And, if it is thus hard to do historical justice, it is far harder to look with candor upon contemporary religions. Thus the Jesuit Father Ripa thought that Satan had created the Buddhist religion on purpose to bewilder the Christian church. There we see a creed possessing more votaries than any in the world, numbering nearly one-third of the human race. Its traditions go back to a founder whose record is stainless and sublime. It has the doctrine of the Real Presence, the Madonna and Child, the invocation of the dead, monasteries and pilgrimages, celibacy and tonsure, relics, rosaries, and holy water. Wherever it has spread, it has broken down the barrier of caste. It teaches that all men are brethren, and makes them prove it by their acts; it diffuses gentleness and self-sacrificing benevolence. "It has become," as Neander admits, "to many tribes of people a means of transition from the wildest barbarism to semi-civilization." Tennent, living amid the lowest form of it in Ceylon, says that its code of morals is "second only to that of Christianity itself," and enjoins "every conceivable virtue and excellence." It is coming among us, represented by many of the Chinese, and a San-Francisco merchant, a Christian of the Episcopal Church, told me that, on conversing with their educated men, he found in them a religious faith quite as enlightened as his own. Shall we not rejoice in this consoling discovery? "Yes," said the simple-hearted Abbé Huc: so he published his account of Buddhism, and saw it excommunicated. "No!" said Father Ripa, "it is the invention of the devil!"[I] With a steady wave of progress Mohammedanism is sweeping through Africa, where Christianity scarcely advances a step. Wherever Mohammedanism reaches, schools and libraries are established, gambling and drunkenness cease, theft and falsehood diminish, polygamy is limited, woman begins to be elevated and has property rights guaranteed; and, instead of witnessing human sacrifices, you see the cottager reading the Koran at her door, like the Christian cottager in Cowper's description. "Its gradual extension," says an eye-witness, "is gradually but surely modifying the negro.... Within the last half century the humanizing influence of the Koran is acknowledged by all who are acquainted with the interior tribes."[J] So in India, Mohammedanism makes converts by thousands (according to Col. Sleeman, than whom there can be no more intelligent authority) where Christianity makes but a handful; and this, he testifies, because in Mohammedanism there is no spirit of caste, while Christians have a caste of their own, and will not put converts on an equality. Do we rejoice in this great work of progress? No! one would think we were still in the time of the crusades by the way we ignore the providential value of Mohammedanism.