylon and Japan, by representa¬
tives of the Brahmo-Somaj of India, by mis¬
sionaries of the Orient, by Mohammedans, Hin¬
dus, and Jains, by a Russian and an African
prince, by a high priest of Shintoism, and by a
score of the representative men and women of
America, entered the hall of Columbus and
joined in an act of common worship to Almighty
God ; when the immense assembly sang
Before Jehovah's awful throne,
Ye nations bow with sacred joy;
Know that the Lord is God alone;
He can create, and He destroy
thousands realized that they were present at a
never-to-be-forgotten event in human history.
A Christian divine and philosopher has written:
"It was the greatest experience of my life. I
never expect a repetition of the sight and the
thrill of that opening morning hour until I stand
before the throne above. For seventeen days
the Parliament continued. One hundred and
fifty thousand people attended its sessions. It
was full of the highest religious enthusiasm from
first to last. At times the scenes were Pente-
* Appendix, Lecture VII, Note 4.
302 CHRISTIANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
costal. Principal Grant, of Queen's University,
Kingston, Canada, writes: "The spirit of the
Parliament of Religions was the spirit of Jesus
Christ. As 'the spectator of all time and of all
existence,' He alone perfectly realized Plato's
ideal of a philosopher. He saw in vision all
nations gathered before His tribunal. Looking
back on all the prophets. He says, 'They wrote of
me.' Looking forward. He says, 'I am with you
to the end of the world.' He always occupied
that high point of view, the best of us only for
a moment. But on the morning the Parlia¬
ment opened and the representatives of human¬
ity met together to tell one another what God
had done for their souls, or how they had been
groping for Him, with the sole object that all
should share as brothers in the rich inheritance
of His grace, we stood for some hours on the
Mount of Vision. What an object-lesson to the
world that the spiritual is the highest, or rather
the only possible, interpretation of the universe."
The Parliament, through its literature, has
done something to widen the world's interest in
universal religion. What study should broaden
the bounds of intellectual and moral sympathy
like this? Should it not give to the heart an
expansion like that which astronomy has given
to the brain? We, ourselves, are heirs of all
that has been; we feel the touch of hands which
became dust when Nineveh was destroyed, and
hear the sound of pathetic voices that were
WOJÍLD'S PARLIAMENT OF RELIGIONS. 303
stilled before the Argive keels grated on the
shores of Ilium or the Aryan races made their
way to the plains of India. The sceptered spirits
of the Past rule us from urns older than the
Druidic circles of Stonehenge, or the rock-hewn
temples of Elephanta, from urns as ancient as
the burial-places of the Egyptian dead.
And the study of religion in its entirety should
be a mighty re-enforcement to faith. The
spiritual facts and problems, in their majesty and
universality, must awe the careless mind into
reverence and rebuke the shallow skepticism,
which dismisses the greatest fact of man's de¬
velopment as a baseless superstition. History
itself is an unsolved problem without God, who
is the interpreter as well as the director of human
progress. If we leave out the Divine Provi¬
dence, what can it- be but an evolution with no
eternal intelligence, no infinite energy, no all-
wise and fore-seeing purpose back of it? And
surely history reaches not its highest worth until
it rises to God. Some of its chief records must
be erased if we omit the names of Abraham and
Moses, of David, Isaiah, and Socrates, of Paul
and John, of Confucius and Buddha and Mo¬
hammed, of Constantino and Athanasius, of
Charlemagne and Bernard, of Luther and Crom¬
well, and the mighty muster-roll of the sages,
prophets and heroes of faith. If religion is sim¬
ply a fading superstition, how does it happen
that it maintains its hold and makes its swiftest
304 CHRISTIANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
progress in an age of scientific knowledge, like
our own? Mr. Kidd informs us that there is no
tendency whatever to eliminate the super-rational
element from religions. One who was acquainted
with the British Association for the Advance¬
ment of Science under forty-one different presi¬
dents, said of them, after examining their re¬
ligious positions, that "The figures indicate that
religious faith, rather than unbelief, has character¬
ized the leading men of the Association." And
a well-known expounder of evolution has written
that science, "instead of robbing the world of
God has done more than all the philosophies and
natural theologies of the past to sustain and
enrich the theistic conception."
The Parliament gave mankind the first oppor¬
tunity of studying religion, not in its fragments,
but in its entirety, as represented in one historic
assemblage. The impression which it made and
is making on the unbelieving and secular world
is salutary. The Columbian Exposition, which
accentuated the material glories of modern civili¬
zation, needed the Parliament of Religions to
bring the human mind back to the great world
of the Spirit. Many regretfully remember that
the architectural splendors of the Columbian
Fair have nearly all vanished. But the Parlia¬
ment of Religions has just begun to live. As
one has said: "It fitted into the growing con¬
sciousness of Christianity and the race. It has
become one of the milestones in humanity's
WOHLDES PARLIAMENT OF RELIGIONS. 305
progress." "In a quite unexampled way,"
writes President Warren, of the Boston Uni¬
versity, "it helped, if it did not force every body
of religionists in the world to come to a sharper
consciousness of the defects and weaknesses of
its own system, so far as it is at present actual¬
ized. This was a gain to all, and especially a
gain to the cause of spiritual ideals the world
over." One of the acutest philosophical think¬
ers of America, Professor John Bascom, has
written: "No religious faith can be perfectly
understood by its several items of belief alone.
We must understand the hold which a belief has
on the minds of those who have thoroughly ab¬
sorbed it. It is from this point of view that a
Parliament of Religions becomes so instructive.
It brings together those who can offer in their
most vital forms the faiths of the world, and so
enables us to measure the spiritual forces opera¬
tive among men." "The Parliament," writes
Professor Bruce, of Glasgow, "may help to dis¬
pel pessimistic ideas of ethnic religions, and
suggest the desirableness of conducting mission
work in the sympathetic spirit of the Pauline
thought, 'God not far from every one of us'."
An American missionary in Constantinople
has truly described the idea which pervaded the
Congress as this: "That every form and develop¬
ment of religious faith and cultus should have
a candid hearing, be understood, and its adher¬
ents treated with respect, courtesy, and affection;
3O6 CHRISTIANITY, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
also that Christianity should be choked down no
man's throat, but that all men should be invited
to receive it for their good, intelligently invited
to an intelligent reception."
Professor Thayer, of Harvard University,
writes: "The very conception of such a gather¬
ing as the Parliament is a product of the Christian
Religion. It could hardly have originated under
any other faith. So far from involving peril to
a genuine and intelligent believer in Christianity,
it affords him the readiest help in appreciating
the greatness of his Christian inheritance. Only
by a comparison can superiority be discovered.
Only by comparison can the latent resources of
truth, fellowship, of service, resident in the Gos¬
pel, come to recognition. Only by learning the
best about the ethnic faiths, can the Christian
missionary show how much that is better than
their best he has to offer. The headshakings of
over-timid believers make one long for a repe¬
tition of Peter's vision and Paul's sermon; that
the Church may be taught once more that there
is something commendable even in heathen re¬
ligiosity. Such lessons will no more chill mis¬
sionary zeal in the nineteenth century than they
did in the first."
We are conscious that vast progress in the
education of humanity has glorified the last hun¬
dred years. Men have come to a broader con¬
ception of human rights and duties. The indi¬
vidual is more highly regarded, and, at the same
WORLD'S PARLIAMENT OF RELIGIONS. 307
time, a false and selfish individualism is rejected.
Divided and scattered peoples of one race have
been brought into national unity, and the nations
which make up Western Christendom have com¬
bined for the suppression of great evils like the
slave-trade. Men are taking the whole globe
into their minds and studies and plans. The
age of isolation is passing away- International
expositions have helped to break down the bar¬
riers of ignorance, antipathy, and prejudice.
How the bounds of fraternity have been en¬
larged! Humanity, though sundered by oceans
and languages, and widely difïering forms of
religion, is, after all, a unit. The literatures of
the great historic faiths are more and more
studied in the spirit which would employ only
the agencies of light and love. Those of us who
believe that we cherish a faith which has just
claims to universalism, which gathers into itself
all the elements of truth and power which lie
scattered and largely ineffective in other re¬
ligions, are learning that the best propagandism
is that which has love, tolerance, and sympathy
at the heart of it.
Professor James Orr, of Edinburgh, has writ¬
ten: "I cannot imagine that anything but good
can come from the appearance of the repre¬
sentatives of the great religions of the world on
a free platform, with full liberty to each to state
its views and claims on the homage of mankind,
provided it be understood that there is no neces-
3oS CHRISTIANITY, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
sary abating on the part of any, of what may be
held to be its exclusive title to acceptance.
Christianity should, least of all, shrink from such
an ordeal and should welcome the opportunity
of a world-wide audience." It was the spirit of
fraternity which succeeded in bringing together,
in 1893, such widely separated exponents of
religion. "Enemies simply met and discovered
that they were brothers who had one Father in
heaven." To dwell on the deep, tender feelings
awakened by the presence at the Parliament of
the truth-seekers of the Orient, earnest, heart-
hungry, believing that they had much to teach
as well as something to learn, their "faces set
toward God, and with some message from God;"
to recall the emotions awakened during the great
opening and closing hours of the Parliament,
would be to indulge in what many would deem
a sentimental rhapsody ; but it is not rhapsody
to say that "the age of isolation and hatred has
passed, and the age of toleration and scientific
comparison has come." Kindlier feelings were
certainly engendered at the Parliament, and
many who looked upon this meeting as a noble
humanitarian measure believe, that by it preju¬
dices were removed and certain results to civili¬
zation made possible. Without concession, with¬
out any attempt to treat all religions as equally
meritorious, without any compromise of any
system of faith and worship, with no idea of
finding or founding any new world-religion, with
WORLD'S PARLIAMENT OF RELIGIONS. 309
equal freedom gladly accorded to all races and
both sexes—the sessions of the Parliament con¬
tinued in practically unbroken harmony. There
was much significance to human brotherhood in
the daily recital of the Lord's Prayer, though
the unity of the Parliament was that of spirit
rather than creed.^ If this meeting simply
effected a wider diffusion of brotherliness, it de¬
serves, as the London Daily Telegraph has said,
"a place among the notable events of our age."
It was certainly a protest against the exclusive-
ness of feeling, the ignorant pride, the ecclesi¬
astical aloofness, and the dogmatic haughtiness
which often prevail.
The world will not soon forget how the vene¬
rated Dr. Schaff declared his resolution to speak
at the Parliament a last word in favor of Chris¬
tian unity. "He was a prophet," writes Pro¬
fessor Comba, from Rome, "for this word of his
was his swan song." One of the chief ideas
which the Parliament made luminous was a re¬
united Christendom, the preparation for a Chris¬
tianized world. Since all the religions found, as
Castelar has said, "a common ground in Chris¬
tianity," and since inevitably the best religion
must come to the foreground, may we not look
to see the lines of human progress centering
more and more in Christ?
It has often been remarked that little sectarian¬
ism was preached at the Parliament. There
'Appendix, Lecture VII, Note 5.
3IO CHRJSTIANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
Christendom proclaimed its Master. Inevitably
this meeting, which furnished the prophecy of a
reunited church, has had large effect on many
minds. Discussions of reunion have been increas¬
ingly rife. Archbishop Keane says that Ameri¬
cans are over-eager for speedy results, and he is
almost content with saying that "the Parliament
accomplished itself." But facts lead to results
in the world of the spirit. Feelings are changed,
and then convictions. "The solemn charge
which the Parliament preaches to all true be¬
lievers is a return to the primitive unity of Chris¬
tians as a condition precedent to the conversion
of the world." With this faith in their hearts,
men are active along various lines. The results
may be far off, but they are certain.
But to me, one of the chief results of the Par¬
liament relates to Christian missions. While
modifying some popular views of the Oriental
faiths, it is promoting a new and humaner inter¬
est in foreign missions by making the ethnic sys¬
tems more real and also more definite to many
minds, by showing Christians that these faiths
are far from dead, though they may have little
life-giving power over their adherents; by set¬
ting before the Christian world the magnitude of
the task that it has undertaken; by teaching
that it must make its swifter and wider advances
in the future by a better understanding and a
larger sympathy, rather than by contemptuous
hostility and bigoted exclusiveness. No intelli-
WOIÍLn'S PARLIAMENT OF RELIGIONS. 31I
gent believer in Christian missions has had his
faith shaken by the stories, some of them almost
fairy stories, which two or three of the delegates
to the Parliament related. No phenomenon of
the century has, on the whole, been more re¬
markable than the Christian uprising in Europe
and America, to give the Gospel to all lands,
and nothing has given me more satisfaction in
the work which I endeavored to do for the glory
of God through this Parliament, than the warm
approval coming from scores of leading mission¬
ary scholars.
We welcomed the best which the non-Chris¬
tian religions could say for themselves. There
was an able delegation of Buddhist priests,
there were eloquent representatives of the Brah-
mo-Samaj, there were scores of able expounders of
Judaism, there were excellent papers read in praise
of Parsiism and Tauism, there were speeches in
eulogy of Islâm, there was an extremely elabo¬
rate and learned exposition of Confucianism,
there were papers on Hinduism by orthodox
Hindus who could not be present, and there was
a very interesting and eloquent oration on Hin¬
duism by one who was able to address the Par¬
liament in person—an oration which has had
many echoes and many criticisms. But whoever
takes pains to read the proceedings of the Parlia¬
ment will discover that the meeting "was a great
Christian demonstration with a non-Christian
section which added color and picturesque effect.
312 CHRISTIANITY, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
The Parliament was distinctively Christian in its
spirit, conceptions, prayers, doxologies, benedic¬
tions, and in its prevailing language, arguments,
and faith. Only Christianity proclaimed itself
the missionary and absolute religion with the
world for its field. No Christian struck his
colors nor allowed himself to be compromised by
the presence of men of other faiths."
I have the widest possible acquaintance with
the effects of that meeting on American Chris¬
tianity ; and I know that it was very generally
felt and said by Christian ministers, journalists,
and teachers, that the Christianity of Christ dis¬
played its glorious supremacy, its peerless char¬
acter from first to last, and some went so far as
to affirm that the non-Christian religions would
never be willing to appear again in a great world-
congress, and show their little tapers by the side
of Christianity's solar orb. My own conviction
was strong from the beginning, and grew stronger
with the progress of the Parliament, that the
best which the non-Christian faiths could say for
themselves would only make more conspicuous
the supereminence of Christ. Such I believe,
was the conviction of every Christian missionary
who took part in the Parliament. The published
proceedings of the meeting were described to me
by a leading student of Comparative Theology
as one of the best books in recent years on the
evidences of Christianity. It is commended to
WORLD'S PARLIAMENT OF RELIGIONS. 313
Christian theological students as such. The
spirit, the prayers, hymns, and main arguments
of this Congress were Christian. When, at the
closing meeting, one speaker ventured to sug¬
gest that no religion should henceforth seek to
make converts of the others, the strange remark
received applause from only one person. That
great audience, at the closing session, was thrilled
by the Hallelujah Chorus and the prophecy
which was sung, "The kingdoms of this world
shall become the kingdom of our Lord and of
His Christ," seemed to them more certain than
ever to be realized. After the final meeting, the
vice-president of a leading foreign missionary
society sent to me his thanks for the services
which I had rendered to Christianity, as he be¬
lieved, by the Parliament of Religions. I have
never heard of a single Christian minister who
was disturbed in his faith or who gave up his
work on account of the Parliament. But I do
know that Christianity in America has made
steady and strong and rapid advances in the
last three years, that willingness to give to for¬
eign missions has been as great as ever, and I do
know that the forms of Oriental speculation have
scarcely made a ripple on the deep surface of our
Western life. When the Parliament closed, I,
with others, afifirmed that it would give a new
impetus to Christian missions. Mr. Mozoomdar
said: "I regard Christ as an essential factor in
the future of India; " and we who have been
3 H CHRJSTIANirr, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
trained in Christian lands agree with Christians
here that Christ is the essential factor in India's
coming regeneration. The Parliament's logical
outcome, as Dr. Joseph Cook has written, will
be the "exaltation of Christianity as the Sun,
compared with which all alien faiths are only
candles."
"The Parliament," says Mr. Slater, of Banga¬
lore, "cannot fail to broaden the thoughts of all
reflecting Christians and influence for good the
spirit of foreign missions. It must tell, and has
already told, in the direction of greater courtesy
and wider toleration and fraternity." He also
says that the Parliament shows conclusively that
Christianity holds the future in its hand. The
venerated Dr. Cyrus Hamlin has pronounced
this effort to bring together all the religions of
the world on the common plane of the brother¬
hood of man a "noble humanitarian measure."
"Much good has already resulted," says Dr.
Wherry, for twenty years a Presbyterian mission¬
ary in India, "and more good will result in the
future." "The Parliament," says that St. Paul
among Syrian missionaries. Dr. Henry H. Jes-
sup, "has awakened thought, stimulated investi¬
gation, stirred up criticism, given light where
light was needed, shown the weakness and im¬
potence of the non-Christian systems, given
Christianity an opportunity to show its supreme
excellence, and brought the Church of Christ
face to face with those who were afar of! and
WORLD'S PARLIAMENT OF RELIGIONS. 315
almost unknown. Christian missions have found
new justification and a new quickening." "I
believe," says Dr. Dennis, of Syria, "that the
Parliament will be for the establishment of Chris¬
tianity." And that noble missionary scholar,
Dr. Post, writes his conviction that "the out¬
come of our Parliament will be for the further¬
ance of the Gospel." "The Church of Christ,"
says Dr. De Forest, of Japan, "is now on a bet¬
ter basis for the intelligent prosecution of mis¬
sion work." "So far from abnegating the
supremacy of Christianity," says Dr. Martin, of
the Imperial University of Peking, "the Parlia¬
ment exemplifies the attitude Christianity must
assume to win recognition." And the Rev.
Gilbert Reid says: "While a few from non-
Christian lands may misinterpret the Parliament,
the majority will be drawn by the broad, sympa¬
thetic attitude of Christians, and will continue to
be influenced by the same spirit. ' ' I have received
one testimonial to the Parliament which I deem
of greater weight than all the adverse criticisms
which it has been my fortune to read.® The
Rev. Daniel McGilvary, the able and veteran
missionary among the Laos, writes: "The Parlia¬
ment of Religions, from its inception, com¬
mended itself to my judgment. Besides attend¬
ing all its sessions, I have read all that I have
seen written for and against it, and that judg¬
ment remains unchanged. Its records will ever
"Appendix, Lecture VII, note 6.
3I6 CHR/STIANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
remain a thesaurus from which missionaries and
students will draw on all the subjects embraced
in its broad range." When we consider the
high character, conservative wisdom, and broad
experience of this missionary, his knowledge of
the Buddhist world in which he lives, and his
accurate and perfect understanding of the spirit
which pervaded the Congress, these words are
entitled to the weight and rank which I have
given them.
The Parliament speaks to Christians with a
brave and cheerful voice, bidding us to be full of
hope and love and brotherhood, bidding us to
emphasize those essentials of truth by which the
world is to be saved, rather than those non¬
essentials by which it is liable to be lost. The
Parliament was not founded on the false theory
that all religions are equally good. It was
founded on the spirit of Christian courtesy, and
also on the rock of absolute sincerity in the
maintenance of individual convictions. Nothing
could be further from the facts than the conten¬
tion that all the representatives of religion were
welcomed "as equally inspired and equally
sufficient prophets and teachers in things sacred
and divine." "Superficial people," writes Pro¬
fessor Bruce, of Scotland, "might carry away
the impression that it put all religions on a level.
The truth, however, is that it simply gave the
religions of the world an opportunity of being
compared, one with another, on their merits."
WORLD'S PARLIAMENT OF RELIGIONS. 317
"That Christianity," says Dr. Dennis, formerly
a secretary of the American Presbyterian Board
of Foreign Missions, "has a right to command,
is true; but has it not the right also to dis¬
cuss, compare, and persuade? God says, evento
offending sinners, 'Come, let us reason to¬
gether.' " "I do not understand," he adds,
"that Christianity ever resigned the purpose and
hope of both influencing and convincing men
through the Parliament of Religions."
Much might be rightly said of the high char¬
acter and ability of many of those who composed
this assembly. If I were asked to-day to name
a score and more of those who seem to me
now to have been the chief and most powerful
personalities in that Congress, the list would
include, besides several professors from the Uni¬
versity of Chicago and a strong delegation from
Japan, the Catholic Archbishop Keane, who
organized the Catholic forces most ably, and
proved himself catholic-hearted on every day of
the Parliament and in every relation with men
who differed from him ; the Archbishop of Zante,
an impressive orator and great-hearted speaker,
whose sudden death, shortly after his return,
has sorrowed many hearts; Dr. George Dana
Boardman, of Philadelphia, almost always pres¬
ent at the meetings, and a gracious influence
everywhere ; the late Dr. Philip Schaff, the
eminent historian, whose address on the "Re¬
union of Christendom" has been called apos-
318 CHRISTIANITY, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
tolic; Mr. Mozoomdar, the leader of the Brah-
mo-Somaj, a man of great eloquence and spiritual
power; Dr. Joseph Cook, a critic of the Parlia¬
ment during many of its days, and its powerful
champion since; Rev. George T. Candlin, the
English missionary from China, who spoke so
persuasively for Christian unity in missionary
fields, and who found the Parliament had be¬
come an epoch in his intellectual life; the Hon¬
orable Pung Quang Yu, the learned representa¬
tive of Confucianism, Mr. Dharmapala, the
gentle Buddhist of Ceylon, whose heart still
lingers in America, to which he has returned,
and who writes most discouragingly of the
lethargic spirit of the Buddhist priests, and who
says that "if Christians would include kindness
to animals in their programme, he would be glad
to close his life as a preacher of Jesus;" Prince
Wolkonsky of Russia, whose voice was heard on
three occasions, always with acceptance; Mr.
