satisfy me; but were they clear as the day, what change would they effect in me ? Man, whether fallen by sin, or standing as nature placed him, is a soldier forcibly enlisted at his birth, and never discharged until death ; and, even then, the believing Christian only changes his bonds. A prisoner of God, — labour and effort are the law of his life; cowardice appears to him like suicide, doubt is his torment, victory his hope, faith his repose, obedience his glory.
Such is man in all ages and in all countries; but such, above all, is man civilised by the religion of Jesus Christ. It may be said that good and evil are human inventions. But if the nature of man engender phantoms so obstinate, what is to save him from himself? and how is he to escape that malignant power of internal creation, of falsehood if you like, which exists and abides within him despite of himself and of you, and which has done so ever since the commencement of the world ?
Unless you can substitute the peace of your conscience in place of the agitation of mine, you can do
nothing for mePeace ! No, however bold you
may be, you would not dare to pretend to it! — and vet, peace is the right and the duty of the creature rationally endowed ; for without peace he sinks below the brute: but,— О ! mystery of mysteries ! for you, for me, and for all — this object will never be attained by ourselves: for whatever may be said, the whole realm of nature does not contain that which can give peace to a single soul.
Thus, could you force me to assent to all your audacious assertions, you would only have furnished me with new proofs of the need of a physician of souls —
author's preface.
IX
of a Redeemer, to cure the hallucinations of a creature so perverse, that it is incessantly and inevitably engendering within itself contest and contradiction, and which, by its very nature, flies from the repose it cannot dispense with, spreading around itself in the name of peace, war, with illusion, disorder and misfortune.
Xo\v, the necessity of a Redeemer being once admitted, you must pardon me if I prefer addressing myself to Jesus Christ rather than to you !
Here we come to the root of the evil ! Pride of intellect must be abased, and reason must own its insufficiency. As the source of reasoning dries up, that of feeling overflows: the soul becomes powerful so soon as she avows her want of strength ; she no longer commands, she entreats; and man approaches near to his object when he falls upon his knees.
But when all shall be cast down, when all shall kiss the dust, who will remain erect upon earth? what power shall exist amid the ashes of the world ? The power which shall remain is a pontiff in a churc
If that church — daughter of Christ, and mother of Christianity — has seen revolt issue from her bosom, the fault was in her priests, for her priests; are men. But she will recover her unity, because these men, frail though they be, are not the less direct successors of the apostles, ordained from age to age bv bishops who themselves received, bishop from bishop, under the imposition of hands traced backwards up to Saint Peter and to Jesus Christ, the infusion of the Holy Spirit, with the requisite authority to communicate that grace to the regenerated world.
XAUTHOR'S PREFACE,
Suppose — for is not every thing possible to God? — suppose that the human race shall wish to become sincerely Christian, will they in that case seek for Christianity in a book ? Xo, they will apply to men who can explain that book. There must, then, always be an authority, even among the preachers of independence; and the authority which is chosen arbitrarily is not likely to equal that established for eighteen hundred centuries.
Will any believe that the Emperor of Russia is a better visible head of the church than the Bishop of Rome ? The Russians have to believe so: but can they ? Such is, however, the religious truth which they now preach to the Poles !
Would you, piquing yourself on consistency, obstinately reject all other authority but that of individual reason ? This would be to perpetuate the war; because the government of reason nourishes pride, and pride engenders division, Alas I Christians little know the Treasure they voluntarily deprived themselves of when they took it into their heads, that people might have national churches I If all the churches in the world had become national, that is-Protcstant or schismatic, there woukl not now be any Christianity; there would be nothing but systems of theology subjected to human policy, which would modify them at its will, according to circumstances and localities.
To sum up : I am a Christian, because the destinies of man are not accomplished upon earth : I am a Catholic, because out of the Catholic churchy Christianity becomes diluted and perishes.
After having surveyed the greater part of the
ÀUTHOE?S PREFACE.XÍ
civilised world, after having applied myself with all ray power during these different travels to discover some of the hidden springs on the action of which depends the life of empires, the following is, according to my attentive observations, the' future that we may venture to predict.
In a human point of view — the universal division or dispersion of minds produced by the contempt felt for the only legitimate authority in matters of faith — in other words, the abolition of Christianity, not as a system of morals or philosophy, but as a religion ; and this suffices for the strength of my argument. In a spiritual point of view — the triumph of Christianity, by the re-union of all the churches in the mother church,—in that shaken but indestructible church which is every age widening its gates for the return of those who went out from it. The universe must again become either pagan or catholic: pagan, in a manner more or less refined, with nature for its temple, sense for its worship, and reason for its idoclass="underline" or catholic, with priests, of whom a certain number at least, sincerely put in practice before they preach, the precept of their master, " My kingdom is not of thi* world."
Such is the dilemma out of which the human mind will never be extricated. Beyond it, there is nothing on one side but imposture, on the other but illusion.
This prospective result has struck me ever since 1 thought at alclass="underline" nevertheless, the ideas of the age were so different from mine, that I wanted—not faith, but boldness: I felt all the weakness of isolation; still I did not cease to protest with all my power in favour of a 6
XÜAUTHOR'S PttEFACE.
my creed. But now that it has become popular in я part of Christendom, now that the great interests which agitate the world are those which have always caused my heart to beat, now that the approaching future is big with the problem for the solution of which I have never ceased to search in my obscurity, I discover that I have a place in the world, I feel supported; if not in my own country (still a prey to that destructive, narrow, exhausted philosophy which continues to retain a large portion of France out of the debate upon the great interests of the world), yet at least in christian Europe. It is this support which has emboldened me more clearly to explain my views in various parts of the present work, and to draw from them their ultimate consequences.
Wherever I have set foot on earth, from Morocco to the frontiers of Siberia, I have seen smouldering the fires of religious war; not any longer, let us hope, to be the war of the armed hand, the least decisive of any, but the Avar of ideas. God alone knows the secret of events; but every man who observes and reflects can foresee some of the questions that will be resolved by the future: those questions are all religious. Upon the attitude which France may take in the world as a Catholic power, will depend her political influence. In the proportion that revolutionary spirits leave her, catholic hearts will draw around her. In this respect, the force of things so governs men, that a king supremely tolerant, and a minister who is a Protestant^ have become throughout the world the most zealous defenders of Catholicism, simply because they are Frenchmen.