times, but any person who cares to examine criminal and other statistics, the only positive tests of a nation's health, will find that France has been extraordinarily successful without Christianity and without putting anything in its place. There are, it is true, moral lessons in its schools, but I would not claim that they are much responsible: the system is imperfect, and the teachers not well equipped. Take our ally Japan. The moral discipline of the nation, which, in spite of some recent deterioration through Western influence, is admirable, does not rest on religious foundations. Take London or any metropolis of modern Europe. The bulk of the people have ceased to receive any influence from the representatives of Christianity, yet there has been moral progress instead of deterioration. Those who speak of degeneration in London or Paris do not accurately know and estimate the state of those cities in more religious times.
This experience might be enlarged indefinitely, but one or two instances will suffice for my purpose. The soundness of these instances which I quote I have established elsewhere, and the general truth to which I refer may be sufficiently gathered from the words of the clergy themselves. The rhetorical way in which they characterise our times is more or less typical of the carelessness of their judgments and the strength of their prejudices. One group of clerical writers, which generally includes the reigning Pope, speak in the darkest terms of our age and suggest that a sensible degeneration has followed the decrease of the influence of the Churches. Another group, considering the remarkable spread of idealism in our generation, the growing demand for peace, justice, and sobriety, claim that this moral progress, which they cannot deny, is
