tence, "Intellectual work of every kind must be free." "And the
New Testament," he adds, "is still the one volume of books on religion
which accepts thia whole statement."

This is a bold--some would say a brazen--assertion. If the New Testament
teaches anything clearly, it teaches that belief is necessary to
salvation. That doctrine stifles free speech and extinguishes inquiry.
Why investigate if you may be damned for your conclusions? And why allow
investigation if another man's errors may involve your perdition? These
questions have been answered logically enough by the Christian Church,
and the "Charter of Jesus Christ" has been the worst of spiritual
oppressions. No religion has been so intolerant as the Christian.
Mohammedanism has been far less bigoted. Buddhism has the proud
distinction of never having persecuted one human being in twenty-four
centuries. The Archbishop's third instance is fantastic to the point of
grotesqueness. Both Christianity and the spirit of Inquiry, he says,
are at one in "the demand for fruit." Does he mean to imply that other
religions set their faces against "fruit"? Buddhism is quite imperative
about moral duties. Mohammedanism gets itself obeyed in matters of
conduct, while Christianity is quite ineffectual. Drink, gambling, and
prostitution abound in Christian countries; in the Mohammedan world
they have been sternly repressed. This is admitted by Dr. Benson in his
volume on _Christ and his Times_; admitted, and even emphasised; so that
he may, as it were, be confuted out of his own mouth.

If we take a leap to the penultimate sermon in the present volume, we
find Archbishop Benson indulging in the same kind of loose statement and
inconsequential reasoning. Its title is "Christ's Crucifixion, an All
in All." The preacher scorns the Greek notion of the Crucifixion as "the
shocking martyrdom of a grand young moralist." Such a notion, he says,
is "quite inconsistent with the facts." Either we know not what Christ
taught, or else he was more than man. And the Archbishop sets about
proving this by means of a series of leaps over logical chasms.

After dilating on the innocence of Christ, who was certainly guilty
according to the Mosaic law, and deserving of death according to the
express command of Jehovah, the Archbishop writes as follows:

"Then we look back through our eighteen centuries, and we see that
before the age of three-and-thirty he had fashioned sayings, had
compacted tho