228 WHAT IS LIFE? 



Now what is the so-called Christian religion 

 whence does it come ? 



We know very little about the founder of this 

 religion. Numerically the Christian religion is a 

 fraction of other religions. 



The number of individuals professing religion of 

 some sort or other is estimated at about 1,480,000,000. 



Of this vast number of individuals the various 

 Christians are about 327,000,000, or somewhat less 

 than one fourth. If these are only those who are to- 

 be saved, how reckless the ideal- God, is in damning ! 



" The sources of our knowledge of the life of Jesus- 

 Christ are almost exclusively biblical." l The best 

 Jewish historian does not mention him, and arises 

 the question, " May we rely on the four gospels as 

 authentic and adequate ? " The gospels are part of 

 that Bible we have shown to be so defective that it 

 cannot be true. 3 The very reason for the existence of 



1 " Chambers's Encyclopaedia," 1890, article " Jesus Christ." 



2 Idem. 



3 " It may, indeed, be now fairly said that the thinking leaders of 

 theology have come to accept the conclusions of science regarding the- 

 origin of language, as against the old explanations by myth and legend. 

 The result has been a blessing both to science and to religion. No- 

 harm has been done to religion ; what has been done is to release it 

 from the clog of theories which thinking men saw could no longer 

 be maintained. . . . Nor has any harm been done to the Bible. On 

 the contrary, this divine revelation through science has made it all 

 the more precious to us. In these myths and legends caught from 

 earlier civilizations we see an evolution of the most important religious- 

 and moral truths for our race. Myth, legend, and parable seem, in 

 obedience to a divine law, the necessary setting for these truths, as 

 they are successively evolved, ever in higher and higher forms. 

 What matters it, then, that we have come to know that the accounts 

 of Creation, the Fall, the Deluge, and much else in our sacred books,. 



