[Footnote 43: Mélanges d'histoire religieuse. Pp. 250-254. 1864.] {255} "That which is really imperiled is not so much Protestantism; it is Christianity, it is very religion. As for natural religion, that exists only in books. Religions which have vital force and influence are positive religions; that is, religions which have a Church, and particular rites, and dogmas. What are these dogmas? Taken in their intimate meaning, they are the solutions of the great problems which have ever disquieted the mind of man--the origin of the world, and of evil; the expiation; the future of humanity. The doctrines of religion are a sort of revealed metaphysics. "Considered in its form, dogma is the supernatural--not merely because religions were born at an epoch when the imagination was greedy of miracles, and when the imagination, in her _näiveté_, associated herself with everything; but also because, as may be readily understood, it is impossible for a positive religion to have any other origin than a revelation; it is necessarily a history of the intervention of God in the destinies of man, the account of acts by which God created and saved the world--it is that or it is nothing. We see then at once that in religion everything is not religious. There is in every religion a multitude of elements, historical, physical, and metaphysical, as to which its dogmas may come into conflict with science. Nevertheless, it is not of this antagonism that I would here speak. The religious sentiment has also its critical action; _it_ also may enter into a struggle with religion. {256} "As long as the authority of the priest or of the book preserves its prestige, the believer receives his religion ready made for him, without himself making distinctions; but as soon as that authority is shaken, a man, if he do not entirely reject his first belief, will at least no longer accept it without reservations. He only retains so much of it as enlightens or touches him, so much as commends itself to his understanding or to his heart; so much, in a word, as gives a satisfaction to his religious requirements.