last moment was better than a whole life of "godless" morality.

But let us get a little closer to our subject: When the preachers state that morality is impossible without God, they really mean—without the Christian religion. As we intimated above, the Mohammedan God and the Christian God, not being the same, can not both be true. And it is not enough to believe in the Christian God, one must also believe in Christ, the Holy Ghost, the atonement, and so on. Hence, the Christian religion is the only power that can save the world, according to the preachers. Let us follow this thought and see where it will lead us to. If you have imagination try to bring the whole world before your mind's eye. Think of the millions upon millions of human beings dwelling upon its surface—of the five hundred millions of Buddhists, the two hundred millions of Moslems, the one hundred and fifty millions of Brahmans, and to these add the millions who follow Confucius, who profess Shintoism, Judaism, Jainism, and the millions who once followed Zoroaster, Zeus, Apollo, Mithra and Isis. Compare with this tremendous host the number of people who during the last two thousand years have called themselves Christians, and tell me if it would be inspiring to think that the Christians who are but a handful compared with this innumerable majority are the only people who can be moral? If the heathen, so called by Christians, can be as moral as ourselves, then Christianity can not claim to be the only divine faith, but if it is, as the preachers claim, the only power that can save, then think of the gloom and the despair which must be the portion of every sensitive soul who realizes the hopelessness of the situation! For thousands of years our humanity was denied the Christian religion, and even now, twenty centuries after the birth of Jesus, only a handful, compared with the earth's population, have accepted the only true religion. Is this inspiring?

If we were to paint the globe in two colors—black and white—allowing the black to represent the "heathen," and the white the Christian, we would see spread before our eyes a limitless sea of inky blackness, with a few white dots floating in it. Oh, how long will it take before this black earth of ours shall change its color? If we feel uncomfortable when we see an animal maltreated, how can we have the heart to subscribe to a doctrine that denies to the great majority of our human fellows, not only future bliss, but even the right to be moral? If instead of being a religion of love, Christianity were a religion of hate, could it be less generous? If instead of being the religion of the "meek and lowly" it were the religion of the proud and the haughty, could it have been more conceited? That people can enjoy a religion which blackens the face of all mankind outside its pale is a pitiful commentary on human nature.

But let us follow the lead of the preacher a little further. He says there can be no morality without God, which means, no morality without the Christian religion. But which Christian religion does he mean? The Catholics denounce protestantism as a perversion; the Protestants call Catholicism an imposture. Which, then, is the Christian religion without which there can be no morality? If the one is as Christian as the other, why then do they try to convert each other—why do the Catholics send missionaries to the Protestants? Evidently, it must be the protestant religion which is alone Christian, at least we in this country seem to think so. If true, then there is no morality possible without the protestant faith. Now see to what a small faith and to what a pale and sickly hope the preacher has brought us. Ah! he has led us into an alley—moldy, stuffy, and choking. The world is no longer in sight, the sun and stars have disappeared, the winds that sweep the face of the earth and the sky are heard no more. Yes, we are in an alley!

Now this protestant religion which is alone the hope of the world, what is it? A moment ago we asked, which is the Christian religion? We now ask, which is the protestant religion? Is it the church of England? Is it Lutheranism? Is it Methodism? Is it Presbyterianism? Is it Unitarianism? Is it the Baptist Church? Is it Christian Science? We believe we have mentioned enough to select from. It will not do to say that all these sects are equally Christian. Why, then, are they separated? Why do not the Baptists commune at the Lord's table with the Presbyterians, and why do the Episcopalians claim that they alone have the apostolic ordination? A Methodist preacher is not allowed to speak from an Episcopal altar—his ordination is not considered valid, and his church is only a sect in, the eyes of the church of England. Which of these, then, is the true protectant religion without which no morality is possible in this world or salvation in the next? The proposition that there can be no morality without God when analyzed, comes to this: There can be no morality without the protestant religion, and it is as yet uncertain which is the Protestant religion.

How educated people can find cheer and comfort in an alley and mistake its darkness for a horizon—how they can be happy in the belief that no one can be good or brave without believing as they do,—is beyond my comprehension. And when we remember that this Protestant religion did not exist before the sixteenth century—that it is only about three hundred years old, and that, if it is the only true religion, it waited a long time—until mankind had reached middle life—until the world had begun to turn gray—before it commenced to minister to its needs—we begin to realize that there is no thoroughfare to the alley to which the preacher has conducted us—for it is a blind alley, and we feel creeping upon us the chill of death and despair!

Oh, let us turn back! Let us hasten out of this darkness! Let us return to the kisses of the sun and the wind, to the air and the light! To think that the whole world, past and present, has been, is, and will be irrevocably lost, unless it accepts our three hundred years old and much-divided religion! What gentle and refined mind can stand the strain? Who can walk straight under the weight of such crushing pessimism? Is it not fortunate that only one day in seven is devoted to church-going?

When I was a Presbyterian minister, one of the hymns we used to sing in church began with the words "From Greenland's Icy Mountains," and went on to speak of "India's Coral Strands" and "Africa's Sunny Fountains," ending with this sentiment.

"Where every prospect pleases

And man alone is vile."

Think of the essentially unmoral mind of the man who could write such a hymn, and of the callousness of the people who can sing it! Think of putting so false, so uncharitable, so conceited, so mean and small a thought into music, and singing it! If they wept over it, if they mourned over it, it would be less incongruous, but to sit in their pews and with the help of organ and piano to sing about the vileness of the earth's greater population seems to me in my haste, to lend considerable support to the doctrine of total depravity. The Christian will trade with the "heathen," he will travel into their country, he will trust them in business, but, on Sunday, when he is in church, when he is kneeling at the altar, in the house of his God, he calls them "vile." If the only way we can appreciate our own morality is by defaming the majority of humanity, how contemptible must our morality he? When we sing that all the Hindoos, the Chinese, the Japanese and the rest of the non-Christian world are "vile,"—that there is no love, no devotion, no patriotism, no honesty, no friendship, no temperance, no philanthropy, no chastity, no truthfulness, no mercy and no honor, in these heathen lands—when we deny that in these parts of the world any virtue can exist, are we not bearing false witness against our neighbors?

To preach the brotherhood of man in one breath, and in the next, to call