Humanly speaking, it is upon the influence exercised and to be exercised in their respective churches and on the public, by these two classes of Christians, that depends the peaceable issue of the crisis through which Christianity is in these days passing. {xix} Our society is, doubtless, far from meriting the title of a Christian one; still it cannot be characterised as anti-Christian; considered as one vast whole, it has no hostile or general prejudice against the Christian religion: it maintains the habits, the instincts, I would willingly add the longings, of Christians; it is conscious that Christian Faith and Ordinance serve powerfully its interests with respect to order and peace; the fanatical opponents of Christianity exercise upon it far more disquieting than seductive influences, for it has already had experience of their empire; and where society appears to offer a silent acquiescence or even to pride itself upon them, still at bottom it dreads their progress. Such being the state of the case, and such the constitution of society, how are we to draw men away from their apathy and their ignorance in matters of religion? How lead them back to Christianity? They alone can accomplish this object, who, in their defence and propagation of the religion of Jesus, shall not wound society itself in the ideas, sentiments, rights and interests which have at present rooted themselves in its very life and energies. {xx} Like religion, modern society has also its fixed points and its invincible tendencies: it can never be set on terms of harmony with the former unless by the concurring action of men who have with each of them a genuine and deep sentiment of sympathy. Since the Christian Religion lives in these times confronting civil liberty, those alone can be efficient champions of religion who at the same time profess fully the Christian Faith and accept with sincerity the tests of Liberty. But in pursuing their pious and salutary enterprise, let not these liberal Christians flatter themselves with the probability of any prompt or complete success: maintain and propagate the Christian faith they may, but they will never be able in the bosom of society to get rid either of incredulity or doubt; even while combating them they must learn to endure their presence; in institutions of freedom there is essentially an intermixture of good and evil, of truth and error; contrary ideas and dispositions produce and develop themselves in it simultaneously. {xxi} "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not," said Jesus to his apostles, "to send peace, but a sword." [Footnote 1] The sword of Jesus Christ, that is, Christianity, at war with human error and shortcomings; a victory, still a victory ever incomplete in an incessant struggle,--_that_ is the condition to which those must submit with resignation who, in the bosom of liberty, defend the truth of Christianity. [Footnote 1: Matthew x. 34.]