of Christianity.  Islam is a John the Baptist crying in the wilderness, “Prepare the way of the Lord”; Mohammed is a schoolmaster to bring men to Christ.  It does for the nations just what Judaism did, that is, it teaches the Divine unity.  Esau has taken the place of Jacob in the economy of Providence.  When the Jews rejected Christ they ceased from their providential work, and their cousins, the Arabs, took their place.  The conquests of Islam, therefore, ought to be regarded as the preliminary conquests of Christianity.

There is still another system which has shown some tendencies toward catholicity.  This is Buddhism, which has extended itself over the whole of the eastern half of Asia.  But though it includes a variety of nationalities, it is doubtful if it includes any variety of races.  All the Buddhists appear to belong to the great Mongol family.  And although this system originated among the Aryan race in India, it has let go its hold of that family and transferred itself wholly to the Mongols.

But Christianity, from the first, showed itself capable of taking possession of the convictions of the most different races of mankind.  Now, as on the day of Pentecost, many races hear the apostles speak in their own tongues, in which they were born,—­Parthians, Medes, Elamites, dwellers in Mesopotamia, Judaea, and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Lybia about Cyrene, strangers of Rome, Cretes and Arabians.  The miracle of tongues was a type of the effect of the truth in penetrating the mind and heart of different nationalities.  The Jewish Christians, indeed, tried to repeat in Christianity their old mistake which had prevented Judaism from becoming universal.  They wished to insist that no one should become a Christian unless he became a Jew at the same time.  If they had succeeded in this, they would have effectually kept the Gospel of Christ from becoming a catholic religion.  But the Apostle Paul was raised up for the emergency, and he prevented this suicidal course.  Consequently Christianity passed at once into Europe, and became the religion of Greeks and Romans as well as Jews.  Paul struck off from it its Jewish shell, told them that as Christians they had nothing to do with the Jewish law, or with Jewish Passovers, Sabbaths, or ceremonies.  As Christians they were only to know Christ, and they were not to know him according to the flesh, that is, not as a Jew.  So Christianity became at once a catholic religion, consisting in the diffusion of great truths and a divine life.  It overflowed the nationalities of Greece and Rome, of North Africa, of Persia and Western Asia, at the very beginning.  It conquered the Gothic and German conquerors of the Roman Empire.  Under Arian missionaries, it converted Goths, Vandals, Lombards.  Under Nestorian missionaries, it penetrated as far east as China, and made converts there.  In like manner the Gospel spread over the whole of North Africa, whence it was afterwards expelled by the power of Islam.  It has shown itself, therefore, capable of adapting itself to every variety of the human race.