re concretely, it is estimated that 10.7% of the inhabitants of the
globe are Protestants; 16.2% are Catholics; 7.1% are Greek Orthodox; 10%
are Animists; 1.4% are Shintoists; 18.2% are Confucians and Taoists;
12.8% are Hindus; 8.4% are Buddhists; 13.4% are Moslems; and 1.8% are
Hebrews and unclassified sects. Truly, a religious babel! and 10% of all
the inhabitants of the globe, about the same number of people who
profess to Protestantism, are Animists. This is the lowest stage of
primitive religion, and millions of humans are still quagmired in the
sloth of a primitive faith which once must have been the faith of all
human beings.

The Mohammedan, the Jew, the Christian, will readily agree that the
animism, the fetishism, and idolatry of the savage were man-made foolish
beliefs. They can readily perceive that there was nothing supernatural,
nothing revealed, in such beliefs; but they do not realize that to him,
in his infantile development, the fetish and the idol were just as
supernatural and superior as the modern conception of a Supreme Being.
In each age man creates his god, in his own image, and within the
confines of his own mental development. The mind of man has expanded so
that it has conquered more and more of his environment; it has grown and
wrested from nature those secrets which constitute his civilization.
Along with this has progressed the conception of a deity, but only to a
certain extent. The mind has embellished the outward appearance of its
gods, consolidated them, and built upon them intricate systems of
theology, upon which feed vast hordes of clergy; but the basic
conception, the fundamental principle, that there must be something
supernatural to explain something which we cannot explain at the present
moment, that conception still drugs the mind of man. Primitive man did
not understand the meaning of lightning, thunder, shadows, echoes, etc.,
and he placed these among the supernatural phenomena. The modern mind
explains these phenomena, understands the laws governing their
production. Yet, it is this same modern mind which persists in going
back to our savage ancestors and their mental sloth, by attributing the
myriads of phenomena which still elude its present stage of mental
development, to a particular idol, this time, a Supreme Being.
Brahmanism, Jainism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, Taoism,
Zoroastrianism, Hebrewism, Mohammedanism, Christianity--which is the
true religion?

Let us