fame only by their denials of the faith which is in Christ Jesus; not, however, cast out from their place and pay in the church, but the more fitting subjects for an unctuous dispensation.

ARTICLE V.

VESTIGES OF CHRISTIAN TRUTH IN FALSE
RELIGIOUS SYSTEMS.

Christ and other Masters: An Historical Inquiry into some of the Chief Parallelisms and Contrasts between Christianity and the Religious Systems of the Ancient World. By CHARLES HARDWICK, M. A., University of Cambridge. 4 vols. 8vo. Cambridge, [England.] Macmillan & Co. 1859. The Christian Advocate's Publication.

The Religions of the World and their Relations to Christianity. By F. D. MAURICE, M. A. Boyle Lectures. From the Third revised London Edition. Boston: Gould & Lincoln.

THE visitor to the mosque of St. Sophia can see, from the extreme end of the right hand gallery, wrought in the finest mosaic upon the lofty ceiling, a full length figure of Christ spreading his hands in benediction directly above what anciently was the chancel of this once Christian church. There, for the four centuries since the city of Constantine has been in the false prophet's power, that benign countenance has been looking down in undisturbed silence upon the crowds of fanatical Moslems prostrating themselves beneath; and the unspoken language of that divine presence has ever been a prophecy and a promise of the restoration of the gospel in its purity to that venerable home of its early triumphs. Another of these "holy places" of the Seraglio Point is also a Greek church of the imperial times, now used for the national armory, piled full of every variety of grim weaponry known to the ancient or modern Turks; but in

the same place at the eastern end, high up above where once the sacred altar bore its eucharistic symbols, the painting of a large cross retains its position, breathing over this display of hostile armament the message of peace on earth and glory to God, through the ever living Spirit of Jesus the Crucified. Musing in those dim hiding-places of defiant delusion, the Christian traveller sees, in such relics of a truer faith, a lively emblem of another noteworthy fact-that the grossest systems of religious imposture hold imbedded within their corrupt mass some of the most important of moral and spiritual ideas. "Nulla falsa doctrina est," wrote Augustine, "quæ non aliquid ▼eri permisceat." Archdeacon Hare has a paragraph on this subject, in the second series of Guesses at Truth, which is full of good, strong sense.

66 'Many learned men, Grotius, for instance, and Wetstein, have taken pains to illustrate the New Testament by quoting all the passages they could collect from the writers of classical antiquity, expressing sentiments in any way analogous to the doctrines and precepts of the gospel. This some persons regard as a disparagement to the honor of the gospel, which they would fain suppose to have come down all at once from heaven, like a meteoric stone from a volcano in the moon, consisting of elements wholly different from anything found upon earth. But surely it is no disparagement to the wisdom of God, or to the dignity of reason, that the development of reason should be preceded by corresponding instincts, and that something analogous to it should be found even in inferior animals. It is no disparagement to the sun, that he should be preceded by the dawn. On the contrary this is his glory, as it was also that of the Messiah, that, in the words with which Milton describes his approach to battle, 'far off his coming shone.' If there had been no instincts in man leading him to Christianity, no yearnings and cravings, no stings of conscience and aspirations for it to quiet and satisfy, it would have been no religion for man. Therefore, instead of shrinking from the notion that anything at all similar to any of the doctrines of Christianity may be found in heathen forms of religion, let us seek out all such resemblances diligently, giving thanks to God that he has never left himself wholly without a witWhen we have found them all, they will only be single rays darting up here and there, forerunners of the sunrise. Subtract the whole amount of them from the gospel, and quite enough will remain to bless God for, even the whole gospel.".

ness.

We have prefixed to our essay the titles of two or three volumes, not to characterize or to criticise their contents, but to indicate where this subject has been treated with more or less elaboration; with not a little of fanciful and pedantic scholarship, and some doubtful reasonings and conclusions, though a vein of truth runs through all these investigations. Other references upon this general topic are Gale's "Court of the Gentiles," and Trench's Hulsean Lectures.

