¦
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PZ-giue thefe BaoAs;
fvr.pit founding ef. a. College in. this Colony*

¦Y_MJl«¥M_¥IEiaSflW- - ILIII_3IK_&mr •

Gift of
Dr, William H.Hotchkiss 190J

JESUS CHRIST.
GOD.
GOD AND MAN.

JESUS CHRIST
GOD
GOD AND MAN

CONFERENCES DELIVERED AT NOTRE DAME IN PARIS
EV THE
REV. PERE LACORDAIRE,

OF THE ORDER OF FRIAR-PREACHERS.

Translated from the French, with the Author's permission, by a
Tertiary of the same Order.

SEVENTH THOUSAND.

NEW YORK
THOMAS WHITTAKER
1892.

CHARLES DICKENS AND EVANS,
CRYSTAL PALACE PRESS.

Reprinted 1892.

DECLARATION.

Although I have constantly taught under the authority
and in the presence of the Archbishops of Paris, and my
doctrine has never been criticised or called in question
by them ; although that same doctrine, published by the
press, has excited neither reproach nor discussion : yet,
lest in treating so many theological questions some in
voluntary error may have escaped me, and this I must
and do readily presume from my weakness, I declare
that I submit my Conferences to the Catholic Church,
whose son I am, and in particular to the Holy Roman
Church, the mother and mistress of all Churches, wherein
resides the plenitude of the authority founded upon earth
by our Lord Jesus Christ.
I also declare again that I do not acknowledge the pre
tended reproductions of my Conferences which have been
made by various periodicals, whatever be their form or
name. I once more protest against that violation of
literary rights, whose result is to place under the name

viii DECLARATION.
of a preacher discourses imperfectly reported amidst an
immense auditory, and not less imperfectly corrected by
the authors of such speculation. Should the doctrine
contained in these publications be attacked, I decline the
responsibility thereof as of a work which is not mine, and
for which I can be held responsible only by a violation
of all right and equity.

FR. HENRI-DOMINIQUE LACORDAIRE,
Prov. des Fr. Pr'echeurs.

Nancy, at the Convent of Notre-Dame-et-Chene.

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.

The subject of the following Conferences is daily attracting
increased attention in England — so justly famed for her
religious feeling and strong sense, yet so distracted by
divisions which contradict the authority, the object, and
the work of Jesus Christ. Many minds that know not
the repose of divine faith, are — timidly perhaps, but
anxiously — watching this great question; requiring, not
only to believe, but also, and rightly, to know why they
should believe.
Humbly desiring to discharge a part of the deep debt
of gratitude which he owes to the author of these cele
brated discourses, the translator respectfully offers them
to his well-beloved country, as a guide in her present
religious confusion and a support in her manifest and
perplexing doubts, hoping and believing that they will
be to others what they have been to him, namely, heralds
of that "glorious liberty" which is the ever-blessed fruit
of Catholic Christianity.

CONTENTS.

Jesus Christ :
PAUK
The Inner Life of Jesus Christ . 3
The Public Power of Jesus Christ 24
The Foundation of the Reign of Jesus Christ ... 40
The Perpetuity and Progress of the Reign of Jesus Christ . 58
The Pre-existence of Jesus Christ  7*>
The Efforts of Rationalism to Destroy the Life of Jesus
Christ  96
The Efforts of Rationalism to Pervert the Life of Jesus
Christ  "6
The Efforts of Rationalism to Explain the Life of Jesus
Christ  134
God: The Existence of God ... 153
The Inner Life of God . . 168
The Creation of the World by God 185
The General Plan of Creaiion 204
Man as an Intelligent Being . 221
Man as a Moral Being . . 242
Man as a Social Being . . 262
The Double Work of Man . 280

x CONTENTS.
God and Man : PAGE
The Supernatural Intercourse between God and Man . . 29?
Two Objections against the Supernatural Intercourse between
God and Man  316
The Need of Supernatural Intercourse between God and
Man  337
Prophecy  353
Mystery as the Object of Prophecy . . . . 371
The Human Act corresponding to Prophecy . . . 386
Sacrament ...... , , 404

JESUS CHRIST.

* Monseigneur Affre, Archbishop of Paris.

HRIST.

ty we have
is of meta-
in a living,
before the
lave shown
. points of
iique here
human is
accomplish omplish in
le ordinary
arted from
bns of the
I beginning
lis to that
mass. A
itest event
rwise, and
hnomenonhest intel-
hnon, the
i a word,

B 2

4 THE INNER LIFE OF
But what is the primary cause of this phenomenon ? Every
phenomenon has a cause. After having examined its visible
side, we should evidently examine that which has produced
the spectacle, that which explains and supports it. Who,
then, has made the Catholic Church? Who has founded
that society which rules minds by certainty, regulates souls
by the highest virtues, blesses the human race by the new
elements it has given to civilization ? Who has formed, under
a hierarchy spiritual ahd unarmed, that body wherein con
viction, holiness, unity, universality, stability, and life, form a
tissue of superhuman and incontestable beauty? Who has
designed and produced it ? Is it time, or chance ? Is it the
work of many, or of one alone ? It is but one, yes, one alone,
a man, that is to say, nothing; the word of a man, which
is but a passing breath. Behold the artist ! God has so willed
it, then, that the foundation of this great work should be
something resembling ourselves, and that man, so weak, so
vain, should, like Atlas, bear heaven and earth upon his
shoulders. Who is this man ? What name does he bear on
the tongues and in the memorials of the human race ? I have
no need to tell you : his name speaks and resounds of itself.
Every man knows it from love or hatred, and in naming
Jesus Christ I am but the remote echo of all ages and all
minds. Jesus Christ, then ! Jesus Christ ! He is the artist !
It is He who founded that Church whose ineffable architecture
we have contemplated together : I speak of the Church under
her present form, for the Church has existed upon earth from
the day when God first spake to man, and when man first
responded from his heart to God.
The artist found, gentlemen, it is needful to study his
history, that we may be able to judge whether the workman
answers to the work, and whether, after having seen that the
work is divine in itself, its divinity will receive confirmation
from the life of him who produced it. In order to do this
we must first learn where to seek for the elements of that life.
This difficulty is not great. Like every man who appears at
an epoch which is historical and rendered famous by his
works, Jesus Christ has a history, a history which the Church
and the world possess, and which, surrounded by countless
memorials, has at least the same authenticity as any other
history formed in the same countries, amidst the same peoples,
and in the same times. As, then, if I would study the lives

JESUS CHRIST. S
Of Brutus and Cassius, I should calmly open Plutarch, I
open the Gospel to study Jesus Christ, and I do so with the
same composure. We will afterwards examine whether I have
erred in admitting this preliminary authenticity ; I assume it
now, being in possession of it, subject to my returning to it
by retracing our steps at a future period, in order to verify the
documents and base them upon a degree of certainty worthy
of the sacred object of our investigation. I take the Gospel,
then, provisionally, for my historical title. You are free to
make what reserve you please as to its authenticity and
veracity; it is a right which I do not dispute, as I know you
will also be just enough to respect in the Gospel, at least
provisionally, the faith of twenty centuries, and the natural
weight of that which forms so conspicuous a part of the world's
history. Lord Jesus, for ten years I have spoken of Thy Church to
this auditory, yet it is indeed of Thee that I have always
spoken; but now, and more directly, I come to Thyself, to
those divine features, which are the daily object of my con
templation, to Thy sacred feet, which I have so often kissed,
to Thy divine hands, which have so often blessed me, to Thy
forehead, crowned with glory and with thorns, to that life
whose sweetness I have respired from my birth, which my
youth disregarded, which my manhood regained, which my
riper age adores and proclaims to every creature. O Father !
O Master ! O Friend ! O Jesus ! second me now more than
ever, since, being closer to Thee, it is meet that my hearers
should perceive it, and that the words which fall from my lips
should manifest the nearness of Thy adorable presence !
There are two lives — the outer life and the inner life. The
outer life would be nothing without the inner life. The inner
life is the support of the other, and therefore, desiring to study
the life of Jesus Christ, I must begin by examining His inner
l:fe. But what is this inner life ? It is the converse between
ourselves and ourselves. Every man converses with himself,
every man speaks to himself, and that converse with himself is
his inner life, as that which, from all eternity, God makes with
Himself in the mystery of His three divine persons is His
inner life. Every man, every intelligent being, holds this
inner conveise with himself, which forms his real life. The
rest is but a semblance, when it is not the produce of that
inner life. The inner life is the whole man, and forms all the

6 THE INNER LIFE OF
worth of man. One is clothed in purple, and yet he is worth
less, because his converse with himself is that of a worthless
being; and another passes along our streets barefoot and in
rags, who is a great man, because his inner converse is that of
a hero or a saint. On the day of judgment we shall see this
changing being within and without, and the mysterious colloquy
of each man being known, his history will then begin. Now,
we proceed as best we can from the outer to the inner life ; for,
if this gift of judging the inner by the outer life had not been
granted to us, if our outer life were any other thing than a
permanent transpiration of our inner life, we should be but
spectres to each other, we should pass by without knowing one
another, as maskers who pass each other in the night. Happily,
and thanks to God, there are orifices through which our inner
life constantly escapes, and the soul, like the blood, hath its
pores. The mouth is the chief and foremost of these channels
which leads the soul out of its invisible sanctuary; it is by
speech that man communicates the secret converse which is
his real life. And although every man thus speaks from within
to without, there are men in whom this manifestation of
themselves is more especially called for, more needful, more
authentic. They are those who come before the world with
doctrines destined by them to become laws. For the first
question put to them is : Who are you ? What say you of
yourselves ? As the priests of Jerusalem sent men to ask John
the Baptist in the desert : Tu quis es ? Quid dicis de
Teipso ? * First of all, since you are not a man like other
men, tell us what you are, what you affirm of yourself: Quid
dicis de Teipso?
And it is not a slight thing, gentlemen, to force a man to
say what he is, or what he believes himself to be ; for that
supreme word of man, that single expression which he utters of
and upon himself is decisive. It lays down the basis upon
which all judgment of him is to be formed. From that
moment all the acts of his life must correspond to the answer
given by him to the question : Quid dicis de Teipso ? And
therefore Jesus Christ, appearing amongst men to bring them
new laws, a new order of things, had to submit to that neces
sity of declaring what He was, and therewith to undergo the
unfailing test to which it subjected Him. It was to His friends
* St. John i. 22.

JESUS CHRIST. 7
and disciples that He had first to declare Himself, by telling
them what He thought of Himself. What said He to them ?
One day, at Cassarea Philippi, He asked His disciples :
" Whom do men say that I, the Son of Man, am ? And they
said, Some say John the Baptist ; others, Elias ; others, Jeremias,
or one of the prophets. Jesus saith to them : But whom say
ye that I am ? Simon Peter answered, and said : Thou art the
Christ, the Son of the living God." Jesus Christ, so far from
rejecting these words as blasphemous, accepted them as
expressing a truth which filled Him with delight, and He said
to Peter : " Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona : for flesh and
blood hath not revealed it to thee, but My Father which is in
Heaven." And He then added, as a reward for the faith of
His disciple : "And I say unto thee that thou art Peter, and
upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell
shall not prevail against it." *
Jesus Christ then presented Himself to His disciples as the
Son of God — not as the Son of God in the sense in which we
are all sons of God, but as the Son of God in its true and
proper sense : had it been otherwise, He would not in so marked
a manner have manifested to His apostle the joy He felt at his
confession. Moreover, on other occasions He spake, if pos
sible, more clearly to them. Philip said to Him : "Lord, show
us the Father, and it is enough for us." Jesus Christ grew
indignant at his demand, and said to him : " So long a time
have I been with you, and you have not known me ? Philip,
he that seeth me, seeth the Father also. How sayest thou,
Show us the Father ? Believe you not that I am in the Father,
and the Father in Me ?" f And, at another time, manifesting
His divine filiation yet more clearly, He said to one of His
disciples who still wavered : " God so loved the world as to
give His only-begotten Son. . . . He that believeth in Him is
not judged ; but he that doth not believe is already judged,
because he believeth not in the name of the only-begotten Son
of God." % Jesus Christ stood forth then as the Son of God
without equal or rival, and in so strict a sense, that He was in
His Father and His Father in Him, and that to see Him was to
see His Father.
So much for friends and disciples. But, besides friends and
disciples, there is another tribunal before which every new
* St. Malt. xvi. 13-18. t St. John xiv. 8-10.
% St. John iii. 16, 18.

8 THE INNER LIFE OF
doctrine must appear, namely, the tribunal of the people. After
having spoken in secret to the chosen ones, it becomes needful
to quit the chamber, to appear in public, to speak to mankind
of all ages and conditions, to those who have not leaned upon
the bosom of the Master, who have not received the education
of friendship, who know not what is required of them, who
oppose to the word of doctrine a host of passions blended
with as many prejudices. Jesus Christ did this ; He heard the
murmurs of the crowd around Him, and was undaunted before
the account which He had to give them of Himself. "How
long," cried they to Him, " dost Thou hold us in suspense ? If
Thou be the Christ, tell us plainly." Jesus Christ answered
them : " I speak to you, and you believe not ; the works that I
do in the name of My Father, they give testimony of Me.* I
and the Father are one." t At that saying, which expressed
all, the Jews took up stones to stone Him, and Jesus said to
them : " Many good works I have showed you from My
Father ; for which of these works do you stone Me ?" The
Jews answered Him : " For a good work we stone Thee not, but
for blasphemy ; and because that Thou, being a man, makest
Thyself God." j The language which Jesus Christ held towards
the people in order to make known to them the origin and
mission of their new spiritual Master, was, then, language free
from all constraint and obscurity. He fearlessly uttered to
them that terrible phrase : " I and my Father are one " — Ego
et Pater unum sumus.
But above the people — that confused mass whose voice is
at the same time the voice of God and the voice of nothing
ness ; above the people — who form at the same time the
highest and the lowest authority — rises, with calm vigilance
and self-respect, the highest representation of right and truth.
Every nation possesses a supreme magistracy which concen
trates in itself the glory and enlightenment of the country, and
before it every doctrine claiming to rule, either by doing
apparent or real violence to received traditions, must at last
appear. Jesus Christ could not escape from this general law
of the human order. He is called before the council of the
elders, the priests, and the princes of Judaea. After hearing
evidence more or less inconsistent, the high priest at length
resolves to place the question in its true light ; he stands up
* St. John x. 24, 25. f Ibid. 30. % Ibid. 32, 33.

JESUS CHRIST. 9
and addresses this solemn charge to the accused : " I adjure
Thee by the living God that Thou tell us if Thou be the Christ,
the Son of God." * Jesus Christ calmly replies in two words :
Ego sum — " I am ! " And He immediately adds, in order to
confirm His avowal by the majesty of His language : " I am ;
and you shall see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of
the power of God, and coming with the clouds of heaven." t
Then the high priest rends his garments. " What need we any
further witnesses?" he exclaims. "You have heard the blas
phemy ! What think you ? " J And they all condemn him,
as guilty, to death. He is then brought before the Roman
governor, who, not finding good reasons for His condemnation,
wishes to release Him ; but the princes of the people persist :
" We have a law," say they, " and by that law He ought to die,
because He made Himself the Son of God." § Pilate so fully
comprehends this, that his Roman, and therefore religious, ear
is all attention; he draws Jesus Christ aside, and timorously
asks Him whence He is: Unde es tu?|| Jesus Christ is
silent ; He confirms by His silence all that He is accused of
having said of Himself, and what, in fact, He has said. The
people who witness His crucifixion understand His condemna
tion in the sense in which it was pronounced ; they insult Him
even in death by these expressive derisions : " Vah, Thou that
destroyest the temple, and in three days dost rebuild it, save
Thy own self; if Thou be the Son of God, come down from the
cross." IT And, when darkness covers the earth, when the
rocks are broken in pieces, when the veil of the temple is rent
in twain, and all Nature proclaims to mankind that a great
event is in action, the lookers-on and the Roman centurion
strike their breasts, saying : " Indeed, this was the Son of
God ! " ** And the apostle St. John concludes his gospel in
these words : " These things are written that you may believe
that Jesus Christ was the Son of God." ft
Thus, before His friends, before the people, before the
magistracy, in His life, in His death, Jesus Christ every
where declares that He is the Son of God, the only Son, a
Son equal with His Father, one with His Father, being in His
Father, and His Father in Him. This is the testimony which
He renders of Himself, His answer to that imperious question :
* St. Matt. xxvi. 63. + St. Mark iv. 62. J St. Mark xiv. 63, 64.
§ St. John xix. 7 " || St. John xix. 9. If St. Matt, xxvii. 40.
** fct. Matt, xxvii. 54. ft St. John xx. 31.

10 THE INNER LIFE OF
Quid dicis de Teipso ? And what an answer, gentlemen I
What ! a man, a creature of flesh and blood, who has before
him, not only the weaknesses of life, but those also of death ; a
man ! and he dares to call Himself God ! It is the first time
in all history. No historical personage, before or since, has
set himself up as God. Idolatry had numberless gods ; but it
had a supreme God, to whom none other was equal ; and
when the most shameful flattery decreed apotheosis to emperors
convicted of every crime by their lives and of complete nothing
ness by their death, none saw in the incense offered to their
ashes anything but a poetical figure, a last act of adulation
rendered by bondage to tyranny. Mahomet, come to replace
the reign of idols, did not call himself God, but a simple envoy
of God ; and if we would go back beyond idolatry in search
of the arrogant impostures, we shall find even in the heart of
India nothing but narrations without consistency, ages without
date, a shapeless abyss in which our vision will be totally
unable to discover any authentic mortal bold enough to declare
that he was God, formally and distinctly, by those two ineffable
words : Ego sum. Man is not capable of uttering so bold a
falsehood, the improbability is too striking.
It is also and too manifestly useless, for what would it
profit ? What end could it serve a man to call himself God ?
Would he establish laws, found an empire ? It is a human
ambition ; and I can well understand why he would not call
himself a philosopher, since any one versed in history knows
that whoever sets himself up as a philosopher is sure to remain
alone upon his pedestal. A man, then, having great ambition
would never advance such pretensions. God is the corner
stone of every lasting edifice. His name, even when invoked
by imposture, serves as a solid cement ; and it was natural that
before and after others Jesus Christ should call Himself the
envoy of God. Men have often accepted that idea; they
readily believe in the intervention of the Divinity in human
affairs, and their faith, thus deceived in its application, is never
deceived as to the reality of a Providence eternally watchful
over their condition. Jesus Christ, in calling Himself the Man
of God, would have proclaimed something probable and ser
viceable ; but the very title of God, the apotheosis of Himself
by Himself, added nothing but difficulties to His enterprise.
Thenceforth it became necessary that in all His actions he
should sustain the part of the Infinite, that even in His death

JESUS CHRIST. Ir
He should maintain proofs of His divine nature, and that His-
tomb, as well as eternity, should bear witness of Him. Was-
this humanly possible ?
_ Add thereto a third consideration relative to the state of
religious belief among the Jews. That people had in their-
law only one explicit dogma — all the others, although they
possessed them in their traditions, were, so to say, veiled and
obscure. The unity of God, graven at the head of the tables
of Sinai, was their chief dogma ; the one that recalled and
included all the others, such as the creation, the fall of man,.
the immortality of the soul. To attack this, even remotely,.
was to attack Moses, Sinai, all the treasured memorials of the
children of Israel, all their customs, every object of their
veneration. Now the name of Jesus Christ as the Son of God,
even without destroying the divine unity, did not enter
naturally into the ears of this people, accustomed by their
lawgiver and their prophets to know only the God who had
brought them out of the land of Egypt, and who had so often.
said to them : " I am the Lord thy God ; thou shalt have no
other gods before me." *
If, then, Jesus Christ falsely called Himself God, He
needlessly created for Himself unaccountable difficulties.
But let us pass on from these preliminary reflections, and
see what account we have to render of the life we are contem
plating. Whatever motives Jesus Christ might have had
against calling Himself God, He did call Himself God ; such is
the fact. Before we examine whether what He said was true,
an intervening question arises : we have to learn whether in
calling Himself God He believed what He said. Between the
affirmation and the reality, between saying, I am God and.
being God, stands the question of good faith and sincerity-
Did Jesus Christ believe in His divinity? Was He convinced
of the truth of that vital dogma which He laid down as the
basis of His teaching and for which He died? Was He
sincere, or — pardon the expression — was He an impostor?
We cannot advance a step further in His life before we solve
this doubt. All mankind, without distinction of time, place,.
nations, laws, or religions, is divided into two ranks, the rank
of impostors and that of sincere men : in these each individual
marks his own place. The impostors have too often led the
* Exodus xx. 2, 3.

12 THE INNER LIFE OF
sincere, but their reign sooner or later betrays itself; and
sincerity in regard to man is a requirement which honours him ;
to error, an aroma which renders it less bitter ; to truth, a
crown which is the first object of our search. Let us then first
of all learn whether Jesus Christ wears this crown ; whether He
is anointed with this aroma; whether He possesses this honour,
without which there is no honour. What think you? Must
we place Him with the impostors or with the sincere ? Was
He of those who have covered their ambition with the veil of
hypocritical sanctity, or of those who have preferred the honour
of irreproachable language even to success, and who have
chosen for their device the motto of the Maccabees: Moriamur
in simplicitate nostra ? — Let us die in our simplicity.
This is the great question.
It is answered by the character of the man, and hence I
may conclude that the cause is judged in favour of Jesus
Christ; for no more venerable form has dawned upon the
horizon of history. The simple course of time has placed Him
above all, leaving nothing visible that can approach it. By the
consent of all, even of those who do not believe in Him, Jesus
Christ is a good man, a sage, an elect, an incomparable per
sonage. He has done such great, such holy things, that even
His enemies pay constant homage to His work and to His
person. It is true that in the last century there was a man who
chose for his motto— designating Jesus Christ — the words :
Jicrasez Pinfame! — Crush the wretch ! But this phrase, gentle
men, had not strength enough to pass the bounds of the
century in which it was uttered ; it halted trembling on the
frontiers of our own ; and since then no human voice, even
among those which are not respected, has dared to repeat that
signal of impious revolt. It has fallen back upon the tomb of
him who first uttered it, and there, after having been judged by
the posterity which has already followed, it awaits the still
more stern judgment of posterity yet to come.
I may, then, stop here, since nothing is higher than a
universal judgment, and since all demonstration appears weak
before a conclusion which forms part of the common sense of
mankind. But I wish to afford you the gratification of
analysing the character of Christ, and of examining by what
harmony of moral beauties that physiognomy infinitely sur
passes the most illustrious forms which time has produced.

