the salvation of man shall be made, in these lectures, the essential feature of religion in so far as religion shall here be dealt with. The religious objects, whatever they otherwise may prove to be, shall be defined as objects such that, when we know them, and in case we can know them, this knowledge of them helps to show us the way of salvation. The central and essential postulate of whatever religion we, in these lectures, are to consider, is the postulate that man {9} needs to be saved. And religious insight shall for us mean insight into the way of salvation and into those objects whereof the knowledge conduces to salvation.

This preliminary definition, thus somewhat abruptly stated, will arouse in the minds of many of you serious doubts and questions. And only the whole course of our study can serve to furnish such answer to these doubts and questions as I can hope to supply to you. Yet a further word or two of purely preliminary explanation may help to prevent your thoughts, at this point, from being turned in a wrong direction. I have defined religious insight as insight into the way of salvation. But what, you may ask, do I mean by the salvation of man or by man's need of salvation? To this question I still owe you a brief preliminary answer.

II

The word salvation naturally first suggests to your own mind certain familiar traditions which have played a great part in the history of Christianity. I do not mean to make light of those traditions nor yet of the significance of the historical Christianity to which they belong. Yet, as I have already told you, these lectures will have no dogmatic religious system to expound, and, for that very reason, will not attempt the grave task of any extended discussion of Christianity. I propose at {10} some future time, not in these lectures, but upon a wholly different occasion, to attempt an application of some of the principles that underlie the present lectures to the special problems which Christianity offers to the student of religion. But these lectures are not to be directly concerned with this special task of expounding or interpreting or estimating Christian doctrines. I repeat: My limited undertaking is to consider in company with you the sources of religious insight, not the contents of any one religion. You will understand, therefore, that when I define religious insight as insight into the way of salvation, I use the word salvation in a sense that I wish you to conceive in terms much more general than those which certain Christian traditions have made familiar to you.

I have already said that both Buddhism and Christianity are interested in the problem of the salvation of mankind, and share in common the postulate that man needs saving. I could have named still other of the world's higher religions which are characterised by the same great interest. Had I the time and the technical knowledge, I could show you how far backward in time, how deep down into the very essence of some of the religions that seem to us extremely primitive, this concern for man's salvation, and for a knowledge of the way of salvation, extends. But the history of religion does not fall within my present scope. And to the varieties of religious doctrine I can only allude by {11} way of illustration. Yet the mere mention of such varieties may serve, I hope, to show you that whole nations and races, and that countless millions of men, have conceived of their need for salvation, and have sought the way thereto, while they have known nothing of Christian doctrine, and while they have not in the least been influenced by those dogmas regarding the fall of man, the process of redemption, or the future destiny of the soul of man which are brought to your minds when you hear the word salvation.

Be willing, then, to generalise our term and to dissociate the idea of salvation from some of the settings in which you usually have conceived it. Since there is thus far in our discussion no question as to whose view of the way of salvation is the true view, you can only gain by such a dissociation, even if it be but a temporary effort at generalisation. The cry of humanity for salvation is not a matter of any one time or faith. The pathos of that cry will become only the deeper when you learn to see why it is so universal a cry. The truth, if there be any accessible truth, regarding the genuine way of salvation will become only the more precious to you when you know by how widely sundered paths the wanderers in the darkness of this world have sought for the saving light.

So let me next attempt to define salvation in a sufficiently general sense. Man is an infinitely needy creature. He wants endlessly numerous {12} special things--food, sleep, pleasure, fellowship, power in all its Protean shapes, peace in all its elusive forms, love in its countless disguises--in brief, all the objects of desire. But amongst these infinitely manifold needs, the need for salvation stands out, in the minds of those who feel it, as a need that is peculiarly paramount, so that, according to their view of life, to desire salvation is to long for some pearl of great price, for the sake of which one would be ready to sell all that one has. The idea that man needs salvation depends, in fact, upon two simpler ideas whereof the main idea is constituted. The first is the idea that there is some end or aim of human life which is more important than all other aims, so that, by comparison with this aim all else is secondary and subsidiary, and perhaps relatively unimportant, or even vain and empty. The other idea is this: That man as he now is, or as he naturally is, is in great danger of so missing this highest aim as to render his whole life a senseless failure by virtue of thus coming short of his true goal. Whoever has been led to conceive human life in these terms, namely, to think that there is for man some sort of highest good, by contrast with which all other goods are relatively trivial, and that man, as he is, is in great danger of losing this highest good, so that his greatest need is of escape from this danger--whoever, I say, thus views our life, holds that man needs salvation.

Now, I beg you to observe that such a view of {13} life as this is in no wise dependent upon any one dogma as to a future state of reward and punishment, as to heaven and hell, as to the fall of man, or as to any point of the traditional doctrine of this or of that special religion. Philosophers and prophets, and even cynics, learned and unlearned men, saints and sinners, sages and fanatics, Christians and non-Christians, believers in immortality and believers that death ends all, may agree, yes, have agreed, in viewing human life in the general spirit just characterised. A very few examples may serve to show how wide-spread this longing for salvation has been and how manifold have also been its guises.

I have already mentioned Buddhism as a religion that seeks the salvation of man. The central idea of the original southern Buddhism, as you know, is pessimistic. Man, so the Buddha and his earlier followers taught, is naturally doomed to misery. This doom is so pervasive and so fatal that you in vain would seek to escape from it through any luxuries, or, so to speak, excesses, of good fortune. On the throne or in the dungeon, wealthy or a beggar, man is always (so the Buddhist insists) the prisoner of desire, a creature of longing, consumed by the fires of passion--and therefore miserable. For man's will is insatiable, and hence always disappointed. Now we are here not in the least concerned with estimating this pessimism. This gloomy ancient Indian view of existence may be as false as {14} you please. Enough--millions of men have held it, and therefore have longed for salvation. For if, as the early Buddhists held, the evil of human life is thus pervasive and paramount, then the aim of escaping from such fatal ill must be deeper and more important than any