Page:New Christianity.pdf/61

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
46

made great progress in mathematics, natural philosophy, chemistry, and physiology. But there is a science much more important to society than physical and mathematical sciences: it is the science which constitutes society—that which serves it as a base: it is morality. Now, morality has followed a course totally opposed to that of the physical and mathematical sciences. It is now eighteen hundred years since its fundamental principle was produced; and, since that epoch, all the researches of men of the greatest genius have not been able to discover a principle superior, by its generality, or by its precision, to that given at this epoch by the founder of Christianity. I will say more: when society lost sight of this principle, when it ceased to take it for a general guide of conduct, it immediately fell under the yoke of Cæsar; that is to say, under the empire of the physical force, which this principle has subjected to the intellectual power.

I demand now, whether the intelligence which produced, eighteen hundred years ago, the regulating principle of the human race, and which, consequently, produced this principle fifteen centuries before we had made any important progress in the physical and mathematical sciences; I demand whether this intelligence has not evidently a character superhuman, and whether there can exist a greater proof of the revelation of Christianity?

Yes! I think that Christianity is a divine institution; and I am persuaded that God accords an especial protection to those who employ their efforts to subject all human institutions to the fundamental principle of this sublime doctrine. I am convinced that I myself accomplish a divine mission, in recalling people and kings to the true spirit of Christianity; and, full of confidence in the divine protection, granted in an especial manner to my labours, I am emboldened to offer my remarks upon their conduct to the allied kings of Europe, who give to their union the sacred name of Holy Alliance. I address my speech directly to them, and dare to say,