The Deism of the eighteenth century, and a certain kind of Protestantism, have accustomed us to consider the founder of the Christian faith only as a great moralist, a benefactor of mankind.
We see nothing more in the Gospel than good maxims; we throw a prudent veil over the strange intellectual state in which it was originated.
There are even persons who regret that the French Revolution departed more than once from principles, and that it was not brought about by wise and moderate men.

Let us not impose our petty and commonplace ideas on these extraordinary movements so far above our every-day life.

Let us continue to admire the "morality of the gospel"-- let us suppress in our religious teachings the chimera which was its soul; but do not let us believe that with the simple ideas of happiness, or of individual morality, we stir the world.

The idea of Jesus was much more profound; it was the most revolutionary idea ever formed in a human brain; it should be taken in its totality, and not with those timid suppressions which deprive it of precisely that which has rendered it efficacious for the regeneration of humanity.
The ideal is ever a Utopia.

When we wish nowadays to represent the Christ of the modern conscience, the consoler, and the judge of the new times, what course do we take?
That which Jesus himself did eighteen hundred and thirty years ago.