Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/238

 2 28 S. E. Baldwin historian whose judgments will be accepted by future generations must write in a religious spirit. He cannot use a key too large for him to grasp. I mean here by religion a rev^erent consciousness of a power (be it law or spirit) manifest in nature, which is stronger than man, and a sense of obligation to answer its demands. Its com- mon fruits, ripened by human association, have through all historic times been what in those times passed for collective virtue and self-sacrifice. The historian nuist respect these qualities. He must share in them, so far at least as to recognize them in others, and recognize their controlling force. George Sand makes her Marquis de Villemer declare that " Jamais une conscience troublee, jamais un esprit fausse n'enten- dront I'histoire." It will be always inclining to search out or invent some unworthy motive, some low design, in the greatest acts. It cannot comprehend that in which it has no part. Nor can the man whose conscience is untroubled and spirit true, but to whom him- self the religious motive is a stranger, appreciate what may be its mastery of others. Particularly is this true where behind the religious motive is the conviction of the personality of God. He to whom the divine stands as a being detached from all beside, will go farther and dare more for the love of God or fear of God, than the man to whom the divine transcends all personality and permeates whatever the universe contains. The very conception of such an immanence of God in the world is at once too vast and too subtle for the ordinary mind. It diiTuses a power which the other con- ception concentrates. It turns a guide into a theory. If mankind is always craving heroes to worship, much more it craves a King of Kings, eternal in the heavens.' The thought of tmity in nature — of a single purpose or power to which all that we see or know or feel is related — is common to most of tlie great religions. It is also a vital part of them. To those who are possessed by it, it seems a clue by which to trace back every event of history to its farthest source. It is distinctly a religious clue. It naturally associates itself with the thought of unity in human authority. To the Mohammedan, religion is still the centralizing force in government that it was for a thousand years to the Christian world. Medieval Europe could conceive only of one spiritual head and of one imperial head on earth. It was this sentiment that kept the Holy Roman Empire in life centuries after, as Voltaire declared, it was no longer Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire. Convince the mass of any people that a change of custom or