n THE ARREST OF ENQUIRY 35 



as due either to its divine origin and guidance ; 

 or to the favourable conditions of the time of its 

 early propagation, and to that wise adaptation to 

 circumstances which linked its fortunes with those 

 of the progressive peoples of Western Europe. In 

 the judgment of every unofficial narrator, this latter 

 explanation best accords with the facts of history, 

 and with the natural causes which largely determine 

 success or failure. The most partisan advocates of its 

 supernatural, and, therefore, special, character, have to 

 show reason why the fortunes of the Christian religion 

 have varied like those of other great religions, both 

 older and younger than it ; why, like Buddhism, it 

 has been ousted from the country in which it rose ; 

 and why, in competition with Brahmanism, as Sir 

 Alfred Lyall testifies in his Asiatic Studies (p. 1 10), 

 and with Mohammedanism in Africa, it has less 

 success than these in the mission fields where it 

 comes into rivalry with them. . Riven into wrangling 

 sects from an early period of its history, it has, while 

 exercising a beneficent influence in turbulent and 

 lawless ages, brought not ' peace on earth, but a 

 sword/ It has been the cause of undying hate, of 

 bloody wars, and of persecutions between parties and 

 nations, whose animosity seems the deeper when 

 stirred by matters which are incapable of proof As 

 Montaigne says, ' Nothing is so firmly believed as 

 that which is least known.' To bring the Christian 

 religion, or, rather, its manifold forms, from the 

 .purest spiritualistic to such degraded type as exists, 

 for example, in Abysinnia, within the operation of 

 the law which governs development, and which, 

 therefore, includes partial and local corruption ; is to 



