As to allegiance to Christ, do you think you can require of any man such absolute allegiance to a mere man, though he may have been the greatest and best that the world has ever produced? My orthodox faith taught me that I should obey Jesus because he is my Creator as well as my Saviour. In the first place, as God he created me, and then as Saviour he came down from heaven and died upon the cross to save me, but he rose again from the dead, and now sits at the right hand of his Father, making intercession for me, and he will come again to rule the whole world. Since Jesus is my living and personal Saviour, I must obey him absolutely and unreservedly. I must love him more than father or mother, son or daughter, or even my own life itself. I must sacrifice my life for him. But if he is not such a Saviour, but a mere teacher who gave us wise precepts and doctrines, who led a beautiful life long years ago, and who died at last upon the cross at the hand of his enemies, what right have you to ask absolute allegiance from me who have no relation at all to him? There have been many great and good men in this world. Confucius, Socrates, Shakamuni, and all other founders of the world religions were more or less great, and we are indebted to them for their teachings and precepts and inspired by their fine examples. But no one thinks of demanding from us absolute allegiance to these great men, or asks us to sacrifice our lives for them. Thus, with the downfall of the belief in the deity of Christ, the authority of Jesus Christ as a divine Master must go also. One of the glories of Christianity is that we have had such a multitude of martyrs for the cause of Christ during the nineteen centuries of its existence. Do you think that a man would face unflinchingly the blazing fire of persecution simply on the strength of his belief in Jesus as a great moral teacher? Would frail women have calmly faced those roaring lions approaching slowly but surely to tear them to pieces with their cruel claws, merely on the strength of the belief that by Christ’s humane teaching womanhood was lifted up to the same level with manhood? It was only in the strength of a belief that the living Saviour was right at their side with his outstretched arms to catch and carry them straight into the bosom of our heavenly Father that the martyrs braved the fire and sword. If such unsound doctrine as the liberals are now teaching had prevailed at the beginning of the introduction of Christianity into the world, there would have been no martyrdom for the Christian faith, and Christianity must have ceased to exist long ago. Thus by the study of New Theology and Higher Criticism all belief in the fundamental doctrines of Christianity were destroyed one after another, and I was again left to my former self. I was introduced into the Christian religion by the front gate of orthodoxy, and led out of it by the back gate of New Theology into my old heathen doubt and unbelief.