The Equinox (Volume I, Number X)

THE KEY OF THE MYSTERIES Christian revelation was made, of a spirit unknown to the ancients, of a spirit evidently divine, more positive than science in its works, in its aspirations, more magnificently ideal than the highest poetry, a spirit for which it was neces- sary to create a new name, a name altogether unheard*in the sanctuaries of antiquity. This name was created, and we shall demonstrate that this name, this word, is, in religion, as much for science as for faith, the expression of the absolute. The word is CHARITY, and the spirit of which we speak is the spirit of charity. Before charity, faith prostrates itself, and conquered science bows. There is here evidently something greater than humanity; charity proves by its works that it is not a dream. It is stronger than all the passions; it triumphs over suffering and over death; it makes God understood by every heart, and seems already to fill eternity by the begun realization of its legitimate hopes. Before charity alive and in action who is the Proudhon who dares blaspheme? Who is the Voltaire who dares laugh? Pile one upon the other the sophisms of Diderot, the critical arguments of Strauss, the “ Ruins” of Volney, so well named, for this man could make nothing but “ruins,” the blasphemies of the revolution whose voice was extinguished once in blood, and once again in the silence of contempt; join to it all that the future may hold for us of monstrosities and of vain dreams; then will there come the humblest and the simplest of all sisters of charity,—the world will leave there all its follies, and all its crimes, and all its dreams, to bow before this sublime reality. 1 Who, however, had the word laid aside against the time when Paul should give it a meaning.—O. M. 7