There is a power, but only one power, that shuts down revolution. This is Christianity.
Christianity is the most extreme opposite of the sins of the revolution. For it bases all of human life on God's order and providence. But Christianity is simultaneously the most profound satisfaction of the impulses [otherwise leading to] revolution.
Only Christianity is still capable of guaranteeing the social order after the great masses have reconsidered its foundations, as well as those of monarchy, property, and marriage, and called them into question. Only Christian purpose has established for us joyful devotion to king and God, to marriage that God has joined together, to the occupation that God has assigned us, to the distribution of goods that God has provided. Christian purpose does not call for a governing authority that it establishes for itself, for a constitution it has made on its own, for law that it discovered out of its own reason. It would much rather receive all this from divine administration, and it is content with contributing its modestly small portion to the grand design of the times, as God has assigned it.
But Christianity is also [the] only [force] capable of fulfilling the real aims of the time, real progress. It is the only source of the principles from which one may expect a satisfactory construction of society – freedom, equality, fraternity in their true essence.
From Christianity comes genuine freedom, whereby man acts only out of his innermost self and according to the gift he has from God, and is not a judge over human governing authority, and yet at the same time [Christianity emits] commitment to God’s orders, toward which true freedom itself immediately strives as if homeward-bound.
From Christianity comes true equality, whereby in every human being the likeness of God comes into its own right and privilege, which is higher than chivalry, and yet at the same time [Christianity emits] a position of membership for everyone, which carries along with it a diversity of rights and privileges.
And from Christianity comes genuine fraternity, which does not, as in socialism, boastingly celebrate the human species in every human being, but rather humbly loves the individual with heart and soul, and therefore [Christianity emits] compassion with the plight of the people, without fraternizing with sin and the depravity of the people.
print version
return to list
previous document