Here, then, we find one clear answer to the question with which we started.  The Christian confessor who is confronted with the question “What reason have you for thinking that the religion of your fathers is better than any other form of faith?” may answer, first, “It is better because it cares more for the unity of the race than any other religion cares; because it believes more strongly in the essential brotherhood of all worshipers; because it teaches a larger charity for men of differing beliefs, and more perfectly realizes the sympathy of religions.  It is far from being all that it ought to be, on this side of its development; many of its adherents are still full of bigotry and intolerance and Pharisaic conceit; but these are contrary to its plainest teachings, and all its progress is in the direction of larger charity for men of all religions.  Already, in spite of its failures, it has shown far more of this temper than any other religion has exhibited; and when it gets rid of its own sects and schisms, and comes closer to the heart of its own Master, it will have a power of drawing the peoples together which no other religion has ever thought of exercising.”

I have spoken of the fact that Christianity claims to be a universal religion.  That was the expectation with which its first messengers were sent forth.  They were bidden to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.  There has never been any other thought among the loyal followers of Jesus than that the day is coming when every knee shall bow to him and every tongue confess him.

This expectation of universality is not shared by all the religions of the earth.  Many of them are purely ethnic faiths; they grow out of the lives of the peoples who adhere to them; it does not seem to be supposed that any other peoples would care for them or know what to do with them.  The old Romans had a saying, “Cujus regio, ejus religio”—­which means, Every country has its own religion.  The earlier Hebrews had the same idea; they thought that every people had a god of its own.  Jehovah was their God; Baal was the god of the Phoenicians, and Chemosh was the god of Moab.  They believed that Jehovah was a stronger God than any of these other deities, but they did not seem to doubt their existence or their potency.  Even the prophet Micah says:  “For all the peoples will walk every one in the name of his god, and we will walk in the name of Jehovah our God for ever and ever."[9] The later prophets gained the larger conception of universality; they believed that there was but one supreme God, and therefore but one religion, to the acceptance of which all mankind would at last be brought.  The narrower conception of religion as a national or racial interest has, however, prevailed and still prevails among many peoples.  The Hindu religion, which numbers many millions of votaries, has no expectation of becoming a world religion.  Indeed, it could not well entertain any such expectation; the system of caste, on which it rests, makes it necessarily exclusive.  It has no missionary impulse; its adherents are content with a good which they do not seek to share with other peoples.  The same thing is true of many of the minor faiths.