Theological Essays and Other Papers, vol 1 | Page 5

was a true
religion; nor will he at all infer, from your religion being true, that his
own must be false. Both are true, he thinks: all religions are true; all
gods are true gods; and all are equally true. Neither can he understand
what you mean by a false religion, or how a religion could be false; and
he is perfectly right. Wherever religions consist only of a worship, as
the Hindoo religion does, there can be no competition amongst them as

to truth. That would be an absurdity, not less nor other than it would be
for a Prussian to denounce the Austrian emperor, or an Austrian to
denounce the Prussian king, as a false sovereign. False! How false? In
what sense false? Surely not as non-existing. But at least, (the reader
will reply,) if the religions contradict each other, one of them must be
false. Yes; but that is impossible. Two religions cannot contradict each
other, where both contain only a _cultus_: they could come into
collision only by means of a doctrinal, or directly affirmative part, like
those of Christianity and Mahometanism. But this part is what no
idolatrous religion ever had, or will have. The reader must not
understand me to mean that, merely as a compromise of courtesy, two
professors of different idolatries would agree to recognise each other.
Not at all. The truth of one does not imply the falsehood of the other.
Both are true as _facts:_ neither can be false, in any higher sense,
because neither makes any pretence to truth doctrinal.
This distinction between a religion having merely a worship, and a
religion having also a body of doctrinal truth, is familiar to the
Mahometans; and they convey the distinction by a very appropriate
expression. Those majestic religions, (as they esteem them,) which rise
above the mere pomps and tympanies of ceremonial worship, they
denominate 'religions of the book.' There are, of such religions, three,
viz., Judaism, Christianity, and Islamism. The first builds upon the Law
and the Prophets; or, perhaps, sufficiently upon the Pentateuch; the
second upon the Gospel; the last upon the Koran. No other religion can
be said to rest upon a book; or to need a book; or even to admit of a
book. For we must not be duped by the case where a lawgiver attempts
to connect his own human institutes with the venerable sanctions of a
national religion, or the case where a learned antiquary unfolds
historically the record of a vast mythology. Heaps of such cases, (both
law and mythological records,) survive in the Sanscrit, and in other
pagan languages. But these are books which build upon the religion,
not books upon which the religion is built. If a religion consists only of
a ceremonial worship, in that case there can be no opening for a book;
because the forms and details publish themselves daily, in the
celebration of the worship, and are traditionally preserved, from age to
age, without dependence on a book. But, if a religion has a doctrine,
this implies a revelation or message from Heaven, which cannot, in any

other way, secure the transmission of this message to future generations,
than by causing it to be registered in a book. A book, therefore, will be
convertible with a doctrinal religion:--no book, no doctrine; and, again,
no doctrine, no book.
Upon these principles, we may understand that second consequence
(marked β) which has perplexed many men, viz., why it is that the
Hindoos, in our own times; but, equally, why it is that the Greek and
Roman idolaters of antiquity, never proselytized; no, nor could have
viewed such an attempt as rational. Naturally, if a religion is doctrinal,
any truth which it possesses, as a secret deposit consigned to its
keeping by a revelation, must be equally valid for one man as for
another, without regard to race or nation. For a doctrinal religion,
therefore, to proselytize, is no more than a duty of consistent humanity.
You, the professors of that religion, possess the medicinal fountains.
You will not diminish your own share by imparting to others. What
churlishness, if you should grudge to others a health which does not
interfere with your own! Christians, therefore, Mahometans, and Jews
originally, in proportion as they were sincere and conscientious, have
always invited, or even forced, the unbelieving to their own faith:
nothing but accidents of situation, local or political, have disturbed'this
effort. But, on the other hand, for a mere '_cultus_' to attempt
conversions, is nonsense. An ancient Roman could have had no motive
for bringing you over to the worship of Jupiter Capitolinus; nor you any
motive for going. 'Surely, poor man,' he would have said, 'you have,
some god of your own, who will be quite as good for your