Copyright, 1899,
By Eliot C. Clarke.




To
William Heney Channing,
My Friend and Fellow-Student
During Many Years,
This Work
Is Affectionately Inscribed.




Preface.



The first six chapters of the present volume are composed from six
articles prepared for the Atlantic Monthly, and published in that magazine
in 1868. They attracted quite as much attention as the writer anticipated,
and this has induced him to enlarge them, and add other chapters. His aim
is to enable the reader to become acquainted with the doctrines and
customs of the principal religions of the world, without having to consult
numerous volumes. He has not come to the task without some preparation,
for it is more than twenty-five years since he first made of this study a
speciality. In this volume it is attempted to give the latest results of
modern investigations, so far as any definite and trustworthy facts have