,
suffering, and sorrowing masses.

There are exceptional individuals all along the way, who conceive, hold,
and exercise the spirit of the Master, and sink self in the service of
man, and but for these the organized priesthood would be execrated by
mankind long before.

The organized church deifies, where the true disciple humanizes and helps
mankind in the name and in the spirit of the Master.

This is the spirit, the origin, the genius and the history of every
Avatar, of Christna, and all the Buddhas, the Saviors and Redeemers of
history.

The orthodox Christian of to-day, whether Catholic or Protestant, will be
likely to admit the foregoing outline except as it applies to his own
religion. Whereas it is abundantly proven to-day regarding his own
religion as nowhere else in history.

The histories of former religions are vague, distant, and so covered over
by tradition, myth, and folklore, as to be difficult to trace.

The beginnings, history, and progress of the Christian religion are
comparatively nearer at hand, and the process above outlined readily
demonstrable.

Not only so, but the recognition of the facts and processes is everywhere
in evidence.

This fact, however, by no means ends the controversy.

Traditions, creeds, and dogmas die hard, and fight to the last extremity.
Nothing else known to man fights so desperately and dies so hard as an
organized priesthood, and beyond this, they are upheld by the ignorance,
superstition, the fear, and the faith of the masses.

Their adherents often believe and assume that they have discovered final
truths, essential and unalterable verities. They undertake to support and
to maintain these by dogmatic authority, a holy book, a "thus sayeth the
Lord."

"There it is, down in black and white." No further evidence is required.

To question such authority is to be damned. To believe, accept, and to
conform, is to be _saved_.

Difference of opinion and of interpretation inevitably arise, even among
those who dare not question the ultimate authority and genuineness of the
original revelation. Hence arise sects, schisms, and theological warfare.

Notwithstanding all this, the original revelation becomes a matter of
thorough investigation and of criticism.

The so-called "higher criticism" had already discovered errors in
translation, and contradictions in interpretation, resulting in a "revised
edition" of the sacred books, while under the name "_Pragmatism_,