God has prepared in each time circumstances suited to the impulse which his Spirit would give. All the circumstances were prepared for the reformation. Just so were they all also prepared for Christianity. The blindness of philosophy can only see the circumstances, and cannot see the power of God which acts in them.
Incredulity is always the same; but those who act from faith know well enough that they are guided by quite another thing than circumstances; often, indeed, in their simplicity, they know not that circumstances do favor them, save in the sense of the promise that all things work together for good to them that love God and are called according to his purpose; and such are not among the feeblest. If one must speak as a man, I should say that the man who has but one idea ordinarily does more than he who knows how to philosophize upon everything. The energy of the one and the abstraction of the other (who judges everything) are rarely united.
That Christians in general yield more or less (alas!) to the influences which surround them, is commonly true. Yet, often, the contrary is the case; and where wealth and worldliness reign, those who seek to leave all for Christ's sake, may, perchance, be accused, not of radicalism, but of being aristocrats, who were discontented with what was national, and may, by the philosophers, be considered as a reaction to the extreme of democracy.
No matter, if the Spirit acts, God produces the fruits of His grace, and the world judges them, passes on and perishes in its own wisdom. Christians may fall also under the influence of the philosophy and systematization of the age. May they that are ours avoid that as they avoid politics. Scientific reasonings upon passing events neither save souls nor raise the fallen Christian. We are the servants of God; God will prepare and direct every circumstance, we need not concern ourselves therewith save to admire the good hand of our God. Our part is to follow the impulse of the Holy Spirit and to guide ourselves by the word of God.
The Holy Spirit, when he acts, knows how to touch all the chords of the human heart and to adapt himself to them in grace, reserving to God all His rights and all His sovereignty; but it is God alone who knows how to do this. Power is needed.
The power and the grace of the Holy Spirit it is which we have to seek, and not to be either democrats or aristocrats or despots we must however, be divine, and walk according to the principle of the grace of Christ in whom the sovereignty of God and the heart of man unite in one and are at peace. God wills that matters should not prosper without that; for they would, then, prosper without Himself.