y citing a parallel passage from Plato or
AEschylus! "The ancient poets," he declares, "seem never to have
conceived the idea of a spirit of resignation which would sanctify
calamity;" and accordingly he quotes Aristotle's assertion, that
"suffering becomes beautiful when any one bears great calamities with
cheerfulness, not through insensibility, but through greatness of
mind." "There is not a passage in the classics," he declares, "which
recognizes the beauty of holiness and Christian mildness;" and in the
next breath he remarks, that Homer's description of Patroclus
furnishes "language which might convey an idea of that mildness of
manner which belonged to men in Christian ages." And he closes his
eloquent picture of the faith of the middle ages in immortality by
attributing to the monks and friars the dying language of Socrates,
that "a man who has spent his life in the study of philosophy ought to
take courage in his death, and to be full of hope that he is about to
possess the greatest good that can be obtained, which will be in his
possession as soon as he dies;" and much more of that serene and
sublime wisdom. Yet all this is done in a manner so absolutely free
from sophistry, the conflict between the scholar and the churchman is
so innocent and transparent, that one forgives it in Digby. In most
writers on these subjects there is greater bigotry, without the
learning which in his case makes it endurable, because it supplies
the means for its own correction.[H]

And, if it is thus hard to do historical justice, it is far harder to
look with candor upon contemporary religions. Thus the Jesuit Father
Ripa thought that Satan had created the Buddhist religion on purpose
to bewilder the Christian church. There we see a creed possessing more
votaries than any in the world, numbering nearly one-third of the
human race. Its traditions go back to a founder whose record is
stainless and sublime. It has the doctrine of the Real Presence, the
Madonna and Child, the invocation of the dead, monasteries and
pilgrimages, celibacy and tonsure, relics, rosaries, and holy water.
Wherever it has spread, it has broken down the barrier of caste. It
teaches that all men are brethren, and makes them prove it by their
acts; it diffuses gentleness and self-sacrificing benevolence. "It has
become," as Neander admits, "to many tribes of people a means of
transition from the wildest barbarism to semi-civilization." Tennent,
living amid the