the Mahometan, the Confucianist, have their grasp of truth. Even the
primitive idolater has some faint gleam of it, distorted though it may
have become. Very well, then; the faintest gleam of such knowledge will
not go without its recompense.



XIV


Exclusiveness is too much our Caucasian habit of mind. It is linked with
our instinct for ownership. Because through Jesus Christ we have a
clearer view of a greater segment of the Universal, if I may so express
myself, than the Buddhist can have through Buddha or the Mahometan
through Mahomet, our tendency is to think that we know the whole of the
Universal, and have it to give away. Any other view of the Universal is
to us so false as to merit not merely condemnation but extirpation.
Extirpation has been the watchword with which Caucasian Christianity has
gone about the world. We have taken toward other views of truth no such
sympathetic stand as St. Paul to that which he found in Greece, and
which is worth recalling:

"Men of Athens, I perceive that you are in every respect remarkably
religious. For as I passed along and observed the things you worship, I
found also an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. The
Being, therefore, whom you, without knowing it, revere, Him I now
proclaim to you. God who made the universe and everything in it--He
being Lord of heaven and earth--does not dwell in sanctuaries built by
men. Nor is He administered to by human hands as though He needed
anything--but He Himself gives to all men life and breath and all