Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/253

 Religion still the Key to History 243 er.cies of thought run, more than those fostered by any other of the great rehgions, towards loyalty to humanity, rather than to race. It is the only one that makes any serious effort to preach its gospel " to every creature ". " We recognize ", said Tertullian, " one com- monwealth, the world." It does not hesitate to put its own rules above those assumed for political science or economy. From the churches of England came the last great impulse that carried through the Corn Laws, and made free trade her policy to-day. There are signs of a movement in the churches of the L'nited States in the same direction. Should it gather force, statesmen must reckon seriously with it. Renan, in his Lijc of Jesns,^ remarks that he was the first of men to conceive, or at all events to put life into that thought, that liberty was something independent of politics ; that one's country is not everything ; and that the man is anterior and superior to the citizen. The share of government in human society becomes less ob- trusive as time goes on. Show of force declines as the sentiment of obedience to law becomes more prevalent. Public authority is more and more localized in small political communities, there to be administered by representatives of the inhabitants. These social principles go to diminish the weight of national governments, and make the individual man feel that he is a citizen first of his own local community and then of the world. They also strongly re- inforce the general trend of the Christian religion (which we may fairly say is to-day the strongest of any in its influence upon human history) towards insistence on universal brotherhood as the ultimate criterion of international obligations. Simeon E. B.ldwin. ' Chap. VT',