ially chaps. ii., vi.-viii., x.-xiii.]

[Footnote 2: Chaps. i., xiv., lii., lxii., xciii. 9, and following.]

[Footnote 3: Book iii. 573, and following; 652, and following; 766,
and following; 795, and following.]

It is evident, indeed, that such a doctrine, taken by itself in a
literal manner, had no future. The world, in continuing to exist,
caused it to crumble. One generation of man at the most was the limit
of its endurance. The faith of the first Christian generation is
intelligible, but the faith of the second generation is no longer so.
After the death of John, or of the last survivor, whoever he might be,
of the group which had seen the master, the word of Jesus was
convicted of falsehood.[1] If the doctrine of Jesus had been simply
belief in an approaching end of the world, it would certainly now be
sleeping in oblivion. What is it, then, which has saved it? The great
breadth of the Gospel conceptions, which has permitted doctrines
suited to very different intellectual conditions to be found under the
same creed. The world has not ended, as Jesus announced, and as his
disciples believed. But it has been renewed, and in one sense renewed
as Jesus desired. It is because his thought was two-sided that it has
been fruitful. His chimera has not had the fate of so many others
which have crossed the human mind, because it concealed a germ of life
which having been introduced, thanks to a covering of fable, into the
bosom of humanity, has thus brought forth eternal fruits.

[Footnote 1: These pangs of Christian conscience are rendered with
simplicity in the second epistle attributed to St. Peter, iii. 8, and
following.]

And let us not say that this is a benevolent interpretation, imagined
in order to clear the honor of our great master from the cruel
contradiction inflicted on his dreams by reality. No, no: this true
kingdom of God, this kingdom of the spirit, which makes each one king
and priest; this kingdom which, like the grain of mustard-seed, has
become a tree which overshadows the world, and amidst whose branches
the birds have their nests, was understood, wished for, and founded by
Jesus. By the side of the false, cold, and impossible idea of an
ostentatious advent, he conceived the real city of God, the true
"palingenesis," the Sermon on the Mount, the apotheosis of the weak,
the love of the people, regard for the poor, and the re-establishment
of all that is humble, true, and simple. This re-establish