fit for the kingdom of God."[4] An
extraordinary confidence, and at times accents of singular sweetness,
reversing all our ideas of him, caused these exaggerations to be
easily received. "Come unto me," cried he, "all ye that labor and are
heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and
learn of me: for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest
unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."[5]

[Footnote 1: Luke xiv. 26. We must here take into account the
exaggeration of Luke's style.]

[Footnote 2: Luke xiv. 33.]

[Footnote 3: Matt. x. 37-39, xvi. 24, 25; Luke ix. 23-25, xiv. 26, 27,
xvii. 33; John xii. 25.]

[Footnote 4: Matt. viii. 21, 22; Luke ix. 59-62.]

[Footnote 5: Matt. xi. 28-30.]

A great danger threatened the future of this exalted morality, thus
expressed in hyperbolical language and with a terrible energy. By
detaching man from earth the ties of life were severed. The Christian
would be praised for being a bad son, or a bad patriot, if it was for
Christ that he resisted his father and fought against his country. The
ancient city, the parent republic, the state, or the law common to
all, were thus placed in hostility with the kingdom of God. A fatal
germ of theocracy was introduced into the world.

From this point, another consequence may be perceived. This morality,
created for a temporary crisis, when introduced into a peaceful
country, and in the midst of a society assured of its own duration,
must seem impossible. The Gospel was thus destined to become a Utopia
for Christians, which few would care to realize. These terrible maxims
would, for the greater number, remain in profound oblivion, an
oblivion encouraged by the clergy itself; the Gospel man would prove a
dangerous man. The most selfish, proud, hard and worldly of all human
beings, a Louis XIV. for instance, would find priests to persuade him,
in spite of the Gospel, that he was a Christian. But, on the other
hand, there would always be found holy men who would take the sublime
paradoxes of Jesus literally. Perfection being placed beyond the
ordinary conditions of society, and a complete Gospel life being only
possible away from the world, the principle of asceticism and of
monasticism was established. Christian societies would have two moral
rules; the one moderately heroic for common men, the other exalted in
the extreme for the perfect man; and the perfect man would be the
monk, subjected t