is neither clear nor sufficing, and has been obscured, and at times almost obliterated, by the pomps and casuistries of the schools and churches. And just as it is difficult to discover the actual Jesus among the conflicting Gospel stories of His works and words, so it is almost impossible to discover the genuine authentic Christian religion amid the swarm of more or less antagonistic sects who confound the general ear with their discordant testimonies.

CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION

It is a common mistake of apologists to set down all general improvements and signs of improvements to the credit of the particular religion or political theory they defend. Every good Liberal knows that bad harvests are due to Tory government. Every good Tory knows that his Party alone is to thank for the glorious certainties that Britannia rules the waves, that an Englishman's house is his castle, and that journeymen tailors earn fourpence an hour more than they were paid in the thirteenth century.

Cobdenites ascribe every known or imagined improvement in commerce, and the condition of the masses, to Free Trade. Things are better than they were fifty years ago: Free Trade was adopted fifty years ago. Ergo there you are.

There is not a word about the development of railways and steam-ships, about improved machines; about telegraphs, the cheap post and telephones; about education and better facilities of travel; about the Factory Acts and Truck Acts; about cheap books and newspapers: and who so base to whisper of Trade Unions, and Agitators, and County Councils.

So it is with the Christian religion. We are more moral, more civilized, more humane, the Christians tell us, than any human beings ever were before us. And we owe this to the Christian religion, and to no other thing under Heaven.

But for Christianity we never should have had the

House of Peers, the Times newspaper, the Underground Railway, the Adventures of Captain Kettle, the Fabian Society, or Sir Thomas Lipton.

The ancient Greek philosophers, the Buddhist missionaries, the Northern invaders, the Roman laws and Roman roads, the inventions of printing, of steam and of railways, the learning of the Arabs, the discoveries of Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Herschel, Hunter, Laplace, Bacon, Descartes, Spencer, Columbus, Karl Marx, Adam Smith; the reforms and heroisms and artistic genius of Wilberforce, Howard, King Asoka, Washington, Cromwell, Howard, Stephen Langton, Oliver Cromwell, Sir Thomas More, Rabelais, and Shakespeare; the wars and travels and commerce of eighteen hundred years, the Dutch Republic, the French Revolution, and the Jameson Raid have had nothing to do with the growth of civilization in Europe and America.

And so to-day: science, invention, education, politics, economic conditions, literature and art, the ancient Greeks and Oriental Wisdom, and the world's press. count for nothing in the molding of the nations. Everything worth having comes from the pulpit, the British and Foreign Bible Society, and the War Cry.

It is not to our scientists, our statesmen, our economists, our authors, inventors, and scholars that we must look for counsel and reform: such secular aid is useless, and we shall be wise to rely entirely upon His holiness the Pope and His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury.

In the England of the Middle Ages, when Christianity was paramount, there was a cruel penal code, there was slavery, there were barbarous forest laws, there were ruthless oppression and insolent robbery of the poor, there were black ignorance and a terror of superstition, there were murderous laws against witchcraft, there was

savage persecution of the Jews, there were "trial by wager of battle," and "question" of prisoners by torture.

Many of these horrors endured until quite recent times. Why did Christianity, with its spiritual and temporal power, permit such things to be?

Did Christianity abolish them? No. Christianity nearly always opposed reform. The Church was the enemy of popular freedom, the enemy of popular education; the friend of superstition and tyranny, and the robber baron.

Those horrors are no more. But Christianity did not abolish them. They were abolished by the gradual spread of humane feelings and the light of knowledge; just as similar iniquities were abolished by the spread of humane doctrines in India, centuries before the birth of Christ.

Organized and authoritative religion the world over makes for ignorance, for poverty and superstition. In Russia, in Italy, in Spain, in Turkey, where the Churches are powerful and the authority is tense, the condition of the people is lamentable. In America, England, and Germany, where the authority of the Church is less rigid and the religion is nearer rationalism, the people are more prosperous, more intelligent, and less superstitious. So, again, the rule of the English Church seems less beneficial than that of the more rational and free Nonconformist. The worst found and worst taught class in England is that of the agricultural laborers, who have been for centuries left entirely in the hands of the Established Church.

It may be urged that the French, although Catholics, are as intelligent and as prosperous as any nation in the world. But the French are a clever people, and since their revolution have not taken their religion so seriously.

Probably there are more Skeptics and Rationalists in France than in any other country.

My point is that the prosperity and happiness of a nation do not depend upon the form of religion they profess, but upon their native energy and intelligence and the level of freedom and knowledge to which they have attained.

It is because organized and authoritative religion opposes education and liberty that we find the most religious peoples the most backward. And this is a strange commentary upon the claim of the Christians, that their religion is the root from which the civilization and the refinement of the world have sprung. 、