B1000 <=> B1002 (BTG XLII Beelzebub in America, p. 1001)

“’What is wrong? What is the cause of it? Were there no good ordinances foredesigned by the Founder of that great religion for the ordinary life of people, the followers of that religion . . . ?’

“Well, my boy, as this young Persian had become sympathetic to me during our acquaintance, I could not refuse him this request, and I decided to explain the question to him, but also, of course, in such a form that he would not even suspect who I was and what was my genuine nature.

“I told him:

“’You say that in the religion which half the world professes, and you probably mean the ‘Christian religion,” there are not such good customs as in your Mohammedan religion?

“’Are there not? On the contrary; in that religion there were many more good customs than in any of the religions of today; in none of the ancient religious teachings were so many good regulations for ordinary everyday life laid down as in just that teaching on which this same Christian religion was founded.

“’If the followers of this great religion themselves, especially those who are called the “elders of the church” of the Middle Ages, treated this religion, step by step, as “Bluebeard” treated his wives, that is to say, put them into derision and changed all their beauty and charm – that is already quite a different matter.

“’In general you must know that all the great genuine religions which have existed down to the present time, created, as history itself testifies, by men of equal attainment in regard to the perfecting of their Pure Reason, are always based on the same truths. The difference in those religions is only in the definite regulations they lay down for the observance of certain details and of what are called rituals; and this difference is the result of the deliberate adoption by the great founders of these regulations which suited the degree of mental perfection of the people of the given period.