Christianity Viewed in Relation to the Present State of Society and Opinion.

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 .



Far from wishing to elude any of the difficulties of this question, I would now set Christianity in contact with the ideas and forces that seem most contrary to it, and with three of them more especially: Liberty, Independent Morality, and Science. Assertions are running the tour of the world that Christianity can accommodate itself neither to liberty nor science; that morality is essentially distinct and separate from Religious Faith. All this I hold to be false and highly prejudicial to the very cause of Liberty, of Morality, and of Science, which those who give utterance to such assertions affect to serve. I believe Christianity and Liberty to be not only compatible with each other, but necessary to each other. I regard Morality as naturally and intimately united to Religion. I am convinced that Christianity and Science need not make any mutual sacrifices, that neither has anything to fear from the other. This I establish in the first three Meditations of the present series. I then enter into the peculiar domain of Christianity, and determine what, in the presence of Liberty, of Philosophical Morality, and of Human Science, is the principle and what the bearing of Christian Ignorance and of Christian Faith. I finally apply to ideas their natural and inevitable law, the law which obliges them to express themselves in facts; I interrogate theory thus transformed into practice, and I show that Christianity alone supports this test victoriously. Christian Life becomes a forcible demonstration of the Legitimacy of Christian Faith. With these three Meditations the present series concludes.