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 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 THE MESSAGE 
 
 OF THE 
 
 WORLD'S RELIGIONS
 
 THE MESSAGE 
 
 OF THE 
 
 WORLD'S RELIGIONS 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO, 
 
 LONDON AND BOMBAY 
 1898
 
 Copyright, 1897, by 
 THE OUTLOOK COMPANY 
 
 Copyright, 1898, by 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
 Press of J. J. Little & Co. 
 Astor Place, New York
 
 4 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 
 
 JUDAISM x 
 
 By Rabbi Gustav Gottheil, D.D. 
 
 BUDDHISM 23 
 
 By Professor T. W. Rhys Davids, Ph.D., LL.D. 
 
 CONFUCIANISM 4 i 
 
 By the Rev. Arthur H. Smith 
 
 Author of " Chinese Characteristics" 
 
 MOHAMMEDANISM 65 
 
 By the Rev. George Washburn, D.D. 
 
 President of Robert College, Constantinople 
 
 BRAHMANISM 36 
 
 By Charles R. Lanman 
 
 Professor of Sanskrit in Harvard University 
 
 CHRISTIANITY io2 
 
 By Lyman Abbott, D.D. 
 
 J 5363 i 8
 
 THE MESSAGE OF 
 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 
 
 JUDAISM 
 
 By Rabbi Gustav Gottheil, D.D. 
 
 The perseverance of the Jew and his 
 Judaism is in itself a mission to the 
 world. That it is the wonder of history 
 is generally allowed; but why should a 
 wonder be wrought, if not to teach and 
 enforce a lesson ? Goethe looked upon 
 it in that light; for he wrote: " In re- 
 gard to independence, firmness, courage 
 — and where these qualities do not suf- 
 fice, tenacity — the people of Israel is 
 without compare. It is the most endur- 
 
 i
 
 2 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 
 
 ing race on earth, which was, is, or shall 
 be, that it may glorify the name of 
 Jehovah forever. It is for this reason 
 that (in the pictorial representation of 
 history which meets the eye of the son 
 of Meister in the Octagon hall) we have 
 placed Israel as the great ensample and 
 central picture which the others sur- 
 round as a frame merely.' The wonder 
 is justified in our eyes when we remem- 
 ber that his " tenacity " is the very sin 
 which the Church cannot forgive. She 
 has done all she can, and much more 
 than she ever ought to have done, to 
 make the wonder cease; but " the arm 
 of the Lord is not shortened to save.' 
 Officially she has not changed her atti- 
 tude toward Israel; she continues to 
 place his mission against the mission of 
 God ; but silently, and in the hearts of 
 her most thoughtful sons and daughters, 
 the question has sprung up, and is press- 
 ing for an answer more urgently day by 
 day: How was it possible for these scat-
 
 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 3 
 
 tered remnants, numerically so weak, and 
 that small number broken up and scat- 
 tered to the four winds, to " stand and 
 to withstand" for so many centuries? 
 To stand, with every known support of 
 a nation struck away; with every na- 
 tional bond rent asunder; without an 
 organization of any kind, without a 
 priesthood, without a rallying-point or 
 outward symbol of unity, national or 
 spiritual ? Here are ten millions of peo- 
 ple, strewn over vast areas of lands, with 
 whole continents and oceans between the 
 " disjecta membra," yet owning an affin- 
 ity that has never been found wanting in 
 the hour of need. This wonder has been 
 so exasperating to the enemies of Israel 
 that they invented all sorts of devilish 
 plots to account for it ; plots that have 
 now been brooded over by the clumsy 
 emissaries of Satan for centuries, but 
 never were consummated yet. Mean- 
 while these mysterious men and women 
 have lived their honest lives and have
 
 4 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 
 
 passed away like other sons and daughters 
 of Adam, have inscribed names on the 
 roll of benefactors that yield to none in 
 lustre, and not a few of them have given 
 their lives in the defence of the country 
 which they called their own. How 
 could a race, so situated and condi- 
 tioned, " withstand' the ceaseless and 
 merciless war made upon it for so long a 
 time ? Needs not that I open that reg- 
 ister once more — it is sufficiently known. 
 True, their disruption was their building 
 up, wherein we see the hand of Provi- 
 dence working its own ends irresistibly : 
 fractions only could be destroyed, or, if 
 exiled, find a refuge somewhere on 
 earth ; the rare instances in which breth- 
 ren refused to open their doors to the 
 fugitives or even showed selfish coldness 
 are branded in Jewish records with an 
 indelible mark of infamy. This was in 
 cases of open war; but open war was 
 not the hardest test of Jewish tenacity 
 and courage; to be slain not the worst
 
 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 5 
 
 of fates; for the martyr's crown casta 
 halo around the darkness of the grave. 
 To live, aye ! to live under the most 
 refined wickedness of persecution was 
 more bitter than death — was, did I say ? 
 Is, to this hour. Very recently one who 
 knows what he is testifying to, and may 
 be fully trusted, said to me: " Sir, the 
 distress, the poverty, the want to which 
 the Jews encaged in the Russian Pale 
 have been reduced is appalling; it is be- 
 yond my power of description ; and there 
 is but one cry sounding from all letters 
 received: ' For God's sake take us any- 
 where you can, so that we have enough 
 to eat and to drink.' But where such 
 distress does not exist, nay, even where 
 plenty reigns and the political rights of 
 the Jew are not questioned, his race and 
 his religion are the gall and wormwood in 
 the cup of the Jew. Without doubt, 
 whether we consider the length of time, 
 or the severity of the trial, or the ab- 
 sence of friend and comforter, no other
 
 6 THE WORLD 'S RELIGIONS 
 
 faith has been tried as has that of Israel. 
 Others have had their periods of perse- 
 cution and oppression, but they were 
 followed by triumph and dominion ; 
 others have covered the pages of history 
 with martyrs and professors who proved 
 invincible under their tortures, and who 
 went to the stake singing psalms and 
 giving praise to God that they were 
 found worthy to seal the truth with their 
 blood ; who better than the Jew can 
 honor their memory ? But, with the 
 exception of two or three interruptions, 
 the way of the Jew has been a " Via 
 Dolorosa ' from the thirteenth to the 
 nineteenth century; and, in the words of 
 his own inimitable elegist, he can say, 
 " Behold, is there a grief like mine ? " 
 
 All this would be wonderful, even if Jew 
 and Judaism were now in their dotage; if 
 their energy were spent, and they were 
 listless as to the present, aimless as to the 
 future; if Byron's word were true: 
 Israel has the grave.
 
 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 7 
 
 But the outcry against the Jew is that 
 his strength is far in excess of his num- 
 ber, that his ambition reaches to heights 
 to which he is not entitled ; his successes 
 are the despair of his non-Jewish com- 
 petitors. And as regards his religion, it 
 is safe to say that it is, at the present 
 day, the most active and energetic in the 
 work of reform. The oldest of churches 
 offers the heartiest welcome to the latest 
 born of ideals. Nor is it a mere nega- 
 tive reform which is pursued ; I mean, 
 one that is content with the lopping of 
 dead branches and the leaving undone of 
 things that have fallen out of joint with 
 the time. Young branches are being 
 constantly grafted on the old stem which 
 is found to be still full of sap, capable 
 to nourish and prosper the fresh shoots. 
 Old liturgies are expurgated and new 
 ones composed ; rituals and ceremonials 
 are being modernized ; new hymns writ- 
 ten, or borrowed from other churches 
 without compunction — sometimes even
 
 8 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 
 
 with their melodies, if text and tone ap- 
 pear to be made for each other ; even new 
 days and seasons are fixed for public wor- 
 ship. In schools, seminaries, periodicals, 
 religious literature, societies, charities — 
 everywhere the breath of a new life is 
 felt. And, more astonishing still, the 
 soil of Palestine is being reclaimed by 
 the hands of Jewish peasants and plant- 
 ers; Jerusalem lifts her head once more 
 and begins to lay aside her sackcloth and 
 ashes — growing rapidly into a modern 
 city. 
 
 And — here the superlative of wonder 
 fails me — next August, in this year 
 eighteen hundred and ninety-seven, a 
 congress of Jews from all parts of the 
 world will meet at Munich, Bavaria, to 
 discuss the whole of the Jewish question 
 and the most effective way of settling it ; 
 and also the question whether the found- 
 ing of a Jewish State in Palestine is pos- 
 sible — if possible, desirable — as a refuge 
 for those Jews who are not permitted
 
 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 9 
 
 by the people among whom they live to 
 assimilate with them in citizenship. 
 
 Brief and summary as I desire to make 
 this statement of the case, I cannot omit 
 the fact that Judaism gave birth to two 
 giant children, which cast their mother 
 so far into the shade as regards numbers, 
 power, wealth, brilliance, organization, 
 and recognition in the world, that she 
 can hardly be mentioned by their side. 
 Well-nigh half of mankind live by a re- 
 ligious faith Jewish at the core, yet that 
 great outpouring of her strength has not 
 diminished her own store ; the mother 
 lives, and so far from preparing for her 
 final exit, is girding up her loins to do 
 and to dare yet more for humanity. She 
 clings to her post as one of the path- 
 finders for the arrival of the Messiah, 
 whose authority will rest on the fact 
 that there will be no questioning, no 
 wrangling about it, that all the earth 
 will answer in unison, " Blessed be
 
 io THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 
 
 he that cometh in the name of the 
 Lord." 
 
 And now I have been asked to offer 
 an explanation of that wonder of his- 
 tory. I frankly confess that I have none 
 to offer, neither have I met with one 
 who could do it for me. After searching 
 and sounding and probing and listening 
 on all sides, I still must bow my head 
 before the Power that lives and moves in 
 this great mystery. Happy I, if I may 
 humbly trace some of the means by 
 which the miracle was wrought and is 
 being continued. I do so with fear and 
 trembling; more than once did I lay 
 down the pen in the hopeless sense of 
 my insufficiency; had I not feared that 
 there was more cowardice than humility 
 in this confession, I would never have 
 pressed the pen back into the reluctant 
 hand. I need both — the grace of God 
 and the indulgence of the reader; and I 
 ask for them in all sincerity and earnest- 
 ness.
 
 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS n 
 
 I. — UNITY 
 
 The taproot of Judaism is the idea of 
 unity; the Rabbis understood this when 
 they wrote on Israel's banner the words 
 of their patriarch, the Deuteronomist, 
 1 Hear, O Israel : The Lord our God, 
 the Lord is one.' In unity there is 
 strength of both faith and faithfulness. 
 In the one and one only God the sim- 
 plest mind and the profoundest thinker 
 meet together. The singer of the shep-- 
 herd psalm, that classical expression of 
 childlike trust, says in song what Bruno 
 and Spinoza say in their architectural 
 systems. There is something grand and 
 soul-subduing in that thought ; and at 
 the same time it allows a freedom of con- 
 struction which keeps the soul in healthy 
 activity and secures a sense of independ- 
 ence and self-esteem. One God or 
 none at all — the alternative is bracing 
 and stimulating. The issue is not that
 
 12 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 
 
 of the Jew, but of thinking man all over 
 the world, and has been so from the time 
 he began to reflect on the problem. The 
 Jew feels that he has a place, indisput- 
 able and unavoidable, in the develop- 
 ment of the human mind and the history 
 of religion ; that he is fully entitled to it, 
 and in holding fast to it he defends the 
 native right of humanity. 
 
 It has been said, and justly so, that it 
 is the enemy that makes a nation. The 
 pressure of defence and the dread of 
 danger are needed to drive people to- 
 gether and to create a sense of unity. 
 Now, by the proclamation of the vanity 
 of all idols and of all ideas of Deity 
 other than the one Israel proclaimed, he 
 provoked the whole world to enmity; 
 and in proportion to this enormous pres- 
 sure from all sides grew his power of 
 adhesion and resistance. He was and is 
 right in allowing no tampering with his 
 foundation faith, under whatever pre-
 
 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 13 
 
 text. The term Monotheism he dislikes, 
 because there lurks danger in it, as he 
 sees clearly in the Trinitarian construc- 
 tion of that term in Christianity. His 
 feet planted on his "Rock" (God is 
 called by that name in his Bible), he 
 watches with sleepless eye every attempt 
 to undermine his foothold. 
 
 A Trinitarian belief is to him a disin- 
 tegration of his clear and compact faith, 
 and multiplies the arguments against 
 God by three. It is the conception of 
 unity, absolute, everlasting, unvarying, 
 which alone can give us a perfect God ; 
 for this could not be with imperfections 
 and limitations in His being. If such 
 appear to our view, the fault must lie in 
 our vision, not in Him. 
 
 And from this central idea a tendency 
 towards unity went out like rays from 
 the sun to pervade all Judaism. One 
 people, the sons of Abraham, Isaac, and 
 Jacob; one land, with one capital and 
 one sanctuary, and in this one spot
 
 14 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 
 
 where the glory of God dwelt, visited by 
 one man, once a year, on the unique 
 fast-day of the year; one book, not the 
 Bible, but the Law of Moses, the Torah, 
 given through the prophet of whom it is 
 written, There never arose another like 
 him in Israel. One law for all, the 
 stranger included, and — no monarchy; 
 for a throne with a human being on it 
 means division, not unity, as the very 
 history of Israel proves better than 
 any other national experience. Moses, 
 incomparable fashioner of a nation and 
 prince of legislators, wanted no dynasty; 
 and those who followed in his footsteps, 
 how true they remained to his great 
 idea! From Joshua to Samuel — these 
 were much-disturbed times, and many 
 saviors of the nation arose, but no throne 
 was established till the people them- 
 selves, in an evil hour, insisted on having 
 one like other nations — and it was not 
 long before the breach occurred that 
 could never be healed again.
 
