The Project Gutenberg EBook of Ten Great Religions, by James Freeman Clarke

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Title: Ten Great Religions
An Essay in Comparative Theology

Author: James Freeman Clarke

Release Date: January 12, 2005 [EBook #14674]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Ten Great Religions

An Essay in Comparative Theology

by

James Freeman Clarke

Prophets who have been since the world began.--Luke i. 70.

Gentiles ... who show the work (or influence) of the (that) law which
is written in their hearts.--Romans ii. 15.

God ... hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all
the face of the earth ... that they should seek the Lord, if haply they
may feel after him and find him.--Acts, xviii. 24-27.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, by James Freeman
Clarke, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

Copyright, 1899,
By Eliot C. Clarke.

To
William Heney Channing,
My Friend and Fellow-Student
During Many Years,
This Work
Is Affectionately Inscribed.

Preface.

The first six chapters of the present volume are composed from six
articles prepared for the Atlantic Monthly, and published in that magazine
in 1868. They attracted quite as much attention as the writer anticipated,
and this has induced him to enlarge them, and add other chapters. His aim
is to enable the reader to become acquainted with the doctrines and
customs of the principal religions of the world, without having to consult
numerous volumes. He has not come to the task without some preparation,
for it is more than twenty-five years since he first made of this study a
speciality. In this volume it is attempted to give the latest results of
modern investigations, so far as any definite and trustworthy facts have
been attained. But the writer is well aware of the difficulty of being
always accurate in a task which involves such interminable study and such
an amount of details. He can only say, in the words of a Hebrew writer:
"If I have done well, and as is fitting the