r3 ing us onward towards a future radically different fro111 existing conditions, and it is vain to attempt to opposo obstacles to destiny. Religion, by far the most solid of all dikes, has lost its strength : .cracking on every side, it leaks and totters, and cannot fail to be sooner or later overthrown. It is certain that contemporary evolution is taking place wholly outside Christianity. There was a time when the word Christian, like Catholic, had a universal signification, and was actually applied to a world of brethren, sharing, to a certain extent, the same customs, the same ideas, and a civilisation or the same nature. But are not the pretensions of Christianity to be considered in our day as synony• mous with civilisation, absolutely unjustifiable? And when it is said of England or Russia that their armies are about to carry Christianity and civilisation into distant regions, is not the irony of the expression obvious to every one 7 The garment of Christianity does not cover all the peoples who by right of culture and industry form a part of contemporary civilisation. The Parsees of Bombay, the Brahmins of Benares eagerly welcome our science, but they are r,oldly polite to the Christian Missionaries. The Japanese, though so prompt in imitating us, take care not to accept our religion. As for the Chinese, they are much too cunning and wary·to allow tliemselves to be converted. "We have no need of your priests," says an English poem written by a Chinese, " Vv e have no need of your priests. We have too many ourselves, both long-haired and shaven. What we need is your arms and your science, to fight you and expel you from our land, as the wind drives forth the withered leaves ! " Thus Christianity does not nominally cover half the civilised world, and even where it is supposed to be paramount, it must be sought out ; it is much more a form than a reality, and amongst those who are apparently the most zealous, it is nothing but an ignoble hypocrisy. Putting aside all whose Christianity' consists merely in the sprinkling of baptism or inscription on the parish register, how many individuals are there whose daily life corresponds with the dogmas they profess, and whose ideas are always, as they should be~ those of another world ? Christians rendered honourable by their perfect sincerity may be sought without marked success even in "Protestant Rome," a city, nevertheless, of mighty traditions. At Geneva as at Oxford, u at all religious centres, and everywhere else, the principal Bibi oteca Gino B anco
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