It follows from the foregoing history and survey that Christianity, regarded by its adherents as either the one progressive and civilizing religion or the one most helpful to progress and civilization, is in no way vitally different from the others which have a theistic basis, and is in itself neither more nor less a force of amelioration than any other founding on sacred books and supernaturalist dogmas. Enlightened Christians with progressive instincts have justified them in terms of Christian doctrine, even as enlightened Moslems, Brahmans, and Buddhists have justified their higher ideals in terms of their doctrine; and the special fortune of Christianity has lain in this, that after nearly a thousand years in which it was relatively retrograde as compared with Islam, which during a large part of the time was progressive, both being what they were in virtue of institutions and environment, the environment was so far politically changed that the Christian countries gradually progressed, while the Moslem countries lost ground. To-day it is becoming clear to instructed eyes that the faiths were not the causal forces; and in Asia the rapid development of Japan in the past generation has vividly demonstrated the fallacy of the Christian view. As there was great progress under ancient paganism, under each one of the great creeds or cults of Asia, under Islam, and under Christianity, so there may be much greater progress in the absence of them all, in virtue of a wider knowledge, a more scientific polity, and a more diffused culture. The ultimate problem is to forecast the future. A confident faith in continual progress is one of the commonest states of mind of the present, the consciously scientific age; and in view of the unmistakable decadence of the creeds as such, it is natural to rationalists to expect an early reduction of Christianity to the status now held by "folk-lore," a species of survival dependent on ignorance upon the one hand and antiquarian curiosity on the other. But while this may be called probable, there can be no scientific certainty in the matter. For one thing, the process must for economic reasons be much slower than used to be thought likely, for instance, in the time of Voltaire, who allowed a century for the extinction of the Christian creed. Voltaire was so far right that a century has seen Christianity abandoned, after a reaction, by a large part of the best intelligence of our age, as it was by that of his. But there may be more reactions; and there is always a conceivable possibility of a total decadence, such as overtook the civilization of the old Mediterranean world.