virtuous and courteous and compassionate and happy, and feel no more
need of spiritual comfort or religious consolation than I do.

They are as gentle, sweet, and merry, and do their duty as faithfully as
any Christian, yet to them Heaven and Hell are meaningless abstractions;
God and the soul are problems they, with quiet cheerfulness, leave time
to solve.

If the craving for religion were universal these young folk would not
be free from spiritual hunger. As they are free from spiritual hunger,
I conclude that the craving for religion is not born in us, but must be
inculcated.

Many good men and women will look blank at such heresy. "What!" they
will exclaim, "take away the belief in the Bible, and the service of
God? Why, our lives would be empty. What would you give us in exchange?"

To which I answer, "The belief in yourselves, and the belief in your
fellow-creatures, and the service of Man."

Such belief and such service will certainly increase the sum of
happiness on earth. And as for the Hereafter--no man knoweth. _No_ man
knoweth. IS CHRISTIANITY THE ONLY HOPE?

Christians tell us that their religion is our only refuge, that Christ
is our only saviour. From the wild Salvation Army captain, thundering
and beseeching under his banner of blood and fire, to the academic
Bishop reconciling science and transfiguring crude translations in the
dim religious light of a cathedral, all the apostles of the Nazarene
carpenter insist that He is the only way. In this the Christian
resembles the Hindu, the Parsee, the Buddhist, and the Mohammedan. There
is but one true religion, and it is his.

The Rationalist locks on with a rueful smile, and wonders. He
sees nothing in any one of these religions to justify its claim to
infallibility or pre-eminence. It seems to him unreasonable to assert
that any theology or any saviour is indispensable. He realises that
a man may be good and happy in any church, or outside any church. He
cannot admit that only those who follow Jesus, or Buddha, or Mahomet,
or Moses can be "saved," nor that all those who fail to believe in the
divine mission of one, or all of these will be lost.

Let us consider the Christian claim. If the Christian claim be valid,
men cannot be good, nor happy, cannot be saved, except through Christ.
Is this position supported by the facts?

One Christian tells me that "It is in the solemn realities of life that
one gets his final evidence that Christianity is