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CATHOLICS AND THE COMPARATIVE
. HISTORY OF RELIGIONS1
By the Rev. C. C. MARTINDALE, S.J., M.A,
In this paper we want to describe something which is
generally used as a weapon against Christianity. We
want to suggest how we may take this weapon into our
own hands, and use it in our own defence, and even for
aggression.
In our effort to be short and very clear, the omissions
of this paper must be so many that it cannot but be
superficial; its contents must be so elementary that it
may seem to many of this audience almost impertinent.
From this latter charge, at least, we hope we may stand
absolved.
The comparative history of religions aims, first, at
collecting evidence concerning the various religions,
ancient and modern, of the world, and at so arranging
the facts that a continuous account of each be formed,
showing its various phases from the day of its birth, if
we can discover that, to the day of its death, if that has
been reached. Exactly in the same way we might trace
the constitutional history of, say, Rome; watching the
scattered villages near the Tiber coalesce and submit
1 A paper read at the Catholic Conference at Manchester,
Sept. 22, 1909.
�2
Catholics and the Comparative
themselves to monarchy; watching the republic succeed
to the monarchy and the empire absorb the republic,
and the collapse of the empire in its turn, and its new
birth, in a new form, beneath the Popes.
When several religions have thus historically been traced,
they will be compared; they will be grouped on grounds
of likeness and of contrast; principles of evolution will be
sought, and laws of growth and of decay. They will be
shown, perhaps, to have followed a necessary line, curving
to an inevitable end. Thus, in the case of Greece, his
torians have a fairly easy task before them to show why
one tiny State developed towards democracy, another
towards feudalism, another into a military despotism.
Or the republic of Rome may be compared with that
of Athens, or of medieval Florence, or of modern
France, always in quest of the political law, the vital
principles at work in and responsible for events.
A philosopher will take the last step: just as he will
inquire into what the political instinct is in itself; why
men form States at all; whether one form of government
is better than another, or than all others; so will it be
asked zcAy men are religious at all; whether they can, at
will, do without religion, or even some particular form of
it; whether religions be connatural to man, or a gift
bestowed unmerited from outside, or an inevitable disease
of the soul.
Elsewhere, in philology, in anatomy, this method has
borne admirable fruit. To it, in philology, we owe our
knowledge of the genealogies of words, and, in conse
quence, of the relationships of races; in anatomy, it
imparts the consoling knowledge that a whale is not a
fish, nor a bat a bird, and much that is a good deal more
important. No wonder it has been eagerly applied by
students to that phenomenon, religion, which from the
beginning has so uniquely troubled or consoled mankind
�Religions
and agitated life. From, it are asked answers to the
questions: What is religion ? Has it always existed ?
and everywhere ? and inevitably ? How did it arise ?
Does it change? Can it die? What is the use of
it ? Has any form of it a special value ?' a unique,
eternal, universal value?
For some time it was the fashion to avoid drawing
comparisons between the Hebrew and the Christian
religions on the one hand and the various pagan
worships on the other ; though we confess that students
—far more often than they owned to it—had one or the
other of those religions in their minds as a tacit term to
which facts might be compared, or an assumed standard
by which they might be judged. However, while many
non-Catholic Christians have refrained, through a rather
timid reverence, from bringing the principles and results
of their research into connection with Christian tradi
tions, we believe that Catholics have been particularly
candid in doing this very thing. We shall have more to
say upon this later; meanwhile suffice it to recall that
the earliest research into the cult of the Persian god
Mithra, so popular to-day among unbelievers, was due
to a Catholic bishop; while in 1880 the Abbe de Broglie’s
lectures on the non-Christian cults at the Institut Catholique of Paris actually anticipated by one month the
first official and frankly sectarian lectures on the same
topic given by Albert Reville from the newly founded
chair of History of Religions at the College de France.
