Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/231

Religion still the Key to History 22 i Every great religion has come at the beginning with a resistless power. It comes as the expression by some clear-sighted, high- strung leader of men of what has long lain confusedly in the minds of many of his fellow-countrymen, now first really disclosed to them and clothed with a light and power that is wholly new. There is a truth in it, or it would not be great ; and truth endures. Such a religion has a beginning, but it will have no end until the national ideas of the peoples to whom it has presented a new con- ception of life are radically changed. It worked a. social revolution when it first appeared, but the shock of it then, however great, was less of a world-force than the trembling, far-dift'used, which in after years and ages has marked its continued life. It is a permanent addition to the energies of civilization. As a key to history, religion has changed its form since the overthrow of the ancient order of things that marked the close of the eighteenth century ; but its strength remains the same. Once that strength was largely found in the power of an estab- lished church, or of a sentiment of opposition to an established church. Xow it is coming more from the force of the principles fcr which, at bottom, churches stand, in influencing general public opinion. Once it received large expression in the fine arts, brought to the service of ecclcsiasticism. The j^yramids, the Greek temple no less than the Gothic cathedral, the paintings of the masters of former days, in .sia as well as Europe, the great music of the past, were all its offspring. To-day these arts turn for the most part elsewhere for their inspiration and ideals. The artist is tired of the anthropomorphism by which his pre- decessors degraded the divine. The architect is planning, the decorator is adorning, museums, libraries, lecture halls, state-houses, more than churches. The composer meets every mood. But there is here, too, a line that never can be passed. A school of art may be non-religious. It cannot be irreligious, and endure. Once religion led to alliances of nations for no other cause than that they shared the same form of it and wished, perhaps, to secure it a wider spread. Against such connections the Peace of West- jihalia, with its rule of cujus reglo, ejus rcligio, shut one door, and the futile outcome of the Holy Alliance closed another. In inter- national affairs the distinction between Christian and infidel has passed away as fully as that between Greek and barbarian ; but that which is vital to all religions and common to all religions is. but the more clearlv seen, and stronglv felt.