Before fully entering on this paper, I should like those who may be inclined to read it to understand very distinctly, once and for all, that I am a Christian. I am sorry that the too-hasty misjudgment of others compels me to assert the fact. The term “Atheist” has been applied to me by several persons who should know better,--for it is an absolutely false, and I may add, libellous accusation. That it has been uttered unthinkingly and at random, by idle chatterers who have never read a line I have written I can well believe,--nevertheless it is a mischievous rumour, as senseless as wicked. Poor and inadequate as my service is, and must ever be, still I am a follower of the Christian Faith, as expounded in Christ’s own words to His disciples. I believe that Christian Faith to be the grandest and purest in the world,--the most hopeful, the most strengthening, the most soul-supporting and ennobling religion ever taught to humanity. To me, in hours of the bitterest trial, it has proved not “a reed shaken by the wind,”--but a rock firmer than the foundations of the world, against which the waves of tribulation break in vain and disperse to naught,--and when brought face to face with imminent death as I have been, it has kept me fearless and calm. I know--because I have experienced,--its priceless worth, its truth, its grand uplifting power; and it is because this simple Christian Faith is so dear to me, and so much a part of my every-day life, that I venture to ask a few straight questions of those who, calling themselves Christians, seem to have lost sight altogether of their Master and His commands. I like people who are consistent. Inconsistency of mind is like uncleanliness of body; it breeds discomfort and disease. And in this wonderful age of ours, in which there is so little real “greatness,”--when even the tried heroism of our leading statesmen and generals is sullied by contemptible jealousies and petty discussions of a quarrelsome nature,--when the minds of men are bent chiefly on money-making and mechanical inventions to save labour (labour being most unfortunately estimated as a curse instead of the blessing it indubitably is), I find inconsistency the chief ingredient of all modern thought. Things are jumbled up in a heterogeneous mass, without order, distinction or merit. And the principal subject on which men and women are most wildly, glaringly inconsistent, is that which is supposed to be the guiding rule of life--Religion. I should like to try and help to settle this vexed question. I want to find out what the Christian Empire means by its “faith.” I venture to lift up my voice as the voice of one alone in the wilderness, and to send it with as clear a pitch and true a tone as I can across the sea of discussion,--the stormy ocean of angry and contradictory tongues,--and I ask bluntly and straightly, “What is it all about? DO YOU BELIEVE YOUR RELIGION, OR DO YOU NOT?”