The universal discredit into which every form of religious belief had fallen, at the end of the last century, exercised without any doubt the greatest influence upon the whole of the French Revolution: it stamped its character. Nothing contributed more to give its features that terrible expression which they wore. In seeking to distinguish between the different effects which irreligion at that time produced in France, it may be seen that it was rather by disturbing men’s minds than by degrading their hearts, or even corrupting their morals, that it disposed the men of that day to go to such strange excesses. When religion thus deserted the souls of men, it did not leave them, as is frequently the case, empty and debilitated. They were filled for the time with sentiments and ideas that occupied its place, and did not, at first, allow them to be utterly prostrate. If the French who effected the Revolution were more incredulous than those of the present day in matters of religion, at least they had one admirable faith which the present generation has not. They had faith in themselves. They never doubted of the perfectibility and power of man: they were burning with enthusiasm for his glory: they believed in his worth. They placed that proud confidence in their own strength which so often leads to error, but without which a people is only capable of servitude: they never doubted of their call to transform the face of society and regenerate the human race. These sentiments and passions became like a sort of new religion to them, which, as it produced some of those great effects which religions produce, kept them from individual selfishness, urged them on even to self-sacrifice and heroism, and frequently rendered them insensible to all those petty objects which possess the men of the present day. After a profound study of history we may still venture to affirm that there never was a revolution, in which, at the commencement, more sincere patriotism, more disinterestedness, more true greatness, were displayed by so great a number of men. The nation then exhibited the principal defect, but, at the same time, the principal ornament, which youth possesses, or rather did possess, namely, inexperience and generosity. Yet irreligion had produced an enormous public evil. In most of the great political revolutions, which, up to that period, had appeared in the world, those who had attacked the established laws had respected the creeds of the country; and, in the greater part of the religious revolutions, those who attacked religion made no attempt to change, at one blow, the nature and order of all the established authorities, and to raze to the ground the ancient constitution of the government. In the greatest convulsions of society one point, at least, had remained unshaken.