Cardinal Wiseman, in his Essays on Various Subjects
(ed. 1853, vol. i. p. 262 seqj, welcomes the principles
and aims of these investigations. While, therefore, our
absolute conviction in the truth of our own faith has
made us fearless in comparing it with others, the enor
mous change which has come over all, though especially
ancient, history in the last century makes it impossible,
�4
Catholics and the Comparative
even if we wish it, to keep our faith apart. To start with,
research in Babylonia and in Palestine, the translation
of Egypt’s hieroglyphs and Assyrian cuneiform, the
critical study of the Old Testament, have all combined
to set the religion of the Hebrews in perspective, to
leave it no longer hanging luminous in the darkness
a unique vision of worship and morality with an isolated
literature : for good or evil, the religion of the Hebrews
must perforce be cofiipared with the contemporary and
neighbouring Semite cults. So, too, archeology has
been transformed and made scientific, papyri have been
excavated, manuscripts discovered and criticized, in
scriptions catalogued, whole new chapters of religious
history round about the first few Christian centuries
rewritten, or for the first time written ; and all this has
placed the history of Christianity itself in a new light,
has given new angles of vision, new criteria, which
peremptorily refuse to that faith a privileged demesne
which comparative history may not approach.
We have already hinted that Catholics, in spite of the
overwhelming difficulties which have all over Europe,
and especially in this country, hampered their higher
education, never shirked the task these facts created for
them. We shall have to refer to this below, and in
particular to the most encouraging activity of the last
twenty years. This must not be forgotten when we
insist, as we cannot but insist, on the need of ever
greater activity if we are to make ourselves heard above
the Babel of non-Catholic voices which sound in the
ears of modern Europe, so eager to be educated.
They assure it, that though all else may be uncertain,
this at least is clear—that in view of the astonishing
similarities existing between the religions called revealed
and those not so described, there can be no essential
difference between Judaism or Christianity and their
�^History of Religions
5
predecessors or contemporaries ; that if those two cults
did not actually borrow idea and formula, symbol and
ceremony, date and purpose of feast-day and of fast,
plagiarize the pagan, imitate their enemies, at least
Christianity and Judaism, Roman, Greek, Egyptian,
Assyrian, Asiatic cults, in fine, all religions everywhere
and always are natural and homogeneous, are created by
the same human needs, witness to an identical craving
of man’s heart, are but the more or less successful
expression of a certain phase of feeling or level of
society, vary directly with these, and die with their
death. To quote a catalogue of names would be easy,
tedious, and useless. Nearly forty years ago M. Havet
preached this in Le Christianisme et ses Origines (Paris,
1871. Ed. 2, 1873-1884), and could say, “The thesis
which is contained in the present volume is so
thoroughly in keeping with the spirit of our time that
I should find it hard work to mention all the authorities
who support it. . . . All modern works touching on the
history of religions are driven to reach the same con
clusion.” In the Nineteenth Century and After of
October, 1905, Mr. Mallock preached the same doc
trine in his graceful and vivid way, giving to the Persian
god Mithra the exaggerated influence on the formation
of Christianity which M. Havet gave to Platonism, but
witnessing always to the same tendency to read out of
Christianity all that is supernatural, and to explain the
remainder as the product of purely natural forces. And
we may add that even those authors—Robertson Smith,
Max Muller himself, and many another—who are whole
worlds away from the violent hatred of our religion
which animates, say, M. Salomon Reinach, or even from
the active antipathies of men like Dr. Frazer and Pro
fessor Rendel Harris, and are willing indeed to see in
Christianity and Judaism something indefinitely better
�6
Catholics and the Comparative
than everything else, yet eliminate from them all those
peculiar elements of super-nature, grace, and special
revelation which, for us, cleave the essential gulf between
ourselves and the whole of the world’s religious history.
