fright, shouted with unanimous voice, The gods are departing!
excedere deos! a period of eighteen centuries of fervent
adoration and superhuman faith was inaugurated.

But the fatal end approaches. The royalty which suffers itself
to be limited will end by the rule of demagogues; the divinity
which is defined dissolves in a pandemonium. Christolatry is the
last term of this long evolution of human thought. The angels,
saints, and virgins reign in heaven with God, says the catechism;
and demons and reprobates live in the hells of eternal
punishment. Ultramundane society has its left and its right: it
is time for the equation to be completed; for this mystical
hierarchy to descend upon earth and appear in its real character.

When Milton represents the first woman admiring herself in a
fountain, and lovingly extending her arms toward her own image as
if to embrace it, he paints, feature for feature, the human
race.--This God whom you worship, O man! this God whom you have
made good, just, omnipotent, omniscient, immortal, and holy, is
yourself: this ideal of perfection is your image, purified in the
shining mirror of your conscience. God, Nature, and man are
three aspects of one and the same being; man is God himself
arriving at self-consciousness through a thousand evolutions. In
Jesus Christ man recognized himself as God; and Christianity is
in reality the religion of God-man. There is no other God than
he who in the beginning said, ME; there is no other God than
THEE.

Such are the last conclusions of philosophy, which dies in
unveiling religion's mystery and its own.