Description
The Hindus regarded more the inner significance of the event. The old-time glory and greatness of Asia seemed destined to return. The material aggrandisement of the European races at the expense of the East seemed at last to be checked. The whole of Buddha land from Ceylon to Japan might again become one in thought and life. Hinduism might once more bring forth its old treasures of spiritual culture for the benefit of mankind. Behind these dreams and visions was the one exulting hope—that the days of servitude to the West were over and the day of independence had dawned. Much had gone before to prepare the way for such a dawn of hope: the Japanese victories made it, for the first time, shining and radiant. A religious Reformation has been advancing side by side with the new Renaissance. Christian Missions have been silently but surely leavening the old religious conceptions of the people of the East, and wherever they have spread there has been a quickening of new life. The future is all with the new. There can be no ultimate return to the old when once it has been left behind. Matthew Arnold’s muchquoted lines concerning the Roman Empire and the East are no longer true of the new civilisation with which the East is coming into contact in our own times.