And I am anxious to insist that this is not a danger
for the expert only, the property of the pedant, a poison
brewed in secret and doled out to individuals. The
commonplaces of Comparative Religion have already
reached the man in the street; France and Germany
have long had their popular series of disastrous publica
tions ; Constable’s series of Religions is new but
welcomed amongst ourselves; it was in the Clarion
that I saw advertised, last December, popular Lectures
on the “True History of Christmas Day.” It was a
letter in the Hibbert Journal, signed by a self-taught
“ City Clerk,” who owing to. his studies had abandoned
his faith, which first threw for me a new and alarming
light on a subject that had already fascinated me. The
Rationalist Press Association is rich in destructive publi
cations of this sort. There are the heavier volumes of
Mr. J. M. Robertson, M.P.—Christianity and Mythology,
A Short History of Christianity, Pagan Christs—heavier,
yet well-thumbed where we have met them in Free
Libraries—there are the Concise History of Religion and
Religion of the First Christians by Gould, and the cheap
reprints of Grant Allen’s Evolution of the Idea of God,
and Laing’s Human Origins which Mr. Clodd has re
vised. Idle is it to urge that this detestable literature has
been again and again refuted; who knows where to find,
who is willing to weigh, the magazine articles or learned
monographs which discuss details, or reaffirm lost
principles ? True science, sober, careful, and restrictive,
is always at a discount when compared with the breezy
and reckless iconoclasm of these writers; and alas ! it
is through spectacles supplied by them that their more
�History of Religions
7
serious readers will study the original texts they refer to,
of which translations are now so easily available. Not
alone, however, do the workers, for whom we think so
much nowadays, find their attention called to these topics.
Europe, and England far from least, is to-day tormented
by religion. Our railway bookstalls prove it. The
almost feverish interest in religious subjects at our
Universities proves it too. The themes we have heard
discussed at Oxford debating clubs, in daily conversa
tions, the two or three questions on religions set now
in all Ancient History or Philosophy papers, argue a
religious awareness that may, or may not, be consoling.
“There is hardly a man in this college,” a friend once
assured us—and he was an unbeliever, and a member of
a college which had a reputation, well, not primarily for
being religious—-“there’s hardly a man here who wouldn’t
be ready to talk religion if you cared to.” America, too,
seems likely to pass that way; and from Japan we have
heard quite recently of the crying need for lectures on
the history of religions to counteract, if it be not already
•too late, the chaotic influences of Spencer, Tylor, Frazer,
and many another, who are for explaining the origin and
appraising the value of religion as such, and agree in
little save in unsupernaturalizing Christianity.
The apostles of the new science take their vocation
seriously. In the preface to his Orpheus? the dainty
pocket and popular resume of his famous Cultes, Mythes
et Religions, M. S. Reinach, who was a President in the
Third International Congress for the Comparative Study
of Religions, held at Oxford last year, declares: “I
recognize most profoundly the moral responsibility I am
assuming in presenting for the first time a synoptic view
1 Published in 1909, already in its fifth edition, a manual in
French lycees, enthusiastically reviewed in this country, and
about to be translated into English.
�8
Catholics and the Comparative
of religions, considered purely and simply as natural
phenomena. I do so because I believe that the time for
this has come round, and that in this field, as in all
others, lay-reason must claim its rights.” Hence he ex
plains that he has made certain omissions, for, “ I hope,
nay, flatter myself, that I shall find as many readers among
the ladies as among men. ... I promise mammas (les
mamans) that they can give this book to their daughters,
provided always the light of history does not scare them.
. . . Some day I shall produce a more complete edition
for mammas (pour les mamans).” Yet what sanction
has this writer for his apostolate of dechristianization ?
He owns that the /o/^-theory on which his big volumes
and Orpheus both are based “ is but an edifice con
structed out of materials not substantial, not solid,
tested, verifiable, but out of possible or probable hypo
theses which reciprocally support and buttress one
another; a style of architecture familiar enough, for in it
card-castles are built” (C.M.R., iii. 88, 1908); while
at the Oxford Congress he confessed that totemism was
“ a hobby, and an overridden hobby too.” The weapon
may then be worthless, its use most clearly illegitimate ;
it matters little, if, in an evil crusade, it may work havoc
against Christ. “ I address myself,” he cries (C.M.R.,
1906, ii. p. xviii), “to Jews as to Christians, to
ignorant atheists, as to learned believers, to announce to
them the Good News of religions unveiled \Veniet
Felicior Aetas—A Happier Age is Coming is the motto
of Orpheus). That is why I publish these volumes ;
that is why I preach them in lectures before popular
audiences; that is why I flatter myself with the hope
that many years of my life will have been devoted not in
vain to this work.”
