It is true there are millions of children, women, and men in India who fall down before the stone image of Vishṇu, with his four arms, riding on a creature half bird, half man, or sleeping on the serpent; who worship Śiva, a monster with three eyes, riding naked on a bull, with a necklace of skulls for his ornament. There are human beings who still believe in a god of war, Kârtikêya, with six faces, riding on a peacock, and holding bow and arrow in his hands; and who invoke a god of success, Gaṇeśa, with four hands and an elephant’s head, sitting on a rat. Nay, it is true that, in the broad daylight of the nineteenth century, the figure of the goddess Kali is carried through the streets of her own city, Calcutta,[10] her wild disheveled hair reaching to her feet, with a necklace of human heads, her tongue protruded from her mouth, her girdle stained with blood. All this is true; but ask any Hindu who can read and write and think, whether these are the gods he believes in, and he will smile at your credulity. How long this living death of national religion in India may last, no one can tell: for our purposes, however, for gaining an idea of the issue of the great religious struggle of the future, that religion too is dead and gone. The three religions which are alive, and between which the decisive battle for the dominion of the world will have to be fought, are the three missionary religions, _Buddhism, Mohammedanism, and Christianity_. Though religious statistics are perhaps the most uncertain of all, yet it is well to have a general conception of the forces of our enemies; and it is well to know that, though the number of Christians is double the number of Mohammedans, the Buddhist religion still occupies the first place in the religious census of mankind.[11] Buddhism rules supreme in Central, Northern, Eastern, and Southern Asia, and it gradually absorbs whatever there is left of aboriginal heathenism in that vast and populous area. Mohammedanism claims as its own Arabia, Persia, great parts of India, Asia Minor, Turkey, and Egypt; and its greatest conquests by missionary efforts are made among the heathen population of Africa. Christianity reigns in Europe and America, and it is conquering the native races of Polynesia and Melanesia, while its missionary outposts are scattered all over the world. Between these three powers, then, the religious battle of the future, the Holy War of mankind, will have to be fought, and is being fought at the present moment, though apparently with little effect. To convert a Mohammedan is difficult; to convert a Buddhist, more difficult still; to convert a Christian, let us hope, well nigh impossible.