ions, which are the only
pure monotheistic religions, are at the same time the only religions which
have any claim to catholicity. Buddhism, though the religion of numerous
nations, seems to be the religion of only one race, namely, the Turanic
race, or Mongols. The people of India who remain Buddhists, the Singalese,
or inhabitants of Ceylon, belong to the aboriginal Tamul, or Mongol race.
With this exception then (which is no exception, as far as we know the
ethnology of Eastern Asia), the only religions which aim at Catholicism
are these three, which are also the only monotheistic religions. Judaism
aimed at catholicity and hoped for it. It had an instinct of universality,
as appeared in its numerous attempts at making proselytes of other
nations. It failed of catholicity when it refused to accept as its Christ
the man who had risen above its national limitations, and who considered
Roman tax-gatherers and Samaritans as already prepared to enter the
kingdom of the Messiah. The Jews required all their converts to become
Jews, and in doing this left the catholic ground. Christianity in the
mouth of Paul, who alone fully seized the true idea of his Master, said,
"Circumcision availeth nothing, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature."
In other words, he declared that it was _not_ necessary to become a Jew in
order to be a Christian.

The Jewish mind, so far forth as it was monotheistic, aimed at
catholicity. The unity of God carries with it, logically, the unity of
man. From one God as spirit we infer one human family. So Paul taught at
Athens. "God that made the world and all things therein, ... hath made of
one blood all races of men to dwell on all the face of the earth."

But the Jews, though catholic as monotheists, and as worshipping a
spiritual God, were limited by their ritual and their intense national
bigotry. Hereditary and ancestral pride separated them, and still separate
them, from the rest of mankind. "_We have Abraham to our Father_" is the
talisman which has kept them together, but kept them from union with
others.

Christianity and Mohammedanism, therefore, remain the only two really
catholic religions. Each has overpassed all the boundaries of race.
Christianity, beginning among the Jews, a Semitic people, passed into
Europe, and has become the religion of Greeks, Romans, Kelts, Germans, and
the Slavic races of Russia, and has not found it impossible to convert the
Africans, the Mongols, and the Amer