If Christianity be historically true it must be granted to demand more than a respectful acknowledgment that its system of ethics is pure; or were it historically false, we ought to think ourselves to be outraging at once virtue and reason in allowing its name to pass our lips. While bowing to Christianity as good and useful, and yet not invested with authority toward ourselves, we are entangled in a web of inconsistencies, of which we are not conscious, only because we choose to make no effort to break through it. If Christianity be true, then it is true that “we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ,” and must, “every one of us, give an account of himself to God.” What meaning do such words convey to the minds of those who, with an equal alarm, would see Christianity overthrown as a controlling power in the social system; or find it brought home to themselves, as an authority, they must personally bow to? Christians! How many amongst us are _Christians_, as men might be called philosophers, who, while naming Newton always with admiration, should yet reserve their interior assent for the very paganism of astronomy. A religion of facts, we need hardly observe, is the only sort of religion adapted powerfully to affect the hearts of the mass of mankind; for ordinary or uncultured minds can neither grasp, nor will care for, abstractions of any kind. But then that which makes Christianity proper for the many, and indeed proper for all, if motives are to be effectively swayed, renders it a rock of offense to the few who will admit nothing that may not be reduced within the circle of their favored generalizations. Such minds, therefore, reject Christianity, or hold it in abeyance, not because they can disprove it, but because it will not be generalized, because it will not be sublimated, because it will not be touched by the tool of reason; because it must remain what it is—an insoluble mass of facts. In attempting to urge consistency upon such persons, the advocate of Christianity makes no progress, and has to return, ever and again, to his document, and to ask: Is this true, or false? If true, your metaphysics _may_ be true also; but yet must not give law to your opinions; much less, govern your conduct. Resolute as may be the determination of some to yield to no such control, nevertheless if the evangelic history be true, “one is our Master, even Christ.” He is our Master in abstract speculation—our Master in religious belief, our Master in morals, and in the ordering of every day’s affairs. It will be readily admitted that this our first position, if it be firm, sweeps away, at a stroke, a hundred systems of religion, ancient and modern, which either have not professed to rest upon historic truth, or which have notoriously failed in making good any such pretension. These various schemes need not be named; they barely merit an enumeration; they are susceptible of no distinct refutation, for they are baseless, powerless, obsolete.