Abstract

Toy's Judaism and Christianity

The article focuses on the book "Judaism and Christianity: A Sketch of the Progress of Thought From Old Testament to New Testament," by Crawford Howell Toy. There is something reassuring in Toy's introductory sections on the general laws of the advance from national to universal religion. They are convincing that the habits of the specialist have not cut him off from that general outlook which is essential to any just opinion of the most isolated phenomenon. In this introduction he argues the dependence of religious development on social conditions, treats of the aggregation of tribal faiths into national religions, of the reactions of religion, science, and ethics on each other, of the relations of great men to their times, and exhibits the actual historical results of these forces and conditions in connection with others of a more external character.