The question therefore is this, Will Christianity be able to do for the remaining religions of the world what it did for the Greeks, the Romans, and the Teutonic nations?  Is it capable of becoming a universal religion?

Sec. 2.  Christianity a Pleroma, or Fulness of Life.

It is evident that Christianity can become the universal human religion only by supplying the religious wants of all the races of men who dwell on all the face of the earth.  If it can continue to give them all the truth their own religions contain, and add something more; if it can inspire them with all the moral life which their own religions communicate, and yet more; and, finally, if it can unite the races of men in one family, one kingdom of heaven,—­then it is fitted to be and will become the universal religion.  It will then not share the fate of those which have preceded it.  It will not have its rise, progress, decline, and fall.  It will not become, in its turn, antiquated, and be left behind by the advance of humanity.  It will not be swallowed up in something deeper and broader than itself.  But it will appear as the desire of all nations, and Christ will reign until he has subdued all his enemies—­error, war, sin, selfishness, tyranny, cruelty—­under his feet.

Now, as we have seen, Christianity differs from all other religions (on the side of truth) in this, that it is a pleroma, or fulness of knowledge.  It does not differ, by teaching what has never been said or thought before.  Perhaps the substance of most of the statements of Jesus may be found scattered through the ten religions of the world, some here and some there.  Jesus claims no monopoly of the truth.  He says.  “My doctrine is not mine, but his who sent me.”  But he does call himself “the Light of the World,” and says that though he does not come to destroy either the law or the prophets, he comes to fulfil them in something higher.  His work is to fulfil all religions with something higher, broader, and deeper than what they have,—­accepting their truth, supplying their deficiencies.

If this is a fact, then it will appear that Christianity comes, not as an exclusive, but as an inclusive system.  It includes everything, it excludes nothing but limitation and deficiency.

Whether Christianity be really such a pleroma of truth or not, must be ascertained by a careful comparison of its teachings, and the ideas lying back of them, with those of all other religions.  We have attempted this, to some extent, in our Introduction, and in our discussion of each separate religion.  We have seen that Christianity, in converting the nations, always accepted something and gave something in return.  Thus it received from Egypt and Africa their powerful realism, as in the writings of Tertullian, Origen, Augustine, and gave in return a spiritual doctrine.  It received God, as seen in nature and its organizations, and returned God as above nature.  Christianity