THE OUTLOOK FOR CHRIS TIANITY WHAT are the prospects of the Christian religion? What promise has it of retaining its hold upon the human race and extending its influence over the thought and life of men? Voices which are supposed to be influential are frequently heard asserting the decadence of Christianity and predicting its speedy disappearance. That assertion and that prediction have been many times repeated, from the days of Celsus down to Bolingbroke and Diderot and Voltaire. In the mean time, the geographers have continued to find a place for Christianity on their maps, and the statisticians do not appear to be able to treat it as a neglectable quantity. We are warned against putting our trust in figures. Numerical estimates of the growth of a religious system are not, indeed, conclusive. Its product must be weighed as well as counted. Yet the figures which show the expansion of Christianity as a world power can hardly be disregarded. For the early periods we have only estimates; but it is at least an approximation to the truth to say that, at the end of the first century, there were in the world about five millions of nominal Christians; at the end of the tenth century, ten millions; at the end of the fifteenth, one hundred millions; at the end of the eighteenth, two hundred millions; at the end of the nineteenth, five hundred millions. The last century has added to the adherents of Christianity almost three times as many as were added during the first fifteen centuries. The rate of progress now is far more rapid than at any other period during the Christian era. The population of the world is growing. The estimates are that, whereas in 1786 the dwellers on this planet numbered 954,000,000, in 1886 they were 1,483,000,000, an increase of fifty-four per cent. But the nominal Christians had increased during the same period more than one hundred per cent. cent. The political strength of Christendom is not, however, represented by these figures. In 1786 a little more than one-third of the people of the world were under the government of Christian nations, and a little less than two-thirds were under the control of non-Christian nations; in 1886 fifty-five per cent. of the larger population were under Christian rule, and only forty-five per cent. under non-Christian rule. The geographers put it in this way: In 1600 the inhabited surface of the earth measured about 43,798,600 square miles; of these, Christians occupied about 3,480,900, and non-Christians 40, |