speculative precursors, and he was the first to apply his mind boldly to
those of the social conditions which the revolution is concerned by one
solution or another to modify. How far his direct influence was
disastrous in consequence of a mischievous method, we shall have to
examine. It was so various that no single answer can comprehend an
exhaustive judgment. His writings produced that glow of enthusiastic
feeling in France, which led to the all-important assistance rendered by
that country to the American colonists in a struggle so momentous for
mankind. It was from his writings that the Americans took the ideas and
the phrases of their great charter, thus uniting the native principles
of their own direct Protestantism with principles that were strictly
derivative from the Protestantism of Geneva. Again, it was his work more
than that of any other one man, that France arose from the deadly decay
which had laid hold of her whole social and political system, and found
that irresistible energy which warded off dissolution within and
partition from without. We shall see, further, that besides being the
first immediately revolutionary thinker in politics, he was the most
stirring of reactionists in religion. His influence formed not only
Robespierre and Paine, but Chateaubriand, not only Jacobinism, but the
Catholicism of the Restoration. Thus he did more than any one else at
once to give direction to the first episodes of revolution, and force to
the first episode of reaction.

There are some teachers whose distinction is neither correct thought,
nor an eye for the exigencies of practical organisation, but simply
depth and fervour of the moral sentiment, bringing with it the
indefinable gift of touching many hearts with love of virtue and the
things of the spirit. The Christian organisations which saved western
society from dissolution owe all to St. Paul, Hildebrand, Luther,
Calvin; but the spiritual life of the west during all these generations