It is an inadequate theory which ascribes the false religious systems of our world to a mere desire and determination to deny the government of a holy God. We trace throughout their structures most obviously the presence and influence of depraved purposes and affections. And as a whole, each one of these is a monstrous deformity. They are nevertheless the proofs, as they are the monuments, of what may be called the native religiosity of man; that is, his capability of faith and worship. No scheme of either of these has been the product of a sheer spiritual perversity, of an "unmitigated diabolism." They all show marks of painful, intense concern in quest of satisfactory conclusions, of reliable and consolatory beliefs. They have been, for the most part, the slow accretions of many generations inquiring after the highest knowledge, often under guidance of strong and far-reaching intellects, but radically vitiated by unsound elementary principles, and by fallacious methods and laws of investigation. While not failing to grasp some very weighty facts of universal religious science, they have held even these truths in so much of theoretic and practical unrighteousness, that the issues of their labors have been evil and destructive. "The world by wisdom knew not God," may be inscribed over the portal of all the temples of heathenism, from the marble fanes of Athens to the mud-hovel of an African necromancer; over the magnificent entrance of the mosque of Omar, and above the lecture-desks of our own Positivists and Parkerites. But all these have shelved some fragments from the precious mine, not altogether by accident, nor because they could not help it. There is in men's souls a consciousness of want which sweeps on like a deep river in the same general course from age to age; which drifts the thoughts and studies of the reflective towards certain common points; the conse

quence of which is this intermingling of truth with falsehood, of solid realities with the most fanciful and foolish speculation, whenever man has explored his relations to God and futurity, in the light of fires of his own kindling. Then, traditions from a primeval and purer past have left their deposits in the mental structure of nations, much like the silver and the miry clay of the Babylonian image the latter and baser element immeasurably preponderating. Where, for example, if not thus, did the old Saxons get their Balder, the son of Odin, the Christ of the Scandinavian mythology; connected with whose touching death the belief went abroad through all that northern wild, "that a time would come, 'after the twilight of the gods,' when Balder would rise from the dead, and when his rising would be a signal for the ending of all sin, and sorrow and death." * Doubtless the main cause of the disguising and perverting of truth from whatever sources suggested, by the rubbish of Pagan and anti-Christian errors, has been "an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God." That is the primal lie lying back of all the culpable mistakes of the race, operating ceaselessly to distort and corrupt, thwarting unconsciously, perhaps, but effectually, many a severe struggle to get beyond the cloudland of spiritual fogs and falsehoods into regions of plainer sight. Man never will have done with these contradictions until he accepts the guidance of Heaven to lead him where the powers of nature can no farther go.'

Our position will be understood. It is not that, because some truths may be common to all religions, therefore all religions so far forth are equally good. The premise, if held, does not carry the conclusion. On the contrary, the truths in question, while absolutely priceless, may be relatively powerless through association with deadly untruth and superstition. Marah's fountain flowed with water, but neither man nor beast could drink it until Moses cast into it the branch of healing wood and made it fit for use. So do all other inspirations need

to be rectified, perfected, by the inspiration of God's Holy

* Vaughan's Revolutions in English History (from Mallet and Kemble) Vol I., p. 174. As the better faith has left its traces in the heathen myths, so they in turn have given us some memorials: e. g. "Our familiar expression, 'Old Nick,' comes from Nicor, the name given to a species of elve, or water-devil, found planning his mischief along the shores of lakes, rivers and seas." Vaughan. New York Ed. 1862.

Spirit as embodied in the Christian Scriptures. This is the true mission among men of "the word of the Lord which endureth forever." This is the express work of the Holy Spirit regenerating the human heart. It is to be constantly remembered that, though God leaves no man or people without a witness in the soul, in favor of truth and duty, this can never avail to salvation, individually or collectively, without the special grace of God making men new creatures in Christ Jesus. We are speaking not of moral qualities in the heathen, but simply of intellectual perceptions and the wants of conscience. We shall place this in a clearer light.

Glancing over the world with an eye to its evangelization, (we have a practical purpose in this outlook,) our eye is arrested by the idolatrous systems of eastern and southern Asia, as prominent among the spiritual delusions to be subverted. Their devotees are numerable by hundreds of millions. Unlike in many of their details, they have general resemblances which indicate a family origin and growth. Viewing the doctrines and rituals of Brahma and Buddh, as their works reveal them to the ordinary beholder, we might very justly conclude them to be mere masses of festering abominations, in which it were as vain to search for a sound opinion, a right aspiration, as it would be to look for a pulse in a decaying corpse. At their mention there start upon us the memories of the strangely complicated barbarities of Hindu superstition, the self-inflicted tortures of blind fanaticism, the unfathomed vileness of oriental society, its almost total want of truthfulness, benevolence, purity, and whatever else is of fair repute among men. Mainly under a vicious moral culture, oriental character has run down generally into a depth of degeneracy which it is not possible to describe to a western mind; to exaggerate it is beyond the force of language. Our missionary reports have made all this familiar even to childhood. But a close examination will discover traces of better thinking and feeling amidst these miserable wanderings; will detect the points in the experimental development of these systems, where a reliable voice from heaven alone was needed to save a really good idea and tendency from a wrong outgrowth. Thus: one of the fundamental principles of these beliefs is, that "there is in man that which is meant to