In the days of the
patriarchs God made an alliance with man; now, to strengthen the
compact, God is to become a man. He will take on our flesh, our
form, our passions, our joys, and our sorrows; will be born of
woman, and die as we do. Then, after this humiliation of the
infinite, man will still pretend that he has elevated the ideal
of his God in making, by a logical conversion, him whom he
had always called creator, a saviour, a redeemer. Humanity does
not yet say, I am God: such a usurpation would shock its piety;
it says, God is in me, IMMANUEL, nobiscum Deus. And, at the
moment when philosophy with pride, and universal conscience with
fright, shouted with unanimous voice, The gods are departing!
excedere deos! a period of eighteen centuries of fervent
adoration and superhuman faith was inaugurated.
But the fatal end approaches. The royalty which suffers itself
to be limited will end by the rule of demagogues; the divinity
which is defined dissolves in a pandemonium. Christolatry is the
last term of this long evolution of human thought.
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