lions of our fellow-creatures will be
lost.

If men can be saved without Christ, then Christ is not our only Saviour.

Christianity seems to be a composite religion, made up of fragments of
religions of far greater antiquity. It is alleged to have originated
some two thousand years ago. It has never been the religion of more than
one-third of the human race, and of those professing it only ten per
cent at any time have thoroughly understood, or sincerely followed,
its teachings. It was not indispensable to the human race during the
thousands (I say millions) of years before its advent. It is not now
indispensable to some eight hundred millions of human beings. It had no
place in the ancient civilisations of Egypt, Assyria, and Greece. It was
unknown to Socrates, to Epicurus, to Aristides, to Marcus Aurelius, to
King Asoka, and to Buddha. It has opposed science and liberty almost
from the first. It has committed the most awful crimes and atrocities.
It has upheld the grossest errors and the most fiendish theories as
the special revelations of God. It has been defeated in argument and
confounded by facts over and over again, and has been steadily driven
back and back, abandoning one essential position after another, until
there is hardly anything left of its original pretensions. It is losing
more and more every day its hold upon the obedience and confidence
of the masses, and has only retained the suffrages of a minority of
educated minds by accepting as truths the very theories which in the
past it punished as deadly sins. Are these the signs of a triumphant
and indispensable religion? One would think, to read the Christian
apologists, that before the advent of Christianity the world had neither
virtue nor wisdom. But the world very old. Civilisation is very old. The
Christian religion is but a new thing, is a mere episode in the history
of human development, and has passed the zenith of its power.

SPIRITUAL DISCERNMENT

Christians say that only those who are naturally religious can
understand religion, or, as Archdeacon Wilson puts it, "Spiritual truths
must be spiritually discerned." This seems to amount to a claim that
religious people possess an extra sense or faculty.

When a man talks about "spiritual discernment," he makes a tacit
assertion which ought not to be allowed to pass unchallenged. What is
that assertion or implication? It is the implication that there is a
spiritual discernment which is d