Christianity was more sincere and serious than it actually appeared to
be. It was at once a public necessity and an intellectual taste.
Society, worn out with commotion and change, sought for fixed points on
which it could rely and repose; men, disgusted with a terrestrial and
material atmosphere, aspired to ascend once more towards higher and
purer horizons; the inclinations of morality concurred with the
instincts of social interest. Left to its natural course, and supported
by the purely religious influence of a clergy entirely devoted to the
re-establishment of faith and Christian life, this movement was likely
to extend and to restore to religion its legitimate empire.

But instead of confining itself to this sphere of action, many members
and blind partisans of the Catholic clergy descended to worldly
questions, and showed themselves more zealous to recast French society
in its old mould, and so to restore their church to its former place
there, than to reform and purify the moral condition of souls. Here was
a profound mistake. The Christian Church is not like the pagan Antaeus,
who renews his strength by touching the earth; it is on the contrary, by
detaching itself from the world, and re-ascending towards heaven, that
the Church in its hours of peril regains its vigour. When we saw it
depart from its appropriate and sublime mission, to demand penal laws
and to preside over the distribution of offices; when we beheld its
desires and efforts prominently directed against the principles and
institutions which constitute today the essence of French society; when
liberty of conscience, publicity, the legal separation of civil and
religious life, the laical character of the State, appeared to be
attacked and compromised,--on that instant the rising tide of religious
reaction stopped, and yielded way to a contrary current. In place of the
movement which thinned the ranks of the unbelievers to the advantage of
the faithful, we saw the two parties unite together; the eighteenth
century appeared once more in arms; Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, and
their worst disciples once more spread themselves abroad and recruited
innumerable battalions. War was declared against society in the name of
the Church, and society returned war for war:--a deplorable chaos, in
which good and evil, truth and falsehood, justice and injustice, were
confounded together, and blows hurled at random on every side.

I know not whether M. de Villele th