The history of religious controversy would be much simpler if all adopted Barnum’s view, but his assumptions are rather large, and his proofs are childishly vague. If he had anything but an _a priori_ faith, there was ample opportunity within the scope of his book to announce it, and by neglecting to particularize some of the evidences of Christian preëminence, he leaves his own dear faith wide open to attack with his own thunder. The religious section of _The Humbugs of the World_ suggests the conclusion that Barnum’s theological philosophy was comparable to the conviction of the soldier who believed that every one was out of step except himself. The nearest Barnum allowed himself to approach criticism of his own gods was a paragraph of condemnation of the long and “windy prayers” of young, inexperienced clergymen, which he likened in mild and forgiving terms to the prayer-mills of the heathens. There is no recognition, however, of a possibility that Mohammedans, Buddhists, and followers of Confucius may have real faiths as well as the humbugs incidental to those faiths. Christianity’s humbugs he ignored altogether, except in the matter of ordeals practised in faraway medieval days, and he pointed out their absurdities only to prove “how much more preferable is our American principle of separation in all matters of State and Church.” Even this criticism was omitted in the English edition of _The Humbugs of the World_. Barnum’s whole nationalist theology and Christian philosophy can be narrowed down to a simple assertion, to the effect that we, the Americans, are the greatest members of a Christian world. He never said this in so many words, for he had too many friends in England and France, but there was no necessity for regarding the feelings of Mohammedans or Chinese, for after all were not these peoples merely subjects for exhibition to a curious Christian world?