seems also
to have special religious qualities, which cause it to tend toward some
one kind of religion more than to another kind. These religions are the
flower of the race; they come forth from it as its best aroma. Thus we see
that Brahmanism is confined to that section or race of the great Aryan
family which has occupied India for more than thirty centuries. It belongs
to the Hindoos, to the people taking its name from the Indus, by the
tributaries of which stream it entered India from the northwest. It has
never attempted to extend itself beyond that particular variety of
mankind. Perhaps one hundred and fifty millions of men accept it as their
faith. It has been held by this race as their religion during a period
immense in the history of mankind. Its sacred books are certainly more
than three thousand years old. But during all this time it has never
communicated itself to any race of men outside of the peninsula of India.
It is thus seen to be a strictly ethnic religion, showing neither the
tendency nor the desire to become the religion of mankind.

The same thing may be said of the religion of Confucius. It belongs to
China and the Chinese. It suits their taste and genius. They have had it
as their state religion for some twenty-three hundred years, and it rules
the opinions of the rulers of opinion among three hundred millions of men.
But out of China Confucius is only a name.

So, too, of the system of Zoroaster. It was for a long period the religion
of an Aryan tribe who became the ruling people among mankind. The Persians
extended themselves through Western Asia, and conquered many nations, but
they never communicated their religion. It was strictly a national or
ethnic religion, belonging only to the Iranians and their descendants, the
Parsees.

In like manner it may be said that the religion of Egypt, of Greece, of
Scandinavia, of the Jews, of Islam, and of Buddhism are ethnic religions.
Those of Egypt and Scandinavia are strictly so. It is said, to be sure,
that the Greeks borrowed the names of their gods from Egypt, but the gods
themselves were entirely different ones. It is also true that some of the
gods of the Romans were borrowed from the Greeks, but their life was left
behind. They merely repeated by rote the Greek mythology, having no power
to invent one for themselves. But the Greek religion they never received.
For instead of its fair humanities, the Roman gods were only servants of
the state,-