Thus the nineteenth century has witnessed in the political world an extraordinary revival of national spirit, especially amongst smaller peoples, and on the other hand a similar revival within the different religious communities. The eighteenth century humanists would have foreseen the one as little as the other. To them it seemed that beneath the clear light of reason the old dogmas of the sects would each lose their force, just as the ignorant patriotism of their day, which they saw to be so largely built upon mistaken prejudice, would give away to their wide cosmopolitan spirit which felt itself above these petty views. The revival of national feeling among the little peoples of Europe, with no wealth of capital or military force to give them aid, which we have witnessed during the last century, is, however, hardly less remarkable than the revival of life amongst the different Churches and religious communities of the western world. There was surely something lacking in the theory of life of these men of broad view of a former day who for [p.5] all their breadth could not find room for enthusiasm such as this. We are beginning to see that the truer cosmopolitan of the future will not cease to be a citizen of his own country when he becomes a citizen of the world, that the wider fellowship will lose its content and its meaning if it is to involve a denial of patriotism and not rather to subsume it as a necessary element in the true international spirit; and so in the inner life of the soul we must seek to harmonize the various contending creeds, not by destroying any particular creed, or attempting to replace it by some, vague generalisation, devoid of life or of attractive and inspiring force, but by attempting to appeal to the best in each, realising that each must have some value of its own, just as the poorest of peoples has its own peculiar traits and virtues; and thus gradually draw the sympathies and thoughts of men nearer together by reason of the common life from which must spring all that is good in the religion of each one.