was henceforth separated in principle from the state.  The rights of conscience, withdrawn from political law, resulted in the constitution of a new power—­the “spiritual power.”  This power has more than once belied its origin.  For ages the bishops have been princes, and the Pope has been a king.  The pretended empire of souls has shown itself at various times as a frightful tyranny, employing the rack and the stake in order to maintain itself.  But the day will come when the separation will bear its fruits, when the domain of things spiritual will cease to be called a “power,” that it may be called a “liberty.”  Sprung from the conscience of a man of the people, formed in the presence of the people, beloved and admired first by the people, Christianity was impressed with an original character which will never be effaced.  It was the first triumph of revolution, the victory of the popular idea, the advent of the simple in heart, the inauguration of the beautiful as understood by the people.  Jesus thus, in the aristocratic societies of antiquity, opened the breach through which all will pass.

The civil power, in fact, although innocent of the death of Jesus (it only countersigned the sentence, and even in spite of itself), ought to bear a great share of the responsibility.  In presiding at the scene of Calvary, the state gave itself a serious blow.  A legend full of all kinds of disrespect prevailed, and became universally known—­a legend in which the constituted authorities played a hateful part, in which it was the accused that was right, and in which the judges and the guards were leagued against the truth.  Seditious in the highest degree, the history of the Passion, spread by a thousand popular images, displayed the Roman eagles as sanctioning the most iniquitous of executions, soldiers executing it, and a prefect commanding it.  What a blow for all established powers!  They have never entirely recovered from it.  How can they assume infallibility in respect to poor men, when they have on their conscience the great mistake of Gethsemane?[1]

[Footnote 1:  This popular sentiment existed in Brittany in the time of my childhood.  The gendarme was there regarded, like the Jew elsewhere, with a kind of pious aversion, for it was he who arrested Jesus!]

CHAPTER XXVIII.

ESSENTIAL CHARACTER OF THE WORK OF JESUS.

Jesus, it will be seen, limited his action entirely to the Jews.  Although his sympathy for those despised by orthodoxy led him to admit pagans into the kingdom of God—­although he had resided more than once in a pagan country, and once or twice we surprise him in kindly relations with unbelievers[1]—­it may be said that his life was passed entirely in the very restricted world in which he was born.  He was never heard of in Greek or Roman countries; his name appears only in profane authors of a hundred years later, and then in an indirect manner, in connection