Against the systematic infidelity which was more and more creeping over the eighteenth century, the Christian faith alone, with all its forces, could fight and triumph.

But the Christian faith was obscured and enfeebled, it clung to the vessel's rigging instead of defending its powerful hull; the flood was rising meanwhile, and the dikes were breaking one after, another.

The religious belief of the Savoyard vicar, imperfect and inconsistent, such as it is set forth in _Emile,_ and that sincere love of nature which was recovered by Rousseau in his solitude, remained powerless to guide the soul and regulate life.
"What the eighteenth century lacked [M.

Guizot, _Melanges biographiques_ (Madame la Comtesse de Rumford)], "what there was of superficiality in its ideas and of decay in its morals, of senselessness in its pretensions and of futility in its creative power, has been strikingly revealed to us by experience; we have learned it to our cost.

We know, we feel the evil bequeathed to us by that memorable epoch.