the fruits are not the Christian fruits. There are many other religions in the world which do good work, keeping men out of savagery and leading them to think of God, and these also produce characteristic results, such as the virile pugnacity of Islam or the patient pessimism of Hinduism and Buddhism, or the heroic loyalty of Shinto: such religions produce saints, for the saints are all orthodox, and are all near together, whatever their starting-place, because they have come near to God. There have been also, and still are, many phases and fashions of Christianity which are harsh and ugly, and cruel, narrow, and anxious, and therefore are not really Christian at all: from them also saints move out towards Heaven, and become Christian. But the object of Christ is not merely to produce saints, since his love is to all men, and not only to exceptional men. The exceptional men can take care of themselves; they will become saints in spite of what the ministers of their religions may have taught them: but the interest of Christ is chiefly in the ordinary people, even most of all, and most actively, in those who are lost, who have dropped out and been forgotten, and have missed their way. We often say that Christianity can be proved to be the best religion by the exceptional saints it produces. But this is not true. Christianity can only be proved to be the best religion by its sinners.
It is by what Christianity does for the ordinary
