a personal God, Islam is like unto Christianity; but in the characteristics of that God they stand far apart. Christianity believes in a God who is self-existent, has free will, but always acts in accordance with his own highest self. Islam, on the other hand, sets forth a God who is self-existent, has a free will, acts in entirely arbitrary fashion, without any regard for self-consistency. The Mohammedan God is, therefore, one without consistency or, one may almost say, without real morality; for no person who is arbitrary can be completely moral. Of the ninety-nine names given to the God of Islam, there is none that denotes the idea of fatherhood or tender care. He is absolutely separate and distinct from the world and touches it only according to caprice, not according to any law of self-consistency. Such a God, supremely worthy in its conception of unity, which opposes all polytheism and destroys all idol worship, can hardly satisfy the longings of the human soul for fellowship with the divine.

Islam arose out of a recoil from the Mariolatry and practical polytheism of an effete Christianity. It is Christianity's greatest and most powerful rebuke. One cannot visit Palestine without being deeply moved by the tragedy of the situation. The idolatrous form of Christianity which gave rise to Mohammedanism has in turn corrupted that religion until it has become essentially ilodatrous in its practice among the common people. While its founder, like that of Christianity, taught that there was one God, its degenerate form, like that of Christianity, is much given to sacred shrines, holy places, and holy persons-all of which are virtually worshiped by the common people.

STUDY IV. THE MESSAGE OF THE NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS.

"Wherefore should the nations say,
Where is now their God?

But our God is in the heavens:

He hath done whatsoever he pleased.
Their idols are silver and gold,
The work of men's hands.

They have mouths, but they speak not;
Eyes have they, but they see not;
They have ears, but they hear not;
Noses have they, but they smell not;
They have hands, but they handle not;
Feet have they, but they walk not;
Neither speak they through their throat.
They that make them shall be like unto them;
Yea, every one that trusteth in them."

(Ps. cxv. 2-8.)

"And he made of one every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed seasons, and the bounds of their habitation; that they should seek God, if haply they might feel after him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us: for in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain even of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring." (Acts xvii. 26-28.)

PART II. THE GOD OF THE NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS.

(Continued.)

TURNING from Mohammedanism to Hinduism, we immediately come into an entirely different realm of thought. Mohammed held to a God of distinct personality and complete unity. While the Hindu religion from time to time declares its God to be personal, it is a personality far different from anything we know. He is the sole essence and reality of the universe, the unity pervading all things. Besides him there is no other reality. "There is no second

outside of him, no other distinct from him," is the set formula of the Hindu faith. This does not mean that there is no other god beside him; it means that there is no other reality beside him.

There is in this conception the fundamental truth of the unity of life, the interrelatedness of all being; but there is the fundamental error of leaving out of account all human personality. If there is no other besides God, then I am a mere dream, a shadow, a delusion. This being so, it is made impossible for me to know that it is so; for my friend, which tells me it is so, is not real, has no existence. It should be noted that the denial of the reality of sense impressions plunges us into utter darkness as to finding truth, for all our experience arises out of sense impressions and as such is the basis of knowledge.

The Buddhist conception goes still farther and denies not only the reality of man, but the reality of God. There is no reality; all is change and decay and illusion. "It is an essential doctrine," says Rhys Davids, perhaps the greatest authority on Buddhism: "It is an essential doctrine, constantly insisted upon in the original Buddhist texts and still held, so far as I have been able to ascertain, by all Buddhists, that there is nothing, either divine or human, either animal or vegetable or material, which is permanent. There is no being; there is only becoming.'

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Personal Thought.-Reflect for a moment to-day on what the value of religion would be to you if you were convinced of the truth of the doctrine of these religions—that is, that there is no such thing as a human person; that you are simply deluded when you think you exist.

1Davids, "American Lectures," page 121.

STUDY IV. THE MESSAGE OF THE NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS.

"God maketh comparison between a slave, the property of his Lord, who hath no power over anything, and a free man whom we have ourselves supplied unto good supplies, and who giveth alms therefrom both in secret and openly. Shall they be held equal? No; praise be to God! But most men know it not." (The Koran, Sura 16.)

"And as for thy bondmen, and thy bondmaids, whom thou shalt have; of the nations that are round about you, of them shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids." (Lev. xxv. 44.)

PART III. VALUATION OF MAN IN THE NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS.

ACCORDING to Islam, man is not akin to God; he does not partake of his nature and essence; neither, indeed, is such a thing desirable. Man is the creature of God. He is absolutely dependent upon his Creator in everything. While theoretically he is a moral agent, practically he cannot be; for God has fixed his fate long before man comes into being. One Mohammedan writer has put it thus:

When fate has come, man cannot it avert;
Fate fails not, should he mind and sight exert.
Beyond the Lord's decree, writ by his pen,

Nor less nor more comes to his servants, men.

This conception at once takes from man all his dignity and worth. He is simply a puppet in the hands of an arbitrary God. The Hindu and Buddhist conception is far less satisfactory. According to the former, man has no distinct existence, but is simply an emanation from the divine, to which he will sooner or later return. He is not responsible, for whatever he does is the deed of the all-pervading God. This at once cuts the nerve of all high endeavor. Buddhism

goes farther and denies man any existence whatever. Man is simply a shadow; or, to be more exact, he is just the result of the stored-up energy of past deeds and desires. Desire, lust, longing-these are the efficient cause of existence. If I do not put away all desire, when my being disintegrates, another being must come into existence to live out the result of the stored-up energy of my desire and deeds (karma). The horror of life, therefore, is rebirth in another form, to have new desires, only to give birth to a new existence. Man, therefore, is a creature bound to the eternal round of decay and rebirth in endless and monotonous succession. Salvation, as we shall see later, is the getting free from this wheel of destiny, the stopping of this monotonous succession of rebirths.

These conceptions do not dignify manhood. Hence in these countries the common man is nothing; he is simply a slave. Only the man who has fortune or some temporal blessing can be worthy of notice. Man is valuable, not because of what he essentially is, but because of something he possesses. As a result of such conceptions there is no social uplift movement known in these countries. Man is not worth lifting. No one needs spend energy on a delusion. Crossing over the Yang-tse River at Hankow, China, one morning I was amazed and horrified to learn that a little girl who had fallen overboard from a house boat had been allowed to drown. The fisherman near had said: "We do not want her. She would be a care to us." Life in these countries has no value, no worth, no sacredness. There are no native asylums, no hospitals, no orphanages. The waste life is thrown on the scrap heap without remorse.

Religions which have no more exalted ideas of man are not apt to make provision for a very worthy salvation.

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