Page:The Cambridge History of American Literature, v3.djvu/231

Comparative Religion ^13 In Confucianism, where the religious movement is ethical, the ethics become human and religion is lost. In Buddhism, where it is philosophical, the philosophy becomes pessimistic and religion dies out. In Hinduism, where it is emotional, the emotion becomes degrading and rehgion is defiled. In Mohammedanism, where it is doctrinal, the doctrine becomes cold and lifeless and religion is atrophied. ... A personal God, possessing a moral character and offering himself in personal relations to man, is known in Christianity- alone. But a still more outspoken sympathy and reverence for the religions which Christianity is to "complete" are to be found among missionaries and their devoutest supporters. George William Knox, for fifteen years a missionary in Japan and after- ward Professor of the Philosophy and History of Religion in Union Theological Seminary, who died in Corea while Union Seminary Lecturer in the East, thus expresses himself in The Spirit of the Orient (1906) : If God rules, we cannot join in the wholesale condemnation of the East as if it were a blot on His creation. . . As one thinks of Confucianism, its vast antiquity, its immense influence over such multitudes, its practical common sense, its freedom from all that is superstitious or licentious or cruel or priestly, of the intelligent men it has led to high views of righteousness, one cannot but regard it as a revelation from the God of truth and righteousness. As we should expect, this viewpoint was strongly urged at the Parliament of Religions in Chicago. Dr. Barrows, its organizer, asked the frank question: "Why should not Christians be glad to leam what God has wrought through Buddha and Zoroaster?" And Robert Hume, a missionary from India who had been prominently identified with the liberal wing in the Andover controversy, and author of Missions from the Modern View (1905), declared: By the contact of Christian and Hindu thought, each will help the other. . . . The Hindu's recognition of the immanence of God in every part of his universe will quicken the present move- ment of western thought to recognize everywhere a present and a living God. The Hindu's longing for unity will help the western mind ... to appreciate . . . that there has been and will be one