some way helps the liberation of
the world. The second example of it can be found in the question of
pantheism--or rather of a certain modern attitude which is often called
immanentism, and which often is Buddhism. But this is so much more
difficult a matter that I must approach it with rather more preparation.

The things said most confidently by advanced persons to crowded
audiences are generally those quite opposite to the fact; it is actually
our truisms that are untrue. Here is a case. There is a phrase of facile
liberality uttered again and again at ethical societies and parliaments
of religion: "the religions of the earth differ in rites and forms, but
they are the same in what they teach." It is false; it is the opposite
of the fact. The religions of the earth do _not_ greatly differ in rites
and forms; they do greatly differ in what they teach. It is as if a man
were to say, "Do not be misled by the fact that the _Church Times_ and
the _Freethinker_ look utterly different, that one is painted on vellum
and the other carved on marble, that one is triangular and the other
hectagonal; read them and you will see that they say the same thing."
The truth is, of course, that they are alike in everything except in the
fact that they don't say the same thing. An atheist stockbroker in
Surbiton looks exactly like a Swedenborgian stockbroker in Wimbledon.
You may walk round and round them and subject them to the most personal
and offensive study without seeing anything Swedenborgian in the hat or
anything particularly godless in the umbrella. It is exactly in their
souls that they are divided. So the truth is that the difficulty of all
the creeds of the earth is not as alleged in this cheap maxim: that they
agree in meaning, but differ in machinery. It is exactly the opposite.
They agree in machinery; almost every great religion on earth works
with the same external methods, with priests, scriptures, altars, sworn
brotherhoods, special feasts. They agree in the mode of teaching; what
they differ about is the thing to be taught. Pagan optimists and Eastern
pessimists would both have temples, just as Liberals and Tories would
both have newspapers. Creeds that exist to destroy each other both have
scriptures, just as armies that exist to destroy each other both have
guns.

The great example of this alleged identity of all human religions is the
alleged spiritual identity of Buddhism and Christianity. Those who adopt
this t