Hirai, the Japanese orator, whose stern denun¬
ciation of the sins of Christian people, evoked
the applause of Christian auditors; the orator
of philosophic Hinduism now welcomed back to
India; Washington Gladden, who spoke on the
social problem with a divine fire which ought to
burn down the barriers of un-Christian separa¬
tions and inspire the disciples of Jesus to co¬
operative labors for the common good; Dr. Wash¬
burn, of Constantinople, who expounded the
Mohammedan question with rare wisdom, and
WORLD'S PARLIAMENT OF RELIGIONS. 319
whose writings in behalf of the Parliament have
had a wide influence; Cardinal Gibbons, who
won may hearts when he thanked God that there
is one platform on which we all stand united—
the platform of charity, of humanity, of benevo¬
lence; Rabbi Gottheil, of New York, who gave
such an eloquent eulogy of Moses, and who con¬
sidered it the glory and reward of his life to be
able to speak in such an assembly of the man
who had been light, strength, and inspiration
to him from childhood ; Colonel Thomas W.
Higginson, who so skillfully turned the minds of
his hearers from theological to less speculative
and more practical questions; Professor Pea-
body, of Harvard, who spoke of Christ as the
greatest Individualist and the greatest Socialist
of history; Lyman Abbott, of New York, who
eulogized religion as the essential foundation of
all religions; Dr. Alger, of Boston, who pointed
out with wonderful philosophic insight the
necessary steps toward the spiritual reunion of
mankind; Dr. Pentecost, of London, who
preached the Gospel at a Parliament of Religions
with the same aggressive fearlessness that he em¬
ployed in addressing the college students of Cal¬
cutta; Dr. Momerie, the able and brilliant ex¬
pounder of Christian Theism; Mrs. Julia Ward
Howe, whose words seemed a benediction;
Robert A. Hume, one of the broadest-minded
and most earnest of our Indian missionaries;
Rev- B. Fay Mills, the evangelist, who, after
320 CHRISTIANITY, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
speaking of Christ as the world's Saviour,
wrought his great audience into a fervor of
Christian feeling which brought many of them
to their feet ; and Bishop Dudley, of Kentucky,
who preached the historic Christ with such ma¬
jestic faith and personal enthusiasm of devout
feeling that he strengthened the confidence of
multitudes that Christ alone is equal to the task
of redeeming humanity.
No meeting like that which I am describing,
however carefully planned, will be devoid of
mistake. The Parliament of 1893 was con¬
ducted by men who did the best that could be
done under very diihcult circumstances. They
believed that, though some unfortunate miscon¬
ceptions would inevitably result, the undertak¬
ing was well worth the risk; and their expecta¬
tions have been more than fulfilled. Thinking
of the welcome that the Parliament of Religions
has opened to me in India—to me with a dis¬
tinctively Christian message—I am reminded of
what the Catholic Professor of Comparative Re¬
ligion at Louvain, Belgium, Mgr. D'Harlez, has
recently said of the Parliament, that it was" a
good way to promote the knowledge of truth, to
assemble men of all creeds under the sky in a
princely assemblage, so as to conciliate the minds
of men who are hostile to each other because of
a thousand misconceptions and prejudices or
hereditary, secular conflicts, and to make them
acknowledge that they are all the children of
WORLD'S PARLIAMENT OF RELIGIONS. 321
one Celestial Father and Creator. This is the
best means for the propagation of the true re¬
ligion ; this is a canal digged for the flowing of
water from the purest sources. And now the
missionary who enters into a heathen country is
no more an enemy, not even a stranger, but a
brother who comes to bring light into the land
and preach the common Father of mankind."
"If," he says, "subsequent sessions of the Par¬
liament are to be fruitful, it must be under the
condition that they deviate not from the original
aim and do not serve the purpose of religious
indifference."
Bishop Vincent wrote me not long ago of his
sympathy with the Parliament, and said: "I hope
that similar gatherings may take place in con¬
nection with the French Exposition of 1900.
Only the systems which are conscious of weak¬
ness can be afraid of an open statement concern¬
ing their own views and concerning the views of
those schools which they regard as rival or an¬
tagonistic. There may be temporary embarrass¬
ment occasioned by the full publication of such
varied views, but thereby investigation and care¬
ful comparison must be promoted. All honest
and inquiring souls will see a large measure of
truth as the result of such investigation." I
have strong hope that a second Parliament will
take place in Paris. The Catholic hierarchy of
America favors the second, as it did the first.
The Catholic leaders of Europe are generally
32 2 CHRISTIANITY, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
hostile to the second as they were to the first ;
but there are Catholic laymen of great influence
in France, who may achieve another congress of
the creeds.
The first Parliament has given an impetus to
the study of comparative theology, which is in
truth "the demonstration of Christianity." It
has led to the founding of two international
Lectureships, one in America and one in India.
It has widened the bounds of human fraternity;
it is fortifying timid souls in regard to the right
and wisdom of liberty in thought and expres¬
sion ; it is clarifying many minds in regard to
the nature of the non-Christian faiths; it is
deepening, in Western lands, the general Chris¬
tian interest in non-Christian nations; and it will
bring before millions in the Orient the more
truthful and beautiful aspects of Christianity.
I think that nearly all will agree with me in
thinking the Congress was a notable event for
the African, whose manhood was fully recog¬
nized; for the Jew, who has suffered various
forms of persecution ; for the Liberal, who saw
the truths for which he had specially contended
grandly recognized; for the Roman Catholic,
who came out into a new atmosphere and gained
from theological opponents new admiration and
respect ; for woman, for there she secured the
largest recognition of her intellectual rights ever
granted. It was a great event for the social
reformer and the advocate of international justice ;
WORLD'S PARLIAMENT OF RELIGIONS. 323
for the Parliament was unanimous in denouncing
the selfishness of modern society, and the in¬
iquity of the opium trade and the rum traffic;
for the Buddhist, the Hindu, and the Confucian,
who were permitted to interpret their own faiths
in the Parliament of Man; for the orthodox
Protestant, whose heart and intellect were ex¬
panded, and whose faith in the Gospel of God's
grace was strengthened by the words and scenes
of that assembly; and it was especially a great
event for the earnest and broad-minded Christian
missionary, who rejoiced that all Christendom
was at last forced to confront the problem of
bringing Christ, the Universal Saviour, to all
mankind.
It is already evident, as Dr. Ellinwood, the
President of the American Society of Compara¬
tive Religion, has said, "that the Parliament has
come to stay." These world-wide comparisons
must continue. Enlightened men will have the
best and truest, and the best religion must come
to the front. As a Christian believer, I wel¬
come truth from every source. I rejoice that
our recent studies have added much to the spir¬
itual panorama of human history. The mild and
tolerant Buddhist Emperor, Asoka, the Hindu
Constantine, takes his place by the savage and
shrewd warrior who saw the Cross in the sky.
Akbar, the Moslem, appears unabashed in com¬
pany with Charlemagne the Christian. St.
Paul's looms before us on the same horizon
3-1 CHRISTIANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
with the Temple of Heaven at Peking, and the
Milan Cathedral stands by the Mosque of Omar.
The waters from the Well of Zemzem together
with those from Bethesda are brought to our
lips. The strange pictures of the Orient startle
the eyes which have seen the canvases of Fra
Angélico and Titian. Moses and Mohammed
walk before our vision ; saints throng round us,
besides those in the Acta Sanctorum of Catholic
Europe; the monks of the Nile and the monks
of Thibet look out upon us, while the sacred
books of the Orient, an imposing library in them¬
selves, dwarf the modest volumes of the Old and
New Testaments. But we who have accepted
the Christian Gospel as the world's hope and
salvation need not be disturbed nor distracted ;
For over all the creeds the face of Christ
Glows with white glory on the face of Man.
We have seen Him, who, in various measure,
has enlightened all. He is the key to history
and to religion, because He is the Reconciler as
well as the Redeemer, and only His Spirit, pene¬
trating into all the earth, could have called forth
such expressions of fraternity among men of
wide-sundered faiths, as rejoiced our hearts in
the World's First Parliament of Religions.
It has been wisely said that "the graves of the
dead religions declare that not selection, but in¬
corporation, makes a religion strong; not incor¬
poration, but reconciliation ; not reconciliation
but the fulfillment of all these aspirations, these
WORLD'S PARLIAMENT OF RELIGIONS. 325
partial truths in a higher thought, in a transcend¬
ent life." The ethnic faiths are not mere curi¬
osities or moral monstrosities on the one hand,
and still less, on the other, are they the final
faiths of the nations adopting them—Chris¬
tianity, tolerant, because cherishing an invincible
faith in her spiritual victory, not "divorced from
the moral order of history," but penetrating,
explaining, and crowning that order, Chris¬
tianity, all luminous with Christ, is the religion
of the coming man; for Christ is the eternal Son
of God, in whom Reason and Faith, the Indi¬
vidual and Society, Man and Woman, Morality
and Religion, Heaven and Earth, are perfectly
conjoined and reconciled. He is, and may be
shown to be, the New Dispensation, which the
saintly Chunder Sen of India believed had dawned
in his own heart; He is the harmony of all
Scriptures, Saints, and Sects, of Inspiration and
of Science, of Asiatic thought and of Western
activity, the reconciliation of apparent contra¬
dictions, "the invisible Westminster Abbey"
where the enmities of more than a hundred gen¬
erations are to lie buried and forgotten.
He came among men, not to make them re¬
ligious, but to make them holy. The man is
religious who offers rice to the hideous idols of
an Asiatic temple, or beats a horrible drum to
keep away the witches from an African village,
but the pagan, whether living here or in Canton
or Natal, needs a new heart. Loving sin, he
326 CHRISTIANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
must learn to love holiness.^ The world needs
«
the Christian religion. India needs Christ. I
speak with some confidence on- this point. In
the providence of God, I have given time, dur¬
ing the best years of my life, to the examination
of this question, and I have had opportunities
such as few other men ever had of seeing
and knowing the best side of the ethnic religions.
I count as my friends Farsees and Hindus, Bud¬
dhists and Confucianists, Shintoists, Jains, and
Mohammedans. I know what they say about
themselves. I have looked at their religions on
the ideal side, as well as the practical, and I
know this, that the very best which is in them,
the very best which these well-meaning men
have shown to us, is often a reflex from Chris¬
tianity, and that which they lack, and the lack is
very serious, is what the Christian Gospel alone
can impart ; and I know that beneath the shin¬
ing examples of the elect few in the non-Chris¬
tian world there is a vast area of idolatry, and
pollution, and unrest, and superstition, and
cruelty, which can never be healed by the forces
which are found in the non-Christian systems.
Recognizing to the full the brighter side of so-
called heathenism, rejoicing that the light has
been shining everywhere, and that foreshadow-
ings of the evangelic truths are discoverable
among the nations, I yet see that in Christ only
is there full salvation for the individual and for
' Appendix, Lecture VII, Note 7.
WORLD'S PARLIAMENT OF RELIGIONS. 327
society. Many wise and true opinions are
doubtless held by the disciples of the ethnic
faiths, but opinions, however true, are not
man's crying need. Jesus Christ is not only the
Truth, but He is also the Way and the Life.®
Men need to know the way which is the way of
the Cross; they need to feel the touch of the
life from Him who came that men might have
life. I believe that He has been everywhere by
His Spirit, and that all that is true, beautiful
and good is a part of His manifested glory. But
the work of His Church, made one in Him, is to
reveal to mankind the Christ of the Gospels and
the Christ of personal experience, to be wit¬
nesses of His truth and love to the uttermost
parts of the earth. He came to earth to lift us
to heaven. He was delivered unto death for the
offences of men; He was raised from the grave
for the justification of our faith in Him; and,
thus exalted. He has promised to draw all men
unto Him. And we have a moral and intellec¬
tual right, with all brotherly kindness in our
souls, to ask kings and sages, poets, and proph¬
ets, and all peoples to crown Him the Lord of
all. In the olden days when the German em¬
peror was chosen, the three archbishops of
Trêves, Mayence, and Cologne girt him with
the sword and crowned him with the crown of
Charlemagne. At the banquet the Bohemian
king was his cup-bearer; the Count Palatine
® Appendix, Lecture VII, Note 8.
328 CHRTSTIANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
plunged his knife into the roasted ox and waited
on his Master; the Duke of Saxony spurred his
horse into heaps of golden grain and bore off a
full measure for his lord, while the Margrave of
Brandenburg rode to a fountain and filled the im¬
perial ewer with water. Standing this day, as
in the presence of the chief prophets and might¬
iest forces of the world, let us expect a new
coronation of the world's living Christ, the
rightful Emperor of mankind. Let the Churches,
girt with his sword of spiritual power, crown Him
with the royal diadem which is His due. Let
princes and nobles be the servants of His Gos¬
pel; let kings and emperors wait on Him who is
the Ancient of Days ; let cities bring great meas¬
ures of gold to publish His word; and let univer¬
sities, loyal to the spirit which has founded the
chief seats of the higher Western and Eastern
learning, forsaking every unworthy and strange
idolatry of human leaders, fill their imperial
chalices from the river of the Water of Life, and
stand attendant on their Lord.
APPENDIX.
APPENDIX.
DR. BARROWS IN INDIA AND JAPAN.*
BY REV. ROBERT A. HUME, D.D.
Every one knows that time is needed for the de¬
velopment of great things in vegetation, in animal
life, and in architecture. But every one does not
understand that there is similar need of time for
the development and for an adequate appreciation
of great things in mind and in spirit. The Parlia¬
ment of Religions, which met in Chicago in 1893,
was a unique and great event in the world of mind
and spirit. Therefore, according to the law of life,
time is necessary for the development of its results
and for men to fully appreciate it. Hence, though
held in America, it is not yet adequately under¬
stood even there. Much less can its true signifi¬
cance be grasped in distant Asia from the reports
of comparatively few persons. But it is the nature
of great things that they must diffuse themselves
and their fruits. It is an evidence that the First
Parliament of Religions was great that it is yearly
more and more diffusing itself. It was conceived
and grew in connection with the greatest Inter¬
national Exposition of material things, because its
*This narrative of Dr. Barrows's reception in the Orient, and this account of
the circumstances under which his addresses were given, will add, doubtless,
further interest to the Lectures themselves.— The Publishers,
331
332 CHRISTIANITY, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
promoters believed that a colossal exhibition of
such things is inadequate, and in some respects
dangerous, unless there is with it and in it an ex¬
position of the greatest spiritual things. This con¬
viction brought forth the Parliament, the first truly
ecumenical exposition of religions.
And, of course, if it was to be an ecumenical
exposition of spiritual things, it could not be con¬
ducted on a less courteous or less wide basis than
the exposition of material things. In this latter
exposition every nation, even the weakest and
least advanced, was invited to send specimens of
its best products, to be selected and displayed by
its own representatives in their own way, and to be
placed by the side of the products of other lands,
in the confidence that such an exposition would be
mutually helpful. The products displayed by the
United States, Great Britain, and Germany were
immensely superior to the displays sent from Af¬
rica and South America. Nevertheless the mutual
exposition was helpful to Europe and America, as
well as to Africa and South America.
It ought to have been in a similarly courteous
spirit, and it was in such a spirit, that the interna¬
tional exhibition of religions was conceived and
conducted. Its meaning was the supremacy of the
spiritual element in man. This was noble in itself,
and more sublime because of its connection with a
gigantic exhibition of the material products of the
world. Representatives of each religion presented
their faiths in their own way. All were not fair or
wise. But no other course would have been feas¬
ible or wise. Naturally the followers of each relig-
APPENDIX.
333
ion put a very high estimate on their own faith.
But it does not seem doubtful that the one crown¬
ing impression of the Parliament was, in the su¬
premacy of spiritual things, the supremacy of
Christ. None but Christians could or would have
planned or executed it.
Because it was a living spiritual power, the Par¬
liament of Religions led to subsequent important
events. First, a Christian lady of America, Mrs.
Caroline E. Haskell, founded a lectureship on Com¬
parative Religion in the Chicago University, for
attendants at that institution. Then, she founded
a lectureship on the same subject in connection
with the same University, but the lectures to be de¬
livered in India, every other year, by some eminent
man. Naturally Mrs. Haskell and the University
requested the president of the Parliament, the Rev,
John Henry Barrows, D.D., to be the first lecturer
to India on this foundation. But he declined the
appointment. Just before that time Mr. Gladstone
had retired from political life, and he was then for¬
mally requested by the University to come to
India to give the first series of lectures on the rela¬
tion of Christianity to the faiths of this land. He
also declined, and suggested Canon Gore. That
eminent man was unable to accept the invitation.
The University then again most urgently requested
Dr. Barrows to accept the appointment. He was
the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Chi¬
cago, and laid the matter before the authorities of
the church. They felt that it was undesirable to
give him the prolonged leave of absence necessary
for this purpose. But under all the circumstances
334 CHRISTIANITY, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
it seemed to him that there was a divine call to
this service. Therefore, he resigned his important
position in Chicago and went to Germany to secure
the amplest preparation for the first series of lec¬
tures on this new foundation.
Two infiuential communities in India looked for¬
ward with deep interest and questioning to these
Barrows-Haskell lectures—viz., the non-Christian
religious reformers, and the Christian missionaries.
The former have been much influenced by the Lord
Jesus Christ; they know that there has been some
change among Western Christians in conceiving
and stating the Christian faith, and they have
thought and hoped that the Parliament of Relig¬
ions meant and would more and more show that
none of the present religions of the world is to be¬
come the final religion, but that each, with some
modifications, is good enough for its adherents,
and that the final, universal religion will be some
mixture and outcome of them all. Such persons
anticipated, with much hope, yet with some mis¬
giving, the coming of Dr. Barrows.
Because the entire non-Christian community in
India had so interpreted the Parliament of Relig¬
ions, and because most missionaries in India have
not had time to see what is to be the real outcome
of that unique religious conference, many mission¬
aries here looked forward with misgiving lest the
Barrows-Haskell lectures would lead Indians to
think that leaders of the West had somewhat low¬
ered the Christian standard. But there were some
missionaries who confidently expected a high and
strong presentation of their faith.
APPENDIX.
335
The great courtesy and kindness which Dr. Bar¬
rows had shown to the Indian representatives of all
faiths at the Chicago Conference, and his unique
position, both as the president of that remarkable
gathering, and now as representative of the vigor¬
ous young University of Chicago to the thinking
men of India, made it certain that he would have a
most cordial reception from all classes in this cour¬
teous country, whatever he might say. When he
landed in Bombay, accompanied by Mrs. Barrows,
on December 15, 1896, he was very heartily wel¬
comed by representatives of the Hindu, Jain,
Parsi, Brahmo and Christian communities, partly
through delegations and partly by letters. The
Bombay Missionary Conference had arranged a
large reception for him at Wilson College, where
leaders of all communities were to meet him. But
on account of the epidemic which is ravaging Bom¬
bay it was deemed best that he should hurry away
from that city, and the reception was given up.
He went first to Benares and spent five days in ob¬
servations of Hinduism in its capital, and in making
several addresses. But his work began in Calcutta,
the political and intellectual capital of India, where
he stayed from December 23d to January 4th.
A noble reception, worthy of the hospitality of
hospitable India and most honorable to the leader
of Hindu society in Calcutta, was given at the
palace of Maharajah Bahadur Sir Jotindra Mohun
Tagore, K.C.S.I., by representatives of the Hindu,
Mohammedan, Jain, Parsi, Buddhist, Brahmo, and
Christian communities. It was a unique and grand
occasion, the exact parallel to which has never
336 CHRISTIANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION,
occurred, when, in an orthodox Hindu prince's pal¬
ace, representatives of every faith met to give the
heartiest welcome to a Christian lecturer from the
West. At this introduction to his special mission
to India, among other fraternal messages Dr. Bar¬
rows said, after words of welcome had been spoken
by Rev. Dr. K. S. Macdonald:
It is one of the chief privileges of my life to stand at last
on the soil of India and to look with wondering eyes on
scenes of strangeness and of splendor which have long been
present to the eyes of the mind, to bring to the ancient
and thoughtful Orient loving salutations from the young
and vigorous Occident, and to speak, however imperfectly,
some words of brotherly affection which may help to bring
them into a closer union of spirit. ... I have come to
India, not merely to inaugurate a Christian lectureship,
bringing America into telegraphic spiritual communication
with Calcutta, but also to make further studies into the life
of this ancient and wondrous land; I have come in order to
realize still further the spiritual indebtedness of the world
to Asia; to clasp hands with those of kindred purposes and
of various creeds, who, believing in the Fatherhood of God
and the Brotherhood of Man, realize, as Cardinal Gibbons
said to us on the opening day of the Parliament, that we
never perform an act so pleasing to God as when we extend
the right hand of fellowship and of practical love to a suf¬
fering member of His earthly family. ... I desire to
be numbered among those who are lovers of India. . . .
