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249, LETTERS.
as a blessing to the world when I have left the arena.”
They shall not be able to say this; for the goblet of liberty
which they offered to the nations, contained — poison.
Perhaps they knew it not; they may be morally irrespon-
sible, but unhappy and unwise I must call them.
I have said that they must exist as actors in that life,
and those ideas which develop themselves in history. But
why should I then speak and fight against them? I do it
in the conviction that this moment may be more transitory
and more easily overcome, in proportion as its representa-
tives become fewer in number and more insignificant.
Certain it is, that the more life’s central powers become
strengthened (I mean here those which place earthly de-
velopment in immediate connection with the eternal idea
which is its foundation), the more quietly will the develop-
ment of society progress towards liberty and happiness ;
the more will the extremes of “right” and “left” be weak-
ened, and becoine more harmless and vanishing accidents.
One acknowledges pretty generally in the camp of the
liberals, that the development of liberty and universal cit-
izenship, which now causes society to ferment, has its foun-
dation in the doctrine, revealed by Christianity, of men’s
equality before God. It has been said that this is Chris-
tianity’s origin in political life, and that Christianity ought
to become political. I grant this with all my heart. But
how does it become so? Why, by grafting the lower, the
earthly politics, upon the higher (the branch upon the
tree), and by proving its foundation to lie in the eternal,
immortal idea, whose doctrine we call Christianity. Only
thereby can it grow in strength and freshness, and escape the
fate of those branches which are planted in loose sand, aud
which, though fresh in the beginning, soon become withered.
Richert and Geyer — and. also “Torsten Rudenskéld in
his way — have in our country shown how this lower and
higher policy can be connected; how the former cannot be
consistently imagined without the latter ; and the greatest
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