self, and so finally merge them in a higher union. The Greek,
Roman, and Jewish religions could not unite with each other; but they were
united by being taken up into Christianity. Christianity has assimilated
the essential ideas of the religions of Persia, Judaea, Egypt, Greece,
Rome, and Scandinavia; and each of these religions, in turn, disappeared
as it was absorbed by this powerful solvent. In the case of Greece, Rome,
Germany, and Judaea, this fact of their passing into solution in
Christianity is a matter of history. Not all the Jews became Christians,
nor has Judaism ceased to exist. This is perhaps owing to the doctrines of
the Trinity and the Deity of Christ, which offend the simplistic
monotheism of the Jewish mind. Yet Christianity at first grew out of
Judaism, and took up into itself the best part of the Jews in and out of
Palestine.

The question therefore is this, Will Christianity be able to do for the
remaining religions of the world what it did for the Greeks, the Romans,
and the Teutonic nations? Is it capable of becoming a universal religion?

Sec. 2. Christianity a Pleroma, or Fulness of Life.

It is evident that Christianity can become the universal human religion
only by supplying the religious wants of all the races of men who dwell on
all the face of the earth. If it can continue to give them all the truth
their own religions contain, and add something more; if it can inspire
them with all the moral life which their own religions communicate, and
yet more; and, finally, if it can unite the races of men in one family,
one kingdom of heaven,--then it is fitted to be and will become the
universal religion. It will then not share the fate of those which have
preceded it. It will not have its rise, progress, decline, and fall. It
will not become, in its turn, antiquated, and be left behind by the
advance of humanity. It will not be swallowed up in something deeper and
broader than itself. But it will appear as the desire of all nations, and
Christ will reign until he has subdued all his enemies--error, war, sin,
selfishness, tyranny, cruelty--under his feet.

Now, as we have seen, Christianity differs from all other religions (on
the side of truth) in this, that it is a pleroma, or fulness of knowledge.
It does not differ, by teaching what has never been said or thought
before. Perhaps the substance of most of the statements of Jesus may be
found scattered through the ten religions of the wor