ics,
Christianity amply compensated for the wrong it had done to civic
virtues. The power of the state was limited to the things of earth;
the mind was freed, or at least the terrible rod of Roman omnipotence
was broken forever.

[Footnote 1: See Stobaeus, _Florilegium_, ch. lxii., lxxvii., lxxxvi.,
and following.]

[Footnote 2: John viii. 32, and following.]

The man who is especially preoccupied with the duties of public life,
does not readily forgive those who attach little importance to his
party quarrels. He especially blames those who subordinate political
to social questions, and profess a sort of indifference for the
former. In one sense he is right, for exclusive power is prejudicial
to the good government of human affairs. But what progress have
"parties" been able to effect in the general morality of our species?
If Jesus, instead of founding his heavenly kingdom, had gone to Rome,
had expended his energies in conspiring against Tiberius, or in
regretting Germanicus, what would have become of the world? As an
austere republican, or zealous patriot, he would not have arrested the
great current of the affairs of his age, but in declaring that
politics are insignificant, he has revealed to the world this truth,
that one's country is not everything, and that the man is before, and
higher than, the citizen.

Our principles of positive science are offended by the dreams
contained in the programme of Jesus. We know the history of the earth;
cosmical revolutions of the kind which Jesus expected are only
produced by geological or astronomical causes, the connection of which
with spiritual things has never yet been demonstrated. But, in order
to be just to great originators, they must not be judged by the
prejudices in which they have shared. Columbus discovered America,
though starting from very erroneous ideas; Newton believed his foolish
explanation of the Apocalypse to be as true as his system of the
world. Shall we place an ordinary man of our time above a Francis
d'Assisi, a St. Bernard, a Joan of Arc, or a Luther, because he is
free from errors which these last have professed? Should we measure
men by the correctness of their ideas of physics, and by the more or
less exact knowledge which they possess of the true system of the
world? Let us understand better the position of Jesus and that which
made his power. The Deism of the eighteenth century, and a certain
kind of Protestantism, have accustomed us to c