In the consideration of the Jewish religion and its descendants, Christianity and Mohammedanism, we are face to face with the most warlike and combative monotheism which history has recorded. In the earlier form, and as in the Hebrew worship of to-day, Jehovah shares his authority with no one--in the Christian system, God and Christ are equally powerful, while with Islam it would seem that Mahomet had slightly the balance of power, notwithstanding the oft-repeated declaration that "there is no God but Allah." Here we have the idea of a chosen people of God carried to its logical conclusion; the jealousy of Jehovah being in no wise an efficient operative cause for the terrible butcheries of men, women, and children, such as we have described in the Old Testament, as having befallen the enemies of the Hebrews when they were victorious. This wild and fanatical worship of a suspicious and revengeful God, although it called for the waging of countless wars upon his supposed orders, and even for the immolation upon the sacrificial altar of one's own children; yet it did not promise, until the rise of the Pharisees into potent influence; the pleasure of a personal immortality for his followers, or the punishment by endless torture for his non-adherents. The effect of the selfish idea of God-ownership we see inherited by Christianity with the ancient heredity qualification changed to one of faith. There can be no question that the historical Christ was, perhaps, next to Buddha, the greatest religious reformer whom the world has known, if we accept as a criterion the number of individuals affected, and the nature of their work. As the enunciator of a system of ethics, it is impossible to see how the Jew could be regarded as the equal of the Indian; although no estimate of Christ can be consistently formed from the St. James version of the Bible, owing to the many and important interpolations of recent church enthusiasts. The plan of vicarious atonement is one of the most immoral doctrines of which the world has a record, and the contempt for woman which the Hebrew shows is not equalled by Buddha, although he, too, was filled with that eastern asceticism which looked with disdain upon intersexual affection. The narrowness and bigotry which can regard an omnipresent and omniscient deity as working for the benefit of but a few followers as against the great proportion of human beings who have passed through an earthly existence entirely in ignorance of Him, and who, on account of this, have to suffer eternal torture, has been responsible for no less than ten million murders in the name of Christ alone, to say nothing of the numberless victims of war and famine who have perished as a result of the insatiable thirst of Jehovah, Christ, and Mahomet for more influence in terrestrial affairs and an augmentation of adherents. The code of ethics prescribed by the Jewish régime was good--far in advance of that of the greater portion of their neighbors.