Christianity is a religion founded upon facts. In this is seen at once a sharp distinction between our religion and that which claims the allegiance of so many millions of our race--the religion, or better, perhaps, the philosophy of the Buddha. Certainly there is such a thing as a Christian philosophy. For we cannot handle facts without at the same time seeking for some rational explanation of them. The plain man becomes a philosopher against his will. In its origin our Christian theology is no artificial, manufactured product. It is rather an inevitable, natural growth. Neither the minds of the earliest Christian thinkers, nor our own minds, are just sheets of blank paper on which facts may impress themselves. Scientists, some of them at least, while repudiating philosophy put forth metaphysical theories of the universe. Theology is simply the necessary result of human minds turned to the consideration of the Christian facts. But it makes all the difference which end you start from, the facts or the theory: whether your method is a posteriori or a priori; inductive or deductive; scientific or obscurantist. And Christianity follows the scientific method of starting with the facts. In this lies the justification of its claim to be a religion at once universal and life-giving. It is universal because facts are the common property of all, although the interpretation placed on those facts by individuals may be more or less adequate. It is life- giving, because men live by facts, not by theories about them; by the assimilation of food, not by the knowledge how food nourishes our bodies. Following, then, the Christian, which is also the scientific method, we now set out in search of the facts, the historical causes which brought about the death of Christ. Now these causes appear to have been, mainly, these three: prejudice, a dead religion, and the love of gain and political ambition.