JESUS CHRIST. 13
The human character is composed of three elements,
namely, the intelligence — the seat of its thoughts ; the heart —
the seat of its feelings ; the will — the seat of its resolutions.
It is the fusion of these three elements which, by its measure,
determines every moral type and fixes its value. We have no
need to seek elsewhere the secret of that perfection which we
find in the hero of the Gospel. Doubtless, for those who
believe Him to be God, His divinity supports and shines
through the whole visible tissue ; but without changing any
thing of the nature of the soul any more than of the body.
Jesus Christ has nothing in Himself to constitute His
physiognomy but thoughts, feelings, and resolutions ; but the
harmony and blending of these form that peculiar charm
which it is now our purpose to examine.
I shall not mislead you, gentlemen, in saying of His in
telligence, that in character and sign it possesses that which
we call the sublime. The sublime is elevation, profundity,
and simplicity, blended together in a single trait. When the
aged Horatius was told that his son had fled from the combat
which decided the supremacy between Alba and Rome, and,
seeing his indignation, they asked him what his son should
have done against three, the old man replied : " He should
have died ! " This is a sublime exclamation ; it is the cry of
duty springing at once from a great soul, and bearing us in a
moment above all the weaknesses which plead within us
against self-sacrifice. Nothing is more simple, but nothing is
higher or more profound. God has given to man the faculty
of reaching the sublime in his actions and in his writings;
but these occasions are rare and fugitive. The greatest men
have been sublime four or five times in their lives ; such was
Caesar saying to a boatman who brought him through a
tempest : " What fearest thou ? Thou carriest Caesar ! "
Simplicity is too often wanting to the greatest actions, or,
when they are simple, they do not raise us sufficiently out of
ourselves, or they are not profound enough to give us
sufficient food for thought. It is the same with our writings.
It is not rare to find in them harmony, grace, beauty, and,
as it were, a flowing stream which bears us along between
sweet and flowery banks. We are thus carried on through
whole pages. Suddenly, and as by chance, a powerful
emotion seizes upon us, and seems to pierce even to our soul.
The sublime has appeared. But it is only an apparition ;

s4 THE INNER LIFE OF
and this is why it draws us out of our natural state, by
producing within us a sudden and passing shock.
It is not so in regard to Jesus Christ. His actions and
His language are stamped with a continuous elevation, pro
fundity, and simplicity, so that the sublime is, as it were,
naturalized in them, and no longer excites our wonder ; never
theless, its empire over the soul is undiminished. For this
reason, after so many famous masterpieces of literature, the
•Gospel has remained a unique book in the world, a book
acknowledged to be above all imitation. " Blessed are the poor
in spirit," * said Jesus Christ. What can be more simple ?
And yet how suddenly it bears us away from earth ! The
angel who seized Habakkuk and carried him from his fields to
Babylon was not more rapid. Three simple words suffice to
•change all our notions of beatitude, of the value of earthly
things, of the object and end of life — to bear us above worldly
cupidity, and cause us to hover joyfully, like the eagle, above
the kingdoms of the world. " Blessed are the poor in spririt ! "
These words will resound throughout the world ; the soul,
having once heard them, will constantly recall them, and never
fail to find hidden in them a powerful hand, ready to its
rescue. Meditation, in sounding their depths, will open
treasures of profundity, a new social economy destined to
change the relations of men with each other, ennoble labour
and suffering, abolish slavery, and make a beneficial and holy
profession even of poverty. Such is the Gospel — that is to
say, Jesus Christ, from beginning to end ; and that sovereign
intelligence cannot be better defined than by saying that it
had received from God the gift of continuous sublimity.
Great minds generally exhaust their whole power in their
thoughts, and are unable to impart more than a feeble and
secondary action to their hearts. This is especially remark
able in founders of empires and doctrines — cold, haughty
men, masters of themselves, looking down upon mankind and
urging them to and fro in their hidden designs, as the wind
waves a field of corn, ripe and ready for the sickle. The con
ception of their plans absorbs them ; success corrupts them by
flattering their pride: reverse sours them, and all things
combine to make them scornful of mankind, which is for them
only a pedestal, erect or overthrown. Even if they do not fall

JESUS CHRIST. IS
so low in the degradation of the heart, they are not permitted
to raise their faculty of loving as high as their faculty of thought.
The piercing glance of the eagle is not naturally given to the
eye of the dove. These distinctions are perceptible even in
authors. Racine — pardon these comparisons — is tender ;
Corneille is much less so, because his genius draws nearer to
the sublime. We feel in him something heroic and austere,
like those Romans of whom he said :
Et je rends grace au ciel de n'etre pas Romain
Pour conserver encor quelque chose d'humain.
Now, Jesus Christ, under this head, is an ever-memorable
exception, and far above successful imitation, even by those
who adopt Him as the Master of their souls. He carried the
power of loving even to tenderness, and to a kind of tender
ness so new that it was needful to create a name for it, and
that it should form a distinct species in the analysis of human
feelings — I mean the evangelic unction. Jesus Christ was
tender towards all men ; it was He who said of them :
" Whatsoever you shall do to the least of these my brethren,
you will have done it unto me ; "* an expression which intro
duced Christian fraternity into the world, and which still daily
engenders love. He was tender towards sinners; He sat at
meat with them, and, when doctrinal pride reproached Him for
it, He replied : " I am not come for those that are in health,
but for those that are sick." f Perceiving a publican who has
climbed up into a tree to see Him pass by, He says to Him,
" Zacchseus, make haste and come down ; for this day I must
abide in thy house." % A sinful woman approaches Him, and
ventures even to anoint His feet with ointment, to the great
scandal of a large assembly ; He reassures her by that immortal
allocution : " Her sins, which are many, are forgiven, because
she has loved much."§ They bring before Him a woman
taken in adultery, in order to force a judgment from Him,
which by its very leniency may compromise Him ; He answers :
" He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone
at her." || He was tender towards His ungrateful and parricidal
country ; and, beholding its walls from afar, He wept, saying :
" Jerusalem ! Jerusalem ! thou that killest the prophets, and
* St. Matt. xxv. 40. f St. Matt. ix. 12.
% St. Luke xix. 5. § St. Luke vii. 47. || St. John viii. 7.

16 THE INNER LIFE OF
stonest them that are sent unto thee, how often would I have
gathered together thy children, as the hen doth gather her
chickens under her wings, and thou wouldst not !" * He was
so tender towards His friends as to wash their feet, and to
permit a very young man to lean upon His breast on one of the
most solemn occasions of His life. Even at His crucifixion he
was tender towards His executioners, and, lifting up His soul to
His Father for them, He said : " Father, forgive them ; for they
I know not what they do." f No earthly life shows such a
blending of light and love. Every word of Jesus Christ is an
expression of tenderness and a sublime revelation ; at the same
' moment when He opens the Infinite to us by His look, He folds
us in His arms and presses us upon His bosom. We soar away
in thought, and are retained by love.
And it must not be forgotten that the tenderness of Jesus
Christ, although boundless, is of spotless virginity. It is
difficult for those who have received a soul apt for love to hold
that precious gift within chaste limits; it is the object of a
supreme struggle, in which one may be sometimes tempted to
regret the gift, or to desire more liberty in its use. Jesus
Christ seems to know nothing of this ; He bears His love in a
vase so pure that the shadow even of doubt does not approach
His heart, and posterity, which, for eighteen centuries, has
sought for faults in Him, has never dared to utter a word of
suspicion against His virtue. The character of His tenderness
is that of ineffable chastity.
There remains yet one thing, gentlemen, to complete our
estimation of the character of Jesus Christ, and to enable us
to judge by His character, of His sincerity. A. sublime intelli
gence, a tender heart, do not suffice to form a will capable of
great resolutions. The will is a distinct world, where, not
withstanding our views and our feelings, the helm is too often
guided by a feeble hand. The character of Jesus Christ on
this head is that of absolute certainty of Himself. None ever
ventured upon a more difficult design ; He claimed to be
acknowledged as God, loved as God, served as God, adored as
God; it would seem that the will should sometimes have
yielded under so heavy a load, and that at least Jesus Christ
should have employed all the human means capable of in
suring the success of such gigantic ambition. It is not so,
' St. Matt, xxiii. 37. + St. Luke xxiii. 34.

JESUS CHRIST. 17
gentlemen ; Jesus Christ despised all human means, or rather
He abstained from employing any.
Politics rank among the highest of these. It is the art of
seizing the tendency of minds at a given moment, of bringing
together opinions and interests which seek to be satisfied, of
anticipating the will of a people before they have a clear
consciousness of it themselves ; of assuming, by the help of
circumstances, the post of their natural representative, and of
placing them upon a course in which we shall be borne along
with them for half a century. Such is the art of politics — an
illustrious art, which may be used for good or evil, and which
is the source of prosperous and lamentable vicissitudes among
nations. Jesus Christ was admirably placed for becoming the
instrument of a revolution favourable to His religious designs.
The people from whom He had sprung had lost, under the
Roman yoke, the remains of their ancient nationality ; hatred
of Rome was then at its height among them, and, in the
deserts and mountains of Judaea, bands of liberators were daily
formed under the command of some patriot, distinguished for
his boldness or some other characteristic. These movements
were seconded by celebrated prophecies, which had long
announced a chief and a saviour to the Jewish people. The
relation of these ideas and interests to the new kingdom, the
coming of which Jesus Christ proclaimed, was evident. Never
theless, so far from conniving at and employing them, He
trampled them under foot. In order to prove Him, He is
asked whether it is needful to pay tribute to Caesar ; He calls
for a piece of money, and, on being told whose image and
superscription it bears, He calmly replies : " Render then to
Caesar that which is Caesar's, and to God that which is God's." *
He goes still further. He announces the temporal ruin of His
nation, He speaks against the temple — the object of religious
and patriotic veneration among the Jews — and He openly
predicts that there shall not remain of it one stone upon
another; therefore this charge was numbered amongst the
accusations brought against him before the supreme magistracy.
His doctrine, so favourable to the people and to the poor,
was of a nature to obtain great popularity for Him : this is a
powerful mainspring for revolutions. In fact, He gained such
an ascendency over the people that they wished to elect Him
* St. Matt. xxii. 21.

18 THE INNER LIFE OF
King of Israel ; but He fled in order to avoid that honour, and
broke with His own hands an instrument which great men
would commonly have valued as a gift and a sign from Heaven.
Next to the art of politics comes power, one of its
adjuncts, but which may be considered without reference to
the causes that generally communicate it. Jesus Christ had
nothing so much at heart as to prevent His disciples from
trusting to power and from exercising it. He sends them
forth, He says, like lambs ; He announces to them all kinds of
troubles, without giving them any other help than patience,
meekness, and humility. If, unmindful of His lessons, they
would call down fire from heaven, he reproaches them with
not yet knowing " of what spirit they are." * At the moment
of His arrest, when He might have defended Himself, and an
apostle drew the sword, Jesus Christ says to him : " Put up
thy sword again into its sheath ; for they who draw the sword
shall perish by the sword." t Whilst the authors of other
doctrines seek a sanction from victory — rashly forgetting that
victory is variable and conscience immutable — Jesus Christ
chooses the Cross for His standard, and protests against all
triumph of power by the triumph of His crucifixion.
He also despises science and philosophy — those nobler
and truer means of imparting conviction. He surrounds
Himself with fishermen instead of savants, and, avoiding even
the appearance of a scientific and philosophical organization of
His doctrine, He teaches it by parables and detached sentences.
He leaves to His disciples and to His Church the future
charge of blending reasoning with them, and of ranging the
whole in order.
In fine, the most ordinary skill seems to be unknown to
Him ; He makes of His death — of the time when He should
have received therefrom so terrible a check to His divinity,
and when He would no longer be present to sustain His
followers — He makes, I say, of His death a snare for the
faith of His disciples, in promising them to rise from the dead,
and in leaving the confirmation of His whole life to that test,
which, if He were not God, could result only in a base fraud,
or a flagrant contradiction.
I know no other human means, gentlemen, of founding
anything here below, than those I have just cited, namely,
* St. Luke ix. 55. t St. John xviii. 11.

JESUS CHRIST. 19
politics, power, science, philosophy, skill. Jesus Christi
abstained from employing any of these, and yet, confidence inl
Himself, absolute certainty of Himself, never failed Him for a\
single hour or a single moment. This very forbearing to J
employ any human means proves to the highest evidence His
inflexible resolution, and the omnipotent energy of His will.
Nevertheless, nothing can be accomplished without means,
without instruments. What means, then, what instruments
did Jesus Christ employ ? Ah ! gentlemen, what means ?
Do you not see what means ? It was Himself, His inner force,
the converse which He held with Himself, the sure posses
sion of His essence. Men tremble because they see them
selves. Jesus Christ did not tremble because He saw
Himself. He knew that His very word was "the Way,
the Truth, .and the Life;"* He gave it to all who came,
as the husbandman sows corn; the husbandman has no
more need of politics, power, science, philosophy, or skill ;
he has the corn, the earth, and the heavens; he opens
his hand and casts forth life. And whilst human politics
pursue their course, whilst power struggles with power, whilst
science exhausts science, the philosophy of to-day buries the
philosophy of yesterday, and the skilful are taken in their own
nets ; the wheat fallen from the hand of God into the hand of
man, and from the hand of man into the bosom of the earth,
vegetates, grows up, and ripens ; it is gathered in, eaten, and
mankind lives ! So did Jesus Christ ; so does everyone who
believes that he holds the truth from God : he first lives by it,
then he sows it, and the world — "which is the field "+— the
world lives by it in its due time.
We have then before us, gentlemen, the character of Jesus
Christ, as the Gospel shows it to us. With regard to His
intelligence — continuous sublimity ; with regard to His heart
— chaste and ineffable tenderness ; with regard to His will —
absolute certainty of Himself. Now this character is incom
patible with the ignoble vice which I no longer dare even to
name, so far is it already removed from your thoughts. Jesus
Christ was sincere because He was a sublime intelligence ; He
was sincere because His heart was open to men as a sanctuary
of tenderness and chastity ; He was sincere because He pos
sessed absolute certainty of Himself, because He had faith in
* St. John xiv. 6. t St. Matt. xiii. 38. C 2

ao THE INNER LIFE OF
His doctrine, because He believed in Himself. Jesus Christ,
like the Gospel— which is no other than Himself— Jesus Christ
was sincerity itself, and the invincible charm which is felt in
contemplating and in listening to Him comes from the inmost
brightness of His physiognomy, by which He is seen from
without wholly as He is.
Granted, say you, Jesus Christ was sincere. What then ?
So many others have also been sincere! Reflect a moment,
gentlemen ; remember that Jesus Christ, being sincere, believed
what He said. Now, He said that He was God; He declared
this to His disciples, to His friends, to the people, to the
supreme magistracy of His country ; He was condemned, and
He died for that affirmation ; therefore He believed that He
was God. But He could not believe this if He were not God,
because it is impossible to be deceived in such a matter as
that of consciousness of one's own personality, without being
mad. Now, Jesus Christ was not a madman, and He was
sincere : then He was God. Here, by an exception which
belongs to the very nature of the subject, the question of
sincerity blends with the question of reality. And this is no
new discovery, no vain idea of my mind. Through ages past,
gentlemen, the Gospel, in proving to the minds of its attentive
readers the sincerity of its hero, convinced them of His
divinity without any other argument. Whilst the Catholic
Church, the daughter and spouse of Jesus Christ, demonstrates
the divinity of her founder by the divinity of her own charac
teristics, the Gospel, in another manner, proves to the children
of the Church the divinity of Him who founded it. And
this impression is common to different ages — to the three
ages of man — so natural is it, and so based upon truth.
At the age of twelve, in the first bloom of life, we heard
the Gospel read, we heard of Jesus Christ ; His works appeared
to us most simple, gentle, and loving ; we believed in them
in the simplicity, the gentleness, the love of our young souls.
But that first impression too often fades and vanishes ; reason
grows strong with its real rights ; outward prejudices penetrate
within us ; inward passions are drawn forth by the sun of our
ripening years, and Jesus Christ falls gradually from the altar
whereupon our first adorations had placed Him. This time
has its day. Years pass over our bondage, up to the time
when reason, become more personal and more powerful, makes
us ashamed of our faith in lessons without authority, and when

JESUS CHRIST. 21
our very passions, enlightened by their domination, incite us
by lassitude to instincts of governance, of duty, and of greater
self-respect. This time is hallowed amongst all others; it is
the time when we enter into order by liberty itself, by that
divine liberty of youth which Providence has prepared for us,
and which no law can snatch from us. If the Gospel then fall
into our hands, and we read it a second time, Jesus Christ often
touches us again, and with a mastery which we no longer
contest, because we yield it to Him of ourselves at an age when
nothing any longer pleads against Him but passions judged and
ignorance overcome. It is the second reading of the Gospel,
gentlemen, that we are now accomplishing together.
There is a third, less fortunate than the two former, because
it is more tardy ; but it brings to Jesus Christ the homage of
man in his maturity, and has produced avowals worthy of
eternal remembrance. Whilst the eighteenth century heaped
insult upon the Son of God, in the very midst of that school
which attacked him, there was a man who believed no more
than the rest, a man as celebrated as the rest — the most
celebrated amongst them, with one exception — and who above
them all was privileged with sincere impulsions. God so willed
it that His name might not be left without a witness even
amongst those who laboured to destroy His reign. That man,
then at the height of his glory, acquainted by his studies with
past ages, and by his life with the age of which he was an
ornament, had to speak of Jesus Christ in a profession of faith
in which he desired to sum up all the doubts and convictions
which his meditations on religious matters had left in his mind.
After having treated of God in a worthy, although in a con
fused manner, he came to the Gospel and Jesus Christ.
There, that soul, floating between error and truth, suddenly
lost its hesitation, and with a hand firm as a martyr's, forgetting
his age and his works, the philosopher wrote the page of a
theologian — a page which was to become the counterpoise of
the blasphemy: Ecrasez Vinfamel It concluded by these
words, which will resound throughout Christendom until the
last coming of Christ : " If the life and death of Socrates be
those of a sage, the life and death of Jesus Christ are those of
a God." *
It might well have been thought that the force of that con-
* Rousseau, "Emile."

22 THE INNER LIFE OF
fession would never have been surpassed, whether in regard to
the genius of the man who wrote it, the authority of his
unbelief, the glory of his name, and the circumstances con
nected with the age which received it ; but it would have been
an error. Another man, another expression, another glory,
another phase of unbelief, another age, another avowal met,
were greater altogether, if not in each separate part, than
those you have just heard. Our age commenced by a man
who outstripped all his contemporaries, and whom we, who have
followed, have not equalled. A conqueror, a soldier, a founder
of empire, his name and his ideas are still everywhere present.
After having unconsciously accomplished the work of God, he
disappeared, that work being done, and waned like a setting
sun in the deep waters of the ocean. There, updh a barren
rock, he loved to recall the events of his own life ; and, from
himself, going back to others who had lived before him, and to
whom he had a right to compare himself, he could not fail to
perceive a form greater than his own upon that illustrious stage
whereon he took his place. He often contemplated it ; mis
fortune opens the soul to illuminations which in prosperity are
unseen. That form constantly rose before him — he was
compelled to judge it. One evening in the course of that long
| exile which expiated past faults and lighted up the road to the")
I future, the fallen conqueror asked one of the few companions
of his capitivity if he could tell him what Jesus Christ really
was. The soldier begged to be excused ; he had been too
busy during his sojourn in the world to think about that
question. " What ! " sorrowfully replied the inquirer, " you
have been baptized in the Catholic Church, and you cannot
tell me, even here upon this rock which consumes us, what
Jesus Christ was ! Well, then, I will tell you ; " and, opening
the Gospel, not with his hands, but from a heart filled by it,
he compared Jesus Christ with himself and all the great
characters of history ; he developed the different characteristics
which distinguished Jesus Christ from all mankind ; and after
uttering a torrent of eloquence which no father of the Church
would have disclaimed, he ended with these words : " In fine,
I know men, and I say that Jesus Christ was not a man ! "
These words, gentlemen, sum up all I would say to you on
the inner life of Jesus Christ, and express the conclusion
which, sooner or later, every man arrives at who reads the
Gospel with just attention. You who are yet young have life

JESUS CHRIST. 23
before you ; you will see learned men, sages, princes, and
their ministers ; you will witness elevations and ruins ; sons
of time, time will initiate you into the hidden things of man ;
and when you have learned them, when you know the measure
of what is human, some day, perhaps, returning from those
heights for which you hoped, you will say also, " I know men,
and I say that Jesus Christ was not a man ! "
The day too will come, when upon the tomb of her great
captain, France will grave these words, and they will shine
there with more immortal lustre than the sun of the Pyramids
and Austerlitz !

