The opposite tendencies of these antagonist forms of piety appear in the development of Egyptian and Hellenic life.  The gods of Egypt were mysteries too far removed from the popular apprehension to be objects of worship; and so religion in Egypt became priestcraft.  In Greece, on the other hand, the gods were too familiar, too near to the people, to be worshipped with any real reverence.  Partaking in all human faults and vices, it must sooner or later come to pass that familiarity would breed contempt.  And as the religion of Egypt perished from being kept away from the people, as an esoteric system in the hands of priests, that of Greece, in which there was no priesthood as an order, came to an end because the gods ceased to be objects of respect at all.

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We see, from these examples, how each of the great ethnic religions tends to a disproportionate and excessive, because one-sided, statement of some divine truth or law.  The question then emerges at this point:  “Is Christianity also one-sided, or does it contain in itself all these truths?” Is it teres atque rotundus, so as to be able to meet every natural religion with a kindred truth, and thus to supply the defects of each from its own fulness?  If it can be shown to possess this amplitude, it at once is placed by itself in an order of its own.  It is not to be classified with the other religions, since it does not share their one family fault.  In every other instance we can touch with our finger the weak place, the empty side.  Is there any such weak side in Christianity?  It is the office of Comparative Theology to answer.

The positive side of Brahmanism we saw to be its sense of spiritual realities.  That is also fully present in Christianity.  Not merely does this appear in such New Testament texts as these:  “God is spirit,” “The letter killeth, the spirit giveth life”:  not only does the New Testament just graze and escape Pantheism in such passages as “From whom, and through whom, and to whom are all things,” “Who is above all, and through all, and in us all,” “In him we live and move and have our being,” but the whole history of Christianity is the record of a spiritualism almost too excessive.  It has appeared in the worship of the Church, the hymns of the Church, the tendencies to asceticism, the depreciation of earth and man.  Christianity, therefore, fully meets Brahmanism on its positive side, while it fulfils its negations, as we shall see hereafter, by adding as full a recognition of man and nature.

The positive side of Buddhism is its cognition of the human soul and the natural laws of the universe.  Now, if we look into the New Testament and into the history of the Church, we find this element also fully expressed.  It appears in all the parables and teachings of Jesus, in which man is represented as a responsible agent, rewarded or punished according to the exact measure of his works; receiving the government