Perhaps it does not matter. It may be that all this speculation about the First Cause, about the Ruling Power of the world, is unnecessary. What matter if God be inscrutable, if He has given us commands for our lives that are clear, if He has laid down for us His will that we should follow. Even if Law be not a full explanation, even if a knowledge of all Law would not mean a knowledge of everything, what would this signify if we can see enough of the laws that govern our lives so to order ourselves as to reach the goal? Whether the Theist be right or the Buddhist, in his theories of the world, the main question with which we are concerned is ourselves. Has any religion a working code of life that is true, that is adapted to us as we are, that is not in conflict with facts and common sense? What matters its name or its supposed origin? Is there such a thing? So thought the man, turning from abstract ideas to real necessities. After all, what I and all men want is not abstract ideas, whether of God or Law, but present help and guidance. Has any God taught any believer a perfect code of life, has any Buddhist searcher discovered the natural Law of life? For if so I would know them. Never mind the whence or how, give me the facts.

It seemed to him, looking back in the beginning of faiths, that morals, that rules of life had no part there. When the Northman saw Thor in the thunder there was no moral code there. The Greek gods were frankly not so much immoral, which predicates a code of morals, as unmoral. They knew of no such thing. It is the same with all the early gods, with the Hindu gods and those of all other early beliefs. The Chin savage on the Burmese frontier sees gods in the great peaks, but these gods demand from him no moral observance, they impress upon him no moral standard. All that the early gods demanded was fear, reverence, worship. Even the Jehovah of the Jews asked at first only this. It is not till you get to the third commandment that conduct comes in, and the moral code was scanty. The early gods of all kinds, of all faiths, had no moral code either for themselves or man. They demanded only obedience and fear and worship. The moral code came later.

It seems unnecessary now to consider whence they came, how they grew, why they became added to the worship of the gods, which was all that early religion meant. Some of that will come elsewhere. It is immaterial here which is only the man's search after a code, any code that would act. For it remains that all faiths when once they had left the elementary stage did add a code of conduct as part of their religion, saying it came from God, or was an immutable law, and tried to induce men to follow it by declaring that it alone would lead to happiness hereafter. All the greater faiths have these codes. "And I," said the man to himself as he searched, "I care nothing whence the code is supposed to have come, truly or falsely, as long as I find it. I want a guide to life as it is. Has any faith such a guide? For each declare that it alone has. Show me these rules to life."

The books showed him. They showed him codes of all degrees, from the simplest to the most complex, from the plain cult of courage, the very first and most necessary of all virtues, to the immensely complicated code of observances of the Brahmin; and outside religions there were the philosophies of Greece and Rome, of India and China, of Persia and Germany, and Scotland.

Now should man so order his life as to live righteously here, and to be of good repute before man and his own conscience? How shall a man so form himself here that if indeed there be a life hereafter he may enter it without fear? What are these codes?

It seemed to him that there ran in some ways a great sameness through the creeds, that up to a certain stage they differed but little. Courage against the foe, courage to face suffering, truth and honesty, and later mercy and compassion, charity of act and thought, courtesy and beauty of mind; these were the additions the faiths made, little by little, to the ground-work of reverence of the gods. And so they grew, adding bit by bit, as civilisation increased and necessity dictated. They added many of them sanitary rules, observances for washing, for cooking, for choosing food, incorporating with religion whatever practice found useful, and thereby giving a sanctity which it would otherwise have lacked. Sometimes rules were added to preserve the race pure, as with the Jews or the Hindus, evolving in the latter religion into the vast system of caste that separates the different races, all of whom call themselves Hindus. With the two faiths as just mentioned the tendency was to narrowness and restriction, to the exclusion of other races; with others, such as the Mahommedan and Buddhist, it was to expansion, to the acceptance of other peoples, until at last some great Prophet arose to give coherence and form to the whole and include it in the sacred books. So arose the codes, the man thought. But this hardly matters. What are the codes?

