[Transcriber's note: This production is based onhttps://archive.org/details/meditationsmoral00guiz/page/n3]
"M. Guizot has recently collected his essays on religion, philosophy, and education into a single volume, under the title of 'Meditations and Moral Studies.' This work, which at present is scarcely known in England, deserves particular attention."—Quarterly Review, No. 187,
The three following Essays, although written some time back,appear to bear so strongly on a question daily and hourlydiscussed among ourselves, that I make but one apology forpresenting them in an English form, which is to the illustriousauthor, whose sentiments (notwithstanding all the attention Ihave given to the task) I cannot but fear I may yet have failedin representing.
The Translation contained in the following pages originated inthe simple desire to facilitate the access to sentiments deemedbeneficial.
He who undertook this pleasing and benevolent task, has beenremoved from this earthly scene. Let it be hoped that this solemntruth may add interest to his labours for others, and that hisearnest wishes for their benefit may be in some measure realized.
When I collected these moral sketches, which were written atdifferent times and under varying circumstances, I did not thinkthat I needed to add anything to them. A recent event, however,has determined me, in now publishing them, to say a few wordsmore.
Having been called upon on the 30th of last April to take thechair at a meeting of the Protestant Bible Society, I expressedmyself in these terms:—
What is after all, speaking religiously, the great question, the most important question which at present occupies the minds of men? It is the question in debate between those who acknowledge and those who deny a supernatural, certain, and sovereign order of things, although inscrutable to human reason. The question in dispute, to call things by their right names, between supernaturalism and naturalism. On the one side, unbelievers, pantheists, pure rationalists, and sceptics of all kinds. On the other, Christians.
"Amongst the first, the best still allow to the statue of the Deity, if I may make use of such an expression, a place in the world and in the human soul; but to the statue only,—an image, a marble. God himself is no longer there. Christians alone possess the living God.
"It is the living God whom we need! Our present and future safety requires that faith in supernatural order, that respect for and submission to supernatural order should again pervade the world and the human soul,—the greatest minds as well as the simplest, the most elevated classes as well as the most humble. The truly efficacious and regenerating influence of religio