Certainly it is clear that already modern ideas of progress have had so penetrating an influence upon Christianity as to affect, not its external reactions and methods only, nor yet its intellectual formulations alone, but deeper still its very mood and inward temper. Whether or not Christianity ought to be a changing movement in a changing world, it certainly has been that and is so still, and the change can be seen going on now in the very atmosphere in which it lives and moves and has its being. For example, consider the attitude of resignation to the will of God, which was characteristic of medieval Christianity. As we saw in our first lecture, the medieval age did not think of human life upon this earth in terms of progress. The hopes of men did not revolve about any Utopia to be expected here. History was not even a glacier, moving slowly toward the sunny meadows. It did not move at all; it was not intended to move; it was standing still. To be sure, the thirteenth century was one of the greatest in the annals of the race. In it the foremost European universities were founded, the sublimest Gothic cathedrals were built, some of the world's finest works of handicraft were made; in it Cimabue and Giotto painted, Dante wrote, St. Thomas Aquinas philosophized, and St. Francis of Assisi lived. The motives, however, which originated and sustained this magnificent outburst of creative energy were otherworldly--they were not concerned with anticipations of a happier lot for humankind upon this earth. The medieval age did not believe that man's estate upon the earth ever would be fundamentally improved, and in consequence took the only reasonable attitude, resignation. When famines came, God sent them; they were punishment for sin; his will be done! When wars came, they were the flails of God to thresh his people; his will be done! Men were resigned to slavery on the ground that God had made men to be masters and slaves. They were resigned to feudalism and absolute monarchy on the ground that God had made men to be rulers and ruled. Whatever was had been ordained by the Divine or had been allowed by him in punishment for man's iniquity. To rebel was sin; to doubt was heresy; to submit was piety. The Hebrew prophets had not been resigned, nor Jesus Christ, nor Paul. The whole New Testament blazes with the hope of the kingdom of righteousness coming upon earth. But the medieval age was resigned. Its real expectations were post-mortem hopes. So far as this earth was concerned, men must submit.