THE
PUBLIC POWER OF JESUS CHRIST

My Lord — Gentlemen,
Jesus Christ declared that He was God, and by His
character He proved the sincerity of that declaration ; there
fore He was God. But is this all the proof of His divinity ?
Doubtless the first manifestation of beings endowed with in
telligence is their word, the affirmation which they give of
themselves ; doubtless the expression of what they are by their
moral physiognomy, or character, is the second and natural
manifestation of the same beings : but is this all ? Is there
nothing beyond this? And even should this demonstration
suffice as to the ordinary relations between men, will it be
sufficient when it is a question of intercourse between God and
men ? Evidently not. For it requires a certain amount of
penetration, and time also, in order to judge a character; a
moral physiognomy is not fully disclosed in a single day, and
when God appears, gentlemen, when He deigns to come to
us, it is manifest that, at the first glance, there should be in
His appearance something exclusive of doubt, or discussion,
or time, or even science, something recognisable immediately
by all; something, in a word, manifesting openly the public
power of God, and infallibly revealing His presence and action.
Even as there is a certain expression of the majesty of tem
poral sovereignty, there should be for God an eminent and
adequate means, by which, as soon as He appears, every
intelligent being, not in mad revolt against Him, should bend
before Him and exclaim : It is God ! What is this mode of
manifestation, which I have called the public power of God ?
In what does it consist ? Did Jesus Christ possess it ? What

JESUS CHRIST. 25
objections does it raise, and how are they answered ? Such,
gentlemen, is the vast field we are about to traverse to-day.
No being can manifest itself save by the elements contained
within itself, and which constitute its nature. Now all beings,
of what kind soever, contain but three elements, namely, sub
stance, force, and law ; substance, which is their centre of
being ; force, which is their action ; law, which is the measure
of their action. If we cast a glance upon the lowest in the
scale of beings, upon that which approaches nearest to nothing
ness, we shall find in it these three elements. Thus the atom
has a substance, something which adheres, which holds its
place, something which we cannot analyse, but which we have
called by a mysterious name, signifying that which is under
and sustains what is above. The atom possesses a resisting
force : in order to displace it, a movement, however slight it
may be, is required ; and without that movement it remains
stationary. It possesses a cohesive force by which its parts
hold together, a force of affinity by which it attracts other atoms
to itself ; for it is its vocation, as it is yours, to increase. It
possesses a force of passibility by which it receives light, heat,
and all the fluids of which its obscure, yet mysterious and pro
found life, has need. In fine, its substance and its force are
regulated by a law ; it is not alone in the world, it is connected
with other beings, it is subject to other influences, as its own
influence is exercised ; its action is measured, as the action of
others upon itself is measured. Substance, force, law; all
these are in an atom, and all these are in God, who is the
Father of the atom. God is the fulness of substance, the
fulness of force, the fulness of law ; He is infinite substance,
absolute force, eternal law. He is yet more : He is the centre
of all substances, their creator and preserver ; the centre of
all forces, their beginning and their end; the centre of all
laws, their principle, their sanction, and their majesty.
As beings are thus formed, from the atom even to God,
every being is able to manifest itself in a threefold manner,
namely, by its substance, by its force, or by its law. By its
substance : thus bodies appear to us ; by its force : thus the
soul reveals itself to us ; by its law : thus the heavenly bodies,
even when invisible, are anticipated by the astronomer through
the general movement that governs them, withholding or
bearing them away from our view. And consequently God
may manifest Himself as substance, as force, and as law ; as

26 THE PUBLIC POWER OF
the centre of all substances, of all forces, and of all laws.
For if an atom possesses the magnificent power of disclosing
itself, if from its very dust and nothingness it imposes itself
upon our vision, enters our academies, provokes discussion,
¦exhausts our learning for ages, how much more should God
possess the right and power to disclose Himself ! A being that
¦does not do this, is not. For the vocation of every being,
without exception, is to appear, to take a field of action and to
act in it ; and as there is no action without manifestation, to
appear is to live. And as God is life, His sole work is evidently
His appearing, radiating, conquering ; in a word, being in all
what He is, namely, the King of substances, the King of forces,
the King of laws.
It is true He now hides His substance from us men, and we
may exclaim with the prophet : " Verily, Thou art a hidden
God ! " * But if He withholds from us that direct vision of
Himself, it is not from weakness or from envy, it is from respect
for our liberty and for the very intercourse which He would
hold with us. Had we at once seen His substance, the over
whelming splendour of that manifestation would have taken
from our soul all its freedom of action ; we should have adored
God in spite of ourselves, whilst the adoration which God
claims from us, and which He has a right to claim, is an
adoration of choice and love, springing from our soul and
.reaching to his own. It was needful, then, that God should
manifest Himself without dazzling our vision and making us
the slaves of His beauty ; it was needful that we should see
Him without seeing Him, that we should be sure of His
presence without being oppressed by it-; and this is why He
has hidden His substance from us whilst He leaves to us His
light, as the sun sometimes gathers clouds to lessen his
splendour, remaining still visible in the midst of heaven.
If the manifestation of God by His substance would have
been too powerful for our liberty, there was another reason
against His manifesting Himself only by His law. The law of
God is truth, that is to say, the sum of all necessary and
possible relations, of all uncreated and creatable relations. In
¦revealing truth, God indeed reveals Himself to us, but under
a form which permits us easily to disregard Him, because we
•detach truth from the living source which bears it, and because
* Isaiah xiv. 15.

JESUS CHRIST. 27
¦we make of it, so to say, a creation, an idol of our own mind ;
or, being unable in certain cases to hail it as the offspring of
our own intelligence, we rid ourselves of it as a stranger who
offends and contradicts us. Doubtless, God is able to raise
truth to the state of prophecy, by announcing beforehand
relations that will result in the course of ages between events
and empires whose names do not yet exist ; but prophecy needs
time for its fulfilment and confirmation ; up to the latest
moment it remains suspended in history as a dream unworthy
of our attention, and, were it to apply to events too near at
hand, it would lose force, wanting anteriority. Therefore, even
in the prophetic state, truth would be insufficient as the in
stantaneous sign of the divine presence. So that, whilst the
manifestation of God by His substance would be too powerful,
that which He gives to us by His law, or truth, is too feeble to
produce immediate conviction.
Force then remains to God, as a means of revealing him
self with a degree of splendour which brings neither too much
nor too little light.
But God possesses force itself, and can exercise it in three
different orders : in the physical order, which includes all the
kingdoms of nature ; in the moral order, which includes what
ever relates to the soul ; in the social order, which comprises
the soul and the body ranged under the laws of unity. Now
God, by Jesus Christ, has visibly applied His force to the two
last orders, that is to say, to the soul and to society, as we
have shown in our preceding conferences in treating of the
virtues reserved to the action of Catholic doctrine, and of
the social effects produced by that same doctrine, the offspring
of Jesus Christ. This sign, however, was insufficient to form
at once a halo of divinity for Jesus Christ, when on His first
appearing among men, He had to present His credentials to
them in the name of the Father, of whom He called Himself
the august and only Son. The conversion of the soul, its
exaltation to the highest virtues, needs time, and the co
operation of man himself; the foundation of a visible society,
endowed with privileges of unity, universality, stability, holi
ness, needs yet more time, and the co-operation of an in
numerable multitude of men spread over the field of ages and
space. God does not create a society in a day, He does not
even so convert a soul ; and when perchance He works this last
prodigy, He who has been its object, and who has the most

28 THE PUBLIC POWER OF
steadfast consciousness thereof, does not suddenly become a
burning and a shining light, enlightening the world with the
splendour of His virtue. Men hide the mystery of God, and
keep it long from the eyes of the world ; like St. Paul, they
withdraw into the desert, and that desert — were it even the
busy throng — remains long in presence of a transfigured soul
before recognizing in it the divine sign.
What remains then to God, gentlemen, as His eminent mode
of appearing, His own and inimitable sign, the public expression
of His physiognomy in space and time ? There remains to Him
His physical force, or, in other words, His sovereignty over
nature, a sovereignty which, in the matter and order forming
its field of action, meets with no liberty to respect, no co
operation to solicit or wait for, but simply an immense energy,
whose instantaneous submission announces the Master of
heaven and earth to every man who is not afraid to encounter
God. The proper character of this sovereign act is that it
requires from the beholder neither study, nor science, nor any
preparation requiring time or distinction, but sincerity only.
It is so foreign to all human action that, at least, it confounds,
even when it does not produce conviction, so that the rebel
has no resource but silence against the upright man who
exclaims : Digitus Dei est hic ! * Therefore, human tongues,
the mysterious organs of truth, have given a singular name to
the act by which God exercises his sovereignty over nature,
and instantaneously manifests His presence to men : they have
called it a miracle, ;that is, the marvellous in the highest degree,
the act which constitutes the public power of God.
But does Jesus Christ bear upon His brow this sign of abso
lute force ? Did he work miracles ? Did He exercise the
public power of God ?
One day John the Baptist sent his disciples to ask him :
" Art Thou He that should come, or look we for another ? "
Jesus Christ answers them : " Go, and tell John what you have
heard and seen ; the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are
cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead rise again, to the poor the
Gospel is preached." f That is to say, Jesus Christ, the man
whom we have acknowledged as the most admirable character
shown in history, was not afraid to give as proof of His mission
and divinity, a whole series of miraculous acts wrought by Him-
* Exodus viii. 19. + St. Luke vii. 20-22.

JESUS CHRIST. 29
¦self, And indeed, the Gospel, from beginning to end, is a
series of simple sayings, which pierce to the very centre of the
soul, and of prodigious sayings, which agitate nature even to
its foundations. Vainly have men endeavoured to separate
these, and see two works in one single work; the Gospel
resists that analysis which pretends to extract from it the
moral substance and put aside the miraculous substance, to
take from the worker of miracles the support of the sage, and
from the sage the support of the worker of miracles. Both of
these remain firmly united against the wily efforts of Unbelief;
die doctrine supports the miracle, the miracle justifies the
doctrine, and the Gospel circulates in the world with an in
vincible character of unity, which permits and obtains for
Jesus Christ only absolute hatred or complete adoration.
This unity is of itself a demonstration for all who reflect
-seriously. Nevertheless, Unbelief, amazed at its powerlessness
to divide Jesus Christ, falls back upon itself, and anxiously
exclaims : Is it then really true that Jesus Christ gave sight to
the blind, made the lame to walk, cleansed the lepers, gave
hearing to the deaf, and life to the dead ? Is it true that He
acted as the Master of nature, and that daily, before the eyes of
the people, in the light of heaven, His creating hand proved that
a divine virtue dwelt in Him ? Is there not a horrible falsehood
engrafted upon the sincerity of that life ?
Gentlemen, the Gospel is from a period in history : it is
a history. The miracles of Jesus Christ were wrought in the
public squares, before multitudes of all conditions, before
numerous and bitter enemies. They formed the basis of a
teaching which divided a whole country, and which soon
divided the universe. If, notwithstanding the character of
truth which distinguishes the Gospel from all other books, you
suspect its testimony as the work of those who believed in
Jesus Christ, you cannot, by a contrary reason, suspect the
recitals and impressions of those who did not believe in the
new Master, and who everywhere persecuted His disciples, His.
doctrines, and even His name. A public discussion was raised,
a man called himself God ; He died for having done so ; His
nation, divided upon His tomb, appealed from that blood,
and from His nation men appealed to that blood shed, which
on all sides found adorers. Now publicity is a power which
forces the enemies of a cause to pronounce openly, and in
spite of themselves to concur in the authentic formation of a

30 THE PUBLIC POWER OF
history which they detest and would fain utterly destroy. It
is in vain ; publicity forces them, they are compelled to speak,
and even in calumniating they are compelled to speak enough
of truth to save it for ever from perishing. This it is, gentle
men, that saves history. Nothing in the world is more hated
and more feared ; the oppressors of nations and the oppressors
of God labour at nothing more vigorously than in endeavour
ing to prevent the existence of history ; they silence the four
winds of heaven against it ; they shut up their victim within
the narrow and deep walls of their dungeons ; they surround
it with cannon, lances, and all the instruments of menace and
fear ; but publicity is stronger than any empire ; it bears along
even those who hold it in execration ; it constrains them to
speak ; the cannon turn, the lances fall, and history passes on !
So, gentlemen, has the history of the miracles of Jesus.
Christ advanced ? It has advanced by His very enemies ; by
the Pharisees, who crucified Him, by the Pagan rationalists,
who crucify His memory. The deicidal Jews, in the face of
publicity filling the whole world, could not avoid expressing
their sentiments and opinions upon the miraculous life of
Christ ; they were compelled to pronounce an affirmation or a
denial, and a denial they dared not pronounce, because no one
in the world can impose absolute falsehood in regard to public
facts after the world has spoken. Absolute falsehood is no
more possible in the order of history than is absolute error in
the order of speculation. The Jews have perverted the miracles
of Jesus Christ ; they have not denied them ; they have written
that Jesus Christ assumed in the temple the incommunicable
name of God, and that by that sovereign name He commanded
nature. This explanation is deposited in the most grave
monuments of their tradition, and this is all they have been
able to do against the accusing memory of Jesus Christ, against
the blood which the whole universe reproached, and still
reproaches, them for shedding. But what more could they
do ? Publicity is master of men who have seen ; it becomes
changed into tradition upon their tomb, and pursues them from
age to age, from justice to justice, even to their latest posterity.
The Pagan rationalists came in their turn to deal with the
history of Jesus Christ. Doubtless they had taken no part in
His crucifixion, and it was not His blood that alarmed them •
but, with His blood, Jesus Christ had shed upon the world a
truth which condemned to nothingness the wisdom of the wise ;

JESUS CHRIST. 3*.
could the wise of this world forgive Him ? They also then
had to give a critical text of His life, and, in order to depreciate-
it, they had to employ all the resources which the traditions-
and discussions of their times afforded them. What have they
said of the miracles of Jesus Christ? What have Celsus,
Porphyrius, Julian — names for ever illustrious, because from
the earliest Christian ages they have been the heralds of the
Son of God in the incomparable offices of enmity — what have
they said of Him ? Have they denied that Jesus Christ wrought
miraculous works in support of His doctrine ? No more than
the Jews ; they have simply made a skilful magician of Him.
Why a magician, and not a sage ? What need was there of so
strange an expression? It is because history was there. It
was possible to pervert the miraculous works of Jesus Christ ;.
it was not possible to be silent in regard to them.
It is then clear, gentlemen, by the very testimony of the
enemies of Jesus Christ, that His preaching was accompanied
by superhuman prodigies. But we must not separate these
exterior incentives to faith, strong as they are, from the inti
mate character of the Gospel and Jesus Christ. In an edifice
all is bound together from the base to the summit. If Jesus-
Christ was sincere, as we have shown, if His nature was
stamped with the character of divine superiority, His sincerity
and His superiority call for confidence in His miracles, as well
as in the affirmations which he made of Himself. If Jesus
Christ did not speak falsely in declaring that He was God, by
a stronger reason He did not lie in acting as God. For it is
more shameful, more contrary to sincerity, to perform impos
tures, that is to say — pardon the expression, but by its force,
that very expression shows the scorn in which mankind holds-
imposture — it is more shameful to be a juggler than a knave.
The knave deceives only by his speech, the juggler adds
thereto miserable manipulations in order to dazzle the eyes of
ignorant spectators. It is a lie heaped upon a lie, an indignity
upon an indignity. And this is why human tongues — so skilful
in expressing scorn — have created that odious name of juggler,
to mark all who dare to employ illusion in aid of imposture.
The superiority of Jesus Christ is no less favourable to the
reality of His miracles than His sincerity. No grave and
learned man will ever employ juggles to support a doctrinal
teaching. For what is jugglery? It is the use of a power
unknown to the science of the times in which it is practised^

32 THE PUBLIC POWER OF
But science will not be slow to arrive at it; absent for a
moment, it is inevitable in the course of mankind ; a day
comes when it rises radiant, and, casting back its investigating
lustre upon the past, it judges, weighs, verifies all, and, whilst
it brings to the true works of genius or of the Divinity their
final consecration, it reduces to dust the puerile practices
which had imposed upon the faith of untaught generations.
Therefore nothing great in the world has ever been founded
upon impostures of this kind ; every work possessing any force
or dignity, even if not altogether free from falsehood, has
gathered its meed of stability from something ancient and
true. Mahomet is a memorable example of this. Author of
a religious revolution in a country unenlightened by science,
he employed every human means to insure success, but he
did not employ jugglery, because it is not a human means. I
have recently read through the Koran. Every twenty pages
Mahomet touches the question of miracles ; he objects, or he
is reproached with not performing them ; never does he once
venture to say that he had performed or ever would perform
them ; he constantly eludes the question. He invokes Abra
ham, Moses, all the patriarchs ; an event in his life when God
protected him ; a victory which had crowned his arms and
justified his doctrine ; he loudly affirms that God is God, and
that Mahomet is His prophet ; this is all. And this scorn of
miserable imposture, this respect for general ideas in regard to
Providence and traditional memorials, is not an insignificant
mark of his skill, and even of his genius.
And we are to believe that Jesus Christ, the author of the
Gospel, stooped to the most unworthy imitations of the
omnipotence of God, that He passed the time of His public
mission in deceiving the eyes of His contemporaries by
phantoms as despicable as they are powerless ! We are to
believe that such miserable trickery could have obtained the
greatest success of faith which the human race has ever
wrought ! It is not possible. Common sense, as well as
history, condemns such a supposition. The public life of
Jesus Christ answers to His inner life, and His inner life con
firms His public life. He declared Himself to be God, He
was believed to be God, He acted as God, and precisely be
cause that position is one of marvellous strength, men have been
forced to try their greatest efforts againstit ; history and common
sense speaking too loudly in favour of Jesus Christ, it was

JESUS CHRIST. 33
needful to have recourse to metaphysics and physics in order
to snatch from His hands at least the sceptre of miracles.
Let us see whether they have succeeded.
Two things are advanced against Him. First, Jesus Christ
wrought no miracles, because it is impossible. Secondly, His
working miracles is of no importance, since everybody can
work them, everybody has wrought them, everybody works them.
First, Jesus Christ wrought no miracles because it is im
possible. And why? Because nature is subject to general
laws, which make of its body a perfect and harmonious unity
where each part answers to all, so that if one single point were
violated the whole would at once perish. Order, even when it
comes from God, is not an arbitrary thing able to destroy or
change itself at will ; order necessarily excludes disorder, and
no greater disorder can be conceived in nature than that
sovereign action which would possess the faculty of destroying
its laws and its constitution. Miracles are impossible under
these two heads ; impossible as disorder, impossible because a
partial violation of nature would be its total destruction.
That is to say, gentlemen, that it is impossible for God to
manifest Himself by the single act which publicly and instan
taneously announces His presence, by the act of sovereignty.
Whilst the lowest in the scale of being has the right to appear
in the bosom of nature by the exercise of its proper force ;
whilst the grain of sand, called into the crucible of the chemist,
answers to His interrogations by characteristic signs which
range it in the registers of science, to God alone it should be
denied to manifest His force in the personal measure that
distinguishes Him and makes Him a separate being ! Not
only should God not have manifested Himself, but it must be
for ever impossible for Him to manifest Himself, in virtue even
of the order of which He is the Creator. To act, is to live ; to
appear, is to live ; to communicate, is to live ; but God can no
longer act, appear, communicate Himself; that is denied to
Him. Banished to the profound depths of His silent and
obscure eternity, if we interrogate Him, if we supplicate Him,
if we cry to Him, He can only say to us — supposing, however,
that He is able to answer us : " What would you have ? I
have made laws ! Ask of the sun and the stars, ask of the sea
and the sand upon its shores ; as for Me, My condition is fixed ;
I am nothing but repose, and the contemplative Servant of the
works of My hands 1 " D

34 THE PUBLIC POWER OF
Ah ! gentlemen, it is not thus that the whole human race
has hitherto understood God. Men have understood Him as
a free and sovereign being ; and, even if they have not always
had a correct knowledge of His nature, they have at least never
refused to Him power and goodness. In all times and places,
sure of these two attributes of their heavenly Father, they have
offered up their ever fervent prayer to Him ; they have asked
all from Him, and daily, upon their bended knees, they ask
Him to enlighten their minds, to give them uprightness of
heart, health of body, to preserve them from scourges, to give
them victory in war, prosperity in peace, the satisfaction of
every want in every state and condition.
There is perhaps some poor woman here who hardly
understands what I say. This morning she knelt by the bed
side of her sick child ; and, forsaken by all, without bread for
the day, she clasped her hands and called to Him who ripens
the corn and creates charity. " O Lord," said she, " come to
my help ; O Lord, make haste to help me ! " And even whilst
I speak, numberless voices are lifted up towards God from all
parts of the earth to ask from Him things in which nature alone
can do nothing, and in which those souls are persuaded that
God can do all. Who then is deceived here? Is it the
metaphysician, or the human race ? And how has nature
taught us to despise nature in order to trust in God ? For it
is not science that teaches us to pray, we pray in spite of
science ; and as there is nothing here below but science
nature, and God ; if we pray in spite of science, it must be
nature or God that teaches us to pray, and to believe with all
our heart in the miracles of divine power and goodness. After
this, whether nature become disorganised or not, or even if it
must perish whenever the finger of God touches it, it is
assuredly the very least concern to us. Nevertheless, out of
respect rfer certain minds, I will show that miracles do no
violence to the natural order.
Nature, as I have already said, possesses three elements •
namely, substances, forces, and laws. Substances are essentially
variable ; they change their form, their weight, combining and
separating at each moment. Forces bear the same character ¦
they increase and diminish, cohere, accumulate, or separate.'
They have nothing immutable but the mathematical lawsj
which at the same time govern forces and substances and
whence the order of the universe proceeds. The mobility of

JESUS CHRIST. 35
forces and substances spreads movement and life in nature ,
the immutability of mathematical laws' maintains there an
order which never fails. Without the first of these all would
be lifeless ; without the second all would be chaos. This
established, what does God do when He works a miracle?
Does He touch the principle of universal order, which is the
mathematical law? By no means. The mathematical law
appertains to the region of ideas — that is to say, to the region
of the eternal and the absolute; God can do nothing here, for
it is Himself. But He acts upon substances and upon forces
— upon substances which are created, upon forces which have
their root in His supreme will. Like ourselves, who, being
subject to the general combinations of nature, nevertheless draw
from our interior vitality movements which are in appearance
contrary to the laws of weight, God acts upon the universe as
we act upon our bodies. He applies somewhere the force
needful to produce there an unusual movement : it is a miracle,
because God alone, in the infinite fount of His will — which is
the centre of all created and possible forces — is able to draw
forth sufficient elements to act suddenly to this degree. If it
please Him to stop the sun — to use a common expression —
He opposes to its projective force, a force which counter
balances it, and which, by virtue even of the mathematical
law, produces repose. It is not more difficult for Him to stop
the whole movement of the universe.
It is the same with all other miracles ; it is a question of
force, the use of which, so far from doing violence to the
physical order — which indeed would be of little moment —
returns to it of its own accord, and, moreover, maintains upon
earth the moral and religious order, without which the physical
order would not exist.
This objection answered, gentlemen, let us proceed to ex
amine the second. We are told that miracles prove nothing,
because all doctrines have miracles in their favour, and because,
by the help of a certain occult science, it is easy to perform
them. I boldly deny that any historical doctrine, that is, any
doctrine founded in the full light of history by men authen
tically known, possesses miraculous works for its basis. At
the present time, we have no example of it ; no one, before our
eyes, among so many instructors of the human race whom we
see around us, has as yet dared to promise us the exercise of
D 2

j6 THE PUBLIC POWER OP
a. power superior to the ordinary power which we dispose of.
No one of our contemporaries has appeared in public giving
sight to the blind and raising the dead to life. Extravagance
has reached ideas and style only ; it has not gone beyond.
Returning from the present age back to Jesus Christ, we find
no one, amongst the innumerable multitude of celebrated
heresiarchs, who has been able to boast that he could com
mand nature, and place the inspirations of his rebellious pride
under the protection of miracles. Mahomet, at the same time
heretic and unbeliever, did not attempt it any more than the
others : this I have already said, and the Koran will more fully
prove it to any one who will take the pains to read that
plagiarism of the Bible made by a student of rhetoric at Mecca.
Beyond Jesus Christ, in the ages claimed by history, what
remains, if we put aside Moses and the prophets — that is, the
very ancestors of Jesus Christ? Shall we notice certain
strange facts connected with Greece and Rome? Shall
we speak of that augur, who, says Livy, cut a stone with a
razor ; or of that vestal who drew along a vessel by her
girdle, or even of the blind man cured by Vespasian?
These facts, whatever they may be, are isolated and belong
to no doctrine ; they have provoked no discussion in
the world, and have established nothing ; they are not
doctrinal facts. Now we are treating of miracles which have
founded religious doctrines — the only miracles worthy of con
sideration ; for it is evident that if God manifests himself by
acts of sovereignty, it must be for some great cause, worthy of
himself and worthy of us, that is to say, for a cause which
affects the eternal destinies of the whole human race. This
places out of the question altogether all isolated facts, such as
those related in the life of Apollonius of Thyana.
This personage is of the first century of the Christian era,
and his life was written at a much later period by an Alex
andrian philosopher called Philostratus, who designed to make
of it a rival to the Gospel, and of Apollonius himself the
counterpart of Jesus Christ. A most singular physiognomy
is here presented to us, but that is all. What has Apollonius
of Thyana accomplished in regard to doctrine? Where are
his writings, his social works, the traces of his passage upon
earth? He died on the morrow of his life. Instead of certain
equivocal facts, had he removed mountains during his life, it