Religion has achieved a great work in the past—a work
marred, however, by serious imperfections. Its best min¬
istry lies, not in the years behind us with their alienations,
their bitterness and cruel persecutions, but belongs rather to
that splendid future when the worshipers of God and the
lovers of men shall fully realize that religion in its truest
manifestations is able to bind the world together into a cos¬
mopolitan fraternity. . . . May that spirit which the
Christians believe is the spirit of Jesus prevail still more
widely and pervade still more deeply.
APPENDIX.
337
The six lectures on the Haskell foundation were
delivered in the Hall of the General Assembly's
Institution, in the northern part of Calcutta, and
half of them were also given in the London Mis¬
sion's Institution in the southern quarter of the city.
In addition, lectures, sermons, and addresses, on
such topics as "The Spiritual World of Shakes¬
peare," "The Parliament of Religions," "Human
Restlessness and Christ its Quieter, " "The Comfort
of Christian Theism" were delivered before asso¬
ciations of students and other bodies. Almost
every morning there were personal interviews with
representatives of various religions. Very cordial
receptions were given to Dr. and Mrs. Barrows by
the widow of Keshub Chunder Sen and her
daughter, the Maharani of Kuch Behar, on the
anniversary of Mr. Sen's last public service; by
Mr. Mozoomdar, the present leader of the New
Dispensation, and by others.
On the 8th of February, the Calcutta Missionary
Conference recorded the following deliverance:
The Conference desire to put on record their sense of the
very great service Dr. Barrows has rendered to the cause
of Christianity in India by the six lectures on Mrs. Haskell's
Foundation which he delivered in Calcutta on the Univer¬
sality of the Christian Religion. They were distinguished
by their high-toned earnestness, their incisive force, their
brave and unambiguous outspokenness, their thorough
grasp of the great truths they handled, their practical value
as a contribution to Christian apologetics, their profound
learning and sweet persuasiveness. In them, the inaugu¬
rating series of the lectureship, were fulfilled the prom¬
ises made at its inception. They were distinguished by the
scholarly and withal friendly, temperate and conciliatory
manner in which opponents of.Christianity were referred to.
338 CHRISTIANIT7', THE WORLD-RELIGION.
and by the fraternal spirit which animated all allusions to
the devotees of other religions. While the rightful claims
of Christianity were set forth without compromise or hesi¬
tation, they were at the same time set forth in such a way
as to secure the favorable interest of the many who would
not acknowledge these claims. The Conference were also
struck by the untiring activity which Dr Barrows mani¬
fested during his short stay of fourteen days in Calcutta,
for during that period he addressed as many as twenty-two
audiences in the same earnest forceful manner, never spar¬
ing himself, or in any way compromising his position as a
Christian lecturer, desirous of winning souls for the Lord
Jesus. Dr. and Mrs. Barrows carry with them wherever
they go the best wishes and the prayers of the members of
the Calcutta Missionary Conference.
The Conference desire to place also on record their
hope that the six "Barrows Lectures" be printed in a cheap
form and widely circulated in single lectures and also as a
book containing all six; and that those which are to follow
on the Foundation may be of the same type and equally
useful to the missionary cause.
In expressing their high appreciation of Dr. Barrows as
a Christian lecturer, the Conference would not forget their
obligations to the good Christian lady, Mrs. Caroline E.
Haskell, who so liberally founded the Barrows Lectures,
and to the members of the University of Chicago who
secured Dr. John Henry Barrows to inaugurate the Lec¬
tureship. The Conference send their greetings to Mrs.
Haskell, and wish her a long, useful and happy life in the
Lord's service on earth, and that thus be richly supplied
unto her the entrance into the eternal Kingdom of our
Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
In a farewell address Mr. Mozoomdar said:
Whatever the occasion be, we thank him for com¬
ing here, and with the deepest gratitude thank that benefi¬
cent and bountiful lady, Mrs. Haskell, whose endowed
lectureship has brought Dr. Barrows to India. . . . The
finished product of American culture, what he places
before us, as on an altar, is lull of the sweetness and light.
APPENDIX.
339
the reasonableness, the tireless energy, and above all the
brotherly kindliness and human love which we get from so
few foreigners, but, getting, we know how to appreciate.
Yes, his words and example will lead us in one of the many
paths which wind on to that high and distant goal whereto
new India, revived India, spiritual India is striving to
make its pilgrimage.
In addition to the value of Dr. Barrows's own ser¬
vices, it has been a distinct advantage to the pur¬
pose of his visit that Mrs. Barrows accompanied him.
After two weeks of constant speaking in Calcutta,
a few days of rest were enjoyed at Darjeeling, in
sight of the Himalayas. After this Dr. Barrows
visited Lucknow, where two lectures were deliv¬
ered; Cawnpore; Delhi, where he spoke four times;
Lahore, where five addresses were given; Amrit-
sar; Agra, where he delivered five addresses; Jey-
pore, Ajmere, Indore, Ahmednagar; Poona, where
he gave ten lectures and addresses; Bangalore, Vel-
lore, and Madras.
In Delhi his addresses were delivered in St.
Stephen's College, of the Cambridge Mission. In
Lahore his first lecture was presided over by Dr. J.
Sime, the Director of Public Instruction in the
Panjab ; the second was presided over by the
Bishop of Lahore; and the third by Colonel Robin¬
son, the British Commissioner. In Agra he gave
his addresses at St. John's College of the Church
Missionary Society and at the Government Agra
College. At Indore Dr. and Mrs. Barrows were
the recipients of very kind attentions from the
Maharajah Holkar, and from the members of the
Brahmo Samaj. At Ahmednagar their time was
largely spent in studying Missions. In Poona he
340 CHRISTIANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
had a great reception from the leading gentlemen
of the non-Christian communities at the General
Library. At the close of his final lecture in Poona,
Dr. Mackichan, President of Wilson College, Bom¬
bay, earnestly commended the lectures to the can¬
did attention of thoughtful Hindus as being of ex¬
ceptional worth.
In a very cordial editorial account in the Banga¬
lore Daily Post of Dr. Barrows's visit to Banga¬
lore, is the following:
As was observed by Mr. Slater in the hall last evening,
three such Christian lectures, so comprehensive and eru¬
dite, so eloquent and ornate, so earnest and persuasive,
generous and sympathetic, have probably never before
been delivered in Bangalore. They were altogether unique
of their kind. It requires a cultivated and historical fac¬
ulty, a keen literary taste and fair acquaintance with his¬
torical Christianity to intelligently follow and really
appreciate Dr. Barrows in his wide, deep, and masterly
treatment of his many-sided subject. Seldom have edu¬
cated Hindus listened to such a sublime, powerful, and bold
exposition of the truths and claims of the religion of Christ.
In Bangalore Dr. Barrows was the recipient of
graceful courtesies from the Cosmopolitan Club,
composed of Hindu gentlemen of various creeds.
At his lecture in Vellore, the Mohammedan mayor
of the city presided. A great public demonstra¬
tion was given in the Victoria Town Hall, Madras,
on February 15th. The address of welcome was
signed by a large committee representing many
faiths, but all united in the spirit of friendliest
courtesy and appreciation toward the president of
the Parliament of Religions. His opening lecture
on February i6th, crowded the Victoria Town Hall
APPENDIX.
341
to its utmost capacity, and the audiences remained
very large to the close. His visit to Madras was
in some respects the climax of his work in India.
Great interest had been awakened by the recent re¬
turn and addresses of Swami Vivekananda, so that
religious discussion prevailed in the bazaar, the
colleges, the homes, and the journals. A large re¬
ception was given Dr. Barrows while in Madras, by
the Triplicane Literary Club, and other receptions
by the India Social Reformers and the native
Christians.
From Madras Dr. Barrows visited Salem and
Coimbatore. After this he went to Trichur, on the
Malabar coast, where he was the guest of the
Prince and Patriarch Nouri, of the Syrian Church.
This ancient church, through its highest officials
and its large membership, gave Dr. Barrows a most
cordial and brilliant welcome.
His course then led him to Madura, where a cor¬
dial greeting awaited him from Christians and non-
Christians. Besides several lectures in Madura,
he, addressed the Christian College in the neigh¬
boring village of Pasumalai. The impression made
by his work here is shown in what Rev. J. P.
Jones, D.D., of Pasumalai, wrote to The Indepen¬
dent., of New York:
The recent visit of Dr. Barrows and his eloquent, power¬
ful lectures have brought cheer and courage to every mis¬
sionary in India, and have done not a little to give a right
view of our faith to many who have recently been carried
away by Vedantic platitudes and fallacies. America is to
be congratulated upon establishing the first lectureship of
this kind, and at a time when it is so much needed. And
Dr. Barrows is to be congratulated upon the conspicuous
342 CHRISTIANITY, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
success with which he has opened this lectureship that is
honored by his name.
Dr. Barrows's closing work in India was a series
of lectures and addresses in Palamacotta and Tin-
nevelly, where the native Christians built a special
panda! or tabernacle.
On the 12th and 13th of March he lectured to
large audiences, many of them Buddhists, in Wesley
College, Colombo. Arriving in Japan on the 5th of
April, Dr. Barrows discovered that there was an
eager desire for the delivery of his lectures in the
Island Empire. His nineteen days in Japan were
fully occupied with work similar to that which he
carried on in India. One lecture was delivered in
Kobe, on the Inland Sea, four addresses in Osaka,
seven in Kioto, three in Yokohama, and seven in
Tokio. Receptions were given him by the mission¬
aries in Osaka, Kioto, Yokohama, and Tokio. In
the beautiful Botanical Garden in the Japanese cap¬
ital a reception was extended Dr. Barrows by rep¬
resentatives of the Christian, Buddhist, Shintoist,
and Confucianist religions. The welcome accorded
in Japan was similar to that in India. Resolutions
were offered by the Missionary Conference in Sen-
dai heartily approving Dr. Barrows's work and ex¬
pressing the hope that a Japanese Lectureship
might be established similar in spirit and purpose
to the India Lectureship. On May 3d, Dr. Bar¬
rows lectùred on Christ, the Universal Man and
Saviour, in the Union Church, Honolulu. On May
loth he reached San Francisco.
Before Dr. Barrows left India the call became so
APPENDIX.
343
loud and general for the immediate production of
an inexpensive edition of the lectures that he gave
them to the Christian Literature Society of India,
of which Dr. Murdoch is secretary, and five thou¬
sand copies were published, and these have been
largely taken and are doing good work in this
country.
The standpoint of the lectures is clearly indi¬
cated by their general title : "Christianity, the World-
Religion." This thesis has been developed and
maintained in a large and kindly way, by a mas¬
terly massing of facts, by forcible argument, and
by a most sympathetic spirit toward all that is good
in every faith. Some of those who were not pres¬
ent at the Parliament of Religions have been sur¬
prised at the strong, unhesitating utterances of Dr.
Barrows in regard to the Christian faith as sure to
become the Universal Religion. But the series has
been everywhere received with marked interest and
attention. The following are examples of what
has been said in various organs of different relig¬
ious communities:
Unity and the Minister.^ the organ of the Church
of the New Dispensation, said:
Dr. Barrows's presence here was imposing and enchant¬
ing, and gave an impetus to the mind of the thoughtful
portion of his Christian and non-Christian hearers. . . .
We knew he was a Christian of the orthodox school, and
his recent lectures have not disappointed us, but increased
our admiration for him. Our admiration for Dr. Barrows
was the greater, because, being a Christian of what may
be called the orthodox school, his heart was so liberal, so
world-embracing, so many-sided.
344 CHIUSTIANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
The Indian Christian Herald., the organ of the
Bengali Christians, said:
The incidents of the visit of Dr. Barrows to Calcutta
have brought into demonstrative relief, the mighty hold,
more or less distinctly realized, of Christianity on the
national conscience. The mission of Dr. Barrows, it was
well understood, was solely and wholly to commend to the
people the fitness of Christianity to become the world-
religion. Never before had a Hindu Maharaja's palace
been thrown open to celebrate the welcome of one with so
exclusive a message to deliver. Never before had Hindus,
Mohammedans, Parsis, Buddhists, Jains, and Brahmosvied
with Christians in wishing godspeed to so single-purposed
a herald. Nor was the spell broken with the development
of the mission. The prayer which, for the first time,
went up from the palatial hall, "May the spirit of Jesus
prevail still more widely and pervade still more deeply,"
was abundantly answered. The gospel lectures found
among their hearers, men of light and leading, Hindu,
Brahmo, and Parsi, who had never before listened to a
distinctive, evangelical appeal. Nay, some of them were
delivered under the acquiescing presidency of Brahmo and
Hindu representatives, while all elicited from non-Chris¬
tians and Christians alike, repeated plaudits of approval.
We are firmly persuaded that Dr. Barrows has been used
of God to draw out, and make patent, some of the invisible
trophies of Missions, and that the outlook is bound to be
an enthusiastic revival of the missionary spirit' in the
Homes of Missions. He has taken his stand on the same
evangelical foundations which are exhibited in the apos¬
tolic mission of the missionaries. Dr. Barrows has illus¬
trated, further, that, while the recognition of truth, wher¬
ever it was found, was an imperative obligation on the part
of every true man, such recognition, properly viewed, was
a source of strength, rather than of weakness, to Chris¬
tianity.
APPENDIX.
345
The Indian IVitness, of Calcutta, said:
We very much doubt whether India has ever been
favored with so worthy a presentation of the Christian
faith. . . . The lectures are a magnificent contribution
to the Christian evidences, well worthy of a permanent
place in literature. Many competent critics have pro¬
nounced the lecture on the Universal Book the finest pre¬
sentation of the incomparable place in the world's life and
literature of the Christian Scriptures which they have read
or heard.
Of the closing lecture, the Indian Witness re¬
marks that it
Was a masterly presentation of the claims of the Chris¬
tian faith upon all men, and in every way a worthy comple¬
tion of what must be regarded as the ablest course of lec¬
tures on Christian subjects to which the Indian commun¬
ity, of the present generation at least, has been permitted
to listen.
The Indian Evangelical Review., of Calcutta, said :
Opportunity of discussion and controversy was not given
on the floor of the Parliament; but the opportunity was
given and largely availed of on the larger arena of the pub¬
lic press and on public platforms, with the result that
instead of the missionaries suffering in reputation or the
work of foreign missions being discredited, it is "the pic¬
turesque fascinating orators who championed the cause"
of the non-Christian religions who have been discredited,
as is always the case when the libelled Christian has got
the indictment or book which his adversary has written.
But what are the net results of the Parliament of 1893?
We would answer, first of all, a widespread approach toward
the Christian platform on the part of the more educated
members of the non-Christian community. They are
pleased with the Parliament of Religions as an expression
of Christian love and sympathy towards, and interest in,
the devotees of non-Christian religions. Love begets love,
and sympathy begets gratitude. This love and this sym-
34^ CHRISTIANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
pathy have drawn many towards Christ who previously
stood aloof. In the second place, to the Parliament of
Religions we owe the able, evangelical and apostolic lec¬
tures of the Rev. Dr. John Henry Barrows. And we add
that different from the lectures of all other temporary vis¬
itors to India, Dr. Barrows's lectures will live and be a
power and an arsenal of munition long after we and the
lecturer have left behind us all earthly activities. They
made a deep and lasting impression upon those who heard
them delivered and many of these were men who never
heard Christian addresses before; we believe they will be
much more widely known, and known for generations yet
to come, as a printed volume. In the third place, we
expect such Christian lectures to be delivered every second
year in perpetuity on Mrs. Haskell's Foundation, and issue
in the publication of works of a permanent apologetic value,
prepared specially for the intelligent English-educated
young men of India. The first series of the Haskell-Bar-
rows Lectures, we hope will prove a true earnest and sam¬
ple of those which are to follow. We desire no better^
none more loyal to the truth as it is in Jesus, and none
more faithful to the non-Christian faiths and their follow¬
ers. Another good thing which Dr. Barrows has done by
his lectures was to correct untruths, and to supplement
half-truths industriously circulated by Christians and non-
Christians. This itself is no small gain. One word more:
the Calcutta Missionary Conference which met after five of
the six lectures were delivered, were enthusiastic and
unanimous in their appreciation of the lectures and in
praise of the University of Chicago, whose commissioner
he is, and of Mrs. Caroline E. Haskell, by whose Christian
liberality the Lectureship was founded.
The Hindu., of Madras, one of the ablest of the
non-Christian journals of India, said:
Dr. Barrows is certainly to be congratulated on the
impression he has produced as a lecturer. There is an
unanimous feeling that he possesses great powers of expo¬
sition and a thorough knowledge of his subject. More
than all, he has evidently a great love for the people of
APPENDIX.
347
this country and some appreciation for their good quali¬
ties, and especially for their intellectual keenness and
aptitude for metaphysical controversy.
But no reference to the lectures has been more
honorable to India than the noble sentiment of
the Indian Social Reformer.^ the courageous organ
of the reformers in Madras. Differing from Dr.
Barrows in standpoint and in belief, this paper
spoke the following true words about the lecturer's
utterances :
It has, we see, been made a point against Dr. Barrows
that he claims a position for Christianity superior to that
of any other religion. We are, of course, not prepared to
concede that claim. But we never expected that Dr. Bar¬
rows would condescend to waive that claim for his own
faith, and if he had done so, we, for one, should not have
very much cared to listen to what he has to say.
And we regard as the outcome of sheer intellectual
indolence and pusillanimity, the opinion which is fashion¬
able nowadays that one conviction, one faith, is as good
as another. We regard this easy-going fashion of mind
as fraught with the greatest danger to the future of this
country. For it means isolation; it spells death. The
vice, wherever and in whatever form it prevails, is the
child of pure selfishness.
The religion of the future will no doubt have affinities
with each of the existing religions, just as the human race
has affinities with the anthropoid apes. We, therefore,
welcome Dr. Barrows's statement of the claims of his
faith. If they are exaggerated or imaginary, they will go
to the wall of their own accord. If they are real, on the
other hand, it may so happen that some courageous souls
that have been seeking the light, and not found it, may be
impressed with them and may be led to transform them¬
selves into the receptacle of a greatness such as an exalted
religious idea alone can bestow. We invite our friends
to give their unbiased hearing to Dr. Barrows. To be
afraid of being converted to his views is cowardice. No
348 CHRISTIANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
man who is afraid of having to relinquish his preposses¬
sions need call himself a religious man or a lover of truth.
His proper place is in the vegetable kingdom, where to be
uprooted is to perish. The human vegetable is the most
despicable of human things.
The motto of the Parliament of Religions was:
"Have we not all one Father? hath not one God
created us?" It is true. There is but one God,
and He is the Father of every one of us, and He
will draw all His children more and more to Him¬
self and more and more to one another. It is in
love to Him and in love to India that these Lectures
were devised and were prepared, and have been de¬
livered, and are now given to the press. The
present writer counts it an honor and a privilege to
write these words of introduction. He believes
that many in our beloved India will read the Lec¬
tures with thoughtfulness and earnestness, and find
them a help in becoming intimate with God our
Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. "And this is
life eternal that they might know Thee, the only
true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent."
And, before reading our brother's message about
our Father and His revelation of Himself, let us
humbly and sincerely pray the universal prayer
which was daily prayed at the World's First Parlia¬
ment of Religions: "Our Father which art in
heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom
come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us
our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us
not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: for
Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the
glory, for ever.—Amen."
Ahmednagar, August 25, 1897.
NOTES.
NOTES.
LECTURE 1.
BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR FIRST LECTURE.
On the general topic of the religious element in man, see:
Saussaye, Manual of the Science of Religion, Chapter 3.
(A summary of the whole discussion between
Spencer, Tyler, Max Müller, and others.)
D'Alviella, Hibbert Lectures, i8gi. Origin and Growth
of the Conception of God, Lecture 2.
James Freeman Clarke, Ten Great Religions, Vol. II,
p. 17 ff.
S. H. Kellogg, Genesis and Growth of Religion, Lecture 2.
On the development of the religious element in man, see:
Menzies, History of Religion, Part I.
Baring-Gould, Origin and Development of Religious Belief.
Two volumes.
On the necessity of religion, see:
John Caird, Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion,
Chapter 4.
Pfleiderer, Philosophy and Development of Religion,
Gifford Lectures, Vol. 1.
Pfleiderer, Philosophy of Religion, Vol. Ill, Section i.
See also upon the general subject, E. Caird, The Evo¬
lution of Religion, Vol. I, Lecture i.
Jevons, Introduction to the History of Religion, Chapters
1-3, etc.
C. M. Tyler, D. D., Bases of Religious Belief.
On Islam and Buddhism as missionary religions, see:
C. R. Haines, Islâm as a Missionary Religion, S. P. C. K.,
1889.
