The argument of these essays has been to prove that even now, in the greatest armed conflict of the world, the term ‘Christendom’ is not inapplicable to Europe.  There is a real unity in Western civilization—­a unity due in large measure to the influence of religious faith and organization.  The mediaeval Church gave the Teutonic peoples of Northern Europe, and the barbarians who overran the Roman Empire, their first momentous introduction into the great inheritance formed by the uneasy blending of Christian faith and literature with Greco-Roman civilization.  The spiritual achievements of Greek and Roman, Jew and Christian have remained the common possessions of the West, the foundation of what is still Christendom.  In so far as it exists Christendom witnesses to the formative power of a religious faith:  in so far as it remains a dream, we may suspect it demands the renewed impulse of a faith enlightened and chastened by all the experience of the past.

If, however, we ask, Is there any likelihood that a common religious faith and life will contribute to raise Western civilization to a yet higher unity? modern as contrasted with mediaeval history seems at first sight to demonstrate the futility of any such inquiry.

Since the Reformation, religion has made for division rather than co-operation.  The modern period of European history begins in disruption.  Not only was Europe rent by the conflict of Catholic and Protestant, but the dream of an international reformed Church which at one time floated before the mind of Cranmer was dissipated by the strength of nationalism and the cleavage in the ranks of the reformers themselves.  In our own country, what is euphemistically termed the Elizabethan Settlement proved to be the source of further dissension, and reform appeared as the prolific mother of sects and schisms.  The Protestant Churches were organized on national and state lines.  They ceased to retain any international character in their constitution, while international intercourse became a diminishing influence.  The Church of Rome in the conflict with Gallicanism found herself at grips with the spirit of nationalism, and to-day the strength of national feeling within Roman Catholicism hinders the Pope from exerting a moral authority over sovereign states that would parallel the judicial functions successfully asserted by Innocent III.  No Christian Church to-day so rises above the national states of Europe, as to control or even adequately to criticize the claims of those states.  The Churches no longer serve to embody and express an European conscience.