The good and the wicked, or at least those who believe themselves and are believed to be such, form opposite armies.

The apotheosis is reached by the scaffold; characters have distinctive features, which engrave them as eternal types in the memory of men.

Except in the French Revolution, no historical centre was as suitable as that in which Jesus was formed, to develop those hidden forces which humanity holds as in reserve, and which are not seen except in days of excitement and peril.
If the government of the world were a speculative problem, and the greatest philosopher were the man best fitted to tell his fellows what they ought to believe, it would be from calmness and reflection that those great moral and dogmatic truths called religions would proceed.

But it is not so.

If we except Cakya-Mouni, the great religious founders have not been metaphysicians.