When we approach the Jewish-Christian faith, we find the dark stream of religious persecution, which had its source in Zoroastrianism, grown into a raging sea. The three religions, Judaism, Christianity and Mohammedanism, bear to one another the relation of parent and children. Christianity is the elder, and Mohammedanism the younger daughter of Judaism. The predominant trait, which is common to them all, is exclusiveness. It is impossible to be humanitarian or universal and exclusive at the same time, which is another way of saying that, where the spirit of exclusiveness holds sway, there religious toleration will be considered a crime, both against God and the State. Of course in all three of these faiths are to be found passages which seem to possess an accent of universality. But it is a universality conditioned on the conversion of the whole world to the faith in question. "My house shall be a house of prayer for all nations," writes the Jewish prophet, but observe it says,--"My house,"--which means that the whole world will come to worship in a Jewish temple. It does not mean that Pagan and Christian, without embracing the Jewish faith, may each worship his own "Christ" in a Jewish synagogue. It is in this same spirit that the Mohammedan throws open his mosque, and the Christian his cathedral to the whole world. Brotherhood in these religions is limited to those of the true faith. The misbeliever is an alien to whom it is a sin even to say "God speed." Intermarriage is forbidden with a view to emphasize the fact that only through conversion can a stranger become a friend or a brother. Such exclusiveness was bound to breed hatred and persecution. And as men make their gods, an exclusive people will have an exclusive god. The Bible conception of God is one of the most repellant in religious literature. We may say it is the least successful attempt at god-making on record. The three religions we have named have all one and the same God, with only unimportant variations. The authors of the Bible seem to have labored under the impression that to make their God acceptable they had only to make him intensely partisan. One who loves his own only. But they have made him, necessarily, as terrible as he is exclusive. He is not only called a jealous God, but also a consuming fire, a man of war. It is expressly stated that "He is angry every day." The English translators have interpolated the words--"with the wicked,"--but the original as rendered into Latin, German, French and other languages, shows plainly that the editors of King James' Version took undue liberties with the text. The Revised Version has dropped the words _with the wicked_, and the text now conveys the same meaning in the English Bible as in the German, which reads: "Und ein Gott, der taglich dirauet," and in the French, "La colere the Dieu est toujours prete a eclater." "Irascitur per singulos dies," are the words in the Vulgate.