TESUS CHRIST. 37
would but have been a literary curiosity, an accident, a man,
nothing. Where then shall we look for doctrines founded in the
light of history upon miraculous events ? Where in the his
torical world is there another omnipotence than that of Jesus
Christ? Where do we find other miracles than His and those
of the saints who have chosen Him for their Master, and who
have derived from Him the power to continue what He had
begun ? Nothing appears upon the horizon ; Jesus Christ
alone remains, and His enemies, eternally attacking Him, are
able to bring against Him nothing but doubts, and not a single
fact equal or even analogous to Him.
But do there not at least exist in nature certain occult
forces which have since been made known to us, and
which Jesus Christ might have employed ? I will name,
gentlemen, the occult forces alluded to, and I will do so
without any hesitation ; they are called magnetic forces.
And I might easily disembarrass myself of them, since
science does not yet recognise them, and even proscribes
them. Nevertheless I choose rather to obey my conscience
than science. You invoke then the magnetic forces;
I believe in them sincerely, firmly; I believe that their
effects have been proved, although in a manner which is as
yet incomplete, and probably will ever remain so, by instructed,
sincere, and even by Christian men ; I believe that these effects,
in the great generality of cases, are purely natural ; I believe
that their secret has never been lost to the world, that it has
been transmitted from age to age, that it has occasioned a
multitude of mysterious actions whose trace is easily distin
guished, and that it has now only left the shade of hidden trans
missions because this age has borne upon its brow the sign of
publicity. I believe all this. Yes, gentlemen, by a divine
preparation against the pride of materialism, by an insult to
science, which dates from a more remote epoch than we can
reach, God has willed that there should be irregular forces in
nature not reducible to precise formulae, almost beyond the
reach of scientific verification. He has so willed it, in order to
prove to men who slumber in the darkness of the senses, that
even independently of religion, there remained within us rays
of a higher order, fearful gleams cast upon the invisible world,
a kind of crater by which our soul, freed for a moment from

38 THE PUBLIC POWER OF
the terrible bonds of the body, flies away into spaces which it
cannot fathom, from whence it brings back no remembrance,
but which give it a sufficient warning that the present order
hides a future order before which ours is but nothingness.
All this I believe is true; but it is also true that these
obscure forces are confined within limits which show no
sovereignty over the natural order. Plunged into a factitious
sleep man sees through opaque bodies at certain distances ; he
names remedies for soothing and even for healing the diseases
of the body ; he seems to know things that he knew not, and
that he forgets on the instant of his waking ; by his will he
exercises great empire over those with whom he is in magnetic
communication ; all this is difficult, painful, mixed up with
uncertainty and prostration. It is a phenomenon of vision
much more than of operation, a phenomenon which belongs to
the prophetic and not to the miraculous order. A sudden cure,
an evident act of sovereignty, has nowhere been witnessed.
Even in the prophetic order, nothing is more pitiful.
It would seem that this extraordinary vision should at least
reveal to us something of that future which may be called the
present future. It does nothing of this. What has magnetism
foretold during the last fifty years ? Let it tell us, not what
will happen in a thousand years, not what will happen
the day after to-morrow even, but what will happen to-morrow
morning. All those who dispose of our destinies are living;
they speak, they write, they alarm our susceptibility ; but
let them show us the certain result of their action in a single
public manner. Alas ! magnetism, which was to change the
world, has not even been able to become an agent of police ;
it strikes the imagination as much by its sterility as by its
singularity. It is not a principle ; it is a ruin. Thus, on the
desolate banks of the Euphrates, in the place where Babylon
once stood, and where that famous tower was begun which, to
speak like Bossuet, was to bear even to heaven the testimony
of the antique power of man, the traveller finds ruins blasted
by the thunderbolt, and almost superhuman in their magnitude.
He stoops, and eagerly gathers up a fragment of brick; he
discovers characters upon it which belong, doubtless, to the
primitive writing of the human race ; but vain are his efforts to
decipher them ; the sacred fragment falls back again from his
hands upon the colossus calcined by fire : it is nothing now
but a broken tile, which even curiosity despises.

JESUS CHRIST. 39
I look around, gentlemen. I see nothing more : Jesus
Christ is alone.
Perhaps, however, you may yet say to me : If Jesus Christ
wrought miracles during His life, and even in the early days of
the Church, why does He do so no longer ? Why ? Alas ! gentle
men, He works miracles every di y, but y ju do not see them.
He works them with less profusion, because the moral and social
miracle, the miracle which needed time, is wrought, and before
your eyes. When Jesus Christ laid the foundations of His
Church, it was needful for Him to obtain faith in a work then
commencing ; now it is formed, although not yet finished : you
behold it, you touch it, you compare it, you measure it, you
judge whether it is a human work. Why should God be
prodigal of miracles to those who do not see the miracle ?
Why, for instance, should I lead you to the mountains of the
Tyrol, to see prodigies which a hundred thousand of your con
temporaries have witnessed there during the last fifteen years ?
Why should I pick up a stone in the quarry when the Church
is built ? The monument of God is standing ; every power has
touched it, every science has scrutinized it, every blasphemy
has cursed it ; examine it well, it is there before you. Between
earth and heaven, as says *he Comte de Maistre, it has been
suspended these eighteen centuries ; if you do not see it, what
would you see ? In a celebrated parable Jesus Christ speaks
of a certain rich man who said to Abraham : " Send someone
from the dead to my brethren." And Abraham answers : " If
they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they
believe, though one rose from the dead."* The Church is
Moses, the Church is all the prophets, the Church is the living
miracle : he who sees not the living, how should he see the
dead? • St. Luke xvi. 31.

THE FOUNDATION OF THE REIGN
OF JESUS CHRIST.

My Lord — Gentlemen,
We have seen that in His public as well as in His inner life,
Jesus Christ lived as God. But to live is only the first act of
life, the second act of life is that of outliving ourselves. For
all life has an object, and it is the accomplishment of that
object which judges the life. Consequently, it is not enough
for me to have proved to you even with the highest evidence
that the inner life of Jesus Christ, and His public life possessed
a divine character ; for if that life has not attained its object, if
it has left no traces, whatever else we may think of it, it has
been vain. It is needful then that Jesus Christ, after having
lived as God, should have perpetuated himself as God ; if He
has not done this, all the conclusion we should be able to draw
from that disproportion between His life and the effects of
His life, would be that He was the most magnificent and the
most inexplicable nothing that the world has ever seen. But
what had Jesus Christ to do in order to perpetuate Himself as
God ? He had to fulfil the object of His life, such as He had
publicly announced and represented it, which was to found
here below the kingdom of God. "After John was put in
prison," says the evangelist St. Mark, " Jesus came into
Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, and
saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at
hand : repent ye, and believe the gospel." * And sending forth
His disciples to take their part in the apostolate, He thus set
forth their mission : " Into whatsoever city ye enter, and they
* St. Mark i. 14, 15.

JESUS CHRIST. 41
receive you, eat such things as are set before you : and heal
the sick that are therein, and say unto them : The kingdom of
God is come nigh unto you. But into whatsoever city ye
shall enter, and they receive you not, go your ways out into the
streets of the same, and say, Even the very dust of your city,
which cleaveth to us, do we wipe off against you : yet know
this, that the kingdom of God is come nigh unto you." *
And what was this kingdom of God preached by Jesus Christ,
as being the object of His coming upon earth ? It was
Himself, inasmuch as that He was to be recognised as God,
loved as God, adored as God, the founder and chief of a
universal society, of which His divinity was to be the corner
stone through faith, love, and adoration. I ask you, gentlemen,
is this work accomplished ? Has Jesus Christ, living and dead,
founded here below a kingdom of which He is the God ? Has
He founded the kingdom of souls? Is He amongst us the
one and only King of souls ? I no longer need to demonstrate
this ; during ten years I have shown its marvels to you ; and
had I not done so, this spiritual kingdom is before your eyes,
many among you are its members and its subjects ; it is a
thing that speaks of itself and is above all demonstration.
Yes, there exists in the world — in this world of mire and
change — a kingdom of souls wherein God is worshipped in
spirit and in truth, where men wrestle with flesh and blood,
and pride ; where nothing resembles what is elsewhere to be
found, and of which Jesus Christ is the author, the chief, the |
king, the God. And as the angel of the Apocalypse, on
beholding the last triumph of that dominion, proclaimed its
glory beforehand by that unparalleled expression uttered before
astonished worlds : Factum est — "Itisdone!"f so, henceforth,
as a disciple of Jesus Christ, a son of this kingdom, an adorer
of the King of souls, I say also to you : Factum est — " It-
is done ! "
The fact is then no longer in question between us ; it is
proved, it is palpable, it is here before us, and I may thus
conclude : " After having lived as God, Jesus Christ has
perpetuated Himself as God." But it may not be unprofitable
to show you how greatly this work surpasses all created power ;
and I will endeavour to do this by exposing to you the double
difficulty which Jesus Christ had to overcome. I will call one
* St. Luke x. 8-1 1. + Apocalypse xi. 15,

42 THE FOUNDATION OF THE REIGN OF
of these the inner difficulty, and the other the public difficulty ;
their explanation will occupy the hour which God now permits
me to devote to you.
The first condition of the kingdom of souls and of its
establishment was that of obtaining faith in its founder, that
is to say, that Jesus Christ should become for an innumerable
multitude of men the rule of all their thoughts, and that,
renouncing themselves in regard to their most necessary and
most profound attribute — -which is their own judgment — they
should accept that of Jesus Christ as their own, even to the
point of being able to say with St. Paul: "I live; yet not I,
but Christ liveth in me." * Not, gentlemen, that Jesus Christ
required from us the sacrifice of our reason in order to
establish His reign by faith ; for He is Himself reason, and it
is He who gives us ours by a reflection of His own, as it is
expressly written in the Gospel of St. John. But He had to
require from us the sacrifice of our own judgment, which is a
very different thing from the sacrifice of our reason. In fact,
reason does not exist in us in its pure state; were it so,
enlightened as we should be by a single and an undivided light,
we should advance in the most perfect unanimity. Instead
of this, although participating in reason, one and universal,
without which we should not be intelligent beings, we mix up
with it weaknesses, obscurities, habits, resolutions, numberless
mysterious circumvallations which bar up its great outlets,
lessen its light, and make of our reason that limited ahd
personal thing which we call private judgment. It is this
judgment, the result of our servitude and liberty, which divides
men in the house of their common mother, and hinders them
from founding here below, by themselves, the holy republic of
truth. We cleave, in fact, to our own judgment in a twofold
manner, because it is based upon reason, and nothing is more
just than to hold to reason ; and we cleave to it still more,
perhaps, by that individuality which distinguishes us, and
which is made up of the innumerable impressions which the
ebb and flow of the intelligence have deposited in us from
the day when we first exercised that admirable faculty of seeing,
hearing, judging, reasoning, and feeling. Now, by the faith
in Jesus Christ, necessary to the constitution of the kingdom
of souls, we must abdicate that personal judgment, which is so
* Gal. ii. 20.

JESUS CHRIST. 43
natural and so dear to us ; we must found our reason in the
superior reason of Christ, we must break in pieces the personal
mould — more or less false and narrow — which makes us what
we are, and enter into the wide and deep mould whence the
Gospel has come, and which is the very mind of Jesus Christ.
This sacrifice, gentlemen, is infinitely painful to us, because,
in order to tear us from ourselves, it touches the root of our
spiritual being. It is still more painful under another head.
Not only do we cleave to ourselves as nature and liberty have
made us, but we strive also to impose ourselves upon others,
to become their models, their masters, and to create a kingdom
of minds in order to govern them. In whatever degree man
may have received from Heaven an elevated mind, this is his
propensity ; in the mental order, as in all the orders of action,
the will of man is to reign. If he be favoured by what is
called birth, or fortune, or power, his will is to be supreme in
them; in fine, if he be gifted in the intellectual order, he
thirsts to govern minds. This last royalty is the most courted
of all, and its most absolute sovereigns are not satisfied if they
do not bring all minds into subjection to their own. When,
therefore, Jesus Christ requires from us the sacrifice of our
judgment to His supreme reason, He requires from us the
abdication of the royalty which we have most at heart ; He
enters into a conspiracy, the object of which is to humble
us before the most rightful throne to which we could aspire :
for what sovereignty is more lawful than the sovereignty of
the mind — that gift which does not come to us from chance or
election, or the efforts of others, but from our own selves, from
what is sown in us by nature and cultivated by us ? And in
proportion as we possess this, whether by science or philosophy,
so are we the more incensed against that usurper called Christ,
who pretends to nothing less than to set up His mind in the
place of our own, than to cause us to think His thoughts and
speak His words. This, gentlemen, is the secret of that
aversion which so many learned men and philosophers feel
towards Jesus Christ ; they are men who will not submit to be
dethroned, and, naturally, they are in the right.
Nevertheless, it has been necessary that, for eighteen
centuries, all of us, whoever we may be, who are the children
of Christ, should consent to be dethroned, to become little, to
be taught, not only during our childhood, but throughout our
lives, and, laden with years and honours, having governed

44 THE FOUNDATION OF THE REIGN OF
men otherwise than by the mind, in our last moments, when
about to appear before God, we have again been required to
abdicate that reign of the judgment, so dear to pride, in order
to repose in Jesus Christ as little children, and charge Him to
bear us in His blessed hands to the throne of that pure and
eternal reason, who is God His Father.
None other upon earth, gentlemen, none other, has ob
tained that supreme dictatorship of the understanding.
Tyrants have oppressed human thought by hindering its
manifestation, they have never governed it ; it eludes all the
devices of the most subtle rule. Sages have formed schools,
but ephemeral schools, whose laws have been disowned even
by their disciples. Should we wonder thereat ? The disciple
of the sage is a man like himself; he idolises the idea of the mas
ter until the day comes when his own idea, ripe for an act of
legitimate ingratitude, enables him to attain to the honours of
teaching, and mark his place in the history of the unstable
dynasties of human knowledge. The religious sects, although
standing upon more solid ground, have, however, met with no
better success. Heresy leaves us our own judgment, Pro
testantism leaves us our own judgment ; all these doctrines, so
far from enchaining faith, have had for object its emancipation.
Even Mahometanism, like idolatry beforehand, was unable to
constitute a doctrinal authority, and consequently it leaves its
followers to the chance of their personal direction. All, save
Christ, either leave to us or restore to us our judgment, and
here lies the eternal charm of error. What do we now hear
around us? What does the present age, uncertain of its
course, and almost alike incapable of boldness in evil and
in good, demand of Christ with supplication? Is it not
to slacken the bonds of His rule, to retrench certain articles of
the ancient Christian constitution, to revise the primitive pact
of the Gospel, to sign, in fine, a compromise between time
and eternity ? But Christ smiles at those frail desires which
do not spring from entire obedience to His adorable reason ;
between Him and ourselves, nothing can exist but Himself
or ourselves, the abdication of our own judgment, or the reign
of our own judgment : between these we have to choose.
It is not even enough for Jesus Christ to set up His
judgment in place of our own; as King of our minds, He
is as yet only at the beginning of His ambition ; He requires
more than our minds; He requires our hearts; He requires

JESUS CHRIST. 4S
affection. And what affection, great God? A love which is
the fulness of human love, and before which all history of love
is as nothing. And that you may judge of what a prodigy
this is, let us examine closely the difficulty which we ourselves
find in exciting love during our lives.
Hardly has the flower of sentiment germinated within
us before we seek in the companions of our youth sympathies
which seize upon our hearts, and draw them forth from their
dear and lonely solitude. Thence, in the history of all
generous lives, come those youthful times, those early re
membrances, which none other will ever efface, and which,
even in extreme old age, leave in our souls a perfume of
the past. Yet, notwithstanding the strength of these young
ties, the simple course of time suspends their progress :
our eyes, in growing stronger, become less sensible to the
beauties of our age, something no longer of childhood delivers
us from that first charm, which perhaps none will ever equal,
but which no longer suffices for us. Affection cools into grave
and virile confidence, and our soul, having mounted a step
upon the cycle of life, needs a new attraction, which, in filling
it, brings it into subjection. Shall I pronounce its name?
And why not? There are two things before which, by the
help of God, I will never shrink, namely, duty and necessity.
It is needful in my discourse that I should pronounce the
name, too much profaned, of the second sentiment of man ;
I name it then, and I say, that man rising from youth to
manhood, needs an attraction capable at the same time of
satisfying his youth and his strength, his need of renovation
and of future. God has prepared for him love ; which, if
it be true, that is to say pure, should complete the education
of his life and render him worthy of having a posterity.
But, O weakness of our nature ! the cares of manhood soon
furrow our brow, and its wrinkles stamp upon it a worthy
testimony to thought ; what more do we need ? Henceforth,
incapable of obtaining the interchange of an infatuation
already appeased for us, and which no longer possesses
illusions enough for its own nourishment, we rest in an
attachment more calm, more serene, still possessing its charm,
but which no longer merits to be compared to the ardour
of that passion which I have just called by its proper name.
All the resources of the soul are not, however, yet exhausted:
as the offspring of eternal love, the genius of its source inspires

46 THE FOUNDATION OF THE REIGN OF
it even unto the end. With the first shadows of age the senti
ment of paternity descends into our heart, and takes possession
of the void left there by its former affections. It is not a state
of decadence — beware of thinking so ; after the regard of God
upon the world, nothing is more beautiful than the regard of
the aged upon the young, so pure is it, so tender, so dis
interested, and it marks in our life the very point of perfection
and of the highest likeness to God. The body declines with
age, the mind perhaps also, but not the spul whereby we love.
Paternity is as superior to love as love itself is superior to
affection. Paternity is the crown of life. It would be full and
stainless love, if from the child to the father there were the
same equal return as from friend to friend, from the wife to the
husband. But it is not so. When we were children we were
loved more than we loved, and, having grown old, we also love
more than we are loved. We must not complain of it. Your
children take the very road upon which you have passed before
them, the road of affection, the road of love — eager courses
which do not permit them to reward that grey-haired passion
which we call paternity. It is the honour of man to find again
in his children the ingratitude which he showed to his fathers,
and thus to end, like God, by a disinterested sentiment.
But it is nevertheless true that, although pursuing love all
our lives, we never obtain it save in an imperfect manner, and
which wounds our hearts. And even had we obtained it during
life, what would remain of it to us after death ? I know that
fond prayers may follow us beyond this world, that our names
may still be pronounced in pious remembrance; but soon
heaven and earth will have advanced another step ; then comes
oblivion, silence dwells upon us, the ethereal breeze of love
passes over our tomb no more. It is gone, it is gone for ever ;
and such is the history of man in regard to love.
I am wrong, gentlemen; there is a Man whose tomb is
guarded by love, there is a Man whose sepulchre is not only
glorious, as a prophet declared, but whose sepulchre is
loved. There is a Man whose ashes, after eighteen centuries,
have not grown cold ; who daily lives again in the thoughts of
an innumerable multitude of men ; who is visited in His cradle
by shepherds and by kings, who vie with each other in bringing
to Him gold and frankincense and myrrh. There is a Man
whose steps are unweariedly retrodden by a large portion of
mankind, and who, although no longer present, is followed by

TESUS CHRIST. 47
that throng in all the scenes of His bygone pilgrimage, upon the
knees of His mother, by the borders of the lakes, to the tops of
the mountains, in the byways of the valleys, under the shade of
the olive-trees, in the still solitude of the deserts. There is a
Man, dead and buried, whose sleep and whose awaking have
ever eager watchers, whose every word still vibrates and pro
duces more than love, produces virtues fructifying in love.
There is a Man, who eighteen centuries ago was nailed to a
gibbet, and whom millions of adorers daily detach from this
throne of His suffering, and, kneeling before Him, prostrating
themselves as low as they can without shame, there, upon the
earth, they kiss His bleeding feet with unspeakable ardour.
There is a Man, who was scourged, killed, crucified, whom an
ineffable passion raises from death and infamy, and exalts to
the glory of love unfailing which finds in Him peace, honour,
joy, and even ecstasy. There is a Man, pursued in His sufferings
and in His tomb by undying hatred, and who, demanding
apostles and martyrs from all posterity, finds apostles and
martyrs in all generations. There is a Man, in fine, and one
only, who has founded His love upon earth, and that Man is
thyself, O Jesus ! who hast been pleased to baptize me, to
anoint me, to consecrate me in Thy love, and whose name
alone now opens my very heart, and draws from it those accents
which overpower me and raise me above myself.
But among great men who are loved ? Among warriors ?
Is it Alexander? Caesar? Charlemagne? Among sages?
Aristotle ? Plato ? Who is loved among great men ? Who ?
Name me even one ; name me a single man who has died and
left love upon his tomb. Mahomet is venerated by Mussul
mans ; he is not loved. No feeling of love has ever touched the
heart of a Mussulman repeating his maxim : " God is God,
and Mahomet is His prophet." One Man alone has gathered
from all ages a love which never fails; Jesus Christ is the
sovereign Lord of hearts as He is of minds, and by a grace con
firmatory of that which belongs only to Him, He has given to
His saints also the privilege of producing in men a pious and
faithful remembrance.
Yet even this is not all ; the kingdom of souls is not yet
established. Jesus Christ, being God, should not be satisfied
with steadfast faith and immortal love ; He must exact adoration.
Adoration is the annihilation of one's self before a superior
being; and this sentiment, gentlemen, is not a stranger to us.

