expect some improvement in these in the present or in the future, we may not be aware of the futility of this conduct; but as soon as the situation is grasped as a whole and estimated as a whole, such human conduct is found to be entirely inadequate, these external aids are found wanting, and there remains only the inexorable "either--or": either the power of a new world is operative in man, and makes him strong outwardly and inwardly, or the whole life of man is spiritually lost--one great delusion, one great error. If from the point of view of the spiritual life the contour of a new world is acquired, we may turn back to history, and ask how far it indicates a movement which tends in the direction of such a world. The spiritual life itself brings a distinctive standard for this inquiry: the fundamental fact is not a single factor within life, but the existence of a self-conscious whole of life, of a spiritual process itself. From the point of view of the spiritual life, the chief thing in religions will be the kind of life they reveal; what they make of the life-process; how through the relation to an absolute life they evolve the life-process to a higher stage. Only so far as they express this life-process, and not in themselves, are the doctrines and practices of religion of value. If we apply this test to the individual religions, Christianity distinctly shows itself to be far superior to the others. More than any of the other religions, Christianity fulfils the demands which are made by the nature of the spiritual life and its relation to the world; and so far as Christianity satisfies these demands, but not in its historical form as a whole, it may assert itself to be absolute.