a cruel and irrational ideal of retribution, even while some of its champions profess to combat scientific methods in the name of humanity. It is in regard to the influence of religious teaching on international relations, however, that the saddest conclusions are forced upon the student of Christian history. The foregoing pages have shown how potent has been organized Christianity to promote strife and slaughter, how impotent to restrain them. If any instance could be found in history of a definite prevention of war on grounds of Christian as distinguished from prudential motive, it would have been there recorded. So flagrant is the record that when it is cited the Christian defence veers round from the position above viewed to one which unconsciously places the source of civilization in human reason. Yet even thus the historic facts are misstated. The enormity of Christian strifes in the past is now apologetically accounted for by the fantastic theorem that hitherto men have not "understood" Christianity, and that only in modern times have its founder's teachings been properly comprehended. Obviously there has been no such development: the gospel's inculcations of love and concord are as simple as may be, and have at all times been perfectly intelligible: what has been lacking is the habit of mind and will that secures the fulfilment of such precepts. And recent experience has painfully proved, once for all, that the religious or "believer's" temper, instead of being normally conducive to such action, is normally the worst hindrance to it.