 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 15 
 
 And so in the great outlook towards 
 the consummation of Israel's oneness, 
 the idea of unity, in heaven and on 
 earth, if I may say so, appears triumphant 
 at last. ' In that day God will be one, 
 and His name be one.' Then God will 
 burn the lip of nations and purify it that 
 they shall all call upon the name of God 
 and serve Him with one consent. Much 
 more might be said on that point, but I 
 must leave off here, and turn to what 
 we must designate as the second great 
 resource of Judaism; and that is: 
 
 II. — DIRECTNESS 
 
 Let the reader forbear criticism as to 
 the name of this part of my statement ; 
 I chose faute de mieux, and will explain 
 at once that Judaism places the soul in 
 direct, immediate relation to the Crea- 
 tor. It offers no mediator, and hence 
 has nothing corresponding to the Chris- 
 tian conception of " a Church/' The
 
 1 6 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 
 
 Jew must be his own bishop, his own 
 pope. His Rabbi is no priest, and, with 
 the exception of two or three instances 
 in which a perfect knowledge of the law 
 is absolutely required, there is no reli- 
 gious function which the Jew cannot per- 
 form legally and effectively for himself 
 without the intercession of a Rabbi. 
 Consistently with this religious democ- 
 racy, the study of the Law, as ex- 
 pounded in the Talmud and the Casu- 
 ists, is declared to be a universal duty; 
 nay, one of the chief obligations of the 
 Jew. And so you might see, if you 
 thought it worth your while to see it, on 
 any morning, winter or summer, hun- 
 dreds of the " old-fashioned ones " leave 
 their homes at four in the morning to go 
 to the Beth-Hamidrash, or home of re- 
 ligious study, and spend the early hours 
 of the day in that sacred pursuit, before 
 they begin their wanderings or toilings 
 to earn the pittances on which they and 
 their families manage to live.
 
 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 17 
 
 I do not underrate the enormous power 
 which the idea of ' a Church ' as a 
 divinely ordained institution is fitted to 
 develop ; a thought of what Catholicism 
 has achieved is enough to convince us of 
 that. But, at the same time, according 
 to the law of compensation and adjust- 
 ment of the balance, the Church must 
 exact obedience and submission, and 
 deprecate self-reliance, the free exercise 
 of reason. Judaism demands the latter, 
 and trusts its fate to it. Any ten male 
 Jews past the age of thirteen may form 
 a body, entitled to all the rights and 
 immunities of a congregation, and per- 
 form public worship, wherever they may 
 be and at whatever time they may desire 
 it. Every synagogue is truly a people's 
 church, and makes government not an 
 easy matter by any means. The Rabbi 
 is entirely thrown upon his own resources 
 as regards weight and influence in the 
 congregation. All attempts at ecclesias- 
 tical organization have so far failed
 
 1 8 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 
 
 among the Jewish ministry. It is not 
 congenial to the spirit of Judaism; the 
 merest approach to it is viewed with sus- 
 picion. Whether modern times and al- 
 tered conditions and ideas will work a 
 change in that respect remains to be 
 seen. So far the grand principle of 
 Rabbi Chananyah ben Teradyon prevails : 
 where two sit together and interchange 
 words of the Law, the Shekinah is be- 
 tween them ; nay, even where one sits 
 alone and devoutly gives his mind to the 
 study of the Law, the Divine Presence 
 is with him, and he receives his full re- 
 ward. 
 
 III. — THIS-WORLDLINESS 
 
 That which strikes me as a third pre- 
 servative element in the constitution of 
 Judaism must seem strange in the eye of 
 the reader, inasmuch as it is everywhere 
 considered and treated as a reproach and 
 a deficiency — I mean its This-worldliness. 
 Strange enough that a religion which ex-
 
 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 19 
 
 isted, and surely not idly, for a thousand 
 years before the first faint mutterings of 
 " another and a better world " are heard 
 in its midst, should grow into the faith 
 of martyrdom and outstrip all others in 
 that regard! Yet so it is; and, what is 
 more surprising still is that, despite the 
 terrible denial which the Jew's experi- 
 ence gave to his belief that God's justice 
 rewards obedience to His Law with 
 earthly happiness and well-being, he 
 held fast to it, and, as it were, assisted 
 God to make good His promises given in 
 His Word. Even after he received and 
 approved the outlook into a " Here- 
 after," his faith in the " Here " suffered 
 no diminution. It sometimes appears to 
 me as if the Jew held it part of his 
 mission to 
 
 strive with might and main 
 For worldly good and earthly gain 
 
 so as to vindicate the ways of his God 
 to man ; a mere fancy of mine, no
 
 20 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 
 
 doubt, but fancies are often only facts 
 read in a peculiar way; and peculiar 
 ways are not incongruous with a peculiar 
 people ! 
 
 However that may be, the truth re- 
 mains the same: Judaism lays all stress 
 upon religion as the wisest plan of 
 spending this life well, and its kingdom 
 of heaven meant a God's kingdom on 
 earth, visible, tastable, measurable, cal- 
 culable; thus remaining true to the con- 
 ception of the Master of masters — the 
 son of Amram, to whom cleanliness was 
 godliness, and a healthful body the holi- 
 est temple of a soul created in the im- 
 age of God. I cannot imagine him as 
 frowning at a good joke; and so I will 
 revive here one made by " Kladde- 
 radatsch" (the Berlin "Puck") when 
 trichinae were first discovered as revel- 
 ling in swine's flesh; he said of Moses: 
 " Das nenn' ich einen Geheimen Medi- 
 zinal-Rath ! ' 
 
 So deeply rooted with the Jews was
 
 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 21 
 
 the serious meaning of this life and what 
 it offers or denies, at all times, that 
 even to his hope of immortality he gave 
 a this-world turn. His motto in this 
 respect was the word : The memory of 
 the just is for a blessing. His dead are 
 not allowed to die for the memory. 
 During the whole of the first year after 
 death his ritual prescribes a prayer to be 
 recited at the stated services by the 
 mourners; and the anniversaries of 
 deaths are loyally kept by children even 
 if they live to a ripe old age. 
 
 When, therefore, the religious life of 
 Europe in the beginning of this century 
 began to take a turn towards the life 
 that now is and the amelioration of its 
 conditions, the Jews were among the 
 readiest to receive and cultivate the new 
 spirit. They looked upon it as a con- 
 firmation of the hope and the faith by 
 which they have been sustained so long; 
 and they are now found among the most 
 active promoters of institutions de-
 
 22 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 
 
 signed to bring a little nearer the earthly 
 paradise of which we have been dream- 
 ing and singing and preaching for so 
 long a time. 
 
 Suppose we reach to it as near as this 
 earth permits, will Judaism still survive, 
 or be absorbed, voluntarily or otherwise, 
 in the realization of its ideals ? Who 
 can tell! This only is certain: its merits 
 will not pass out of the memory of 
 men. Can we Jews be satisfied with this 
 consummation ? Why not ! What is 
 good for individual man must be good 
 for any conglomeration of men ; and 
 what is better for the individual than 
 the thought that the best fruit of his toil 
 has nourished the best life of the world ? 
 That such a crown will some time be 
 placed on the brow of Judah is certain. 
 The rest is in God's hand.
 
 II 
 
 BUDDHISM 
 
 By Professor T. W. Rhys Davids, Ph.D., LL.D. 
 Oxford University. 
 
 The future Buddha (the founder of 
 the great system of religion and philos- 
 ophy which we call Buddhism, and 
 which he called the Dhamma or the 
 Norm) was born in the sixth century 
 B.C., in a noble family of Aryan descent, 
 then settled at a place called Kapila-vat- 
 thu, near what is now the boundary be- 
 tween British India and Nepal. How, in 
 his twenty-ninth year, he left his wife 
 and only child and went out into the 
 wilderness to become a homeless wan- 
 derer; how he spent six years of pro- 
 bationary studies into the mysteries of 
 life ; how, after much mental struggle, 
 
 23
 
 24 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 
 
 he at last deemed himself to have dis- 
 covered the solution of that mystery, 
 and came forward as a teacher of the 
 new doctrine; how he founded the Bud- 
 dhist Order, that oldest and most influ- 
 ential of all mendicant Orders; and how 
 he died peacefully forty-five years after- 
 wards, is now well known to all. What 
 we have to consider for a short space are 
 the salient features of that philosophy 
 of life which he set forth. 
 
 When he began to think, it was not so 
 much the fear of the gods that most 
 filled with awe the minds of previous 
 thinkers, as the fear of transmigration. 
 The belief in the transmigration of 
 souls, everywhere a part of primitive 
 animism, had then acquired in the valley 
 of the Ganges a power and a vitality 
 much greater, much more influential, 
 than it had at a similar stage in the re- 
 ligious evolution of other ancient peo- 
 ples. Very real, very constantly present 
 to the minds of ordinary men, the idea
 
 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 25 
 
 filled the heart of the more thoughtful 
 with a vague dread of the future. How 
 was this transmigration to end ? Where, 
 even after endless aeons of different lives 
 in different bodies, could the soul look 
 to find rest and peace at last ? Even a 
 rebirth in heaven offered no security. 
 For the gods and the angel-spirits, how- 
 ever long the duration of their bliss, were 
 doomed to fall, in their turn, from their 
 high estate, and be reborn, according to 
 their deeds, in other bodies. 
 
 The most imaginative and poetic 
 thought they had found a way of es- 
 cape. They postulated a god, higher 
 than all other gods, a personification of 
 the mystic words of the ancient sacri- 
 fice, Brahma, in whom all else that lived 
 found its life. The logical conclusion 
 was further drawn that all matter also 
 was derived from Brahma, was Brahma. 
 It is an error to trace back into pre- 
 Buddhistic literature the notion of an 
 absorption after death into this all-per-
 
 26 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 
 
 vading deity. It was enough for the 
 thinkers of that day that the man who, 
 in this life, realized the identity of his 
 own soul with Brahma, would, when he 
 died, go to the Brahma world, and thence 
 never return, never be reborn. Thus, 
 and thus only, was a firm resting-place 
 to be found. The peace realized already 
 in this life as a consequence of the sense of 
 identity with God would never pass away. 
 This theory, though common to vari- 
 ous schools among the Brahmins, was 
 confined to the few. It was taught, in 
 poorest hermitages, as a mystery attain- 
 able only by the select, the deepest 
 thinkers, and even by them only by the 
 grace of God. The mass of the people, 
 when they thought about such things, 
 were content, as we see from the funeral 
 ceremonies, to look forward to a rebirth 
 among the departed fathers in the world 
 of the gods. The more religious thought 
 to make this end more sure by careful 
 observance of sacrificial rites and custom-
 
 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 27 
 
 ary duties, or even, in extreme cases, by 
 ascetic practices of various kinds. But 
 just before the rise of Buddhism there 
 had been, due greatly to favorable 
 political and economic conditions, a 
 remarkable increase in the popularity of 
 all sorts of theosophic speculation ; and 
 numerous teachers, not by any means 
 always Brahmins, were posing as sophists, 
 and as teachers of new things. 
 
 Under two such teachers the future 
 Buddha at first, immediately after his 
 renunciation, studied. But, being dis- 
 satisfied with their teaching, because it 
 dealt more with the attainment of self- 
 induced trance than with the ethical 
 training he" desired, he left them, to work 
 out the question by and for himself. 
 We cannot, therefore, be surprised to 
 find, either, on the one hand, that the 
 system he afterwards put forth bore evi- 
 dent traces of the previous speculation, 
 or, on the other, that it differed so 
 greatly from that speculation in matters
 
 28 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 
 
 fundamental that it stamps him as the 
 most original of all the leading religious 
 teachers of the world. 
 
 His system aims, like the previous 
 ones, at salvation from transmigration. 
 But he went behind transmigration. 
 Why did they all dread this endless trans- 
 migration unless renewed becomings 
 meant also renewed sorrow ? The object 
 to be aimed at must, therefore, be, above 
 all and after all, the conquest of sorrow. 
 But what is sorrow other than a subjec- 
 tive feeling, an experience of one's own 
 mind ? It is the separation from the 
 loved and liked, the enforced union with 
 the dreaded and disliked, the sense of 
 wants unsatisfied, the sense of growing 
 old, of decay and death. Now, all these 
 are found wherever a separate individu- 
 ality is found. And that is the reason 
 why these constant becomings, these re- 
 iterated rebirths (which always involve a 
 separate individuality) are bound up with 
 sorrow.
 
 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 29 
 
 What brings all this about ? It is the 
 unsatisfied longings at the moment of 
 death that cause the rebirth. (Here the 
 Indian thinker agrees, not only with his 
 own predecessors, but also with Plato.) 
 And these longings are, always and only, 
 of three kinds — the lust of the flesh, the 
 lust of life, and the love of this present 
 world. To lay these, then, aside, to get 
 rid of them, to become free from them — 
 that would be the means to the end that 
 all the religious thinkers of that day 
 equally desired. 
 
 But these ignoble longings are also 
 things of the mind, the outcome of a 
 man's own heart. The way, then, and 
 the only way, to the conquest of them 
 must be the conquest of one's own heart 
 by the cultivation of the opposite dis- 
 positions. No theosophical speculation, 
 no views about one's soul, no hopes of 
 a future life, no sacrifices, no penances, 
 no external aid, can here avail. Nay, 
 more than this — reliance on one or all of
 
 30 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 
 
 these expedients only serves to turn the 
 attention away from the only useful 
 struggle, which is the struggle after self- 
 conquest. The other, then so popular, 
 methods are all worse than useless, they 
 are actually pernicious. 
 
 Now, self-conquest is not so easy. It 
 must be carried on gradually, and accord- 
 ing to a system, or the intellectual and 
 ethical effort will be vain. The system 
 put forward by the Buddha is well known 
 as the Noble Eightfold Path (in Pali the 
 Ariyo Atthangiko Maggo), that is to say: 
 
 i. Right Views. 5. Right Livelihood. 
 
 2. Right Aspirations. 6. Right Effort. 
 
 3. Right Speech. 7. Right Mindfulness. 
 
 4. Right Conduct. 8. Right Rapture. 
 
 To have reached the end of this eight- 
 fold path, to have made each of its eight 
 divisions part and parcel of one's own 
 nature, to have become all that it implies, 
 is Arahatship or Nirvana. And the 
 unshakable emancipation of heart which
 
 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 31 
 
 the Arahat then enjoys is described as 
 the aim and the essence, the pith and 
 the goal, of Buddhism. 1 
 
 How tame it must have seemed, how 
 empty, how pale, compared with the 
 sacrificial rites, or the elaborate pen- 
 ances, or the high-flown theosophies of 
 the other religious teachers! One can 
 almost hear the sneer of the worldly- 
 wise superior person of that day against 
 the " platitudes of the Noble Eightfold 
 Path;" one can almost feel the want 
 for something more supernatural, more 
 striking, that would at once be felt by 
 the theosophists on hearing the simpli- 
 city of this new doctrine. 
 
