t men are
too apt to forget that law is the servant of equity, and that while
the world is in its present stage of development equity which cannot
be had by law must be had by force, upon which ultimately law rests,
not for its sanction, but for its efficacy.

We have been familiar latterly with the term "buffer states;" the
pleasant function discharged by Siam between Great Britain and France.
Though not strictly analogous, the term conveys an idea of the
relations that have hitherto obtained between Eastern and Western
civilizations. They have existed apart, each a world of itself; but
they are approaching not only in geographical propinquity, a
recognized source of danger, but, what is more important, in common
ideas of material advantage, without a corresponding sympathy in
spiritual ideas. It is not merely that the two are in different stages
of development from a common source, as are Russia and Great Britain.
They are running as yet on wholly different lines, springing from
conceptions radically different. To bring them into correspondence in
that, the most important realm of ideas, there is needed on the one
side--or on the other--not growth, but conversion. However far it has
wandered, and however short of its pattern it has come, the
civilization of modern Europe grew up under the shadow of the Cross,
and what is best in it still breathes the spirit of the Crucified. It
is to be feared that Eastern thinkers consider it rather an advantage
than a detriment that they are appropriating the material progress of
Europe unfettered by Christian traditions,--as agnostic countries.
But, for the present at least, agnosticism with Christian ages behind
it is a very different thing from agnosticism which has never known
Christianity.

What will be in the future the dominant spiritual ideas of those
nations which hitherto have been known as Christian, is scarcely a
question of the twentieth century. Whatever variations of faith, in
direction or in degree, the close of that century may show, it is not
probable that so short a period will reveal the full change of
standards and of practice which necessarily must follow ultimately
upon a radical change of belief. That the impress of Christianity will
remain throughout the coming century is reasonably as certain as that
it took centuries of nominal faith to lift Christian standards and
practice even to the point they now have reached. Decline, as well as
rise, must be gradu