RATIONAL LIFE 323 



lines only recently opened up. The Christian nations 

 hold the commanding positions in the world, so that 

 it is impossible to regard the others as offering any 

 serious competition with them for ascendancy, in 

 moulding the world s future. 



In dealing with man s place in Nature, the lines of 

 investigation do not include any examination of Chris 

 tianity as a supernatural religion, but only as a spiritual 

 force contributing to the advance of the race. We 

 contemplate it here as a historic religion, whose faith 

 in the Supreme, whose conceptions of life, whose 

 motives for action, whose views of future existence, 

 have wielded a mighty influence in course of the ages. 

 Our stand-point is essentially that occupied by the 

 historian, whose position is distinct from that of the 

 theologian. Gibbon has fitly expressed the difference 

 between these two points of view. The theologian may 

 indulge the pleasing task of describing religion as she 

 descended from heaven, arrayed in her native purity. 

 A more melancholy duty is imposed on the historian. 

 He must discover the inevitable mixture of error and 

 corruption, which she contracted in a long residence 

 on the earth, among a weak and degenerate race of 

 beings. 1 But Christ stands out distinct from the 

 Christianity which has had a place in the world ever 

 since His coming. The Christ of history is a unique 

 personality; one whose character is a singular em 

 bodiment of human excellence ; one whose appearance 

 in the world, it is impossible to explain within the 

 terms of evolution. Two things stand out clearly, 

 when His life is set in contrast with other lives : His 

 superiority to the age in which He lived, and the 



1 Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. ii. chap. xv. p. 262. 



