The Letters to the Seven Churches of Asia

In the contact of East and West originates the movement of history. The historical position of Christianity cannot be rightly understood except in its relation to this immemorial meeting and conflict. The present book is based on the view that Christianity is the religion which associates East and West in a higher range of thought than either can reach alone, and tends to substitute a peaceful union for the war into which the essential difference of Asiatic and European character too often leads the two continents. So profound is the difference, that in their meeting either war must result, or each of them must modify itself. There is no power except religion strong enough to modify both sufficiently to make a peaceful union possible; and there is no religion but Christianity which is wholly penetrated both with the European and with the Asiatic spirit--so penetrated that many are sensitive only to one or the other.