[Transcriber's note: This production is based on https://archive.org/details/christianityview00guiz/page/n6] {i} Christianity Viewed In Relation To The Present State Of Society And Opinion. By M. Guizot. Translated Under The Superintendence Of The Author. London: John Murray, Albemarle Street. 1871. {ii} By The Same Author. The Essence Of Christianity. Post 8vo, 9s. 6d. "No one can open this book, and recollect the circumstances which produced it, without feeling that it is a valuable contribution to the literature of the present controversy." --_Edinburgh Review_. The Present State Of Christianity. Post 8vo, 10s. 6d. "A remarkable series of religious meditations. They form a sequel to a similar volume on the Essence of Christianity, published two years ago, and an introduction to a further series, in which M. Guizot proposes to treat the great questions of the history of Christianity, and the future destiny of the Christian religion. The book is one of great interest."--_Pall Mall Gazette_. {iii} {iv} {v} Preface. In the First Series of these Meditations, I gave a summary of the facts and dogmas which constitute, as I think, the foundation and the essence of the Christian Religion. In the next series I retraced the Reawakening of Faith and of Christian Life during the nineteenth century in France, both amongst Romanists and Protestants. With Christianity thus reanimated and resuscitated amongst us, after having passed through one of its most violent trials, I confronted the principal philosophical systems which in these days reject and combat it: Rationalism, Positivism, Pantheism, Materialism, Scepticism. I essayed to determine the fundamental error which seems to me to characterize each of those systems, and to have always rendered them inadequate to the office either of satisfying or explaining man's nature and destiny. {vi} That series of my Meditations I concluded with these words: "Why is it that Christianity, in spite of all the attacks which it has had to undergo, and all the ordeals through which it has been made to pass, has for eighteen centuries satisfied infinitely better the spontaneous instincts and invincible cravings of humanity? Is it not because it is pure from the errors which vitiate the different systems of philosophy just passed in review? because it fills up the void that those systems either create or leave in the human soul? because, in short, it conducts man nigher to the fountain of light?" [Footnote 1] [Footnote 1: Meditations on the Actual State of Christianity. Eighth Meditation: Impiety, Recklessness, Perplexity, p. 336.]