"I fear that almost universally they mistake a bare belief for faith. Their theology thus becomes an _act_ of memory instead of a rule of life, and Christianity is reduced to a superstition. The only way of distinguishing superstition from true religion is by an examination of results. But where are the fruits of modern Christianity? If it be absolutely true, and all-sufficient for purposes of regeneration, how am I to account for the singular fact that there is as much wickedness in London in the year 1865 A.D., as there was in Jerusalem in the year 1 B.C.? If the object of the last revelation was to take the place of the one before it, and to reform the world, why are the best modern Christians of my acquaintance no holier than the best modern Jews whom I have the honour to know?" "But the object of the last revelation was not to reform the world, but to save it," he replied. "Thanks, Broadhem, for having put in rather too epigrammatic a form, perhaps, to please those who believe it, the most diabolical sophism that was ever invented to beguile a Church--the doctrine that men can be saved by opinion without practice: that a man's practice may be bad, and yet because his faith is good his salvation is sure--that he can, by such a miserable philosophy as would disgrace the justice of the earth, escape the just sentence to be passed upon all his deeds. The results of so fatal a dogma must be a Church that tends to atheism, and that loves corruption. There is in every heart a something that speaks against this, and speaks with a burning language that sweeps the invisible chords of the inmost consciousness, and awakens a torrent of indignant denial of the shallow sophistry that a man can be saved if his thoughts and life are bad. If he cherish self-love, and the love of ruling others, though he intrench the intellect in the midst of all creeds, and span the reason with all faiths, making a sacred public profession before all men, he but adds to the heinousness of his crime, and makes more terrible the fast-coming and final judgment." Broadhem stopped suddenly in the street as I finished in a somewhat excited tone, and gasped rather than spoke, "Frank, you literally astound me. I could never have believed it possible you would have come out in that line. Are those your own ideas or another's?" "Another's," I replied, coolly. "I believe they are rather unsound, but I commend them to your notice, because, if they are not correct, Christianity will soon cease to exist, even in name; but if they are, then it contains within it a regenerating power hitherto undeveloped, whereby the world may be absolutely reformed. I will venture to assert that Christian nations will make no moral progress so long as they continue to cherish the pagan superstition that religion consists in trying to save themselves by virtue of a creed, instead of in trying to save others by the virtues of a life." "But that's works," said Broadhem.