I should like to have been able to indicate the sort of
evidence which is exploited by those who wish to argue
�| History of Religions
9
the purely natural evolution of Christianity and Judaism,
or at least their organic connection with cults once
thought alien. From Babylonia and Assyria came, we
are assured, the Genesis-tales of Creation, Fall, and
Flood; the style of Israel’s prophecies and psalms;
the germ of its monotheism ; the very name of Yahweh;
from Egypt were copied its ark, many of its ceremonies
and vestments ; immemorial Semitic—nay, world-tradi
tion gave it its blood-ritual, its scape-goat; from
Hammurabi, says Reinach, “ God plagiarized ” the
Decalogue and the Mosaic law; from Persia are said
to have come its doctrines of angels and of personal
resurrection; from a slow elaboration of Greek philo
sophies, of later Persian worship, and of Syrian cults,
came Christianity, in itself a mainly social ebullition
into which elements of religion were from all sides
tossed. To Egypt we are to look for the origin of
our Trinity; almost anywhere for the Incarnation and
miraculous birth; to Asia for the yearly Passion-plays of
death and resurrection of youthful gods; to Mithraism
(lately grown fashionable far beyond its merits) for our
sacraments and hierarchy; to Isis-worship for our ideal
of Virgin-Motherhood; to the medley of cults run riot
- in the early Roman Empire for the ideas of sin, forgive
ness, penance, ecstasy, union with God, heaven, hell,
and purgatory which we believed peculiarly our own.
Even humility, even chastity, even charity and renuncia
tion are jewels peculiar no more, we learn, to the crown
of Christianity.
Since it would be quite impossible, within our limits,
even to indicate the principles whereby we should sift
true from false, or draw legitimate comparisons or em
phasize contrasts, we had better not elaborate this point.
Yet we may very briefly indicate the encouraging side of
all this movement. First, it really is not so modern as
�io
Catholics and the Comparative
it claims to be. In the very earliest centuries of the
Church it was insisted on. Celsus, Faustus, and many
another anti-Christian controversialist were quite aware
of the similarities and pushed them quite as far as our
modern theorists. Justin, Tatian, Clement, Minutius
Felix, Gregory of Nazianzos and Gregory the Great, and
other Christian Fathers were equally aware of them
and by no means frightened by them; indeed, they
built up whole new chapters of apologetic on them—
very entertaining chapters, too, at times. Chrysostom
and Jerome are astonishingly severe on the Jews for the
amount of paganism God was forced to allow them to
retain. Very gradual, indeed, Gregory of Nazianzos
owns, was the world’s conversion to Christianity; the
preparation for the Gospel was begun far back in
history; the substance of the Christian religion,
Augustine dared to say, was never lacking from the
very beginning of the world. Clement of Alexandria
taught that heathen systems got what good they had
from a plundering of the Mosaic books. Bishop Huet,
in the seventeenth century, thought that all pagan gods
were really Moses in disguise. But most of all, the
earlier Fathers liked to see, when pagan seemed too like
Christian, the mischief-making of devils, who, by an
ticipating or imitating Christian dogma or ritual in
pagan spheres, bewildered the faithful and prevented
conversions.
Still, in our own century historical and archeological
appliances are, as we said at the beginning, so much
more perfect than they were, that we have a far better
chance than the Christian Fathers themselves of getting
facts in perspective; and we may confidently expect
that honest research, even under rationalist auspices,
will shape the Comparative History of Religions into a
very valuable weapon in defence of Revelation. For it is
�History of Religions
11
now obvious that, to the study of Comparative Religion as
such, we have not, nor could have, any reasonable objec
tion. Those who imagine that we resent the inclusion
of the religions of Israel and of Christ among those to
which the comparative method is to be applied, are
entirely mistaken. It is true that we believe those
two religions—or rather, that one religion of which they
are the stages—to be unique because divine. Yet this is
no reason for deprecating comparison, but rather for
inviting it; and invite it we do, convinced that once the
facts are known, they will be found, as Aristotle pro
mised, to make one music with the truth. Not with the
premisses, not with the principles of this science, as we
have described them, may we quarrel, but only with the
hurried conclusions, or the hypotheses treated as verified
certainties which mar too often the work of non-Catholic
students.
That the result will be all in our favour is not only
assured by faith, but is warranted by even these few
years of experience. Thus, the new science, in its early
days, detected such seeming similarities between Bud
dhism and Christianity, that Cardinal Newman himself
was scared. The self-same science, progressing a little
further, ascertained not only that these similarities were
enormously exaggerated, but that they were often the
result of borrowings not by Christianity from Buddhism,
but by Buddhism from Christianity. Where Persia was
said to have influenced Judaism, it is becoming at least
probable that Judaism may have influenced Persian
literature. And speaking more generally, just as M.
