258 THE RIGHT EEV. J. E. C. WELLDON, U.D., ON 



self-evident. If I were to choose an instance as showing how 

 far Jesus Christ has lifted the moral standard of humanity 

 above His predecessors, I would put His treatment of the woman 

 taken in adultery beside the conversation between Socrates and 

 the courtezan as related by Xenophon. The Christian Saint, 

 whether man or woman, is, in fact, the realisation of a type 

 which the pre-Christian or the non- Christian world can scarcely 

 imagine. 



Let me add the fidelity of the Christian revelation to human 

 nature. Christianity is based upon the facts of man's inherent 

 sinfulness, yet his natural affinity to God, and his conscious need 

 of redemption or atonement. By the doctrine of the Incarnation 

 it satisfies the human desire of contact with the Deity ; in the 

 fact of the Crucifixion it exemplifies by a unique example the 

 principle of self-sacrifice. It sets its seal upon the truth enun- 

 ciated by the prophet Micah, that not in ritual or oblation, but in 

 obedience to the Divine Law lies the true performance of 

 religious duty. It were strange indeed that the Bible, if it were 

 a purely human book, should always take God's side as against 

 man's ; but if holy men of old spake in the Bible as they were 

 moved by the Divine Spirit, then it is natural that the Bible 

 •should " justify the ways of God to man." Such a religion as 

 Confucianism or Buddhism seems to stifle the human instinct of 

 prayer and devotion. Other religions admit it, but fail to satisfy 

 it. In Christianity alone is the spiritual side of human nature 

 completely satisfied. 



Again, the progressiveness of the Christian revelation distin- 

 guishes it from religions which are hidebound by some rigid 

 institution, as Hinduism is by caste, or incapable, as Moham- 

 medanism is, of rising above a certain level. Hinduism and 

 Buddhism are stationary religions. Mohammedanism, as being 

 historically later than Christianity, may be said to be a religion 

 'Comparatively retrograde. It is a religion of conquest ; and if it 

 lifts a pagan society with singular rapidity to a certain height, 

 beyond that height it is apparently impotent to ascend. It is 

 morally and spiritually weakened by its inadequate conception 

 of the Godhead ; for the Mohammedan God is a God of Power ; 

 the Christian God is a God of Love. 



I come then, lastly, to the person of Jesus Christ ; for it is His 

 personality which gives His religion its most distinctive 

 superiority to all other religions of the world. It may be not 

 unfairly said that Mohammed, by the defects of his personal 

 life, fails to answer the highest instincts of humanity. Buddha, 

 if he was the Light of Asia, is not, and cannot be, the Light of 



