OF CHRISTIANITY UPON OTHER RKLIGIOUS SYSTEMS. 



55 



equally well be traced to Zoroaster as to Plato and Heraclitus 1 

 There is a Divine person known in the Zendavesta as Truth, distinct 

 from Ahuramazda, the All Wise ; and it counsels its readers, for 

 holiness and salvation, to come to know and to please both these 

 heavenly beings ; while representations of a Divine Trinity are found 

 upon Persian monuments. Yet why need we go to such sources when 

 we find the Old Testament narrative illustrates so well the statement 

 in John i, 18, concerning The Logos, " No man hath seen God at any 

 time ; the only begotten Son, who has gone into the bosom of the 

 Father, He set Him forth " ; for whereas Moses was told by Jehovah, 

 " No man can see my face and live," Moses and Aaron and the 

 twenty-four elders " saw God and did eat and drink " ; and when 

 Jacob had first wrestled with an angel, or heavenly messenger, and 

 then, when conquered, had held on until he was blessed, he exclaimed, 

 "I have seen God face to face, and my life is spared" ; and after- 

 wards in blessing his grandchildren, evidently looking back at the 

 event, he said, "The God before whom my fathers Abraham and 

 Isaac did walk, the God who hath fed me all my life long unto this 

 day, the Angel who hath redeemed me from all evil, bless the 

 lads "... And such instances could be multiplied. 



Kev. John Tuckwell, M.R.A.S. : We are all of one mind with 

 Professor Orchard, I am sure, in our high appreciation of the valuable 

 Essay our Lecturer has produced as the Gunning Prize. In discuss- 

 ing a question of this nature, involving the comparison of the 

 Christian religion with other religious faiths, it is important for us 

 to keep in mind the distinction between what is essential and what 

 is adventitious in all these religions. Some men are better, and 

 others are worse, than the faiths they profess. But in them all, and 

 in all men, there is one fundamental element, sometimes described as 

 the religious instinct, and which M. Bergson attributes to the 

 elan vital, which is present wherever there is life. Be it so, but it is 

 indispensable that the religious instinct should have an appropriate 

 environment in which it can live and develop. What we see in most 

 of the religions of the world is the religious instinct blindly trying 

 to make an environment for itself. But if God has implanted in 

 man a religious instinct, it seems incredible that He should not have 

 provided also an environment of Truth suited to its exercise and 

 development, otherwise the instinct would have been as useless as the 

 fins of a fish with no water in which it could swim, or the wings of 



