usades kindled a fiery militant
and missionary spirit previously unknown to religions, whereby
religious propagation became the mainspring and declared object of
conquest and colonisation. Finally, in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries the great secession from the Roman Church divided the
nations of Western Europe into hostile camps, and throughout the long
wars of that period political jealousies and ambitions were inflamed
by religious animosities. In Eastern Europe the Greek Church fell
under almost complete subordination to the State.

The history of Europe and Western Asia records, therefore, a close
connection and community of interests between the States and the
orthodox faiths; a combination which has had a very potent influence,
during many centuries, upon the course of civil affairs, upon the
fortunes, or misfortunes, of nations. Up to the sixteenth century, at
least, it was universally held, by Christianity and by Islam, that
the State was bound to enforce orthodoxy; conversion and the
suppression or expulsion of heretics were public duties. Unity of
creed was thought necessary for national unity--a government could not
undertake to maintain authority, or preserve the allegiance of its
subjects, in a realm divided and distracted by sectarian
controversies. On these principles Christianity and Islam were
consolidated, in union with the States or in close alliance with them;
and the geographical boundaries of these two faiths, and of their
internal divisions respectively, have not materially changed up to the
present day.

* * * * *

Let me now turn to the history of religion in those countries of
further Asia, which were never reached by Greek or Roman conquest or
civilisation, where the ancient forms of worship and conceptions of
divinity, which existed before Christianity and Islam, still flourish.
And here I shall only deal with the relations of the State to religion
in India and China and their dependencies, because these vast and
populous empires contain the two great religions, Hinduism and
Buddhism, of purely Asiatic origin and character, which have
assimilated to a large extent, and in a certain degree elevated, the
indigenous polytheism, and which still exercise a mighty influence
over the spiritual and moral condition of many millions.

We know what a tremendous power religion has been in the wars and
politics of the West. I submit that in Eastern Asia, beyond