Mr. Lane, and Mr. Vambery tell us, that, in Arabia, Egypt, and Turkistan, there are multitudes who are outwardly Mohammedan, but who in their private belief reject Mohammed, and are really Pagans.  But, no doubt, there is a catholic tendency both in Judaism and Mohammedanism; and this comes from the great doctrine which they hold in common with Christianity,—­the unity of God.  Faith in that is the basis of all expectation of a universal religion, and the wish and the power to convert others come from that doctrine of the Divine unity.

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But Christianity teaches the unity of God not merely as a supremacy of power and will, but as a supremacy of love and wisdom; it teaches God as Father, and not merely as King; so it seeks not merely to make proselytes and subjects, but to make converts.  Hence Christianity, beginning as a Semitic religion, among the Jews, went across the Greek Archipelago and converted the Hellenic and the Latin races; afterward the Goths, Lombards, Franks, Vandals; later still, the Saxons, Danes, and Normans.  Meantime, its Nestorian missionaries, pushing east, made converts in Armenia, Persia, India, and China.  In later days it has converted negroes, Indians, and the people of the Pacific Islands.  Something, indeed, stopped its progress after its first triumphant successes during seven or eight centuries.  At the tenth century it reached its term.  Modern missions, whether those of Jesuits or Protestants, have not converted whole nations and races, but only individuals here and there.  The reason of this check, probably, is, that Christians have repeated the mistakes of the Jews and Mohammedans.  They have sought to make proselytes to an outward system of worship and ritual, or to make subjects to a dogma; but not to make converts to an idea and a life.  When the Christian missionaries shall go and say to the Hindoos or the Buddhists:  “You are already on your way toward God,—­your religion came from him, and was inspired by his Spirit; now he sends you something more and higher by his Son, who does not come to destroy but to fulfil, not to take away any good thing you have, but to add to it something better,” then we shall see the process of conversion, checked in the ninth and tenth, centuries, reinaugurated.

Judaism, Islam, and Christianity, all teaching the strict unity of God, have all aimed at becoming universal.  Judaism failed because it sought proselytes instead of making converts.  Islam, the religion of Mohammed (in reality a Judaizing Christian sect) failed because it sought to make subjects rather than converts.  Its conquests over a variety of races were extensive, but not deep.  To-day it holds in its embrace at least four very distinct races,—­the Arabs, a Semitic race, the Persians, an Indo-European race, the Negroes, and the Turks or Turanians.  But, correctly viewed, Islam is only a heretical Christian sect, and so all this must be credited to the interest