cience and the understanding, and these truths
have found expression in the proverbs or ethical maxims of all races. To
this extent God has nowhere left himself without witness. But all this
is quite apart from a divinely revealed religion which may be cherished
or be wholly lost. The golden rule is found not only in the New
Testament, but negatively at least in the Confucian classics;[16] and
the Shastras of the Hindus present it in both the positive and the
negative form. And the still higher grace of doing good to those who
injure us, was proclaimed by Laotze, five hundred years before Christ
preached the Sermon on the Mount.

The immense superiority of the ethical standard in Christianity, lies in
its harmony and completeness. Confucius taught the active virtues of
life, Laotze those of a passive kind; Christianity inculcates both. In
heathenism ethical truths exist in fragments--mere half truths, like the
broken and scattered remains of a temple once beautiful but now
destroyed. They hold no relation to any high religious purpose, because
they have no intelligent relation to God. Christian ethics begin with
our relations to God as supreme, and they embrace the present life and
the world to come. The symmetry of the divine precept, "Thou shalt love
the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and thy neighbor as thyself," finds
no counterpart in the false religions of the world. Nowhere else, not
even in Buddhism, is found the perfect law of love. The great secret of
power in Christianity is God's unspeakable love to men in Christ; and
the reflex of that love is the highest and purest ever realized in human
hearts.

Thirdly, the false systems should be studied by the Christian
missionary, not for their own sakes so much as for an ulterior purpose,
and they should be studied in constant comparison with the religion
which it is his business to proclaim. His aim is not that of a savant.
Let us not disguise it: he is mainly endeavoring to gain a more thorough
preparation for his own great work. The professional scholar at Oxford
or Leipsic might condemn this acknowledged bias--this pursuit of truth
as a means and not as an end--but if he would be entirely frank, he
would often find himself working in the interest of a linguistic
theory, or a pet hypothesis of social science. It was in this spirit
that Spencer and Darwin have searched the world for facts to support
their systems.[17]

I repeat, it is enough for the missionary