 Whether one agrees with Buddhism 
 or not, it is easy to see that these objec- 
 tions, at least, are unfounded, exagger- 
 ated. It may be a platitude that every 
 man ought to have right views. It is 
 not a platitude — most men would deny 
 
 1 Majjhima, I., 205.
 
 32 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 
 
 it (and none more contemptuously than 
 the superior person) — that every man 
 ought to have right rapture. It was not 
 only not a platitude, it was either a col- 
 ossal blunder or a new truth of the very 
 greatest weight, that salvation was to be 
 sought in a state of mind, and in that 
 only. Whether right or wrong, no one 
 in the history of the world had hitherto 
 put forward such a doctrine. And it 
 certainly was not a simple matter that 
 these eight, and just these eight, should 
 have been held to be, in themselves, 
 sufficient. Nor was it so simple even to 
 grasp what the eight points, thus delib- 
 erately chosen, actually did, and did not, 
 include and mean ; still less what the 
 Path, as a whole, leads up to and in- 
 volves. Whatever else it was, early Bud- 
 dhism was a most original, a most care- 
 fully thought out and balanced system. 
 
 This system is explained in the collec- 
 tion of 1 86 Dialogues of the Buddha 
 preserved to us in the Buddhist sacred
 
 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 33 
 
 books. The forty-third of these Dia- 
 logues is devoted to the elucidation of 
 what is meant by right views. It will be 
 well, even only as a specimen, to set out 
 in detail what this elucidation is as ex- 
 plained in the ninth of the Dialogues of 
 lesser length. And, first, the man of 
 right views understands what is evil and 
 what is good, and the roots of each. 
 And, again, he knows what are the four 
 bases of bodily and mental life, and how 
 these bases come into action and after- 
 wards cease. The four, it may be men- 
 tioned in passing, are food, contact 
 (through the senses with the outside 
 world), mental activity, and conscious- 
 ness. There is no mention either of 
 Brahma or of a soul or of intuitive 
 ideas. As a consequence of this knowl- 
 edge, the disciple gets entirely rid of 
 sensuality and of ill will toward other 
 beings, for he roots out of his heart the 
 tendency toward the pride that arises 
 from the belief in an ego ; and thus, 
 3
 
 34 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 
 
 conquering delusion and gaining wisdom, 
 he, even while yet in this present world, 
 makes an end of sorrow. 
 
 And, again, he knows what sorrow is, 
 and its origin and its cessation — how it 
 is bound up with the temporary individ- 
 uality resulting from the evanescent 
 union of the five groups of bodily and 
 mental qualities (which go to make up 
 each individual) ; how it results from 
 craving, and ceases in Arahatship. 
 
 And, again, he knows what old age 
 and death mean, the getting aged and 
 broken and white and wrinkled, the ap- 
 proaching end of one's allotted span of 
 life, the breaking up of one's bodily 
 organs; and the fall out of the class of 
 beings to which one belongs, the disin- 
 tegration of the five groups, the vanish- 
 ing away from the sphere that one has 
 filled — how both of them, death and old 
 age, come from birth, and how both are 
 overcome by Arahatship. 
 
 And, again, he knows about birth and
 
 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 35 
 
 becoming, and about the grasping and 
 thirst from which they come, and how 
 all of these cease in Arahatship. 
 
 And he knows about the sensations 
 and about the ideas that follow thereon, 
 how they arise and what they lead to ; 
 and about name, and form, and con- 
 sciousness, and mental predispositions; 
 how all have their root in ignorance, and 
 how ignorance can be analyzed ulti- 
 mately into the four great evils — lust 
 and becoming, delusion, and unwisdom. 
 When he knows all this, then is his in- 
 sight right, his views are straight, and 
 endowed with an abiding trust in the 
 truth ; he has entered into the realm of 
 the good law. 
 
 It may safely be said that no one, if 
 asked to define right views, would give 
 precisely this explanation. We have 
 here unfolded to us what was then, and 
 what is still, a new and original view of 
 the mystery of life. The " soul" the- 
 ory, which lies at the basis of all other
 
 36 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 
 
 religious systems, is conspicuous only by 
 its absence. And there is no reference 
 to any final causes. There is, indeed, a 
 constant reference to causes and effects 
 — very often of a kind that must seem 
 strange, and at first sight almost unintel- 
 ligible. But the main thesis is that life 
 is the result of a temporary collocation 
 of conditions that are always changing 
 and are constantly tending to dissolve. 
 To be able to trace the rise of any one 
 state from the immediately preceding 
 one is part of ' right views.' To be 
 able to explain the ultimate and neces- 
 sary first cause, or causes, is no such 
 part. It is implied (and is elsewhere ex- 
 plicitly stated) that to have views about 
 ultimate questions is a positive danger, 
 inasmuch as it leads the man who holds 
 them to rest on them without paying 
 that strict attention to the immediate 
 causes that it is so important for him to 
 grasp. 
 
 But the inevitable limits of space pre-
 
 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 37 
 
 elude any further comment on this state- 
 ment of the right views that are the first 
 thing necessary to the Noble Path. The 
 right aspirations are explained in the 
 twenty-ninth Dialogue. Lowest of all 
 comes the aspiration after a sufficient 
 livelihood, and the regard and respect of 
 one's fellow-men. Better than this is 
 the aspiration after rectitude of life. 
 Better again than that is the aspiration 
 after the rapture and the mental peace 
 that arise from the insight of meditation. 
 Still better is the aspiration after cer- 
 tainty of knowledge. And best of all is 
 the aspiration after that emancipation of 
 heart that, first obtained as a temporary, 
 momentary state, may by continued 
 effort be made a permanent part of one's 
 very being. That is the thing — this un- 
 shakable emancipation of heart — which is 
 the meaning, and the pith, and the end 
 of the whole matter. 1 
 
 1 Taken in abstract from Majjhima I., pp. 192-197, 
 where the reference is to members of the Order.
 
 38 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 
 
 The interpretations of right speech 
 and conduct and livelihood and effort are 
 not so different from the ordinary mean- 
 ing attached to similar expressions in 
 the West. But they leave out every- 
 thing not in harmony with the above. 
 Right livelihood, it may be added, in- 
 volves, . among other things, that it 
 brings hurt or danger to no living thing 
 — a far-reaching ethical proposition that, 
 if rigidly observed, would play sad havoc 
 with many modes of livelihood highly 
 honored in the present social conditions 
 of the West. Right effort has, of 
 course, nothing to do with getting on 
 and making money. It is a never-flag- 
 ging activity of the mind directed to 
 ethical ends. And the important place 
 it occupies in the " Path " is in striking 
 contradiction to the constant hints 
 in popular literature at the apathy 
 and the idle, dreamy sort of existence 
 supposed to be characteristic of Bud- 
 dhism.
 
 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 39 
 
 Right mindfulness would be almost 
 inevitably misunderstood by Western 
 readers without the aid of commentary. 
 It means a constant presence of mind in 
 all the ordinary acts of life, never for 
 one moment forgetful of the real facts of 
 the subjective and objective phenomena 
 that are ever passing before one's mental 
 vision. This is set out in detail in many 
 passages in the Sacred Books, and two 
 of the Dialogues are devoted exclu- 
 sively to it. There it is laid down that 
 this constant mental alertness is the only 
 method for purification, for getting be- 
 yond grief and woe, for putting an end 
 to sorrow and suffering, for the realiza- 
 tion of Nirvana. 1 
 
 Finally, right rapture is the peace of 
 heart which follows on the sense of vic- 
 tory gained; and is realized by that 
 steadfast concentration of mind in which 
 the sense of " This is I" and " This is 
 
 1 See, for instance, Majjhima I., 55—63.
 
 40 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 
 
 mine ' has been finally got rid of and 
 overcome. 1 
 
 The system is pieced together like a 
 puzzle. Each detail is only really mas- 
 tered when its particular place in the 
 system is kept before one's mind. An 
 exposition confined to the necessarily 
 narrow limits of such an article as the 
 present one can attempt to deal with 
 only the more fundamental and general 
 features of the scheme. To any one 
 who will study it, it is full of suggestion 
 for practical application in the ethics of 
 to-day. And its great value is the aid 
 which it affords to the student of the 
 comparative history of the development 
 of human thought. 2 
 
 1 Compare Anguttara III., 32, with Milinda 325, 
 and Samyutta IV., 297, 350, and Dhamma Sangani 
 II, 15, 24. 
 
 2 Further information will be found in my just pub- 
 lished "American Lectures," and in the authorities 
 there referred to.
 
 Ill 
 
 CONFUCIANISM 
 
 By the Rev. Arthur H. Smith 
 
 Author of "Chinese Characteristics" 
 
 What is Confucianism ? By Confu- 
 cianism we mean the essential teaching 
 of those works which the Chinese reckon 
 as classics. According to the narrowest 
 enumeration, these are five in number — 
 the Book of Changes, the Book of Odes, 
 the Book of History, the Book of Rites, 
 and the Spring and Autumn Annals. 
 To these are also added the Conversations 
 of Confucius, the Book of Filial Piety, 
 the Works of Mencius, and Rituals and 
 Commentaries, making a total of thirteen. 
 The aggregate bulk of these works is 
 probably somewhat less than that of our 
 Old Testament, but if the Commentaries 
 
 41
 
 42 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 
 
 are included the classics comprise in 
 themselves a vast library.. 
 
 Theoretical Confucianism is to be got 
 at by a distillation of these ancient books, 
 and the writer of this paper wishes to 
 disclaim any special fitness for the task 
 of discussing a topic so comprehensive 
 and of which he knows so little at first 
 hand. 
 
 At the Chicago Parliament of Reli- 
 gions by far the longest essay presented 
 was by the Hon. Pung Kwang Yu, Sec- 
 retary to the Chinese Legation at Wash- 
 ington. It extends to sixty-six pages, 
 more than ten times the average length 
 of the papers read there, and is an elab- 
 orate discussion of many branches of 
 our subject. It is of special interest, 
 ' as it is the first exposition ever given 
 of Confucianism in English by a distin- 
 guished and able man, himself a Con- 
 fucianist. It is also the first attempt of 
 such a man to estimate the relative value 
 of all religions, especially of Christian-
 
 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 43 
 
 ity. In addition to this, it gives us the 
 view which the Chinese Government 
 holds of Christian missions to-day.' 
 The writer of that essay was asked not 
 to make it " technical," but he found it 
 impossible to make it otherwise. The 
 writer of the present paper is requested 
 to make it " popular," but this he feels 
 more and more convinced to be imprac- 
 ticable as he considers the matter longer. 
 To most readers the Confucian classics 
 are inaccessible, but the report of the 
 Parliament of Religions has been sown 
 broadcast over the whole earth. It 
 seems, therefore, best to summarize, as 
 briefly as may be, the essential parts of 
 Mr. Pung's exposition, and those who 
 wish for further elucidation have only to 
 study his essay for themselves. Econ- 
 omy of space forbids more than a mere 
 abstract, but we shall endeavor to give 
 the spirit of Mr. Pung's thoughts with- 
 out at all following his order: 
 
 While it is not true, as some claim,
 
 44 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 
 
 that China has no religion of her own, 
 Confucianism is an ethical system, and is 
 not a "religion" at all. Thousands of 
 years ago the Chinese were obliged to 
 give up religion as a basis of govern- 
 ment, because when secular and spiritual 
 matters were mixed, misfortunes and 
 calamities befell the nation. Nothing 
 could now induce the Chinese to consent 
 that civil and religious affairs should inter- 
 sect each other. 
 
 There is a Spirit who rules this uni- 
 verse of created things; who accom- 
 plishes all his purposes without effort ; 
 whose presence cannot be perceived by 
 the senses ; who dwells ever in an atmos- 
 phere of serene majesty; who is the 
 dispenser of all things, eternal and un- 
 changeable. Before the creation of the 
 universe he existed, and after the disso- 
 lution of the universe he will remain the 
 same. He is called "Ti,' Supreme 
 Ruler. " Ti ' is synonymous with 
 heaven, and there is only one such.
 
 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 45 
 
 Heaven and earth constitute a dualism. 
 The conjunction of their vital essences 
 brings forth a third, the inscrutable part 
 of which is called a spirit. Heaven 
 unites its essences with those of the sun, 
 moon, and stars, and spirits of heaven 
 result. In a similar way the spirits of 
 mountains, rivers, and seas are produced. 
 When any of these spirits in some spe- 
 cial way benefit creation, the national 
 government canonizes them, and they 
 then take their place by the side of 
 heaven. 
 
 Man is the product of heaven and 
 earth, the union of the active and pas- 
 sive principles, the conjunction of the 
 soul and spirit, and the ethereal essence 
 of the five elements. Being the con- 
 necting link between unities and dual- 
 isms, man is called the heart of heaven 
 and earth. Spirit must not be con- 
 founded with nature. Nature is an ac- 
 tive element, matter is a passive element. 
 To the interaction of the essences of
 
 46 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 
 
 the active and the passive principles the 
 spirits of mountains, marshes, birds, in- 
 sects, and of man are due. The spirit 
 of man is in a more concentrated and 
 better disciplined state than the spirits 
 of the rest of the created things. For 
 this reason the spirit of man, after death, 
 though separated from the body, is able 
 to retain its essential virtues, and does 
 not become easily dissipated. This is 
 the ghost or disembodied spirit. 
 
 Spirits owe their existence to material 
 substances, and as the substances may 
 be useful or noxious, so spirits may be 
 benevolent or malevolent. A man whose 
 heart is good must have a good spirit. 
 Spirits attract one another, and when 
 good spirits attract one another, this is 
 happiness. When bad spirits attract one 
 another, this is misery. When the bad 
 spirits produce misfortune and calami- 
 ties, the wise legislator puts his reli- 
 ance on music and ceremonies to adjust 
 the social equilibrium. His aim is to
 
 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 47 
 
 restore the human heart to its pristine 
 innocence by establishing a standard of 
 goodness, and by pointing out a way of 
 salvation to every creature. The right 
 principles of action can be discovered 
 only by studying the waxing of the ac- 
 tive and passive elements as set forth in 
 the Book of Changes, and surely cannot 
 be understood by those who believe in 
 what priests call the dispensations of 
 Providence. Man is endowed with fac- 
 ulties of the highest dignity, but if men 
 lose this dignity in unlimited indulgence, 
 even heaven cannot possibly do any- 
 thing for them ; but if, after experien- 
 cing a sense of shame mingled with fear 
 and trembling, they repent of their evil 
 doings, they become men again with 
 their humanity restored. This is a doc- 
 trine maintained by all schools of Con- 
 fucianists. 
 
