When the new “Science of Religions” has been further developed, it will probably be recognized that the character of each is determined, not only by its own proper dogmas, but by those of the religion which it has superseded. Men do not, as they often imagine, tear up an old faith by the roots and plant a new one on the same ground. They only cut across the old and graft the new on its stem. Thus it comes to pass, for example, that much of the sap of Roman Paganism runs through the pores of Latin Christianity, and much of that of Odin worship through those of Teuton and Scandinavian Protestantism. Still more certainly does the faith held by an individual man in his earlier years dye his mind with its peculiar color, so that no subsequent conversion ever wholly obliterates it, but makes him like a frescoed wall on which yellow has been painted over blue, leaving as the result—green. The tint of Anglican piety may be discerned even beneath a pervert Cardinal’s scarlet robe. A Romish acolyte, transformed into the most brilliant of sceptical essayists, still boasts that the ecclesiastical set of his brain enables him “alone in his century” to understand Christ and Saint Francis.[13] A Jew, baptized and become Prime Minister of England, wrote novels and made history altogether in the vein of the author of the Book of Esther. Beneath the wolf’s clothing of the whole pack of modern Secularists, Agnostics, and Atheists, friction reveals (for the present generation, at all events) a flock of harmless Christian sheep. For this reason hasty efforts to fuse religious bodies which happen to manifest tendencies to doctrinal agreement seem predestined to failure. Much else besides mere readiness to pronounce similar symbols of faith is needed to gather men permanently into one temple. Amalgamation attempted prematurely can only result in accentuating those diversities of sentiment which have stronger power to dissever than any intellectual affinities have charms to unite. Ecclesiastical schisms are infinitely easier to effect than ecclesiastical coalitions.