“Christianity,” Guizot said, “is a necessity for mankind; it is a school of reverence.” No doubt; but less so perhaps than Hindu religions, which go the length of proposing the absolute division of mankind into castes as an object for reverence; however contrary it may be to the natural sentiments of mankind and the operation of social laws. Assuredly no society can subsist if its members neither respect nor reverence what is respectable and venerable; respect is decidedly an indispensable element in national life; the fact is one which we too easily forget in France; but society is barred from progress if one respects what is not respectable, and progress is a condition of life for a society. Tell me what you respect, and I will tell you what you are. The progress of human reverence for objects ever higher and more high is symbolic of all other kinds of progress achieved by the human mind. [Sidenote: Christianity quite the opposite of a defence against communism.] But for religion, say the Guizot school, the property-question would sweep away the masses of the people; it is the Church which holds them in check. If there is a property-question, let us not seek to ignore it; let us labour sincerely and actively at its solution. _Qui trompe-t-on ici?_ Is God simply a means of saving the capitalist? More than that, the property-question is not one which is more intimately bound up to-day with religion than with free-thought. Christianity, which implicitly contains within it the principles of communism, is itself responsible for spreading ideas among the people which have inevitably germinated in the course of the great intellectual germination which distinguishes the present epoch. M. de Laveleye, one of the defenders of liberal Christianity, confesses as much. It was well known that among the first Christians all property was held in common, and that communism was the immediate consequence of baptism.[74] “We hold everything in common except our women,” Tertullian and St. Justin say; “we share everything.”[75] It is well known with what vehemence the Fathers of the Church have attacked the right of private property. “The earth,” says St. Ambrose, “was given to the rich and poor in common. Why, oh, ye rich! should ye arrogate to yourselves alone the ownership of it?” “Nature created rights in common, usurpation has created private rights.” “Wealth is always the product of robbery,” says St. Jerome. “The rich man is a robber,” says St. Basil. “Iniquity is the basis of private property,” says St. Clement. “The rich man is a brigand,” says St. Chrysostom. Bossuet himself cries, in a sermon on the distribution of the necessities of life: “The murmurs of the poor are just: why this inequality of condition?” And, in the sermon on the eminent dignity of the poor: “The politics of Jesus are directly opposed to those of this century.” And finally Pascal, summing up in an illustration all the socialistic