 Nature is grand and impartial in its 
 actions. The rule of life should be con- 
 formity to nature. To devote one's at-
 
 48 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 
 
 tention to the investigation of the laws 
 of the spiritual world is unprofitable. 
 Consequently Confucius made man his 
 study, and would not discourse on won- 
 ders, brute force, rebellion, and spirits. 
 He says that the art of rendering effect- 
 ive service to the people consists in keep- 
 ing aloof from the spirits as well as in 
 holding them in respect. " We have 
 not. yet performed our duties to men,' 
 he says; " how can we perform our 
 duties to spirits ? ' We know not as 
 
 yet about life ; how can we know about 
 death ? ' " He who has sinned against 
 Heaven has no place to pray.' Under 
 such circumstances any attempt to pre- 
 sent before the people questions and 
 problems that are incomprehensible and 
 incapable of demonstration serves only 
 to delude them by a crowd of misleading 
 lights and to lead them to error and con- 
 fusion. The wise rulers of antiquity 
 laid down rules of propriety for the reg- 
 ulation of the three " superior claims,'
 
 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 49 
 
 to wit, that of the sovereign, the father, 
 and the husband, as well as of the " five 
 relations," namely, those of sovereign 
 and subject, of parents and children, of 
 husbands and wives, of elder and younger 
 brothers, and of friends toward one an- 
 other. 
 
 All intelligent Chinese have for this 
 reason been followers of Confucius, and 
 Confucius really succeeded to the an- 
 cient line of priests. To do reverence 
 to spirits is to do nothing more than to 
 refrain from giving them annoyance, and 
 to do reverence to Heaven is nothing 
 more than to refrain from giving it annoy- 
 ance. On these points the ritual code is 
 explicit, and there is, therefore, no de- 
 mand for other religious works. What 
 is properly called religion has never 
 been considered as a desirable thing for 
 the people to know and for the govern- 
 ment to sanction. The reason is that 
 every attempt to propagate religious 
 doctrines in China has always given rise 
 4
 
 50 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 
 
 to the spreading of falsehoods and 
 errors, and finally resulted in rebellions 
 and dire calamity. It .makes not the 
 least difference whether the particular 
 form of religion teaches truth or error, 
 nor what the character of the propagan- 
 dists may be. The final resnalt is ever 
 the same, except that a religion that 
 teaches error precipitates a crisis more 
 speedily, that is all. 
 
 Both Taoists and Buddhists teach of 
 future rewards and punishments. The 
 purpose in doing so is laudable; it is 
 the perpetuation of falsehood by clinging 
 to errors that deserves condemnation. 
 Confucianists do not accept such doc- 
 trines, though they make no attempt to 
 suppress them. Heaven and hell are 
 found in this life, without troubling the 
 Buddhist Pluto and the Christ of the 
 Christians to judge the dead after death, 
 and reward every man according to his 
 deserts. As a rule, men given to specu- 
 lations on the world of spirits are for-
 
 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 51 
 
 getful of the duties of this life, and while 
 employed by officials on occasions of 
 public worship, they are at the same time 
 despised by the Confucianists as the 
 dregs of the people. As Buddhism says 
 nothing of the regulation of the family, 
 the government of the State, and the 
 pacification of the world, there can be 
 no conflict between Buddhism and the 
 affairs of state. 
 
 There are many resemblances between 
 the teachings of Christ and those of 
 Confucianists, but the New Testament is 
 very meagre on questions respecting the 
 human faculties and the principles of 
 morality, while the Confucian writers are 
 very full. There is a Trinity in Taoism, 
 a Trinity in Buddhism, and a Trinity in 
 Christianity. If, by living according to 
 the dictates of nature and by suppress- 
 ing the desires of the flesh, one arrives 
 at perfect agreement with nature, and 
 obtains a complete mastery over desires, 
 such a one Buddhists call a Buddha,
 
 52 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 
 
 Taoists a genius, and Christians a child 
 of God. It is idle for thinkers to attack 
 one another, for all men cannot possibly 
 arrive at the same opinion on any sub- 
 ject. The progress of Christianity does 
 not concern Confucianists in the least. 
 
 Thus far the Hon. Pung Kwang Yu. 
 To this ought to be appended a quota- 
 tion from a speech of Li Hung Chang in 
 New York last autumn, in which he said 
 to a delegation representing missionary 
 interests: "In a philosophical point of 
 view, as far as I have been able to appre- 
 ciate, Christianity does not differ much 
 from Confucianism, as the Golden Rule 
 is expressed in a positive form in one, 
 while it is expressed in the negative form 
 in the other. It is at present enough to 
 conclude that there exists not much 
 difference between the wise sayings of 
 the two greatest teachers, on the foun- 
 dations of which the whole structure of 
 the two systems of morality is built.'
 
 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 53 
 
 There are six essential elements of 
 Confucianism, five of which, so far as we 
 know, differentiate it from any other 
 system of non-Christian thought. Of 
 these, the first is its doctrine of the direct 
 responsibility of the sovereign to Heaven, 
 Shang Ti, or God. This is abundantly 
 illustrated in the classical writings, and 
 it is a factor of the government of the 
 present day as really as in times past. 
 From this source originates the whole 
 complex theory of Chinese responsibility, 
 which plays so large a part in the con- 
 duct of all Chinese affairs, private as 
 well as public. Only the Emperor wor- 
 ships Shang Ti, although the people do 
 reverence to " heaven and earth," with 
 very little conception of what it is that 
 they worship. 
 
 The second element is the startling 
 theory that the people are of more impor- 
 tance than the sovereign. The latter 
 reigns by the decree of Heaven. When 
 he loses Heaven's decree, he has no
 
 54 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 
 
 longer, the right to rule. The Chinese 
 theory of government has been com- 
 pendiously described as despotism tem- 
 pered by the right of rebellion — a right 
 constantly exercised in every period of 
 Chinese history. This feature of Chi- 
 nese rule makes it the most unique com- 
 bination of absolute monarchy and 
 " triumphant democracy " that the world 
 has ever seen. 
 
 The third element is the clear recogni- 
 tion of the various social relations, as 
 already described. To a Chinese these 
 five relations exhaust the universe, just 
 as a Christian considers the Ten Com- 
 mandments to be co-extensive with hu- 
 man activity. As a matter of fact, it is 
 easy to show that many ' relations,' 
 such as those between capital and labor, 
 for example, find no recognition at all. 
 
 The fourth element is the lofty moral 
 system of Confucianism. The five con- 
 stant virtues are benevolence, righteous- 
 ness, propriety, knowledge, and good
 
 THE . WORLD ' S RELIGION'S 5 5 
 
 faith. The virtues are far oftener .talked 
 of in China than the precepts of the 
 New Testament in Christian lands. They 
 form a standard which is brought to the 
 attention of all Chinese continuously. 
 The civil service examinations, a slow 
 growth of many ages, have unified the 
 Chinese mind as the mind of no other 
 people was ever unified, unless the Jews 
 form an exception. The Chinese habit 
 of using sententious classical mottoes for 
 the adornment of their door-posts, mot- 
 toes written afresh at every New Year 
 season, keeps the Confucian maxims 
 always before the eye of the whole Chi- 
 nese race. They are employed with 
 varied iteration in all primary text- 
 books, and the classics themselves form 
 the sole and sufficient staple of all Chi- 
 nese learning. It is an integral part of 
 the theory that only the wise and the 
 able should rule. The object of the 
 elaborate civil service examinations is to 
 determine who the wise and the able are.
 
 56 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 
 
 The fifth element is the presentation of 
 an ideal or princely man as the model on 
 which every Confucianist should form 
 his character. The influence of this 
 ideal upon the unnumbered millions of 
 Chinese Confucianists must have been 
 measureless. Confucius enounced the 
 Golden Rule in a negative form, but he 
 affirms in the same connection that he 
 himself had not attained to it. This 
 places before all followers of the sage the 
 ambition to live up to the high level 
 which the master himself had not reached. 
 Self-examination is inculcated by the 
 precepts and by the example of the 
 greatest rulers and wise men of antiquity. 
 No nation, no race, was ever better out- 
 fitted .with admirable moral precepts 
 than the Chinese. 
 
 The last element of the six, only less 
 distinctly Chinese than the others, is 
 filial piety. This includes not only that 
 meaning naturally suggested to Orien- 
 tals, but a great deal more, and in es-
 
 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 57 
 
 pecial the worship of ancestors, which is 
 the real religion of the Chinese people. 
 It is perhaps the most potent among 
 several causes which have perpetuated 
 the Chinese race as a unit through all the 
 millenniums of its vast history. It is 
 itself an illustration of the saying of an 
 emperor of a famous dynasty more than 
 a thousand years ago, that Confucianism 
 is adapted to the Chinese people as water 
 to the fish. 
 
 To those who believe that all truth is 
 in its origin one, there need be no hesi- 
 tation in admitting that the sages who 
 uttered the principles underlying the 
 Confucian tenets were in a sense divinely 
 illuminated. Theirs was not the inspi- 
 ration which we find in the Christian 
 Scriptures, but they saw clearly pro- 
 found, far-reaching, and eternal truths. 
 
 Thus far we have spoken only of theo- 
 retical Confucianism. It is of impor- 
 tance to remember that Confucius was in
 
 58 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 
 
 no sense the founder of the system 
 which goes by his name. He himself 
 declared that he was not an originator, 
 but a transmitter. It was his glory to 
 have caught all the rays of light coming 
 from the dim past, and to combine them 
 into one torch which has ever since lit up 
 the Chinese path. But there was a 
 Confucianism before Confucius; Taoism, 
 or Rationalism, which has been its sole 
 native rival, has to some extent modified 
 Confucianism by interaction. Taoism 
 taught the art of reducing nature by pro- 
 cesses analogous to European alchemy, 
 and the possibility of an elixir of life, thus 
 attaining immortality. Yet this must 
 always be the reward of the few. Bud- 
 dhism, invited to China by an emperor 
 more than six hundred years after the 
 birth of Confucius, attempted to fill the 
 void in the human heart which longs for 
 salvation and for a saviour. The success 
 of this misty and chameleon faith among 
 the millions of hard-headed, practical
 
 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 59 
 
 Chinese has been phenomenal. For 
 ages Confucianism was its bitter foe, but 
 as a matter of fact these three discord- 
 ant contradictories have been inter- 
 blended in a way perhaps elsewhere 
 unexampled on this earth. Temples are 
 found all over the empire in which the 
 founders of the " three religions " stand 
 side by side, and by perpetual repercus- 
 sion for several hundred years the maxim 
 that the three doctrines are one has come 
 to be almost as much believed as the 
 doctrines themselves. The same cir- 
 cumstance has resulted in such a com- 
 plex of faith, in three sets of tenets 
 which are, in Hamiltonian phrase, " in- 
 compossible," as to confound those Oc- 
 cidental statisticians who insist upon 
 supposing that every man must either 
 believe something or believe something 
 else ; whereas a Chinese believes, or sup- 
 poses that he believes, something and 
 something else.
 
 60 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 
 
 The reader who has followed the fore 
 going abstract of the most recent expo- 
 sition of Confucian doctrine is prepared 
 to judge in how many essential particu- 
 lars it fails to give light. Its Shang Ti 
 is remote and out of relation with man- 
 kind. He is not a Father, and the peo- 
 ple are not allowed to worship him. 
 Prayer is a ceremony by which evils are 
 avoided and blessings insured. Poly- 
 theism is not only sanctioned, but neces- 
 sitated. There is no explanation of sin 
 and no remedy for it. For those to 
 whom the ideal is inaccessible there is 
 no salvation. Mere example is elevated 
 into a force sufficient to keep the race on 
 the right path. There is no explanation 
 of its failure to do so, and no remedy for 
 the failure. Ancestral worship is equiv- 
 alent to the enlargement of the Chinese 
 Pantheon to include all dead parents. 
 This rite takes precedence of all others, 
 and leads to the indefinite and reckless 
 propagation of millions of persons for
 
 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 61 
 
 whose support there is no adequate pro- 
 vision. To this end polygamy, with all 
 its immeasurable woes, is a practical 
 necessity. Confucianism subordinates 
 the children to the parents as long as the 
 parents live, and prevents the normal 
 development of those thus conditioned. 
 The highest result of an ideal Confucian 
 life is a cold formalism, and its inevita- 
 ble tendency is to foster exaggerated 
 self-esteem.. It has resulted in the prac- 
 tical deification of its leading sages, but 
 no one has any hope of reproducing 
 their example in practice. It is a cur- 
 rent saying that there are but two ideal 
 men — one is dead, the other not yet 
 born ! This aphorism aptly voices the 
 hopelessness of Confucianism. 
 
 Judging from a background of twenty- 
 five years' acquaintance with China, one 
 may pass through four distinct stages in 
 his estimate of Confucianism. Coming 
 to it from the atmosphere of a study of
 
 62 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 
 
 comparative religion, he is prepared to 
 find it the best system ever devised by 
 the mind of man for solving the prob- 
 lems of the race. He reveres the sages, 
 and is anxious to conserve all that is 
 good in their teaching. After some 
 years of experience he becomes alive 
 to the cavernous depths of sorrow and 
 misery for which Confucianism has no 
 help and no sympathy. The hollowness 
 of its high-sounding but empty verbiage 
 grates upon the ear, and he is weary of 
 suspicion and insincerity masquerading 
 in the garments of antiquity. 
 
 By this time a renewed observation of 
 the actual state of the Occidental world 
 serves to restore the balance of judg- 
 ment. He there beholds many evils 
 which are not forced to the front in 
 China, and he recognizes the fact that 
 there is no such unity of thought in any 
 Western land in regard to ideals as there 
 is in China. After a prolonged contem- 
 plation of the restless world at large, he
 
 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 63 
 
 returns to China full of generous hope- 
 fulness that his former opinions may 
 have been overdrawn. But a reexam- 
 ination of all the phenomena which he 
 sees, a reperusal of the data upon which 
 previous judgments were formed, inevi- 
 tably lead to a more emphatic reaffirma- 
 tion of the proposition that Confucianism 
 is a spent force. Its golden age is in the 
 past, while the outlook of every Chris- 
 tian land is toward the morning dawn of 
 a bright future. After listening to the 
 varied eloquence of the speakers at the 
 Parliament of Religions, one is com- 
 pelled to ask, What, after all, is the es- 
 sential difference between the Orient and 
 the Occident ? We believe it to be this : 
 In the former, when things are as bad as 
 they can be, they get worse ; in the Occi- 
 dent they slowly tend to an improve- 
 ment. Confucianism has within it no 
 further energy for the evolution of good, 
 but it is a powerful conserving influence. 
 China is in a far sounder condition mor-
 
 64 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 
 
 ally than was the Roman Empire in the 
 time of Christ. We believe that China 
 is sounder morally than Mohammedan 
 Turkey, or than polyglot, metaphysical 
 India. But, great as has been its work, 
 Confucianism is inert. It is dead. 
 Sooner or later it must give way to some- 
 thing stronger, wiser, and better.
 