351
352 CHRISTIANITY, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
A. Scott, D. D., Buddhism and Christianity, Lecture 6,
p. 318 ff.
Dods, Mohammed, Buddha, and Christ, passim.
On the universal character of Christianity, see:
Fremantle, The World as the Subject of Redemption.
Kuenen, National Religions and Universal Religions,
p. 292.
G. M. Grant, The Religions of the World in Relation to
Christianity.
Note i, p. 26.
Max Müller writes:
" A distinction has been made for us between religion
and philosophy, and, so far as form and object are con¬
cerned, I do not deny that such a distinction may be useful.
But when we look to the subjects with which religion is con¬
cerned, they are, and always have been, the very subjects
on which philosophy has dwelt, nay, from which philosophy
has sprung. If religion depends for its very life on the
sentiment or the perception of the infinite within the finite
and beyond the finite, who is to determine the legitimacy
of that sentiment or of that perception, if not the philoso¬
pher ? Who is to determine the powers which man possesses
for apprehending the finite by his senses, for working up
his single and therefore finite impressions into concepts by
his reason, if not the philosopher? And who, if not the
philosopher, is to find out whether man can claim the
right of asserting the existence of the infinite, in spite of the
constant opposition of sense and reason, taking these
words in their usual meaning? We should damnify relig¬
ion if we separated it from philosophy; we should ruin
philosophy if we divorced it from religion." Hibbert
Lectures, 1878, The Origin and Growth of Religion, pp. 337-8.
In speaking of the great Hindu philosophies, as contain¬
ing matters of chiefly intellectual interest, I do not mean
to deny their religious significance, nor do I express an
opinion favorable to any divorce of religion from philoso¬
phy. I hope that in these lectures I have, at least, indi¬
cated the fundamental principles of the Christian philosophy.
Going to India with a supremely practical purpose, and
ATO TES.
353
realizing that the Hindu mind has made religion chiefly a
matter of speculation, I felt that my best service would be
rendered by setting forth the ethical and spiritual aspects
of the Christian faith. The following citations from men
who know the present condition and needs of thoughtful
Hindus are of interest.
In one of his valuable reports of work among educated
classes, the Rev. T. E. Slater, of Bangalore, says:
" Christianity and Hinduism are now meeting face to
face; and the great lament which we as missionaries have
to raise, is in respect to the tone of mind generally prevalent
in the country. To so many minds, religious truths appear
to be little more than the material on which to exercise the
ingenuity of controversy and speculation. There is
enough and to spare of criticism and discussion ; but serious
thought and earnest inquiry are very rare. Besides the
spirit of false patriotism that is abroad, the materialistic
tendency of the age deadens the concern for spiritual
things. Interest in merely worldly pursuits and in
amassing wealth seems to be just now all-absorbing, and
the ' gospel of getting on ' gains more hearers than any
other."
In a lecture on Universal Religion, delivered in Banga¬
lore, November, i8g6, p. 7, Rev. Edward P. Rice, B. A.,
says:
" One not unfrequently meets with those who say that
a man cannot judge whether his ancestral religion is true
or not unless he reads all the Sastras and the commentaries
thereon. The reflection which such a statement at once
suggests is that the religion which requires a pundit to
understand it and to see its reasonableness may be a very
profound one, but it cannot be the Universal Religion."
In a lecture on Liberal Education in India, p. 19, Pro¬
fessor N. G. Welinkar, of Wilson College, Bombay^ has ably
shown some of the weaknesses of the present training of
the Hindus:
"The greatest lack in the education imparted in the
majority of Indian colleges is the religious element; and
therefore in common with many enlightened friends of
liberal education in India, both Christian and non-Chris-
354 CHRISTIANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
tian, I rejoice at the existence in the midst of our educa¬
tional system of missionary colleges where the essentially
religious basis of all sound education—and particularly of
western education—is steadily kept in view, and where
those great truths are presented to the rising generations
of Indians, on the acceptance of which alone depends all
progress in the paths of true enlightenment and knowl¬
edge."
Note 2, p. 27.
"Thus, beneath and beyond what we may call our
secular consciousness in all its forms, beneath and beyond
all our consciousness of finite objects and of the subjective
interests and desires that bind us to them, there is always
a religious consciousness, the consciousness of an infinite
or Divine Being, who is the source of all existence and of
all knowledge, and in whom we and all things 'live and
move and have our being.' " The Evolution of Religion,
Edward Caird, Vol. I. p. 85.
"The theological interpretation of the universe is, with
the chief thinkers from Plato to Hegel, its final interpre¬
tation, the natural interpretation elevated in and by the
supernatural, which last is itself enriched by every discov¬
ery of natural science. When nature is seen to be God
acting, so that each discovery in natural science is also a
contribution to natural theology, it seems evident that col¬
lision between advancing science and religious faith is not
possible." Philosophy of Theism, A. C. Fraser, p. 296,
Note 3, p. 28.
"The thought and feeling of divine immanence in all
natural appearances ; of the finite being pervaded by and
sustained in what is infinite,—comes out, in ancient and
modern poetry and religion, as the intense expression of a
theism so conscious of the uniqueness and pervadingness
of the Divine as to refuse to place God apart—one among
many. Hebrew literature, with its abundant representa¬
tions of God, still leads up to the idea of divine presence
latent in the heart of reality." Philosophy of Theism, A. C.
Eraser, p. 152.
NOTES.
355
Note 4, p. 30.
"The sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar.
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world."
—Dover Beach, by Matthew Arnold.
It is now evident that Matthew Arnold and others mis¬
took a temporary backward current for a permanent ten¬
dency. It is not unusual for Hindu journals to quote from
skeptical European writers of a generation ago who do not
represent present opinion. To a coosiderable degree India
gave credit to incorrect reports made by a few returning
delegates to the Parliament of Religions. On reaching
Bombay I had occasion to speak as follows:
" The Christian people of America were hospitable to
the delegates from other lands and faiths, and heard and
read with much interest and genuine sympathy the repre¬
sentations of non-Christian religions. This interest and
courtesy were, in some cases, misinterpreted. Some of the
Japanese Buddhist delegates returned home with the idea,
which they spread far and wide, that Arherica was losing
faith in Christianity and was hungering for the bread of
life which Buddhism had to offer. Nothing could be more
absurd. America is not losing faith in the Christian relig¬
ion. Its progress in the United States during the last
twenty-five years has been more rapid than ever before.
In the building of new churches; in the vast additions to
church membership, numbering nearly half a million every
year; in the building of mission-schools in our great cities,
and the pushing of mission-work on our wide frontier of
new settlements; in the spread of Sunday Schools ; in the
marvellous growth of the Christian Endeavor movement,
and of similar young people's societies, which probably
number three millions of members in the United States
alone; in the great sums given to Christian colleges ; and in
35^ CHRISTIANITY, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
the many millions of dollars annually raised to send to
other lands the messengers of the Gospel,—in all this, and
in the steadily growing purpose to put the gentle and
humane teachings of Jesus into the daily life, and to make
them effective in the relations of men with each other, we
have indisputable evidences that Christianity is a grow-
ingly powerful, beneficent infiuence.
"People going to America from the Orient are easily
liable to misunderstand the interest and courtesy with
which they are received. Curious to hear all truth, the
American people listen eagerly to lectures on the Vedanta
philosophy or on Esoteric Buddhism, and continue to go
to their own churches, cherish their own Christian faith,
and do their own Christian work as before. Naturally our
Oriental visitors are most earnestly courted by Americans
who, for one reason or another, are not in sympathy with
evangelical Christian beliefs. And I have noticed that
persons who have gone away from historic Christianity
sometimes think that everybody is about to follow them.
But this is not so. Our carefully prepared Government
census shows that the evangelical believers in America
outnumber the non-evangelical of all denominations more
than one hundred to one." Times of India, Dec. 17, 1896.
Note 5, p. 31.
The following remarks by one of the most thoughtful of
the American missionaries in India indicate a change which
is both marked and hopeful:
"A few years ago the raising of this question [the origin
of Hinduism] would, in itself, have been considered a dis¬
ability in one who aspired to become a missionary. It was
laid down as a fundamental postulate of his belief that
Hinduism was of the devil, and that, coming from below,
it must be shunned as a study and denounced root and
branch as a thing purely satanic. It is not too much to
say that this theory has entirely given way to a more
rational belief." Rev. J. P. Jones, D.D., in The Harvest
Field, March, 1897, p. 83.
" Modern scholarship is practically of one voice in main¬
taining that God hath not left himself without witness
NOTES.
357
among the many nations of the earth—a witness that has
indeed been comparatively feeble—a revelation that is dim
and star-like as compared with the noon-day brightness of
the Sun of Righteousness in the Christian religion. The
day has come when the missionary must accept and
believe that God has been dealing directly with this people
through the many centuries of their history, leading them
to important truth, even though their evil hearts and worse
lives have caused them, in many cases, to 'change the
truth of God into a lie and worship, and serve the creature
more than the Creator.' Many of the truths which are
imbedded in the religion of the land find their solution in
no other hypothesis than this." Rev. J. P. Jones, D.D., in
The Harvest Field, March, 1897, p. 84.
Note 6, p. 32.
In considering Mohammedanism, Hinduism, Confucian¬
ism, and Buddhism as the faiths which dispute with Chris¬
tianity the conquest of the globe, I do not mean to imply
any lack of appreciation of other religions, some of which
may be considered as of a higher type than these four. The
Sikhs of India are an interesting people and their religion
contains noble elements, but their faith is not so wide¬
spread as to reach and influence even the land of its birth.
"The Sikh religion may be considered as localized in
the Panjab, for though there are members of this faith in
most provinces, 98 per cent of them are returned from its
birthplace." General Report on the Census of India, 1891,
p. 176.
Parsiism, more ancient than the religion of the Sikhs,
and one of the highest forms of non-Christian faith, has not
extended itself widely enough to be deemed even an Indian
faith.
"As the Sikhs appertain specially to the Panjab, so the
Zoroastrian religion is almost confined to the Western
Presidency and states surrounding it. The early settle¬
ments of the Parsis at Nausari, in the Baroda State, and in
Surat and Broach, still contain about 30.4 per cent of the
entire community, and their original fire temple at Udwada
on the Surat coast has maintained its supreme repute.
35^ CH/flSTIANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
But the headquarters of the race have been gradually
shifted to Bombay, where there are now 52.8 per cent
returned." General Report on the Census of India, 1891,
p. 176.
The Jains have close connection in several ways both
with Buddhism and Hinduism. Their benevolence and their
kindness toward animals are highly praiseworthy. This
faith numbers a million and a half adherents.
"It is remarkable that in the country of its birth, Par-
asnath in South Bihar, there should be no more than one
thousand four hundred and eighty-seven of this religion
returned at the census. From evidence indirectly afforded
by applications made from the neighboring tract just be¬
fore the census, it seems highly probable that in this part
of the country, instead of desiring to emphasize the dis¬
tinction of their religion from Brahmanism, as was the case
at Delhi, etc., the Jains are anxious to efface it, as their so¬
cial position is evidently based on caste orthodoxy within
the Brahmanic fold. If this tendency be true, it will ac¬
count for the disappearance of the Jains into the general
sea of Hinduism." General Report on the Census of India,
1891, p. 176.
"The Jains are widespread over India, though they form
an appreciable numerical element in the population only in
Rajputana, Ajmer, and Western India, and nowhere reach
five per cent of the total. It is worth notice that they seem
to flourish most where they have devoted themselves to
trade and commerce, and are weak in number where they
have become agriculturists." General Report on the Cen¬
sus of India, 1891, p. 176.
Note 7, p. 38.
"The Christian ought not to rest satisfied with the
vague general idea that Hinduism is a form of heathenism
with which he has nothing to do, save to help in destroying
it. Let him try to realize the ideas of the Hindus regarding
God, and the soul, and sin, and salvation, and heaven, and
hell, and the many sore trials of this mortal life. He will
then certainly have a much more vivid perception of the
Divine origin and transcendent importance of his own
NOTES.
359
religion. Further, he will then extend a helping hand to
his eastern brother with far more of sensibility and tender¬
ness ; and, in proportion to the measure of his loving
sympathy will doubtless be the measure of his success. A
yearning heart will accomplish more than the most cogent
argument." Non-Christian Religions of the World—The
Hindu Religion, J. Murray Mitchell, p. 4.
Note 8, p. 39.
One of the foremost men of India is Behramji M. Mala-
bari, editor of The Spectator of Bombay. As poet, scholar,
and reformer he is esteemed both in Great Britain and
in India. In a sketch of his life and times, by R. P.
Karkaria, we learn that he came under the powerful influ¬
ence of Rev. Dr. Wilson.
"Dr. Wilson, then, failed to make him a Christian, but
he succeeded in making him a better man, inspired by all
that is good and true in the Christian faith superadded to
that of his own. And if the venerable missionary had lived
longer he would certainly have been proud of the moral
and religious development of his protégé." India, Forty
Years of Progress and Reform, R. P. Karkaria, p. 80.
Malabari has labored not only to promote social reform
in India, but to bring men of different faiths and races into
more fraternal relations. His appreciation of the work of
Prof. Max Müller in the same direction is well known.
"He has labored all his life to bring about a union
amongst nations. That union has long been aimed at. A
marriage between East and West was arranged even before
the days of the illustrious William Jones. Even the silver
wedding is gone and past. In that work of union you
trace the hand of a higher power than of man. Modern
Indian history teaches you that. But I may say that Max
Müller and his contemporaries have contributed largely to
bringing to the surface the practical result of that process
of, let us hope, progressive union. By his Rig-Veda
Samhita, and other works, Max Müller has given new
birth, so to say, to Sanskrit: he has resuscitated, I say he
has helped to regenerate, the language and literature of
our land." Behramji M. Malabari, D. Gidumal, pp. 162-3.
360 CHRISTIANIT7', THE WORLD-RELIGION.
The more enlightened minds of India are not wanting
in a clear, comprehensive and grateful understanding of
the advantages which have come to India from her con¬
tact with western civilization.
"Macaulay and Bentinck were justified in their expecta¬
tions of the enormous benefits to accrue to the Indian races
from English education. During the last two generations
India has gone through a new and unique development,
fraught with momentous consequences to itself and to the
British Empire. Under Western influences the former
traditional moorings are already being gradually left
behind, and the educated classes are drifting towards
another goal." India, Forty Years of Progress and Reform,
R. P. Karkaria, p. 13.
"Yhe many noble deeds of philanthropy and self-denying
benevolence which Christian missionaries have performed
in India, and the various intellectual, social, and moral
improvements which they have effected, need no flattering
comment; they are treasured in the gratitude of the nation,
and can never be forgotten or denied." Lectures in India,
Keshub Chunder Sen, p. 15.
Note 9, p. 40.
In an interview published in The Madras Standard,
Feb. 13th, 1897, I said; I am profoundly impressed with
the lack of unity prevailing in India. It is an aggregation
of peoples, governments, religions, and classes where
the divisions are woeful indeed. It is perfectly evident
that, if the wise, restraining hand of British rule were
removed, chaos would prevail and the Hindus and Moham¬
medans in some places would be flying at each others'
throats. There are few countries where religious intoler¬
ance seems so general and cruel as here. India is living
in a state of society which, so far as religious tolerance is
concerned, appears to us Americans most distressing. The
alphabet of true toleration has yet to be learnt by great
sections of the community. I know that Hinduism is will¬
ing that men should hold a variety of incongruous creeds,
but religion is not merely a creed; it is also a life where
the conditions and environments ought to be in harmony
NOTES.
361
with the inner convictions. The religions of India have
been trying here, as at the Parliament of Religions, to
make themselves as Christian as possible. But when mem¬
bers of the Hindu community, convinced of the truth and
rightful claims of Christianity, prepare to confess Christ and
enter into fellowship with His people, these Christian dis¬
ciples still meet relentless and often cruel opposition. They
are sometimes disowned, prohibited from seeing their
own relations, deprived of just inheritances, assailed with
falsehood, with blows, and now and then tortured. Some
of the noblest specimens of human character and some
of the finest and most enlightened intellects which I have
met in any land are in the Native Christian Commu¬
nity of India. And I have reason to believe that there are
many thousands of educated youths who are convinced that
Christianity is true but who are still held back from de¬
claring their faith openly by reason of the cruel intolerance
still prevailing.
Note 10, p. 59.
"When, after the long feuds and battles of the middle
ages, Confucianism stepped the second time into the Land
of Brave Scholars, it was no longer with the simple rules
of conduct and ceremonial of the ancient days, nor was it
as the ally of Buddhism." The Religions of Japan, Griifis,
p. 136.
"The new Confucianism came to Japan as the system of
Chu Hi. For three centuries this system has already held
sway over the intellect of China. For two centuries and a
half it had dominated the minds of the Samurai so that
the majority of them to-day, even with the new name of
Shizoku, are Confucianists so far as they are anything."
The Religions of Japan, Griifis, p. 136.
"From the palace downward there was no centralization
of authority or responsibility, no unity of counsel, no agree¬
ment as to action, no plan of campaign. Stupefied bewil¬
derment, helpless inertia, or arrogant contempt for the
invader, prevailed alternately, sometimes simultaneously,
in every yamen. Each man was absorbed in the effort to
get the better of somebody else, and to make something for
362 CHRTSTIANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
his own pocket out of so paying a concern as a campaign.
Viceroys swindled governors, governors swindled generals,
and generals swindled subalterns. There were infinite and
delicately-shaded grades of peculation. Of patriotism, or
enthusiasm for the war, or loyalty to the dynasty, or self-
respect for the race, there was not a sign. Chinese tele¬
graph-clerks sold important information to the Japanese ;
Chinese officers accepted bribes to retreat or to surrender."
Problems of the Far East, Geo. N. Curzon, M.P., p. 366.
Note i i, p. 59.
"The Absolute Religion must make no distinction
between Jew and Gentile, Musselman and Kaffir, Christian
and heathen, Arya and Mleccha, high caste and low caste,
layman and ecclesiastic; but must deal with each individ¬
ual of the race as a man.'' Universal Religion, a lecture
delivered at Bangalore in Nov. 1896, by Edward P. Rice, p. 6.
Note 12, p. 60.
"If Buddhism has gained such amazing conquests over
Oriental nations could not Christianity, with a similar but
far superior humanity and self-sacrifice, and with the true
Son of God to present, gain still greater victories? There
seems nothing to prevent an Oriental who has hung on the
words of Buddha from listening even more intently to the
words of Christ. But he will not be induced to do so by
denunciations of such a sweet and loving soul as Gautama.
The preacher must arm himself with the best of Buddha's
truths, and then show the higher in the teachings of Jesus.
He must offer the Fatherhood of God, which the Hindu
saint never mentally grasped, and the hope of a conscious
living immortality, which the great Mystic may not fully
have attained." The Unknown God, C. Loring Brace, p. 312.
LECTURE IL
BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR SECOND LECTURE.
On the general subject of the effects of Christianity, see:
Storrs, The Divine Origin of Christianity Indicated by Its
Historical Effects.
F. W. Farrar, The Witness of History to Christ.
Fairbairn, Religion in History and in Modern Life.
C. Loring Brace, Gesta Christi.
On Christianity and the Roman Empire, see:
Merivale, Conversion of the Roman Empire, Boyle Lec¬
ture, 1864.
Uhlhorn, Conflict of Christianity with Heathenism.
The same. Christian Charity in the Ancient Church.
Lecky, History of European Morals from Augustus to
Charlemagne.
On Christianity and Social Questions, see:
Peabody, Ely, Henderson, and Gladden, in the Report
of the Parliament of Religions.
On Christian Missions, see:
Warneck, History of Protestant Missions, translated by
Thomas Smith, D.D., 1884.
J. S. Dennis, Foreign Missions after a Century.
J. S. Dennis, Christian Missions and Social Progress.
(Very valuable.)
A. C. Thompson, Protestant Missions, Their Rise and
E.arly Progress.
E. A. Lawrence, Modern Missions in the East.
Report of World's Congress of Missions, Chicago, 1893.
Note i, p. 71.
"The question is sometimes asked. What is the influence
of Mohammedanism upon the moral character of Moslems?
363
364 CHRIST/ANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
In reply to this question, it must be admitted that wherever
it brings to its allegiance a grossly idolatrous people, espe¬
cially if they be fetish- or devil-worshipers, it does raise
their moral status. Cannibalism and infanticide are abol¬
ished ; idolatrous customs, degrading and immoral, are
obliterated; certain fixed rules are enforced in respect to
society and the State; thieves and murderers are severely
punished; the use of intoxicating drinks is greatly dimin¬
ished if not absolutely prevented; children are educated to
some extent and trained up as the worshipers of the true
God; certain ideas of honor, courage and devotion are
inculcated, and so the scale of morality is greatly ad¬
vanced ; and yet there is a limit to Moslem progress in morals
a long way this side the goal of Christian ethics. The per¬
missions of the Koran in respect to polygamy, concubinage
and divorce; the sanction of slavery and holy war, the
example of Mohammed himself, the adoption of the prin¬
ciple that the end justifies the means—thereby consecrating
every form of deception and lying, every sort of persecu¬
tion and violence to the cause of religion—these things
effectually block the wheels of progress in ethical spheres,
so that Moslem nations have hardly ever reached even the
planes of moral purity occupied by the most degenerate
Christian nations." Islâm, or the Religion of the Turk,
E. M. Wherry, p. 59.
Note 2, p. 80.
