would throw out Christianity altogether, as foreign to the duties and
relations of both citizens and rulers, pretending that it ignored all
connection with mundane affairs and had reference only to the salvation
of the soul,--as if all Christ's teachings were not regulative of the
springs of conduct between man and man, as indicative of the relations
between man and God! Like Voltaire, Rousseau had the excuse of a corrupt
ecclesiasticism to be broken into; but the Church and Christianity are
two different things. This he did not see. No one was more impatient of
all restraints than Rousseau; yet he maintained that men, if calling
themselves Christians, must submit to every wrong and injustice, looking
for a remedy in the future world,--thus pouring contempt on those who
had no right, according to his view of their system, to complain of
injustice or strive to rise above temporal evils. Christianity, he said,
inculcates servitude and dependence; its spirit is favorable to tyrants;
true Christians are formed to be slaves, and they know it, and never
trouble themselves about conspiracies and insurrections, since this
transitory world has no value in their eyes. He denied that Christians
could be good soldiers,--a falsehood rebuked for us by the wars of the
Reformation, by the troops of Cromwell and Gustavus Adolphus, by our
American soldiers in the late Civil War. Thus he would throw away the
greatest stimulus to heroism,--even the consciousness of duty, and
devotion to great truths and interests.

I cannot follow out the political ideas of Rousseau in his various other
treatises, in which he prepared the way for revolution and for the
excesses of the Reign of Terror. The truth is, Rousseau's feelings were
vastly superior to his thinking. Whatever of good is to result from his
influence will arise out of the impulse he gave toward the search for
ideals that should embrace the many as well as the few in their
benefits; when he himself attempted to apply this impulse to philosophic