e expression of the conviction that all
movement at bottom brings nothing new and that life offers no prospect
of further improvement.' When Paul discovered that the law was a
schoolmaster to bring men to Christ, he enunciated a profounder
philosophy of history than Plato ever knew.

The very fact that Christianity sprang out of Judaism means that it
enshrines and suggests the idea of progress in the very circumstances of
its origin. But its hold on the idea is something deeper than its
connexion with Judaism. Christianity claims to be the final religion,
but its claim differs in kind from the parallel claim of Mohammedanism.
The world of Islam is held in mortmain by the prophet. It cannot advance
beyond the forms in which he embodied his message without denying the
claims he made for himself. But to the early Christians the synoptic
gospels were the record of all that Jesus _began_ to do and to say,
while the highest development of Christian experience and reflection in
the New Testament, the gospel of John, contemplates the greater things
which the followers of Jesus shall accomplish and the fuller revelations
which shall come as the disciples are able to bear them. The claim of
Christianity to finality rests on its opening up endless possibilities
of spiritual growth to mankind. To some of us it seems that part of this
fuller revelation has come through modern knowledge and discovery. The
faith in progress which Christians have often held falteringly and have
sometimes denied, appears to be confirmed and clarified by all that we
are learning of creative evolution. In any case, the influence of
modern science has tended to produce a faith in progress in the West--a
faith which some regard as essentially different from the Christian view
of the world and history, but which for others seems more and more to
coalesce with that earlier if in some respects cruder Christian
conviction. No doubt when the facts of evolution were held to point to
gradual and continuous development, they favoured a view of steady
progress which was antagonistic to the Christian belief in the sudden
introduction of new elements into history. But the later advances of
evolutionary theory seem more akin to the early Christian attitude. The
element of apocalyptic is seen not to be so alien from nature as had
been at first supposed.

However it arises and whatever form it takes, this faith in progress is
characteristic of the Western outlook, and g