Were these valiant and intelligent champions of the faith of Jesus not adopted and accredited as such in the churches to which they belong; did the Church of Rome furnish ground for thinking her essentially hostile to the fundamental principles and rights of modern society, and that she only tolerates them as Moses tolerated divorce amongst the Jews, "because of the hardness of their heart"; and, on the other hand, did the rejectors of the Supernatural, of the Inspiration of the Scriptures, and of the Divinity of Jesus Christ, predominate in the bosom of Protestantism; and finally, did the latter then become nought but a hesitating system of philosophy; {xxii} if all these deplorable things were to be realised, I am far from thinking that, owing to such faults, such disasters, the religion of Christ would vanish from the world and definitively withdraw from men its light and its support: the destinies of religion are far above human errors; but still, beyond all doubt, for mankind to be turned back from them, and for the light to return to their soul and harmony to modern society, there would have again to burst out in the human soul and in society one of those immense troubles, one of those revolutionary whirlwinds, whose evils man is compelled actually to undergo before he can derive benefit from its lessons. On the point of addressing myself to questions more profound and of a less transitory nature, I content myself with having merely indicated what I think of the crisis that agitates Christendom at the present day, as also of its main cause, its perils, and the chances, good or bad, that it holds out for the future. {xxiii} In the work of which the first part is now before the public, I omit all the circumstantial facts and details as well as the discussions that grow out of them, and it is only with the Christian Religion as it is in itself, with its fundamental belief and its reasonableness, that I occupy myself; it has been my purpose to illustrate the truth of Christianity by contrasting it with the systems and the doubts that men set in array against it. It is my intention to avoid all direct and personal polemics; express reference to individuals embarrasses and envenoms all questions in controversy, and gives rise to ill-judged deference or unjust invective, two descriptions of falsity for which alike I feel no sympathy: let me have then for adversaries ideas alone; and whatever these may be, I admit beforehand the possibility of sincerity on the part of those that prefer them. Without this admission all serious discussion is out of the question; and neither the intellectual enormity of the error, nor its awful practical consequences, positively precludes sincerity on the part of him that promulgates it. {xxiv} The mind of man is still more easily led astray than his heart, and is still more egotistical; after having once conceived and expressed an idea, it attaches itself to it as to its own