er, F. C. Baur, Renan, Creuzer, Maurice, G.
W. Cox, and others.

In America, except Mr. Alger's admirable monograph on the "Doctrine of the
Future Life," we have scarcely anything worthy of notice. Mrs. Lydia Maria
Child's work on the "Progress of Religious Ideas" deserves the greatest
credit, when we consider the time when it was written and the few sources
of information then accessible.[2] Twenty-five years ago it was hardly
possible to procure any adequate information concerning Brahmanism,
Buddhism, or the religions of Confucius, Zoroaster, and Mohammed. Hardly
any part of the Vedas had been translated into a European language. The
works of Anquetil du Perron and Kleuker were still the highest authority
upon the Zendavesta. About the Buddhists scarcely anything was known. But
now, though many important _lacunae_ remain to be filled, we have ample
means of ascertaining the essential facts concerning most of these
movements of the human soul. The time seems to have come to accomplish
something which may have a lasting value.

Sec. 3. Ethnic Religions. Injustice often done to them by Christian
Apologists.

Comparative Theology, pursuing its impartial course as a positive science,
will avoid the error into which most of the Christian apologists of the
last century fell, in speaking of ethnic or heathen religions. In order to
show the need of Christianity, they thought it necessary to disparage all
other religions. Accordingly they have insisted that, while the Jewish and
Christian religions were revealed, all other religions were invented;
that, while these were from God, those were the work of man; that, while
in the true religions there was nothing false, in the false religions
there was nothing true. If any trace of truth was to be found in
Polytheism, it was so mixed with error as to be practically only evil. As
the doctrines of heathen religions were corrupt, so their worship was only
a debasing superstition. Their influence was to make men worse, not
better; their tendency was to produce sensuality, cruelty, and universal
degradation. They did not proceed, in any sense, from God; they were not
even the work of good men, but rather of deliberate imposition and
priestcraft. A supernatural religion had become necessary in order to
counteract the fatal consequences of these debased and debasing
superstitions. This is the view of the great natural religions of the
world which was taken by such writers as Lelan