"The Hinduism which I examined, for example, in
Benares filled me with pity and distress. The hideous idol¬
atries which I have witnessed in many places appear to me
thoroughly debasing to the people. I know what excuses
and explanations are offered by the pundits. I am sorry
that they think the common and, tome, degrading worship,
is fitted to an unenlightened population. I am sorry that
they do not cherish a loftier faith in the possibilities of the
common mind. Even granting, which I do not, that idol¬
atry is fitted to national infancy, three thousand years of
idolatry constitute too long a period of childish enslave¬
ment. Christianity in three hundred years swept away,
in large measure, the degrading forms of Greek and Roman
IVO TES.
365
polytheism. I know that there are hundreds of brave-
hearted reformers in India who are hoping and working
for the spiritual uplifting of the people, and I wonder that
hundreds of thousands of educated Hindus do not devote
themselves to a similar noble task. In western Christen¬
dom it is believed that the lowliest and most ignorant are
worthy of the best illumination, and the preaching of the
Gospel to the poor has wrought some of the chief marvels
of Christian history. We have found that the humblest
and most ignorant can be brought to worship God (who is
spirit) 'in spirit and in truth.' Instead of palliating idolatry
and all its terrible accompaniments in India, the edu¬
cated Hindu, it seems to me, might well strive to
repeat, with better accompaniments and without any sur¬
render of faith in the great God, the reformatory and ethical
work which even Buddhism wrought in India more than
two thousand years ago.
"Philosophic Hinduism is another thing, and the repre¬
sentatives of it whom-1 have met are men not only of intel¬
lectual acuteness but often of true devoutness of spirit. I
should esteem them even more highly than I now do if
their lives were devoted to lifting the pall of ignorance
from this poor people, and I am sorry that they are not
more generally willing to accept and proclaim that Chris¬
tian Gospel which I believe, more firmly if possible than
ever before, is the only sufficient force for the regeneration
of the individual and of society." Interview published in
the Madras Mail.
Note 3, p. 80.
Throughout Asia, outside the dominion of Christian and
Mohammedan thought, faith in metempsychosis is a fun¬
damental and dominating conception, contributing as
much as any other idea to the vast distinctions separating
the East from the West. President W. F. Warren, of the
Boston University, in his baccalaureate address, 1897, "Art
Thou a Human Being?" elucidates instructively the terri¬
ble significance of the baseless doctrine of transmigration.
"Here are men by the hundred million who certainly
know not what it is to be a man ; men by the hundred mil-
366 CHRISTIANirr, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
lion in whose estimation the innocent instinctive love of
conscious personal life is the supreme error, the supreme
curse, the only unpardonable sin; men by the hundred
million who consider themselves and all beings in the
total cosmic system as already lost, and as already under¬
going seonian punishment for sin committed in unremem-
bered earlier lives—a punishment which can never, never
cease so long as one individual consciousness shall cling
to life.
"According to the Buddha and to all advocates of metem¬
psychosis, the Karma which became embodied and per¬
petuated in me the moment I began to be, was nothing
that belonged to my father or mother, or to any of their
traceable ancestors—it was something that belonged to a
wholly different line of beings, the last of whom ceased the
moment I began my life.
"In Buddhist thought, and in the thought of all believ¬
ers in successive incarnations in various natures, there
neither is nor can be any such thing as that which we call
the human race. By this term we mean the total aggrega¬
tion of genealogically inter-connected human individuals,
living or dead, born or yet unborn, the whole viewed as
one in nature, one in origin, one in rational destination.
Neither the Buddhist, nor the believer in any form of trans¬
migration proper, knows any such vital unity of humanity.
He cannot. Part of the beings that have been members
of the human family are now beasts and birds and reptiles
—not to speak of yet lower or higher beings of non-human
varieties. A short time ago, all that to-day are men were
other than human, and a short time hence all will be
human no longer. Heredity being detached from the line
of parentage, the family is necessarily different in idea and
different in manifestation from what it is in the Christian
lands. In the realm of civil life a naturally ordered and
conservatively administered state is impossible. A man
to-day may be a woman to-morrow. Any apparently human
ruler is liable at any time to lay aside his human form and
take a year's vacation or a thousand years' vacation among
the fairylike goddesses, or among the demons, or among
the beasts of the field. Any subject of the government
NOTES.
367
caught in the very act of stealing may turn out to be a
god commendably engaged in righting some ancient wrong
that no man ever heard of."
Note 4, p. 82.
In partial contrast, however, with the despondency of
the Hindu Christian mentioned by Prof. Max Müller, note
the following observations of the Parsi scholar, Malabari:
"In spite of pressing engagements I contrived to see a
good deal of English life, at home and outside, in the
spheres of politics, literature, science, and the professions,
as well as of philanthropy ; in regard to the domestic rela¬
tions, and as contrasted with life abroad, much of what I
saw was disappointing, but there was much of it that
seemed full of hope." Behramji M. Malabari, by G. Gidu-
mal, p. 238.
"The life in a decent English home is a life of equality
among all the members. This means openness and mutual
confidence. Wife and husband are one at home, however
different their creed, political or religious. They love,
trust, serve each other as true partners, each contributing
his or her share to the common stock of happiness. The
children stand in the same position with the parents as the
latter stand to each other. There are no secrets, and there¬
fore no suspicion on the one hand or reserve on the other.
Mother and daughter live more like sisters; father and son
more like two brothers. The parent is as slow to assert
his or her authority as the child is to abuse his or her free¬
dom. The education of the heart begins very early, almost
while the child is in arms. Then begins the physical edu¬
cation, followed after an interval by education of the
mind. And how natural is the system of education! how
pleasant the mode of imparting it! It never wearies or
cramps the recipient." The Indian Eye on English Life, by
B. M. Malabari, p. 62.
"His Christianity strikes one as being a religion mainly
of flesh, bone and muscle. It teaches him, more than any¬
thing else, how to live, to survive, to make the best of life.
At home, or abroad, he appears a good deal to be guided
by this same muscular principle, to aggrandize, to con-
368 CHRISTIANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
quer, and to rule. His life, at its best, is a high fever of
humanity from which the divine has been eliminated, or in
which, rather, the divine has not yet made a dwelling-
place. It makes one wonder at such times if the life and
teachings of Christ—Britain's most precious heritage—may
not, after all, be thrown away upon a people whose spir¬
itual appreciation is so defective. Are such a people likely
to attain to anything like a perfect life, making for peace
and righteousness?" The Indian Eye on English Life, by B.
M. Malabari, p. 96.
"On the other hand, one need not be a Christian him¬
self to be able to see that Christianity has tended power¬
fully to humanize one of the least human of the races of
man. In its essence, it ought to exercise a three-fold
influence—to humanize, to liberalize, to equalize. This, to
me, is a very great achievement. Other religions have
their special merits; but none of them claims to have ren¬
dered this three-fold service to the race." The Indian Eye
on English Life, by B. M. Malabari, p. 99.
Prof. Welinkar, of Wilson College, Bombay, has grasped
flrmly and expressed with clearness one of the chief differ¬
ences between English and Hindu education:
"You cannot by stufflng the student's head with any
amount of mere book-knowledge, get him to imbibe a gen¬
uine love for the fundamental virtues of the English char¬
acter—its love of truth, its magnanimity, its devotion to
righteousness. You must get at the spring of these
traits, discover the moral motive power which sustains the
best and noblest in the life of England, and you must
make the youth of India drink of that life-giving stream,
and thus derive the moral power that alone can urge to
such lofty action." Liberal Education in India, N. G. Wel¬
inkar, p. 18.
Note 5, p. 82.
"Un ñls des croisés, le prince de Polignac, m'écrivait
récemment au sujet de l'Islâm. Cette puissante discipline
des âmes ne compte pas un seul rebelle parmi ses adeptes,
c'est-à-dire pas un athée. . . . Un pareil résultat ne
peut s'obtenir sans une grandeur intrinsèque. Et il ajou-
NOTES.
369
tait de vive voix ces paroles hardies, auxquelles je m'as¬
socie: Les Arabes sont plus chrétiens que nous et c'est par
la porte de l'Islâm que nous reviendrons à l'Evangile.
Nous avons besoin maintenant de cet intermédiaire entre
Jésus et nous." Christianisme et Islamisme. Conferences
données à Paris dans le mois de Mai, i8ç^, par M. Hyacinthe
Loyson, p. 66.
Note 6, p. 85.
On that hard Pagan world disgust
And secret loathing fell;
Deep weariness and sated lust
Made human life a hell.
The brooding East with awe beheld
Her impious younger world;
The Roman tempest swell'd and swell'd
And on her head was hurl'd.
The East bow'd low before the blast
In patient, deep disdain;
She let the legions thunder past.
And plunged in thought again.
So well she mused, a morning broke
Across her spirit gray;
A conquering, new-born joy awoke.
And filled her life with day.
— Obermann Once More, by Matthew Arnold.
Note 7, p. 88.
"We know how the first fellowship of the brethren met;
how they went forth with words of mercy, love, justice,
and hope; we know their self-denial, humility, and zeal;
their heroic lives and awful deaths; their loving natures
and their noble purposes; how they gathered around them
wherever they came the purest and greatest; how across
mountains, seas, and continents the communion of saints
joined in affectionate trust; how from the deepest corrup¬
tion of the heart arose a yearning for a truer life; how the
new faith, ennobling the instincts of human nature, raised
37° CHRISTIANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
up the slave, the poor, and the humble to the dignity of
common manhood, and gave new meaning to the true
nature of womanhood; how, by slow degrees, the church,
with its rule of right, of morality, and of communion,
arose; how the first founders and apostles of this faith
lived and died, and all their gifts were concentrated in
one, of all the characters of certain history, doubtless the
loftiest and purest—the unselfish, the great-hearted Paul."
The Meaning of History, Frederic Harrison, pp. 60-1.
Note 8, p. 92.
"There are moments in which we are all Buddhists;
when life has disappointed us, when weariness is upon us,
when the keen anguish born of the sight of human suffer¬
ing appals and benumbs us; when we are frozen to terror,
and our manhood flies at the sight of the Medusa-like head
of the world's unappeased and unappeasable agony; then
we too are torn by the paroxysm of anguish; we would
flee to the Nirvana of oblivion and unconsciousness, turn¬
ing our backs upon what we cannot alleviate, and longing
to lay down the burden of life, and to escape from that
which has become insupportable." EllinwooT s Oriental Re¬
ligions and Christianity, p. 324.
But this is only a temporary mood, as Dr. Ellinwood has
clearly shown, and it is essentially an unchristian spirit.
Some of the distinctions between Christianity and Buddh¬
ism have been clearly set forth by Prof. George H. Palmer,
of Harvard University, reported in The Outlook, July, 1897,
pp. 443-450.
"Only when desire has altogether passed away can mis¬
ery cease. Is this pessimism? I certainly do not like to use
that obnoxious word in the presence of my gentle friend (Mr.
H. Dharmapala). Yet as we reflect how Christianity faces this-
same tremendous problem, there appears a notable con¬
trast in emphasis. Christianity knows of death, knows of
old age, knows of disease, and is cheerful before them ;
looks upon them indeed as the very means which may
assist us in that for which we are here. These are valuable
forces, it tells us; for in this world we are co-workers with
God, intrusted with the charge of our own upbuilding, and
NOTES.
371
through these very agencies that upbuilding may be accom¬
plished."
"Horror of individual destruction is a distinctive note
in Christianity. Each one through consciousness is given
charge of himself; he is to build himself up into steadfast
character, into powerful personality. On this Jesus per¬
petually dwells.
"I find in the teachings of Buddha little provision for
the great organic institutions of society. The family docs
not naturally spring from such a soil. Of course the fam¬
ily exists under Buddhism. It is tolerated. But, after all,
the call of the Buddha is always to a monastic life, and
the thoroughgoing Buddhist is a monk. Monkery is deeply
planted in the nature of Buddhism. The family, if it
exists, exists by force of nature, a subordinated institution.
Woman as woman has no well-grounded dignity. Nor do
I see any provision in Buddhism for the upbuilding of a
state. The organic union of man with man in spiritual
bonds is something on which Buddhism depends, but
which it does not expressly sanction." Christiatiity and
Buddhism, Prof. George H. Palmer.
Writing of Buddhism in China, the Hon. G. N. Curzon
says:
"The Buddhist priests are no amateurs in the art of
mendicancy. Sometimes large bands of them may be seen
patroling the streets, and by the discordant clamor of a
gong calling attention to the unmistakable character of the
errand which has brought them down into the thorough¬
fares of men. By these different methods they manage to
scrape along; their buildings and temples just saved from
dilapidation; their persons and costumes in the last stage
of seediness and decay; their piety an illusion, their pre¬
tensions a fraud; themselves at once the saviours and the
outcasts of society, its courted and despised." Problems of
the Far East, Geo. N. Curzon, M.P., p. 352.
"The expression of their features is usually one of blank
and idiotic absorption; which is, perhaps, not surprising,
considering that of the words which they intone scarcely
one syllable do they themselves understand. The mass-
book is a dead letter to them, for it is written in Sanskrit
372 CHRISTIANITY, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
or Pali, which they can no more decipher than fly. The
words that they chant are merely the equivalent in sound
of the ordinary sentences, rendered into Chinese charac¬
ters, and are therefore totally devoid of sense." Problems
of the Far East, Geo. N. Curzon, M.P., p. 355.
Note 9, p. 103.
"The Hindu religion is a reflection of the composite
character of the Hindus, who are not one people but many.
It is based on the idea of universal receptivity. It has ever
aimed at accommodating itself to circumstances, and has
carried on the process of adaptation through more than
three thousand years. It has flrst borne with, and then, so
to speak, swallowed, digested, and assimilated, something
from all creeds. Or, like a vast hospitable mansion, it
has opened its doors to all comers; it has not refused a
welcome to applicants of every grade from the highest to
the lowest, if only willing to adopt caste-rules; insomuch
that many regard Hinduism as a system of social rules
rather than of religious creeds." Brahmanism and Hindu¬
ism, Sir Monier Williams, p. 57.
Note 10, p. 103.
"Why does the Englishman appear two different beings
—in England all kindness, in India all hauteur? Will the
following suggestions throw some light on this very seri¬
ous question? When the Englishman met the Hindu in
England he never realized the depth of the gulf that sep¬
arates the races from each other—the immensity of the
difference in their ideas and habits. He comes to India,
and the truth begins to dawn upon him. Idolatry every¬
where; caste everywhere; women immured in the zenana.
If he be a religious man these things deeply pain him; if
he be only intellectually a Christian, the sorrow speedily
turns into contempt—contempt not of the people, but of
their superstitions. He asks why things so ruinous are
allowed to endure. He gets no answer, but is told that,
in addition to the polytheism all around, there exists a
high philosophy such as is unfolded in the Upanishads or
Vedanta. Waiving the question of the intrinsic merit of
NOTES.
373
such philosophy, he asks what is its practical value? What
is it doing to raise India from groveling superstition? The
answer is 'Nothing'; true or false, it is a mere speculation.
He is a practical man, earnest about reform; and from this
boastful, barren philosophy he turns away in disgust, or,
at any rate, despair." A Letter to Indian Friends, by Rev.
J. Murray Mitchell, p. 7.
Note ii, p. 104.
"Ye are also forbidden to take to wife free women who
are married, except those women whom your right hands
shall possess as slaves. This is ordained you from God.
Whatever is beside this is allowed you ; that ye may with
your substance provide wives for yourselves, acting that
which is right and avoiding whoredom. And for the advan¬
tage which ye receive from them, give them their reward,
according to that which is ordained; but it shall be
no crime in you to make any other agreement among your¬
selves, after the ordinance shall be complied with; for God
is knowing and wise. Whoso among you hath not means
sufhcient that he may marry free women who are believ¬
ers, let him marry with such of your maid-servants whom
your right hand possesses as are true believers; for God
well knoweth your faith." The Koran, Chap. IV.
Note 12, p. 106.
"The lowest of all is the Pariah outcast, hiding him¬
self from public gaze, a thing conscious of hopeless degra¬
dation, shunning himself, so to say, as much as he is
shunned by others. O Caste, thou inexorable tyrant, what
hope is there in India while thy Jugernaut wheel is grind¬
ing man's best nature out of him! Ye missionaries of
Christ, why don't you save these unhappy tribes from per¬
haps eternal wrong? What a rich harvest of souls to save !"
Gujarat and the Gujaratis, by B. M. Malabari, p. 186.
LECTURE III.
BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR THIRD LECTURE.
On the general doctrine of God in religion, see:
d'Alviella Hibbert Lectures, 1891, Origin and Growth of
the Conception of God.
James Freeman Clarke, Ten Great Religions, Vol. IL
C. Loring Brace, The Unknown God.
On non-Christian Monotheism, see:
S. H. Kellogg, Genesis and Growth of Religion, Lectures
7 and 8.
Ellinwood, Oriental Religions and Christianity, Lecture 7.
For the Varuna literature, see:
Monier Williams, Indian Wisdom, p. 13.
Muir, Sanskrit Texts.
For the Old Testament Doctrine of God, see:
Schultz, Old Testament Theology, Vol. II.
For Hindu Pantheism, see:
Jacob, A Manual of Hindu Pantheism, Tiibner's
Oriental Series, i8gi.
C. R. Lanman, The Beginnings of Hindu Pantheism.
On the general subject of theism, see:
Flint, Theism.
The same, Anti-Theistic Theories,
A. C. Fraser, Philosophy of Theism.
On the special doctrines of the incarnation and redemption,
see :
Canon Gore, Lectures on the Incarnation of the Son of God.
D. W. Simon, The Redemption of Man.
Fairbairn, The Place of Christ in Modern Theology.
NOTES.
375
Note i, p. ii6,
"One to whom the boundary line between the Creator
and His world is perfectly clear, one who knows the eternal
difference between mind and matter, one born amid the
trumphs of science, can but faintly realize the mental con¬
dition of the millions of Japan to whom there is no unify¬
ing thought of the Creator-Father." The Religions of Japan,
Griffis, p. 14.
Note 2, p. 117.
Dr. Fairbairn contends that Christ is the creator of
monotheism in the strict and proper sense of the term.
"Certain of the prophets of Israel had been monotheists,
but Judaism was not a monotheism, for a religion that is
so bound up with a tribe and its polity as to be incapable
of universal realization, does not really know God as abso¬
lutely supreme." He affirms that monotheism in the strict
sense means "that alike in idea and reality God is the God
of all men, open and accessible to all."
"We may say, then, that, so far as realized religions
were concerned, we had before Christ polytheisms, pan¬
theisms, henotheisms, but no monotheism. By one and
the same act He created the conception of one God, one
religion, and one society; but the first would have been
inefficient and incomplete if it had not been explicated in
the second and incorporated in the third. The religion
explicated the God, for it was ethical in nature as He was
in character; the society incorporated His ideal, for it was
universal, as God was one, and filial, as He was father."
The Place of Christ ht Modern Theology, Fairbairn, p. 515.
In speaking of monotheism as primeval I intend merely
to convey the idea of its antiquity. It appears in early
sacred literatures, but back of these there was probably a
long evolution. The following is Jevons's account of the
development of the monotheistic idea:
"The first step toward monotheism is taken when one
deity is, as not unusually happens, conceived to be supreme
over all the others, and the rest are but his vassals, his
ministers or angels. This is due to the transference of the
376 CHRISTIANITY, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
of the gods; they, like men, are supposed to have a king
over them. The next step is the result of the constant
tendency of the ancients to identify one god with another:
Herodotus had no difficulty in recognizing the gods of
Greece under the names which the Egyptians gave to their
own deities; Caesar and Tacitus did not hesitate to identify
the gods of Gaul and Germany with those of Rome. And
this was the more easy and reasonable because in many
cases the gods in question were really the deifications of
some one and the same natural phenomenon—sun, moon,
etc." Introduction to the History of Religion, F. B. Jevons,
P- 383-
Note 3, p. 125.
"Historical pantheism, the typical, fascinating panthe¬
ism of Spinoza, is in error only through its exclusiveness.
The conception of one universal substance is true as far as
it goes, but it is not the whole truth. The strand of differ¬
ence runs throughout creation. As without the identity
there can be no unity, so without the difference there can
be no variety and no reality in finite existences." The
Christ of To-day, Gordon, p. 95.
Note 4, p. 136.
An interesting and instructive parallel has been drawn
by Dr. K. S. Macdonald between the Aryan god "Agni"
and the God of Christian revelation.
"The descriptions given in the Vedas of the god Agni
lend themselves wonderfully toa comparison with the Lord
Jesus Christ alike as God and man, as prophet, priest, and
king. We do not think that our so using them is unjusti¬
fiable or in any way dishonoring to Christ or injurious to
the interests of His cause. On the other hand, such com¬
parisons, if wisely made, ought to lead people who profess
to have respect for the Vedas to a greater appreciation of
the features or traits which are common to both." Agni,
the Aryan God, a. Parallel, by K. S. Macdonald, M.A., D.D.,
reprinted from The Indian Evangelical Review, January and
April, 1897, p. 20.
