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Introduction

Religion includes the relationship of man to God, and of man to each other. It is, therefore, a very comprehensive word, because it includes or contacts every relationship of life. This is true whether we welcome the fact, or resent its intrusion into our thinking, and have a feeling of indignation that it persists in demanding a large place in our most secret thoughts. In this volume, as in common usage, religion is used in the restricted sense of right relationship to God and man.

The special reason that it demands and has such a large place in our thinking is because of the insistent belief that these relationships will not cease with this life, but will continue throughout eternity. Nor is it about ourselves alone that we are concerned, but about our loved ones as well. Indeed most people who can be considered pious are more concerned about their loved ones than about themselves. Then too, in the case of all good people there is no little concern about the spiritual condition of the masses of the people of the earth.

Will most of these people in some way find an entrance into the better world, or will the vast multitudes of earth be eternally separated from God? Whether from genuine interest or idle speculation such questions must come to every thoughtful mind.

A layman said he had had three ministers. The first thought most of the people would finally be lost and he was greatly troubled about it. The second thought nearly everybody would go to hell, and he seemed to be glad of it. They were a tough, ornery lot who would not listen to the preacher, and would not try to live right, and they would simply get what they deserved. The third was uneasy about all of us, but simply hoped for the best.

There are groups throughout the world, some small, others very large, who think they have a monopoly of the favor of God, that their group alone will enjoy the delights of the heavenly world, and that all the others will be cast into the outer darkness. The most pronounced case of that sort I ever came into personal con- tact with was a Negro preacher to whom I gave a ride near my native heath. He belonged to that small group who take the words of Jesus literally as to the washing of feet. I soon found that he thought that anybody would have little chance of entering the pearly gates who did not literally wash the feet of others in church. It may be said that such narrowness is not confined to the poor and ignorant. It would be ludicrous in many cases if it were not so serious. On the other hand, there are those who believe that God is too good and merciful to permit any of His creatures to suffer forever.

These are great and vital questions. They are entirely too important to be settled by a few isolated proof texts-passages that may not bear on this particular point at all. But in order to get a satisfactory conception of the subject the Bible as a whole must be permitted to tell its own story.