was a part. The
religions of China, Islam, Buddha, and Judaea have all been arrested, and
remain unchanged and seemingly unchangeable. Like great vessels anchored
in a stream, the current of time flows past them, and each year they are
further behind the spirit of the age, and less in harmony with its
demands. Christianity alone, of all human religions, seems to possess the
power of keeping abreast with the advancing civilization of the world. As
the child's soul grows with his body, so that when he becomes a man it is
a man's soul and not a child's, so the Gospel of Jesus continues the soul
of all human culture. It continually drops its old forms and takes new
ones. It passed out of its Jewish body under the guidance of Paul. In a
speculative age it unfolded into creeds and systems. In a worshipping age
it developed ceremonies and a ritual. When the fall of Rome left Europe
without unity or centre, it gave it an organization and order through the
Papacy. When the Papacy became a tyranny, and the Renaissance called for
free thought, it suddenly put forth Protestantism, as the tree by the
water-side sends forth its shoots in due season. Protestantism, free as
air, opens out into the various sects, each taking hold of some human
need; Lutheranism, Calvinism, Methodism, Swedenborgianism, or Rationalism.
Christianity blossoms out into modern science, literature, art,--children
who indeed often forget their mother, and are ignorant of their source,
but which are still fed from her breasts and partake of her life.
Christianity, the spirit of faith, hope, and love, is the deep fountain of
modern civilization. Its inventions are for the many, not for the few. Its
science is not hoarded, but diffused. It elevates the masses, who
everywhere else have been trampled down. The friend of the people, it
tends to free schools, a free press, a free government, the abolition of
slavery, war, vice, and the melioration of society. We cannot, indeed,
here _prove_ that Christianity is the cause of these features peculiar to
modern life; but we find it everywhere associated with them, and so we can
say that it only, of all the religions of mankind, has been capable of
accompanying man in his progress from evil to good, from good to better.

We have merely suggested some of the results to which the study of
Comparative Theology may lead us. They will appear more fully as we
proceed in our examination of the religions, and subsequently in their