Sec. 6.  Christianity in Relation to Judaism and Mohammedanism.  The Monad in all Religions.

There are three religions which teach the pure upity of God, or true monotheism.  These three Unitarian religions are Judaism, Christianity, and Mohammedanism.  They also all originated in a single race, the Semitic race, that which has occupied the central region of the world, the centre of three continents.  It is the race which tends to a religious unity, as that of our Aryan ancestors tended to variety.

But what is pure monotheism?  It is the worship of one alone God, separated by the vast abyss of the infinite from all finite beings.  It is the worship of God, not as the Supreme Being only, not as the chief among many gods, as Jupiter was the president of the dynasty on Olympus, not merely the Most High, but as the only God.  It avoids the two extremes, one of making the Supreme Being head of a council or synod of deities, and the other of making him indeed infinite, but an infinite abstraction, or abyss of darkness.  These are the two impure forms of monotheism.  The first prevailed in Greece, Rome, Egypt, Scandinavia.  In each of these religions there was a supreme being,—­Zeus, Jupiter, Ammon, Odin,—­but this supreme god was only primus inter pares, first among equals.  The other impure form of monotheism prevailed in the East,—­in Brahmanism, Buddhism, and the religion of Zoroaster.  In the one Parabrahm, in the other Zerana-Akerana, in the third Nirvana itself, is the Infinite Being or substance, wholly separate from all that is finite.  It is so wholly separate as to cease to be an object of adoration and obedience.  Not Parabrahm, but Siva, Vischnu, and Brahma; not Zerana-Akerana, but Ormazd and the Amschaspands; not the infinite world of Nirvana, nor the mighty Adi-Buddha, but the Buddhas of Confession, the finite Sakya-Muni, are the objects of worship in these systems.

Only from the Semitic race have arisen the pure monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Mohammedanism.  Each of these proclaims one only God, and each makes this only God the object of all worship and service.  Judaism says, “Hear!  O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord!” (Deut. vi. 4.) Originally among the Jews, God’s name as the “Plural of Majesty” indicated a unity formed from variety; but afterward it became in the word Jahveh a unity of substance.  “By my name Jehovah I was not known to them” (i.e. to the Patriarchs).[406] That name indicates absolute Being, “I am the I am."[407]

Ancient Gentile monotheism vibrated between a personal God, the object of worship, who was limited and finite, and an infinite absolute Being who was out of sight, “whose veil no one had lifted.”  The peculiarity of the Mosaic religion was to make God truly the one alone, and at the same time truly the object of worship.

In this respect Judaism, Christianity, and Mohammedanism agree, and in this they differ from all other religions.  Individual thinkers, like Socrates, AEschylus, Cicero, have reached the same conviction; but these three are the only popular religions, in which God is at once the infinite and absolute, and the only object of worship.