e herald angels, the wise men from the east, the manger,
the child God, the cross, and the gospel of mercy and atonement, and
of universal brotherhood and peace amongst the earthly children of
a Heavenly Father, whose attribute was love--this story, possessed a
certain homely beauty and sentimental glamour which won the allegiance
of many golden-hearted and sweet-souled men and women. These lovely
natures assimilated from the chaotic welter of beauty and ashes called
the Christian religion all that was pure, and rejected all that was
foul. It was the light of such sovereign souls as Joan of Arc and
Francis of Assisi that saved Christianity from darkness and the pit; and
how much does that religion owe to the genius of Wyclif and Tyndale, of
Milton and Handel, of Mozart and Thomas a Kempis, of Michael Angelo and
Rafael, and the compilers of the Book of Common Prayer?

There are good men and good women by millions in the Christian ranks
to-day, and it is their virtue, and their zeal, and their illumination
of its better qualities, and charitable and loyal shelter of its follies
and its crimes, that keep the Christian religion still alive.

Christianity has been for fifteen hundred years the religion of the
brilliant, brave, and strenuous races in the world. And what has it
accomplished? And how does it stand to-day?

Is Christianity the rule of life in America and Europe? Are the masses
of people who accept it peaceful, virtuous, chaste, spiritually minded,
prosperous, happy? Are their national laws based on its ethics? Are
their international politics guided by the Sermon on the Mount? Are
their noblest and most Christlike men and women most revered and
honoured? Is the Christian religion loved and respected by those outside
its pale? Are London and Paris, New York and St. Petersburg, Berlin,
Vienna, Brussels, and Rome centres of holiness and of sweetness and
light? From Glasgow to Johannesburg, from Bombay to San Francisco is God
or Mammon king?

If a tree should be known by its fruit, the Christian religion has small
right to boast of its success.

But the Christian will say, "This is not Christianity, but its
caricature." Where, then, is the saving grace, the compelling power,
of this divine religion, which, planted by God Himself, is found after
nineteen centuries to yield nothing but leaves?

After all these sad ages of heroism and crime, of war and massacre,
of preaching and praying, of blustering and trimmin