 IV 
 MOHAMMEDANISM 
 
 By the Rev. George Washburn, D.D. 
 President of Robert College, Constantinople 
 
 Mohammedanism is a positive religion 
 based upon the Koran and the life and 
 teaching of Mohammed. The Koran is 
 believed to be literally the word of God, 
 communicated directly to the Prophet, 
 and written at his dictation. It is in- 
 spired not only verbally but in punctua- 
 tion, and although the original writings 
 were destroyed, there is every reason to 
 believe that we have it in essentially the 
 same form in which Mohammed left it. 
 All Moslems accept it and use it, believ- 
 ing that the divine words have a mystic 
 power whether they are understood or 
 5
 
 66 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 
 
 not. If translated, it is no longer the 
 word of God. 
 
 But it is the life and teaching of the 
 Prophet as set forth by the Imams, 
 rather than the Koran, which is the prac- 
 tical basis of Mohammedanism, and con- 
 trols the faith and life of the people. 
 Every effort was made during the life- 
 time of those who personally knew the 
 Prophet to collect and record all the in- 
 cidents of his life and all his sayings. 
 These were carefully sifted, and formed 
 the basis of several lives of the Prophet, 
 and of collections of traditions in regard 
 to him, graded, according to the weight 
 of testimony, into several classes. The 
 division of his followers into Sunnis and 
 Shiahs, and of these into a multitude of 
 contending sects, grew out of the ques- 
 tion of the succession to the Caliphat, 
 and of the interpretation of these tradi- 
 tions. Most of the Sunnis are followers 
 of the Imam Hanifa, who was born at 
 Kufa, and lived from 80 to 150 A.H. He
 
 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 67 
 
 was the great theologian of Islam. He 
 based his teaching upon the Koran, the 
 traditions of the sayings and acts of 
 the Prophet, the sayings and acts of the 
 earlier Caliphs, and logical deductions 
 from all these. It is a most elaborate 
 system of philosophy, theology, and law, 
 and is the chief study of the Ulema to 
 this day. There are rival systems by 
 the Imams Shafei, Malek, and Hanbal, 
 but they have few followers. It is impos- 
 sible to enter here upon any discussion 
 of these systems or even an enumera- 
 tion of the hundreds of Mohammedan 
 sects, but it is necessary to remember 
 that, whatever one may think of the 
 Koran, it plays about the same part in 
 Islam as that of the Old Testament in 
 modern Judaism. It is the sacred book, 
 but not the source of either the beliefs 
 or the morals, of the people. 
 
 In deciding what is essential to a reli- 
 gion it is always desirable to have the tes- 
 timony of some one who professes it,
 
 68 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 
 
 and is an authority recognized by his 
 co-religionists. In this case we have an 
 official letter, written ten years ago, by 
 the Sheik-ul-Islam, the highest author- 
 ity possible, to a German gentleman who 
 had written to him for information as to 
 how he could become a Moslem. I 
 quote all the essential parts of this state- 
 ment : 
 
 The religion of Islam has for its basis faith in 
 the unity of God and the mission of the Prophet. 
 If you declare that there is one God and that 
 Mohammed is his prophet, you are a Mussulman 
 and our brother, for all true believers are 
 brethren. 
 
 This is a summary definition of faith. Now 
 let us enter into its development. Man, who is 
 superior to the other animals by his intelligence, 
 has been created out of nothing to adore his 
 Creator. This adoration consists in honoring 
 the commands of God and in sympathizing with 
 his creatures. 
 
 To enlighten men God has sent the 
 prophets and the holy Koran. The great- 
 est of all the prophets was Mohammed.
 
 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 69 
 
 All the prophets threaten their followers with 
 a Day of Judgment. So it is necessary to believe 
 that the dead will rise, that they will appear be- 
 fore the tribunal of God to give an account, that 
 the elect will be sent to paradise and the damned 
 to hell. All the acts of soldiers in a holy war 
 will be considered as prayer, and the martyrs 
 will go to paradise without any examination 
 into their lives. 
 
 Moreover, it is necessary to accept as an article 
 of faith that God is the author of both good and 
 evil. Consequently the believer ought to have 
 faith in God, in his angels, in his books, in his 
 prophets, in the last judgment, and to attribute 
 both good and evil to the Divine Will. He who 
 professes thes£ verities is a true believer, but to 
 be a perfect believer it is necessary to pray to 
 God and to avoid falling into such sins as assas- 
 sination, robbery, adultery, and sodomy. 
 
 In addition to the profession of faith a good 
 Moslem ought to pray five times a day, to give 
 away each year one-fortieth part of his goods, 
 to fast during the month of Ramazan, and at 
 least once in his life to make the pilgrimage to 
 Mecca. 
 
 If a believer does not conform to these orders 
 of God, and does not avoid what He forbids, he 
 does not for this become an unbeliever. He will
 
 70 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 
 
 be considered as a sinner, that is to say, as a be- 
 liever who has gone astray, and merits, in another 
 world, a provisional punishment. He is at the 
 disposition of God, who will pardon him or con- 
 demn him to pass a certain period in hell, pro- 
 portioned to his guilt. 
 
 But faith annuls all sin. He who accepts 
 Islamism becomes as innocent as a new-born 
 babe, and is responsible only for the sins com- 
 mitted after his conversion. A sinner who re- 
 pents, and who solicits in person the remission 
 of his sins, obtains the divine pardon. The only 
 exception is when we have violated the rights of 
 our neighbor ; for the servant of God who can- 
 not obtain justice in this world will demand it 
 at the last judgment, and God will accord it. 
 To avoid this responsibility we must obtain an ac- 
 quittance from the person wronged before we die. 
 
 There are no priests, no clergy, no 
 mediators between God and man, in the 
 faith of Islam. Only the religious cere- 
 monies are subordinate to the will of the 
 Caliph and Sultan, and " obedience to 
 his orders is one of the most important 
 of religious duties." 
 
 One of the things to which every Moslem
 
 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 71 
 
 ought to be very attentive is integrity of char- 
 acter. Such vices as pride, presumption, ego- 
 tism, and severity do not befit a Moslem. To 
 revere the great and to compassionate the small 
 are precepts of Islam. 
 
 Any one who will compare this plain 
 official statement with the glowing pages 
 of Syed Ameer Aali's " Life and Teach- 
 ing of Mohammed" will realize how 
 difficult it is for a student only of books 
 to form a correct conception of what 
 Mohammedanism really is; for no one 
 doubts that Ameer Aali's book is per- 
 fectly honest, and that he conceives it 
 possible to realize his conception of 
 Islam ; but, unfortunately, he represents 
 only a small sect, and reaches his conclu- 
 sions by ignoring most of what is re- 
 corded of the Prophet in the lives and 
 traditions which other Mohammedans 
 receive. He himself recognizes the fact 
 that existing Mohammedanism does not 
 at all resemble his ideal, either in theory 
 or practice (page 284).
 
 72 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 
 
 That Mohammed was an inspired 
 prophet of God all his followers agree, 
 though some deny that there was any- 
 thing supernatural in his inspiration and 
 arbitrarily reject most of the traditions. 
 Nearly all, however, go to the other ex- 
 treme — make him the first created spirit 
 and his life miraculous from the dawn of 
 creation to the present day. The ques- 
 tion what his life and character really 
 were is a study by itself, and we cannot 
 enter upon it here. The life and char- 
 acter which determine the nature of 
 Mohammedanism are those which appear 
 in the traditions and in the earlier biog- 
 raphies. While there is a bright side 
 to them and they exhibit many noble 
 qualities, they are not conformed to 
 Christian ideas of morality, and there 
 are chapters, even in the Koran, refer- 
 ring to acts which could be excused to 
 his own people only by a revelation from 
 God. But there is nothing anywhere to 
 justify the conclusion that Mohammed
 
 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 73 
 
 himself doubted the reality of his mis- 
 sion as a prophet called to preach the 
 being and unity of God. That he be- 
 lieved this truth himself, that he was 
 even ready to die for it, and that he held 
 it to the end, I have no doubt. And 
 this is the central thought of Mohammed- 
 anism — the one uppermost in the minds 
 of all Moslems — that there is one Eter- 
 nal, Almighty, Omnipresent, Personal 
 God, who is the special friend and pro- 
 tector of all true believers. God is in 
 all their thoughts. He is everywhere 
 and in everything. Whatever is done, 
 he does it. Whatever is known, he 
 knows it. There is no limit to his wis- 
 dom or power. There is no perfection 
 which he does not possess. He has 
 ninety-nine names, each representing 
 some divine attribute, but the one most 
 often used is the All-Merciful. To 
 those who confess his being and unity 
 and recognize Mohammed as his prophet, 
 he is always long-suffering and merciful.
 
 74 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 
 
 To all others he is a consuming fire from 
 which there is no possible escape in this 
 world or the next. He is their implaca- 
 ble enemy. 
 
 The character of any religion may be 
 tested by its conception of God and its 
 teaching as to the nature of man. In 
 this second respect also, Mohammedan- 
 ism seems, at first sight, to be at one 
 with Christianity. It teaches that man 
 is a sinner, weak, corrupt, and absolutely 
 dependent upon God's mercy for salva- 
 tion. With these two great truths the 
 Mohammedan mystic sometimes rises to 
 the highest and most spiritual concep- 
 tions of God, and aspires to a life swal- 
 lowed up in him. But if we examine 
 these doctrines more closely, we find 
 that the orthodox and common belief, 
 based upon the life and traditions of the 
 Prophet, gives us a very different concep- 
 tion of both God and man from that 
 found in the New Testament. The God 
 of Mohammedanism is an ideal Oriental
 
 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 75 
 
 despot magnified to infinity. The con- 
 ception is not wanting in grandeur. All 
 that Arabic poetry could do to exalt 
 him has been done. Every perfection 
 which it could conceive was attributed to 
 him. Still he is an absolute Oriental 
 monarch — all-powerful, all-wise, all-mer- 
 ciful towards his loyal subjects, but 
 wreaking vengeance on all his adversa- 
 ries — above all law, and infinitely re- 
 moved from even the highest of his offi- 
 cials. Whatever he does or commands 
 is right because he wills it. What he 
 hates is not sin, but rebellion. He may 
 or may not punish other offences, for he 
 is all-merciful, but to deny his unity or 
 his prophet is unpardonable. For this 
 there is nothing but eternal fire. As 
 there is no right or wrong except as he 
 wills it, there is no true sense in which 
 he can be called holy. Nor can it be 
 said that he loves righteousness. What 
 he loves is submission to his will, and 
 this is the highest virtue known to Mo-
 
 76 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 
 
 hammedanism. It is what gives it its 
 name — Islam, which means submission. 
 Between God and man there is no kin- 
 ship, nothing in common. He is not 
 our Father and we are not his children. 
 To use this expression as Christians do 
 is blasphemy. If we are true believers, 
 we are his sheep ; if not, we are wolves. 
 Consequently the idea of the incarnation 
 of God in Jesus Christ is not only blas- 
 phemous, but absurd and incomprehen- 
 sible. Whatever the Christian knows of 
 God through the Incarnation is unknown 
 to the Moslem. 
 
 The Mohammedan conception of the 
 nature of man is fatalistic. It does not 
 push fatalism to its logical conclusion and 
 deny the reality of sin. The Prophet 
 speaks of himself as a sinner depend- 
 ent on divine mercy, although this is 
 explained away by his followers as only 
 a figure of speech. But while sin, pun- 
 ishment, and the pains of hell occupy a 
 large place in the Koran and the tradi-
 
 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 77 
 
 tions, while so much is said of the need 
 of divine mercy, still the Moslem psy- 
 chology is fatalistic, and the people look 
 upon sin rather as a misfortune than a 
 crime. The Moslem makes no distinc- 
 tion between the sensibilities and the 
 will, and does not admit that he can re- 
 sist or control his desires. He may 
 avoid temptation, but he cannot resist it. 
 God has made him weak, and hung his 
 fate upon his neck. What can he do ? 
 If God has made him a Christian, Jew, 
 or idolater, he will go to hell forever, 
 however he may live in this world. This 
 is his fate. If he is a Moslem, he will 
 ultimately go to paradise, whatever his 
 character. It is God's will. For one 
 born a Moslem there is no place for con- 
 version or regeneration. Man has no 
 will to be changed. There is no such 
 thing as an eternal principle of right. 
 There is only the arbitrary will of God. 
 Sin is disregard of God's law. He may 
 punish it or not as he pleases. The idea
 
 78 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 
 
 that sin can corrupt and destroy the 
 soul of a Moslem, or that character is 
 fixed forever by our own act, is absurd. 
 It is not salvation from sin that a man 
 needs, but salvation from punishment. 
 This depends on the will of God. As 
 there is no necessity for regeneration, so 
 there is none for an atonement, though 
 the Moslem makes much of the advocacy 
 of the Prophet. Christ was a great 
 prophet, but in no sense the Saviour or 
 Redeemer of the world. He did not die 
 for the world, for the very good reason 
 that he did not die at all, but was taken 
 up to heaven, while one like him was 
 crucified. When a Moslem feels the 
 burden of sin, he feels it as a debt, and 
 asks himself what good work he can do 
 to offset it, or comforts himself with the 
 thought that the Great King is too rich 
 and merciful to press a poor, weak, but 
 loyal subject for payment. 
 
 These brief statements are sufficient 
 to show that the Moslem conception of
 
 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS • 79 
 
 man is the natural complement of its 
 conception of God. While not abso- 
 lutely fatalistic, it regards sin as a natu- 
 ral weakness, and character as a matter 
 of fate rather than the effect of the 
 choice of good or evil. Taken together, 
 these two conceptions embody what is 
 essential in the orthodox faith of Islam, 
 and they are doctrines easy to be propa- 
 gated, especially when championed by 
 a conquering race. It does not require 
 much mental effort to comprehend 
 them, and their acceptance does not ne- 
 cessitate, any change of character; while, 
 at the same time, everything is promised 
 to the convert which the soul demands 
 — perfect immunity for all past sin, the 
 special favor and protection of an om- 
 nipotent God and whatever man can de- 
 sire in another world, while his instinct 
 for worship is satisfied by an elaborate 
 ceremonial code. 
 
