Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from "What Think Ye of Christ?" A Jewish View of Christianity: Being a Lecture Delivered 1886, at a Christian Literary Society in London, Under the Chairmanship of Joseph Jacobs, M.A., Cambridge
Ferent meaning. Excellent people often say there is only one religion by which they mean that their particular theology is the only one that is true, or that it is the best, and the terms theology and religion are inconveniently confused. Seeing how common it is to say that, there is only one religion; and that the statement conveys exactly what I do not mean when I say it, I have thought it necessary to state brie?y my own definition of the term. If I allude to heathendom, I mean only such peoples who have not yet perceived the parental relation of the Supreme Being to the human family. But I wish to convey no more the idea of opprobrium than I would if I alluded to persons who were not yet acquainted with the principles of logic. A religious person means one who, by some means or other, is conscious of the parental relation of the Supreme Being to mankind. The degrees of religion relate to the measure of in?uence which that principle has obtained in the particular case. The reason why I presume to describe religion as the first principle in importance, in the structure of civilization, is because it is only one which has for its immediate logical outcome the doctrine of human brother hood. Now as the antithesis to civilization is human discord, the chief test of a civilized commonwealth is the harmony of the social relations. The world has so far progressed in civilization as men and nations live in harmony. Inasmuch as there is less strife in the year 1886 than in the years of previous epochs, we are more civilized now than we were then. Moreover, in so far as there is, at this moment, strife among nations, we are less civilized than we may become. Every measure, therefore, which secures the basis of liberty, and thus shatters the founds tions of enmity, increases civilization.
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