y by the few and after ages of toil
and ceaseless re-births. In the Greek plan only the philosopher who
comes to full understanding can attain salvation. In the Christian
plan salvation is for all, for all are sons of God, in fact, and may
through Christ become so in consciousness. In the Buddhistic plan the
hopeless masses resort to magic and keep on with their idolatry and
countless gross superstitions. In the Greek plan the hopeless resort
to the "mysteries" for the attainment of salvation. In the Christian
plan there are no hopeless masses, for all may gain the regenerated
will and become conscious sons of God.

The Buddhist mind gave up all effort to grasp or even to understand
reality. The Greek mind thought it could arrive at reality through the
intellect. But two thousand years of philosophic study and evolution
drove philosophy into the absurd positions of absolute subjective
idealism on the one hand and sensationalism and absolute materialism
on the other. The Christian mind lays emphasis on the will and
accordingly is alone able to reach reality, a reality justifiable
alike to the reason and to the heart. For will is the creative faculty
in man as well as in God. As God through His will creates reality, so
man through his will first comes to know reality. Mere intellect can
never pass over from thought to being. Being can be known as a reality
only through the will.

In consequence of the above-stated methods of thought, the Buddhist
was of necessity a pessimist; the Greek only less so; while the Jew
and the Christian could alone be thoroughgoing optimists. The Buddhist
ever asserts the is-not; the Greek, the is; while the Jew and
Christian demand the ought-to be, as the supreme thing. Hence flows
the perennial life of the Christian civilization.

Those races and civilizations whose highest and deepest conception of
the ultimate is that of mere reason, no less than those races and
civilizations whose highest and deepest conception of reality is that
of an abstract emptiness, must be landed in an unreal world, must
arrive at irrational results, for they have not taken into account the
most vital element of thought and life. Such races and civilizations
cannot rise to the highest levels of which man is capable; they must
of necessity give way to those races and that civilization which build
on larger and more complete foundations, which worship Will, Human and
Divine, and seek for its larger development both