"And it will continue to be so," he said, "until you learn to practice the truth for truth's sake,--until you love your neighbor--not only because Christ commanded it, but because the principle of love is 'ingrained in your consciences.' As for belonging to a church, I can only conceive of that in the social sense, for every soul that aspires upward belongs to Christ's church universal. They are the lambs of his flock, the objects of his tenderest care. But I can see how a great number of religious societies, or organizations, are possible, as corresponding with the requirements of different groups of people." "Yes," I said, glad of this admission, "and these societies are all aiming at the same thing that you teach,--the brotherhood of man. They clothe the poor, they look after the sick, they send missionaries to the heathen, they preach morality and temperance,--all, in His Name, because, to tell the truth, they cannot conceive of any virtue disassociated from the man, Jesus. Jesus is the great leader of the spiritual forces marshaled under the banners of truth upon the Earth. In all their good works, which are so great and so many, good christians give Christ the glory, because, but for him, they would not have had the Truth, the Life,--the world was so dark, so ignorant. All the ancient civilizations upon the Earth,--and some of them were magnificent!--have perished, because they did not possess this truth and this spiritual life which Christ taught. There was a great deal of knowledge, but not love; there was a great deal of philosophy, but it was cold. There was mysticism, but it did not satisfy. Do you wonder, sir, that a world should love the man who brought love into that world,--who brought peace, good-will, to men?" "No, no," said the Master, "I do not wonder. It is grand, sublime! And he gave his body to be destroyed by his persecutors, in order to prove to the world that there is a life higher than the physical, and indestructible,--and that physical death has no other agony than physical pain. Ah, I see, I understand, and I am not surprised that you call this man your redeemer! I think, my friend," he added, "that you have now a civilization upon the Earth, which will not perish!" After a moment, he remarked, turning to me with a smile, "We are not so far apart as we thought we were, when we first started out, are we?" "No," said I, "the only wonder to me is, that you should have been in possession, from the beginning, of the same truths that were revealed to us only a few centuries ago, through, as we have been taught to believe, special Divine Favor." "Say, rather, Infinite Divine Love," he returned; "then we shall indeed stand upon the same plane, all alike, children of God." As we continued our walk, his mind continued to dwell upon the teachings of Christ, and he sought to make clear to me one thing after another.