NOTES.
377
"We doubt whether out of all the ideals set before us
among the so-called three hundred and thirty millions of
Hindu gods, there can be selected any whose character is
more satisfactory to Brahmos, Christians, or Mohammed¬
ans. or indeed to nineteenth century ideas generally, than
the character which the ancient Aryans of India gave to
Agni—a character largely preserved among Hindus to the
present day in their daily worship among all the vicissi¬
tudes and changes which Hindus underwent during the last
three thousand years—the more remarkable as he is but
seldom worshiped by or through a man-made image, as
almost all the other gods are." Ibid, p. 6.
"We have also removed a great deal of rubbish which,
not only lay in heaps all round about the structure, but was
piled up in the very rooms inside, and up on the walls,
inside and outside, disfiguring stone and brick. All this
we have carted away, and exposed to view the individual
stones and bricks, some of which are beautiful to behold in
their naked, unadorned simplicity. But after all what does
it all amount to? Nothing more than the foundations of
what promised to be a noble superstructure; but which,
instead of being finished according to the original plan,
was turned to ignoble and impure purposes, altogether dis¬
honoring to the Great Architect. In Christianity alone
does the original plan find its fulfillment." Ibid, p. 21.
As an illustration of the Hindu habit of deifying every
fact and force, the following is of interest:
"Soma itself becomes a god, and a very mighty one; he
is even the creator and father of the gods ; the king of gods
and men; all creatures are in his hand. It is surely extra¬
ordinary that the Aryas could apply such hyperbolical laud¬
ations to the liquor which they had made to trickle into
the vat, and which they knew to be the juice of a plant
they had cut down on the mountains and pounded in a
mortar; and that intoxication should be confounded with
inspiration. Yet of such aberrations we know the human
mind is perfectly capable." The Non-Christian Religions of
the World—The Hindu Religion, J. Murray Mitchell, p. 10.
37^ CHRISTIANITY, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
Note 5, p. 140.
"The idea of sacrifice is inherent in human nature, and
ought to have been retained, cherished, purified, and
realized: though, when the conception of deity becomes
impersonal, as it does in the Upanishads, there is no
Supreme Being to whom sacrifices, even of the heart and
life, can be offered. That the idea was true and necessary,
is shown by the fact that the sacrificial system—suppressed
during the period of the Upanishads—broke out again
afterwards in still greater and more manifold activity in
the popular sectarian cults of Vaishnavites and Saivites;
and material sacrifices, offered to these and to other deities,
have continued, in one form or another, down to the pres¬
ent day, and must continue, in this and other non-Chris¬
tian lands, till Christ, the great Fulfiller of Sacrifices, is
understood." Studies in The T. E. Slater, p. 13.
Note 6, p. 141.
"Brahmanism, again, knows evil, but as metaphysical,
rather than moral, man's being in a system of illusion,
divided by ignorance from his rest in the Brahma who is
the only universal reality. Buddhism, which has of all
religions the most overmastering sense of misery, has also
the least sense of sin." The Place of Christ in Modern The¬
ology, Fairbairn, p. 454.
"The suffering and hardened and indifferent world waits
for a broken heart in the presence of the eternal pity in
Christ. The primary want is the dissolving of the soul in
the sea of regret and grief over the beauty of the Lord made
real in the Master. The moral idea will never rise upon
these multitudes until it rises out of this sea of penitential
feeling, like the sun out of a troubled ocean. Nothing but
the fires of such sorrow and love can melt the chains of
evil habit, consume the force of earthly inclinations, and
burn up utterly the vast psychic accumulation of a soul
alienated from the true order and divine law of its life.
Passion led astray, and passion must recover to righteous¬
ness. Only the fury of love can avail for those within the
prison of moral despair." The Christ of To-day, Gordon,
p. 278.
NOTES.
379
Note 7, p. 143.
"Even when, over-constrained by the testimony of con¬
science, the Hindu will speak as if moral good and evil
were to be rewarded and punished by a personal God, still
that doctrine of Karma remains, and is no less fatal to the
idea of responsibility. For if I am not free; if all my
actions are determined by a law of physical necessity
entirely beyond my control,—then assuredly I am not
responsible for them. Let it be observed again that these
are not merely logical consequences attached to the system
by an antagonist which the people will refuse to admit.
The Hindus themselves, both in their authoritative books
and in their common talk, argue that very conclusion. In
the Puranas again and again those guilty of the most flagi¬
tious crimes are comforted by Krishna, for example, on this
express ground, that whereas all was fixed by their Karma,
and man therefore has no power over that which is to be,
therefore in the crime they were guilty of no fault. And
so among the people one wearies of hearing the constant
excuse for almost everything which ought not to be, 'What
can we do? It was our Karma! ' " Dr. Kellogg, quoted in
Selections from the Upanishads, pp. 93-4.
Note 8, p. 149.
"The Christian doctrine imputes punishable guilt only
so far as each one's free choice makes the sin his own ; the
dying infant who has no choice is saved by grace; but|Upon
every Buddhist, however short-lived, there rests an heir¬
loom of destiny which countless transmigrations cannot
discharge." Ellinwood's Oriental Religions and Christianity,
p. 328.
Note 9, p. 149.
"A state in which the knowing and the known are one,
in which subject and object are identified, implies, as Sir
William Hamilton, Mansel, and Herbert Spencer have
alike shown, the annihilation of both; and hence our very
personality, the existence of which is to each person a fact
beyond all others the most certain, is yet a thing which
truly cannot be known at all ; for the object perceived is
380 CHRISTIANITY, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
itself the perceiving object." Studies in the Upanishad, T.
E. Slater, p. 22.
"This kind of pantheism, however, reaches the unity of
the finite with the infinite solely by denying the reality of
the former. It reconciles man with God simply by the
negation of all that makes him man. But such a nega¬
tive deliverance is, as we have already seen, no real eman¬
cipation. If it brings rest to the weary, it is but the rest of
the grave. Nay, as the Buddhist recognizes, with the
absolute negation of the finite, the infinite, also, which is
known only in its relation to it, is deprived of all meaning.
Its God ceases to be a living God, just because He has
absorbed all life unto Himself." The Evolution of Religion,
Edward Caird, Vol. II, p. 149.
Note 10, p. 152.
See Pressensé's Ancient World and Christianity, p. 469.
The expectant attitude of the pagan world at the coming
of Christ is well described in Chapter II of Book V. In
regard to Virgil's prophecies in the fourth Eclogue of a gol¬
den age to come when the earth shall be delivered from
sorrow, Pressensé says:
"It was especially in this aspect that Virgil was the
inspired voice of his generation. Victor Hugo has well
expressed in the following lines the mysterious expectancy
which filled the air at this period:
" 'Le vers porte à sa eime une lueur étrange
C'est qu'à son insu même il est une des âmes
Que l'Orient lointain teignait de vagues flammes.
C'est qu'il est un des coeurs que déjà, sous les deux
Dorait le jour naissant du Christ mystérieux.* "
"It is easy to understand how Virgil came to be Chris¬
tianized in early legend. His feast was kept in the Middle
Ages as one of the prophets of Christ. St. Paul was sup¬
posed to have visited his tomb in Naples, and to have
lamented over it thus: 'Oh greatest of poets, what had I
not made of thee, had I but met thee in thy lifetime?*
"We conclude with M. Boissier that Virgil was one of
NOTES.
381
ity without knowing it, and with M. Duruy we say, that
like a new Columbus he pointed, through the mists of the
West, to the new world which was to come forth from them.
Dante gave a perfectly true picture of Virgil when he
likened him to a man going out into the night and carry¬
ing behind him a torch of which he makes no use, but
which lightens the path of those who come after.
"Every impartial historian recognizes from his own point
of view the attitude of expectancy in which souls were
standing at this time. 'Every man,' says Lucretius, 'is
groping after the way of life.' It seems strange to find
this great Epicurean poet thus anticipating the words after¬
ward spoken by Paul at Athens." The Ancient World and
Christianity, E. De Pressensé, D.D., pp. 558-559.
LECTURE IV.
BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR THE FOURTH LECTURE.
On the general subject of the Bible and Biblical study, see:
Moulton, The Literary Study of the Bible.
C. A. Briggs, Biblical Study.
Bartlett and Peters, Scriptures, Hebrew and Christian.
Ladd, What is the Bible ?
Gladden, Who Wrote the Bible ?
Zenos, The Elements of the Higher Criticism.
Lias, Principles of Biblical Criticism.
Westcott, The History of the English Bible.
On the other sacred books of the world, see:
The Book of the Dead. Translation by Renouf.
For the Akkadian Hymns, see translations (to be used with
great caution) in Sayce, Hibbert Lectures on the Religion of
the Ancient Babylonians.
For the A vesta, see translation in the Sacred Books of the
East{S. B. E.)Vo\^. IV, XXIII and XXXI, and the revolu¬
tionary work on the A vesta, by the late Professor Darra-
steter.
For the Kojiki, see Chamberlain's translation in Proceedings
of the Asiatic Society of fafan; supplement to Volume X.
For the sacred books of China, see the translations in
5. B. E., Vols. Ill, XVI, XXVII and XXVIII (Confucian)
and XXXIX and XL (Taoism).
For the Vedas, see translations of the Rig and Atharva by
R. T. H. Griffith. Portions of the Rig Veda have been
translated in S. B. E.. Vols. XXXII and XLVIII. and the
NOTES.
383
For the Brahmanas, see the translation of the Satapatha
Brahmana, S. B. E., XII, XXVI, XLI.
For the Puranas, see the translation of the Vishnu Purana
by Wilson, and of the Bhagavata Purana by Burnouf.
For the Upanishads, see the translation in S. B. E., Vols. I
and XV.
T. E. Slater, Studies in the Upanishads.
For the Buddhist texts, see translations in S. B. E.—(i)
Vinaya, Vols. XIII, XVII, XX; (2) Dhammapada, Vol. X;
(3) Selected Suttas, Vol. XI.
For the Koran, see the well-known translation by Sale, the
commentary by Wherry, four volumes, and the transla¬
tion by Palmer, in S. B. E., VI and XIX.
For the Sikh Bible, see the translation by E. Trumpp, called
The Adi-Granth; or. The Holy Scriptures of the Sikhs, iSyy.
Note i, p. 179.
For instructive examples of the noble elements which are
found in non-Christian literature, read the collection of
prayers, Egyptian, Akkadian, Babylonian, Vedic, Avestic,
Chinese, Mohammedan, and Modern Hindu which Prof.
Max Müller has brought together in his volume of Gifford
Lectures, 1892, Theosophy or Psychological Religion, pp. 13-22.
See also Hymn xcvii. Rig Veda, Book I:
1. Chasing with light our sin away, O Agni, shine thou
wealth on us.
May his light chase our sin away.
2. For goodly fields, for pleasant homes, for wealth, we
sacrifice to thee.
May his light chase our sin away.
3. Best praiser of all these be he; foremost of our chiefs
who sacrifice.
May his light chase our sin away.
4. So that thy worshipers and we, thine, Agni, in our
sons may live.
May his light chase our sin away.
5. As ever-conquering Agni's beams of splendor go to
everv side.
384 CHRISTIANITY, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
6. To every side thy face is turned, thou art triumphant
everywhere.
May his light chase our sin away.
7. O thou whose face looks every way, bear off our foes as
in a ship.
May his light chase our sin away.
8. As in a ship, convey us for our advantage o'er the
flood.
May his light chase our sin away.
Note 2, p. 182.
"How has it come to pass that the fates of the Upani-
shads and of the Bible, their influence on the world, have
been so different? How different their nature and their
scope. The Bible covers the course of the world from the
creation to the flnal restitution of all things; it is imbed¬
ded in, and asscoiated with, the past history of the race; it
deals with all the problems of practical life; it is addressed
to all men, and concerns all men—the Book for the millions.
"If the ancient Indian ideal of spirituality was so lofty,
why was it not retained; and why did it not save the
country from degenerating? If but one human being had
really become God here on earth, this planet of ours ought
long ago to have been transformed into a very different
world. But, instead of that, why has India become the
most illiterate land; and the land that, according to the
late Sir Madhava Rao, has suffered more from self-created
social evils than any other community? Is the present state
of Hindu society and the present moral exhaustion the
legitimate development or the accidental outcome of the
ancient philosophy of the universe? Pantheistic thought
has always exercised a paralyzing influence on all moral
and human life. Most vital is the connection between the
highest religious thought and the moral and social life of a
people. And what have all the philosophies and sciences
of the world done for the regeneration and progress of
mankind compared with the one truth—'God is love?' "
Studies in the Upanishads, T. E. Slater, p. 73.
"Institutions not only grow but decay also, and decay as
well as growth is a process of evolution. Florid art is
NOTES.
385
evolved out of something simpler, but it is not therefore
superior to it. The Roman Empire was evolved out of the
Roman Republic, and was morally a degeneration from it.
The polytheism of Virgil is not better, as religion, than
that of Homer; the polytheism of the late Brahmanism is
certainly worse than that of the earlier periods. There¬
fore to say that the only evolution in religion—except
that which is on the lines of the Bible—is an evolu¬
tion of error, may be quite true and yet not show that the
idea of evolution is applicable to heathen religions. Their
evolution may well have been, from the religious point of
view, one long process of degeneration. Progress is cer¬
tainly as exceptional in religion as in other things, and
where it takes place must be due to exceptional causes."
Introduction to the History of Religion, F. B. Jevons, p. 5.
Note 3, p. 188.
"But no other history and no human experience is so
clear a proof of the practical curse to a people which lies in
a false philosophy and imperfect religion as the confused
records of Hindu thought afford. The combination of pan¬
theism and idolatry seems to be the worst possible spiritual
atmosphere for a people. The belief in re-birth, previous
existence, and future transmigration became almost
stamped congenitally upon the Hindu mind. It over¬
shadowed existence from the earliest moment with the
deepest darkness. The devout and thoughtful worshiper
saw no escape from it, except after millions of aeons in the
absolute cessation of personal existence by absorption in
God. Pain and suffering and sin were the necessary
accompaniments of conscious life through all possible
existences till the soul entered into the Infinite Spirit."
The Unknown God, C. Loring Brace, p. 222.
Note 4, p. 188.
"The early Hindus did not find any difficulty in reconcil¬
ing the most different and sometimes contradictory opin¬
ions in their search after truth; and a most extraordinary
medley of oracular sayings might be collected from the
386 CHRISTIANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
paratively ancient, all tending to elucidate the darkest
points of philosophy and religion, the creation of the
world, the nature of God, the relation of man to God, and
similar subjects. That one statement should be contra¬
dicted by another seems never to have been felt as any
serious difficulty." Ancient Sanskrit Literature^ Max Mül¬
ler, pp. 320-21.
Note 5, p. 189.
"What could you expect from a nation whose mothers
have to live in perpetual infancy?—married in the early
teens, often to become widows before they are out of their
teens. Can these be the mothers of heroes and patriots,
and statesmen? The women of India have really no exist¬
ence, as apart from the men. Their life is one of dire
dependence. And as are the women, so, naturally, must
be the men—dependent upon others for almost everything
in life, without a career and without the resources for
working out their own destiny. They have nearly lost the
power of initiative for purposes of self-improvement." The
Indian Problem, B. M. Malabari, p. 42.
"Now let us first try these tests on existing heathen¬
ism. The old Vedic religion, so much talked about by
philologists, is dead and gone, and so, too, are the
gods it worshiped. And the glamor that used to
daze simple occidentals when the Vedas and Upanishads
existed untranslated in archaic Sanskrit, has vanished now
that you may read them for yourself in plain English."
Hinduism and Christianity, Rev. Geo. T. Washburn, D.D., p. 7.
"In regard to women, the general feeling is that they
are the necessary machines for producing children (Manu
ix, 96); and without children there can be no due perform¬
ance of the funeral rites essential to the peace of a man's
soul after death. This is secured by early marriages. If
the law required the consent of boys and girls before the
marriage ceremony, they might decline to give it. Hence
girls are betrothed at three or four years of age, and go
through the ceremony of marriage at seven to boys of
whom they know nothing, and if these boy-husbands die
NOTES.
387
they remain virgin-widows all their lives." Brahnianism
and Hinduism, Sir Monier Williams, p. 387.
"The Indian home, instead of aiding the work of schools
and colleges, in a large number of cases positively retards
it. It is not merely the general ignorance prevailing in
Indian homes that makes them bear so unfavorably on
Western culture, in its best sense, but the positive beliefs
and practices which obtain there—and which, in their spirit
are totally antagonistic to the new views which English
education inculcates regarding life and duty. The Indian
home is a scene of superstitious beliefs and practices, in
which the high school and college student has lost all faith,
and which he has even learnt to despise. Yet he quietly
puts up with these and even seems to countenance them
because his new light has supplied him with nothing which
he can put in the place of them, nor has it worked on him
with such force as to create an abhorrence for things which
he considers to be wrong." Liberal Education in India, hy
N. G. Welinkar, p. 10.
"It is true that, theoretically, they are ignored as sep¬
arate units in society. It is true that they abstain from
pronouncing their husband's name, calling him simply
'lord,' or 'master,' or 'the chosen' (vara); and they them¬
selves are never directly alluded to by their husbands in
conversation. It is true that for a male friend to mention
their names or even inquire after their health would be a
breach of etiquette. It is true, too, that their life is spent
in petty household duties, in superintending the family
cuisine, in a wearisome round of trivial acts. It is even
true that in religion they are theoretically placed on the
same level as Sudras. They are allowed no formal initia¬
tion into the Hindu faith, no investiture with the sacred
thread, no spiritual second birth. Marriage is to them
the end and aim of life, and the only medium of regenera¬
tion. No other purificatory rite is permitted to them.
They never read, repeat, or listen to the Veda. Yet, for
all that, the women of India are the mainstay of Hindu¬
ism. They are its principal stronghold and fortress.
Without their support both Brahmanism and Hinduism
388 CHRISTIANITY, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
would rapidly collapse." Brahmanism and Hinduism, Sir
Monier Williams, p. 388.
"Therefore we say that the Hindu code as a whole is
savage and antique, and that, excluding religious excess
and debauchery, it is on a par with the modern ethical code
only nominally." Religions of India, Hopkins, p. 555.
Note 6, p. 196.
"It is to the British government that we owe our deliv¬
erance from oppression and misrule, from darkness and
distress, from ignorance and superstition. Those enlight¬
ened ideas which have changed the very life of the nation,
and have gradually brought about such wondrous improve¬
ment in native society, are the gifts of that government;
and so likewise the inestimable boon of freedom of thought
and action, which we so justly prize." Lectures in India,
Keshub Chunder Sen, p. 15.
LECTURE V.
BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR THE FIFTH LECTURE.
The leading works on the life of Jesus may be enumerated
as follows;
Andrews, Life of Our Lord.
Weiss, The Life of Christ, 3 volumes (T. & T. Clarke,
Edinburgh).
Edersheim, Life and Times of fesus, the Messiah.
Beyschlag, Das Leben fesu.
Pressensé, Jesus Christ, His Life, Times, and Work.
Didon, The Life of Jesus, 2 volumes. (The best Roman
Catholic life.)
Keim, History of Jesus of Nasara.
Here also may be mentioned Fairbairn's The Place of
Christ in Modern Theology.
Phillips Brooks, The Influence of Jesus.
George Dana Boardman, Christ, the Unifler of Human¬
ity, in History of Parliament of Religions.
For the lives of the other great founders of religions, see:
For Buddha:
Rhys David's Buddhism, S. P. C. K., and Hibbert Lec¬
tures.
Oldenberg, Buddha (translated from the German).
For Confucius:
Legge, Life and Teachings of Confucius.
The same. Religions of China.
R. K. Douglas, Confucianism, S. P. C. K.
For Zoroaster
The Encyclopaedia Britannica article on Zaroaster.
389
39° CHRISTIANITV, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
For Mohammed :
Sir William Muir, The Life of Mahomet, 4 volumes
(hostile, though judicial).
Syed Ameer All, Life and Teachings of Mohammed
(written by a believer).
For Socrates;
Plato's Apology and Crito.
Stanley's Lecture on Socrates in the third series of his
Jewish Church.
Wenley, Socrates and Christ.
Note i, p. 209.
"It seems that the Christ that has come to us is an
Englishman, with English manners and customs about him,
and with the temper and spirit of an Englishman in him.
Hence it is that the Hindu people shrink back and say:
Who is this revolutionary reformer who is trying to sap
the very foundations of native society and establish here
an outlandish faith and civilization quite incompatible with
oriental instincts and ideas?" Lectures in India, Keshub
Chunder Sen, p. 282.
"To us Asiatics, therefore, Christ is doubly interesting,
and his religion is entitled to our peculiar regard as an
altogether Oriental affair. The more this great fact is
pondered, the less I hope will be the antipathy and hatred
of European Christians against Oriental nationalities, and
the greater the interest of the Asiatics in the teachings of
Christ. And thus in Christ, Europe and Asia, the East and
the West, may learn to find harmony and unity." Lectures
in India, Keshub Chunder Sen, p. 26.