Reinach confesses that his totemist theory was but a
card-castle, and is himself abandoning it more and more,
so we have seen all sorts of theories put forward in the
name of Comparative History of Religion as naturalistic,
but adequate explanations of the religious phenomenon
�12
Catholics and the Compardilute
collapse beneath the weight of new facts, added by the
very science which had accumulated the data out of
which those theories at first were built. Such is the fate
of Animism, Totemism, Magic, Social Instinct, Ancestor
Worship, Solar Myth, Astral Myth, which one after the
other professed to explain religion and rob Christianity
and Judaism of their claim to divine origin.
On all this we must renounce to dwell; we have but
space, here, to ask for four definite things. They are :
that Catholics should write more simple yet scientific
literature on this subject; that they should produce
works recognized as standard on it; that in the training
of professors or of men destined to be spiritual guides,
the thing should not be overlooked; and finally, that
there should be an apostolate of more than mere
literature.
First, the crying need of a popular literature has been
so often emphasized in Conferences like this, that we
need do no more than indicate Comparative Religion as a
topic ■ that needs not least to be so treated. Germany
started its simple series at Munster nearly twenty years
ago. Bloud, in Paris, publishes excellent simple lectures
in his Science et Religion series; Beauchesne, also of
Paris, has brought out three numbers of a series con
siderably more ambitious, on Buddhism, by Professor de
la Vallee Poussin; Islam, by Baron Carra de Vaux; on
the Religion of non-Civilized Folks, by Mgr. Leroy. The
Catholic Truth Society of England has, for a year now,
been publishing a modest series, which, composed of thirtytwo lectures, will form four volumes of a shilling each;
the first contains an introductory lecture, by the dis
tinguished editor of the Etudes, and others on the
greater religions of antiquity, that on the uniquely im
portant religion of Assyria and Babylon being by the
Rev. A. Condamin, an Orientalist of the very first rank
�History of Religions
13
in scholarship; that on Buddhism, an almost equally
important religion in view of the .constant attack made,
on its occasion, upon Catholicism, is by Professor de la
Vallee Poussin, a scholar of European reputation ; that
on China, by a missionary of twenty-two years’ experi
ence in that country; that on Hinduism will by be the
editor of the Bombay Examiner. The second volume,
which deals with the great ancient religions which
- bordered especially closely on nascent Christianity or its
more immediate ancestry, will have the exceptional
good fortune to contain two lectures from the pen of
His Lordship the Bishop of Salford, whose unimpeach
able authority is recognized far beyond this country.
The third volume deals with great phases or crises in the
history of our own religion; the fourth with the sects
that have broken from it, and their fate, and the two
great systems of Mohammedanism and Modern Judaism.
The paper on Eastern Churches, as well as that on
Gregory VII, is from the erudite and entertaining pen
of Dr. Adrian Fortescue. Aquinas has the advantage
of being written by the Very Reverend Father McNabb,
of St. Thomas’s own Order. Anglicanism and Wesleyanism are treated by ex-ministers of those bodies;
Presbyterianism is by Fr. Power of Edinburgh. But this
is not the place to insist in any detail on the qualifica
tions of the various authors ; we will only add that if this
series succeeds well, the Catholic Truth Society hopes to
be able to accede to the numerous wishes expressed that
a fifth volume be published dealing with those low
forms—Magic, Fetichism, and the like—held, by some, to
have preceded all religion, and with those “after-faiths,”
Spiritualism, Christian Science, &c., superstitions which
invade the human soul, once it has deserted genuine
religion, but remains restless after God.
Unitarianism, the nadir to which, in this country,
�14
Catholics and the Comparative
organized religion has descended, is by the Rev. G. S.
Hitchcock, long a minister of that body, to whose
initiative this series owes much.1
As for the big works, surely it stands to reason that
writers of short pamphlets should scarcely dare to claim
a hearing if they cannot back what they say by work
recognized as original and unimpeachable, by garnered
erudition which guarantees the unproved generalizations
of their popular productions.
