CHRISTIANITY THE UNIVERSAL LIGION.
Scholars sometimes claim that there are uni versal religions. znil they mention Christianity. Buddhism, and Mohammedanism. The conscious ness of Christendom eliminates instantly and em phatically the claims of the Buddhist and the Mos lem faiths to universal acceptance, and wise ob servation eliminates than both from any serious regard so far as the future of Christendom is con cerned. They can not make themselves at home in our western world. They have few natural affilia tions with Christendom. They represent either what we have left behind, or what we can never assimilate.
(1) Its Nature. That Christianity is essentially a universal religion is evident from its nature, which must he identified with the mind or person ality of Jesus Christ. It cannot be seriously de nied that He is universal in His character, His purposes, and in II is conquests. There is nothing provincial, local. or merely national about Him. Ile was and is the Son of Man, the Son of I humility, the Representative of all races, nationalities. con.
ditions, and of both sexes. He is the reconcilia tion of all diversities and the consummation of all human possibilities. He is also the Son of God, the realization in human life of the mind of the Eternal, the revelation to man of God's fatherly heart and His redeeming purposes.
(2) Universality. A universal religion must meet universal wants. It must be immediately adapted to the profoundest needs of the human soul. It must he able to redeem human nature from pollution, from guilt, and to so reinvigorate the human spirit as to make it strong in true righteousness, benevolence, and hope. A relig ion like Buddhism, which has mere pity for man's misery and makes no adequate pro vision for the healing of man's sin, and which fails to give man a vital hold of an infinite father ly love, cannot be universal. A system of faith that is not in harmony with the highest ethics, and which exhausts its uplifting and progressive pos sibilities in a brief and limited history, can never become a universal religion. Mohammedanism has shown itself an excellent cure for idolatry and the lower forms of savagery, but it soon leads to a state of intellectual and moral stagnation, and is so fettered by its fundamental creed that it can have no strong affiliations with the hu manities and hopes of modern progressive civiliza tion.
(3) Standard. A survey of the world as it spreads out before us at the present time is a strong evidence that Christianity is rapidly universalizing itself. It has become the stand ard to which other religions are adjusting their teachings. Nothing is more evident than that the progressive minds among the Hindus and Buddhists are endeavoring to make some parts of their creed as Christian as possible. Christianity is already the religion of those who control the destinies of the race, and, however imperfectly the so-called Christian nations are be having in their dealings with the Orient, they con tain within themselves a Life which sharply re bukes their own imperfections, and which fur nishes the ideal to which more and more they must approximate. A universal religion must not leave the sorrowing and troubled and oftimes despairing heart of man in doubt with regard to the Supreme Love which reigns in the heavens and is control ling the destinies of mankind. It must so reveal that love in a human life as to make it a living and perpetual reality. It must provide a standard which can never be outgrown, and furnish mo tives of enduring energy that shall lead men to aspire to live nearer and nearer to that standard.
It must furnish a body of spiritual teaching which has in it so much of God's mind that man cannot outgrow it. It must provide for the satisfaction of human hope and human affection by bringing the assurances of a happy immortality close to the sorrowing and troubled life of the present. I find in Christianity, and in Christianity alone, that which meets all these conditions and needs. I discover that Christ, who is the substance of Christian faith, is exalted more and more before the minds and moral imaginations of men. In a thousand ways He is drawing nations toward Himself. The lines of progress center in Him. He is the inspiration of hope and the object of de sire. The greatest of modern Hindu reformers, Keshub Chunder Sen, saw in Him the world's re conciliation and redemption. When received into the heart, He satisfies the Japanese as truly as the American, the Hindu as perfectly as the Euro pean My conviction that Christianity is yet to become the religion of all nations has been vastly strength ened by what I have seen of the decadent civiliza tions and systems of the Orient. I acknowledge that these Eastern systems still have a strong, though at times a despairing grip over the Asiatic peoples, but they have been put on the defensive; they have come to feel that there is a mighty spiritual power which seeks to replace them with something better. Their natural antipathy to that which comes from the West, and their abhorrence of the sins and crimes of those who represent Christian nations, have still not been able to keep I from them the spiritual and ethical superiorities of the Christian system. There have been such noble examples of Christly living and teaching in the Orient that even non-Christian scholars confess that the highest types of character yet evolved by our race are found among some of the Christian missionaries in the Orient. I do not look for the speedy disintegration of these ancient systems ; I do look for a wiser approach on the part of Christianity toward the representatives of Hindu ism, Buddhism, and Islam. Christendom itself is so furrowed with imperfection and weakened by discord that it hardly seems worthy to secure any sudden and very rapid dominion in Asia; but the dawn of a better Christendom means the dawn of Christian civilization in Asia and throughout the world.
The feeling of a universal human brotherhood is entering the heart of humanity, and this has a distinctively Christian origin. Fraternity is the key to the solution of the social and ecclesiastical problems of Europe and America; and just so far as the spirit of true brotherhood enters the Hindu, Chinese, and Japanese mind, just so far will some of the peculiar creeds or dispositions of the Orien tal spirit be sloughed off. There is no trueprogress possible to the Hindu and Chinese civilizations without a new standard of womanhood, and a new conception of the unity, personality, righteousness, and love of God. These can be derived only from a pure Christianity. It deserves world-wide ac ceptance, and therefore will ultimately secure it. It is the only religion which from first to last shows us God seeking with loving and redemptive purpose after man,instead of man groping through mists of error, through weary centuries, after the unknown God. Christianity is the religion of re demption, of intellectual freedom, of popular liber ty, of unending progress, of world-wide hope, and therefore it will be universal. J. H. B.