"Saint, Son of God, Elder Brother, it is impossible to
honor and love Thee too much. I have sometimes failed
to give Thee Thy due; but alas! I find it too true on the
other hand that, in obeying and honoring Thee, men put
the spirit of God in the background altogether. I would
rather be true to God than to man, though I know God is
in man, and honor to man is one of the highest virtues. O
teach me Thy true worship, my God, so that my highest
love and honor to Thee will be the highest love and honor
to Thy Son." Heart-Beats, Mozoomdar, p. 171.
NOTES.
391
"Strength was natural to Thee, O Son of God, as to the
young lion—strength to suffer and to act. Thy words
were as mighty as Thy silence. I trust in Thee to bear me
in Thy strong arms, as the shepherd bears his weakling
lamb. Cover me in Thy garment of protecting faith, and
change Thou me into Thy very self." Heart-Beats, Mo-
zoomdar, p. 129.
Note 2, p. 214.
"With regard to animal life, I know that it is often
claimed that Buddha was more compassionate than Jesus.
I think he was less discriminating. Jesus had a tender
regard for all animal life, and taught that even the spar¬
rows were the subjects of his Father's care; but never¬
theless he believed that men were in God's sight of 'more
value than many sparrows.' He rebuked the stiff conserv¬
atism of the Pharisees, which would have forbidden the
finding of a lost sheep on the Sabbath, or the rescuing of a
dumb beast from suffering. Buddhism is perhaps much
more particular in avoiding the destruction of insect life
than Christianity, but on that score I think Buddhism has
yet to reckon with the modern science of bacteriology, and
the question whether the living germs of disease shall
destroy or be destroyed, and whether it is less merciful
on the whole that animals and fishes shall be food for
each other and for man than that myriads of living
microbes shall destroy them by the slow torture of disease.
Life and death are shown by science to be so balanced that
in the total of existence death is as beneficent as life. The
economy of the sea is one of constant carnage, and so also
with the earth; but for this the sea would soon become a
solid mass of suffering, living forms, and the earth would
be uninhabitable by men. Christian precept is humane,
but it is discriminating. It would destroy the wolves and
serpents of India rather than allow them every year to
destroy thousands of the people, and it would allow the
Esquimaux to feed on fish rather than suffer the extinction
of their race." The Open Court, F. F. Ellin wood, p. 56, of
January, 1897.
"If, therefore, it be asked whether the Christian idea of
392 CHIUSTIANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
charity is a higher thing than the Buddhist conception of
a sympathy which passes over every barrier of caste and
race and circumstance, and which in its universality em¬
braces all men and even all animals, there is a ready
answer. Buddhism, like the abstract pantheism it opposes,
has no distinguishing respect for the spiritual nature of
man. It is a leveling doctrine which meets the indiscrim¬
inate 'Whatever is is right,' of Brahmanism, with an
equally indiscriminate 'Whatever is is wrong.' It cannot
set the qualities that make a man above those that make a
beast. And if its love extends to all men, and, we may
even say, to all living beings, it is not that it regards them
as having any real value in their individual existence, but
that it looks upon them as all equally sufferers from the
misery of existence. Hence it might be said that the uni¬
versal charity of the Buddhist was only his second highest
virtue; and that it held even so high a place as this only
because such charity is the negation of all special regard
for individual things." The Evolution of Religion^ Edward
Caird, p. 365.
Note 3, p. 228.
"How can there be any comparison between Christ and
any other man? His personal goodness and faith alone
would confer supreme eminence on him. When to that is
added the strange element of unexampled suffering and
neglect, such as would have crushed any other man's soul,
does he not become unique? But that suffering, instead of
producing bitterness, was an endless source of love and
sympathy for others, who never felt for him. Nay, more,
the suffering takes the dignity of death. If death had
ended all, Christ would have been one of the greatest
names in history. But he rose from death, and the world
to-day bears the teeming evidence that Christ lives. The
dead become alive when they trust in His name; the living
become more alive when they love Him. All goodness,
sweetness, wisdom, are crowned with the meek dignity of
the Son of Man. All sorrow, sin, suffering, are purified
in His spirit. Where is such another on earth?" Heart-
Beats, Mozoomdar, p. 13.
NOTES.
393
Note 4, p. 238.
"Mr. M. B. Malabari, in his recent tours, has had very
painful experiences of the strong and active antagonism
that exists between the Hindus and the Mohammedans.
Writing to the The Indian Spectator of a recent date, Mr.
Malabari says: 'At Fatehpur and other places I heard the
Hindus reviling the Mohammedans; here, at Jhansi, I find
the Mohammedans execrating and incriminating the
Hindus. So here we are, dreaming of national unity, but
rent asunder, in real life, by interracial dissensions;
dreaming of universal peace when strife and struggle dog
us at every step; dreaming of a common cause against
foreigners, but kept by the same foreigners from cutting one
ançther's throats! Wide, very wide is the gulf bet.ween
the dream and the reality. And, upon my honor, the gulf
is widening more and more in some respects.' " The
Queen, of Calcutta, June 28, 1897, p. 4.
LECTURE VI.
BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR THE SIXTH LECTURE.
On the history of Christianity, the best books are:
Schaff, History of Christianity, 6 volumes.
Fisher, History of the Christian Church. (A manual his¬
tory.)
Moeller, History of the Christian Church, 2 volumes.
For the early history of Christianity, see:
Pressensé, Early Years of Christianity, 4 volumes.
For Christianity and the Supernatural, see:
Fisher, The Supernatural Origin of Christianity.
For Christianity and Miracles, see;
Bruce, The Miraculous Element in the Gospels.
For Christianity and Science, see:
A. J. Balfour, The Foundations of Belief.
A. D. White, A History of the Warfare of Science with
Theology.
For Revelation and Inspiration, see:
Ewald, Revelation, Its Nature and Record.
Bruce, The Chief End of Revelation.
Sanday, Inspiration, Bampton Lectures; 1893.
Horton, Inspiration and the Bible.
The same. Revelation and the Bible.
For Christianity and History, see:
Fairbairn, The City of God.
Sell, The Church in the Mirror of History.
Dale, The Living Christ and the Four Gospels.
On the general subject of the Lecture, see:
Bruce, Apologetics.
Fisher, The Grounds of Theistic and Christian Belief.
394
NOTES.
395
Note i, p. 251.
See Robertson Smith's Prophets of Israel^ pp. 1-7.
Note 2, p. 253.
"But religion in India is dead or decaying in the ranks
where it is most potent for a widefelt constructive influ¬
ence." The Indian Eye on English Life, by B M. Mala-
bari, p. 125.
"The best among the Greek philosophers confessed
their need of some new power to give practical effect to
their theories; and who can say that the life of Greece was
not greatly deteriorated in the second and third centuries
of our era from what it had been in the days of Aristotle
and Demosthenes? The ironical strength of Socrates had
no redeeming force. The beautiful life of Marcus Aurelius
gives the impression of resignation, not of hope. The excel¬
lent maxims of Confucius at most bound fast the life of
China in an iron law. Buddhism gave peace, but it was,
at least as to the social and political life, the peace of
resigned despair. Mohammed's grand iconoclasm spent
itself almost in its ñrst onset, and has failed to exhibit
any new principle of vitality. But the cross of Christ is
new in every age, and has changed the face of the world,
and has been the spring of civilization and of an untiring
progress." The World as the Subject of Redemption, W. H.
Fremantle, p. 26.
Note 3, p. 266.
"There is, to use a phrase of grammar, a proleptic, or
anticipatory, Christianity, of which we may see traces deep
down in the convictions of the various races of men. It
shows itself partially and ñtfully in their religions, but
more in their philosophies, their family life, and their laws.
In these God has always had a witness among them.
Christ came in the fulness of time. The ground was laid
on all sides in preparation for Him ; the human race was
growing towards Him; so that we must look at the whole
human development as one, and on Christian spirit as the
root of all that is good and true in it, and on Christ Him-
396 CHRISTIAN ITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
self as its crown." The World as the Subject of Redemption^
W. H. Fremantle, p. 250.
Note 4, p. 266.
By miracles we mean works of ever-continuing wonder,
worthy of the Divine character, the results of the exercise
of God's power, put forth not in the order of the usual
course of Nature, for the purpose of attesting a Divine rev¬
elation. This, of course, excludes all wonders which the
progress of science may explain, and all the lying won¬
ders of evil magicians and necromancers. It lifts the
miracle to its proper place as a Divine act performed for
the highest ends. Now Jesus Christ appealed to such
miracles as among the evidences of His supernatural com¬
mission. "That ye may know that the Son of Man hath
power on earth to forgive sins (then saith he to the sick
of the palsy), 'Arise, take up thy bed and go unto thine
house.'" What does a miracle show? What do these
events, wrought by the direct interposition of Divine power,
indicate? They prove not only the truth of the message,
but the Divine authority of the messenger. It is the
authority which miracles give to the Gospels which appears
offensive to some men. The effort to-day is not to deny
the moral truth of the Scriptures, but to put the Gospels
on the same level with the ethical writings of Socrates and
Seneca, of George Fox and Swedenborg. Now I believe
that it is a Christian duty to welcome truth from any
quarter, and to cherish humane thoughts towards all relig¬
ions, so far as they are true; but if God has interposed,
out of love toward man, and set the seal of miracle on cer¬
tain Scriptures which we call the Gospels, then there
belong to them a dignity, an inspiration and an authority
setting them apart from and above all other writings.
John Foster has called a miracle "the ringing of the great
bell of the universe, summoning the multitudes to hear
the sermon." And as Moses in the wilderness, when he
saw the burning bush which was not consumed, turned
aside, and then heard the voice of the Lord from the midst
of the ffaming shrub, so miracles have been the burning
bush, drawing men aside, both to hear this Divine word.
NOTES.
397
and to receive it as of Divine authority. Over such Scrip¬
tures flames an awful "light which never was on sea or
land," a light above that of the sun, because it comes
directly from the highest heaven, and the voice which
speaks to us can be no other than the voice of God. And
though we may stand with bowed and uncovered heads
before the great sages and singers of humanity, yet when
we come before this Book, we may well heed the word
which says, "Put off thy shoes from off thy feet for the place
whereon thou standest is holy ground."
I believe that the miracles, however, are far more than
the bell calling us to hear the sermon; they are themselves
a heavenly part of the divine discourse, giving us a dis¬
closure of God as helpful and blessed as any which shines
from the Scriptures. And, besides all else, the miracles
clinch our faith at points where it is weakest; they set the
seal of Heaven on the title-deeds of our salvation. I can¬
not think that any other document is worthy of such a
celestial stamp. Were not the .miracles there to convince
the human mind, the wayward heart would often be self-
deceived into giving up a book that so rebukes its wicked¬
ness. And were it not for the miracles we might distrust
such glorious promises as are therein made to the believ¬
ers in Christ. It is not so difficult to believe the hard
things of the Word of God, as to believe the glorious things
which are spoken to the Christian. When the Bible speaks
of judgment, it has the power of conscience on its side.
But when the Bible speaks of mercy to sinners, of forgive¬
ness to rebels, of crowns and scepters, and sonship with
God, of Heavenly worlds with gates of pearl and streets of
gold and the River of Life, and joys surpassing all our
dreams, then it is that we need, most of all, the miracu¬
lous elements of the Gospel to reinvigorate and perpetuate
our faltering faith. This Book of Books which has entered
into the highest literature, which has shaped the noblest
art, which has been the life-blood of civilization, the
mother of liberty, the enfranchisement of the oppressed,
the conqueror of barbarism ; this Book which has called
forth the eulogies of the greatest minds, which has fur¬
nished the subject for the most profound and ennobling
398 CHRISTIANITr, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
study, which has brought solace to the suffering and hope
to the dying, and which makes itself at home in all lands,
amid all nations, in all centuries, is so wonderful that it
alone appears worthy of such a Heavenly seal as miracles
have given it.
Note 5, p. 267.
If any are determined by a previously formed philoso¬
phy, not to believe in miracles, however attested, even
though by the Word of Him who claimed to be the Son of
God, and who in the consciousness of perfect truth and
holiness appealed to His miracles, they will contrive to
reject them. But once acknowledge a personal God who
loves mankind and, as John Stuart Mill has conclusively
said, all rational objection to miracles disappears. All
who believe in God believe that a Divine Person has already
bridged the non-existent and the existent, the non-living
and the living,the non-intelligent and the intelligent ; so that,
as Dr. Peabody of Harvard has shown, "Miracles make a
large part of the history of the material universe." All
who see a personal God working in and through the phe¬
nomena of the visible and the intellectual world, mani¬
festing His glory in the birth of a star and in the birth of
a Shakespeare, showing forth His power in the blossoms
which cover with beauty the sods of springtime, and in the
galaxies which sprinkle the midnight with sidereal fire, all
who see a personal God in the annual resurrection of
Nature, will not deny that such a God can raise the dead.
Such a denial, as even Rousseau said, "would be impious if
it were not absurd. It is logical for one who does not
believe in a personal God to deny the possibility of mir¬
acles. All that Hume makes out in his celebrated essay,
is, that no amount of evidence can prove a miracle to an
atheist. And if God is thought to be an impersonal, inde¬
scribable, unknowable abstraction, or if He is regarded
as a great magician who has retired into the infinite deeps
of space and left the management of our earthly life to
dumb, mechanical laws, in the midst of which He Him¬
self can make no sign, then of course we talk in vain, to
those thinking thus, about miraculous interferences. Such
NOTES.
399
a poor and helpless exile as some men hold God to be
would never have called forth Lazarus from his sepulchre
or empowered the Christian Apostles to heal the sick. But,
once acknowledge an omnipresent God, working in and
through all natural laws, and, as unbelievers themselves
confess, the objections to miracles vanish.
There are historic certainties, resting, it is true, for their
evidence on testimony, but for which the evidence is so
weighty that doubt is unreasonable. The voyage of
Columbus, the death of Napoleon Bonaparte at St. Helena,
these are historic certainties, though they rest on the credi¬
bility of human testimony. Such a complexity of proba¬
bilities encloses the Christian faith that Christ rose from
the dead, and such a complexity of absurdities and moral
impossibilities beset the denial of His resurrection, that
the event must be placed where Greenleaf, the great author¬
ity on legal evidence, places it, in the category of historic
certainties. When we rise to behold this mighty miracle
as the crowning revelation of the nature of Jesus, it seems
altogether befitting that such a nature should receive such
a diadem. The resurrection belongs to the other parts of
an unequalled life; it is not an isolated fact. And, as we
abide in thought with the historic Jesus, as we contem¬
plate the perfection of His goodness, the originality of His
claims, the matchlessness of His wisdom, and as we hear
from His sinless lips His sublime words concerning Him¬
self, declaring that He had power to lay down His life and
power to take it again, it seems that a being of another
order and from a higher world was manifest in the Man of
Galilee, and for such a life it seems congruous that there
should be an end unique and glorious. And when we note
that Divine hopes of immortality are made to walk the
earth with assurance beneath them by the resurrection of
Jesus, when we see in His tomb the Divine purpose, which
had been dimly disclosed to the men of old, breaking open
at last to fully reveal man's eternal home in the bosom of
God, all the prophecies of hope and conscience and love
verified as the rejoicing Heavenly Bridegroom came out
of His chamber of death on the Resurrection morning, and
when we perceive how godless the moral universe would
400 CHRISTIANITY, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
seem if such a divine life as Christ's had in fact been
beaten down into hopeless defeat by the Crucifixion, then
all the overwhelming and invincible testimony that Jesus
did rise again appears to be testimony to what is in accord
with the higher order of the world, while the great miracle
itself is explained by its divine purpose that eternal life
should be disclosed to men, and that Christ, our redeem¬
ing King, who died for us on the Cross, "should be
declared the Son of God with power by the Resurrection
from the dead."
The third day after the crucifixion of Jesus, the world
began to be transformed. A company of humble men
rose out of despair into ecstacy, out of weakness into
unequalled spiritual power. The first day of the week
began to be as sacred to them as the ancient Sabbath of
Jehovah. Obstinate and almost ineradicable Jewish preju¬
dices were uprooted, and a divine and world-wide philan¬
thropy was planted in their hearts. When fifty days had
passed there came into their souls such heavenly power
that they filled a vast number from every nation with their
faith and their love. A new City of God rose out of the
empire of the Caesars; the conversion of a hostile and
wicked world is nothing less than a Divine testimony to
the supreme fact on which the Church was builded ; and
having reached this point, it would seem that the evidence
of the truth of this event could scarcely be made stronger
by the device of man, or, I say it reverently, by the wis¬
dom of God Himself. At least we are willing to say with
that relentless and destructive German critic, Ewald, "That
nothing stands more historically certain than that Jesus
rose from the dead and appeared again to His followers,
and that their seeing Him again was the beginning of a
higher faith and of all their Christian work in the world."
LECTURE VIL
BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR SEVENTH LECTURE.
The Official History of the World's Parliament of Religions, 2
volumes, Hill & Shuman, Chicago.
Le Congrès des Religions, G. Bonet-Maury, Paris.
Die Welt-Religionen auf dem Columbia-Congress von Chicago,
Prof. Wilhelm von Zehender, München.
II Parlamenta delle Religioni e l'Irenica Interconfessionale,
Emilio Comba, Rome.
La Loi du Progrès dans les Religions, Goblet d'Alviella, Brus-
sels.
The Chorus of Faith, Jenkin Lloyd Jones.
Le Parlement des Religions, Revue de l'Histoire des Religions,
September and October, 1893.
Review of the World's Religious Congresses, Chicago and New
York, 1893, L. P. Mercer.
See also;
C. H. Toy, The New World, December, 1893.
Paul Carus, The Forum, June, 1894.
C. C. Bonney, The New Church Review, January, 1894.
George William Knox, The Church at Home and Abroad,
June, 1894.
D. S. Schaff, Homiletic Review, December, 1893.
Joseph Cook, Our Day, throughout 1894.
Morgan Dix, A Parliament of Religions, New York,
James Pott & Co., 1894.
F- Max Müller, Deutsche Rundschau, Berlin, March,
1895.
F. Max Müller, The Arena, December, 1894.
E. Portalie, Études Religieuses, Paris, September, 1894.
G. Bonet-Maury, Revue des Deux Mondes, August, 1894.
Frédérick Passy, Le Congrès des Religions, à Chicago, en
j8çj.
401
402 CHRISTIANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
Frédérick Passy, Le Congrh des Religions, Paris.
George Dana Boardman, The Parliament of Religions,
Philadelphia Baptist Print, 1893.
The White City and the Parliament of Religions, two ser¬
mons by Rev. M. J. Savage, Boston, Geo. H. Ellis.
Note i, p. 296.
For an interesting account of Akbar's Council, see the
life of that emperor by Le Compte F. A. de Noer, trans¬
lated from the German by Professor G. Bonet-Maury,
Leyden, E. J. Brill, 1S83; Paris, Ernest Leroux. Perhaps
the most interesting part is the story of the Jesuits who, by
the invitation of the Emperor, made a difficult journey of
forty-three days from Goa, arriving at the Emperor's
palace in Fatehpur-sikri on the i8th of February, 1580.
The Three Jesuit "padres" were Rodolfo Aquaviva,
Antonio de Monserrat and Francisco Enriques, men of
great ability, who presented to the Emperor, among other
things, a new edition of the Bible and two images, one of
Jesus and the other of the Virgin Mary. (To facilitate
their conferences with the Emperor they were soon given
apartments in the palace itself.)
In order to give some idea of the bitterness which char¬
acterized this so-called Parliament of Religions, I quote the
following paragraphs from Le Compte F. A. de Noer's His¬
tory, Vol, I, pp. 326-327:
"Les conférences du jeudi soir à l'Ibadat-Khana offrirent
le spectacle attrayant d'un Concile, où presque toutes les
grandes religions de l'univers étaient représentées. Les
'Padres' plaidèrent leur cause avec la supériorité que leur
donnait l'érudition et la subtilité scolastiques ; et, comme
du Jarric le raconte avec une visible satisfaction, les théo¬
logiens musulmans ne trouvèrent pas d' objections suffi¬
santes. Ironie singulière de l'histoire ! Les Maures mus¬
ulmans avaient un jour fait fleurir toutes les sciences,
y compris la dialectique d'Aristotle dans la presqu'île
Pyrénéenne; leurs successeurs chrétiens avaient recuilli le
riche héritage et c'étaient eux, à leur tour, qui rétorquaient
contre les sectatéurs du Coran les armes forgées par des
NOTES.
musulmans. Ces maudits moines appliquaient la dénom¬
ination et les attributs du diable à Mahomet, le meilleur
des Prophètes (que la grâce de Dieu repose sur lui et sur
toute sa maison!) ce que des démons euxmême n'eussent
pas osé faire."
Note 2, p. 298.
