Can it be that all men have a like need and that all religions have a common quality which serves that need? Can it be possible that all races, the Englishman, the Negro, the Italian, the Russian, the Arab, the Chinaman, and the Pathan, have the same urgent necessity, and that their urgent necessity is answered by so many varying religions? If so, what is this necessity which religion alone can fill, what is this succour that religion alone can give? What is the use of religion? These are some of the questions I ask, other men have asked the same--not many. The majority of men never ask themselves anything of the sort. They are born into a religion, they live in it more or less, they die in it. They may question its accuracy in one point or another, for each man to some extent makes his own faith; but nearly all men take their faith much as they find it and make the best of it. It does not occur to them to say, "Why should I want a religion at all? Why not go without?" They feel the necessity of it. Even the very few who reject their own faith almost always try for some other, something they hope will meet their necessity. They will prefer one faith to another. But they do not first consider why they want a faith at all. They do not ask, "Of what use is any religion?" Yet this is in the main the subject of this book, these questions are the ones I ask, the questions to which I seek an answer. I will repeat them. Why are all peoples, all men religious? Is the necessity a common necessity? If so, what is it? Why does one form of religion appeal to one people and another to another people, while remaining hateful to all the rest? Notwithstanding their common hate, have all religions a common secret? And if so, what is that? This book of mine is in part the story of a boy who was born into a faith and who lost it; it tries to explain why he lost it. It is the story of a man who searched for a new faith and who did not find it, because he knew not what he sought. He knew not what religion was nor why he wanted it. He knew not his need. He sought in religion for things no religion possesses. He was ill yet he knew not his disease, and so he could find no remedy. And finally it is an attempt to discern what religion really means, what it is, what is the use of it, what men require of it.