48 THE FOUNDATION OF THE REIGN OF
It lies, like all the others, in the very depth of our nature, and
plays a more important part there than you are perhaps aware
of. Let us not disguise this truth from ourselves; all of us,
more or less, desire to be adored. It is this innate thirst for
adoration which has produced every tyranny. You sometimes
wonder that a prince should weave together numberless
intrigues in order to emancipate himself from human and
divine laws ; that he should add violence to cunning, shed
streams of blood and march onward to the execration of man
kind ; you ask yourselves why he does this. Ah ! gentlemen,
for the very natural object of being adored, of seeing every
thought subject to his own, every will in conformity to his will,
every right, every duty emanating from him, and even the
bodies of men bent like slaves before his mortal body. Such
is the depth of our heart, as was Satan's. But by a counter
poise due to that frightful malady of pride, we can only desire
adoration for ourselves by abhorring the adoration of others.
Thence springs the execration that follows despotism. Man
kind, abased by a power despising all law, concentrates its'
secret indignation within itself, awaits the inevitable day of the
despot's weakness, and, when that day comes, it turns upon and
tramples under foot the vile creature who had disdained it even
to demanding incense from it. A great orator once said to a
celebrated tribune : " There is but one step from the Capitol to
the Tarpeian rock." I shall say with as much truth, although
in less grand expressions : There is but one step from the altar
to the common sewer. Whosoever has been adored will sooner
or later be hurled by the hand of the people from the lofty
summit of divine majesty usurped, to the execration of eternal
opprobrium. Such do we find history — that power charged with
the promulgation of the judgments of God upon the pride of man.
In spite of history, however, Jesus Christ is adored. A
man, mortal and dead, He has obtained adoration which still
endures, and of which the world offers no other example.
What emperor has held His temples and His statues ? What
has become of all that population of gods created by adulation ?
Their dust even no longer exists, and the surviving remembrance
of them serves but to excite our wonder at the extravagance
of men and the justice of God. Jesus Christ alone remains
standing upon His altars, not in a corner of the world, but
over the whole earth, and among nations celebrated by the
cultivation of the mind. The greatest monuments of art shelter

JESUS CHRIST. 49
His sacred images ; the most magnificent ceremonies assemble
the people under the influence of His name ; poetry, music,
painting, sculpture, exhaust their resources to proclaim His
glory and to offer Him incense worthy of the adoration which
ages have consecrated to Him. And yet, upon what throne do
they adore Him ? Upon a cross ! Upon a cross ? They adore
Him under the mean appearances of bread and wine ! Here,
thought becomes altogether confounded. It would seem that
this man has taken delight in abusing His strange power, and
in insulting mankind by prostrating them in wonder before the
most vain shadows. Having by His crucifixion descended
lower than death He made even of ignominy the throne of
His divinity; and, not satisfied with this triumph, He willed
that we should acknowledge His supreme essence and His
eternal life by an adoration which is a startling contradiction
to our senses ! Can such success in such daring be in any way
understood ?
It is true many have endeavoured to overthrow His altars ;
but their powerlessness has but served to confirm His glory.
At each outrage He has seemed to grow greater; genius
has protected Him against genius, science against science,
empire against empire; whatever arms have been uplifted
against Him He has made His own; and when apparently
vanquished, the world has still beheld Him calm, serene,
Master, adored !
Thus has He founded the kingdom of souls by a faith
which costs us the sacrifice of our own judgment, by a love
which exceeds all love, by an adoration which we have given
to Him alone ; a triple mystery of a force which reveals His
divinity to us, and which will yet more clearly reveal it when
we shall have taken account of the public difficulty that stood
in the way of the establishment of this supernatural kingdom.
The place was filled, gentlemen, when Jesus Christ came
into the world ; the place was filled because it is never void.
Even had He pretended to establish between Himself and
us secret relations only, a kind of obscure worship, this design
would sooner or later have encountered fears and jealousies,
manifested by public opposition. But Jesus Christ was far
from desiring to hide His reign ; He had said : " That which you
hear in the - ear, preach ye upon the housetops ; " * and He
* St. Matt. a. 27.

50 THE FOUNDATION OF THE REIGN OF
Himself, the enemy of all mysterious initiation, had constantly
spoken and acted before the eyes of the multitude and the
authorities. Fie willed a visible reign, a social constitution
of His doctrine, a recognised priesthood, temples, laws, rights ;
and consequently it was inevitable that He should find in
His way the religious and political establishment which preceded
Him. That establishment had two names ; it was called idolatry,
and the Roman Empire. Idolatry was the worship that as
sembled the universe under one and the same religious form ;
the Roman Empire was the power that governed all known
mankind, or nearly so. The one and the other were incom
patible with the establishment of the reign of Jesus Christ, and
that reign could only begin by abolishing idolatry as a false
religion, and by modifying the Roman Empire so as to fit
it for the laws promulgated by the Gospel.
You have, perhaps, hitherto considered idolatry as a
religious organization easy to overthrow ; you have greatly
deceived yourselves. Of all the forms of worship that have
taken possession of man, none, save Christianity, has possessed
more extent and solidity than idolatry. This is because it fully
satisfied the three great passions of man. What are these three
passions ? The first, and perhaps it will surprise you, the first
is the religious passion, the want of intercourse with God. Yes,
gentlemen, the religious passion precedes all others, even the pas
sion of sensuality. For sensuality touches only the senses which
are fragile, which soon become exhausted, which tire of them
selves ; while the religious want, a sort of divine hunger, has
its source in the most profound depths of our being, and
gathers nourishment there from all those miseries which excite
in us a continuous distaste for the present life. Even pride
comes but after it; however active it may be, it is subject here
below to too many humiliations not to second and bear before
itself in our soul a better and a gentler sentiment, that which
draws us near to God, and causes us to seek our own dignity
in his greatness. Religion is the first and oldest friend of
man ; even when he wounds it, he still respects and cultivates
secret intimacies with it. Let not the state of our country,
gentlemen, deceive us on this point; do not think because
there are some millions of men around us who are besotted
in practical atheism, that this is the natural condition of
the human race. It is the result of extraordinary circumstances,
and notwithstanding the irreligion of some of her children]

JESUS CHRIST. 51
this same France has never for a single day ceased to bear
in her glorious womb a multitude of souls who serve God
ardently, and honour their faith by works known throughout
the world.
Now, idolatry, in spite of its slight doctrinal character, gave
satisfaction to the religious want ; it had temples, altars, a
priesthood, sacrifices, prayeis, public and pompous ceremonies,
a very great station in the world, and the shreds of its mythology
still contained sufficient remembrance of God to keep the soul
from fasting and without food.
But it must not be forgotten that idolatry, in giving satis
faction to the elevated inclinations of our nature, did not
disdain the most abject, and abundantly dispensed sacred
nourishment to them. A most profound and subtle art had
blended together God and matter, religion and sensuality,
causing grave thoughts and shameful solicitations to descend
from the same altars. The idolater had all in his gods ; what
ever he willed, heaven obeyed his desires. What a master
piece, had heaven in its turn been obeyed ! In addition, the
third passion of man, the pride of domination, found also in
this worship, which was erudite by its very degradation, an
ample satisfaction. Idolatry was not distinct from the empire ;
the prince, the senate, or the people, conferred the sacerdotal
magistracy, named the pontiffs, regulated the ceremonies, took
pleasure in covering the robe of their consuls with the mantle
of their gods. Religion was country also. The fasces and
the altars were seen advancing together before the republic :
the fasces, the symbol of its justice and power; the altars, the
symbol of that mysterious alliance which united the destinies
of the State to the very destinies of the gods.
No, you will never adequately represent to yourselves the
force of that institution. Ah ! if a pagan ceremony were to
rise up again before you ; if you could see all Rome mounting
to the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, that concourse of people,
those legions, that senate, all those patriotic memorials mount
ing with them, and all together bearing to the gods the new
victory of Rome ! If you could hear the silence and the
sound of unanimity, that hum of all the passions convinced of
their rights and satisfied with their triumph, pride as well as
sensuality, sensuality as well as religion, the elevated and the
abject, heaven and earth, all at once, all in a single day and in
a single action : if you had seen and heard this, you, perhaps, e a

52 THE FOUNDATION OF THE REIGN OF
yielding to that total intoxication of the human faculties, would
for a moment have bowed the head, and adored in the hands
of Rome the antique gods of the world !
However, they were not to be adored, they were to be
destroyed ; such was the order of Jesus Christ. They were to
be destroyed throughout the world, since the whole world was
subject to idolatry. And what was to replace it ? A Man,
humbled even to the punishment of slaves ; a Man, come
from a country upon which the Romans showered floods of
ridicule with oppression ; a Jew, and a Jew crucified ! This
is what the fishermen of Judssa brought to Rome, to the
Capitol, to replace the statue of Jupiter Capitolinus ! Judge.
then ! Here was ignominy instead of greatness, penance and
mortification instead of sensuality. Penance and mortification;
what words ! After eighteen centuries of naturalization, I
hardly dare to pronounce them before you, without disguising
them to your ears, which have nevertheless been nourished by
the language of the Gospel ; and it was necessary to reveal
these to the Romans ! It was necessary to say to them : We
bring you a religion all pure and holy, founded upon the im
molation of the body by chastity, and not only by chastity,
which is only a simple retrenchment, but by the direct hatred
of the senses. We come, with the scourge in our hands, to
teach you to treat your body as a slave, because it is the slave
of the most vile inclinations, and because you can only deliver
your souls from it by keeping it in the respect and chastise
ment of obedience. It was necessary to say these things to a
people puffed up by seven centuries of arrogance and domina
tion, plunged in sensuality as well as in pride, and accustomed
to find in their gods, which were to be destroyed, the justifica
tion of their pompous ignominy. But Jesus Christ had so
ordered it ; all that was said, believed, adopted, and the reign
of idols fell before the reign of the cross, in spite of the Roman
Empire. The Roman Empire and idolatry were as one ; but it was
not less inimical to the Christian establishment on another
hand. That empire had been founded slowly by the prudence
and stability of its councils, the courage of its armies, the
abnegation of its chiefs, until, having become master of the
world, it bent under the very weight of its greatness, and lost
in corruption all the public liberties which had formed its
glory and its welfare. Nothing of this remained when Jesus

JESUS CHRIST. 53
Christ came into the world, save a few already dishonoured
symbols; and when He died, the empire had passed from
Augustus to Tiberius by a decadence which foreshadowed
Nero. The orators' tribune was mute,, the people consoled
themselves for the loss of the Forum with a crust of bread
thrown to them ; the senate, mangled and decimated in its last
illustrious men, opposed to despotism only the promptitude of
an obedience which sometimes even wearied the insolent
caprice of the master. A single man was all, and that man
could hurl with impunity any defiance to servitude. One day,
it pleased him to assemble the senate, that is to say, the relics
of all the great Roman families, the descendants of those
conscript fathers who had borne war and liberty so proudly
within the folds of their togas; it pleased him to call them
together to deliberate about the composition of a fish sauce !
I thank you, gentlemen, for refraining from laughter; this is
the greatest insult which has ever been offered to human
nature in the person of the greatest political body it has ever
produced, God permitted it, gentlemen, in order to teach us
how low man falls by the corruption of riches and apostasy
from liberty, that guardian of all rights and of all duties. Such,
then, was Rome when Jesus Christ sent His disciples to con
vert her to Himself, and such was with Rome the whole universe.
Mistress of the world, after having enchained nations to her
greatness, she held them enchained to her humiliations ; and
for the first time in the history of the human race liberty had
no longer an asylum upon earth.
I say, for the first time. Until then, by a providence worthy
of all our thanksgivings, God had so provided that there was
always some free land where virtue and truth could defend
themselves against the designs of the stronger. Whilst the East
was fertile in tyrannies, Egypt possessed institutions worthy of
esteem, and judged her kings after their death ; Greece defended
her tribune against the ambition of the kings of Persia ; Rome
protected her citizens by laws which surrounded their lives
with many sacred ramparts. If from ancient we pass to modern
times, we shall find there the same care of Providence in not
permitting despotism to reign everywhere at the same time.
The present world is divided into three zones, the zone of un
limited tyranny which has nothing to envy from the most cruel
histories of the past, an intermediate zone where some action
is still permitted to thought and to faith; and, in fine, that

54 THE FOUNDATION OF THE REIGN OF
generous western zone of which we form a part, those great
kingdoms of France, England, the United States of America,
Spain, where rights and duties have guarantees; where men
speak, write, discuss; where, whilst power oppresses the
majesty of God and man in distant regions, we defend it
before the world, and we defend it without glory, because
nothing in that office menaces either our heads or our honour!
A unique moment arrived when, with a map of the world
open before you, you would have sought in vain for a mountain
or a desert to shelter the heart of Cato of Utica, and when
Cato of Utica thought it necessary to ask from Death that
liberty which no spot upon earth could any longer give to him.
At that unique and terrible moment, Jesus Christ sent His
apostles to announce the Gospel to every creature, and to
found in their faith, love, and adoration, the kingdom of souls
and of truth.
Let us see what this kingdom was to the Roman Empire.
First, it was. the liberty of the soul. Jesus Christ claimed
the soul ; He claimed that it should be free to know Him, to
love Him, to adore Him, to pray to Him, to unite with Him.
He did not admit that any other than Himself had right over
the soul, and above all the right of hindering the soul from
communicating with them. Yet much more : Jesus Christ
claimed the public union of souls in His service ; He knew
nothing of secrecy; He demanded a patent and social worship.
The liberty of the soul implied the right to found material and
spiritual churches, to assemble, to pray together, to hear in
common the Word of God, that substantial food of the soul
which is its daily bread, and of which it can be deprived only
by an act of sacrilegious homicide. The liberty of the soul im
plied the right of practising together all the ceremonies of
public worship, of receiving the sacrament of eternal life, of
living together by the Gospel and Jesus Christ. None upon
earth possessed any longer the government of sacred things
but the anointed of the Lord — the elect souls — initiated into
a larger faith and love, tested by the successors of the apostles,
sanctified by ordination. All the rest, princes and peoples,
were excluded from the administration of the body and blood
of Jesus Christ, that divine centre of the kingdom of souls,
and which it was not meet to deliver to dogs, according to the
forcible expression of the most gentle Gospel.
But as the soul is the basis of man, by creating the liberty

JESUS CHRIST. 55
of the soul, Jesus Christ, at the same time, created the liberty
of man. The Gospel, as the regulator of the rights and duties
of all, rose to the power of a universal charter, which became
the measure of all legitimate authority, and which, in hallowing
it, preserved it from the excesses into which human power had
everywhere fallen. On this account, the kingdom of souls was
absolutely the very opposite of the Roman Empire, and it was
impossible to imagine a more complete antagonism. The
Roman Empire was universal servitude ; the kingdom of souls,
universal liberty. Between them it was a question of being or
not being. The struggle was inevitable ; it was to be a deadly
struggle. Now, what force did the kingdom of souls dispose of
against that empire covered with legions ? None. The
Forum ? It was no more. The senate ? It was no more.
The people ? They were no more. Eloquence ? It was
no more. Thought ? It was no more. Was it at least per
mitted to the first Christians whom the Gospel had raised
up in the world to gather one against a hundred thousand
for the combat ? No, that was not permitted to them.
What then was their strength ? The same that Jesus Christ
had before them. They had to confess His name and then
to die, to die to-day, to-morrow, the day after, to die one
after another, that is to say, to vanquish servitude by the
peaceful exercise of the liberty of the soul ; to vanquish force,
not by force, but by virtue. It had been said to them : If
for three centuries you can boldly say : " I believe in God
the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and in
Jesus Christ, His only Son our Lord, who was born of the
Virgin Mary, was dead, and is risen again;" if for three
centuries you can say this openly, and die daily after having
declared it, in three centuries you shall be masters, that is to
say, free.
And this was done.
And this was done in spite of the fury of the Roman
Empire converting the universe into a headsman, and losing
its terrified reason in the emptiness of its cruelties. I will say
no more of the martyrs ; they conquered, as the whole world
knows. And this kingdom of souls, founded by their blood ;
this kingdom of souls, which was to destroy idolatry, and
which has destroyed it, which was to overthrow the Roman
Empire, and which has overthrown it in all that was false

56 THE FOUNDATION OF THE REIGN OF
and unjust in it; where did this kingdom of souls set
up its capital? In Rome! The seat of virtue was placed
in the seat of power; the seat of liberty in the seat of
bondage ; in the seat of shameful idols the seat of the cross
of Jesus Christ; in the seat whence the orders of Nero
issued to the world, the seat of the disarmed and aged
pastor, who, in the name of Jesus Christ, whose vicar he
is, spreads throughout the world purity, peace, and blessing.
O triumph of faith and love ! O spectacle which enraptures
man above himself by showing him what he can do for good
vith the help of God ! My own eyes have seen that land,
the liberator of souls, that soil formed of the ashes and blood
of martyrs ; and why should I not recur to remembrances
which will confirm my words in reinvigorating my life ?
One day, then, my heart all trembling with emotion, I
entered by the Flaminian Gate that famous city which had
conquered the world by her arms, and governed it by her laws.
I hurried to the Capitol ; but the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus
no longer crowned its heroic summit. I descended to the
Forum ; the orator's tribune was broken down, and the voice
of herdsmen had succeeded to the voices of Cicero and Hor-
tensius. I mounted the steep paths of the Palatine; the
Caesars were gone, and they had not even left a praetorian at
the entry to ask the name of the inquisitive stranger. Whilst
I was pondering those mighty ruins, through the azure of the
Italian sky, I perceived in the distance a temple whose dome
appeared to cover all the present grandeurs of that city upon
whose dust I trod. I advanced towards it, and there, upon a
vast and magnificent space, I found Europe assembled in the
persons of her ambassadors, her poets, her artists, her pilgrims
— a throng diverse in origin, but united, it seemed, in common
and earnest expectation. I also waited, when in the distance
before me an old man advanced, borne in a chair above the
crowd, bareheaded and holding in his two hands, under the
form of mysterious bread, that Man of Judaea aforetime
crucified. Every head bent before Him, tears flowed in silent
adoration, and upon no visage did I see the protestation of
doubt, or the shadow of a feeling which was not, at least,
respectful. Whilst I also adored my Master and my King,
the immortal King of souls, sharing in the triumph, without
seeking to express it even to myself, the obelisk of granite

JESUS CHRIST. 57
standing in our midst sang for us all, silent and enraptured,
the hymn of God victorious : Christus vincit, Christus i
regnat, Christus imperat, Christus ab omni malo plebem )
suam liberat ! And, lest an enemy should have been found
in that multitude, it answered itself by another celebrated
hymn, which warned us to fly from the lion of Judah if we
would not adore him in his victory. After many years, which
have already whitened my brow, I repeat to you those threats
and those songs of joy; happy are you if you do not fly, but
if, drawing nearer, you repeat with us all, children of Christ and
members of His kingdom : Christus vincit, Christus regnat,
Christus imperat, Christus ab omni malo plebem suam
liberat 1

THE PERPETUITY AND PROGRESS OF
THE REIGN OF JESUS CHRIST. .

