52 The Fundamentals pretensions much above the others, far less claim exclusive divine sanction; all of them being the product of man’s spirit ual nature, as molded by his history and environment, in different nations and ages. This is the view under which the study of comparative religion is prosecuted by many eminent scholars. A large and generous study of religions— their characteristics and history—tends, it is held, to bring them into closer fellowship with each other; and only igno rance or prejudice (say these unbiased thinkers) can isolate the religion of the Old Testament or of the New, and refuse to acknowledge in other religions the divine elements which entitle them to take rank with Judaism or Christianity. The utterances of Jesus Christ on this question of the divinity of the Old Testament religion and cults are unmis takable; and not less clear and decided is His language respecting the writings in which this religion is delivered. God is the source in the directest sense, of both the religion and the records of it. No man can claim Christ’s authority for classing Judaism with Confucianism, Hinduism, Bud dhism, and Parseeism. There is nothing, indeed, in the Lord’s teaching which forbids us to recognize anything that is good in ethnic religions—any of those elements of spiritual truth which become the common property of the race and which were not completely lost in the night of heathenism; but, on the other hand, it is abundantly evident that the Jew ish faith is, to our Lord, the one true faith, and that the Jewish Scriptures have a place of their own—a place which cannot be shared with the sacred books of other peoples. Samaritanism, even though it had appropriated so largely from the religion of Israel, He will not recognize. “For sal vation is of the Jews.” Almost any reference of our Lord to the Old Testament will support the statement that He regards the Dispensation and its Scriptures as from God. He shows, e. g., that Old Testament prophecy is fulfilled in Himself, or He vindicates
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