[Transcriber's note: This production is based onhttps://archive.org/details/christianityview00guiz/page/n6]
"No one can open this book, and recollect the circumstances which produced it, without feeling that it is a valuable contribution to the literature of the present controversy."
—Edinburgh Review.
"A remarkable series of religious meditations. They form a sequel to a similar volume on the Essence of Christianity, published two years ago, and an introduction to a further series, in which M. Guizot proposes to treat the great questions of the history of Christianity, and the future destiny of the Christian religion. The book is one of great interest."—Pall Mall Gazette.
In the First Series of these Meditations, I gave a summary of thefacts and dogmas which constitute, as I think, the foundation andthe essence of the Christian Religion. In the next series Iretraced the Reawakening of Faith and of Christian Life duringthe nineteenth century in France, both amongst Romanists andProtestants. With Christianity thus reanimated and resuscitatedamongst us, after having passed through one of its most violenttrials, I confronted the principal philosophical systems which inthese days reject and combat it: Rationalism, Positivism,Pantheism, Materialism, Scepticism. I essayed to determine thefundamental error which seems to me to characterize each of thosesystems, and to have always rendered them inadequate to theoffice either of satisfying or explaining man's nature anddestiny.{vi}That series of my Meditations I concluded with these words: "Whyis it that Christianity, in spite of all the attacks which it hashad to undergo, and all the ordeals through which it has beenmade to pass, has for eighteen centuries satisfied infinitelybetter the spontaneous instincts and invincible cravings ofhumanity? Is it not because it is pure from the errors whichvitiate the different systems of philosophy just passed inreview? because it fills up the void that those systems eithercreate or leave in the human soul? because, in short, it conductsman nigher to the fountain of light?" [Footnote 1]
[Footnote 1: Meditations on the Actual State of Christianity. Eighth Meditation: Impiety, Recklessness, Perplexity, p. 336.]
Far from wishing to elude any of the difficulties of thisquestion, I would now set Christianity in contact with the ideasand forces that seem most contrary to it, and with three of themmore especially: Liberty, Independent Morality, and Science.{vii}Assertions are running the tour of the world that Christianitycan accommodate itself neither to liberty nor science; thatmorality is essentially distinct and separate from ReligiousFait