Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/246

 236 S. B. Baldwin archaeologists or worked out by critical research, which was un- known before, but because the attitude of Christian people and Christian ministers towards biblical study has become gradually revolutionized. Textual homiletics, textual theology, unscientific theories of interpretation, have become generally discredited. The spirit of free inquiry, which not long ago characterized but a few men like Strauss and Renan, has now begun to characterize all real Christian scholarship in the United States and most of it in the world at large. Here, from the absence of religious establishments and the presence of universal education at public charge, it has nat- urally had free scope. It has given a prominence before unknown in modern times, outside of China, to character and conduct as the foundations of a true life. It has brought the general Christian world to look upon them as about the only evidence worth having that in any man earth has been brought close to heaven, while still maintaining that character and conduct are the fruits of the ideal, the children of faith in the invisible and eternal. It has brought the wider world of civilized mankind in all continents to care little for a man's theological beliefs, everything for his beliefs, his real beliefs, as to what is the true, the good, and the beautiful. Panislamism has gained a fresh inspiration from this source. The Young Turkish Party, already recognized as an important political force, founds itself on treating the Koran with the same free hand with which Christians treat the Bible, and so bringing its teachings into harmony with the new thought of a new time. During the last few years the American people have insisted, to a marked degree, on the observance of higher ethical standards on the part of their public and of their business men. The move- ment in this direction has been a steady one for more than half a century. In 1843, the foremost English novelist, fresh from a visit to the United States, could speak of it as "that Republic, but yesterday let loose upon her noble course, and but to-day so maimed and lame, so full of sores and ulcers, foul to the eye and almost hopeless to the sense, that her best friends turn from the loathsome creature with disgust."^ So severe an arraignment was unjustified in 1843. It would have been impossible and unthinkable at any time since, let us say, the Civil War. But it was not the Civil War that elevated the moral standards of the people. War is a salvation to some souls, a damnation to many more. " Treasons, stratagems, and spoils " — the spoils of the field and the spoils of the army con- tractor^make a poor soil for the growth of public morals. The ^ Dickens in Martin Chuzalewit, chap. xxii.