claim and utilise all the truth God’s Spirit had spoken in ages past. “Siquis vera loquitur, prior est quam ipse veritas? O Homo, attende Christum, non quando ad te venerit, sed quando te fecerit.”[60] The more of Christian doctrine and ethics we find in other religions, the more Divine will Christianity appear. There is not a truth which has verified and sustained any other religion which is not found in Christianity, in fuller amount and in clearer form. Christianity differs from all other religions, not because it is a purer system of moral truth, but because it is the manifestation of a Divine life, and because in that life it reveals the _power_ which alone can reconcile the knowing with the doing of duty. It professes only to have one original, one distinctive element; but how much is involved in that profession? for this original is Christ Himself, and all its doctrines and precepts are vital only because of their connection with Christ. Whole libraries of moral and doctrinal anthologies would not make up for the obliteration of His likeness from the religious consciousness of the world: “It would be like consoling ourselves for the loss of the sun by the kindling of ten thousand artificial lamps.”[61] He confronts the ages, as the One to whom all religions point, of whom all true prophets of the human race have unconsciously testified. They, like the Founder of this great religion, whose alleged resemblances will be found, as we examine them, to be rather point-blank contradictions and contrasts to the Christian doctrines and story, may have indeed been burning and shining lights, and men were willing for a season to rejoice in their light. They were “not that Light,” but as voices crying in the night for its arising they came to “bear witness of it”: the Light not of Asia only, nor yet only of Europe, but the “Light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.” Footnote 1: _Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung_, Pref. xiii. Footnote 2: Professor Max Müller, Gifford Lectures for 1888, on _Natural Religion_, p. 11. Footnote 3: T. W. Rhys Davids, Hibbert Lectures, 1881, “On the Origin and Growth of Religion as illustrated by some points in the History of Indian Buddhism,” p. 10. Footnote 4: Max Müller, _Introduction to the Science of Religion_, p. 38. Footnote 5: John v. 39. Footnote 6: Baring Gould, _Origin and Development of Religious Belief_, vol. i. p. 121. Footnote 7: Westcott, _Victory of the Cross_, pp. 3, 6. Footnote 8: