y have a great deal in
common, but a great deal that is different. Mr. Wentworth Higginson,[403]
in an excellent lecture, much of which has our cordial assent, says,
"Every race believes in a Creator and Governor of the world, in whom
devout souls recognize a Father also." But Buddhism, the most extensive
religion on the surface of the earth, explicitly denies creation, and
absolutely ignores any Ruler or Governor of the world. The Buddha neither
made the world nor preserves it, and the Buddha is the great object of
Buddhist worship. Mr. Higginson says: "Every race believes in
immortality." Though the Buddhists, as we have seen, believe in
immortality, it is in so obscure a form that many of the best scholars
declare that the highest aim and the last result of all progress in
Buddhism is annihilation. He continues, "Every race recognizes in its
religious precepts the brotherhood of man." The Koran teaches no such
doctrine, and it is notorious that the Brahmanical system of caste, which
has been despotic in India for twenty-five hundred years, excludes such
brotherhood. Mr. Higginson therefore is of opinion that caste has grown up
in defiance of the Vedas. The Vedas indeed are ignorant of caste, but they
are also ignorant of human brotherhood. The system of caste was not a
defiance of the Vedas.

Nothing is gained for humanity by such statements, which are refuted
immediately by the most evident facts. The true "sympathy of religions"
does not consist in their saying the same thing, any more than a true
concord in music consists in many performers striking the same note.
Variety is the condition of harmony. These religions may, and we believe
will, be all harmonized; but thus far it is only too plain that they have
been at war with each other. In order to find the resemblances we must
begin by seeing the differences.

Cudworth, in his great work, speaks of "the symphony of all religions," an
expression which we prefer to that of Mr. Higginson. It expresses
precisely what we conceive to be the fact, that these religions are all
capable of being brought into union, though so very different. They may
say,

"Are not we formed, as notes of music are,
For one another, though dissimilar?
Such difference, without discord, as shall make
The sweetest sounds."

But this harmony can only be established among the ethnic religions by
means of a catholic religion which shall be able to take each of them up
into it