=Primus inter pares.=--The pupil continued: "Religions seemed to be determined by regions like nationalities. Swedenborg hints at something of the sort, saying that people have the religion which they ought to have. Those who have no religion are tramps and vagabonds, pariahs and gipsies, scoundrels and swindlers. They think they are at home everywhere, but are so only on the high-roads, in the market-places, behind the circus-stable, in the alehouse. When Lessing asserts in _Nathan der Weise_ that all religions are equally good, he shows that he has not understood Christianity, which is the beginning and end of the world's history. The Muhammedans are certainly religious, more religious than the Christians, and among the adherents of Islam are many sects, but no atheistic ones. All observe the hours of prayer, fasts, and daily washings. Muhammed was no Christ-hater. But they are alien to our climate. Still we have something to learn from them; they are not ashamed to show their religion, while we shuffle with it. They are not only religious on Sundays but every day and all day. "But, if we heard that a Christian had gone over to Islam we should regard it as a fall from the higher to the lower, while the conversion of a Muhammedan to Christianity would be hailed as an ascent. Saladin was certainly noble and Nathan wise, but the nobleness of the former had somewhat of a pose about it, and the wisdom of the latter was of the same homely kind as Voltaire's. On the other hand, Godfrey de Bouillon accepted the crown of thorns instead of the king's crown, and St. Louis gave his life for the wisdom which surpasses all understanding." =Heathen Imaginations.=--The teacher said: "Religions are represented by regions, defined territories, circles, of which each considers himself the centre. The modern heathen sit in their little bag, which is big enough to be seen, and when they only see heathen they imagine that Christianity is decaying or altogether done with. And yet it is flourishing as it never did before; everything serves the Gospel with or against its will. The heathen find new weapons in heaps of ruins and in temple-libraries; they close churches and thereby bring Christianity into life and into the domestic circle. When they make life bitter for the Christians, the latter turn from the sour and seek the fresh. The missionaries who were only lately regarded with a contemptuous smile are now discovered by great explorers in deserts and wildernesses, where they have established oases of humanity and mercy. There the plundered wanderer can rest his weary head, secure of having found one trustworthy man. He who wishes to know the effect of Christianity on an idolater should read Kanso Utschimura's _Memoirs of a Japanese; or, How I Became a Christian_. Those who preach 'cheerful paganism' can see in this work how a polytheist is tom and tortured by doubt, and tossed to-and-fro between the contradictory commands of eighty million gods."