emotion, “By the grace of God I am what I am.”  The Buddha declared that he recognized no being in any world to whom he owed any special reverence; and especially in his later years, when his disciples had come to look upon him as in a sense divine, he regarded himself as the highest of all intelligences on the earth or in the various heavens.  Such assumptions in both Buddha and Confucius will explain the fact that for ages both have been virtually worshipped.  “At fifteen,” said Confucius, “I had my mind bent on learning.  At thirty I stood firm.  At forty I had no doubt.  At fifty I knew the decrees of Heaven.  At sixty my ear was an obedient organ for the reception of truth.  At seventy I could follow what my heart desired without transgressing what was right."[224] Yet neither of these great teachers claimed to be a divine Saviour.  They were simply exemplars; their self-righteousness was supposed to be attainable by all.

I cannot do better in this connection than point out a striking contrast in the recorded experiences of two well-known historic characters.  Islam honors David, King of Israel, and accords him a place among its accredited prophets.  Both David and Mohammed were guilty of adultery under circumstances of peculiar aggravation.  Mohammed covered his offence by a blasphemous pretence of special revelations from God, justifying his crime and chiding him for such qualms of conscience as he had.  David lay in dust and ashes while he bemoaned not only the consequences of his sin and the breach of justice toward his neighbor, but also the deep spiritual offence of his act.  “Against Thee, and Thee only, O God, have I sinned, and done this evil in Thy sight.”  Profoundest penitence on the one hand and Heaven-daring blasphemy on the other, the Bible and the Koran being witnesses!

Another marked distinction is seen in the moral purity of the Christian Scriptures as contrasted with the so-called sacred books of all other religions.  That which is simply human will naturally be expected to show the moral taint of lapsed humanity.  The waters cannot rise higher than the fountain-head, nor can one gather figs from thistles.  In our social intercourse with men we sooner or later find out their true moral level.  And so in what is written, the exact grade of the author will surely appear.  And it is by this very test that we can with tolerable accuracy distinguish the human from the divine in religious records.  It is not difficult to determine what is from heaven and what is of the earth.

No enlightened reader of Greek mythology can proceed far without discovering that he is dealing with the prurient and often lascivious imaginings of semi-barbarous poets.  He finds the poetry and the art of Greece both reflecting the character of a passionate people, bred under a southern sun and in an extremely sensuous age.  If he ventures into the lowest depths of the popular religious literature of Greece or Rome, or ancient Egypt or Phoenicia, he finds unspeakable