 The ethical code of Islam is essentially 
 that of the Old Testament, modified in
 
 So THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 
 
 some respects by the traditions of the 
 life of the Prophet and by the philoso- 
 phy of Hanifa and the other Imams. 
 In practice it is also modified by the 
 Moslem conception of the nature of man 
 and by the fact that the ideal man of 
 Islam is Mohammed. Whatever he is 
 supposed to have done or approved is 
 worthy of imitation. It is also peculiar 
 in that it makes a broad distinction be- 
 tween the duties which Moslems owe to 
 each other and those which they owe 
 to unbelievers. As the Moslem rejects 
 the fatherhood of God, so he denies the 
 brotherhood of man. All true believers 
 are brethren; all others are dogs. If 
 they quietly submit to Moslem rule, pay 
 tribute, make themselves useful, and are 
 good dogs, they are to be tolerated and 
 treated with kindness; otherwise the 
 men are to be killed and the women and 
 children sold as slaves (Koran, Sura 
 IX.). This distinction is elaborated in 
 the works of Hanifa, which are the prin-
 
 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 81 
 
 cipal study of the Softas. There are, of 
 course, many Moslems, like Ameer Aali, 
 whose relations with Christians are such 
 that they have no sympathy with this 
 orthodox view. 
 
 The working of this principle has been 
 illustrated by the plunder and massacre 
 of the Armenians during the past two 
 years in Turkey. It has been done in 
 the name of the Prophet, with the sanc- 
 tion of the Caliph, by the hands of Mos- 
 lems, who have gone from the mosque to 
 the massacre believing that they were 
 doing God's will. At the same time a 
 laree number of Turks have condemned 
 the massacres, and have done all that 
 they could to defend the lives of the 
 Armenians. Tens of thousands of Ar- 
 menian lives have been saved in this 
 way, and some distinguished Ulema 
 have declared that neither the massacres 
 nor the forced conversions could be jus- 
 tified. This difference does not arise 
 from any doubt as to the principle in- 
 6
 
 82 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 
 
 volved, but from a question of fact. If 
 the whole Armenian nation is to be con- 
 sidered in a state of rebellion against the 
 Caliph, then all that has been done has 
 been strictly in accord with the teaching 
 of Islam. I have met no Turk who 
 held any other opinion. But if only a 
 few individuals have been in rebellion, 
 then there is no justification for the 
 plunder and slaughter of thousands of 
 innocent and submissive people, even if 
 they were unbelievers. It is on this 
 ground that they have, in many cases, 
 been protected by pious Moslems. 
 
 The specific duties which a perfect 
 Mussulman owes to God and his breth- 
 ren, and the special sins which he is to 
 avoid, are stated in the letter of the 
 Sheik-ul-Islam. The duties are prayer, 
 alms, fasting, pilgrimage, and, in case of 
 need, holy war; in general to obey the 
 commands of God and compassionate 
 his creatures, to revere the great and pity 
 the weak. He should avoid such sins as
 
 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 83 
 
 assassination, robbery, adultery, sodomy, 
 pride, presumption, egotism, and harsh- 
 ness. The Koran says: " God promises 
 his mercy and a brilliant recompense to 
 those who add good works to their 
 faith.' Omer Nessefi says: "It is an 
 indispensable obligation for every Mos- 
 lem to practise virtue and avoid vice, 
 i.e., all that is contrary to religion, law, 
 humanity, good manners, and the duties 
 of society. He ought especially to guard 
 against deception, lying, slander, and 
 abuse of his neighbor.' In practice 
 there are certainly many Moslems who 
 try to observe these precepts, who fear 
 God, and in their dealings with men, 
 even with unbelievers, are honest, truth- 
 ful, and benevolent, who are temperate 
 in the gratification of their desires, and 
 cultivate a self-denying spirit, of whose 
 sincere desire to do right there can be no 
 doubt. But the average Moslem, within 
 my observation, is much more concerned 
 with the formal than the spiritual side of
 
 84 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 
 
 his religion. This is also the testimony 
 of Ameer Aali. He says, " The Mos- 
 lems of the present day have made 
 themselves the slaves of opportunism 
 and outward observance." 
 
 Volumes have been written on points 
 in Mohammedanism which I have not 
 touched, but which undoubtedly make 
 up the greater part of the life and 
 thought of the majority of Moslems. 
 The speculative theology and philosophy 
 of Mohammedanism, though now some- 
 what antiquated in relation to modern 
 thought, covers as wide a field as that of 
 Thomas Aquinas, and is the basis of the 
 teaching in the schools. The common 
 people get their religious education from 
 the lives and traditions of the Prophet, 
 which are full of curious and fantastic 
 legends of the times of the earlier proph- 
 ets as well as of the delights of para- 
 dise and the sufferings of hell. The 
 dervishes and their secret teaching are a 
 study by themselves. Then there are
 
 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 85 
 
 great moral questions, such as slavery, 
 polygamy, divorce, and holy war, which 
 might be discussed at length. But my 
 object has been to present only such 
 points as all orthodox Moslems regard 
 as essential to their faith, without con- 
 troversy or any more of comment and 
 explanation than seemed necessary to a 
 right understanding of them.
 
 V 
 BRAHMANISM 
 
 By Charles R. Lanman 
 Professor of Sanskrit, Harvard University 
 
 It is a cheering sign of the times that 
 we are beginning to quit prejudice and 
 are learning to look outward. We adopt 
 a ballot-law from Australia simply be- 
 cause it makes for political righteous- 
 ness; we waste no time to inquire, like 
 Nathanael, " Can there any good thing 
 come out of" that whilome limbo of 
 deported convicts ? And, now, at last, 
 in religion, as well as in politics, we are 
 ready to go to the ends of the earth, if 
 so be we may find God's light and truth, 
 and to take it at the hands of men whom 
 we once scrupled not to call benighted 
 heathen. " God, who at sundry times 
 
 86
 
 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 87 
 
 and in divers manners spake in time past 
 unto the fathers by the prophets " — such 
 is the splendid exordium of the Epistle 
 to the Hebrews. To the Hebrews, 
 "prophets" meant naught else than 
 Hebrew prophets — small wonder. But 
 to St. Paul — what would the meaning 
 be to him, if we could question him 
 about it to-day ? He surely would be 
 the last to limit it to the saints and sages 
 of a" chosen people.' Nay, rather, he 
 would rejoice to find the accents of the 
 Holy Ghost in Greece or even in India. 
 
 Brahmanism is exclusive rather than 
 proselyting. It is not a world-religion ; 
 but we may not on that account deny 
 that it has a message for the world. 
 That message may consist on the one 
 hand in truths which its doctrines in- 
 clude; or also, on the other, in lessons 
 and warnings which modern thinkers of 
 wider scope than any Hindu, may read 
 from its long and often sad history. 
 
 The term Brahmanism is vague, and
 
 83 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 
 
 forces us, even at the outset, to some 
 prefatory definition. The Vedas are the 
 sacred books of the Hindus, the oldest 
 recorded documents of that branch of 
 the human race to which we Anglo-Sax- 
 ons belong. For our present purposes, 
 the Vedas may be divided into three 
 great strata: the Hymns, the Brahmanas, 
 and the Upanishads. The Hymns (often 
 called Veda in a narrower sense) are 
 the oldest, and in them is reflected the 
 simple nature-religion of a sturdy, life- 
 loving people, the early Aryan Hindus. 
 To them, the wind, the storm, the sun, 
 the fire, the waters — each was the mani- 
 festation of a divine personality, of a 
 god whose anger was to be appeased and 
 whose favor was to be sought. The 
 worship is on a give-and-take basis. The 
 gods accept offerings of rice and butter, 
 and bestow in return rain and food, chil- 
 dren and cattle. Of lofty spiritual aspi- 
 ration there is little in the Hymns of the 
 old Vedic religion.
 
 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 89 
 
 The simple rites of the fathers fell 
 into the hands of a caste of priests 
 whose interest it was to elaborate the 
 rites into a system so complex that only 
 they, the professional sacrificers, could 
 perform them. The ancient nature- 
 worship was transformed into a rigid, 
 soul-deadening ritualism which is per- 
 haps without a parallel. The sacrifice 
 was apotheosized and invested with a 
 supernal, a god-compelling power. This 
 second great phase in the evolution of 
 religionsMn India we name Brahmanism 
 proper; the literature in which it is re- 
 flected we call the Brahmanas, and they 
 seem to represent Indian thought at 
 its lowest ebb. With it came a pro- 
 found transformation of the Indian char- 
 acter. The life-loving strenuousness 
 of the olden time has given place- to 
 pessimistic quietism. The belief in the 
 transmigration of souls has become an 
 established conviction, not of the learned 
 only, but of the lowest and meanest.
 
 qo THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 
 
 We may liken the time to the hour 
 of sultry stillness that precedes the 
 storm. 
 
 For at this juncture, probably in the 
 sixth century B.C., a new era of religious 
 commotion began. Dreamers and mys- 
 tics, reformers and saviours, seem to have 
 arisen on all sides in Gangesland, full of 
 new teachings, some lofty, some paltry, 
 with which they were to reclaim men 
 from the slough in which they were 
 mired. Gotama Buddha was one of these 
 teachers, the greatest and noblest per- 
 sonality of all Indian history. Another 
 was Nigantha Nataputta, the founder, 
 or rather the reformer, of Jainism. Still 
 others of lesser note are named in the 
 Buddhist Scriptures as propounders of 
 various heresies. But next to Gotama, 
 doubtless the greatest teachers of this 
 time were the Brahman theosophists, men 
 like Shandilya and Yajnavalkya, the au- 
 thors of the doctrines of the Upani- 
 shads.
 
 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 91 
 
 The Upanishads 1 teach the absolute 
 identity of man and God, of the individ- 
 ual soul and the Supreme Spirit, and de- 
 clare that only by recognition of its true 
 nature can the soul be released from 
 its attachment to the world-illusion, and 
 from the consequent round of trans- 
 migrations. Ignorance is the root of all 
 sin and evil. Salvation is by knowledge. 
 And accordingly the Upanishads on 
 the one hand form what the Hindus 
 call the " Knowledge division ' of the 
 Vedas, as opposed to the old Hymns 
 and Brahmanas on the other hand, 
 which they call the V Work-division.' 
 The relation is like that of the New Tes- 
 tament to the Old — only that in India 
 the antithesis is not between works and 
 faith, but between works and knowl- 
 edge. Since the Upanishads are held to 
 
 1 The best work extant in any modern language of 
 Europe upon the Upanishads is Paul Deussen's trans- 
 lation of them, with introductions, published lately 
 by Brockhaus in Leipsic.
 
 92 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 
 
 be the crown or capstone of all the 
 Vedas, they are called Vedanta, literally, 
 ' the end of the Vedas.' The doctrines 
 of these theosophic treatises cannot be 
 combined into one coherent philosophi- 
 cal system ; they are too disconnected, 
 contradictory, and disorderly. And the 
 best proof of it is that several very di- 
 verse systems of philosophy were, as a 
 matter of fact, built upon them. The 
 Hindus admit six orthodox systems, the 
 chief of which are the Vedanta system 
 and the Sankhya system. Here are 
 elaborated, with all the art and the tech- 
 nical skill of the Indian dialectician, the 
 great rude thoughts of the Upanishads. 
 To treat of the systems is beyond the 
 scope of this brief paper. 
 
 Modern philosophical critics may ad- 
 mit or deny the value of the Upanishads 
 and of the systems, as speculation ; but 
 the loftiness and honesty of purpose of 
 these ancient teachers cannot be denied. 
 They have never lost sight of the one
 
 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 93 
 
 great practical end of all their teaching, 
 the liberation of the soul. As illustra- 
 tion may serve the final sentence of a 
 famous Sankhya book. The author has 
 just concluded a long argument, which, 
 when turned from Sanskrit into the 
 clearest English, is still surpassingly hard 
 and knotty reading. Then follows his 
 simple but impressive climax: " Be all 
 my argument right, or be all my argu- 
 ment wrong, the ending of bondage to 
 the world is the supreme aim of the 
 
 The object of the Upanishads, then, 
 is the search after God. The riddle of 
 existence is scarcely broached in the 
 oldest Veda. To the mystics of the 
 Upanishads, the origination of the uni- 
 verse out of nothing is the question of 
 questions; and if it proved as insoluble 
 to them as to us, the grappling with it 
 led at least to their one great contribu- 
 tion to human thought, the identity of 
 the subject with the object, of man with
 
 94 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 
 
 God, of the Atman with Brahman; in 
 short, to the idealistic monism of the 
 Vedanta system, and the supreme con- 
 ception of the All-soul. 
 
 The word atman originally meant 
 breath, and so the principle of life, the 
 soul, the innermost self. A picturesque 
 myth in one of the oldest Upanishads 
 na*iVely represents the Atman as a pri- 
 meval being of human likeness, and all 
 the creatures as proceeding from him by 
 his creative act. Little as the gain from 
 all this may be, it is yet the starting-point 
 of the spiritual pantheism of India. It 
 would be giving an epitome of Indian 
 theology to explain the famous word 
 brahman. At first it meant the power 
 of devotion, of prayer, and especially of 
 the sacrifice; and, finally, with the inor- 
 dinate exaggeration of the sacrifice (as 
 hinted above) into a power upon which 
 even the gods were conceived as depend- 
 ing, Brahman came to be the power 
 which is behind both the gods and the
 
 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 95 
 
 world, the eternal principle of all exist- 
 ence. 
 
 The acme of these doctrines is reached 
 in the fusion of the originally subjec- 
 tive Atman with the objective Brahman 
 into one supreme entity, transcending all 
 limitations of space, time, and causality. 
 The soul is not different from Brahm, 
 because there is nothing existent outside 
 of Brahm. The soul is not a transfor- 
 mation of Brahm, because Brahm is un- 
 changeable. The soul is not a part of 
 Brahm, because whatever has parts is 
 transitory and suffers change, and Brahm, 
 being unchangeable, can therefore have 
 no parts. In short, then, the kernel of 
 the whole doctrine is the direct imma- 
 nency of God, an assumption unproved, 
 and yet of profound practical import. 
 
 The central point of all this teaching 
 is illustrated in a hundred ways, naive 
 and picturesque. We may cite one 
 (Deussen thinks it the oldest) passage in 
 which the doctrine is set forth. " Ver-
 
 96 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 
 
 ily the universe is Brahm : whose sub- 
 stance is spirit; whose body is life; 
 whose form is light ; whose purpose is 
 truth ; whose essence is infinity. This is 
 my spirit (or atman) within my heart, 
 smaller than a grain of rice, qr a barley- 
 corn, or a grain of mustard-seed; smaller 
 than a grain of millet, or even than a 
 husked grain of millet. It is greater 
 than the earth, greater than the sky, 
 greater than the heaven, greater than all 
 the worlds. The all-working, all-wishing, 
 all-smelling, all-tasting one, that em- 
 braceth the universe, that is silent, un- 
 troubled — that is my spirit within my 
 heart; that is Brahm. Thereunto, when 
 I go hence, shall I attain. Thus spake 
 Shandilya. " 
 
 The chief end of man is salvation, that 
 is, liberation from the bonds of death 
 and rebirth, the endless rounds of trans- 
 migration. This liberation is effected, 
 not by faith, but by knowledge, by the 
 recognition of the absolute identity of
 
 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 97 
 
 my innermost being with God. What 
 now is the way to this knowledge ? For 
 on it we must find the basis of the prac- 
 tical ethics of the Vedanta. The fallen 
 state is the illusion of separation from 
 God, and this illusion is fed by the de- 
 sires and lusts of the world. Morality, 
 therefore, is primarily rather negative 
 than positive — the renunciation of the 
 lust of the world, of wife, children, pos- 
 sessions, in short, of all the great activi- 
 ties of life. 
 
