n the universal ground of religion. Then he
drops into the language of his sect and adds,--

"To believe in Zoroaster as lawgiver, and to hold his writings
sacred."

The creed thus furnishes a formula for all religions. It might be
printed in blank like a circular, leaving only the closing name to be
filled in.[B] For Zoroaster read Christ, and you have Christianity;
read Buddha, and you have Buddhism; read Mohammed, and you have
Mohammedanism. Each of these, in short, is Natural Religion _plus_ an
individual name. It is by insisting on that _plus_ that each religion
stops short of being universal.

In this religion of the human race, thus variously disguised, we find
everywhere the same leading features. The same great doctrines, good
or bad,--regeneration, predestination, atonement, the future life, the
final judgment, the Divine Reason or Logos, and the Trinity. The same
religious institutions,--monks, missionaries, priests, and pilgrims.
The same ritual,--prayers, liturgies, sacrifices, sermons, hymns. The
same implements,--frankincense, candles, holy water, relics, amulets,
votive offerings. The same symbols,--the cross, the ball, the
triangle, the serpent, the all-seeing eye, the halo of rays, the tree
of life. The same saints, angels, and martyrs. The same holiness
attached to particular cities, rivers, and mountains. The same
prophecies and miracles,--the dead restored and evil spirits cast out.
The self-same holy days; for Easter and Christmas were kept as spring
and autumn festivals, centuries before our era, by Egyptians,
Persians, Saxons, Romans. The same artistic designs, since the mother
and child stand depicted, not only in the temples of Europe, but in
those of Etruria and Arabia, Egypt and Thibet. In ancient Christian
art, the evangelists were represented with the same heads of eagles,
oxen, and lions, upon which we gaze with amazement in Egyptian tombs.
Nay, the very sects and subdivisions of all historic religions have
been the same, and each supplies us with mystic and rationalist,
formalist and philanthropist, ascetic and epicurean. The simple fact
is, that all these things are as indigenous as grass and mosses; they
spring up in every soil, and only the microscope can tell them apart.

And, as all these inevitably recur, so comes back again and again the
idea of incarnation,--the Divine Man. Here, too, all religions
sympathize, and, with slight modifications, each is the copy of the
other. As