. There would have been social
and political and religious contests over "caste" or "harems" or
"Tripitaka," instead of over slavery as a divine institution, the right
of a mother to her own offspring, or the inspiration of the Bible. The
wheels of progress would have been blocked some days by devotees who
preached damnation for those who believed in the "Trinity" instead of
for those who did not. Hell would have been as freely promised to the
man who suggested that Newton knew more than Mohammed, as it is to-day
to any one who makes the same odious comparison between Darwin and
Moses. The timid would have been terrified by sermons to prove the
lost condition of a man who touched one of lower rank, in place of
the edification our clergy offer in the shape of eternal damnation
for unbaptized infants. And there would have been so little difference
between the arguments for the divinity of the Tripitaka and the Bible,
and for the miracles of each, that if any devout Presbyterian had by
accident left his barrel of sermons on the latter subject behind him,
his Buddhist brother could have utilized them without the change of an
argument. But the wheel would turn and the devotee would either go
down or change his creed, and it would depend chiefly upon his age and
consequent flexibility which course he would adopt.

No known religion could transfer the conditions of civilization in China
to America or England or France, and no amount of christianizing (if
such a thing were possible) could transform China into a like condition
with us, so long as her climate, her soil, and her population remain
what they are to-day. You may make the Arab or the Jap digest the whole
Westminster catechism, but he will, he _must_, be an Arab or a Jap
still--if he lives through it all. If his constitution is good, and he
gets over it, his condition and grade of civilization will continue to
conform to his environment; and the trifling difference involved between
turning-off prayers on a wheel and counting them off on beads will be
simply the difference between tweedledee and tweedledum.

Notwithstanding this as a primary fact, the religion of a country has a
modifying influence on the rapidity of its progress, and the more fixed
a religion--the more certainly it claims perfection, the greater claim
it lays to holding the final word; _and the more fully this claim is
accepted by the people_, the greater influence will it have, the greater
check will