1. All the great religions of the world, except Christianity and
Mohammedanism, are ethnic religions, or religions limited to a single
nation or race. Christianity alone (including Mohammedanism and Judaism,
which are its temporary and local forms) is the religion of all races.

2. Every ethnic religion has its positive and negative side. Its positive
side is that which holds some vital truth; its negative side is the
absence of some other essential truth. Every such religion is true and
providential, but each limited and imperfect.

3. Christianity alone is a πλήρωμα, or a fulness of truth, not coming to
destroy but to fulfil the previous religions; but being capable of
replacing them by teaching all the truth they have taught, and supplying
that which they have omitted.

4. Christianity, being not a system but a life, not a creed or a form, but
a spirit, is able to meet all the changing wants of an advancing
civilization by new developments and adaptations, constantly feeding the
life of man at its roots by fresh supplies of faith in God and faith in
man.




Chapter II.

Confucius and the Chinese, or the Prose of Asia.