of remembering that they were entitled to form their own judgment of the new Teacher, as they had judged of Hillel and other great instructors, Christians, as they called themselves, have insulted, calumniated, oppressed, abased, outraged, “the chosen race” during the long succession of centuries since the Jewish contemporaries of the Founder of Christianity made up their minds that he did not meet the conditions required by the subject of the predictions of their Scriptures.  The course of the argument against them is very briefly and effectively stated by Mr. Emerson: 

“This was Jehovah come down out of heaven.  I will kill you if you say he was a man.”

It seems as if there should be certain laws of etiquette regulating the relation of different religions to each other.  It is not civil for a follower of Mahomet to call his neighbor of another creed a “Christian dog.”  Still more, there should be something like politeness in the bearing of Christian sects toward each other, and of believers in the new dispensation toward those who still adhere to the old.  We are in the habit of allowing a certain arrogant assumption to our Roman Catholic brethren.  We have got used to their pretensions.  They may call us “heretics,” if they like.  They may speak of us as “infidels,” if they choose, especially if they say it in Latin.  So long as there is no inquisition, so long as there is no auto da fe, we do not mind the hard words much; and we have as good phrases to give them back:  the Man of Sin and the Scarlet Woman will serve for examples.  But it is better to be civil to each other all round.  I doubt if a convert to the religion of Mahomet was ever made by calling a man a Christian dog.  I doubt if a Hebrew ever became a good Christian if the baptismal rite was performed by spitting on his Jewish gabardine.  I have often thought of the advance in comity and true charity shown in the title of my late honored friend James Freeman Clarke’s book, “The Ten Great Religions.”  If the creeds of mankind try to understand each other before attempting mutual extermination, they will be sure to find a meaning in beliefs which are different from their own.  The old Calvinistic spirit was almost savagely exclusive.  While the author of the “Ten Great Religions” was growing up in Boston under the benignant, large-minded teachings of the Rev. James Freeman, the famous Dr. John M. Mason, at New York, was fiercely attacking the noble humanity of “The Universal Prayer.”  “In preaching,” says his biographer, “he once quoted Pope’s lines as to God’s being adored alike ‘by saint, by savage, and by sage,’ and pronounced it (in his deepest guttural) ‘the most damnable lie.’”

What could the Hebrew expect when a Christian preacher could use such language about a petition breathing the very soul of humanity?  Happily, the true human spirit is encroaching on that arrogant and narrow-minded form of selfishness which called itself Christianity.