For people spending long years in the close courts and streets of ugly towns, the mere sight of nature is startling, and may awaken longings, to themselves strange, to others indescribable, but which are the stirrings of the life within. The stories of great lives, and of other religions, very simply told, as far as possible leaving out the foreign conditions which confuse the ignorant mind, are sometimes helpful. It is generally considered wise to hide from children and untutored people the knowledge of other religions, for fear it should awaken doubts concerning their own; but in those cases where their own is so very negative, it is often helpful to learn of faiths held by the large masses of mankind. To hear that the great fundamental ideas of all worships are similar would perhaps suggest to the hearer that there might be more in it than ‘just parson stuff’ and lead him to inquire further; or, if it did not do this, it would be some gain to remove the ignorance which, more than familiarity, breeds contempt of the despised foreigner. Once, after a talk about Egypt and its old religion, the Osiris worship, the beautiful story of the virgin Isis, and her son Horus, who was slain by Set, the King of Evil, and rose again from the bosom of the Nile, I heard it said, ‘They thought the same then, did they? only called them different names.’ The largeness of the idea caught the hearer; its universality bore testimony to its truth. Would it not be helpful if our religious teachers, instead of spending their precious time denouncing the errors of other religions, would take the truths running through the great stories common to them all, and in an historical attitude of mind show the growth of thought, the development of spirituality till his hearers are brought face to face with the Founder of our religion, who set the noblest example; taught the purest doctrine; lived the highest spiritual life; was in Himself, to use the Bible words, ‘the way, the truth, and the life’?