I pass without any transitional stage from the awakening of Christianity in the Roman Catholic Church to the awakening of Christianity in the Protestant Church. What need of a transition? I am not quitting the Christian Church. With respect to their claims as Christians, Protestant nations have been put to the test. They have had, like Catholic nations, to pass through violent struggles, to combat evil tendencies, to undergo perilous trials; but the peculiar characteristic of Christianity, the simultaneous action of faith and of science, of authority and liberty, has received a glorious development in the bosom of Protestant nations. {127} England and Holland, Protestant Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland, and the United States of America, have had their vices, their crimes, their sufferings, and their reverses; but, after all, these States have in the last four centuries labored with effect at the solution, in a Christian sense, of that grand problem of human society--the moral and physical progress of the masses, as well as the political guarantee of their rights and liberties. And in these days the States to which I have alluded resist effectually the shocks--now of anarchy, now of despotism, which alternately trouble the peace of Christendom. As for the Christian Faith itself, if, in Protestant countries, it does not escape the attacks elsewhere made upon it, neither is it without its powerful defenders and faithful followers. In those countries, Christian Churches are full of adherents, and the cause of Christianity finds every day valiant champions to devote to its service the arms which science and liberty supply. {128} There is on the part of the Romanists a puerile infatuation upon this subject, which makes them absolutely close their eyes to facts; by an error fatal to themselves, they persist in imputing the fermentation in society, and the abandonment of religion, to the influence of the Protestant nations--nations among whom these two scourges are combated with at least as much resolution and effect as elsewhere. It is not my wish to institute disparaging comparisons, or to foment a rivalry opposed to the spirit of Christ's religion. Protestantism is not, in Christendom, the last, neither is it the sole bulwark of Christianity; but there exists none that is stronger, that offers fewer weak points to assailants, or that is better provided with faithful and able defenders. {129}