to the Epicureans and
Stoics, nor is this the feeling with which a thoughtful Christian and
a sincere believer in the divine government of the world is likely to
rise from a perusal of any of the books which he knows to be or to
have been the only source of spiritual light and comfort to thousands
and thousands among the dwellers on earth.

[Footnote 52: 'Le Bouddha et sa Religion.' Par J. Barthelemy
Saint-Hilaire, Membre de l'Institut. Paris, 1860.]

Many are the advantages to be derived from a careful study of other
religions, but the greatest of all is that it teaches us to appreciate
more truly what we possess in our own. When do we feel the blessings
of our own country more warmly and truly than when we return from
abroad? It is the same with regard to religion. Let us see what other
nations have had and still have in the place of religion; let us
examine the prayers, the worship, the theology even of the most highly
civilised races,--the Greeks, the Romans, the Hindus, the
Persians,--and we shall then understand more thoroughly what blessings
are vouchsafed to us in being allowed to breathe from the first breath
of life the pure air of a land of Christian light and knowledge. We
are too apt to take the greatest blessings as matters of course, and
even religion forms no exception. We have done so little to gain our
religion, we have suffered so little in the cause of truth, that
however highly we prize our own Christianity, we never prize it highly
enough until we have compared it with the religions of the rest of the
world.

This, however, is not the only advantage; and we think that M.
Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire has formed too low an estimate of the
benefits to be derived from a thoughtful study of the religions of
mankind when he writes of Buddhism: 'Le seul, mais immense service que
le Bouddhisme puisse nous rendre, c'est par son triste contraste de
nous faire apprecier mieux encore la valeur inestimable de nos
croyances, en nous montrant tout ce qu'il en coute a l'humanite qui ne
les partage point.' This is not all. If a knowledge of other countries
and a study of the manners and customs of foreign nations teach us to
appreciate what we have at home, they likewise form the best cure of
that national conceit and want of sympathy with which we are too apt
to look on all that is strange and foreign. The feeling which led the
Hellenic races to divide the whole world into Greeks and Barbarians is
so deeply engra