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 higher to the fountain of light? Question paramount, to which these _Meditations_ are intended as the prelude, and which I shall essay to solve, by confronting, as I before said, [Footnote 86] Christianity with its opponents, and by showing that, if it succeeds where they fail, the reason is, that, sprung from a higher source than man, it alone has the right to succeed, for it alone knows man rightly as he is--as one entire being; it alone satisfies man by furnishing him with a rule for his guidance through life. [Footnote 86: First Meditation, p. 200.] The End. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Meditations, Actual State Of Christianity, And On The Att, by François Guizot