nd invalidated by the lack of faith?--that the "asking"
is not credentialed by the "believing?" When the anointed minister
of Heaven spreads his palms and uprolls his eyes to beseech a general
blessing or some special advantage is he the celebrant of a hollow,
meaningless rite, or the dupe of a false promise? One does not know, but
if one is not a fool one does know that his every resultless petition
proves him by the inexorable laws of logic to be the one or the other.

VII.

Modern Christianity is beautiful exceedingly, and he who admires not is
eyed batly and minded as the mole. "Sell all thou hast," said Christ and
"give to the poor." All--no less--in order "to be saved." The poor were
Christ's peculiar care. Ever for them and their privations, and
not greatly for their spiritual darkness, fell from his lips the
compassionate word, the mandate divine for their relief and cherishing.
Of foreign missions, of home missions, of mission schools, of church
buildings, of work among pagans _in partibus infidelium_, of work among
sailors, of communion table, of delegates to councils--of any of these
things he knew no more than the moon man. They were inventions of
others, as is the entire florid and flamboyant fabric of ecclesiasticism
that has been reared, stone by stone and century after century, upon his
simple life and works and words. "Founder," indeed! He founded nothing,
instituted nothing; Paul did all that Christ simply went about doing,
and being, good--admonishing the rich, whom he regarded as criminals,
comforting the luckless and uttering wisdom with that Oriental
indirection wherein our stupid ingenuity finds imaginary warrant for all
desiderated pranks and fads.

IMMORTALITY

THE desire for life everlasting has commonly been affirmed to be
universal--at least that is the view taken by those unacquainted with
Oriental faiths and with Oriental character. Those of us whose knowledge
is a trifle wider are not prepared to say that the desire is universal
or even general.

If the devout Buddhist, for example, wishes to "live alway," he has not
succeeded in very clearly formulating the desire. The sort of thing that
he is pleased to hope for is not what we should call life, and not what
many of us would care for.

When a man says that everybody has "a horror of annihilation," we may be
very sure that he has not many opportunities for observation, or that
he has not availed himself of all that he ha