e
shall bow to him and every tongue confess him.

This expectation of universality is not shared by all the religions of
the earth. Many of them are purely ethnic faiths; they grow out of the
lives of the peoples who adhere to them; it does not seem to be supposed
that any other peoples would care for them or know what to do with them.
The old Romans had a saying, "_Cujus regio, ejus religio_"--which means,
Every country has its own religion. The earlier Hebrews had the same
idea; they thought that every people had a god of its own. Jehovah was
their God; Baal was the god of the Phoenicians, and Chemosh was the god
of Moab. They believed that Jehovah was a stronger God than any of these
other deities, but they did not seem to doubt their existence or their
potency. Even the prophet Micah says: "For all the peoples will walk
every one in the name of his god, and we will walk in the name of
Jehovah our God for ever and ever."[9] The later prophets gained the
larger conception of universality; they believed that there was but one
supreme God, and therefore but one religion, to the acceptance of which
all mankind would at last be brought. The narrower conception of
religion as a national or racial interest has, however, prevailed and
still prevails among many peoples. The Hindu religion, which numbers
many millions of votaries, has no expectation of becoming a world
religion. Indeed, it could not well entertain any such expectation; the
system of caste, on which it rests, makes it necessarily exclusive. It
has no missionary impulse; its adherents are content with a good which
they do not seek to share with other peoples. The same thing is true of
many of the minor faiths.

Now it is manifest that religions which do not expect to be universal
are not likely to exceed their own expectations. "According to your
faith be it unto you" is as true of systems as of men. And none of us is
likely to be strongly drawn to a faith which has really no invitation
for us, no matter how stoutly it may maintain its own superiority. No
religion which has only a tribal or racial significance can make any
effective appeal to our credence. The note of universality must be
struck by any religion which claims our suffrages.

There are certain great living religions which make this claim of
universality. Judaism and Parseeism have both entertained this
expectation, but the fewness of their adherents at the present time
indicates that the expecta