________________
152 LECTURES ON THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION ligions of Zoroaster, Buddha, or Confucius--can hardly be aware how strongly the interpretation of the hištory of the religions of the world, as an education of the human race, can be supported by authorities before which they themselves would probably bow in silence. We need not appeal to an English bishop to prove the soundness, or to a German philosopher to prove the truth, of this view. If we wanted authorities we could appeal to Popes, to the Fathers of the Church, to the Apostles themselves, for they have all upheld the same view with no wavering or uncertain voice.
I pointed out before that the simultaneous study of the old and the New Testament, with an occasional reference to the religion and philosophy of Greece and Rome, had supplied Christian divines with some of the most useful lessons for a wider comparison of all the religions of the world. In studying the Old Testament, and observing in it the absence of some of the most essential truths of Christianity, they, too, had asked with surprise why the interval between the fall of man and his redemption had been so long, why men were allowed so long to walk in darkness, and whether the heathens had really no place in the counsels of God. Here is the answer of a Pope, of Leo the Great1 (440-461):
"Let those who with impious murmurings find fault with the Divine dispensations, and who complain about the lateness of Our Lord's nativity, cease from their grievances, as if what was carried out in this last age of the world, had not been impending in time past. . . . What the apostles preached, the prophets
1 Hardwick, Christ and other Masters,' vol. i. p. 85.
