priest aided it (until it had won millions of adherents), and the bishops almost unanimously opposed it: and the humanitarianism of modern times is an almost exclusively lay movement, gaining power and fervour in proportion as we sweep the clergy aside. Europe was civilised under the Roman and Greek pagans, and it is civilised, in the same broad sense, under the modern pagans; it was not civilised in the intervening period, and the worst features of its life to-day are, not recent outgrowths, but inheritances from the Christian past.
The pleas which some of the clergy, who know a little history, urge against this plain generalisation of the historical facts are curious. The majority, of course, knowing nothing of history, repeat the conventional untruths, but a few would tell us that this modern humanitarianism is due to a belated appreciation of the Christian ethic. Are justice, sympathy, truthfulness, kindness, and honour confined to the Christian ethic? Was there ever a great moralist, or a mature civilisation, which failed to appreciate them? Is not the modern humanitarian movement plainly characterised by a determination to do good to men, not for a reward in heaven or because Christ (like so many others) enjoined it, but because you cannot have a fine mind and character without experiencing this determination? Were there, in the fifteen hundred years of Christian domination, not enough men with intelligence enough to perceive the practical
