Note 6 — Chapter I · THE GRAVITY OF THE PRESENT SITUATION

Whichever way we turn the same spectacle confronts us. In France especially, and also in Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Holland, Belgium, Italy, Spain, the United States, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Brazil, and Argentina (where the men are practically all agnostics), freethought is making rapid progress. Only in Russia, where ninety per cent. of the population are uneducated, is the growth small and confined to the “intellectuals.” Never in the world’s history has there been so much disbelief in the “supernatural”; and, with the advance of science and education, this disbelief appears likely to be one day almost universal. Militant Rationalism is jubilant; while the pastor of the Theistic Church6 proclaims: “I see a battle coming. I do not, like Froude, predict that it will be fought once more, as of old, in blood and tears; but I am as certain as I am of to-morrow’s dawn that a mighty conflict is at hand which will revolutionise the religious thought and feeling of Christendom.”