It is the glory of Christianity to have been the first to place religion on this height, and in this the only religious point of view. And yet, neither reasons nor temptations were wanting at its origin, to make it denounce temporal society, and either separate from or declare war against it. Still it never dreamt of such a course. At the moment when the Christian faith restored to man his lost dignity and raised him to his forfeited position, she made herself liable for him without a murmur to slavery, despotism, iniquities, inequalities, incomparable miseries. {60} Not one revolutionary intention or idea, to use a modern phrase, is to be traced near the cradle of Christianity. Christians in the name of their faith heroically resist persecution and tyranny, but they do not undertake to change the state of society or of mankind. They share in it, they adapt themselves to it, whatever its principles, forms, consequences. They do more. The world is old and corrupt; they denounce and vigorously resist its corruptions and vices: but they do not curse, they do not avoid the world. They view it with indignation yet with affection, with grief yet with hope. Rigid minds, ardent imaginations, take fright at the sight of the world, and fly to the deserts of the Thebais or retreat within the walls of a cloister. Brilliant apparitions are those who impress the minds of nations, and renew the well-nigh forgotten strife between austere and impure passions; but these are only exceptions in the history of Christianity, imposing and powerful indeed, but they do not characterise the Christian religion, do not predominate in it, do not constitute its essence and general tendency. Christianity has made monks, yet never was a religion less monkish. Never was a religion introduced into the world which entered more into it, more easily accommodated itself to it, to all its phases and all its facts. Opposed to this day in the very country which saw its birth, Christianity spreads to the east and west, to the north and south. {61} It penetrates the old monarchies of Asia and the deep forests of Germany, the schools of Athens and of Rome, the wandering tribes of the desert; and nowhere does it disturb itself about traditions, institutions, governments; it allies itself and lives in peace with the most diverse societies. It knows that everywhere and amidst all the variety of social forms it can pursue its own work, that truly religious work, the regeneration and safety of the soul.