Never was there a period that pointed so strongly, so clearly, so generally towards the future, as our own. On this account we should endeavour clearly and accurately to distinguish between what on the one hand man may by slow, progressive, but unweared exertions--by the pacific adjustment of all disputed points--and by the cultivation of his intellectual qualities, contribute towards the great work of the religious regeneration of government and science--and what on the other hand he should look for in silent awe from a higher Providence--from the new creative fiat of a last period of consummation, unable as he is to produce or call it forth. We are directed much more towards the future than towards the past;--but in order to comprehend in all its magnitude the problem of our age, it sufficeth not that we should seek this social regeneration in the eighteenth century--an age in no respect entitled to praise--or in the reign of Lewis the Fourteenth, and his times of false national glory. The birth of Christianity must be the great point of survey to which we must recur, not to bring back, or counterfeit the forms of ages past, which are no longer applicable to our own; but clearly to examine what has remained incomplete, what has not yet been attained. For unquestionably, all that has been neglected in the earlier periods and stages of Christian civilization, must be made good in this true, consummate regeneration of society. If truth is to obtain a complete victory--if Christianity is really to triumph on the earth--then must the state become Christian, and science become Christian. But these two objects have never been generally, nor completely realized; although during the many ages mankind have been Christian, they have struggled for the attainment of both; and though this political struggle and this intellectual aspiration form the purport of modern history. The Roman Empire, even after the true religion had become predominant, was too thoroughly and radically corrupt, ever to form a truly Christian state. The sound, unvitiated natural energy of the Germanic nations, seemed far better fitted for such a destiny, after they had received from Christianity a high religious consecration for this purpose. There was, if we may so speak, in the interior of each state, as well as in the general system of Christendom, a most magnificent foundation laid for a truly Christian structure of government. But this ground-work remained unfinished, after the internal divisions in the state, then the divisions between church and state, and lastly, the divisions in the church and in religion itself, had interrupted the successful beginnings of a most glorious work.