If, I continued, I examine the past history and present position of Christianity, with an impartial eye, I see that it presents in several most important respects a contrast with other religions in point office. I shall content myself with enumerating a few. Look, then, at the perpetual spirit of aggression which characterizes this religion; its undeniable power (in whatever it consists, and from whatever it springs) to prompt those who hold it to render it victorious,—a spirit which has more or less characterized its whole history: which still lives, even in its most corrupt forms, and which has not been least active in our own time. I do not see any thing like it in other religions. Till I see Mollahs from Ispahan, Brahmins from Benares, Bonzes from China, preaching their systems of religion in London, Paris, and Berlin, supported year after year by an enormous expenditure on the part of their zealous compatriots, and the nations who support them taking the liveliest interest in their success or failure, till I see this (call it fanatical if you will, the money thus expended wasted, the men who give it fools), I shall not be able to pronounce Christianity simply on a par with other religions.
Till the sacred books of other religions can boast of at least a hundredth part of the same efforts to translate and diffuse them as have been concentrated on the Bible; till we find them in at least half as many languages; till they can render those who possess them at least a tenth part as willing to make costly efforts to insure to them a circulation coextensive with the family of man; till they occupy an equal space in the literature of the world, and are equally bound up with the philosophy, history, poetry, of the community of civilized nations; till they have given an equal number of human communities a written language, and may thus boast of having imparted to large sections of the human family the germ of all art, science, and civilization; till they can cite an equal amount of testimonies to their beauty and sublimity from those who reject their divine original,—I shall scarcely think Christianity can be put simply on a par with other religions.
Till it can be said that the sacred books of other religions are equally unique in relation to all the literature in which they are imbedded; similar neither to what precedes nor what comes after them, —their enemies themselves being judges; till they can be shown to be as superior to all that is found in contemporaneous authors as the New Testament is to the writings of Christian Fathers or the Jewish Rabbis,—I cannot say that Christianity is just like any other religion.
Till we can find a religion that has stood as many different assaults from infidelity in the midst of it,—educated infidelity, infidelity aided by learning, genius, philosophy, freely employing all the power of argument and all the power of ridicule to disabuse its votaries; till we can find a religion which can point to an equal array of educated men, philosophic in spirit, in learning, and genius, deeply skilled in the investigation of evidence, deliberately declaring that its claims are well sustained.—we cannot say that Christianity is just like any other religion.
Till it can be shown that another religion to an equal extent, has propagated itself without force amongst totally different races, and in the most distant countries, and has survived equal revolutions of thought and opinion, manners and laws, amongst those who have embraced it, it cannot be said that Christianity is simply like any other religion.
Till it can be shown that the sacred books of other religions have contained predictions as definite and as unlikely to be fulfilled as the success of early Christianity against all the opposition of prejudice and persecution,—its voluntary reception amongst different races, contrary to all the analogies of religious history,—and the continued preservation of the Jews among all nations without forming a part of any,—I cannot think that Christianity is precisely in the condition of any other religion.
Such, gentlemen, were some few of the differences in fact which seemed to me, not less than its theory, to discriminate Christianity from other religions. Had I in those days of my youth, been favored with the views of modern "spiritualism," I should have added, that till it is shown that some other religion has possessed an equal power of moulding those characters whom Mr. Newman points out as the best examples of "spiritual" religion, and can point to oracles equally pervaded by that "sentiment" which he declares is wanting in Greek philosophers, English Deists, and German Pantheists, but which, he admits, pervades the Bible; till I see the devout men whom he extols produced by other religions, or rather. I ought to say, produced without them (where Christianity however is unknown) by the unaided "spiritual faculty,"—I cannot but think that the position of Christianity is somewhat discriminated both from other religions and from "Naturalism."
Such, I said, to conclude, was an imperfect outline of some of my early conflicts, and such the cruel mode in which my unbelieving friends laughed at each other's hypotheses, and left me destitute of any. Finding that they conclusively confuted one another, and perceiving at last that the idea of the superhuman origin of Christianity did, and, as Bishop Butler says, alone can resolve all the difficulties of the subject, I was compelled to forego all the advantages of infidelity, and condescended to "depress" my conscience to the "Biblical standard"! Would to Heaven that it had never been depressed below it!
I am bound to say my auditors listened with courtesy. The conversation was now carried on in little knots: I, who was glad of a rest, was occupied in listening to a conversation between Harrington and his Italian friend, who was urging him to take refuge from such a Babel of discords as his company had uttered, in the only secure asylum. Harrington told him, with the utmost gravity, that one great objection to the Church of Rome was the unseemly liberty she allowed to the right of private judgment; that he found in her communion distractions the most perplexing, especially as between English and foreign Romanists!
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