Your horizon cannot widen without elevating your
ideal. It would, be easy to show that all the principal
religious ascents of the human race have coincided with a



BBLIGIOUS BDUOATIOK. 23

notable enlargement of the intellectual horizon. The
most elevated Greek philosophy came into existence after
events had brought the G-reeks into contact with the
East. The Judaism of the times which preceded Christ
was formed, not under the dictation but in the midst, and
nt the impulse more or loss direct, of Persian and Greek
influences. Christianity comes forth at the moment when
the ancient world, till then split up into nationalities in-
different if not hostile to each other, acquires a knowledge
of itself, and when national partialities began to disappear
in a community of subjection and endurance under the
yoke of liome. The Beformation had for it? mother the
now spirit, full of independence and hardihood, which an-
tiquity had laid opon, groat discoveries, acquaintance with
the world increased more than threefold, breathed into
modern Europe. And in our own days, when geo-
graphical, scientific, and industrial discoveries are chang-
ing the face of society, we witness a fresh evolution of
the imperishable Christian idea. The reason of these co-
incidences is simple. Eoligious progress is accomplished
only by means of a certain enfeoblement of the forces of
tradition. As long as it speaks alone, tradition stamps
on all its lessons the seal of the eternal and the universal,
the appearance of the absolute ; hence its religious potency,
for the seal of the absolute is an attestation of divinity.
