The view which we are opposing contradicts that law of progress which alone gives meaning and unity to history.  Instead of progress, it teaches degeneracy and failure.  But elsewhere we see progress, not recession.  Geology shows us higher forms of life succeeding to the lower.  Botany exhibits the lichens and mosses preparing a soil for more complex forms of vegetation.  Civil history shows the savage state giving way to the semi-civilized, and that to the civilized.  If heathen religions are a step, a preparation for Christianity, then this law of degrees appears also in religion; then we see an order in the progress of the human soul,—­“first the blade, then the ear, afterward the full corn in the ear.”  Then we can understand why Christ’s coming was delayed till the fulness of the time had come.  But otherwise all, in this most important sphere of human life, is in disorder, without unity, progress, meaning, or providence.

These views, we trust, will be amply confirmed when we come to examine each great religion separately and carefully.  We shall find them always feeling after God, often finding him.  We shall see that in their origin they are not the work of priestcraft, but of human nature; in their essence not superstitions, but religions; in their doctrines true more frequently than false; in their moral tendency good rather than evil.  And instead of degenerating toward something worse, they come to prepare the way for something better.

Sec. 4.  How Ethnic Religions were regarded by Christ and his Apostles.

According to Christ and the Apostles, Christianity was to grow out of Judaism, and be developed into a universal religion.  Accordingly, the method of Jesus was to go first to the Jews; and when he left the limits of Palestine on a single occasion, he declared himself as only going into Phoenicia to seek after the lost sheep of the house of Israel.  But he stated that he had other sheep, not of this fold, whom he must bring, recognizing that there were, among the heathen, good and honest hearts prepared for Christianity, and already belonging to him; sheep who knew his voice and were ready to follow him.  He also declared that the Roman centurion and the Phoenician woman already possessed great faith, the centurion more than he had yet found in Israel.  But the most striking declaration of Jesus, and one singularly overlooked, concerning the character of the heathen, is to be found in his description of the day of judgment, in Matthew (chap.  XXV.).  It is very curious that men should speculate as to the fate of the heathen, when Jesus has here distinctly taught that all good men among them are his sheep, though they never heard of him.  The account begins, “Before him shall be gathered all the Gentiles” (or heathen).  It is not a description of the judgment of the Christian world, but of the heathen world.  The word here used ([Greek:  ta ethnae]) occurs about one hundred and sixty-four times in the New Testament.  It