Page 248 - The interest of America in sea power, present and future

A Twentieth-Century Outlook. 229

ever short of its pattern it has come, the civi-
lization of modern Europe grew up under the
shadow of the Cross, and what is best in it
still breathes the spirit of the Crucified. It is
to be feared that Eastern thinkers consider it
rather an advantage than a detriment that they
are appropriating the material progress of
traditions, —
Europe unfettered by Christian \
as agnostic countries. But, for the present at
least, agnosticism with Christian ages behind
it is a very different thing from agnosticism
which has never known Christianity.
What will be in the future the dominant
spiritual ideas of those nations which hitherto
have been known as Christian, is scarcely a
question of the twentieth century. Whatever
variations of faith, in direction or in degree,
the close of that century may show, it is not
probable that so short a period will reveal the
full change of standards and of practice which
necessarily must follow ultimately upon a radi-
cal change of belief. That the impress of
Christianity will remain throughout the com-
ing century is reasonably as certain as that it
took centuries of nominal faith to lift Christian
standards and practice even to the point they