also was in reality an ethnic religion, though it aimed at catholicity and
expected it, and made proselytes. But it could not tolerate unessentials,
and so failed of becoming catholic. The Jewish religion, until it had
Christianity to help it, was never able to do more than make proselytes
here and there. Christianity, while preaching the doctrines of Jesus and
the New Testament, has been able to carry also the weight of the Old
Testament, and to give a certain catholicity to Judaism. The religion of
Mohammed has been catholic, in that it has become the religion of very
different races,--the Arabs, Turks, and Persians, belonging to the three
great varieties of the human family. But then Mohammedanism has never
sought to make _converts_, but only _subjects;_ it has not asked for
belief, but merely for submission. Consequently Mr. Palgrave, Mr. Lane,
and Mr. Vambery tell us, that, in Arabia, Egypt, and Turkistan, there are
multitudes who are outwardly Mohammedan, but who in their private belief
reject Mohammed, and are really Pagans. But, no doubt, there is a catholic
tendency both in Judaism and Mohammedanism; and this comes from the great
doctrine which they hold in common with Christianity,--the _unity of God_.
Faith in that is the basis of all expectation of a universal religion, and
the wish and the power to convert others come from that doctrine of the
Divine unity.

* * * * *

But Christianity teaches the unity of God not merely as a supremacy of
power and will, but as a supremacy of love and wisdom; it teaches God as
Father, and not merely as King; so it seeks not merely to make proselytes
and subjects, but to make converts. Hence Christianity, beginning as a
Semitic religion, among the Jews, went across the Greek Archipelago and
converted the Hellenic and the Latin races; afterward the Goths,
Lombards, Franks, Vandals; later still, the Saxons, Danes, and Normans.