one religion after another lead lives not so clearly worse than the lives led by Christians, as to merit all the distinction of punishment between hell and heaven ; when it is found, too, that the follower of each of these religions is just as sure as the Christian is that his particular religion is the true one, and all others false, then the Christian stranger begins to question whether he is wholly right in regarding the " heathen " as only destined for damnation, and their religion as so utterly wrong.
At the same time the truth gradually dawns upon him that religion is universal, and an essential part of human nature. Of the truth of this I have been deeply impressed upon my travels. I remember the rude Mongols, far away in the midst of the Gobi Desert, setting apart in their tents the little altar at which they worshipped. I recall nights spent in the tents of the wandering Kirghiz, when the family of an evening would say their prayers together ; I think of the Afghan and Central Asian merchants visiting me in Yarkand, and in the middle of their visits asking to be excused while they laid down a cloth on the floor and repeated their prayers ; of the late Mehtar of Chitral, during a morning's shooting among the mountains, halting, with all his court, for a few minutes to pray ; and, lastly, of the wild men of Hunza, whom I had led up a new and difficult pass, pausing as they reached the summit to offer a prayer of thanks, and ending with a shout of "Allah!"
In all these there was a religious sentiment deeply rooted. They all shared the feeling that there was some Great Spirit or Influence guiding and ruling all things, and that in some indefinable way they were dependent on this Spirit. This feeling, which is religion, is universal, and has developed with the development of the human race. It seems to have been implanted in the mind of man as life was breathed into his body. And as I have watched the workings and the results
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