Among the Anglican divines, giving their adhesion to
the Parliament of Religions, may be mentioned. Dr. Car¬
penter, bishop of Ripon, the late Bishop Phillips Brooks of
Massachusetts, Bishop Thomas M. Clark of Rhode Island,
Bishop Whitehead of Pittsburg, Bishop Grafton of Fond
du Lac, Bishop McLaren of Chicago, Bishop Spaulding of
Colorado, Bishop Scarborough of New Jersey, the late
Bishop Knickerbacker of Indiana, Bishop Seymour of
Springfield, Bishop Whittaker of Pennsylvania, Bishop
Whipple of Minnesota, Bishop Sullivan of Algoma, Bishop
Tuttle of Missouri, Bishop Gillespie of Grand Rapids,
Bishop Hare of South Dakota, Bishop Burgess of Quincy,
Bishop Perry of Iowa, Bishop Paret of Maryland, Bishop
Nicholson of Milwaukee, Bishop Johnston of Western
Texas, Bishop Smith of Sydney, Australia, Bishop Holly
of Hayti.
Note 3, p. 299.
"For what am I going—for vain glory? Nay. To run
away from my persecutors? Nay. For physical pleasure?
Nay. For what, then? To lay the noblest aspirations of
my country and my people before the judgment-seat of
mankind; to glorify God in the land of the living, as I
have glorified Him in this land of death; to bear witness
that the spirit of God is infinitely active and alive, still
evolving human destiny to higher inheritances, and shap¬
ing the future so much more glorious than the past; that
the ideal may be made actual; that aspiration, communion,
prayer, may be assured in their reality by the acceptance
of all nations; that the New Dispensation of God preached
to a few hitherto may dawn upon the whole world, I go."
Heart-Beats, Mozoomdar, p. 91.
404 CHRISTIANITY, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
Note 4, p. 301.
"There are few things which I so truly regret having
missed as the great Parliament of Religions, held in Chi¬
cago as a part of the Columbian Exposition. Who would
have thought that what was announced as simply an aux¬
iliary branch of that exhibition could have developed into
what it was; could have become the most important part of
that immense undertaking; could have become the greatest
success of the past year, and, I do not hesitate to say, could
now take its place as one of the most memorable events in
the history of the world? Even in America, where people
have not fully lost the faculty of admiring, and of giving
hearty expression to their admiration, the greatness of that
event seems to me not yet fully appreciated, while in other
countries vague rumors only have as yet reached the pub¬
lic at large of what took place in the Religious Parliament
at Chicago. Here and there, I am sorry to say, ridicule
also, the impotent weapon of ignorance and envy, has been
used against what ought to have been sacred to every man
of sense and culture; but ridicule is blown away like offen¬
sive smoke; the windows are opened, and the fresh air of
truth streams in." Prof. F. Max Müller, The Arena, De¬
cember, 1894.
"Die grossartigste und vielleicht folgenreichste Idee,
die in unserem, seinem Ende entgegeneilenden Jahrhun¬
dert zur Ausführung gelangt ist, war die Versammlung
von Vertretern aller Religionen zur Zeit der grossen Wel¬
tausstellung in Chicago im Jahre, 1893. — In keinem
anderen Lande der Welt hätte eine so kühne weltumfas-
sendè Idee gefasst—viel weniger noch zur Ausführung
gebracht werden können!"
"Wenn die Lehre von einer Ur-Offenbarung bisher von
den Laien gutglaübig hingenommen wurde, so hat der
Geist des Friedens, der die Versammlung in Chicago
beseelte, aller Welt klar gelegt, dass es auf Erden wirklich
eine Ur-Religion giebt, und dass die Spuren dieser, wenn
auch vielfach missverstandenen, vielfach entstellten, viel¬
fach missgestalteten Ur-Religion eben jene zween Gebote
sind, die, wenn auch theilweise stark verdunkelt, in allen
NOTES. 405
Welt-Religionen wieder zu erkennen sind." Prof. Wilhelm
von Zehender, Munich.
Note 5, p. 309.
"According to habits of thought but recently broken up,
God had only one Son. Our race, while in an unfilial mood,
was not composed of the children of the Highest. By
nature men belong to the animal kingdom ; to the kingdom
of the spirit they belong only by the miracle of regenera¬
tion and the condescension of the Divine adoption. This
opinion is no longer preachable or credible among thinking
men. It is obviously inconsistent with Christian theism
and Christian ethics. If it still lives in the schools, it is
utterly dead in the great fields of militant Christendom.
It is the mother of fatalism and despair. It postpones all
Christian ethical appeal until regeneration has taken place,
that is, until the animal has been made over into a man
and a child of God; and, as that new creation is the work
of the Eternal Spirit, Christian morality has no sphere of
operation except in the extremely limited community of
believers in their own regeneration. " The Christof To-day,
Gordon, p. 79.
Note 6, p. 315.
"Some gentle critics who see no good except in old
stereotyped lines of action will doubtless forbode only evil
from such a 'new departure.' They will consider the
Church degraded, because she stood there in the midst not
only of her own truant children, but even of the heathens.
But the dear Lord, who has said that His Church must
bring forth from her treasures 'new things and old,' and
who has made her, as St. Paul says, 'a debtor' to all the
outside wanderers and gropers, will be sure to view the
matter differently. For Him alone was the work under¬
taken and carried on; and to His honor and glory may all
of its results redound." Archbishop John J. Keane.
Note 7, p. 326.
"India wants nothing so much as a religious revival, or
rather a restoration. There is no real unity for the nation
^o6 CHRISTIANITT, THE WORLD-RELIGION.
except through one faith ; political unity is uncertain. The
struggle lies in the future between a new religion for the
people and revival of the old." India, Forty Years of Pro¬
gress and Reform, by R. P. Karkaria, p. II2.
Note 8, p. 327.
"It was a wonderful meeting, prophetic of great ad¬
vances in the spiritual life of mankind. When our holy
faith is brought face to face with any other the comparison
itself is an argument for Christianity. Believing as I do
that Christ is that Light which is in every man who comes
into the world, I shall be amazed not to discover the evi¬
dence of His presence and energy in all lands. This book
is a sign of his coming, the glorious appearing of the Son
of Man, a sign that He is even now the world's best life."
Professor C. R. Henderson, D.D., on the Record of the
Parliament of Religions,
INDEX.
Abbott, Dr. Lyman, 319.
Abraham, 126, 133.
Abyssinia, 81.
Adler, Rabbi, 296.
Africa, 61, 191.
Agni, 376, 377.
Agnosticism, decadent, 30.
Akbar 292, 296, 323, , 402.
America, Biblical origin of,
193-
progress of Christianity in
194, 239, 294.
American Christianity, hos¬
pitable and progressive,
355, 356-
Angélico, Fra, 228.
Anglican Church and Parli¬
ament of Religions, 298,
403.
Anglo-Saxon race, 35, 97.
Arnold, Matthew, 217, 269,
355, 369.
Arnold, Thomas, 233, 269.
Asiatic, 35, 209, 210.
Asoka, 48, 296, 323.
Augustine, St.,53, 83, 232.
Avesta, 382.
Bacon, 129.
Balfour, Arthur J., 167, 263.
Bascom, Professor, 305.
Beha Allah, 38.
Bernard of Clairvaux, 233.
Bible, 157, 198.
adapted to all, 175.
and other sacred books,
178, 180.
an honest book, 183.
an organic growth, 180,
181.
407
Bible as literature, 169, 184,
382.
not shaken by criticism,
186.
of divine origin, 184, 185.
progressive revelation, 181,
182.
revision of, 157.
spread of its influence,
161, 163.
translates well, 174.
Blackie, Professor, 160.
Boardman, George Dana,
317, 389-
Bonney, C. C., 300.
Book of the Dead, 165.
Brace, C. L., 362, 374, 385.
Brahmanism, 378.
Brahmo Somaj and Parlia¬
ment of Religions, 299,
311-
Brotherhood, human, 41, 96,
156.
Brooks, Phillips, 138, 389.
Bruce, Professor A.B., 281,
305. 316.
Bryce, Professor James, 193.
Buddha, Gautama, 125,
135, 138, 148, 205, 214,
220, 222, 226, 255.
Buddhism and animal life,
391-
and Christianity, 370, 371.
and re-incarnation, 366.
characteristics of, 91, 92,
94, 95, no, 190, 207, 230,
248, 255.
effects of, 103.
ethical, oriental, 59, 60.
in China, 371.
4o8
INDEX.
Buddhism, missionary, 45,
46, 47, 351.
scriptures of, 166.
Bunyan, John, 230.
Caird, John, 351.
Caird, Principal Edward,
68, 351, 354. 380.
Calvin, John, 204.
Candlin, George T., 318.
Carpenter, J. Estlin, 292.
Carroll, Dr. 194.
Castelar, on Parliament of
Religions, 309.
Channing, 219, 279.
Charity, 43.
China, 134, 190, 192, 198,
361, 362, 371.
Christ and founders of other
faiths, 202, 207, 213, 214.
and prophecy, 205.
bibliography of the life of,
389-
God's revelation for all,
22, 113.
His perfect moral nature,
218, 227.
idealism, 68.
inspiration of love, 203.
portrait in Gospels true,
285.
the distinctive truth of
Christianity, 14, 34, 36,
37, 44, 75, 202, 203.
the incomparable, 392.
the reconciler, 235, 324,
325-
the revelation of God, 136,
153, 229, 230.
universal Kingship of,227.
universal Man and Sa¬
viour, 201, 240.
words of, their influence,
217.
Christendom, greatness, 57,
61, 62.
sins, 75, 77, 81, 82, 84.
Christianity an art, 233.
and Anglo-Saxon peoples,
72, 73-
Christianity and other re¬
ligions, 31, 33, 34, 38, 62,
78, 79, 82, 104, 136, 234,
312.
and twentieth century, 64,
65, 102.
a religion of facts, 257,
258.
changeable, 89, 90.
conquests, 55, 56, 72, 85,
86, 87, 195, 196, 274.
democratic, 98, lOl.
described, 36.
effects, 73, 74.
greatest of facts, 274.
historic character of, 243,
289, 394-
hopeful, 95.
inclusive, 44.
influence on nations, 98.
and Hinduism, 353.
living, 90.
many-sided, 96.
more than a creed, 37.
of divine origin, 106, 275.
progressive, 91, 92, 93.
supernatural origin of,,
264, 286.
universal and missionary.
15, 16, 22, 35, 37, 41, 47,
48, 52, 53. 55. 63, 69, 70,
world's need of, 326, 327.
Church of God, foundation
of, 286.
Civilization and Christian¬
ity, 92, 104, 105.
Clarke, James Freeman, 351,
374-
Classical Literature, enthu¬
siasm for, 164.
Coleridge, 191.
Cologne Cathedral, 243, 249.
Columbian Exposition, 304,
331. 332.
Columbian Exposition and
Parliament of Religions,
299, 300.
Comparative Theology, 30,
44. 68.
Comte, Auguste, 228.
INDEX.
409
Confucianism, 43, 48, 5g,
179. 254-
Confucius, 148, 166, 208,
215, 220, 226, 389.
Conscience, 123, 124.
Conversions, the great, 231.
Cook, Dr. Joseph, 314, 318.
Curzon, George N., 362,
371. 372.
D'Alviella, 351, 374.
Darwin, loi, 158.
DeForest, J. H., 315.
Dennis, J. S., 315, 317, 363.
Desire not wrong, 68.
D'Harlez, Mgr. 320.
Dharmapala, 318.
Dodds, Dr. Marcus, 352.
Dorner, 204.
Drummond, Professor Hen¬
ry, 28, 122, 190.
Dudley, Bishop, 319.
Ellinwood, Dr. F. F., 323,
370, 379. 391-
Emerson, 121.
England, Christian Exten¬
sion of, 196.
English Christianity, 367,
368.
Epistles of Paul, 273, 279.
Ewald, 191.
Fairbairn, Principal A. M.,
99, no, 156, 374, 375. 379-
Farrar, F. W., 72, 363.
Fatherhood, God's, 112, 114,
117, 118, 133, 156, 214.
Fiske, John, 196.
Fraser, Prof. A. C., 354.374-
Freedom, growth of, 93.
Fremantle, W. H., 200, 237,
352, 395. 396.
Gibbons, Cardinal, 319.
Gladden, Washington, 318.
Gladstone, 57, 6i, 233, 259,
298. 333-
God and conscience, 124.
and history, 303.
God, Christian doctrine of,
112, 115.
Hindu doctrine of, 125, 136.
holiness of, 129.
love of, 133, 137.
Mohammedan doctrine of,
135. 150.
not localized, 126.
omnipresent, 121, 122.
personal, 120, 125, 142.
spiritual, 121, 127.
the redeeming, 132, 143,
147.
unity of, 116, 119.
Goethe, no.
Golden Rule, 43.
Goodspeed, Geo. S., 156.
Gordon, Dr. Geo., 200, 376,
378. 405.
Gore, Canon, 47, 151, 266,
333. 374-
Gospels, inspiration of lit¬
erature, 212.
origin of, 272, 273.
teaching of, 211.
Goths, 88.
Gottheil, Rabbi, 319.
Grant, Principal G. M., 33,
302, 352.
Greek Church, 36, 236.
Greek Language and Litera¬
ture, 53, 71, 206.
Greek Philosophy ineffect¬
ive, 395.
GrifBs, W. E., 68, 91, no,
361. 375-
Grotius, 98.
Haines, C. R., 351,
Hamlin, Cyrus, 314.
Harnack, 242.
Harper, Wm. R., 292.
Harrison Frederick, 370.
Haskell, Mrs. C. E., 9, 23,
25. 333. 337. 338.
Hebrew Language, 53. "
Henderson, C. R., 406.
Higginson, T. W., 319.
"Hindu" (Madras), 346.
Hindu Christians, 25, 26.
INDEX.
Hindu Sacred Books, 171.
Hinduism, absorbing power,
33, 97, 113, 249, 372.
and moral evil, 37g.
an idolatry, 364.
national, 45, 59, 248, 254.
origin of, not satanic, 356.
philosophic, 365.
tested, 79, 103, 125, 136.
Hugo, Victor, 223, 380.
Hume, Robert A., 319, 331.
Huxley, Professor, 268.
Hyacinthe, M. Loyson, 368,
369-
Incarnation, 139.
India, 103, 106, 198.
divisions of, 393.
Dr. Barrows's journey in,
335. 342.
lack of unity in, 360.
religious need of, 405.
India Lectureship, need of,
13, 14, 322, 333.
origin of, 9, 23, 24, 238,
240, 287.
"Indian Christian Herald,"
344-
"Indian Evangelical Re¬
view," 345.
Indian home life, 387,
" Indian Social Reformer,"
347-
" Indian Witness," 345.
Jains, 358.
Japan, 116, 159, 189, 192.
Dr. Barrows's journey in
342.
Jessup, Henry H., 214.
Jevons, 351, 375. 376. 385.
John's Gospel, 161, 271, 272.
Jones, Rev. J. P., 341, 356,
357-,
Jones, Sir William, 191.
Judaism, 48, 50, 53, 55, 58,
119, 125, 126.
Keane, Archbishop, 310, 317,
405.
Kellogg, S. H., 351, 374, 379.
Kidd, Benjamin, 72, 304.
Kingdom of Heaven, 56, 57.
Kojiki, 166, 382.
Koran, 135, 159, 160, 171,
172, 173, 197, 254, 373.
Kuenen, 69, 135, 352.
Laotse, 43, 48, 166.
Latin, 53.
Lawrence, E. A., 363.
Lightfoot, Bishop, 115.
Lincoln, iii.
Lord's Prayer, 114, 309.
Lotze, 118.
Luther, 161, 204, 226, 231,
233-
Macdonald, Rev. Dr. K. S.,
18, 336, 376, 377-
Mackichan, Dr., 340.
Madagascar, 9, 18, 22, 190,
191.
Malabari, B. M., 359, 367,
386, 393, 395-
Manu, spiritual, 127.
Manu, Laws of, 189.
Martin, Dr. W. A. P., 78, 315.
Martineau, James, 121.
Maurice, Frederick D., 233.
McGilvary, Daniel, 315.
Menzies, 351.
Merivale, 363.
Messianic hopes, 50, 51.
Metempsychosis, 365, 366.
Mills, B. Fay, 319.
Milton, John, 204, 233.
Miracles, 258, 266, 267, 270,
396, 400.
Mitchell, J. Murray, 358, 359,
373. 377.
Moffat, Robert, 102.
Mohammed, 148, 226, 390.
Mohammedanism, character
and mission of, 33, 42,
45, 81, 89, 180, 207, 248.
effects of, 364.
limits of, 70, 104.
not universal, 61, 62, 63.
Monotheism, 117, 125, 129.
Morality, real, 40, 41.
INDEX.
411
Moses, 49, 120, 224, 226.
Mozoomdar, 9. 18, 22, 209,
231. 313, 318, 337, 338,
390, 391, 392, 403.
Müller, Prof. F. Max, 17, 38,
82, 104, 184, 351, 352,
383. 385. 386, 403-
Napoleon, 223.
Neander, 152, 204.
Newman, Cardinal, 74.
Newton, 125.
New Zealand, 196.
Niebuhr, 269.
Nirvana, 153.
Non-Christian Literature,
noble elements of, 383.
Nouri, the patriarch, 341.
Old Testament, 44, 48, 118,
120.
Orr, Prof. James, 307.
Palestine, epitome of the
world, 168,
Palmer, Prof. Geo. H., 68,
370.
Pantheism, 112, n6, 121, 125,
140, 141, 145, 374, 380.
Pariahs, 373.
Parker, Theodore, 219.
Parks, Edward A., 158.
Parliament of Religions, 10,
23, 34, 46, 114, 238, 292,
328, 331, 333, 348, 401,
402.
Parsees, 58, 114, 166, 357.
Pascal, 118, 221.
Paul, the apostle, 115, 117,
128, 145, 168, 170, 221,
224, 231, 277, 297.
Persecutions, the early, 85,
86.
Peter, the apostle, 285, 297.
Pfleiderer, 351.
Plato, 100, 116, 265, 269.
Post, Dr. George, 315.
Préssensé, de, 152, 380.
Prophecy, 44.
Psalms, The, 177.
Redemption, 132, 147.
Reid, Gilbert, 315.
Religion, absorbing power
of greater religions, 33,
41.
greatness and universality
of, 27, 42, 71, 72.
origin of, 28.
science and, 29.
study of, 302, 303.
Religious tests, 75, 80.
Rénan, 86, 222, 261.
Resurrection of Christ, 271,
277, 282.
Rice, Rev. E. P., 22, 242,
353. 362.
Richter, Paul, 223.
Ritter, Carl, 163.
Roman Catholic church, 236.
Roman Empire, 48, 77, 85,
86, 100, 206, 282.
Romanes, Professor, 273.
Rousseau, 226.
Sacred Books of the East,
38, 382, 383.
Saussaye, 351.
Schaff, Dr., 176, 309, 317.
Schultz, Dr. Hermann, 22,
no, 200, 242, 374.
Scott, A., D.D., 352.
Sen, Keshub Chunder, 209,
337. 360, 388, 390.
Sikhs, 157, 357.
Simon, D. W., 574.
Slater, Rev. T. E., 156, 314,
340, 353. 378, 380, 383,
384-
Slavery, 89, 93.
Smith, Robertson, 177, 251,
395.
Socrates, 223, 226, 390.
Soma, 377.
Spencer, Herbert, 70, 73, 124.
Spinoza, 141.
Spirit of God, everywhere,
25.
Stanley, Dean, 269.
St. Francis of Assisi, 233.
St. Hilaire, 107, 220.
412
INDEX.
Storrs, Dr. R. S., 363.
St. Peters Church, 130, 131.
Strauss, 141, 264.
Sympathy, Buddhist and
Christian conception of,
392.
Tagore, Sir J. M., reception
by, 335.
Tamil Proverbs, 179.
Ten Commandments, 187,
i88.
Tennyson, 234, 292, 298.
Thayer, Prof. John H., 306.
Theism, Christian, 123, 127.
literature of, 374.
Toleration, 39, 40.
Trench, Archbishop, 43.
Trinity, 140, 268.
Tyler, C. M., 351.
Unity of Mankind, 40, 41,
45.
Universal Book, 157, 198.
University of Chicago, 10,
23, 335.
Upanishads, 156, 167, 193,
378, 379. 380, 383, 384.
Varuna, 118, 374.
Vedas, 137, 138, 152, 166,
193, 382, 386.
Victoria, Queen, 197.
Vincent, Bishop J. H., 321.
Virgil's Eclogues, 380.
Warren, President, 305, 365.
Washburn, Pres. George,
79. 318.
Welinkar, Prof. N. G., 353,
368, 387-
Wesley, John, 231, 233.
Westcott, B. F., 374.
Wherly, E. M., 314.
Whittier, 292.
Williams, Sir Monier, 45,
94. 372, 374. 387, 388.
Wolkonski, Prince, 318.
Womanhood and Christian¬
ity, 89, 97, 188, 189, 232.
Womanhood in India, 386,
387-
World-religion, not eclectic
merely, 31, 32.
Xenophon, 223.
Zehender, Prof. Wm. von,
404. 405-
Zoroaster, 152, 3S9.