, or evolution, with
the emphasis placed upon such facts as seemed to comport with this
theory. Meanwhile there has been an air of broad-minded charity in the
manner in which the apologists of Oriental systems have treated the
subject. They have included Christ in the same category with Plato and
Confucius, and have generally placed Him at the head; and this supposed
breadth of sentiment has given them a degree of influence with dubious
and wavering Christians, as well as with multitudes who are without
faith of any kind.

In this country the study of comparative religion has been almost
entirely in the hands of non-evangelical writers. We have had "The Ten
Great Religions," from the pen of Rev. James Freeman Clarke; "The
Oriental Religions," written with great labor by the late Samuel
Johnson; and Mr. Moncure D. Conway's "Anthology," with its flowers,
gathered from the sacred books of all systems, and so chosen as to carry
the implication that they all are equally inspired. Many other works
designed to show that Christianity was developed from ancient sun myths,
or was only a plagiarism upon the old mythologies of India, have been
current among us. But strangely enough, the Christian Church has seemed
to regard this subject as scarcely worthy of serious consideration. With
the exception of a very able work on Buddhism,[1] and several review
articles on Hinduism, written by Professor S.H. Kellogg, very little has
been published from the Christian standpoint.[2] The term "heathenism"
has been used as an expression of contempt, and has been applied with
too little discrimination.

There is a reason, perhaps, why these systems have been underestimated.
It so happened that the races among whom the modern missionary
enterprise has carried on its earlier work were mostly simple types of
pagans, found in the wilds of America, in Greenland and Labrador, in the
West Indies, on the African coast, or in the islands of the Pacific; and
these worshippers of nature or of spirits gave a very different
impression from that which the Apostles and the Early Church gained from
their intercourse with the conquering Romans or the polished and
philosophic Greeks. Our missionary work has been symbolized, as Sir
William W. Hunter puts it, by a band of half-naked savages listening to
a missionary seated under a palm-tree, and receiving his message with
child-like and unquestioning faith.

But in the opening of free access to the great Asiati