. Really,
those are in danger who receive only the superficial and misleading
representations of heathenism which one is sure to meet in our magazine
literature, or in works like "Robert Elsmere" and "The Light of Asia."

One cannot fail to mark the different light in which we view the
mythologies of the Greeks and Romans. If their religious beliefs and
speculations had remained a secret until our time, if the high ethical
precepts of Seneca and Marcus Aurelius had only now been proclaimed, and
Socrates had just been celebrated in glowing verse as the "Light of
Greece," there would be no little commotion in the religious world, and
thousands with only weak and troubled faith might be disturbed. But
simply because we thoroughly understand the mythology of Greece and
Rome, we have no fear. We welcome all that it can teach us. We cordially
acknowledge the virtues of Socrates and assign him his true place. We
enrich the fancy and awaken the intellectual energies of our youth by
classical studies, and Christianity shines forth with new lustre by
contrast with the heathen systems which it encountered in the Roman
Empire ages ago.

And yet that was no easy conquest. The early church, when brought face
to face with the culture of Greece and the self-assertion of Roman
power, when confronted with profound philosophies like those of Plato
and Aristotle, with the subtleties of the Stoics, and with countless
admixtures of Persian mysticism, had, humanly speaking, quite as
formidable a task as those that are presented in the heathen systems of
to-day. Very few of the champions of modern heathenism can compare with
Celsus, and there are no more subtle philosophies than those of ancient
Greece. Evidently, the one thing needed to disenchant the false systems
of our time is a clear and accurate knowledge of their merits and
demerits, and of their true relation to Christianity.

It will be of advantage, for one thing, if we learn to give credit to
the non-Christian religions for the good which they may fairly claim.
There has existed a feeling that they had no rights which Christian men
were bound to respect. They have been looked upon as systems of unmixed
evil, whose enormities it were impossible to exaggerate. And all such
misconceptions and exaggerations have only led to serious reactions.
Anti-Christian writers have made great capital of the alleged
misrepresentations which zealous friends of missions have put upon
heathenism; an