This method of establishing Christianity differs from the traditional argument in this:  that, while the last undertakes to prove Christianity to be true, this shows it to be true.  For if we can make it appear, by a fair survey of the principal religions of the world, that, while they are ethnic or local, Christianity is catholic or universal; that, while they are defective, possessing some truths and wanting others, Christianity possesses all; and that, while they are stationary, Christianity is progressive; it will not then be necessary to discuss in what sense it is a supernatural religion.  Such a survey will show that it is adapted to the nature of man.  When we see adaptation we naturally infer design.  If Christianity appears, after a full comparison with other religions, to be the one and only religion which is perfectly adapted to man, it will be impossible to doubt that it was designed by God to be the religion of our race; that it is the providential religion sent by God to man, its truth God’s truth its way the way to God and to heaven.

Sec. 6.  It will show that, while most of the Religions of the World are Ethnic, or the Religions of Races, Christianity is Catholic, or adapted to become the Religion of all Races.

By ethnic religions we mean those religions, each of which has always been confined within the boundaries of a particular race or family of mankind, and has never made proselytes or converts, except accidentally, outside of it.  By catholic religions we mean those which have shown the desire and power of passing over these limits, and becoming the religion of a considerable number of persons belonging to different races.

Now we are met at once with the striking and obvious fact, that most of the religions of the world are evidently religions limited in some way to particular races or nations.  They are, as we have said, ethnic.  We use this Greek word rather than its Latin equivalent, gentile, because gentile, though meaning literally “of, or belonging to, a race,” has acquired a special sense from its New Testament use as meaning all who are not Jews.  The word “ethnic” remains pure from any such secondary or acquired meaning, and signifies simply that which belongs to a race.

The science of ethnology is a modern one, and is still in the process of formation.  Some of its conclusions, however, may be considered as established.  It has forever set aside Blumenbach’s old classification of mankind into the Caucasian and four other varieties, and has given us, instead, a division of the largest part of mankind into Indo-European, Semitic, and Turanian families, leaving a considerable penumbra outside as yet unclassified.