noblest endowment.

We should be chiefly concerned to understand the divine will more perfectly, and to be strengthened that we may obey. The main burden of all true prayer is contained in the pregnant summary of Elihu, “That which I know not, teach Thou me; wherein I have done evil, may I do so no more." Well will it be for you, well will it be for me, if we can say, with all the fervour of which our nature is capable:

"I do not ask, O Lord, that life may be

A pleasant road;

I do not ask that Thou wouldst take from me
Aught of its load.

I do not ask that flowers should always spring
Beneath my feet;

I know too well the poison and the sting
Of things too sweet.

For one thing only, Lord, dear Lord, I plead—

Lead me aright;

Though strength should falter and though heart should bleed,

Lead me to Light."

179

Christianity and Pre-Christian
Religion.

I.

PRE-CHRISTIAN RELIGION.

IN

"He left not Himself without witness."-ACTS xiv. 17.

this and the following sermons I propose

to contrast Christianity and pre-Christian religion, with especial reference to the doctrines of the Incarnation, the Atonement, and Redemption, with reference, that is, to (1) the revelation of the Deity which was given in Christ; (2) the new relation towards God into which men were thereby introduced; and (3) the moral reformation effected by the Atonement.

There are persons who divide religions, as they do all other things, into two classes,— their own, and those which are not their own;

or, as they more euphemistically express it, the true and the false. Any religion, which does not number them among its disciples, must be, of course, altogether worthless. Some even go so far as to restrict the term true religion, not to the common Christianity of Christendom, but to the creed of some one particular sect or denomination. I remember hearing a man—a clergyman, I am sorry to say-find fault with her Majesty our Queen for worshipping in a Presbyterian church, on the ground that, in doing so, she was guilty of "changing her religion." Such an extreme exhibition of narrowness is nowadays somewhat exceptional; but the notion that non-Christian religions, at any rate, are altogether worthless, is by no means

uncommon.

That this notion is incorrect, and that all religions are true as far as they go—i. e., as far as they are religions, may be seen from the following considerations. (1.) It is inconceivable that God, while revealing Himself completely to the few, should have concealed Himself as completely from the many. The Being who cared only for a small proportion of the human race, however strong He might be, however remarkable and terrible, would not be good

-i.e., would not be God.

(2.) If every religion

which is inferior to Christianity is to be called

false, Judaism cannot be called true.

(3.) In many of the so-called false religions, we find, as I shall point out to you, remarkable anticipations both of Old and of New Testament teaching. And what is absolutely true in one religion cannot be absolutely false in another. (4.) The hasty characterisation of all religions but one as false religions, is countenanced neither by the Bible nor by what are called "the Fathers." 1 I might quote many confirmatory passages, but two will suffice. St Peter, who was by nature and education inclined to all the exclusiveness of a Jew, confessed on one occasion to the Gentile Cornelius, "God hath showed me that I should not call any man common or unclean." And similarly Augustine says, "There are no religions which do not contain some truth." (5.) The unwarrantable depreciation of non-Christian religions is not the best way of honouring Christianity. If they contained nothing valuable, the fact that Christianity surpassed them would be deprived of

1 A quotation from the Fathers always impresses those persons who imagine that these primitive expositors of Christianity have said the last word upon the subject.

all significance.

But if, after giving them their full due, and seeing that they did contain much that was true and good, we still find that Christianity is pre-eminently superior, we shall in the end appreciate our own religion all the more highly.

There is another equally common, but equally misleading, mode of expression-viz., the attempted distinction between natural and revealed religion. This implies that it is possible, without any revelation at all, to arrive at a certain amount of religious truth. Now there is no doubt that by a study of nature, and by self-examination, men may come to know something of God. But it is absurd to call this knowledge natural, in contradistinction to revealed; for nature and man are themselves revelations. Nature is not silent and dead. She is resonant with voices that speak to us of God:

"Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge. There is no