that
He lays down. Failure to obey these laws brings its punishment in the
present or in a future life, while implicit obedience brings the highest
rewards. To such a God is often attributed all the weaknesses of the
human being, sometimes in a much exaggerated form--hence His reign
becomes one of fear to His subjects.

A religion of law assumes that man is capable of himself of obeying the
law, and is responsible for his mode of life; it assumes that man is
capable through his own energy of conquering the world of sin, and of
leading the higher life.

Religions of this type possess of course the merit of simplicity,
transparency, and finality. The decrees, the punishments and rewards are
given with some clearness and are easily understood; there is no appeal
and little equivocation. They served a useful purpose in the earlier
ages of civilisation, but cannot solve the problem for the complex
civilisation and advanced culture of the present age. They place God too
far from man, and attribute to man powers which he cannot of himself
possess. The conceptions of the Deity involved in them are too
anthropomorphic in character--too much coloured by human frailties.

The religions of law have had to give place to those of a superior
type--the religions of redemption. These religions appreciate the
difficulty there exists for humankind of itself to transcend the world
of sin, and are of two types--one type expressing a merely negative
element, the other a negative and positive element.

The typical negative redemptive religion is that of Buddhism. Buddhism
teaches us that the world is a sham and an evil; and the duty of man is
to appreciate this fact, and to deny the world, but here the matter
ends--it ends with world-renunciation and self-renunciation. There is
only a negative element in such a religion, no inspiration to live and
fight for gaining a higher world. This, of course, cannot provide a
satisfactory solution to the problem, for no new life with new values is
presented to us. It is a religion devoid of hope, for it does not point
to a higher life. "A wisdom of world-denial, a calm composure of the
nature, an entire serenity in the midst of the changing scenes of life,
constitute the summit of life."

Christianity teaches us that the world is full of misery and suffering,
but the world in itself is really a perfect work of Divine wisdom and
goodness. "The root of evil is not in the nature of the world, but in
m