My Lord — Gentlemen,
According to His design and according to His declara
tion, Jesus Christ established upon earth the kingdom of God,
the kingdom of souls ; He established it, notwithstanding
the difficulty of reigning over men by faith, love and adoration,
and notwithstanding the public difficulty which the state of
political and religious society then presented to him. But,
gentlemen, to enable us to affirm that Jesus Christ has outlived
Himself as God, is it enough that His work is stamped with a
character which can be only divine ? No ; for although His
success was prodigious, regarding it at the point where we left
it, namely, at the accession of Constantine, yet it is the lot of
every power that makes its appearance here below to have its
struggle and its triumph — a struggle and a triumph, I grant,
not all of the same measure, but which have, at least, this in
common, that they appear, contend, and reach a favourable
moment, which will be called success. What is more difficult
and more necessary for the confirmation of victory is to resist
victory itself. A celebrated diplomatist has said : " Time is
the great enemy." Has Jesus Christ then overcome the great
enemy ? After idolatry, after the Roman Empire, has He over
come that other power, which is but eternity disguised, the
power of time ? At the end of a more or less prosperous
career, has He not, like all the rest, felt that icy hand which,
sooner or later, dishonours the greatest events, and hurls the
most stable dynasties from their throne ? Is He not visibly
struc-k by that slowly advancing thunderbolt which spares

JESUS CHRIST. J9
nothing ? Such is the question which now claims our attention.
In a word, I am about to lay before you the balance-sheet of
Jesus Christ, and I invite you to examine it.
Why is time the great enemy ? Because, gentlemen, it is
endowed with a double power, the power of destroying and of
building up. What was it that overthrew those primitive
empires of Assyria and Chaldasa? It was time. What over
drew that empire of Cyrus, vainly raised up again by
Alexander ? It was time. What overthrew that empire, in
creased by the ruins of all the others, and which we should
rather call the world than an empire, the Roman world ? It
was time. What overthrew all those republics of the Middle
Ages whose vestiges, surviving in marbles and paintings, we so
much admire? It was time. And, on another hand, what
has built up those new kingdoms whose sons we are, the king
doms of the Franks, the Germans, the Anglo-Saxons, and the
rest? It is the same hand, skilful in creating after having
destroyed, and which, from the very dust where it has revelled
with so much pride, draws forth substance, order, and solidity.
Time destroys with one hand and rebuilds with the other,
enemy alike to both, since the edifice it raises up does but
sink deeper the edifice it overthrows, for, with time, to found
is also to destroy.
Nevertheless, gentlemen, let us not halt at those splendid
images, which only reveal to us the inimical power, of time by
outward appearances. Let us endeavour to unveil its secret by
analysis, in order that, having learned whence time derives its
double power of destruction and edification, we may consider
whether Jesus Christ has not been subject to the exercise of
that formidable action, and why He alone has been able to
escape from it, should we at length prove that He has escaped
from it.
The action of time results from five causes, the first of
which is novelty. Time is always young, and yet it ages all
things. Each of its steps is the advance of dawn, but it leaves
darkness and night behind. Restless child of eternity, it
borrows unfading youth there, but has no power to com
municate it, save but for a moment, to the things measured by
its course. It passes, it sheds life ; but that life of to-day soon
becomes that of yesterday, of the day before, of bygone times,
a remembrance, a relic of the past, and yet time is not
impoverished; it is ever fertile and young, causing the new

60 PERPETUITY AND PROGRESS OF THE REIGN OF
to follow the old. Now, the new possesses a charm which
seduces the mind as well as the senses, and which enables
doctrines bearing its impress easily to prevail against doctrines
become superannuated by the simple fact of their duration.
Remark what happens around us. As soon as a man is able
to give a new form to ideas, and appropriate them to the
course of time, he inevitably has disciples. Why? Because
he has said something which had not been said before, or
had been forgotten. We have the passion for novelty in ideas
as in all the rest, and it is not difficult to understand why it is
so. Predestinated as we are to enjoy the infinite, the infinite
is our want, and we pursue it everywhere. Now, novelty is
the only thing here below which gives us some sensation of
the infinite. As soon as we have considered an object, we
say : It is enough. Who will turn the page ? Novelty turns
it, and in turning it, disguises its feebleness to our intelligence
by a false gleam of progress, which enchants us.
Above all others, gentlemen, Jesus Christ had to fear this
inclination of our souls, which arms time with a power so
dangerous to doctrinal sterility. However merciful the Gospel
may be, it was not to bend to the inconstancy of our mind ;
"heaven and earth shall pass away," said Jesus Christ, "but
my words shall not pass away."* It was to traverse all ages,
losing daily the force of its novelty without losing any of its
precept, or rather, like God, "who," said Saint Augustin, "is
beauty ever ancient and ever new," the evangelic word was to
infuse into its progressive antiquity a youthfulness which
should charm the heart of all new generations.
This first advantage obtained over time, a second remained
to be gained. The second power of time is in experience,
that is to say, in the revelation that results from the applica
tion of doctrines to the positive life of mankind. Every
doctrine is a body of laws, which is of value only in so much
as it is considered to contain true relations of beings ; it is like
the creation of a world. As long as that creation remains in
the mind in the state of pure conception, we may be deceived
as to its real merits, because it is difficult to judge a great
assemblage of ideas ; but it is no longer so when, entering into
the domain of reality, they are required to found or to main
tain a positive order; experience infallibly manifests their
* St. Matt. xxiv. 35.

JESUS CHRIST. 61
weakness or their falsity; for a false or powerless law is
incapable of establishing durable relations, and as a house
based upon false mathematical principles falls to the ground,
so no order whatever could subsist based upon ideas wanting
the equilibrium of truth.
Now, who had ever more reason to fear this terrible test of
experience than Jesus Christ? For, with the Gospel, he had
not placed in the world a society confined within the narrow
limits of a race and a country, but a universal society, wherein
every soul wheresoever born, could claim the rights of citizen
ship ; and consequently, if the Gospel were false, its ruin
should have been as great as the universe, and as rapid as
time, acting at once upon numberless places and minds.
The third power of time is in corruption. Everything,
having reached a certain point of prosperity, decays, because
as soon as man is master he wills to enjoy, and because the
inevitable result of enjoyment is that decomposition of the
soul and body which we call corruption. The history of all
successes is the history of Hannibal at Capua. Men grow
listless and forgetful, they think themselves secure, they become
intoxicated with success; the slow poison of ease relaxes all
the springs of their activity ; and the being who is nothing
save by activity, falls little by little into the shame of slumbering
effeminacy. Nimrod begins, Sardanapalus ends. It is the
high road of great fortunes; labour and virtue form thern,
enjoyments annihilate even their last traces. Religion, even
more than any other empire, is subject to this great law, and
above all the Church, or the religion of Jesus Christ, was
firmly chained to it. For the blood of the cross had given her
life ; having sprung from the crucifixion of a God, she could
not fail, in the days of her prosperity, to remember the cruel
humiliations of her cradle. And, on another hand, the tempt
ations which her triumph prepared for her were far to surpass
any temptations until then known. She was to see the kings
of the earth at her feet, to issue orders from one end of the
world to the other, to behold ages bending before her teaching
and her action, to cover the earth with sumptuous monuments,
and see it become a tributary to all the wants of unlimited
power and glory; and under the weight of such success,
reaching even to heaven, to preserve upon her brow, as in her
heart, the sign of penance and humility. Or, if in one of the
long days of her life she was about to yield, and to feel the

62 PERPETUITY AND PROGRESS OF THE REIGN OF
attack of corruption, from that very corruption she was to
resuscitate her life, not another life — as we see in nature — but
her own life ; and, like the eagle of Scripture, recovering the
charm of her youth, soar aloft with outstretched wings,
invigorated and renewed by her very poverty and by the
shedding of her own blood.
The fourth power of time is chance, that is to say, certain
conjunctures which do not blend with anything that genius is
able to combine and foresee, and which suddenly overthrow
the most ably concerted designs. History is full of these.
Human prudence makes shipwreck upon shoals imperceptible
to the keenest eye. It is the grain of sand of which Pascal
speaks, which one morning threw Cromwell into disorder, and
destroyed plans destined to change the face of Europe.
You sometimes wonder, perhaps, at a certain equilibrium
visible in the world, and which keeps the strong from destroy
ing the weak at will. Why have those great empires not yet
crushed the small neighbouring States ? It is becaus'e those
great empires have Cromwell's grain of sand against them.
At the very moment when their combinations are ready to
succeed and bring about the destruction of all rights upon
earth, the obscure son of some peasant, in the corner of a hut,
sharpens his knife on a broken millstone ; at the noise of war
he dons his cap, slips his knife into his girdle, and goes out to
see something of what is passing between Providence and the
kings of the earth. The smoke of powder opens his eyes ; the
sight of blood elates him ; God makes him the instrument of a
brilliant action ; behold him a great captain ; empires recede
a step before him : that knife, that peasant, is chance.
Judge now how much of this Jesus Christ has had to en
counter in the course of a reign of eighteen hundred years.
Consult simply the history of the papacy, and see what a
slender thread has held the destinies of that throne, always
surrounded by enemies, yet always enduring. It has constantly
had to contend against the most skilful combinations; but
what is still more terrible is that conspiracy of chance, that
enemy which might at any time have destroyed it, and which,
strange to say, has always respected it.
The fifth power of time is war. No earthly power can
avoid combat ; it necessarily has enemies, not only on account
of its faults and abuses, but by the simple fact of its existence.
To exist is to combat, because to exist is to take from the

JESUS CHRIST. 63
common seat of life a part of the substance destined for all ;
and if this be true of the most feeble being, how much more
so must it be of an assemblage of beings raised to the state of
power! Therefore Jesus Christ declared "that He came not
to send peace, but war,"* a terrible war, and upon a scale so
vast as to astound our imagination. For it is the war of the
spirit against the flesh and of the flesh against the spirit, that is
to say, of the two elements which constitute man, neither of
which can ever completely vanquish the other. When the
body is victorious, the soul struggles against it, and when the
soul is the stronger, the body watches for the moment when its
yoke may be broken. But this internal struggle does not cease
here, it necessarily produces a war as general as it is deeply
seated. Souls unite with souls and bodies with bodies ; it is
the union of bodies against the union of souls which forms the
great war of mankind. Jesus Christ at the head of one army,
and Satan at the head of the other ; the army of the passions,
pride, sensuality, hatred, on one side ; the army of the spirit,
humility, chastity, obedience, mortification, charity, on the
other. All these are in action in the formidable regions of the
finite and the infinite, in the depths of God, of the soul, and of
the senses, amidst a thousand secondary causes which add to
the gloom and the chances of the struggle ; and if Jesus Christ
be God, He must in the end be victorious, His form remaining
unchangeable, although continually insulted, upon the vener
able summit of time and things.
Has it been so, gentlemen ? Can we testify of Jesus Christ
that He has been more powerful than novelty, than experience,
than corruption, than chance, than war, than all these causes
banded together against Him during a course of eighteen
centuries ? Can we do this ?
Yes, gentlemen, I can do this ; I can even show you three
degrees in this triumph of Jesus Christ over time. For, in the
first place, He lives, His work is before you ; although it has
undergone more or less of attack in that long pilgrimage under
the rebel hand of time, it is nevertheless still before you. It
remains surrounded by sufficient glory to attract all eyes, and
to be still the object of veneration to which there is no rival, as
nothing is comparable to the hatred of the enemies who have j
not accepted in its temporal duration the proof of its origin in
* St. Matt, x., 34.

64 PERPETUITY AND PROGRESS OF THE REIGN OF
the very bosom of eternity. But this is not all. Not only is
Jesus Christ living in His Church and His Church in Him, but,
since the Christian era, no religious establishment has been
founded in the world of which Jesus Christ has not been the
basis and the bond of union.
The first in the order of time is Islamism. Now, the basis
of Islamism, as Grotius long ago remarked, is entirely biblical.
It is Abraham, Isaac, Jacob ; it is Moses, Mount Sinai, the
Jewish people in the most memorable events of its history ; it
is Jesus Christ Himself, come after the prophets, and greater
than they. At each page of the Koran, Mahomet inscribes a
recital drawn from Christian antiquities or makes some allusion
to them. Why is this ? Why is it that, aspiring to the honour
of founding a religion, Mahomet did not base it entirely upon
himself ! Why, gentlemen? Because he could not. Man can no
more build in the air in the order of spirits than in the order of
bodies; he must however find a basis. Now, according to the ex
pression of Fontenelle, "the Christian religion is the onlyreligion
which possesses proofs," and wherever it has appeared with the
authority of its history, error must take its support and be
grafted into that mighty trunk which alone throws out its roots
in antiquity. Mahomet lived in an age and in a land already
impregnated with the sap of Christianity; he touched Abyssinia,
a great seat of Christendom, Egypt, a metropolitan church,
Judaea, where all the great Christian mysteries were accom
plished ; the blood of his people remounted with omnipotent
celebrity to the blood of Abraham; he could only, in such
conditions, found a heresy, or, if you prefer it, establish him
self upon Jesus Christ by an infidelity which still rendered
immense homage to Him. This is why Mussulmans have always
permitted Christians to live in their territory, and adore Jesus
Christ, not from toleration resulting from fear, but from respect
for the common traditions of the two religions and the formal
recommendations of the Koran. There has been a struggle
for supremacy between Mussulmans and Christians ; but there
has been no persecution, properly so called, of Christians by
Mussulmans. Ishmael reclaimed only his right of primogeni
ture over Isaac. And this, gentlemen, explains to you the
strange spectacle which Constantinople now presents to us,
where, although the penalty of death is decreed against any
Christian who should convert a Mussulman, Christians of every

JESUS CHRIST. 6J
communion have nevertheless full liberty to exercise their
worship, even publicly.
After Islamism came the Greek schism. Now the Greek
schism is the whole Catholic Church save two points — the
supremacy of the sovereign Pontiff, and the procession of the
Holy Ghost. All the rest, dogmas, morals, sacraments, hier
archy, customs, have been preserved by the descendants of
Photius. They have rejected the vicar of Jesus Christ, but
they have not rejected Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the object
of their faith, their love, and their adoration, the corner-stone
of their religious edifice.
It is the same, although in a minor degree, with Protest
antism. Protestantism has denied the Church, but not Jesus
Christ. Jesus Christ remains the Doctor and King of souls, and
even for a great number of Protestants He is still the only Son
of God, worthy as such of supteme adoration.
No other religious establishment has been raised up in the
world since the Christian era. Brahminism and Buddhism
were anterior to Jesus Christ ; and if some movement was
visible in the last of these at a nearer epoch, it was owing to
the intercourse between Christians and the distant regions of
India and Tartary. Thus, in the mountains of Thibet, since
our celebrated embassies of the Middle Ages, a puerile
imitation of the papacy has been witnessed. Jesus Christ no
sooner dawned upon the world than His light caused the
clouds of false religions to recede ; many have entirely
disappeared, and none has been formed but upon His name
and history. He has become the trunk of error as well as
of truth, and whoever totally denies Him, opens an abyss for
himself where nothing but death will ever fructify. His tomb
is now the centre of the religious world ; Mussulmans, Greeks,
Protestants, Catholics, guard it. All, gathered together from
the four winds of heaven, agree to venerate the inanimate
stone upon which the mangled body of Christ for three days
and nights reposed. A hundred battles have been fought
around it ; the destinies of the world have a score of times
changed their aspect there; but defeat or victory has ever
borne to it the homage of nations, and so many struggles have
but served to glorify that fragile tomb where all come to
prostrate themselves. If Catholics alone had guarded it, it
would have been an ordinary protection, like all the rest that
F

66 PERPETUITY AND PROGRESS OF THE REIGN OF
is measured by the sword ; it was more fitting to the designs
of God that Jerusalem "should be trodden under foot of
nations," * as the Gospel had foretold, and that the Holy
Sepulchre, held up by a thousand hands, should appear
amidst all the events as the indicative sign that no religious
establishment is thenceforth possible save on condition of
participating in Christ by something at least of His blood, His
doctrine, and His memory.
Time, gentlemen, will bring you new proofs of this. You
will see the fading away of the miserable vestiges of religions
without foundation, as the civilization advances of which
Jesus Christ is the Creator and the Head. Fable cannot keep
ground against history, antiquity empty against antiquity filled,
the vague against the certain, death against life. Jesus Christ
pursues his course even by the very unfaithfulness which pride
brings to Him ; He makes use of schisms and heresies as of
tainted water which still contains Him for a multitude of souls
armed against poison by the simplicity of ignorance and good
faith. But at the same time — and this is His third triumph
over time — He maintains incorruptible and above all His true
Church, the Catholic, Apostolic, Roman Church. He insures
to her even a numerical superiority ; for Islamism counts but
a hundred millions of followers, the Greek schism, sixty
millions, Protestantism a like number, whilst the Catholic
Church holds a hundred and sixty millions of souls subject to
her government. Hierarchical superiority; for neither Is
lamism, nor the Greek schism, nor Protestantism has been
able to create a papacy. Superiority of independence ; for no
spiritual community has been able to preserve inviolable the
sanctuary of the soul, save the Catholic Church, which, by
constantly giving her inexhaustible blood for that cause, has
kept her teaching and her action free from the yoke, and has
merited the honour of being here below the bulwark of right
and the virgin soil of holy liberty.
I shall not enlarge further, gentlemen, upon the marks of
the true Church of Jesus Christ. I have already done this,
and I hastily refer to it now only to demonstrate the sovereign
providence by which Jesus Christ has maintained them on the
brow of His Church against all the efforts of time.
Thus then a threefold perpetuity is acquired for Jesus Christ
* Isaiah v. 5.

JESUS CHRIST. 67
from the scrutiny to which we have subjected Him : perpetuity
of life ; perpetuity of exclusive irradiation of life ; perpetuity of
superiority in life.
But you may reply : This is not questioned. Jesus Christ
has lived ; He has infused His life into all religious establish
ments which have come afterHim, and He has even maintained
His Church above all the rest. Yet do you not now perceive
signs of decadency in His work ? Have not a multitude of
souls emancipated themselves from His rule ? And when signs
of decrepitude begin to appear, may we not foresee a near and
an inevitable dissolution ?
This may be your idea, gentlemen; mine is that Jesus
Christ is at the apogee of His glory and power ; and this, with
the help of God, I shall now proceed to show you.
Three things constitute power, and the progress of these
three things constitutes the progress of power, namely, the
territorial state, the numerical state, and the moral state.
Now, I affirm that, under this threefold relation, Jesus Christ
has never attained a higher point than that at which we at
present contemplate him.
In the first place, what was the territorial state of Jesus
Christ under Constantine ? It was nearly included even in
the boundaries of the empire, between the Rhine, the
Euphrates, and the Atlas. If it passed beyond, that addition
was compensated for by the many parts of the empire of
which the Gospel held but an imperfect and uncertain
possession. But what do you now see? It is true Jesus
Christ has lost some of his former territories, now occupied by
Mussulmans; although it must be remarked that Christians
exist upon the whole surface of the Islamic soil, and that
Islamism itself recognises Jesus Christ and His ancestors.
But turn your eyes to the west, to the east, to the north,
to the south, and in every direction of the globe you will find
the conquering steps of the Saviour. He has crossed the
Rhine ; He has subjected Germany, Poland, All the Russias,
the three kingdoms of Great Britain, and has borne even to
the pole, across the mountains and ices of Sweden, the sun
of His dominion. The Atlantic Ocean opened before Him ;
He has passed the Cape of Good Hope, has joined to the
sceptre of his children that famous peninsula of India, which
from antiquity was looked upon as the reservoir of all the
treasures of nature. He has founded establishments along
f 2

68 PERPETUITY AND PROGRESS OF THE REIGN OF
the coast of Africa, and rejoined by the Red Sea His old
possessions of Abyssinia. He has made the tour of the two
Americas, and from one pole to the other, ranging them under
His laws, He has raised up together republics, missions, and
bishoprics. He has retaken Spain from Mahomet, and every
where shaken the territory of Islam. But yesterday, again,
when the chief of the house of Bourbon was descending from
the throne and about to carry His noble old age into exile, we
saw Jesus Christ, by the arm of the old Frank king who thus
wrote his testament among us, conquer two kingdoms from
infidelity, the kingdoms of Greece and Algeria. Still more
recently, China has opened to Him her ports, which had so
long been shut; New Holland becomes peopled under the
shadow of His cross ; the islands of Oceania transform their
savage inhabitants into humble and meek adorers of His
Gospel. There are no longer any seas, or solitudes, or
mountains, or inaccessible places where Jesus Christ does not
hoist the bold standards of His children blended with His
own. Return now back to Constantine; weigh the Christian
world of that epoch with the Christian world of the present
time, and judge of the territorial progress which Jesus Christ
has made.
It is the same with the numerical state. I said just now
that the Catholic Church counts a hundred and sixty millions
of children, the Greek schism sixty millions, Protestantism
sixty millions more. This is a total of two hundred and eighty
millions of men who acknowledge Jesus Christ for their
Saviour and their spiritual head. Doubtless, there are some
among these who do not bear His yoke from clear and positive
conviction ; but the Christian's life must be judged as a whole,
and especially at the hour of death. Among the many who
think themselves unbelievers there are few who resist Christ
to the last, and who do not ask Him to forgive their errors
much more than their apostasy. Their soul, moreover, was
formed by the Gospel, and it is still their nourishment even
when they think they despise it. The numerical state of Jesus
Christ was never more flourishing, and it daily tends to in
crease by the development of Christian populations. Whilst
the Mahometan races become impoverished and the remains
of the idolatrous nations vegetate in their immobility, the
Christian blood, blessed by God, prospers beyond measure,

JESUS CHRIST. 69
and continual emigrations carry its superabundance into
distant lands, and with it the precious seeds of faith.
If you perceive a disproportion between the territory and
the population of Jesus Christ, it is easy to be explained.
The power of Christians grows yet faster than their blood ;
they conquer and govern space with a handful of men, and
their genius fills it long before their posterity. I do not think
this observation is prejudicial to Jesus Christ. But there is
another which you certainly expect from me, and which I also
expect from you. Whatever may be the state, say you, of the
territorial and numerical progress of Jesus Christ — a phenome
non which may be explained by the ascendency of the Christian
races — you cannot deny the invasion and progress of unbelief
in the very midst of Christianity. If Jesus Christ has over
thrown the religions which were before His own, unbelief, more
powerful than He, overthrows in its turn the work which He
had built up, and overthrows it with still more terrible effects,
since it is doubt and negation which take the place of faith.
Like those lands exhausted by a substance that has devoured
all their sap, and which can no longer produce anything, the
land over which Christ has passed is a land cursed ; it no
longer produces anything but doubt and negation. Thus we
advance to a state worse than any of which mankind has been
the witness and the victim. Like that conqueror who caused
Jerusalem to be razed and salt to be cast upon its ruins, Christ
has exhausted the convictions of the human race, and cast
upon its intelligence the salt of absolute unbelief. Woe to us,
doubtless, woe to us who can no longer believe ! But to
whom do we owe that incapacity, if not to the tyranny of
Christ, who has not been powerful enough to bend for ever
our minds to His dogmas, and who is powerful enough to keep
us from ever holding any other faith than His own ?
I grant, gentlemen, that after seventeen centuries during which
Jesus Christ was not denied, He was at length denied in the
last century ; He is denied even now. But so far from that
accident menacing the work of Christ, it derives a glory there
from, which it will be easy for you to recognise and appreciate.
Three countries formed the seat of the total revolt against
Jesus Christ — England, France, and Germany. As to England,
unbelief has long ago ceased to possess any power or renown
there. If your ears are attentive to the echoes of the British
Parliament, that highest of all expression of national opinions,