It is M. Reinach’s
Cultes, Mythes et Religions which gives such
startling notoriety to his Orpheus; it is Harnack’s famous
Lehrbuch which guarantees, in popular estimation,
his What is Christianity I We will not labour this,
but merely indicate how disastrous it must be if, when
we are asked advice upon these subjects, we cannot—I
will not say, speak authoritatively ourselves (no one need
be scandalized if we disclaim the right to do that'}—but
if we cannot point to Catholic works as reliable
sources of information ; if we must send inquirers to
works of well-meaning non-Catholics at best. How
consoling is it, therefore, to see that in the Encyclopedias
—Dr. Hastings’s new Dictionary of Religion and
Ethics, for instance—Catholics are beginnning to find a
place as of right; the admirable work of Fr. Lagrange
and the whole Dominican School at Jerusalem, and of
Fr. Delehaye of the Bollandists, is winning an inter
national recognition; to the articles in the Catholic
Encyclopedia none need fear to refer the inquirer.
Third—and we speak here with extremest diffi
dence—a short experience has already made it clear
to us how suddenly the boys who leave our schools are
1 We would plead that the inevitable limitation of choice and
treatment of subject-matter implied by this arrangement, did
not seem to the Editor to justify the postponement of an effort,
inadequate indeed, yet, it is trusted, of immediate utility.
�History of Religions
T5
brought face to face with problems such as we have
dwelt upon, and how they are for the most part thrown
back upon sheer loyalty to a faith that cannot lie. They
cannot even remember that So-and-so at their school
had foreseen for them those problems, forgotten though
the solution then might be. We believe that here—and
in how many fields—the era of protection should yield
to that of preparation, and that this topic which is so
obviously most important can without difficulty be made
most interesting; and we would dare to hint that at least
some of its leading principles might find a place in those
higher courses of religious instruction which we long
to see.
Finally—and would we could dwell on this !—should
not a loyal exposition of this History of Religions be
equivalent to a splendid Apologetic
Max Muller (
himself declared that in proportion as the treasures J
hidden in the despised religions of the world were |
appreciated, true Christianity stood out only the more
unique and supreme. To know ourselves, we should
know them; when we see their best, our best appears J
better than we had dreamed. The presence and work
of the Holy Spirit, the mystery of sin, of grace, the 1
relation of the Natural and the Supernatural, the
transcendency of the Person of Jesus Christ, the
divinity and immortality of His Church, stand out
the better when we watch well the process of man’s
pilgrimage in universal history./’ May I refer with
gratitude and admiration to the lectures given in the
University of Manchester by the Right Reverend the
Bishop of Salford ? Such a work—the active supple
menting of the written by the spoken word, by an
expert, before a mixed audience—answers all our
prayers. And is it not noticeable, in view of the
close connection which the History of Religions has
�16
Comparative History of Religions? '
with Sociology, and the patronage accorded to its
worst extravagances by the Socialist organs of this
country, that these University Lectures should be
given in the same city which has established that
Catholic School of Social Science, from which we can
scarcely hope too much, so noble are the fruits it has
already borne ? We would conclude by recalling that
the Holy Father’s munificent gift of one hundred
thousand francs to Mgr. Baudrillart—a gift offered in
the hour of his poverty to the French Church in her
great need—was, with his full consent and approbation,
given to the foundation of a new chair of Comparative
History of Religions in the Institut Catholique of Paris,
while the foundation of a chair of Assyriology at the
Apollinare in Rome, and the place given to analogous
studies in the Pope’s Syllabus for the Italian seminaries,
proves the personal interest the Holy Father finds in the
cause we have been pleading.
PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY THE CATHOLIC TRUTH SOCIETY, LONDON.
�
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Description
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Catholics and the comparative history of religions
Creator
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Martindale, C. C. (Cyril Charlie) [1879-1963]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 16 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: "A paper read at the Catholic Conference at Manchester, Sept. 22, 1909."
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Catholic Truth Society
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
[1909]
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RA1546
Subject
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Catholic Church
Religion
Rights
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (Catholics and the comparative history of religions), identified by </span><span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a></span><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Catholic Church
Comparative Religions
Theology-Comparative and Non-Christian