And yet that was no easy conquest.  The early church, when brought face to face with the culture of Greece and the self-assertion of Roman power, when confronted with profound philosophies like those of Plato and Aristotle, with the subtleties of the Stoics, and with countless admixtures of Persian mysticism, had, humanly speaking, quite as formidable a task as those that are presented in the heathen systems of to-day.  Very few of the champions of modern heathenism can compare with Celsus, and there are no more subtle philosophies than those of ancient Greece.  Evidently, the one thing needed to disenchant the false systems of our time is a clear and accurate knowledge of their merits and demerits, and of their true relation to Christianity.

It will be of advantage, for one thing, if we learn to give credit to the non-Christian religions for the good which they may fairly claim.  There has existed a feeling that they had no rights which Christian men were bound to respect.  They have been looked upon as systems of unmixed evil, whose enormities it were impossible to exaggerate.  And all such misconceptions and exaggerations have only led to serious reactions.  Anti-Christian writers have made great capital of the alleged misrepresentations which zealous friends of missions have put upon heathenism; and there is always great force in any appeal for fair play, on whichever side the truth may lie.  Where the popular Christian idea has presented a low view of some system, scarcely rising above the grade of fetichism, the apologists have triumphantly displayed a profound philosophy.  Where the masses of Christian people have credited whole nations with no higher notions of worship than a supreme trust in senseless stocks and stones, some skilful defender has claimed that the idols were only the outward symbols of an indwelling conception of deity, and has proceeded with keen relish to point out a similar use of symbols in the pictures and images of the Christian Church.

From one extreme many people have passed to another, and in the end have credited heathen systems with greater merit than they possess.  A marked illustration of this fact is found in the influence which was produced by Sir Edwin Arnold’s “Light of Asia.”  Sentimental readers, passing from surprise to credulity, were ready to invest the “gentle Indian Saint” with Christian conceptions which no real Buddhist ever thought of.  Mr. Arnold himself is said to have expressed surprise that people should have given to his poem so serious an interpretation, or should have imagined for a moment that he intended to compare Buddhism with the higher and purer teachings of the New Testament.