rade
the people, I am engaged in the emancipation of souls. I shall occupy
2000 years, perchance, in renewing men's minds before I become apparent
in human institutions. But the day will come when my doctrines will
escape from the temple, and will enter into the councils of the people;
on that day the social world will be renewed."

This day had now arrived; it had been prepared by an age of philosophy,
sceptical in appearance but in reality replete with belief. The
scepticism of the 18th century only affected exterior forms, and the
supernatural dogmata of Christianity, whilst it adopted with enthusiasm,
morality and the social sense. What Christianity called revelation,
philosophy called reason. The words were different, the meaning
identical. The emancipation of individuals, of castes, of people, were
alike derived from it. Only the ancient world had been enfranchised in
the name of Christ, whilst the modern world was freed in the name of the
rights which every human creature has received from the hand of God; and
from both flowed the enfranchisement of God or nature. The political
philosophy of the Revolution could not have invented a word more true,
more complete, more divine than Christianity, to reveal itself to
Europe, and it had adopted the dogma and the word of _fraternity_. Only
the French Revolution attacked the form of this ruling religion; because
it was incrusted in the forms of government, monarchical, theocratic, or
aristocratic, which they sought to destroy. It is the explanation of
that apparent contradiction of the mind of the 18th century, which
borrowed all from Christianity in policy, and denied, whilst it
despoiled, it. There was at one and the same time a violent attraction
and a violent repulsion in the two doctrines. They recognised whilst
they struggled against each other, and yearned to recognise each other
even more completely when the contest was terminated by the triumph of
liberty.

Three things were then evident to reflecting minds from and after the
month of April, 1791; the one, that the march of the revolutionary
movement advanced from step to step to the complete restoration of all
the rights of suffering humanity--from those of the people by their
government, to those of citizens by castes, and of the workman by the
citizen; thus it assailed tyranny, privilege, inequality, selfishness,
not only on the throne, but in the civil law; in the administration, in
the legal distribution