The great danger to Christianity to-day, from the side of other religions, is not that of persecution or the hostility of the state. The danger lies in the temptation to compromise. Let Christianity, it is said, lay aside its assumption of divine and exclusive authority and of infinite superiority to all other religions, and let it make in its ethics some concessions to the weakness of human nature, and the path to world-conquest will be open. Never was the temptation to compromise, with Judaism on the one hand and heathenism on the other, stronger than it was in the early ages of the Christian Church. If Christianity had compromised in the time of Jesus and Paul, persecution would have ceased and the scandal of the cross would have been removed. If early Christianity had compromised with heathenism, and had not waged unrelenting warfare upon idolatry, it could have escaped the united hostility of the state and of the other religions and philosophies; on the other hand, if Christianity had come to terms with Judaism or Paganism, while it might perhaps be known historically as an obscure Jewish sect, or as a ripple upon the wave of oriental religious influence upon the Græco-Roman world, it would never have been the mighty spiritual power that it has been in human society. It is a mistake to-day to think that for Christianity the way of conquest is the way of compromise, and that Christianity can become a world religion, superseding all others, by laying aside its distinctive features and its exalted and exclusive claims. It would, indeed, be a mistake to import our doctrinal systems in all their controversial details into the heathen world, and the mystical oriental mind may easily clothe Christianity, itself an oriental religion, in new and more beautiful forms; but it would be, if possible, a greater mistake to attempt to substitute ethics or natural religion for doctrinal Christianity. The rock of Islam will not yield to the preaching of a merely human and prophetic Jesus; nor will the preaching of the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of man--the same message which the Swamis and Babists, with a more pantheistic content to their message, preach in England and America--be effective to overthrow the hoary superstitions of India and the caste system with its hold upon every fibre of human nature.