ENQ. Perhaps so, yet it is the idea of trusting in a personal Saviour to help and strengthen in the battle of life, which is the fundamental idea of modern Christianity. And there is no doubt that, subjectively, such belief is efficacious, _i.e._, that those who believe _do_ feel themselves helped and strengthened. THEO. Nor is there any more doubt, that some patients of “Christian” and “Mental Scientists”—the great “_Deniers_”[17]—are also sometimes cured; nor that hypnotism, and suggestion, psychology, and even mediumship, will produce such results, as often, if not oftener. You take into consideration, and string on the thread of your argument, successes alone. And how about ten times the number of failures? Surely you will not presume to say that failure is unknown even with a sufficiency of blind faith, among fanatical Christians? ENQ. But how can you explain those cases which are followed by full success? Where does a Theosophist look to for power to subdue his passions and selfishness? THEO. To his Higher Self, the divine spirit, or the God in him, and to his _Karma_. How long shall we have to repeat over and over again that the tree is known by its fruit, the nature of the cause by its effects? You speak of subduing passions, and becoming good through and with the help of God or Christ. We ask, where do you find more virtuous, guiltless people, abstaining from sin and crime, in Christendom or Buddhism—in Christian countries or in heathen lands? Statistics are there to give the answer and corroborate our claims. According to the last census in Ceylon and India, in the comparative table of crimes committed by Christians, Mussulmen, Hindoos, Eurasians, Buddhists, etc., etc., on two millions of population taken at random from each, and covering the misdemeanours of several years, the proportion of crimes committed by the Christian stands as 15 to 4 as against those committed by the Buddhist population. (Vide LUCIFER for April, 1888, p. 147, Art. Christian Lectures on Buddhism.) No Orientalist, no historian of any note, or traveller in Buddhist land, from Bishop Bigandet and Abbé Huc, to Sir William Hunter and every fair-minded official, will fail to give the palm of virtue to Buddhists before Christians. Yet the former (not the true Buddhist Siamese sect, at all events) do not believe in either God or a future reward, outside of this earth. They do not pray, neither priests nor laymen. “Pray!” they would exclaim in wonder, “to whom, or what?” ENQ. Then they are truly Atheists.