But it is not only this fact and this problem with which our epoch has to deal; at their side there is another not less important, the solution of which also falls within the mission of the age. Many of the friends of Liberty and Equality regard Christianity, and especially Roman Catholicism, as their greatest enemy. {3} In his moments of perverseness and angry waywardness, Voltaire so treated it. Thousands of men, not only men of intelligence, but a multitude of others, obscure enough, still not deficient in activity, speak and act under the empire of the same idea; at one time brutal, at another hypocritical, the anti-Christian sentiment is at once ardent and far-spread. Is it well founded? Is Christianity, after all, the obstacle to the progress of Liberty and of Equality? Or is it not, on the contrary, rather true that both already owe much to Christianity, and that both require its sanction and its support to ensure their legitimate and durable triumph? The great question of the 19th century remains in suspense, and social order in peril, so long as that other question is not solved. I meet at every step in the Gospels words such as these--"What shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?" [Footnote 5] [Footnote 5: Mark viii. 36, 37.] {4} "Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul; but rather fear Him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell." [Footnote 6] "Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature." [Footnote 7] [Footnote 6: Matthew x. 28.] [Footnote 7: Mark xvi. 15.] The dominant idea in the Gospels is the infinite worth of the human soul, of every human soul. Jesus came to influence and to save souls, all souls without exception,--souls of the powerful and of the obscure, of the rich and poor, learned and ignorant, happy or afflicted. The condition and the salvation of souls is the foundation of the Christian Religion.