Foreign Missions or World Wide Evangelism 81 will be slowly wrought out in thought and deed until the con summation. “In this sense, Christianity is the only historical religion. The message which it proclaims is wholly unique. Christ said, I am—not I declare, or I lay open, or I point to, but I am—the way, the truth and the life.” 6. The ethical uniqueness of Christianity entitles it to absorb and displace all other religions. It alone makes the ■moral character of God the central and transcendent thing. Judged by its God, no other gods are really good. It alone presents a perfect ethical ideal for the individual and it alone possesses a social ethic adequate for a true national life and for a world society. I t is pre-eminently the ethical religion. All its values are moral values. All the best life of Christian lands is an effort to embody the Christian ethics in life, and those ethics shelter absolutely none of the evil of Christian lands. “There is hardly a more trustworthy sign and a safer criterion of the civilization of a people,” says the anthro pologist Waitz, “than the degree in which the demands of a pure morality are supported by their religion and are inter woven with their religious life.” And this is the true test of religions also. Do they supply men with perfect moral ideals ? Do they condemn evil and refuse to allow evil to shelter itself under religious sanction? On one or both of these issues every non-Christian religion breaks down. There is much worthy moral teaching in each of the non-Christian religions, but the Koran enjoined the enslavement of the women and children of unbelievers conquered in battle, and authorized unlimited concubinage, and its sanction of polygamy cannot be defended as in the interest of morality. “Polygamy,” said Dr. Henry H. Jessup, “has not diminished licentiousness among Moham medans.” Even in the Vedas there are passages which are morally debarred from publication. “I dare not give and you dare not print,” wrote the Rev. S. Williams, “the ipsissima verba of an English version of the original Yajar Veda Man- -
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