But the age of the Renaissance tended to exalt intellectual and æsthetic culture at the expense of the moral. The revival of Hellenism brought with it antireligious tendencies and threatened to bring to naught Europe’s labor of centuries to build up Christian character. This was rescued by the stronger sister movement of the Reformation, which united in it both the Hellenic and Christian spirit leading Christianity to its destined end--namely, to become a human religion. Unity of religion and life, heaven and earth, divine and human, now enters into the consciousness of the race. The dignity of individual conscience and reason, the equal destiny of all mankind without national, class, or sex discrimination, the future grandeur of the race and its earthly abode, begin to become the living faith of the West. Mediæval Christianity aimed to establish a spiritual kingdom beside and beyond the earthly one; modern Christianity aims at the gradual spiritualization of the earthly kingdom. Although the above revelation or message of Christianity was again submerged under the new scholasticism and ecclesiasticism into which Protestantism fell, the modern world has never lacked men of insight who, from time to time, have proclaimed it. No great new movement in history can pass without having its influence in the field of education. The Reformation really marks the beginning of modern education in the West, though to the Catholic Church belongs the honor of having preserved through the dark ages the treasures of ancient culture which made the Renaissance possible. In it we see the basis and germs of the fundamental ideas and ideals which have governed the education of Christendom until to-day. Luther is naturally the greatest name in this movement and deserves to represent it in its educational as well as religious aspect. As Compayré says: “The German reformer Luther is, of all his co-religionists, the one who has served the cause of elementary instruction with the most ardor. He not only addressed a pressing appeal to the ruling classes in behalf of founding schools for the people, but, by his influence methods of instruction were improved, and the educational spirit was renewed in accordance with the principles of Protestantism” (5: p. 114).