expounding or interpreting or estimating Christian doctrines. I
repeat: My limited undertaking is to consider in company with you the
sources of religious insight, not the contents of any one religion.
You will understand, therefore, that when I define religious insight
as insight into the way of salvation, I use the word salvation in a
sense that I wish you to conceive in terms much more general than
those which certain Christian traditions have made familiar to you.

I have already said that both Buddhism and Christianity are interested
in the problem of the salvation of mankind, and share in common the
postulate that man needs saving. I could have named still other of the
world's higher religions which are characterised by the same great
interest. Had I the time and the technical knowledge, I could show you
how far backward in time, how deep down into the very essence of some
of the religions that seem to us extremely primitive, this concern for
man's salvation, and for a knowledge of the way of salvation, extends.
But the history of religion does not fall within my present scope. And
to the varieties of religious doctrine I can only allude by {11} way
of illustration. Yet the mere mention of such varieties may serve, I
hope, to show you that whole nations and races, and that countless
millions of men, have conceived of their need for salvation, and have
sought the way thereto, while they have known nothing of Christian
doctrine, and while they have not in the least been influenced by
those dogmas regarding the fall of man, the process of redemption, or
the future destiny of the soul of man which are brought to your minds
when you hear the word salvation.

Be willing, then, to generalise our term and to dissociate the idea of
salvation from some of the settings in which you usually have
conceived it. Since there is thus far in our discussion no question as
to whose view of the way of salvation is the true view, you can only
gain by such a dissociation, even if it be but a temporary effort at
generalisation. The cry of humanity for salvation is not a matter of
any one time or faith. The pathos of that cry will become only the
deeper when you learn to see why it is so universal a cry. The truth,
if there be any accessible truth, regarding the genuine way of
salvation will become only the more precious to you when you know by
how widely sundered paths the wanderers in the darkness of this world
have sought for the sav