Yet there is a very important difference between the defeat inflicted on
Hellenism by Christianity eighteen hundred years ago, and the check
given to the Renascence by Puritanism. The greatness of the difference
is well measured by the difference in force, beauty, significance, and
usefulness, between primitive Christianity and Protestantism. Eighteen
hundred years ago it was altogether the hour of Hebraism. Primitive
Christianity was legitimately and truly the ascendant force in the world
at that time, and the way of mankind's progress lay through its full
development. Another hour in man's development began in the fifteenth
century, and the main road of his progress then lay for a time through
Hellenism. Puritanism was no longer the central current of the world's
progress, it was a side stream crossing the central current and checking
it. The cross and the check may have been necessary and salutary, but
that does not do away with the essential difference between the main
stream of man's advance and a cross or side stream.
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