the "strait gate" through which
many would be unable to pass. Cicero (bk. vi. "Commonwealth," quoted by
Inman) says: "Be assured that, for all those who have in any way
conducted to the preservation, defence, and enlargement of their native
country, there is a certain place in heaven, where they shall enjoy an
eternity and happiness." It is needless to further multiply quotations
in order to show that our latest development of these Eastern creeds
only reiterated the teaching of the earlier phases of religious thought.

"But, at least," urge the Christians, "we owe the sublime idea of the
UNITY OF GOD to revelation, and this is grander than the Polytheism of
the Pagan world." Is it not, however, true, that just as Christians urge
that the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, are but one God, so the thinkers
of old believed in one Supreme Being, while the multitudinous gods were
but as the angels and saints of Christianity, his messengers, his
subordinates, not his rivals? All savages are Polytheists, just as were
the Hebrews, whose god "Jehovah" was but their special god, stronger
than the gods of the nations around them, gods whose existence they
never denied; but as thought grew, the superior minds in each nation
rose over the multitude of deities to the idea of one Supreme Being
working in many ways, and the loftiest flights of the "prophets" of the
Jewish Scriptures may be paralleled by those of the sages of other
creeds. Zoroaster taught that "God is the first, indestructible,
eternal, unbegotten, indivisible, dissimilar" ("Ancient Fragments,"
Cory, p. 239, quoted by Inman). In the Sabaean Litany (two extracts only
of this ancient work are preserved by El Wardi, the great Arabic
historian) we read: "Thou art the Eternal One, in whom all order is
centred.... Thou dost embrace all things. Thou art the Infinite and
Incomprehensible, who standest alone" ("Sacred Anthology," by M.D.
Conway, pp. 74, 75). "There is only one Deity, the great soul. He is
called the Sun, for he is the soul of all beings. That which is One, the
wise call it in divers manners. Wise poets, by words, make the
beautiful-winged manifold, though he is One" ("Rig-Veda," B.C. 1500,
from "Anthology," p.76). "The Divine Mind alone is the whole assemblage
of the gods.... He (the Brahmin) may contemplate castle, air, fire,
water, the subtile ether, in his own body and organs; in his heart, the
Star; in his motion, Vishnu; in his vigour, Hara; in his speech, Agni;