If, I continued, I examine the past history and present position of Christianity, with an impartial eye, I see that it presents in several most important respects a contrast with other religions in point office.  I shall content myself with enumerating a few.  Look, then, at the perpetual spirit of aggression which characterizes this religion; its undeniable power (in whatever it consists, and from whatever it springs) to prompt those who hold it to render it victorious,—­a spirit which has more or less characterized its whole history:  which still lives, even in its most corrupt forms, and which has not been least active in our own time.  I do not see any thing like it in other religions.  Till I see Mollahs from Ispahan, Brahmins from Benares, Bonzes from China, preaching their systems of religion in London, Paris, and Berlin, supported year after year by an enormous expenditure on the part of their zealous compatriots, and the nations who support them taking the liveliest interest in their success or failure, till I see this (call it fanatical if you will, the money thus expended wasted, the men who give it fools), I shall not be able to pronounce Christianity simply on a par with other religions.

Till the sacred books of other religions can boast of at least a hundredth part of the same efforts to translate and diffuse them as have been concentrated on the Bible; till we find them in at least half as many languages; till they can render those who possess them at least a tenth part as willing to make costly efforts to insure to them a circulation coextensive with the family of man; till they occupy an equal space in the literature of the world, and are equally bound up with the philosophy, history, poetry, of the community of civilized nations; till they have given an equal number of human communities a written language, and may thus boast of having imparted to large sections of the human family the germ of all art, science, and civilization; till they can cite an equal amount of testimonies to their beauty and sublimity from those who reject their divine original,—­I shall scarcely think Christianity can be put simply on a par with other religions.

Till it can be said that the sacred books of other religions are equally unique in relation to all the literature in which they are imbedded; similar neither to what precedes nor what comes after them, —­their enemies themselves being judges; till they can be shown to be as superior to all that is found in contemporaneous authors as the New Testament is to the writings of Christian Fathers or the Jewish Rabbis,—­I cannot say that Christianity is just like any other religion.

Till we can find a religion that has stood as many different assaults from infidelity in the midst of it,—­educated infidelity, infidelity aided by learning, genius, philosophy, freely employing all the power of argument and all the power of ridicule to disabuse its votaries; till we can find a religion which can point to an equal array of educated men, philosophic in spirit, in learning, and genius, deeply skilled in the investigation of evidence, deliberately declaring that its claims are well sustained.—­we cannot say that Christianity is just like any other religion.