from it its Jewish shell, told them that as Christians they had nothing to
do with the Jewish law, or with Jewish Passovers, Sabbaths, or ceremonies.
As Christians they were only to know Christ, and they were not to know
him according to the flesh, that is, not as a Jew. So Christianity became
at once a catholic religion, consisting in the diffusion of great truths
and a divine life. It overflowed the nationalities of Greece and Rome, of
North Africa, of Persia and Western Asia, at the very beginning. It
conquered the Gothic and German conquerors of the Roman Empire. Under
Arian missionaries, it converted Goths, Vandals, Lombards. Under Nestorian
missionaries, it penetrated as far east as China, and made converts there.
In like manner the Gospel spread over the whole of North Africa, whence it
was afterwards expelled by the power of Islam. It has shown itself,
therefore, capable of adapting itself to every variety of the human race.



§ 7. Comparative Theology will probably show that the Ethnic Religions are
one-sided, each containing a Truth of its own, but being defective,
wanting some corresponding Truth. Christianity, or the Catholic Religion,
is complete on every Side.


Brahmanism, for example, is complete on the side of spirit, defective on
the side of matter; full as regards the infinite, empty of the finite;
recognizing eternity but not time, God but not nature. It is a vast system
of spiritual pantheism, in which there is no reality but God, all else
being Maya, or illusion. The Hindoo mind is singularly pious, but also
singularly immoral. It has no history, for history belongs to time. No one
knows when its sacred books were written, when its civilization began,
what caused its progress, what its decline. Gentle, devout, abstract, it