eal as those painted by Mohammed, wherein they will dwell
beyond all time, a reward for their devotions and faith in this life.

These three religions embrace three-fourths of the human race and all
its civilized nations, with trifling exceptions. They displaced and
extinguished the older creeds and in a few centuries controlled the
earth; but as against each other their strife has been of little avail.
The reason is, they share the same momentum of religious thought,
differing in its interpretation not more among themselves than do
orthodox members of either faith in their own fold. Many enlightened
Muslims and Christians, for example, consider the descriptions of
Paradise given in the Koran and the Apocalypse to convey wholly
spiritual meanings.

There has been so much to surprise in the rapid extension of these
faiths that the votaries of each claim manifest miraculous
interposition. The religious idea of an after life is a sufficient
moment to account for the phenomenon. I say the _religious_ idea, for,
with one or two exceptions, however distinct had been the belief in a
hereafter, that belief had not a religious coloring until they gave it
such. This distinction is an important one.

Students of religions have hitherto attributed too much weight to the
primitive notion of an existence after death. It is common enough, but
it rarely has anything at all to do with the simpler manifestations of
the religious sentiment. These are directed to the immediate desires of
the individual or the community, and do not look beyond the present
life. The doctrine of compensation hereafter is foreign to them. I have
shown this at length so far as the religions of America were concerned.
"Neither the delights of a heaven on the one hand, nor the terrors of a
hell on the other were ever held out by priests or sages as an incentive
to well doing, or a warning to the evil disposed."[258-1] The same is
true of the classical religions of Greece and Rome, of Carthage and
Assyria. Even in Egypt the manner of death and the rites of interment
had much more to do with the fate of the soul, than had its thoughts
and deeds in the flesh. The opinions of Socrates and Plato on the soul
as something which always existed and whose after life is affected by
its experiences here, struck the Athenians as novel and innovating.

On the other hand, the ancient Germans had a most lively faith in the
life hereafter. Money was loaned in this world to be