EELIGIOTJS TKUTH 149 



demonstration prevails, they are not unnaturally in- 

 clined to suppose that nothing in it is settled, nothing 

 ascertained," and very reasonably, I think. Nothing 

 can be settled except upon demonstrative evidence ; 

 you may think it settled and wake up next day to 

 find that the floods of new inquiry have come and 

 set it all afloat again. Moral evidence can settle 

 nothing permanently ; it may produce conviction in 

 men's minds to-day, which some new thought or 

 new spirit will chafe under to-morrow. The moral 

 evidences of Christianity — its wonderful growth 

 from such obscure beginnings, the noble lives it has 

 inspired, its power for good in the world, etc. — have 

 great weight, but they do not settle the questions 

 that vex us. Other religions have grown in the 

 same way, and been the inspiration of heroic lives 

 and the bond of national prosperity. It will not do 

 to say, as is so often said, that the European nations 

 owe all to Christianity ; what Christianity owes to 

 the quality and spirit of the European races remains 

 to be determined. Why did it not transform the 

 Eastern peoples as well ? Science has done more 

 for the development of Western civilization in one 

 hundred years than Christianity did in eighteen 

 hundred. Again, why has science not done as much 

 for the Oriental nations ? There we are ; to dogma- 

 tize in these matters is dangerous business. The 

 factor of race, the factor of environment, climate, 

 geology, rivers, mountain chains, variety of coast 

 line, etc., all enter into the problem. 



The writer I have already quoted says, " Too 



