of ten or five cities according to his stewardship.  And when we look into the practical working of Christianity we find almost an exaggerated stress laid on the duty of saving one’s soul.  This excessive estimate is chiefly seen in the monastic system of the Roman Church, and in the Calvinistic sects of Protestantism.  It also comes to light again, curiously enough, in such books as Combe’s “Constitution of Man,” the theory of which is exactly the same as that of the Buddhists; namely, that the aim of life is a prudential virtue, consisting in wise obedience to the natural laws of the universe.  Both systems substitute prudence for Providence as the arbiter of human destiny.  But, apart from these special tendencies in Christianity, it cannot be doubted that all Christian experience recognizes the positive truth of Buddhism in regarding the human soul as a substantial, finite, but progressive monad, not to be absorbed, as in Brahmanism, in the abyss of absolute being.

The positive side of the system of Confucius is the organization of the state on the basis of the family.  The government of the emperor is paternal government, the obedience of the subject is filial obedience.  Now, though Jesus did not for the first time call God “the Father,” he first brought men into a truly filial relation to God.  The Roman Church is organized on the family idea.  The word “Pope” means the “Father”; he is the father of the whole Church.  Every bishop and every priest is also the father of a smaller family, and all those born into the Church are its children, as all born into a family are born sons and daughters of the family.  In Protestantism, also, society is composed of families as the body is made up of cells.  Only in China, and in Christendom, is family life thus sacred and worshipful.  In some patriarchal systems, polygamy annuls the wife and the mother; in others the father is a despot, and the children slaves; in other systems, the crushing authority of the state destroys the independence of the household.  Christianity alone accepts with China the religion of family life with all its conservative elements, while it fulfils it with the larger hope of the kingdom of heaven and brotherhood of mankind.

This idea of the kingdom of heaven, so central in Christianity, is also the essential motive in the religion of Zoroaster.  As, in the Zend Avesta, every man is a soldier, fighting for light or for darkness, and neutrality is impossible; so, in the Gospel, light and good stand opposed to darkness and evil as perpetual foes.  A certain current of dualism runs through the Christian Scriptures and the teaching of the Church.  God and Satan, heaven and hell, are the only alternatives.  Every one must choose between them.  In the current theology, this dualism has been so emphasized as even to exceed that of the Zend Avesta.  The doctrine of everlasting punishment and an everlasting hell has always been the orthodox doctrine in Christianity,