70 PERPETUITY AND PROGRESS OF THE REIGN OF
you will not have heard, since the birth of the present century,
a single word of insult or menace to Christ. England has
emancipated Catholics ; she has recalled to the tribune of her
Parliament the proscribed voices of the defenders of the
papacy ; she has opened her fields to the labour of monks,
and her schools to the learning of the Roman clergy. The old
walls of Oxford have heard the most celebrated doctors of
Anglicanism speaking of Jesus Christ like the Ancient Church,
they have witnessed the retreat of many who have passed from
the rostrum to the humble cell, there to recite the office after
the manner of the religious orders, and to pray at the foot of a
crucifix for the return of their soul and of their country to the
old faith of the Anglo-Saxons. Catholic churches, and even
cathedrals, have risen up full of splendour from the land of
proscription, and Jesus Christ has marched triumphantly with
His bishops and priests in the very places where stones and
the sword had pursued Him. In fine, England is won back
from unbelief, she who was the first to shelter it under the
protection of her nobles and her men of genius.
If we turn next to France, doubtless we shall not find
there in the same fulness the signs of a return to faith. Yet
none of you, knowing the history of the past and the present,
would compare the two positions. In the last century,
unbelief was absolute mistress of minds, alone it guided the
pen and spoke with eloquence ; its books were public events ;
its great men ranked with the old families of the monarchy,
and held familiar intercourse with all the kings of Europe ; a
flagrant and an overwhelming conspiracy hurled to heaven
every insult against Jesus Christ. Is it so now, gentlemen ?
Has not Jesus Christ His writers, His orators, His party, His
youth, His glory, among us ? And if unbelief still exists, do
we not well know how to make it bend before us, and how to
march on in the strength of our souls, against its now decrepit-
successes and its ill-judged expectations ? We do, gentlemen ;
the watchword of the faith in all its most militant action comes
from France; our missionaries, our sisters of charity, our
brothers of the Christian schools, bear it to the ends of the
world, and whoever loves Jesus Christ upon earth keeps his
hand upon our heart to feel there the pulsations of faith, and
to thank the God who strikes and who heals.
I shall say nothing of Germany ; she remains, doubtless,
although with certain modifications, the seat of the war against

JESUS CHRIST. 71
Jesus Christ. Our unbelievers go there to seek the arms
which the genius of France refuses to them yet more and
more ; but the fall is great, and the thunder that comes from
the clouds of the Rhine is not destined to produce such
effects as that double voice of England and France, whose
future alliance in favour of the Church and Jesus Christ the
great Comte de Maistre has long ago foretold.
However, gentlemen, let us not be content with proving by
facts the progressive decrease of the forces of unbelief; let us
endeavour to trace its causes in order to draw conclusions
which may embrace the future as well as the past.
God, then, seeing the darkness of men's minds, has caused
three suns to rise slowly upon the horizon of the Church : the
sun of history, the sun of science, and the sun of liberty.
History was ill-understood ; great research, aided by great
social revolutions, has enlightened its sombre mysteries, and
Jesus Christ, calumniated in the .works of His Church, has
retaken in the realities of the world a place which men willed
to dishonour. Whilst history returned to him by the labours
of Protestants and unbelievers, as much as by those of
Catholics, science did not serve Him with a lesser return of
justice and fidelity. Did it dig in the bowels of the earth, it
found again there the first page of Moses ; did it descend to
the foundations of the temples and monuments of Egypt, it
found there the points of junction between Egyptian history
and the history of the people of God ; did it succeed in
deciphering the language of hieroglyphics, those signs, recalled
to the vigour of their expression, bore testimony to the newness
of the world, compromised by the calculations of astronomy ;
did it discover and bring to light ruins and inscriptions, those
ruins and those inscriptions spoke for us ; nature interrogated
in every sense, gave back a Christian note from all its pores, as
if it had been created or charmed by Jesus Christ.
Liberty also has rendered us signal services. It has loosened
the bonds with which unbelief had bound the Church by the
hand of kings, and permitted Jesus Christ to resume the
sceptre of speech, too long enfeebled from respect which was
no longer merited.
Unbelief has, however, received a heavier blow than all
these. For the causes I have just enumerated act only in the
higher ranks of the world ; they do not strike at the heart of
the human race, and that central shock is necessary to all

72 PERPETUITY AND PROGRESS OF THE REIGN OF
extended action. The centre of the world, the heart of the
human race, is the people. The people then should have had
a sign against unbelief, and that sign was given to them in
order that nothing might be wanting to the causes of salvation
which God prepares for us. What sign then was given to the
people ? What sign, gentlemen ? It is this : the soul and the
body of the people have gained nothing from unbelief, and
they know it. The people had a God in heaven ; when the
earth, so sparing towards them, overtasked their strength, they
clasped their hands, and in looking upwards and in appealing
to God from their very wretchedness, they felt dignity and
consolation reaching to them. The people had a God, not only
in heaven, but nearer to them, a God who had become man
and was poor, who was born in a stable, whose body had been
laid upon straw, and who had suffered in this life more thanf
they. The people had a God, not in heaven only, not only in
the flesh and in poverty, but they had a God upon the same
cross which they themselves bear, and when they beheld i.
themselves with their two arms extended in their suffering,/'
they found on their right hand their God who was crucified for
them, and who bore them company. The people had a God,
not only in heaven, not only in their flesh, in their poverty,
and in their own cross, but they had a God living in the
Church to teach, to protect, and to console them; they
had a God living in their priest to receive the oppressive
secrets of their hearts ; they had a God living in the sister of
charity to bind up their wounded limbs when they could no
longer serve them, and to honour their souls in the miseries of
their bodies. The people had a God in heaven and upon
earth ; you have taken away from them the God of heaven, and
you have not preserved for them the God of earth. What
then did you give them in His stead ? What other God have
you made for them ? Ah ! I am wrong, for God you have
given them doubt, and for goddess negation ! You said to
them : " Perhaps ! " And finding that too much, you spoke
again with authority, and said : " No ! " Why should they
complain ? There is no longer any God, or Christ, or Gospel,
or Church; but you remain to them, and with you the worms
which brought them into the world, and the worms which will
prey upon their dead bodies. Is not this enough to satisfy a
soul ?
Perhaps, unable to bear the sight of that merciless spoliation

JESUS CHRIST. 73
wrought by your hands, you will turn to the bodies of the
people and boast of what they owe to you, for the temporal
well-being which you have procured for them in exchange for
what they have lost. Ah ! I expected as much from you ! The
bodies of the people ! But listen to the sounds which rise
from Manchester, Birmingham, Flanders, the cry, not of
poverty and want — they are the words and things of bygone
times — but the cry of pauperism : that is to say, the cry of
distress having reached the state of system and power, and
rising by an unexpected malediction, from the very develop
ment of wealth itself. The political economy of unbelief has
been destroyed by facts upon every seat of human enterprise
and activity ; it still struggles against these results, as terrible as
they were unlooked for ; but it is the hydra of Lerne against
the arm of Hercules : the blow which it has received is a mortal
blow because it has been dealt by the hand of the people !
In a word, the bodies and the souls of the people have
gained nothing from unbelief; and the people know it.
But if you have done nothing as yet for the souls
and bodies of the people, perhaps it is to come, perhaps
you will some day set up a doctrine in the place of the
doctrine of Christ? I must deprive you of that last hope;
and without even trusting to the nothingness of your past
efforts, I must show you that it is impossible for you to
found a doctrine. In fact, unbelief rests upon two general
principles, of which this is the first : man should not believe in
man, because one man is as good as another, and his most
precious treasure is the independence of his mind. Your
second principle is : Man should not believe in God, because
God does not speak to man. But if man ought neither to
believe in God nor in man, in whom then should he believe ?
Your answer is : In himself, and in himself alone. Now
wherever men believe only in themselves, there are no
disciples; where there are no disciples, there is no master;
where there is no master, there is no unity ; where there is no
unity, there is no doctrine. You would not then found a
doctrine, even had you a thousand years multiplied by another
thousand before you. If you quit the principles of unbelief,
at that very moment you fall back upon Jesus Christ, the only
possible Master for whosoever acknowledges an authority,
because without Him there is nothing which holds together
upon any foundation.

74 PERPETUITY AND PROGRESS OF THE REIGN OF
But after all let us admit that you may found a doctrine.
Even should you succeed it would not be sufficient to dethrone
Jesus Christ ; your doctrine must be more perfect than that of
Jesus Christ. Now listen to what I have just experienced.
Three months ago I read for your sake the author who in this
age seems to have had the distinction of writing against Jesus
Christ with the greatest boldness, if not with the greatest
ability : I mean Dr. Strauss. After having, with heated forehead,
waded through four large volumes of transcendental weariness,
as the Germans say, I reached, at length, the last chapter,
entitled Conclusion. There Dr. Strauss, starting from the idea
that Jesus Christ is completely vanquished, asks himself
whether some man, capable of equalling and even of surpassing
Jesus Christ, will not appear upon the empty stage of mankind.
That question asked, a kind of tardy and eloquent justice
seizes upon the author, and, in a page which I read again more
than once, the only one in which the soul makes itself felt, he
declares that it is not probable that any man will ever be able
to equal Jesus Christ, but he is absolutely certain that no man
will ever surpass Him.
Such is the conclusion.
To sum up, gentlemen, I find in Jesus Christ a threefold
perpetuity : perpetuity in His life, perpetuity in the exclusive
irradiation of His life, perpetuity in the superiority of His life.
I also find in Him a threefold progress : progress in the
territorial state, progress in the numerical state, progress in the
moral state. Jesus Christ has, then, overcome time ; he has
overcome the great enemy, and, beholding Him upon the
summit of ages in all the serenity of His imperturbable youth, I
remember what Saint Paul said of Him in another sense :
" Christ, risen from the dead, dieth no more."* Once He
descended into the tomb ; but the human race, for whom He
died, bent towards Him, and, raising Him up with a love which
has never grown cold, bears Him in its hands, risen again to
life. Behold Him, gentlemen, examine Him well, He lives !
Look again, He dieth no more, He is young, He is King, He
is God ! He lived as God, He has outlived Himself as God ;
to-morrow I will show you that He pre-existed as God.
Nothing will then be wanting to that threefold act of life,
living, surviving, pre-existing ; nothing will be found in Him.
* Rom. vi. 9.

JESUS CHRIST. 75,
which is not stamped with the seal of divinity, and which
hinders me from proclaiming with the sovereignty of certainty
that other expression of Saint Paul : " Jesus Christ was-
yesterday, He is to-day, and the same for ever ! "*
• Heb. xiii. 8.

THE
PRE-EXISTENCE OF JESUS CHRIST.

My Lord — Gentlemen,
All life is not yet comprised in living and in outliving
that life ; the third act of life, which is the first in the order of
time, is that of pre-existence. Every being, save God, pre
exists in its germ, and man in particular pre-exists in his
ancestors. No one appears here below whose reign has not
been prepared long beforehand ; and the more important the
destiny designed for him by Providence, the more important
also is the preparatory action of his ancestors. Jesus Christ,
as man, should therefore have pre-existed after the manner of
men ; and, inasmuch as He was greater than all men by His
destiny, He should also have pre-existed in a manner peculiar
to Himself alone. I remark then, in the first place, that alone
amongst all the great names, He possesses an authentic
genealogy which remounts from Him even to the father of the
human race, and that He is thus, undoubtedly, the first
gentleman in the world. It is but little, I grant, and therefore
His pre-existence should not be limited to this alone.
Ancestry, we have said, is proportionate to posterity.
Whosoever has no ancestry, will have no posterity ; and this
explains to you the weakness of doctrines which unceasingly
appear and disappear before you. They begin in the man who
advances them, and, beginning with him, they die with him.
As soon as a man without antecedents in his teaching, a man,
the last who has sprung up in this world, dares to bring to
mankind doctrines which he calls new, that single word is the
foreboding of his powerlessness and the expression of his
condemnation. For if the doctrines claimed by him as his

JESUS CHRIST, -jf
own possessed any importance, they would inevitably have
pre-existed him, he would at most be but their renovator ; to
say that an important thing begins in one's self, is to take
nothingness for starting-point, for horizon, and for end.
But if ancestry be proportionate to posterity, it follows
that Jesus Christ must have pre-existed in His ancestors with
incomparable greatness. And, to speak more precisely, since
Jesus Christ has had for His posterity the most important social
and religious work of the times which have followed Him, He
should also have had for His ancestry the most important social
and religious work of the times which preceded Him. The
Catholic Church being the fruit of His coming, we must find
before His coming something that worthily prepares the Catholic
Church, and that comprises Jesus Christ between a past and a
future — doubtless not of equal proportions, but so balanced
that that which preceded Him was beyond all comparison with
the rest, as well as that which followed Him. The Jewish
people, gentlemen, fulfil these conditions. The Jewish people
was the most important social and religious work of the times
preceding Jesus Christ, as the Catholic Church is the most
important social and religious work of later times; and, as
Jesus Christ is the soul of the Catholic Church, in which His
life is perpetuated, so He was the soul of the Jewish people in
whom He pre-existed. I must explain this double proposition
to you, and so succeed in surrounding the sacred head of
Christ with all the promulgatory rays of His divinity.
That the Jewish people was the greatest social and religious
work of antiquity, I shall not, I think, have much difficulty in
proving. Let us begin by its superiority in the social point of
view. Legislation is the highest element of the life of a people,
and, in legislation, the first point to consider is the constitution
of the law itself. Now the Hebrew law possesses two characters
which belong to it alone, and which place it beyond all com
parison ; they are universality and immutability. It has for its
basis something universal, namely, the general relations of man
with God and with mankind. The tables of Sinai, which form
its prologue and its fundamental page, exist even now as the
most memorable expression of all the great duties ; and the
Catholic Church, even after the promulgation of the Gospel,
has not been able to substitute in place of the Decalogue
anything which she has judged worthy to set it aside. Those
ten decrees form the basis of Christian morals, as they formed

78 THE PRE-EXISTENCE OF
the basis of Hebrew morals. In the second place, the Jewish
law, although including the whole political, civil, criminal,
commercial, judicial, and even ceremonial order — things essen
tially variable in their nature — was endowed with an immuta
bility of which there is no other example in any legislation
whatsoever. In Moses the legislative power of the Hebrews
began and ended. Whilst every human society has in its
centre a permanent legislative power which retrenches, adds,
corrects, according to times and necessities, and an exceptional
legislative power, which goes so far as to reform even the
constitution itself, affected by the change of habits and customs,
the Jewish people, from Moses, remained contented in regard
to law, with a simple regulating faculty. The hand that had
graven the tables of Sinai and penned that vast legislation
comprised in the Pentateuch was strong enough permanently
to consolidate a whole nation, how long soever it might endure ;
and three thousand years passed over his work have never
once borne to it the slightest contradiction. Above all others,
gentlemen, after the last fifty years of our history, we can
appreciate the superhuman genius of such a foundation.
The constitution of authority in legislature follows in
importance the constitution of law ; for authority is the living
guardian of the dead text of law. Now, what was the constitu
tion of authority among the Hebrews ? It has been often said,
if I mistake not, that it was theocratic ; this is an error. From
the earliest times, Moses and Aaron divided the power; one
was the military and civil chief, the other the religious chief,
and that distinction between the temporal and spiritual order
— deeply traced by the double memorial of the legislator and
the pontiff — continues throughout the whole history of the
Jewish people, notwithstanding the accidental gathering of the
whole authority in one and the same hand. If the pontificate
and the supreme judicature blend together in Samuel, they
become separated in the times of David and the kings ; if they
are found united after the captivity, they separated again before
Jesus Christ. The Hebraic community, like the Catholic
community, was based upon the distinction between the
spiritual and the temporal powers, a distinction without which
a nation would neither be able to preserve truth nor liberty.
Truth, because being of a higher order, it could not keep its
place under a sceptre transmitted by purely human means;
liberty, because all the social and regular forces, being con-

JESUS CHRIST. 79
centred under the sceptre of one single mind and one single
action, it becomes impossible for any one to defend his feeble
personality against the omnipotent personality of the State.
The people, crushed under the weight of such a formidable
unity, would doubtless writhe like the giant under the weight
of Etna ; but their force, not being united under a stable and
recognized organization, their efforts would result only in futile
shocks, by which, if they succeeded in overthrowing the order
that weighed upon them, their very victory would still cost
them their liberty; for to destroy order is also to destroy
liberty. By the division of power into two branches, not
opposed to each other — not even rivals, so much do their
attributes differ — opinion obtains a pacific support against
force, right against oppression, and society, notwithstanding its
vicissitudes, being united without violence, duly performs its
office for time and for eternity.
However, this admirable order has nowhere been able to
establish itself, save among the Jewish people and in nations
entirely Christian, that is to say, Catholic. Everywhere else,
the State has not failed to absorb the whole of human nature
in its rapacious unity. And this, gentlemen, should not excite
our wonder : the spiritual power, being by its very essence a
disarmed power, God alone is able to communicate to it the
inner force which it needs peacefully to resist the temporal
power. Where God is not, intrigue, baseness, fear, soon bend
mind to matter ; and the spiritual order, should it still exist,
remains but a miserable phantom, to which the State leaves a
reed for sceptre, contempt for protection, and a little gold for
pay. Inasmuch, then, as the Jewish people, as well as the
Catholic nations, possessed the prerogative of a true spiritual
power, it is stamped with a character of pre-eminence, which no
other people can dispute with it in the times anterior to
Christ. The constitution of family was not less remarkable in the
Jewish people than the constitution of lav/ and authority. The
individuals whose union forms families, and whom we may
call domestic individuals, namely, the father, the mother, the
child, and the servant, stood there in relations full of order
and equity. Moses, it is true, did not formally substitute the
unity of the conjugal tie in place of Eastern polygamy; but he
instilled the practice of it by establishing the faculty of repu
diation for certain cases, by forbidding the future kings of

So THE PRE-EXISTENCE OF
Israel to have a great number of wives, like the princes of the
East, and in supposing but once only in his whole legislation
that a man may have two wives. Thus, save a few examples
noticed in the course of Scripture, the Hebraic family
appears to us, under this head, in a state analogous to that of
the Christian family. The unity of marriage was a custom
among them. The authority of the father over the child was
great, without extending to that right over life and death
which too often made an executioner's office of paternity
among the ancients. The servant belonged to the family by
virtue of a voluntary agreement; no Hebrew could be the
slave of another Hebrew ; and even engagements for perpetual
service were permitted by law only after the trial of seven
years. The stranger alone, by right of conquest, was liable to
slavery, properly so called; and even this bondage, kept
within certain limits, was far from producing that contempt
and that abuse of man which we remark among the peoples
anterior to Jesus Christ. All the Jewish families were ranged
in twelve tribes, corresponding to the twelve patriarchs, sons
of Jacob, and forming of the nation twelve great families,
united in the bond of the same blood, and so much the more
strongly, as it flowed from the same father by twelve perfectly
recognizable sources. Nothing in antiquity is comparable to
this constitution of the Hebraic family.
It is the same in regard to the bases upon which the system
of proprietorship rested among them. Houses and lands
could only be alienated for a lapse of forty-nine years. After
that they returned to their former possessor, or to his heirs.
The object of this singular arrangement was to prevent the
ruin of families and the too great inequality of fortunes, with
out hindering, however, the necessary movement of commerce
and industry. The rich man bought of the unfortunate or
erring man the whole or a part of his patrimony, and enjoyed
possession of it for half a century ; but the son or grandson
of the despoiled proprietor cherished in his heart the hope of
returning again to the roof of his ancestors. By a second
and no less remarkable regulation, the fields could not be
cultivated more than six years in seven; they rested the
seventh year, and all the fruit which they bore naturally in a
land covered with vines and olive trees belonged to the poor,
as their share in the common patrimony of Israel.
Such was, in the most fundamental matters, that celebrated

JESUS CHRIST. 8!
legislation of Moses, the invulnerable stability of which time
has respected, and which has placed that great man at the
head of all those who have had the rare distinction of giving
laws to nations.
But legislation is only the first element of the life of a
people ; art is the second. Legislation classes a people in the
order of acts, art determines its rank in the order of ideas and
of their expression. The greater the idea the greater is the
visible monument it raises up, and which causes it to subsist
even after it has perished in the mind that conceived it. Now
the monument of Hebraic ideas is a book which forms part of
the Book of books, a book which forms the preface to the
Gospel, and which in that illustrious vicinity obtains respect
as the finished pedestal of a faultless statue. As history, the
Hebrew Bible precedes all histories by its antiquity, continuity,
and authenticity ; alone it mounts to the cradle of the human
race, and lays down the first stone of the whole edifice of the
past. • As a juridical compilation, it is without equal in any of
the collections containing the laws of great communities. As
moral philosophy, it opposes its books of wisdom to all the
maxims of the most renowned sages, and a presence of God is
felt in them which elevates the soul above the natural reach of
reason. As poesy, it contains the hymns of David and the
Prophets, repeated after two or three thousand years by all the
echoes of the Christian world, and become creators of a,
language which has passed into all human tongues for lauding
and blessing God. Other peoples have had historians, juris
consults, sages, poets, but which are their own, and form, as
it were, a separate glory; the Jewish people has been the
historian, the jurisconsult, the .-;age, the poet of mankind.
Its territory also answered to that great place which we
behold it occupying. For the support and nourishment of its
body, it had received a land equally illustrious with its legis
lation and its art. Cast a glance upon a map of the world, and
you will quickly perceive there a point which forms the centre
of Asia, Africa, and Europe ; which, washed by the waves of
the Mediterranean, touches! by them those healthy and genial
climates where in the plenitude of human activity the hardy
race of Japhet exercises its energy ; whilst on another hand,
the river Euphrates and the Gulf of the Red Sea open to its
inhabitants the routes of the Indian Ocean, permitting them to
seek under the equatorial zones those fabulous riches which

82 THE PRE-EXISTENCE Of
Solomon explored, which Alexander desired to see, which the
Romans coveted, which the Middle Ages discovered anew,
which the British power now guards with such supreme jealousy.
In close vicinity also to that favoured point of the globe, you
will perceive Memphis, the Nile, the Pyramids, and those
sublime deserts which to the present time have rebelled against
the most courageous curiosity ; so that its boundaries, having
gates open to all, had them also closed against all. There, as
at an inevitable rendezvous indicated by nature and God, all
the conquerors have appeared. The primitive monarchies of
Assur and Chaldsea unceasingly sent there their generals.
Alexander was halted there before Tyre, and went to read in
Jerusalem the history of his triumphs written beforehand like
those of Cyrus ; his successors contested desperately for this
remnant of his crown ; the Romans took possession of it ; all
the chivalry of the Middle Ages pressed there during two
hundred years; Napoleon caused a gleam of his sword to
shine upon its sands ; in fine, but yesterday the last thunder of
European cannon awakened the old echoes of that proud
land ; and the discerning finger of those who observe the future
points to it as the future battle-ground for the combats reserved
to our descendants. You have named Syria, gentlemen, and
with it the territory given to the Jewish people as the temporal
complement of those magnificent graces which they had
received in the mental order.
Nevertheless, gentlemen, a people is not yet fully known
when we know its territory, its art, and its legislation; it is
necessary also to know its history. The history of a people is
the course of its acts for the preservation of its laws, ideas,
customs, territory — all, in fine, that constitutes its proper life
and civilization. The more magnificent its endowments, the
more is it accountable towards God and man for the devoted-
ness shown by it in defence of the gifts which are not only its
personal patrimony, but which form part of the general dotation
of mankind, and enter into the plans by which Providence
conducts all things to their end. And, according as a people
acquits itself well or ill of this great task, it marks in history its
degree of shame or renown. What, gentlemen, has formed
the dignity of our history ? It is that having received from God
a territory which is the heart of Europe, we have held it under
faithful guardianship for fourteen hundred years, permitting
none but ourselves to settle between the Alps and the Pyrenees ;

