Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/395

Rh with; third, that it should produce good effects, and prove a blessing. There should be nothing in the message but what the simple and well-meaning could understand when spoken; what it required and prescribed in character, conduct, and way of life should admit of being put into practice in any climate or country, in any age, by every class of people; and this practical trial of the religion should have a direct effect of good, with benefits and blessings for all. Such are the primary essentials of a universal religion. No idealizing of any teaching with the institutions into which it should organize itself could enhance the attractions or the expected practical benefits of such a religion offered to men. Language (and that the most simple) and sympathetic benevolence would seem to be the only agencies needed as a medium in communicating it successively to those all over the globe who could be reached by its missionaries. Here again we have a problem most worthy of engaging, for the instruction of all, the thought and wisdom of the responsible teachers of truth, to explain to us whether the neglect to keep in view one, two, or all three of those essentials of a world-wide religion is chargeable for the very limited success of modern missionary effort.

The rich experience gathered from missionary labors among the heathen here and elsewhere has drawn out very distinctly and sharply among professed Christians a radical difference of opinion and estimate applied to their religion, which we may state in plain and familiar terms as amounting to this: one class of persons will interpret and value and teach Christianity, as the means of saving souls one by one, redeeming them from guilt and an endless doom of woe; another class look away from this individual work of Christianity save as each will have a share in a common good, and identify Christianity with a general influence of civilizing, humanizing, refining, elevating, and reforming effects on whole communities. The one class will, so to speak, view this work of individual conversion and