As has already been noticed, all theories of moral transformation found in heathen systems require time.  The process is carried on by intensive and long-continued thought, or by gradual accumulations of merit.  Only the Buddha was enlightened per sallum,[209] so to speak.  And quite in accord with this view are those modern forms of materialism which maintain that mental and moral habits consist in gradual impressions made in the molecules of the nerve-tissues—­that these impressions come at length to determine our acts without the necessity of either purpose or conscious recognition, and that only when right action becomes thus involuntary can character strictly be said to exist.[210] But such theories certainly do not harmonize with the known facts of Christian conversion already alluded to.  We do not refuse to recognize a certain degree of truth hidden in these speculations.  We are aware that continued thought or emotion promotes a certain habit, and that in the Christian life such habit becomes an element of strength.  We also admit that high and pure thought and emotion stamp themselves at length upon our physical nature, and appear in the very expression of the countenance, but when we look for the transforming impulse that can begin and sustain such habitual exercises in spite of the natural sinfulness and corruption which all systems admit, we find it only in the Christian doctrine of the new birth by the power of the Holy Ghost.

On these two doctrines of a Divine Vicarious Sacrifice and of the transforming power of a Divine Spirit we might rest our case.  It should be sufficient to show, first, that Christianity alone provides a divine salvation in which God is made sin for us; and second, that its power alone, though objective, works in us the only effectual subjective transformation by a direct influence from on high.  But there are many other points of contrast in which the transcendent character of Christianity appears.

First, an important differential lies in the completeness of the Divine personality of Jesus.  Buddhism, Confucianism, and Mohammedanism, were strongly supported by the personality of their founders.  We also cheerfully accord to such men as Socrates and Plato great personal influence.  They have impressed themselves upon the millions of mankind more deeply than statesmen, or potentates, or conquerors; but not one of these presents to us a complete and rounded character, judged even from a human stand-point.  Mohammed utterly failed on the ethical side.[211] His life was so marred by coarse sensuality, weak effeminacy, heartless cruelty, unblushing hypocrisy, and heaven-defying blasphemy, that but for his stupendous achievements, and his sublime and persistent self-assertion, he would long since have been buried beneath the contempt of mankind.[212] Confucius appears to have been above reproach in morals, and that amid universal profligacy; but he was cold in temperament, unsympathetic, and