When, among a hundred men one man dominates ninety-nine, it is iniquity and despotism.  When ten dominate ninety, it is injustice and oligarchy.  When fifty-one dominate forty-nine (and this only theoretically, for, in reality, among these fifty-one there are ten or twelve masters), then it is justice and liberty.  Could anyone imagine anything more ridiculous and absurd than this reasoning?  However, this is the very reasoning that serves as a basic principle for everyone who extols better social conditions.

All the nations in the world are restless.  An active force that seems to be preparing the way for a cataclysm is felt everywhere.  Man has never assumed so great a responsibility.  Each moment brings care that becomes more and more absorbing.  One has the impression that something great is going to be accomplished.  But on the eve of the appearance of Christ the world was then, also, expecting great events; yet it did not welcome Him when He came.  In the same way the world might feel the birth pangs before His next coming and go on failing to understand what is happening.  (Lucie Malaury, Daily Reading, June 30th)

Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.  (Matthew 10:28)

The states of the Christian world have not only reached, but in our day have passed the limits towards which the states of ancient times were approaching before their dismemberment.  We can see by this fact that each step that we make today towards material progress not only does not advance us towards the general wellbeing, but shows us, on the contrary, that all these technical improvements increase our miseries.  Submarine, subterranean, and aerial machines may be invented for transporting men with the rapidity of lightning.  The means of propagating speech and human thought may be multiplied ad infinitum.  But it would still remain a fact that the travelers, who are so comfortably and rapidly transported, are neither willing nor able to commit anything but evil, and their thoughts and words can only incite men to evil.  As to the perfected weapons of destruction, which make carnage easier while diminishing the risk of those who employ them, they give evidential proof of the impossibility of persevering in the same direction.

Thus, the horror of the situation of the Christian world appears under a double aspect: the absence of a moral principle of union and a gradual lowering of man to a degree below that of animals.  This is so, in spite of all his intellectual progress and, above all, in spite of the complexity of the lies that hide our miserable condition and our cruelty.

The lies cover the cruelty, the cruelty causes the spreading of the lies, and both increase like snowballs.  But everything must come to an end.  And I consider that a crisis in this unfortunate condition is approaching.  The Christian world must inevitably get to the end of this horrible situation, and it must as inevitably get out of it.  The evils we see, resulting from the lack of a religious conception corresponding to our epoch, are the inevitable condition of progress.  They should also disappear as inevitably after the adoption of a religious principle that would correspond to our epoch.