For this reason I have had little to say respecting the two great Christian confessions, the Protestant and Greek Churches.  As to the latter, it has never, since the restoration of science, arrayed itself in opposition to the advancement of knowledge.  On the contrary, it has always met it with welcome.  It has observed a reverential attitude to truth, from whatever quarter it might come.  Recognizing the apparent discrepancies between its interpretations of revealed truth and the discoveries of science, it has always expected that satisfactory explanations and reconciliations would ensue, and in this it has not been disappointed.  It would have been well for modern civilization if the Roman Church had done the same.

In speaking of Christianity, reference is generally made to the Roman Church, partly because its adherents compose the majority of Christendom, partly because its demands are the most pretentious, and partly because it has commonly sought to enforce those demands by the civil power.  None of the Protestant Churches has ever occupied a position so imperious—­none has ever had such wide-spread political influence.  For the most part they have been averse to constraint, and except in very few instances their opposition has not passed beyond the exciting of theological odium.

As to Science, she has never sought to ally herself to civil power.  She has never attempted to throw odium or inflict social ruin on any human being.  She has never subjected any one to mental torment, physical torture, least of all to death, for the purpose of upholding or promoting her ideas.  She presents herself unstained by cruelties and crimes.  But in the Vatican—­ we have only to recall the Inquisition—­the hands that are now raised in appeals to the Most Merciful are crimsoned.  They have been steeped in blood!

There are two modes of historical composition, the artistic and the scientific.  The former implies that men give origin to events; it therefore selects some prominent individual, pictures him under a fanciful form, and makes him the hero of a romance.  The latter, insisting that human affairs present an unbroken chain, in which each fact is the offspring of some preceding fact, and the parent of some subsequent fact, declares that men do not control events, but that events control men.  The former gives origin to compositions, which, however much they may interest or delight us, are but a grade above novels; the latter is austere, perhaps even repulsive, for it sternly impresses us with a conviction of the irresistible dominion of law, and the insignificance of human exertions.  In a subject so solemn as that to which this book is devoted, the romantic and the popular are altogether out of place.  He who presumes to treat of it must fix his eyes steadfastly on that chain of destiny which universal history displays; he must turn with disdain from the phantom impostures of pontiffs and statesmen and kings.