THE MORROW.

I.

HERE is a fallacy, surviving even among

educated people, as a vague feeling, that

there is some causative connection between Christianity and the higher civilisation of the chief nations which profess it. This, we know, is the main argument of the missionary: he confounds the oriental man by claiming all the science, literature, and arts of Europe as the fruits of Christianity, thereby compelling all of our men of science and culture-though denounced for materialism here-to sanction the dogmas which our sects are sending out there.

It has been already pointed out that there was reflected in Christianity a more refined type of woman, and a higher recognition of her moral influence, by reason of its ideal Madonna, than existed in the European religions which it superseded, though under those woman had larger political rights; also that it held the germs of a higher political régime in its doctrine of the equality of souls before God; and it taught the dignity of labour in its theory that Christ was a poor mechanic. But it would

be a serious error to suppose that such ideas are contained only in Christianity. Other and earlier religions have their Madonnas, and their deities incarnate in humble forms, and taught human equality; and if any other of those religions had happened to get the mastery of Europe the same ideas would have been selected out of them. It is race, time, circumstance, which keep the same ideas dormant in one place and develope them in another. These determine religious forms, immeasurably more than religious forms determine them.

As proof of this we have only to consider the condition of Christianity among other races than our own. Fortyfive years ago a young man who had graduated with the highest honours at Oxford, filled with zeal for the spread of Christianity, went as a missionary to Aleppo lived there and in various regions of the Ottoman empire, where he could fully compare those of his own faith with Moslems. There were Christians of all kinds and degrees. The letters written home by that earnest and orthodox missionary were published in 1856,* and I fear the book is now out of print. He found that the animosities of the Christians to each other rendered them helpless before the united Turks, and yet that the Turks were anxious to reconcile the Christians-Greek, Roman Catholic, Syriac, and the rest-to each other. While conscious of a desire that Turkish Government should be overthrown, the missionary sees no chance of a

* Personal Narrative, in Letters, principally from Turkey, in the years 1830-3. By F. W. Newman. London: Holyoake & Co., Fleet Street.

1856.

worthier successor, "no mark in the Christians of higher qualities." They are "neither strong nor wise nor ingenious nor active-minded." The Turks leave to them

freedom of the press, yet the Christians have no books and their intellects were wholly uninstructed. He says that the missionaries there have to leave the Turks and try to convert the Christians. He and the other zealous missionaries with him shrank from the native Christians as "dangerous and faithless allies," and finally they relinquished the idea of building a church there, and came home disheartened.

This is the testimony of one who when he wrote it, and for some time afterwards, was a Christian zealot,— Professor Newman. It shows that low races find their

barbarism harmonious with Christianity while advanced races are crediting it with their civilisation.

The Nestorian Christian will kill a man if he works on Sunday. He finds in the book given him as the Word of God as ample warrant for his barbarism as an Englishman can find in it for his civility. And just the same is true of all other religions.

Mohammedanism, which among Turks turns to a cruel superstition, once blossomed in Persia to a beautiful mystical religion represented by the finest literary age known to Asia.

II.

Professor Newman has related in another work ("Phases of Faith ") the impression made upon his mind by a Mussulman mechanic who, having listened to

his instruction, remarked that while the English seemed to be superior in everything else, they certainly did not possess a true religion. The devout Oxonian Scholar returned to England with that humble workman's word, and it was a seed cast in the mind of the sower who went forth to sow, among the many which have since borne fruit a hundredfold.

That Mohammedan laid his hand upon the fundamental anomaly of this country. We are a civilised country in everything but one, that is religion; that is barbarous. Its dogmas are derived from barbarous tribes and ages. We do not use their ploughs nor other implements; we do not adopt their science nor their arts; but we establish in the School and the Church their wild superstitions of a world accursed, man vicariously depraved and vicariously redeemed, a deity demanding blood, and a hell of fire and brimstone. Educated people even in the Churches confess the barbarism of these beliefs by declaring, whenever we state them, that we are caricaturing their faith. We quote them word for word from their creeds and confessions; and yet they say it is misrepresentation and caricature. No doubt it misrepresents them, and it certainly caricatures civilised humanity; but there are the Creeds in the Prayer-book, and in dissenting Confessions, in the Catechisms taught to every generation, and any one may read them. Whatever the educated may secretly read in the dogmas, such is their plain meaning to the child and the unlettered millions.

Now, why is it that civilised England teaches her people a barbarous religion? It is because all progress in civilisa