ard peace
as taught in the Buddhist religion. A similar feature is to be traced
in the Mohammedan faith, if we are right that Islam means surrender to
the will of God, and the Mussulman a surrendered person; and certainly
there have been those in the great religion of the East who held
surrender in a higher sense than that of the fatalism which we
generally attach to the words.

Now, when we speak of different religions as in the foregoing, it is
not that we want to cultivate the science of comparative religious
anatomy; all we want to say is this, that just as a very rough
observation convinces us that corresponding organs in different
creatures imply corresponding uses and similar needs, so we discern
various methods of bringing peace to the soul of man in those religions
which have to the greatest extent prevailed in the world.

We are right to read these features carefully, for they are the
watermarks of the absolute religion (which we believe the religion of
Jesus to be), which is to gather in the men of every tribe and kindred
and nation, and to unite all the children of God who are scattered
abroad.

We are too much accustomed to look on these foreign religionists merely
in the light of compassion, as people for whom we must send the
missionary, make the regular collection and offer the periodic prayer;
and we make maps of the world in which we paint in all the religions
which differ from our own in black, or, if not in black, in other
colours only for the sake of distinction. But, if we were wise, we
should see that, where we paint black, it should be black with streaks
of light; and we should learn, too, to see that our own faith would
need, if accurately represented, to be a white colour checked and
streaked with spots of the intensest black. For not all that is called
Christianity is of Christ.

We say, then, that one of the characteristics of the absolute religion
is that it offers to the soul a real and permanent peace. Here is a
test for us: a real peace; it must not be based on deceptive methods: a
permanent peace, which neither things present can disturb, nor life nor
death dispel. And the Lord Jesus, who has spoken of the heart of man
as never man spake, made this one of the keystones of His teaching, as
it was the cornerstone of His living.

"Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy-laden, and I will rest
you."

"These things I have spoken unto you that in Me ye might have peace."