CHAPTER XIII
WESTERN CHRISTIANITY
In any attempt to estimate the rise or decline of human values, it is, of course, necessary to take due account of the reputed decay of religious faith and feelings. Here we are on a wider field than in dealing with the sciences and arts. So far as religion is concerned with dogmatic creeds and ceremonial, there can be no question that the Churches have lost much of their former hold on their adherents. This is, as I have already intimated, due not so much to any conscious scepticism as to a growing sense of the unreality of any other world and any other life than this. For how many church-goers to-day has the doctrine of Atonement any meaning? How many believe in the “saving” of their souls? “The exceeding Sinfulness of Sin,” “Righteousness,” the “grace of God” carry little emotional appeal. As for miracles, perhaps it would be right to say that the miracles of another world have been displaced by the miracles of this world. To the mass of people in civilized countries the interest of ordinary life, outside the routine of work, has been immensely enlarged. Perhaps “sport” and its accompaniments have done as much as anything to absorb the lighter interest of most men in all classes of society in this country and America, and its
