Page:Religiouspersecu00haynuoft.djvu/31

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MODERN TOLERATION
15

of government are no longer avowedly religious, because modern men have become stolid and unimaginative. On the contrary, I believe that modern democracies are more strongly swayed in politics by appeals to the imagination than the communities of past times, and that statesmen consciously use this leverage on a larger scale than before. In the United States politicians use more rhetorical and sentimental language every year, and the same tendency is apparent in Europe. The Jubilee procession of 1897, and the coronation of Queen Wilhelmina in 1898, aroused extraordinary outbursts of enthusiasm in nations conventionally considered more phlegmatic than the Latin or the Slav peoples.

On all these grounds it seems probable that modern toleration is intimately bound up with the sceptical or inquiring spirit, and that there is some historical continuity in the process. The primitive tribe and the ancient city-state were theocracies pure and simple; even the Greek city was a "parochial Sinai." To some extent Christianity reinforced, and was helped by the universality of Stoic philosophy in revolting against this, and set up the individual conscience as the supreme arbiter for men. It substituted an otherworldly jurisdiction for that of the State. "My kingdom is not of this world" is the key-note of Christ's teaching. The partial success of this new idea is