Some passages in the fair work of M. Saint-Marc Girardin upon dramatic literature might, at least I fear so, lead to the conclusion that Christianity is, in its essence, only the result of a natural progress of man's mind, a gradual development of ancient wisdom. {178} Such, for instance, is the passage where the author tells us that the Greeks were advancing step by step toward Christian spiritualism. We regret that M. Saint-Marc Girardin did not say in what sense he understood this, and within what limits. We hope that he will not see in us the champion of a captious orthodoxy, if we say that nothing so much weakens the authority of Christianity, that nothing prejudices in men's minds its cause more, than to treat it as a link in the chain, which chain in reality it severed. That events, that is, Providence, did aforehand hollow a bed in the regions of the west for this divine river, what believer, however rigid, would ever entertain any scruple in admitting? But still it is essential that we should not misapprehend the source whence that river welled forth. {179} No natural development of events, either among the Jews or among the Greeks, can account for the existence of Christianity. Whatever the progress made by the ancients, there never was a time when there existed not an infinity between their ideas, and the ideas of Christianity; and infinity alone can fill up the gulf between. There is an end of Christianity if men agree in thinking the contrary--if they succeed in causing the Supernatural to assume a place in one of the compartments of the Philosophy of History. As far as we are concerned, we would prefer for the Christian religion the most outrageous denial, to an admiration circumscribed within such limits. Christ's faith is nothing if not, like Melchisedek without earthly parent here below, and without genealogy." [Footnote 26] [Footnote 26: Essai sur la manifestation des convictions religieuses, p. 85. Premiers discours, pp. 14, 50, 53. Littérature Française, vol. iii, p. 623.] {180}