 So far»as theories go, there is spiritual 
 truth on both sides, for Christian and 
 Hindu alike, to take and to give. To 
 Hindu mysticism and to Christian mys- 
 ticism alike are common the most gro- 
 tesque fancies and the deepest truths ; in 
 both are elements which may prove to be 
 of value for our religious life. It may 
 be too that some of the Indian theories 
 concerning personality when dissociated 
 from Indian pessimism shall yet in these 
 last days bear fruit. Did the Eastern 
 7
 
 g8 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 
 
 mystic so lose himself in the beatific 
 vision of God as to have little thought 
 for his fellows? Possibly; but, per 
 contra, are not we so feverishly asserting 
 our individuality in all the details of life 
 that we never quit the pin-fold in which 
 we are confined and pestered ? May not 
 each of us learn from the other ? 
 
 There is a Sanskrit work called the 
 " Garland of Questions and Answers,' 
 in which some Hindu Nicodemus seeks 
 to know what it is to be born of the 
 Spirit. His question is: 
 
 What lack I yet ? What for my soul remaineth 
 To know, that all these longings then may cease ? 
 
 And the answer: 
 
 Salvation, wherein simplest soul attaineth 
 The knowledge that doth end in perfect peace. 
 
 And again : 
 
 What must I know, the which, when compre- 
 hending, 
 Their secret thought from all the worlds I wrest ?
 
 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 99 
 
 And the answer : 
 
 On all-embracing Brahm thy spirit bending, — 
 That know, Prime Form of Being, Manifest. 
 
 And we hustling Occidentals marvel and 
 say, " How can these things be ? ' Mys- 
 tical perhaps they are to our Western 
 temper of mind; but are we quite sure 
 that our temper is wholly right, and the 
 only right one ? In India as well as in 
 Palestine was the warning given: " Ex- 
 cept ye become as little children." 
 
 As fox the Upanishads in practice, we 
 little realize in the Occident how holy 
 and saintly have been the lives of thou- 
 sands of these quiet Vedantists. And 
 even in characterizing renunciation as a 
 negative virtue, there may be a touch of 
 injustice and error. On the other hand, 
 if we are right in our ideals of human 
 progress, it is hard to see how they have 
 been furthered by quietism. " I am 
 come,' said the greatest of teachers, 
 " that they might have life, and that
 
 ioo THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 
 
 they might have it more abundantly.' 
 But even here again let me warn against 
 over-confidence in the infallibility of the 
 Occidental standards by which we would 
 measure the fulness of life. 
 
 And it is well to remember here that 
 — despite all the diversity of dogmas 
 and of metaphysical conceptions, whether 
 of Buddhism or Confucianism, whether of 
 Christianity or the Vedanta — that the 
 way of peace for all is by morality and 
 not by immorality, that the ethical ideal 
 is essentially the same the world over, 
 that virtue is everywhere lovely, or, in 
 mystic phrase, that she can quicken our 
 spiritual sense until we catch the unheard 
 music of the spheres. 
 
 She can teach ye how to climb 
 Higher than the sphery chime. 
 
 A change of attitude towards non- 
 Christian religions has undoubtedly be- 
 gun within Christendom. It is a step in 
 advance, clear and great. Among its
 
 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 101 
 
 immediate results there may indeed be 
 much unintelligible dabbling in Bud- 
 dhism and sundry other " isms " of the 
 East, and the growth therefrom of an 
 irreverent and weak and flabby eclecti- 
 cism ; but these are transient extrava- 
 gances. The new habit of mind, if only 
 it be informed with honesty and humil- 
 ity, is an essential preliminary to the 
 best general religious progress. It is 
 something which the leaders of religious 
 life and thought should welcome as a 
 glorious, an inspiring opportunity.
 
 VI 
 CHRISTIANITY 
 
 By Lyman Abbott 
 
 The object of this series of articles is 
 to point out what is distinctive in each 
 one of the great religions of the world. 
 What is thus distinctive in Christianity is 
 Jesus Christ. Other religions are greater 
 than their founders. Confucianism is 
 greater than Confucius, Buddhism than 
 Siddartha, Judaism than Moses, Moham- 
 medanism than Mohammed. But Christ 
 is greater than Christianity ; the Founder 
 is greater than the religion which he 
 founded. Its accretions are corruptions; 
 it might almost be said that its develop- 
 ment is degeneracy. The Sermon on 
 the Mount is greater than the greatest of 
 
 the creeds ; the Lord's Supper is sublimer 
 
 102
 
 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 103 
 
 in its simplicity than the High Mass in its 
 elaboration; the message and ministry 
 of the twelve, with the Master as their 
 leader, are larger events in history than 
 all the complicated ecclesiasticism of the 
 Middle Ages, with its clerical orders and 
 sub-orders. 
 
 I. In Christianity the principles of the 
 religion are exemplified and the spirit 
 of the religion is embodied in a Person. 
 The whole duty of the Christian is 
 summed up in the Master's command, 
 11 Follow me.' The whole creed of the 
 Christian is summed up in " Ye believe 
 in God, believe also in me.' Confucius 
 gave precepts whose value is wholly in- 
 dependent of the man who gave them ; 
 Siddartha is a shadow cast upon the 
 clouds — no one can tell how much it re- 
 sembles any historical original ; Moses is 
 avowedly only the interpreter of a law 
 whose divine authority derives no sanc- 
 tion from the human law-giver; Moham- 
 med is a true prophet of monotheism,
 
 104 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 
 
 but no reader of these pages would wish 
 to emulate his life. But Christ is a living 
 Person, whose historical reality skepti- 
 cism itself no longer doubts, whose au- 
 thoritative declarations as a faithful and 
 true witness add to the sum of human 
 knowledge, and whose life and character 
 are both greater and more luminous than 
 any report of his precepts which his im- 
 mediate followers have preserved for us. 
 Are we perplexed as to the meaning of 
 any of his directions ? we have but to 
 ask an interpretation of his life. " But 
 I say unto you, Love your enemies.' 
 
 If one smite thee on the one cheek, 
 turn to him the other also.' His own 
 treatment of Judas Iscariot, his own en- 
 durance of shame and insult in the court 
 of Caiaphas, make the enigma clear to us. 
 
 And not only clear; also possible, 
 " * Love your enemies; ' that is not hu- 
 man nature" — this protest dies away, 
 half uttered, upon our lips when we see 
 what this Man has done in attestation of
 
 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 105 
 
 the possibilities of human nature. Con- 
 fucianism, Buddhism, Mosaism, all pre- 
 sent splendid ideals of life ; Christianity 
 differs from them less in the ideals pre- 
 sented than in the transcendent fact that 
 it presents them realized. The divine 
 life is no longer a poet's dream or a 
 prophet's ecstatic vision of some future 
 celestial glory. The kingdom of God 
 has come down to earth. The highest 
 hope of the idealist is no longer an 
 impossible hope ; it is a realized fact in 
 human history. Christ is the ideal. To 
 be a Christian is to be Christlike ; there 
 is nothing higher; when, if ever, all 
 humanity becomes Christlike, the king- 
 dom of heaven will have come on earth ; 
 there is nothing beyond. 
 
 Thus Christianity is at once idealism 
 and realism in religion combined. It 
 commends nothing which it does not 
 demonstrate possible. When Christ asks 
 his followers, " Can ye drink of the cup 
 that I drink of, and be baptized with the
 
 106 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 
 
 baptism I am baptized with?' inspired 
 by his example, and still more by his 
 persuasive personality, they reply, " We 
 can; " and he responds, " Ye shall.' It 
 is this quality of realism in the religion 
 of Christ — a religion presented by its 
 Founder, not as an impossible ideal, but 
 as a reality, not as a vision of a hoped- 
 for future, but as the record of un- 
 doubted history — which constitutes the 
 first distinguishing mark of Christianity. 
 Confucianism, summoning its adherents 
 to pay veneration to an idealized past, 
 Buddhism, bidding its adherents dream 
 of an unrealized future, keep their vota- 
 ries unchanged from century to century. 
 Christ, calling the Christian to an ideal 
 which he has realized in his own life, 
 responds to every failure and every con- 
 sequent discouragement, " You can, for 
 I have. What I have done you can do ; 
 what I am you can become.' 
 
 The followers of Christ, thus inspired 
 by an ideal realized in history, rise from
 
 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 107 
 
 every defeat with a new hope of victory 
 in their hearts, and go forward from every 
 victory inspired to attempt new achieve- 
 ment. When they have abolished slav- 
 ery, they immediately combine to fit 
 the enfranchised for industrial freedom. 
 When they have abolished private war, 
 they rest not, but gather their forces 
 together to abolish international war. 
 They are not discouraged in the first case 
 because the negro population grows 
 faster than the schools, nor in the second 
 because imperial Europe, with fanatical 
 conservatism, persists in retaining a mili- 
 tarism inherited from pagan Rome. 
 Nor does the fact that they are a minor- 
 ity, even in the community which calls 
 itself Christian, abate their courage; for 
 they look back and see what One accom- 
 plished with but twelve followers, and 
 one of them a traitor. It is true that 
 there is industrial servitude in our work- 
 shops as well as in the fields of China, 
 that there are prostitutes in Christian as
 
 108 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 
 
 well as in Hindu cities, social caste in 
 democratic America as well as in Brah- 
 manical India, the spirit of militarism in 
 Christian Europe as well as in Moham- 
 medan Turkey. But Christianity has 
 abolished the worst forms of industrial 
 servitude and is ameliorating such as re- 
 main ; there are no consecrated prosti- 
 tutes in Christendom ; caste exists in spite 
 of religion in the United States, because 
 of religion in India; the spirit of the 
 Cross, patiently if peacefully, opposes 
 itself to that spirit of militarism which 
 the Crescent inspires and glorifies. 
 
 What is true of Christianity as a social 
 force is true of it also as an individual 
 life. Its history is written in splendid 
 lives. It is the record, not merely of 
 great thoughts, but of greater deeds; it 
 is not merely the vision of splendid 
 ideals, but the history of achievement, 
 marred indeed by many a failure and 
 many a blemish, but more splendid than 
 any mere ideal, because deeds are always
 
 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 109 
 
 more splendid than dreams. Christian- 
 ity is not a history of ethical rules, theo- 
 logical doctrines, or ecclesiastical sys- 
 tems ; it is a history of living men and 
 women ; not a picture of piety, but the 
 biography of saints ; not a picture of 
 heroism, but a biography of heroes ; not 
 a picture of patience, but a biography of 
 brave men and women bearing the world's 
 burdens. It is not the history of Ro- 
 manism and Lutheranism and Puritanism 
 and Wesleyanism ; it is the biography of 
 Augustine, and William of Orange, and 
 John Hampden, and the Methodist pio- 
 neers. No other religion has written its 
 history in such achievements and such 
 biographies. Christianity is an ideal 
 realized in the one Christ, and therefore 
 in process of realization in Christen- 
 dom ; a spirit incarnated in the one Man, 
 and therefore in the process of becoming 
 incarnated in Humanity. 
 
 II. This realism of religion, which is 
 a distinctive characteristic of Christianity,
 
 no THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 
 
 is due to the new power which Christian- 
 ity confers upon mankind, or, to speak 
 more accurately, to the new revelation 
 which it affords of an eternal power. 
 
 That Christianity claims to confer such 
 new power upon man is evident from the 
 most casual reading of the primitive docu- 
 ments. It is implied in the declaration 
 of Christ defining his mission: " I have 
 come that they might have life, and 
 might have it more abundantly.' It is 
 affirmed by Paul in his definition of the 
 Gospel as " the power of God unto sal- 
 vation." It is even more explicitly de- 
 clared by John : " To them gave he power 
 to become the sons of God, even to 
 them that believe on his name.' But it 
 is not only occasionally and incidentally 
 claimed for Christianity by its first evan- 
 gelists; it is the theme of their teach- 
 ing. They are not the framers of a new 
 code of rules for the regulation of con- 
 duct, nor the teachers of a new system 
 of philosophy — though their successors
 
 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS in 
 
 in the ministry have often been one or 
 the other; they are the heralds of a Per- 
 son. To understand their message we 
 must remember that Christianity came 
 to the world as the consummation and 
 fulfillment of a precedent religion. One 
 characteristic of the Jewish religion was 
 its forelooking character. From the 
 promise to Eve that her seed should crush 
 the serpent's head to the prophecy of 
 the great Unknown Prophet of the Exile 
 that the Suffering Servant of the Lord 
 should redeem Israel out of all his 
 troubles, the Jewish people were taught 
 by their prophets to look forward to a 
 Deliverer and a Deliverance which should 
 bring the kingdom of God on the earth. 
 Whatever interpretation we may now 
 give to these promises, there is no ques- 
 tion, as matter of history, that, in the 
 first century of this era, the Jewish peo- 
 ple were universally expecting the com- 
 ing of a Messiah, an Anointed One, who 
 would fulfill the expectation of Israel,
 
 H2 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 
 
 and redeem the nation, if not the world, 
 from its sorrows. The burden of the 
 preaching of the Apostles is that the 
 Messiah has come, and the Day of Deliv- 
 erance is at hand. It is not necessary 
 to load these pages with quotations or 
 even with references. The Apostolic 
 sermons reported in the Book of Acts 
 are the earliest recorded examples of 
 primitive preaching. The burden of 
 these sermons is always the same, that 
 the Messiah has come, and that the evi- 
 dence of his Messiahship is his resurrec- 
 tion from the dead. The Epistles of 
 Paul are probably the earliest writings 
 of the primitive Church. The burden of 
 these Epistles is always the same, that 
 " the law of the Spirit of life in Christ 
 Jesus hath made me free from the law of 
 sin and death,' so that " we are more 
 than conquerors through him that loved 
 us." If we turn to the teaching of 
 Christ, we find the same characteristic. 
 At the beginning of his ministry, in the
 
