Russia in 1839 -Empire of the Czar: A Journey Through Eternal Russia

author's preface.vü

political communities; in other words, to make war with fellow-men. Christianity alone has discovered the secret of free and pacific association, because it alone has shown to liberty in what it is that liberty consists. Christianity governs, and will yet more rigidly govern the earth, by the increasingly strict application of its divine morals to human transactions. Hitherto the Christian world has been more occupied with the mystic side of religion than with its political bearing. A new era commences for Christianity: perhaps our grandchildren will see the Gospel serving as the basis of public order.

But it woiúd be impious to believe that this was the only end of the divine legislator; tin's is but his means.

Supernatural light cannot be acquired by the human race, except through the union of souls beyond and above the trammels of all temporal governments : a spiritual society, a society without limits : such is the hope — such the future prospect of the world.

I hear it said that this object will be henceforward attainable without the aid of our religion; that Christianity, built on the ruinous foundation of original sin, has had its day ; and that to accomplish his true vocation, misunderstood until now, man needs only to obey the laws of nature.

Ambitious men of a superior order of talent, who revive these old doctrines by eloquence ever new, are obliged to add, in order to be consistent, that good and evil exist only in the human mind ; and that the man who creates these phantoms may also destroy them.

The pretended new proofs which they give do not