TEN GREAT RELIGIONS. INTRODUCTION. CHAPTER I. 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, and the English an Essay, or attempt. It is an attempt 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, the religions of mankind, to see wherein they agree and wherein they differ, we are able to perceive with greater accuracy what each is. The first problem in Comparative Theology is therefore analytical, being to distinguish each religion from the rest. We compare them to see wherein they agree and wherein they differ. But the next problem in Comparative Theology is synthetical, and considers the adaptation of each system to every other, to determine its place, use, and value, in reference to universal or absolute religion. It must, therefore, examine the different religions to find wherein each is complete or defective, true or false; how each may supply the defects of the other or prepare the way for a better; how each religion acts on the race which receives it, is adapted to that race, and to the region of the earth which it inhabits. In this department, therefore, it connects itself with Comparative Geography, with universal history, and with ethics. Finally, this department of Comparative Theology shows the relation of each partial religion to human civilization, and observes how each religion of the world is a step in the progress of humanity. It shows that both the positive and negative side of a religion make it a preparation for a higher religion, and that the universal religion must root itself in the decaying soil of partial religions. And in this sense Comparative Theology becomes the science of missions. Such a work as this is evidently too great for a single mind. Many students must co-operate, and that through many years, before it can be completed. This volume is intended as a contribution toward that end. It will contain an account of each of the principal religions, and its development. It will be, therefore, devoted to the natural history of ethnic and catholic religions, and its method will be that of analysis. The second part, which may be published hereafter, will compare these different systems to show what each teaches concerning the great subjects of religious thought,- God, Duty, and Immortality. Finally, it will compare them with Christianity, and will inquire whether or not that is capable of becoming the religion of the human race. § 2. Comparative Theology; its Nature, Value, and present Position. Its As The work of Comparative Theology is to do equal justice to all the religious tendencies of mankind. position is that of a judge, not that of an advocate. suming, with the Apostle Paul, that each religion has come providentially, as a method by which different races should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him and find him," it attempts to show how each may be a step in the religious progress of the races, and "a schoolmaster to bring men to Christ." It is bound, however, to abstain from such inferences until it has accurately ascertained all the facts. Its first problem is to learn what each system contains; it may then go on, and endeavor to generalize from its facts. Comparative Theology is, therefore, as yet in its infancy. The same tendency in this century, which has produced the sciences of Comparative Anatomy, Comparative Geography, and Comparative Philology, is now creating this new science of Comparative Theology.* It will be to any special theology as Comparative Anatomy is to any special anatomy, Comparative Geography to any special geography, or Comparative Philology to the study of any particular language. It may be called a science, since it consists in the study of the facts of human history, and their relation to each other. It does not dogmatize it observes. It deals only with phenomena, - single phenomena, or facts; grouped phenomena, or laws. Several valuable works, bearing more or less directly on Comparative Theology, have recently appeared in Germany, France, and England. Among these may be mentioned those of Max Müller, Bunsen, Burnouf, Döllinger, Hardwicke, St. Hilaire, Duncker, F. C. Baur, Rénan, Creuzer, Maurice, G. W. Cox, and others. In America, except Mr. Alger's admirable monograph on the "Doctrine of the Future Life," we have scarcely anything worthy of notice. Mrs. Lydia Maria Child's * It is one of the sagacious remarks of Goethe, that "the eighteenth century tended to analysis, but the nineteenth will deal with synthesis." work on the "Progress of Religious Ideas" deserves the greatest credit, when we consider the time when it was written and the few sources of information then accessible.* Twenty-five years ago it was hardly possible to procure any adequate information concerning Brahmanism, Buddhism, or the religions of Confucius, Zoroaster, and Mohammed. Hardly any part of the Vedas had been translated into a European language. The works of Anquetil du Perron and Kleuker were still the highest authority upon the Zendavesta. About the Buddhists scarcely anything was known. But now, though many important lacuna remain to be filled, we have ample means of ascertaining the essential facts concerning most of these movements of the human soul. The time seems to have come to accomplish something which may have a lasting value. § 3. Ethnic Religions. Injustice often done to them by Christian Apologists. Comparative Theology, pursuing its impartial course as a positive science, will avoid the error into which most of the Christian apologists of the last century fell, in speaking of ethnic or heathen religions. In order to show the need of Christianity, they thought it necessary to disparage all other religions. Accordingly they have insisted that, while the Jewish and Christian religions were revealed, all other religions were invented; that, while these were from God, those were the work of man ; that, while in the true religions there was nothing false, in the false religions there was nothing true. If any trace of truth was to be found in Polytheism, it was so mixed with error as to be practically only evil. As the doctrines of heathen religions were corrupt, so their worship was only a debasing superstition. Their influence was to make men worse, not better; their tendency was to produce sensuality, cruelty, and universal degradation. They did not proceed, in any sense, from God; they were not * Professor Cocker's work on "Christianity and Greek Philosophy," should also be mentioned. even the work of good men, but rather of deliberate imposition and priestcraft. A supernatural religion had become necessary in order to counteract the fatal consequences of these debased and debasing superstitions. This is the view of the great natural religions of the world which was taken by such writers as Leland, Whitby, and Warburton in the last century. Even liberal thinkers, like James Foster* and John Locke,† declare that, at the coming of Christ, mankind had fallen into utter darkness, and that vice and superstition filled the world. Infidel no less than Christian writers took the same disparaging view of natural religions. They considered them, in their source, the work of fraud; in their essence, corrupt superstitions; in their doctrines, wholly false; in their moral tendency, absolutely injurious; and in their result, degenerating more and more into greater evil. A few writers, like Cudworth and the Platonists, endeavored to put in a good word for the Greek philosophers, but the religions of the world were abandoned to unmitigated reprobation. The account which so candid a writer as Mosheim gives of them is worth noticing, on account of its sweeping character. "All the nations of the world," he says, "except the Jews, were plunged in the grossest superstition. Some nations, indeed, went beyond others in impiety and absurdity, but all stood charged with irrationality and gross stupidity in matters of religion." "The greater part of the gods of all nations were ancient heroes, famous for their achievements and their worthy deeds, such as kings, generals, and founders of * James Foster has a sermon on "The Advantages of a Revelation," in which he declares that, at the time of Christ's coming, "just notions of God were, in general, erased from the minds of men. His worship was debased and polluted, and scarce any traces could be discerned of the genuine and immutable religion of nature. "In + John Locke, in his "Reasonableness of Christianity," says that when Christ came 66 men had given themselves up into the hands of their priests, to fill their heads with false notions of the Deity, and their worship with foolish rites, as they pleased; and what dread or craft once began, devotion soon made sacred, and religion immutable." this state of darkness and ignorance of the true God, vice and superstition held the world.' Quotations of this sort might be indefinitely multiplied. See an article by the present writer, in the "Christian Examiner," March, 1857. |