460 Life and Immortality. 
Had it not been for this religion man’s spiritual side would 
not have been developed in civilized life. And although 
there are numberless individuals who are all unconscious of 
its development in themselves, yet these have been influenced 
to an enormous extent by the religious atmosphere by which 
they are surrounded. 
Not only is Christianity so immeasurably in advance of 
all other religions, but it is no less of every other system of 
thought that has ever been promulgated in regard to what is 
moral and spiritual. Neither philosophy, science nor poetry 
has ever produced results in thought, conduct or beauty in 
any degree comparable with it. What has science or phi- 
losophy done for the thought of mankind compared with 
what has been done by the single doctrine, “ God is love?” 
The Story of the Cross, from its commencement in prophetic 
aspiration to its culmination in the Gospel, is preéminently 
the most magnificent presentation in literature. Only to a 
man wholly destitute of religious perception can Christianity 
fail to appear the greatest exhibition of the beautiful, the sub- 
lime, and of all else that appeals to our spiritual nature, 
which has ever been known upon the earth. It is not only 
adapted to men of the highest culture, but the most remarka- 
ble thing about it is its perfect adaptation to all sorts and 
conditions of men. Its problems, historical and philosophical, 
open up to you worlds of material, over which you may 
spend your life with the same interminable interest as the 
student meets in the fields of natural science. 
Whatever our theory of the origin of man, there can be 
no doubt that we all feel that his intellectual part is higher 
than the animal; and that the moral is higher than the intel- 
lectual, whatever our theory of either may be; and that the 
spiritual is higher than the moral, whatever our theory of 
religion may be. It is what is understood by his moral, and 
still more by his spiritual qualities, that make up what is 
called his character, and, astonishing to say, it is character 
that tells in the longrun. Morality and spirituality are two 
