tage from prayer; because, if he prays at all, he must pray to some invisible Being, and whether he calls that Being his God, or by any other name seeks His aid, it is clear he cannot be a disbeliever in the Almighty so long as he prays to Him. As all who have experienced the advantage of prayer in cases of trouble or distress must admit, the loss of such an aid and consolation is its own punishment in this world, whatever may ensue in the next. In this sense only can we admit that belief in God is necessary to salvation.

The next requirement-Love of Mankind (ante p. 108)— may be said to embrace all the other commandments of Christ (ante p. 98), which are there divided under five heads, excepting the injunction to love God. It may, however, be fairly argued—and no doubt is held by many minds-that love of mankind embraces the love of God, and that the man who cherishes a disinterested love towards his fellow-men obeys the voice of God within him, and is therefore living a life which is acceptable to God. What, in fact, do we or can we ever know of God, excepting by studying the objects of His creation-the wonders of the natural world-from the lowest form of animal and vegetable life, up to man, the highest? It is true that amongst scientific men the physical wonders of the minor objects of the animal kingdom seem to absorb more attention than the moral attributes of man, notwithstanding that the latter are as superior, in point of interest, even to man's physical attributes, as these are to the structure of insects and plants. The man who sympathises with his fellow-men and interests himself in their moral and social progress, with an earnest desire to study the laws and purport of their earthly life, may truly be said to know more of God than the man whose only thoughts are about the safety of his own soul, or whose mind is engrossed with the observance of ecclesiastical forms and ceremonies. The want of faith in God must certainly be a loss to the man to whom prayer is a word of

no meaning, and who sees no relief in time of trouble or distress but that which can be gained by his own unaided exertions. Self-dependence is doubtless a valuable quality; but in the desperate struggle for life, the man who has no faith in any higher power than his own strength and vigilance must undoubtedly lead a much more care-worn and anxious existence than the man who does his best and contentedly leaves the rest to Providence.

The judgment of Christ (ante p. 40), that those who have done good to the poor have thereby done good to him, coupled with the texts on p. 61 and p. 65, identifying Christ with God, and telling us that he that despiseth Christ despiseth God, and he that receiveth Christ receiveth God, would, in this sense, seem to justify the supposition, that

Those who have done their duty to their fellow-men have done their duty to Christ and to God; in other words, love to God is embraced in love to mankind. "He that is not against us is on our part."

Let us consider more closely, therefore, what is love of mankind. This, I have already explained, must include both beneficence and benevolence. The outward performance of good works, unaccompanied by kindly and disinterested motives, is no performance of the duty to love your neighbour. It is impossible to glance over the list of practical precepts taught by Christ as illustrations of his commandment to love one another without being struck with the fact, that their practice involves the cultivation, first of all, of the inner man; in short, beneficent deeds must be the outcome of a benevolent spirit. Hence we find Christ constantly inculcating the suppression of all feelings of hatred and revenge, of selfishness and uncharitableness, of ambition and self-glorification (which is merely another form of selfishness); also the cultivation of humility and a sincere, forgiving and affectionate behaviour towards our fellow-men.

The love of others implies, above all things, the suppression of the love of self; indeed, the great duty in life may be summed up as the suppression of self. It is impossible to read over the teachings of Christ without seeing that this commandment forms the basis of the Christian life; and after eighteen centuries of Christianity we cannot look abroad upon society without being struck with the fact, that human selfishness is the one great cause of all the wickedness that exists in the world to-day; and that we are still as far from the Christian ideal as ever we were. I have already reminded the reader of the fact, that the greatest beneficence is quite consistent with the existence of much selfishness of motive, and it is therefore obvious that the inner man must be cultivated before the deeds of the outer man can be any criterion for salvation according to the teachings of Christ, as summarised by me on p. 98, ante. I venture, therefore, to submit, as deducible from the foregoing arguments-that :

Salvation according to Christ is only to be attained by cultivating a truthful, benevolent, charitable, and unselfish disposition, exemplified by kindly deeds and an upright life.

It seems difficult to sum up the duty of a follower of Christ in regard to his neighbour (as epitomised in the fifth head on page 98, ante) in any more comprehensive form than the above, and I fail to see how a man who leads such a life or rather whose inner nature corresponds with the foregoing description-can possibly fail to satisfy all that Christ requires of those who wish to be saved.

The unselfishness of such a man would keep him from being covetous, ambitious, or given to self-glorification or gluttony. His truthfulness would prevent him from being hypocritical. His unselfishness and benevolence combined would make him prone to almsgiving, and his charity would render him forgiving and merciful to his enemies.

I

The only quality in which, perhaps, he might come short of Christ's requirements would be in prayer and faith in God's providing. Worldly cares and anxiety may certainly cause unhappiness to such a man, if he lacks faith in Providence, as his very unselfishness would, probably, cause him to be anxious about those dependent on him—an anxiety which nothing but prayer and faith in the wisdom of an over-ruling Providence could remove. Here, therefore, we see the need of the first commandment-love of God; and setting aside the question of salvation, it is here where the materialist must be at such a disadvantage in the pursuit of happiness. The mere love of others, without this faith in God, would seem-according to the foregoing conclusions— to leave something still deficient in the character of the man who seeks to live up to Christ's teachings by doing his duty to others.

The mere fact that he depends so much upon himself, and sees no source of help external to himself, must tend to concentrate his thoughts too much upon his own affairs. This constant dwelling on material subjects and selfinterests, becomes, in time, confirmed into a habit which tends to make him covetous or worldly-minded. If, therefore, an unselfish spirit, a complete absence of care about things we cannot control, and a full reliance upon the loving guidance and protection of an Almighty Father, whose messengers are empowered to save us from calamities and trials which it seems good to Him to avert, can make a man happy in this world; then, surely, it is no exaggeration to say that the man who so believes has an immense advantage over the materialist, even supposing that his faith has no foundation in fact. I say this because-since happiness is only a relative term—the man who believes something which seems to another to be a delusion, but which is to him a source of happiness, is, for the time being, to all intents and purposes, a contented man. Happiness requires, above all things, the absence of care, and this constant care

and anxiety about worldly affairs causes no small proportion of the unhappiness to be found in the world. How to justify its presence consistently with a firm faith in God's providing, is a difficulty which I do not pretend to overcome. One might, indeed, be tempted to conclude that the two are so inconsistent, that their co-existence in one mind is impossible, and the man who worries himself about worldly affairs is not merely unhappy, but fails to fulfil Christ's commandment, and is, therefore, not a Christian. If we are to interpret the words of Christ strictly, we might even go further and say that he cannot, therefore, be saved: but, of this, more anon.

I may sum up the foregoing observations upon faith and love of God, by saying that although it would seem to be charging the Almighty with injustice to suppose that He would consign to eternal torments a good man who has no faith in a Supreme Being, simply because he sees no sufficient evidence to support that faith, yet it cannot be denied that

In this life, at least, there is an appreciable difference in the amount of happiness* which the believer and the unbeliever are capable of enjoying; even supposing belief in God be not an essential to salvation

* I have, on page 14, of this book, appended an extract from Mr. J. S. Mill's Essay on “The Utility of Religion," wherein I observe he comes to a similar conclusion.