low--happiness may be enjoyed
even with these; but without virtue, both riches and honor seem to me
like the passing cloud.... Our passions shut up the door of our souls
against God."

What we are pleased to call "the golden rule," and to look upon as
purely Christian, he gave in these words 500 years before Christ was
born: "Tsze-kung said, '_What I do not wish men to do to me, I also wish
not to do to men._' The Master said, 'You have not attained to that.'

"Such is the power of words, that those uttered by this intensely
earnest man, whose work was ended only by death, have kept alive
throughout the vast empire of China a reverence for the past _and a
sense of duty to the present which_ have made the Chinese the most
orderly and moral people in the world."

So much for the great religions that are older than our own and _could
not have_ borrowed from us. So much for the moral sentiments of the
peoples who developed them, and who live and die happy with them to-day.
It leaves only a small part of this globe and a comparatively small
number of its inhabitants who believe in and are guided by the Bible, or
by the morality which has grown side-by-side with it.

But there is one other great religion which is of interest to us: *

* See Appendix R.

"And the value of Islam, the youngest of the great religions, is that
we are able to see how its first simple form became overlaid with legend
and foolish superstition, and thus learn how, in like manner, myth and
fable have grown around more ancient religions [and around our own].

"For example; although Mohammed came into the world like other children,
wonderful things are said to have taken place at his birth.

"He never claimed to be a perfect man; he did not pretend to foretell
events or to work miracles.

"In spite of all this, his followers said of him, while he was yet
living, that he worked wonders, and they believed the golden vision,
hinted at in Koran, to have been a real event, although Mohammed said
over and over again that it was but a dream.

"This religion is the guide in life and the support in death of _one
hundred and fifty millions of our fellow creatures_; like Christianity,
it has its missionaries scattered over the globe, and offers itself as a
faith needed by all men.

"The success of Islam was great. Not one hundred years after the death
of the prophet, it had converted half the then known world, and its
green flag waved from China t