A man may have lived many a year in the East, and witnessed there, with deep appreciation, the purity, the endurance, the touching self-denial of the devout peasantry, and the beautiful charity of the poor towards the poor; or he may have associated with saintly ascetics in India, and with the yellow-robed and gentle _religieux_ of Ceylon; he may have surveyed the famous temple of that fair island, in the intense stillness of a tropical night, till all identity of self seemed to vanish in the solemnity of the surroundings, and the only sound was that of a monk's intoning voice heard from within the dungeon-like apertures of the building, and the only light that of the fitful fireflies amid the lofty and drooping foliage;--yet, in each and all of these experiences, that aroma of holiness, so perceptible at times in our own religious atmosphere, would somehow seem strangely absent to the unacclimatized senses, and no halo would be distinguishable by a vision which had been restricted by prejudice. Still more difficult is it to rise to the same height of reverence for a saintly and surpassing personality if it is presented in sacred records other than those to which one has owned a prior allegiance. Nevertheless, the discovery in other religious systems of a correspondence with one's own particular persuasion must assuredly tend towards the attainment of that attitude of mind commended by St. Paul of "being all things to all men." To pave the way towards the acquisition of this mental posture in relation to religious concepts is the main object I have had in view in composing this small book. It has been said that no age has more needed a departure in this direction than our own. "On the one hand, sectarian hatred and dogmatism almost obscure the great truths _common_ to all mankind; on the other, merciless and destructive criticism, in undermining much that used to be generally accepted, seems at times to threaten even the foundations of truth." Some people, however, maintain that there is an appreciable value to be attached to all dogmatic declarations, and that those who are working in strictly-confined theological grooves are contributing, as specialists, to a knowledge of the whole. Even if these workers are possessed of all the uncharitable qualities sometimes attributed to the narrow-minded, yet they may be held deserving of encouragement in view of the probability that the more their limited ideas become exposed to the light by their enthusiastic endeavours to assert them as final truth, the sooner will their imperfections be obliterated. The fragmentary opinions they cling to will then be discovered to possess no value except as constituent elements of the whole. Others go the length of advocating that the flames of bigotry should be fanned to furnace-heat in order that the feeding fuel may be the more rapidly consumed.