You see, therefore, that I find no solution for the future except in Christianity and in Catholic Christianity; the religion of the Word is the manifestation of truth, even as the Creation is God made visible. I do not pretend that a general renovation will absolutely take place, for I admit that whole nations are vowed to destruction; I admit also that the faith is drying up in certain countries: but, if a single grain of it remain, if it fall upon a little earth, were it but in the remnants of a vase, that grain will spring up and a second incarnation of the Catholic spirit will revive society. Christianity is the most philosophical and rational appreciation of God and the Creation; it contains the three great laws of the universe, divine law, moral law, political law: divine law, the unity of God in three Persons; moral law, charity; political law, that is, liberty, equality, fraternity. The two first principles are fully developed; the third, political law, has not received its complements, because it could not flourish so long as the intelligent belief in the infinite being and universal morality were not firmly established. Now Christianity had first to clear away the absurdities and abominations with which idolatry and slavery had encumbered the human race. Enlightened persons cannot understand how a Catholic like myself can persist in sitting in the shadow of what they call ruins; according to those persons, it is a wager on my part, an obstinate determination. But tell me, for pity's sake, where shall I find a family and a God in the individual and philosophical society which you offer me? Tell me that, and I follow you; if not, do not find it amiss that I lie down in the tomb of Christ, the only shelter which you have left to me while abandoning me. No, I have made no wager with myself: I am sincere; see here what has happened to me: of my plans, my studies, my experiments, all that has remained to me is a complete disillusionment touching all the things which this world pursues. My religious conviction, as it grew greater, has swallowed up all my other convictions; there is no more believing Christian and no more incredulous man here below than I. Far from drawing near its end, the religion of the Deliverer has hardly entered upon its political period: liberty, equality, fraternity. The Gospel, the sentence of acquittal, has not yet been read to all; we have not gone beyond the curses pronounced by Christ: "Wo to you ... because you load men with burdens which they cannot bear, and you yourselves touch not the packs with one of your fingers[445]."