Everywhere men had been able to find in the universe, or within themselves—and in Indian thought the two are ultimately one— that which answered their needs and called forth their best. Osiris and Marduk were effective gods in Egypt and Babylonia ; and in Krishna, it has been said, every Indian ideal, instinct and conviction found sanction and embodiment. Even among rudi mentary religions the totems, ancestral deities and friendly spirits can be the mainstay of the social life. Throughout there are to be found fundamental resemblances. But the differences are no less fundamental, owing to the way in which the primary beliefs and ideas are shaped. There are typical needs and universal difficulties, but the closer the parallels the more significant do differences become—of this a careful comparison of treatment of the person of founders of religions affords many interesting examples. It was during the middle of the Ist millenium B.C. that there arose religions addressing themselves to individuals; but Christianity differs from Zoroastrianism and Buddhism, and also from the religion of Mohammed, by its organic connection with its Jewish environment. It carried on and "fulfilled" the great essential ideas of the parent religion. Israel had been conscious of a peculiarly intimate personal relationship with its God. The majesty and might of the Deity meant both the insignificance of the individual, but also the glory and the mission of one who had such a God as his own. Great ideas were hammered out and tested through centuries of hard and strenuous history, and from the first Christianity felt that the religion of Israel had now reached its culminating point, and that the Israel of old was replaced by the Christian body, the body of Christ.
The efforts to preserve unchanged the teaching of a Founder or to develop its essential character can be followed in the history of religions. The rapid growth of legends and miracles, and the necessity for forming a "canonical" history can be seen most recently in the rise of Babiism (q.v.). Moreover, the extraordi nary development of Buddhism from an ethical brotherhood to an elaborate religion is "a radical transformation . . . comparable
to that which out of the religion of Jesus made Catholic Christian ity" (G. F. Moore). It illustrates the effort to adapt a new re ligion to the most diverse needs. In this process the transition from the male Avalokiteshvara to Kwan-yin (Kwan-non) the "goddess of mercy" of the Far East reflects the demand for Divine female attributes, even as in the Near East, the great mother-goddesses continued to survive in the Virgin Mother. To satisfy popular needs a religion has often moved away from the plain life and teaching of its Founder; and whereas Jesus himself repudiated the suggestion that he should prove his greatness by working marvels (cf. Mark viii. I i seq., also the Temptation), popular religion, by demanding tangible and physical proofs of his uniqueness (e.g., the Virgin birth), diverted attention from that which really made him unique. But already, earlier, in Israel, the prohibition to put God to the test (Deut. vi. 16) had to contend with popular stories oi the proofs and signs of Yahweh's might, or of his readiness or ability to fulfil his word. (Cf. Abra ham, Gen. xv. 8; Moses, Ex. iii. seq.; Gideon, Judges vi. ; Heze kiah, 2 Ki. xviii.) Religions tend to undergo some weakening of their earlier spiritual value. (Cf. Christ as a wonder-worker, or as merely an ethical teacher, or a social reformer.) But from time to time there are demands for a return to what is felt to be fundamental and essential, and the "return" can be an "advance" with an enrichment of spiritual meaning. The Fourth Gospel is a striking example of the way in which a reinterpretation, after the lapse of some decades, has been felt to be so true that the four Gospels have seemed to be a single unit even as the whole book of Isaiah, the whole Old Testament and the whole Bible have been felt by many to be single organic units, and not the highly composite works that they are. On the other hand, the return to the past illustrated in the antiquarianism of Babylonia and of Egypt, and later of the unsuccessful Sassanian revival proves that an old system must be adjusted to later conditions if it is to endure.