It seemed to him that out of all the faiths only two held codes that rose much above the level of savage conduct. We cannot go back to the codes of Moses or Mahommed; we cannot accept the narrow racial limitations of Hinduism; we have outgrown the simple ethics of Zoroaster and the Egyptians. The teachings of Confucius and Laotze are strange to us, and the philosophies, if they seem clear, are so singularly unconvincing. They lack so greatly all that appeals to mankind; they are so much codes in the head and not for the heart; they are as mathematical drawings compared to a work of art; they do not ring true. And so there were quickly left for him only two, the codes of Christ and of Buddha, the examples of the two greatest prophets the world has known.

And between the teachings of the great Teacher who lived two thousand and five hundred years ago, and that of the man God of the Christians six hundred years later, what difference is there? They start from different beginnings, they work towards perhaps different ends; but in the methods, in the rules of life, what difference is there? That which was taught by the sea of Galilee is but the echo of the words spoken long before below the Himalayan Hills. They are the same, read them. The two greatest faiths the world has known, the two greatest teachers that ever came to man to help him in his need, have brought him the same message. Believe not in the world, believe not in wealth, in power, in greatness, in strength. These are not what man should seek. Nay, but leave the world behind you because it is all evil, all very evil. Nothing of this world is of any value. In a man's heart is his greatest treasure. Make therefore your heart pure from the world. Leave it all and turn to God, to righteousness. Cultivate your own soul apart from all the pleasures of life. The other world can be gained only by abjuring this. Wealth and honour and ambition, all the glories of the world, are but traps to catch you. Even the loves we love are wrong. The Buddha left his wife and child. The Christ never married, and denied even his mother any love beyond that of a disciple. It is all the same. Their lives, their teachings are the same.

The man sighed as he read. Surely, he said, these are hard things to believe, that the world is evil. No, but it is not evil. That a man can only fit himself for heaven by being unfit for earth. I cannot believe this. I have not changed since I thought this over as a boy. This is not a true code, not a true rule, not a true faith, whether Christian or Buddhist. I did not believe then, a boy; I do not believe now, a man.

The world is not evil. There is evil there, but so much of good. There are stains there truly, but so much of beauty. Do you think I can watch the sun rise, the daily marvel which is beyond words, and hate the world? Can I see the man I love, the men who have helped me, who have been with me, the men who are my friends, and say that they are of a world that is evil? And the women, the girls, the children, are their lives for us nothing? Are they of a world that we must abjure? It is never so. Truly, there are in these teachings, whether of the Christ or of the Buddha, much that is of beauty, much, so much that touches our hearts, I had at times fain believe. But I find in the world beauty also, beauty that comes as near, that comes nearer than they do. When a man is honest and honourable and true, and rises to great position, to be spoken well of by all men, is that an evil thing? Is the wealth that comes of the keen brain, the strong will, a calamity? Are our loves, our hopes, our fears but evil? Yet they are of the world. Beautiful as is the teaching, there are in the world things far more beautiful. I will never believe, never, that the world and flesh are partners to the Devil. I will never believe that.

"And more," said the man slowly. "No one ever does believe it—none but a very few. The world has rejected it always; not from wickedness, but because the teaching is never true. They do not acknowledge their disbelief. No! The Christians and the Buddhists maintain their faith by words. But in secret, in their own hearts, before the world, in the action of their own hands, have they ever acknowledged these beliefs?"

Neither the Christ nor the Buddha are the models men follow, because men are sure that, though there be truth in their teachings yet it is not all the truth, though there be beauty yet are there other beauties as great, nay greater than these. The world is never evil, and if it were, to follow these doctrines would not be the way to make it better.

Then the man turned from his books again to the world beneath him, he came to reality from dreams. I have learnt nothing? No, but I have learnt something. I have learned what I have yet to learn. And I have learned more. I know why I disbelieve, because I love the world as it is, and because I will never believe that what calls to my heart from there is wrong. The beauty of things is the truth of things. And in truth and beauty is the voice of God as surely, nay more surely than in the voice of any prophet of two thousand years ago.