Ten Great Religions | Page 4

anything worthy of notice. Mrs.
Lydia Maria Child's work on the "Progress of Religious Ideas" deserves
the greatest credit, when we consider the time when it was written and
the few sources of information then accessible.[2] Twenty-five years
ago it was hardly possible to procure any adequate information
concerning Brahmanism, Buddhism, or the religions of Confucius,
Zoroaster, and Mohammed. Hardly any part of the Vedas had been

translated into a European language. The works of Anquetil du Perron
and Kleuker were still the highest authority upon the Zendavesta.
About the Buddhists scarcely anything was known. But now, though
many important _lacunæ_ remain to be filled, we have ample means of
ascertaining the essential facts concerning most of these movements of
the human soul. The time seems to have come to accomplish something
which may have a lasting value.

§ 3. Ethnic Religions. Injustice often done to them by Christian
Apologists.
Comparative Theology, pursuing its impartial course as a positive
science, will avoid the error into which most of the Christian apologists
of the last century fell, in speaking of ethnic or heathen religions. In
order to show the need of Christianity, they thought it necessary to
disparage all other religions. Accordingly they have insisted that, while
the Jewish and Christian religions were revealed, all other religions
were invented; that, while these were from God, those were the work of
man; that, while in the true religions there was nothing false, in the
false religions there was nothing true. If any trace of truth was to be
found in Polytheism, it was so mixed with error as to be practically
only evil. As the doctrines of heathen religions were corrupt, so their
worship was only a debasing superstition. Their influence was to make
men worse, not better; their tendency was to produce sensuality, cruelty,
and universal degradation. They did not proceed, in any sense, from
God; they were not even the work of good men, but rather of deliberate
imposition and priestcraft. A supernatural religion had become
necessary in order to counteract the fatal consequences of these
debased and debasing superstitions. This is the view of the great natural
religions of the world which was taken by such writers as Leland,
Whitby, and Warburton in the last century. Even liberal thinkers, like
James Foster[3] and John Locke,[4] declare that, at the coming of
Christ, mankind had fallen into utter darkness, and that vice and
superstition filled the world. Infidel no less than Christian writers took
the same disparaging view of natural religions. They considered them,
in their source, the work of fraud; in their essence, corrupt superstitions;

in their doctrines, wholly false; in their moral tendency, absolutely
injurious; and in their result, degenerating more and more into greater
evil.
A few writers, like Cudworth and the Platonists, endeavored to put in a
good word for the Greek philosophers, but the religions of the world
were abandoned to unmitigated reprobation. The account which so
candid a writer as Mosheim gives of them is worth noticing, on account
of its sweeping character. "All the nations of the world," he says,
"except the Jews, were plunged in the grossest superstition. Some
nations, indeed, went beyond others in impiety and absurdity, but all
stood charged with irrationality and gross stupidity in matters of
religion." "The greater part of the gods of all nations were ancient
heroes, famous for their achievements and their worthy deeds, such as
kings, generals, and founders of cities." "To these some added the more
splendid and useful objects in the natural world, as the sun, moon, and
stars; and some were not ashamed to pay divine honors to mountains,
rivers, trees, etc." "The worship of these deities consisted in ceremonies,
sacrifices, and prayers. The ceremonies were, for the most part, absurd
and ridiculous, and throughout debasing, obscene, and cruel. The
prayers were truly insipid and void of piety, both in their form and
matter." "The priests who presided over this worship basely abused
their authority to impose on the people." "The whole pagan system had
not the least efficacy to produce and cherish virtuous emotions in the
soul; because the gods and goddesses were patterns of vice, the priests
bad men, and the doctrines false."[5]
This view of heathen religions is probably much exaggerated. They
must contain more truth than error, and must have been, on the whole,
useful to mankind. We do not believe that they originated in human
fraud, that their essence is superstition, that there is more falsehood
than truth in their doctrines, that their moral tendency is mainly
injurious, or that they continually degenerate into greater evil. No doubt
it may be justly predicated of all these systems that they contain much
which is false and injurious to human virtue. But the following
considerations may tend to show