ot themselves assailed, very tolerant, and did the civil thing by
all other gods of all other nations, and were even content to expire
with great propriety (they usually did so) with the political
extinction of the race of their votaries! Christianity alone adopts
a different tone,--"Go ye, and preach the Gospel to all nations."--and
declares, not only that it will reign, but that none other shall. It
will not endure a rival; it will not consent to have a statue with
the mob of the Pantheon. Whether this ambition--call it pride and folly,
if you will, as you well may if the thing be merely human--was likely
to suggest itself to man, considering the local and national character
of other religions, and the apparent hopelessness of any such enterprise,
I have my doubts. Arrogance it may be; but it is not such arrogance as
is very natural to man.

These, I said, were amongst a few of the things in which I must say I
thought the theory of Christianity very unlike that of any religion
human nature was likely to invent.

If, I continued, I examine the past history and present position of
Christianity, with an impartial eye, I see that it presents in several
most important respects a contrast with other religions in point office.
I shall content myself with enumerating a few. Look, then, at the
perpetual spirit of aggression which characterizes this religion;
its undeniable power (in whatever it consists, and from whatever it
springs) to prompt those who hold it to render it victorious,--a spirit
which has more or less characterized its whole history: which still
lives, even in its most corrupt forms, and which has not been least
active in our own time. I do not see any thing like it in other religions.
Till I see Mollahs from Ispahan, Brahmins from Benares, Bonzes from
China, preaching their systems of religion in London, Paris, and Berlin,
supported year after year by an enormous expenditure on the part of
their zealous compatriots, and the nations who support them taking
the liveliest interest in their success or failure, till I see this
(call it fanatical if you will, the money thus expended wasted, the
men who give it fools), I shall not be able to pronounce Christianity
simply on a par with other religions.

Till the sacred books of other religions can boast of at least a
hundredth part of the same efforts to translate and diffuse them as
have been concentrated on the Bible; till we find them in at least
half as many l