For 1000 years Mohammendanisn: promised to become the religion of all Europe, and in fact penetrated far into Asia. It borrowed many Chris-tien dogmas; the unity of God, a belief in the soul and the future life. But in its early days it was spread by the force of arms, "Believe or die" promising s paradise of sensuality. In the opinion of critics there was so little spiritual about Mohammed's private life or his manner of welding peoples into his politics] state, that as a religious leader he seems to compare rather unfavourably with Buddha or Christ, onfuciarism, strictly speaking," says Lin Vu Tang, "was not a religion, It had certain feelings towards life and the universe that bordered on religion, but it was not a religion." There are many excellent moral precepts in the doctrine, but if we are talking about a religion for the future, this fine humanistic philosophy of life so well suited to form the cultured gentlemzn is scarcely what are after.
Is it possible that Brahminism hould one day appeal universally? "Every Hindu, Mahatma G: ndhi, "believes in one sole God, in regeneration and redemption." So far, so good, But Hinduism required es sacred rites such revolting tices as "he suicide of young and the burying of lepers alive; and the radically unjust doctrine of castes caused elmest a third of its pariah members to be treated worse than brute Moreover, its offici: hymns are often ly Can this mixture c be the ideal religion for the future?
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àcetrine of G like Chri: the <uthen! difficult for ty of which it is most bolars to establish efter it ec n from its legends we ud igion but another ph losotama nei afirns no" od, but simly ignores Him. Though personally an austere man th a compassion for the ty, he taught what octic Hy amounted to atheism. them in their present hour of persecution. They were God's chosen people till Christ, fulfilling the prophecies wonderfully, came to bring salvation not only to them but to all men and all ages. Today they wait patiently, pathetically for One hes already come; but theirs sec to be the great religion of the ps rather than of the future.
A Christian is obliged by his very Christianity to recognize religious values in other religions, for 1+ is of faith that "Christ enlighteneth eve: man that cometh into the world." (John 1, 9). Certain Christian truths are found in pre-Christicn religions; but why The soul created by God is Christian" and the God who made all things revealed His doctrine in part to primitive men, completely when the fullness of time had come and He should send His only "begotten Son. Christianity tought by Jesus contains all that good in ell other religions, excludes the human error and moral corrupt tion of those religions, completes what they lack.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.