the noblest portions of humanity have passed from the ancient
religions, comprised under the vague name of Paganism, to a religion
founded on the Divine Unity, the Trinity, and the Incarnation of the
Son of God. It has taken nearly a thousand years to accomplish this
conversion. The new religion had itself taken at least three hundred
years in its formation. But the origin of the revolution in question
with which we have to do is a fact which took place under the reigns
of Augustus and Tiberius. At that time there lived a superior
personage, who, by his bold originality, and by the love which he was
able to inspire, became the object and fixed the starting-point of the
future faith of humanity.

As soon as man became distinguished from the animal, he became
religious; that is to say, he saw in Nature something beyond the
phenomena, and for himself something beyond death. This sentiment,
during some thousands of years, became corrupted in the strangest
manner. In many races it did not pass beyond the belief in sorcerers,
under the gross form in which we still find it in certain parts of
Oceania. Among some, the religious sentiment degenerated into the
shameful scenes of butchery which form the character of the ancient
religion of Mexico. Amongst others, especially in Africa, it became
pure Fetichism, that is, the adoration of a material object, to which
were attributed supernatural powers. Like the instinct of love, which
at times elevates the most vulgar man above himself, yet sometimes
becomes perverted and ferocious, so this divine faculty of religion
during a long period seems only to be a cancer which must be
extirpated from the human race, a cause of errors and crimes which the
wise ought to endeavor to suppress.

The brilliant civilizations which were developed from a very remote