The revolution he wished to effect was always a moral revolution; but he had not yet begun to trust to the angels and the last trumpet for its execution.  It was upon men and by the aid of men themselves that he wished to act.  A visionary who had no other idea than the proximity of the last judgment, would not have had this care for the amelioration of man, and would not have given utterance to the finest moral teaching that humanity has received.  Much vagueness no doubt tinged his ideas, and it was rather a noble feeling than a fixed design, that urged him to the sublime work which was realized by him, though in a very different manner to what he imagined.

It was indeed the kingdom of God, or in other words, the kingdom of the Spirit, which he founded; and if Jesus, from the bosom of his Father, sees his work bear fruit in the world, he may indeed say with truth, “This is what I have desired.”  That which Jesus founded, that which will remain eternally his, allowing for the imperfections which mix themselves with everything realized by humanity, is the doctrine of the liberty of the soul.  Greece had already had beautiful ideas on this subject.[1] Various stoics had learned how to be free even under a tyrant.  But in general the ancient world had regarded liberty as attached to certain political forms; freedom was personified in Harmodius and Aristogiton, Brutus and Cassius.  The true Christian enjoys more real freedom; here below he is an exile; what matters it to him who is the transitory governor of this earth, which is not his home?  Liberty for him is truth.[2] Jesus did not know history sufficiently to understand that such a doctrine came most opportunely at the moment when republican liberty ended, and when the small municipal constitutions of antiquity were absorbed in the unity of the Roman empire.  But his admirable good sense, and the truly prophetic instinct which he had of his mission, guided him with marvelous certainty.  By the sentence, “Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and to God the things which are God’s,” he created something apart from politics, a refuge for souls in the midst of the empire of brute force.  Assuredly, such a doctrine had its dangers.  To establish as a principle that we must recognize the legitimacy of a power by the inscription on its coins, to proclaim that the perfect man pays tribute with scorn and without question, was to destroy republicanism in the ancient form, and to favor all tyranny.  Christianity, in this sense, has contributed much to weaken the sense of duty of the citizen, and to deliver the world into the absolute power of existing circumstances.  But in constituting an immense free association, which during three hundred years was able to dispense with politics, Christianity amply compensated for the wrong it had done to civic virtues.  The power of the state was limited to the things of earth; the mind was freed, or at least the terrible rod of Roman omnipotence was broken forever.