ETHNIC AND CATHOLIC RELIGIONS.
§ 1. Object of the present Work. § 2. Comparative Theology; its Nature, Value, and present Position. §3. Ethnic Religions. Injustice often done to them by Christian Apologists. § 4. How Ethnic Religions were regarded by Christ and his Apostles. § 5. Comparative Theology will furnish a new Class of Evidences in Support of Christianity. § 6. It will show that, while most of the Religions of the World are Ethnic, or the Religions of Races, Christianity is Catholic, or adapted to become the Religion of all Races. § 7. It will show that Ethnic Religions are Partial, Christianity Universal. § 8. It will show that Ethnic Religions are arrested, but that Christianity is steadily progressive.
§ 1. Object of the present Work.
HE present work is what the Germans call a Versuch,
Tand the English an Essay, or attempt. It is an at
tempt to compare the great religions of the world with each other. When completed, this comparison ought to show what each is, what it contains, wherein it resembles the others, wherein it differs from the others; its origin and development, its place in universal history; its positive and negative qualities, its truths and errors, and its influence, past, present, or future, on the welfare of mankind. For everything becomes more clear by comparison. We can never understand the nature of a phenomenon when we contemplate it by itself, as well as when we look at it in its relations to other phenomena of the same kind. The qualities of each become more clear in contrast with those of the others. By comparing together, therefore,