indefinite a character; for this was necessary at the beginning at least, in order to remove any misconception, or any possible suspicion of interested views. And not only doth the stability and future existence of the whole Christian and civilized world depend on this bond of religious confederacy,—which we can only hope may be ever more and more firmly knit—but every great power in particular is more especially called upon to take a part therein. That the moral strength and stability of the Russian Empire mainly depends on religion—that every departure from its sacred spirit must have the most fatal effects on its whole system, has already been declared by her late monarch, distinguished alike in adverse and in prosperous fortune, an axiom of state-policy, and can scarcely ever be again forgotten. But in that country, where the elements of Protestantism (to use that word in its most comprehensive signification) obtained such weight in the outset of its literary refinement, and are so incorporated with the whole political system of the state, the toleration extended to every form of worship, should not be withheld from that church, which is the mother-church of the rest of Europe, and of Poland inclusively;[20] nor should the religious liberty of individuals be in that respect at all restricted.
It is equally evident that in that country of
Europe where monarchy has been restored, the restoration of religion must go hand in hand with that of monarchy, and that the latter would lose all security were the former removed. In the pacific monarchy,[21] unchangeably attached as she is to her ancient principles, religion has ever been, more than any other principle, the recognised basis of her existence. As to the fifth[22] Germanico-European monarchy recently created, the solid maintenance of religion is the only means to allay the disquiet incident to such a state, and to secure its future existence. Any act of even indirect hostility towards the Catholic body—one half of the nation[23] —any infringement on the liberty of individuals in that sacred concern—a liberty which must be guaranteed not only by the letter of the law, but by real, effective and practical measures—would not only be in utter opposition to those religious principles, rapidly spreading as they are in all Europe, and particularly in Germany; but would violate and render insecure the great fundamental and long established principle of toleration; as has hitherto been acknowledged. It is only in England that Anglicanism has raised her doubts as to the utility of a religious fraternity among the Christian states and nations—doubts
which are connected with the still exclusively Protestant character of the English Constitution, and which on many occasions may lead England to a sort of schismatical rupture with the rest of Europe. On several occasions we must contemplate with regret, how that mighty England, in the eighteenth century so brilliant and so powerful by the sway she exerted over the whole European mind, no longer seems to feel herself at home in the nineteenth century, nor to know where to find her place in the new order of things.
But as respects Europe at large, the maxims and principles of liberalism are only a partial return to the Revolution—they can have no other tendency but to Revolution. Liberalism will never obtain a majority among the well-thinking persons of any of the European states, except by some gross error—some singular degeneracy in that party, which really does not constitute a party, and ought not to be called such—I mean the men who in politics are attached to monarchy, and in religion to Christianity.
The mere principle of a mechanical Balance of Power to serve as a negative check on overgrown dominion—a system which emanated from England, and was in the eighteenth century universally received—has ceased to be applicable, or to be of service to the existing state of things in Europe; for all the remedies which it can offer, tend only to aggravate the evil when it has once occurred. In religion alone are to
be found the remedies and the safeguards, the emancipation and consolidation of the whole civilized world, as well as of every particular state. The most imminent danger to our age, and the possible abuse of religion itself, are the excesses of the absolute. Great is the danger, when in a vindictive spirit of re-action, a revolutionary conduct is adopted by the party of legitimacy; when passion itself is consecrated into a maxim of reason, and held up as the only valid and just mode of proceeding; and when, the sacredness of religion itself is hawked about as some fashionable opinion; as if the world-redeeming power of faith and truth consisted in the mere dead letter, and in the recited formula. True life can spring only from the vivifying spirit of eternal truth. In science the absolute is the abyss which swallows up the living truth, and leaves behind only the hollow idea, and the dead formula. In the political world the absolute in conduct and speculation is that false spirit of time, opposed to all good and to the fulness of divine truth, which in a great measure rules the world, and may entirely rule it, and lead it for ever to its final ruin. As errors would not be dangerous or deceptive, and would have little effect, unless they contained a portion or appearance of truth; this false spirit of time which successively assumes all forms of destruction, since it has abandoned the path of eternal truth, consists in this—it withdraws particular
facts from their historical connection, and holds them up as the centre and term of a system, without any limitation, and without any regard to historical circumstances. The true foundation, and the right term of things, in the history of society as in the lives of individuals, cannot be thus severed from their historical connection, and their place in the natural order of events. In any speculation or enterprise conducted by this passionate spirit of exaggeration, the living spirit must evaporate, and only the dead and deadening formula survive. What idols may successively be worshipped by the changing spirit of time which easily bounds from one extreme to another, cannot be determined before-hand. It is even possible that for a while eternal truth itself may be profaned and perverted to such an idol of the day—I mean the counterfeit form of truth;—for the spirit of time, however it may assume the garb, can never attain the inward essence and living energy of truth. Whatever may be the alternate idol, and the reigning object of its worship, or of its passionate rhetoric, it still remains essentially the same—that is to say, the absolute, alike deadening to intellect, and destructive to life. In science, the absolute is the idol of vain and empty systems, of dead and abstract reason.
The Christian faith has the living God and his revelation for its object, and is itself that revelation; hence every doctrine taken from this
source is something real and positive. The defence of truth against error will then only be attended with permanent success, when the divine doctrine, in whatever department it may be, is represented with intellectual energy as a living principle; and at the same time placed in its historical connection, with a due regard to every other historical reality. This calm, historical judgment of things—this acute insight into subjects, whether they be real facts or intellectual phenomena—is the invariable concomitant of truth, and the indispensable condition to the full knowledge of truth. This is the more so, indeed, as religion, which forms the basis of all truth, and of all knowledge, naturally traces with attentive eye the mysterious clue of Divine Providence and Divine permission through the long labyrinth of human errors and human follies, be they of a practical or a speculative nature. Error, on the other hand, is always unhistorical; the spirit of time almost always passionate; and both consequently untrue. The conflict against error cannot be brought to a prompter and more successful issue, than by separating in every system of moral and speculative error, and according to the standard of divine truth, the absolute, which is the basis of such systems, into its two component parts of truth and falsehood. For when we acknowledge and point out the truth to be found in those systems, there only remains error, whose inanity it requires little labour, little cost of talent, or