me a kind of painful bewilderment, which has, I think, for ever engraven
them in my memory. Since then, I have had occasion to learn by many
tokens that this fact was not at all an exceptional one, but that men
of influence, famous schools, important tendencies of the modern mind,
are agreed in proclaiming that the time of religion is over, of religion
in all its forms, of religion in the largest sense of the word. Beneath
the social disturbances of the day, beneath the discussions of science,
beneath the anxiety of some and the sadness of others, beneath the
ironical and more or less insulting joy of a few, we read at the
foundation of many intellectual manifestations of our time these gloomy
words: "Henceforth no more God for humanity!" What may well send a
shudder of fright through society--more than threatening war, more than
possible revolution, more than the plots which may be hatching in the
dark against the security of persons or of property--is, the number, the
importance, and the extent of the efforts which are making in our days
to extinguish in men's souls their faith in the living God.

This fear, Gentlemen, I should wish to communicate to you, but I should
wish also to confine it within its just limits. Religion (I take this
term in its most general acceptation) is not, as many say that it is,
either dead or dying. I want no other proof of this than the pains which
so many people are taking to kill it. It is often those who say that it
is dead, or falling rapidly into dissolution, who apply themselves to
this work. They are too generous, no doubt, to make a violent attack
upon a corpse; and it is easy to understand, judging by the intensity of
their exertions, that in their own opinion they have something else to
do than to give a finishing stroke to the dying.

Present circumstances are serious, not for religion itself, which cannot
be imperilled, but for minds which run the risk of losing their balance