There are good men and good women by millions in the Christian ranks to-day, and it is their virtue, and their zeal, and their illumination of its better qualities, and charitable and loyal shelter of its follies and its crimes, that keep the Christian religion still alive.
Christianity has been for fifteen hundred years the religion of the brilliant, brave, and strenuous races in the world. And what has it accomplished? And how does it stand to-day?
Is Christianity the rule of life in America and Europe? Are the masses of people who accept it peaceful, virtuous, chaste, spiritually minded, prosperous, happy? Are their national laws based on its ethics? Are their international politics guided by the Sermon on the Mount? Are their noblest and most Christlike men and women most revered and honoured? Is the Christian religion loved and respected by those outside its pale? Are London and Paris, New York and St. Petersburg, Berlin, Vienna, Brussels, and Rome centres of holiness and of sweetness and light? From Glasgow to Johannesburg, from Bombay to San Francisco is God or Mammon king?
If a tree should be known by its fruit, the Christian religion has small right to boast of its success.
But the Christian will say, "This is not Christianity, but its caricature." Where, then, is the saving grace, the compelling power, of this divine religion, which, planted by God Himself, is found after nineteen centuries to yield nothing but leaves?
After all these sad ages of heroism and crime, of war and massacre, of preaching and praying, of blustering and trimming; after all this prodigal waste of blood and tears, and labour and treasure, and genius and sacrifice, we have nothing better to show for Christianity than European and American Society to-day.
And this ghastly heart-breaking failure proves the Christian religion to be the Divine Revelation of God!
THE PROPHECIES
Another alleged proof of the divine verity of the Christian religion is the Prophecies. Hundreds of books—perhaps I might say thousands of books—have been written upon these prophecies. Wonderful books, wonderful prophecies, wonderful religion, wonderful people.