The defence of religion has been overdone. We have cooped up the faith in theological fortresses, surrounding it with an immense array of outworks--creeds, dogmas, apologetics, institutions--and we have used up our resources in holding our "positions" against one another when we ought to have been attacking the common enemy in the open field. These outworks and defences, intended to save us from perplexity, have become a greater source of perplexity than all the rest. It takes a lifetime to understand them, and when understood most of them turn out futile. It is the fashion nowadays to express alarm about the future of religion. Hardly a day passes but we hear some utterance, read some document, which sounds that note. But look closely and you will often discover that what these people are really alarmed about is not religion itself, but one or other of the entrenched camps in which religion has been cooped up. Where is the church, where is the sect, where is the creed-bolstered institution, unhampered by the cares of these great fortresses? And indeed they are not safe. There is no place on earth where a man's soul is less safe than when it immures itself in one of these masterpieces of military architecture, mostly mediæval. We live in an age of long-range artillery and of high explosives. Are you then in search of a religion which will relieve you of perplexity, remove peril out of your path, and surround your soul with an unassailable rampart against doubt? I have to confess that I know of none such. But I know of at least one religion which does far greater things than these. In the first place, the religion I am thinking of brings all our perplexities to a focus; lifts them up on high; concentrates them on two or three burning points, and shows us with a clearness that admits of no mistaking what a tremendous mystery we are up against in life.