At the end of the Age of Enlightenment and with the fire of the Revolution barely extinguished, Chateaubriand, who had not yet turned thirty, undertook an apology of the Christian religion. In addition to restoring the image of a broken religion, he sought to provide new proofs of the existence of God. But he was far from the language of the theologian. He was already the great poet who praised the excellence, the beauty and the “genius” of Christianity, not without a shudder.
In the first part of the book, Chateaubriand deals with the origin of man, human nature and its mysteries. The Christian religion being “the most poetic, the most human, the most favorable to freedom, to arts and letters,” it follows that all literature, all the fine arts, all philosophical and scholarly thought are nothing else, he tells us, but emanations of God.
In the second part he praises Christian worship in its material and hierarchical dimensions. For the young writer, everything contributes to the magnificence of Christianity: the bells of the churches and the clothes of the priests; the tombs of the dead and the prayers of the living. In addition to its beauty, he defends the eminently moral character of this religion. In his eyes, this is demonstrated by the benefits it brings to humanity and the services it renders to society.