The comparative study of other religions, so far from being prejudicial to the claims of Christianity, will be helpful in establishing its sublime pre-eminence among them, and in enabling us to discharge to their adherents the duty which its Founder has imposed upon us. It may modify considerably our theology, but it will strengthen our fundamental beliefs. As a general rule, we may assert that the strength of a man’s faith will be found to be in direct proportion to his knowledge of the everlasting and unchangeable laws by which the universe is governed. It is our theology alone that is assailed, and we are learning that theology, as a system of reasoning upon materials furnished not only by religion itself, but also by some other “ologies,” must be based on other and higher authority than that of an infallible Council, or that of a chapter whose significance was supposed to be unalterably fixed two or three thousand years ago. The religion which revolted against the assumption of the Scribe in our Lord’s day, and which disallowed the claim of the Pope some three centuries ago to be the sole interpreters of revelation, is not only testing the authenticity of the texts to which the appeal was then made, but is inquiring into their actual significance by collating them with the truths of another revelation as divine. It is not that men want to get rid of dogma, for dogma of some kind there must ever be. There will always be a vast deal which we must believe, because there is much that can only thus be known; but a satisfactory dogmatic foundation must henceforth be sought in facts anterior to any scriptures, or to any church that would interpret them, viz., in the elemental necessities and aspirations of our common human nature. It has been wisely said that “the theology which fails to meet the demands of the whole man is simply doomed.”[6] What is wanted therefore for theology is some broad and solid basis, to be laid by analysing, comparing, and co-ordinating all religious beliefs within our reach. In each of them we may hope to find some truth—it may be very feebly and very partially expressed—of no more value by itself than a flake of gold found in an immense drift of sand or mass of quartz, but yet of immense value as indicating the source from which it came and the substance to which it claims affinity. All separate and imperfect truths point towards some higher truth which will unite and fulfil and interpret them. And so every religion, however erroneous it may be, is prophetic—because found in a humanity that is essentially one—of a universal religion, a faith which is not just one of the faiths of the nations, but is the divine answer, unchanged and inexhaustible, to all the aspirations of mankind. The study of other religions therefore, even of those of the most degraded peoples, and of those most contradictory of our own, is as binding upon us as is the study of our Bibles. For us