But if, in comparison with Christianity, it is a corrupt and false religion, as many assume, then what deductions must we draw from its amazing triumphs?  For the fact stares us in the face that it is rooted deeply in a large part of the Eastern world, or, at least, has prevailed victorious for more than a thousand years.

First, we must conclude that the external triumph of a religion, especially among ignorant or wicked people, is not so much owing to the purity and loftiness of its truths, as to its harmony with prevailing errors and corruptions.  When Mohammed preached his sublimest doctrines, and appealed to reason and conscience, he converted about a score of people in thirteen years.  When he invoked demoralizing passions, he converted all Arabia in eleven years.  And does not this startling conclusion seem to be confirmed by the whole history of mankind?  How slow the progress of Christianity for two hundred years, except when assisted by direct supernatural influences!  How rapid its triumphs when it became adapted to the rude barbaric mind, or to the degenerate people of the Empire!  How popular and prevalent and widespread are those religions which we are accustomed to regard as most corrupt!  Buddhism and Brahmanism have had more adherents than even Mohammedanism.  How difficult it was for Moses and the prophets to keep the Jews from idolatry!  What caused the rapid eclipse of faith in the antediluvian world?  Why could not Noah establish and perpetuate his doctrines among his own descendants before he was dead?  Why was the Socratic philosophy unpopular?  Why were the Epicureans so fashionable?  Why was Christianity itself most eagerly embraced when its light was obscured by fables and superstitions?  Why did the Roman Empire perish, with all the aid of a magnificent civilization; why did this civilization itself retrograde; why did its art and literature decline?  Why did the grand triumphs of Protestantism stop in half a century after Luther delivered his message?  What made the mediaeval popes so powerful?  What gave such ascendency to the Jesuits?  Why is the simple faith of the primitive Christians so obnoxious to the wise, the mighty, and the noble?  What makes the most insidious heresies so acceptable to the learned?  Why is modern literature, when fashionable and popular, so antichristian in its tone and spirit?  Why have not the doctrines of Luther held their own in Germany, and those of Calvin in Geneva, and those of Cranmer in England, and those of the Pilgrim Fathers in New England?  Is it because, as men become advanced in learning and culture, they are theologically wiser than Moses and Abraham and Isaiah?