 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 113 
 
 synagogue at Nazareth, he reads from an 
 ancient prophecy the promise of One to 
 come who will proclaim glad tidings to 
 the poor, will heal the broken-hearted, 
 will proclaim deliverance to the captives 
 and recovering of sight to the blind, and 
 will lead forth into liberty those that are 
 crushed by oppression ; and he declares 
 that he has come to fulfill this promise. 
 At the close of his ministry, put under 
 solemn judicial oath by the high priest, 
 and asked if he is the Messiah, the Son 
 of the Living God, he replies that he 
 is, and seals this claim with the surren- 
 der of his life. Modern discovery has 
 made it clear that the Fourth Gospel 
 was written and published early in the 
 second century, if not late in the first 
 century, and it contains, in all probabil- 
 ity, a report of Christ's life and mission 
 furnished by the Beloved Disciple, if not 
 actually written by him. But we are not 
 left to the Fourth Gospel for evidence 
 
 that Jesus claimed to be the Christ, the 
 8
 
 H4 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 
 
 Anointed One, the Saviour of the world. 
 This claim is wrought into his teaching 
 concerning himself as recorded in the 
 Synoptic Gospels, into the Apostolic 
 heralding of his Person as recorded in the 
 Book of Acts, into the thought and life 
 of the earliest churches as reflected in 
 the letters of Paul. The post-Apostolic 
 writings and the very inscriptions in the 
 catacombs illustrate the same claim of 
 primitive Christianity. The earliest 
 symbol of the Christians, used by them 
 apparently as a sort of secret sign or 
 watchword, was a fish. This word fish 
 is formed in the Greek of the five letters 
 which for the English reader we may 
 represent thus: I, Ch, Th, U, S. Each 
 letter represents a word which we may 
 represent in English characters thus: 
 Jesous, Christos, Theou, Uios, 
 Soter — that is, Jesus, Christ, of God 
 the Son, Saviour. This faith in a Person 
 who brought a new life into the world, a 
 new power to men, an emancipation, an
 
 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 115 
 
 enfranchisement, a deliverance, was the 
 creed of the early Church. However 
 skeptical one may be concerning the 
 truth of this faith, one cannot doubt that 
 the faith existed, and was the secret of 
 the Church's existence. 
 
 As little can it be doubted that the world 
 sorely feels the need of such a power. 
 Whatever opinion the skeptic may enter- 
 tain concerning the eighth chapter of 
 Romans, there are few skeptics who will 
 doubt the seventh chapter. " To will 
 is present with me ; but how to perform 
 that which is good I find not," is the ex- 
 perience of all men who possess noble 
 ideals". It is only the hopelessly self- 
 conceited man to whom this declaration 
 is meaningless. Much is said of the 
 Gospel as a revelation ; but we do not so 
 much need to have new truth revealed 
 to us as new power conferred upon us. 
 It is easier to see the right than to do 
 the right as we see it. Our ideals may 
 be, and often are, ignoble, but they are
 
 n6 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 
 
 nobler than our lives. To transmute 
 dreams into deeds is the perpetually un- 
 solved problem of every noble nature. 
 That Christianity has conferred on all 
 its votaries the power which man so 
 sorely needs no one will claim ; but that 
 it has conferred on them new moral 
 power, endowing with life, transforming 
 the character, and revealed in the con- 
 duct, is abundantly illustrated by its his- 
 tory: in individual transformations like 
 those of Paul the persecutor into the 
 Apostle, Augustine the roue" into the 
 saint, Loyola the soldier into the church- 
 man, Luther the monk into the eman- 
 cipator, Bunyan the tinker into the 
 prophet, Gough the drunkard into the 
 temperance reformer; on a large scale, in 
 the transformation of pagan Rome into 
 Christian Europe, and the Anglo-Saxon 
 race from the freebooters and pirates of 
 the eighth century into the pioneers of 
 civilization in the nineteenth. It may, 
 indeed, be said that the progress is very
 
 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 117 
 
 slow, since it has taken eighteen centu- 
 ries to make out of paganism a social 
 order so little Christianized as that of 
 modern Europe. But it must be remem- 
 bered that the present population of 
 Europe has been under the influence of 
 Christianity, not eighteen centuries, but 
 one-third of a century. Progress is nec- 
 essarily slow in a world in which every 
 thirty-three years a new class comes into 
 life to acquire afresh all its knowledge 
 and all its virtue. 
 
 However slow that progress may have 
 been, it is certain that Christianity is the 
 only world-religion which is characterized- 
 by those transformations of individual 
 character which we call conversion, or 
 that transformation of national character 
 which we call progress. We hear much 
 of the progress of humanity; but histor- 
 ically it has been confined to Christen- 
 dom ; the nineteenth century is much 
 glorified, but in China and India the 
 nineteenth century does not differ from
 
 n8 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 
 
 the first. Christianity appears to me 
 to be the only world-religion which even 
 claims ability to make such transforma- 
 tions of character, to confer on man 
 power to realize his ideals, to convert his 
 aspirations into achievement. Neither 
 Confucianism, Judaism, nor Mohammed- 
 anism can be said even to offer to man 
 an addition to his powers, a reinforce- 
 ment of his spirit, and an emancipation 
 from his bondage. Buddhism, it is true, 
 does offer a deliverance; Buddha does 
 claim to be a Deliverer from the perpet- 
 ual disappointments of life. But, as 
 Professor Palmer has recently so clearly 
 pointed out, Buddhism prescribes as the 
 secret of deliverance the death of desire, 
 Christianity proffers the power to fulfill 
 aspiration. The rest of the one is the 
 rest of death, that of the other is the rest 
 of triumphant life. 
 
 III. I have said that this power to real- 
 ize ideals which Christianity confers upon 
 its adherents is not really new, but only
 
 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 119 
 
 a new realization of a power which is 
 eternal ; but this is equally true of that 
 increased endowment which knowledge 
 confers in the physical realm. Elec- 
 tricity is not a new force now first cre- 
 ated, but an old force now first discovered 
 or revealed. As the nature of electricity 
 is revealed to us it becomes a practical 
 power in our hands to be employed by 
 us. Thus revelation or discovery, 1 while 
 it does not add to the powers in the 
 universe, increases our capacity to use 
 them. The powers in the universe re- 
 main unaltered, but our power is in- 
 creased. 
 
 In the moral realm the greatest of all 
 powers is that of a great personality — 
 that which one masterful character exer- 
 cises over another character. This is the 
 power of the great orator, who sways an 
 audience as he will, not by acquired arts 
 of rhetoric or elocution — these are only 
 
 1 Synonymous words : to discover is to uncover, to 
 reveal is to unveil.
 
 120 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 
 
 his instruments — but by the personal 
 character which employs them and is 
 communicated by them. It is this which 
 makes him what we call — concealing our 
 ignorance by the meaningless word — a 
 magnetic speaker. This is the secret of 
 the great musician. More than the 
 flute-like voice of the singer, more than 
 the trained fingers of the violinist or the 
 pianist, is the man or woman who is in- 
 terpreted by voice or instrument. If 
 this character is wanting, we may admire 
 the technique, but go away untouched, 
 saying, " But he had no soul.' This is 
 the power of the great general — the Little 
 Corporal seizing the flag at the bridge of 
 Lodi, and by his mere presence convert- 
 ing his hesitating soldiers into an irre- 
 sistible torrent of brave men ; General 
 Sheridan meeting his panic-stricken sol- 
 diers fleeing from the field in the Shenan- 
 doah Valley, calling to them, " Turn, 
 boys, turn ! we are going the other way,' 
 and, by the power of his infectious
 
 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 121 
 
 courage, converting their panic into an 
 enthusiasm of courage, and the rout into a 
 victory. This is the secret of the mother's 
 power. She goes down in solemn joy 
 to that door which swings both ways on 
 its hinges, not knowing whether she will 
 go out into the unknown, or out of the 
 unknown a new life will come to her; 
 she offers her life in that very hour in 
 which she welcomes a new life to her 
 keeping; all her motherhood is one life- 
 long offering, a transmission of her life 
 to the child, whom she endows with 
 courage, truth, purity, love, not by her 
 skilled teaching, but by the impartation 
 of herself; not by what she says, nor yet 
 by what she does, but by what she is. 
 
 Christianity, recognizing this power of 
 a great personality, brings to bear upon 
 humanity the personality of God. It 
 differs somewhat from other world-reli- 
 gions in the ideals of human life and 
 character which it presents. Yet in the 
 main these agree ; for the aspirations of
 
 122 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 
 
 humanity are ever alike in their trend, 
 though not in their clearness and purity. 
 Christianity differs more from other 
 world-religions in its doctrine of God. 
 Confucianism deifies its ancestors, Bud- 
 dhism deifies its dreams, Mohammedan- 
 ism deifies its conscience and its self-will ; 
 Christianity alone deifies love. But the 
 distinctive characteristic of Christianity 
 lies, not in its ideals — that is, its laws ; 
 not in its conception of God — that is, 
 in its theology; but in this, that it so 
 brings God down to earth, so interprets 
 him an Immanuel, a God with us, that it 
 discovers or reveals to man this eternal 
 but before unknown power, the power of 
 a divine personality living among men, 
 brooding them, and by direct personal 
 influence transforming them. God's 
 silent voice transcends the magnetism of 
 all world-orators; his inspiring presence 
 summons to a courage unparalleled on 
 any field of battle; his brooding care is 
 more life-giving than that of any mother.
 
 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 123 
 
 This is, to us who follow Christ and 
 believe in him, the meaning of the Incar- 
 nation. In vain our imagination endeav- 
 ors to realize an " Infinite and Eternal 
 Energy," or a " Power not ourselves 
 that makes for righteousness.' But in 
 Christ we see God personified ; brought 
 within our vision ; so dwelling among us 
 that his personality touches ours and we 
 answer to the contact. This is what we 
 mean by the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. 
 He dwells with us and is in us, his Spirit 
 so mingling with our spirit that all our 
 life is reinforced by his presence, and 
 what before was impossible becomes easy. 
 This is what we mean by atonement. 
 He is at one with us and we are at one 
 with him, so that his life flows into us 
 and we live by him. This is what the 
 Psalmist means when he says, " By my 
 God I have run through a troop, and by 
 my God I have leaped over a wall.' 
 This is what Paul means when he says, 
 " I can do all things through him that
 
 i2 4 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 
 
 strengtheneth me.' This is what he 
 means by saying that we are heirs of God 
 and joint heirs with Jesus Christ. We 
 inherit God himself, become partakers of 
 the divine nature, like Christ are sons of 
 God, our life is begotten of God and 
 proceeds from him. This is what he 
 means by saying that our righteousness 
 is of God by faith ; as the listener enters 
 into sympathy with the orator, the sol- 
 dier with the hero, the child with the 
 mother, so we enter into sympathy with 
 God — that is faith. As life passes from 
 orator to audience, from hero to soldier, 
 from mother to child, so it passes from 
 God to the human soul — that is grace. 
 And this faith which receives and this 
 grace which gives find, possibly ana- 
 logies, certainly no parallel, in any other 
 world-religion. 
 
 To sum all up: the distinctive charac- 
 teristic of Christianity is Christ; by 
 Christ God is brought to earth, made 
 visible, tangible, comprehensible to us;
 
 THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS 125 
 
 by this contact the divine personality 
 comes in touch with us, reinforces our 
 spiritual nature, endows us with new 
 power, inspires, recreates, transforms; 
 thus empowered, we are able to translate 
 our before impossible ideals into realities, 
 our dreams into deeds, our aspirations 
 into achievements.
 
 PARABLES 
 
 FOR SCHOOL AND HOME 
 
 By 
 
 WENDELL P. GARRISON 
 
 Author of "What Mr. Darwin Saw," etc., etc. 
 
 With 21 Engravings on Wood done Expressly for the 
 
 Volume by Gustav Kruell. 
 
 12mo, cloth, ornamental, $1.25 
 
 " How to make men think and how to help men think is a 
 problem which slowly approaches solution. Progress has gone 
 so far that it has substituted children for men in the double 
 question adduced, and is now studying the various experiments 
 of pedagogues and psychologists. One of these is Wendell P. 
 Garrison, and his experiment is shown in a pretty volume, en- 
 titled 'Parables for School and Home. 1 The author is a man 
 of wide culture who has a healthful appreciation of humor, 
 poetry, art, and music. He loves children, and he believes 
 that in their unfolding they can be helped to think, and at the 
 same time develop morally. 
 
 The so-called 'Parables' are delightful fifteen-minute 
 chats. . . • They are the conversations of a gentleman 
 with his sons and daughters. The book is handsomely gotten 
 up; exquisite illustrations by Gustav Kruell render it an 
 artistic as well as a literary treasure. It may be highly recom- 
 mended to parents, guardians, and teachers wherever English 
 is spoken."— Mail and Express, New York. 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO. 
 
 91-93 Fifth Avenue, New York
 
 JESUS THE MESSIAH 
 
 By 
 
 ALFRED EDERSHEIM t M.A. 
 
 Some time Grinfield lecturer on the Septuagint 
 in the University of Oxford 
 
 An abridged edition of The Life and Times of Jesus the 
 Messiah, with preface by Prof. W. Sanday, of Oxford 
 
 Small 8vo, 659 pages, $1.00 
 
 This edition has been carefully abridged from the well- 
 known two-volume work of Dr. Edersheim. While the 
 larger w r ork will remain, as the late Rev. Dr. Howard 
 Crosby, D.D., has said of it, ''an indispensable encyclopaedia 
 for a well-equipped minister," the smaller work is intended 
 to be used by Sunday-school scholars and teachers and by 
 all who desire a book for reading rather than for reference. 
 
 The following are some testimonials to the parent work, 
 from prominent clergymen: 
 
 REV. LYMAN ABBOTT, D.D. 
 
 "The best of all the published lives of Christ.' 1 
 
 REV. HERRICK JOHNSON, D.D., Chicago. 
 "A vivid, striking, unique and intensely interesting book.'' 
 
 PROF. SHAILER MATTHEWS, University of Chicago. 
 
 "There is no work in English, upon this subject, to be 
 classed with this of Edersheim." 
 
 REV. JOHN HALL, D.D., New York. 
 " It is scholarly, suggestive and valuable. It is specially 
 useful in throwing light upon the times of the Saviour's life on 
 earth." 
 
 REV. C. H. PARKHURST, D.D., New York. 
 
 " There is no biography of Christ, humanly composed, that 
 vies with Edersheim's." 
 
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 91-93 Fifth Avenue, New York
 
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