Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/252

242 S. E. Baldzuin It is the existence of this spirit which makes the punishments often inflicted on insurgents by the British in their Eastern possessions sharp up to the point of barbarism. Nothing less tells there.

It is the mosque that guards the palace of the Sultan.

Sir William Marriott, when in company with Ismail Pasha, the first Khedive of Egypt, happened to meet in Boulogne a procession of young girls on their way to their first communion. The pasha saluted it with a low reverence. "Your Highness is more Catholic than the Catholics", said Sir William. "Ah," was the reply. "you see I have ruled, and no man can rule without religion."

On this point East and West can both agree. Napoleon said, in reference to the Concordat of 1801, that he saw in the church not the mystery of the incarnation but the mystery of social order. Later, at the height of his power, speaking in the same vein, he intimated his belief that Christianity was an illusion but a very useful one. It assured the tranquillity of the state in reconciling man with himself and giving him a philosophy to live by. The age of illusions was for nations, as for individuals, the age of happiness.

It is not for history to pronounce whether any religion or all religions be founded on mere illusions. She must leave that to theologians and psychologists. But in her field of inductive sociology, she owns still the continuing force of the religious motive.

In modern politics, it takes on a new importance. They are expressed in terms of representative government. It may be representation by a legislature, or by a ministry. In either case it will assume to represent the people by representing a party. Representative government implies and involves party organization. Party organization is unfavorable to the expression of candid, impartial public opinion. But let any religious question be involved, and public opinion will find a way to express itself, which no party machinery can seriously obstruct.

So in world-politics, now so largely governed by a public opinion of the world, the pressure that can be brought upon any one power by others—that is brought upon each by other peoples through the press—will be immensely strengthened if it be impelled by an ethical or religious motive;—ethical or religious, for an ethical impulse common to many nations belongs to the religion of humanity.

That grows as ecclesiasticism declines. The Christian church has been gradually reduced, to use the phrase of Gardiner, "from the exercise of power to the employment of influence". Its