rnate Gods for prophets; they have had their
priesthoods, their traditions, and their growing bodies of doctrine:
there is nothing in Christianity that cannot find its counterpart, even
to the most marked details, in the life of its founder. Two centuries,
for instance, before the birth of Christ, Buddha is said to have been
born without human father. Angels sang in heaven to announce his advent;
an aged hermit blessed him in his mother's arms; a monarch was advised,
though he refused, to destroy the child, who, it was predicted, should
be a universal ruler. It is told how he was once lost, and was found
again in a temple; and how his young wisdom astonished all the doctors.
A woman in a crowd was rebuked by him for exclaiming, '_Blessed is the
womb that bare thee_.' His prophetic career began when he was about
thirty years old; and one of the most solemn events of it is his
temptation in solitude by the evil one. Everywhere, indeed, in other
religions we are discovering things that we once thought peculiar to the
Christian. And thus the fatal inference is being drawn on all sides,
that they have all sprung from a common and an earthly root, and that
one has no more certainty than another. And thus another blow is dealt
to a faith that was already weakened. Not only, it is thought, can
Christianity not prove itself in any supernatural sense to be sacred,
but other religions prove that even in a natural sense it is not
singular. It has not come down from heaven: it is not exceptional even
in its attempt to rise to it.

Such are the broad conclusions which in these days seem to be forced
upon us; and which knowledge, as it daily widens, would seem to be
daily strengthening. But are these altogether so destructive as they
seem? Let us enquire into this more closely. If we do this, it will be
soon apparent that the so-called enlightened and critical modern
judgment has been misled as to this point by an error I have already
dwelt upon. It has considered Christianity solely as represented by
Protestantism; or if it has glanced at Rome at all, it has ignorantly
dismissed as weaknesses the doctrines which are the essence of her
strength. Now, as far as Protestantism is concerned, the modern critical
judgment is undoubtedly in the right. Not only, as I have pointed out
already, has experience proved the practical incoherency of its
superstructure, but criticism has washed away like sand every vestige of
its supernatural foundat