JESUS CHRIST. 83
it is that having among all the barbarous nations received the
firstfruits of the Catholic faith, we have preserved it to the end,
neither permitting this, the elder kingdom of Christendom, to
be entirely corrupted by heresy nor overcome by doubt ; it is
that having received, in fine, the most ancient, and the most
free monarchy of Europe, we have preserved in a happy
balance, although it has been often troubled, the double spirit
of authority and liberty, being equally incapable of supporting
anarchy or absolute power. We have, in a word, preserved in
the body of Europe a land of faith, order, and liberty.
The Jewish people had yet greater duties, and a more
perilous position imposed upon it. Feeble in number, and
cast upon a part of the world which by its position tempted all
the neighbouring empires, it had to protect against them, with
its independence, laws and traditions upon which the destinies
of the world depended. No people entrusted with a more pre
cious charge, in more favourable conditions, has shown such
remarkable and persevering magnanimity in defending it. Not
to see this would be an act of blindness, not to acknowledge
it an act of ingratitude. Nineveh, Babylon, Memphis, by
turns, and sometimes together, conspired for the destruction
of that handful of Israelites; innumerable armies, led by
powerful kings, invaded their territory, and laid siege to their
capital; often victorious, they often purchased their glory at
the cost of cruel reverses. Ten of their tribes, carried into
captivity, have disappeared from history ; the two others after
wards followed the same road of exile from whence nations
never return. But seventy years of adversity far from their
country did not weary the hearts of the captives ; by science
and beauty they penetrated into the palace of kings, and
governed their conquerors. Cyrus delivers them, Alexander
visits them, and when, in the heart of Asia, a new and a more
terrible persecution brings into their temple the desolation of
impiety, they raise up in their midst to save their country and
religion, that race of the Maccabees whose name has become
for peoples oppressed by stronger than themselves the very
name of courage and right. And this heroic spectacle,
gentlemen, lasted fifteen hundred years ! For fifteen hundred
consecutive years Israel held her place against the great
empires of the world; and when at length Rome had sur
mounted all and subjected all, when the whole earth had kept
silence before her for more than a century, Israel still struggled G 2

S4 THE PRE-EXISTENCE OF
in the mountains and valleys of Judaea for the remnants of
her liberty. Rome was forced to send her legions and her
captains against such memorable perseverance, and Jerusalem,
yet once more besieged, sent up to heaven, in an implacable
defence, the last generous cry which the Romans were destined
to hear. Was it ended, gentlemen ? Did not this people, without
territory and without princes, wander to die in obscurity upon
the vast surface over which the still timid will of their con
querors had scattered it ? For any other, indeed, the hour of
death would have come. But the Israelites remembered the
days of their captivity, when they hung their harps upon the
willows of Babylon, because they could not sing the songs of
Sion in a strange land; as they had then carried their laws
and traditions with them to be their eternal principle of life,
they again bore them over the whole earth. They demanded
their subsistence from labour, their dignity from the memorials
of their ancestors, their consolation from the God who had
brought them out of Egypt by Moses, out of Chaldaea by
Cyrus, and who was able, when He willed, to bring them back
again to that Jerusalem already raised from its ruins, and
become the object of the combats of all Christendom. This
people, whom their founder called a hard people, and who in
fact opposed to adversity a soul of granite, this people still
lives — lives everywhere. Disinherited from their country, the
children of Israel have sought in commerce that movable
wealth which may be hidden more quickly than persecution
advances ; and we now see kings tributaries to their activity,
unblushingly recurring to the venerated purse of some Hebrew
for the accomplishment of their designs and the aggrandisement
of their glory. Yet once more, Israel lives ; she has lived for
seventeen centuries without chief, without temple, without
territory, often persecuted, but preserving, as in Jerusalem, her
antique and immovable ideas, and having in addition that
unique glory of subsisting from an inner force sustained by
nothing from without, and which nourishes itself at the
mysterious altar of a superhuman past. Do you not see that
she defies you? That alone among nations she counts four
thousand years of duration ? That nothing prognosticates the
end of such a scandal against the nature of things ? Dig out
her tomb if you can ; set your surest seal upon it ; place your
guards around it ; she will but laugh at you and rise again,

JESUS CHRIST. 85
proving to you yet once more that she lives of a spirit which 1
you have not, and that matter can do naught against spirit.
I have the right to conclude, gentlemen, that the Jewish
people, under the social point of view, is the most important
monument of the times anterior to Christ. It is not less so
under the religious point of view; and here I shall need but
very short observations.
For, remark that whilst all nations were plunged in the
darkness of idolatry, Greeks, Romans, Assyrians, Egyptians,
that little people adored one only God ; and antiquity spake
with wonder of the empty temple of Jerusalem, because it did
not see God represented there by any image capable of im
pressing the senses — not that such representation is an evil in
itself, as long as it does not touch the true character of the
Divinity ; but the Hebrews had such a horror of idols that they
preferred, according to the order of their legislator, to leave
God in their temple in His total invisibility rather than expose
their faith to the impressive charm of some striking representa
tion. For idolatry not only attacked them from without, it
seized upon their heart, and they often fell before it. But,
notwithstanding this double temptation, they never failed to
return to that God of their fathers of whom they were the sole
adorers. By the dogma of creation they had an idea of Him which
always completely separated them from idolaters. These
rendered no account to themselves of the existence of the
universe, or if they sought to penetrate its secret, they willingly
believed it to be contemporary with their gods, giving to them
at most some secondary action upon universal substance. The
Jews had quite another doctrine, expressed from the first sign
of their sacred Scriptures by that astounding phrase : " In the /
beginning God created the heavens and the earth."* Hadi
they possessed but that single doctrinal expression, they would )
have been richer in knowledge of God than all the schools and
all the religions of antiquity. In a word, the Jewish people
was the only people before Jesus Christ which had a clear
notion of the Divinity, and which rendered to Him a worship
free from the puerile dreams of the imagination and the taint
of shameless sensuality. I may then conclude that in the
religious, as in the social point of view, the Hebrew nation was
* Gen. I 1.

86 THE PRE-EXISTENCE OF
the most important monument of the times anterior to Jesus
Christ. I add that Jesus Christ was the soul of that nation, and
pre-existed in it by a life which we are about to verify.
I ought to have grown weary, gentlemen, of pointing out to
you the peculiarities of the Jews. There is one, however,
which surpasses all the rest, and of which I have as yet said
nothing. I mean the Messianic idea which circulated in their
veins as their purest blood, and without which it is impossible
to explain either their faith or their destinies. The Messianic
idea is composed of four elements. Under its influence, the
Jews believed, in the first place, that the one God and Creator
adored by them would some day become the God of the
whole earth. In addition, they believed that that revolution
would be brought about by a single man, called the Messiah,
the Holy One, the Just, the Saviour, the Desired of nations.
They believed that this Man would be a Jew of the tribe of
Judah, and of the house of David. They believed, in fine,
that this predestinated Man would suffer and die in order to
accomplish the work of transformation with which Providence
had charged Him.
That such was their faith it is easy for us to learn even of
themselves, since they still live, and since, notwithstanding four
thousand years of expectation which, in their eyes, has not
been realised, they have never ceased to render unshaken
testimony to the hopes of their ancestors. But, gentlemen,
let us not be content with their present testimony ; let us
open the monuments of their history, and follow the progress
of the Messianic idea through the principal phases that mark
the development of the nation itself, such as its birth, its
formation into a people, the point of its maturity, its decadence,
its captivity, and its restoration at the foot of the second
temple, raised up by Zorababel.
Behold us in the fields of Chaldasa with Abraham ! We are
about to hear the first words, which formed, as it were, the
seed of the Hebrew race. Observe, gentlemen, that we are not
now examining whether these words are true, whether they
were from God ; we have now simply to show the idea which
the Jewish people had of themselves, and of their mission
here below. Whether they deceived themselves in this idea is
another question, to be judged afterwards.
God, then, according to the Hebrew monuments, says to

JESUS CHRIST. 87
Abraham : " Go forth out of thy country, and from thy kindred,
and out of thy father's house, and come into the land which
I will show thee ; and I will make of thee a great nation, and
I will bless thee, and magnify thy name, and thou shalt be
blessed. I will bless them that bless thee, and curse them
that curse thee, and in thee shall all the kindred of the earth
be blessed." * Thus at the same moment, and in an inseparable
manner, two thousand years before Jesus Christ, the Jewish
people appeared in the world, and therewith the Messianic
idea — the idea that Israel was the depositary of a blessing
which was to spread over the whole universe.
Abraham goes forth from Chaldaea, and settles in the land
promised to his posterity. He waits there even to an advanced
old age for the son to whom he is to transmit the Messianic
heritage ; that son is given to him ; and when the child has
•attained all the graces of youth, God calls upon the patriarch to
offer him in sacrifice upon a mysterious mountain. With
unshaken faith in the wisdom and goodness of God, the old
man raises his hand upon his only and well-beloved son, and
he hears that second declaration, stronger and more distinct
than the first : " By my own self have I sworn, saith the Lord,
because thou hast done this thing, and hast not spared thy
only-begotten son for my sake : I will bfess thee, and I will
multiply thy seed as the stars of heaven, and as the sand that
is by the sea-shore ; thy seed shall possess the gates of their
enemies, and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be
blessed." 7 An oath is added to the force of the promise ; and
it is more clearly indicated that the Messianic benediction
should spread over the whole human race, not by Abraham
himself, but by his posterity.
Isaac, the son of Abraham, hears the same promise and the
same prophecy ; they are repeated to Jacob, the son of Isaac.
The three first Hebrew generations, thus confirmed in the hope
of the Messiah, spread out in twelve patriarchs, father of
twelve tribes ; and Jacob, about to die, assembles them around
his bed to close the first Messianic age by a solemn prophecy,
which sums up the preceding ones, giving, at the same time,
additional precision to them. Surrounded, then, by his twelve
children, he announces to each of them, by some characteristic
traits, what will be his lot in the future. Having arrived at
* Gen. xii. 1-3. t Gen. xxii. 16-18.

88 THE PRE-EXISTENCE OF
Judah, he says these memorable words to him : " Judah, thee
shall thy brethren praise : thy hands shall be on the necks of
thy enemies ; the sons of thy father shall bow down to thee.
Judah is a lion's whelp : to the prey, my son, thou art gone up:
resting thou hast couched as a lion, and as a lioness : who
shall rouse him ? The sceptre shall not be taken away from
Judah, nor a ruler from his thigh, till he come that is to be
sent, and he shall be the expectation of nations."* Thus, at
the moment when the patriarchal inheritance becomes sub
divided into twelve branches, the branch from which the
Messiah is to be born is designated ; it is to be that of Judah ;
and the day predestined for the appearance of the Messiah is
marked by a sign which posterity will easily recognise.
The blood of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is henceforth
fertile ; it multiplies in a land which has given it hospitality ;
and having soon become an object of fear and jealousy, it
passes from exile to bondage, in order to serve in tribulation
an apprenticeship necessary to its high destinies. Its enemies
think to destroy, they do but strengthen it. The Israelites are
a people. Moses brings them out of Egypt, and leads them
across the desert to the foot of Sinai, from whence come the
laws which are to govern them. Follow, gentlemen, follow
that marvellous march of so great a people ; the eyes of your
childhood formerly gazed upon its wonders, look at them
again with the thought of riper years. From encampment to
encampment the children of Israel arrived before Jordan, to
the frontiers of that territory inhabited by their first ancestors,
and the possession of which is promised to their posterity.
There they meet a whole people in arms awaiting those
adventurers who despoiled Egypt, and whose march has
resounded from the desert even to the hills of Judaea. Moab
has ranged her battalions, she has raised her altars, convoked
her chiefs ; the children of Israel are afoot, with their wives,
their children, their soldiers, their Levites, bearing, hidden
under the skins of animals, the tabernacle of the God who has
just spoken to them from Sinai. A man of the East advances
between the two peoples. " Balak," says he, " Balak, king of
the Moabites, hath brought me from Aram, from the mountains
of the east : Come, said he, and curse Jacob ; make haste and
detest Israel. How shall I curse him whom God hath not
• Gen. xlix. 8-10.

JESUS CHRIST. 89
cursed ? By what means shall I detest him whom the Lord
detesteth not ? I shall see him from the top of the rocks, and
shall consider him from the hills. This people shall dwell
alone, and shall not be reckoned among the nations. Who
can count the dust of Jacob, and know the number of the
stock of Israel ? " * These unexpected blessings alarmed
Moab ; the prophet is implored to change his language ; if he
will not curse, they pray him at least not to bless. Thrice
Balaam opens his mouth; thrice he blesses the conquering
people before him ; and at last the Messianic prophecy escapes
from him as in spite of himself : " I shall see him, but not
now : I shall behold him, but not near. A star shall rise out
of Jacob, and a sceptre shall spring up from Israel, and shall
strike the chiefs of Moab, and shall waste the children of
Seth. . . . Alas ! who shall live when God shall do these
things? They shall come in galleys from Italy, they shall
overcome the Assyrians, and shall waste the Hebrews, and at
last they themselves also shall perish." +
Observe again, gentlemen, that we are not now examining
whether Balaam was or was not a prophet, but simply showing
the course of the Messianic idea in the historical life of the
Jewish people. You see this idea taking here a new develop
ment ; it is no longer a patriarch of Israel who announces the
coming of the Messiah, and the establishment of His reign over
all the children of Seth, that is to say, of Adam, but a stranger.
And he marks the circumstances of His coming with most
.strange perspicacity, since he even designates the domination
of the Romans over the East and over the Jewish people as
the precursory sign of the Messiah's appearance.
David and Solomon mark the highest point of the Hebrew
monarchy, and with them commence the national and religious
hymns known by the name of psalms. Sung in the temple
of Jerusalem on the great feast days, they publicly expressed
the inner feeling, the hopes and desires of the whole nation.
Now it is easy to recognise here the Messianic idea disclosing
itself on all occasions in the soul of poet and people. On
reading them you will remark passages such as this : " All the
ends of the earth shall remember and shall be converted to the
Lord : and all the kindreds of the Gentiles shall adore in His
sight, for the kingdom is the Lord's ; and he shall have
* Numb, xxiii. 7-10. + Ibid. xxiv. 17, 23, 24.

go THE PRE-EXISTENCE OF
dominion over the nations. All the fat ones of the earth have
eaten, and have adored : all they that go down to the earth
shall fall before him." *
Later also, at the approach of the decadence and captivity
— seven hundred years, however, before Jesus Christ — the
Messianic idea assumed in Isaiah a clearness and an abundance
of expression which it is impossible to render to you, since I
should weary you by the number and length of the passages I
should have to cite. It is he who sees the Messiah springing
from the race of Jesse, the father of David, and who at the
same time describes, as if from Calvary or the Vatican, the
glory of the sufferings and triumphs of Jesus Christ. " Arise,
arise, put on thy strength, O Sion ; put on the garments of thy
glory, 0 Jerusalem, the city of the Holy One : for henceforth
the uncircumcised and unclean shall no more pass through
thee."f "How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him
that bringeth good tidings, and that preacheth peace : of him
that showeth forth good, that preacheth salvation, that saith to
Sion : Thy God shall reign ! " % " The Lord hath prepared His
holy arm in the sight of all the Gentiles, and all the ends of
the earth shall see the salvation of our God. " § " Behold my
servant shall understand, he shall be exalted and extolled, and
he shall be exceeding high. As many have been astonished at
thee so shall his visage be inglorious among men, and his form
among the sons of men. He shall sprinkle many nations.
Kings shall shut their mouth at him : for they to whom it was not
told of him have seen, and they that heard not have beheld." ||
And immediately after, Isaiah begins the description of the
sufferings and ignominies of Calvary, which he completes in
twelve consecutive verses. Then he continues, resuming his
hymns of triumph : " He that hath made thee shall rule over
thee, the Lord of hosts is his name ; and thy Redeemer, the
Holy One of Israel, shall be called the God of all the
earth."!! But it is at Babylon, during the captivity, six hundred years
before Jesus Christ, that the Messianic idea becomes invested
with a form which attains to mathematical clearness and
precision. Must I recall to you the prophecy of Daniel?
Listen then to it : " Seventy weeks are shortened upon thy
people, and upon the holy city, that transgression may be
* Vs. xxi. 28-30. t Is. Iii. I. $ /bid. 7. § Ibid. 10.
|| Is. Hi. 13-15. 1 Ibid. liv. e.

JESUS CHRIST. 91
finished, and sin may have an end, and everlasting justice may
be brought, and vision and prophecy may be fulfilled, and the
Saint of saints be anointed. Know thou therefore and take
notice that from the going forth of the word to build up
Jerusalem again unto Christ the Prince, there shall be seven
weeks and sixty-two weeks : and the street shall be built again,
and the walls in the straitness of times. And after sixty-two
weeks Christ shall be slain : and the people that shall deny
him shall not be his. And a people with their leader that
shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary : and the
end thereof shall be waste, and after the end of the war the
appointed desolation. And he shall confirm the covenant
with many, in one week : and in the half of the week the
victim and the sacrifice shall fail : and there shall be in the
temple the abomination of desolation : and the desolation
shall continue even to the consummation, and to the end." *
I do not stop, gentlemen, to examine the striking features
of this discourse, which resembles less a vision of the future
than a narration of the past. The course of my subject bears
me on and brings me to the foot of the second temple, to hear,
five hundred years before Jesus Christ, those last words of the
prophet Aggeus : " Yet one little while, and I will move the
•heaven, and the earth, and the sea, and the dry land, and I
will move all nations ; and the Desired of all nations shall
come ; and I will fill this house with glory, saith the Lord of
Hosts. . . . Great shall be the glory of this last house more
than of the first, and in this place will I give peace. "t
What continuity, gentlemen, through so many eventful
centuries ! What fidelity to one and the same idea from so
many men separated by ages ! But the Messianic idea was
not even confined to the special tradition of the Jewish
people ; it passed over Jordan, the Euphrates, the Indus, the
Mediterranean, all the oceans, and, borne upon the invisible
•wings of Providence, it penetrated all the most diverse and
most distant nations, to create among them a uniform hope
and a universal remembrance. Confucius, at the eastern
extremity of Asia, spoke of a saint who, he said, was the true
saint, and who would appear in the West. Virgil, translating
into verse the oracles of the Cumaean Sibyl, announced to the
Augustan Age the coming of a mysterious child, a son of
* Dan. ix. 24-27. t Aggeus "• 7~10-

?2 THE PRE-EXISTENCE OF
Jupiter, destined to banish from the world the vestiges of
iniquity, and to commence an order of things as great as new.
Tacitus, on the reign of Vespasian, thus expresses himself:
" It was a widely-spread belief that, according to ancient sacer
dotal writings, at that very epoch, the East should prevail, and
that men come from Judaea should seize the government of
things." The rationalists of the eighteenth century, constrained
by evidence, have often avowed that unanimity of the
Messianic expectation. Voltaire said : " From time imme
morial it was a maxim among the Indians and the Chinese
that the sage would come from the West; Europe, on the
contrary, declared that the sage would come from the East."*
Volney said : " The sacred and mythological traditions of
former times had spread throughout Asia the belief in a great
mediator who was to come, a final judge, a future saviour,
king, God, conqueror, and legislator, who would bring back
again the golden age upon earth, and deliver men from the
empire of evil."t Boulanger, under a still more general form,
confessed that all nations held " an expectation of that
nature ; " and he adds this astounding phrase : that the East
may be said to be "the pole of the hope of all nations."J It is
the very saying of Jacob on his death-bed.
It is then certain, gentlemen, that the Messianic idea was
the life of the Jewish people during the course of the two
thousand years which preceded Jesus Christ; and that idea
was held among all the nations of the earth with such
unanimity, that it is not even possible to account for it by the
communications of the Hebrews with the Gentiles, but it is
necessary to suppose a diffusion of that idea even anterior to
Abraham. And that Messianic idea, so extraordinary in its
universality, its progress, its perseverance, and its precision, is it
at length fulfilled ? Yes, it is fulfilled ; the one God, creator
of the Hebraic Bible, has become the God of nearly all the
earth ; and the very nations that have not yet accepted Him
render homage to Him by a certain number of adorers whom
Providence elects from their midst. And who has accomplished
this incredible revolution? One single Man, Christ. And
whence came this Man, Christ ? He was a Jew, of the tribe of
Judah, of the house of David. And how has He accomplished
* "Additions M'Histoire Generate," page 15.
t "Les Ruines," page 228.
j " Recherches sur l'Origine du Despotisme Oriental," section x.

JESUS CHRIST. 93
4his prodigious social and religious revolution ? By suffering
-and dying, as David, Isaiah, Daniel, had foretold.
And now, gentlemen, what think you of it ? Here are two
"parallel and corresponding facts, both certain, both of
colossal proportion, one which lasted two thousand years
before Jesus Christ, the other which has lasted eighteen
hundred years since Jesus Christ; one which announces a
great revolution, and a revolution impossible to foresee, the
•other which is its accomplishment, both having Jesus Christ
for principle, for end, and for bond of union. Yet once more,
what think you of it ? Are you bold enough to deny it?
But what would you deny ? The existence of the Messianic
idea ? It is in the Jewish people, still living, in all the
continuous monuments of its history, in the universal traditions
of the human race, in the most positive avowals of the most
profound unbelief. Would you deny the anteriority of the
prophetic details ? The Jews, who crucified Jesus Christ, and
who have a national and traditional interest in depriving Him
of the proofs of His divinity, declare to you that their Scriptures
were formerly what they are now, and for additional certainty,
two hundred and fifty years before Jesus Christ, under Ptolemy
Philadelphus, king of Egypt, all the Old Testament, translated
into Greek, fell into the possession of the Greek world, the
Roman world, and the whole civilised world. Would you
turn to the other pole of the question, and deny the accom
plishment of the Messianic idea? The Catholic Church, the
offspring of that idea, is before your eyes — she has baptized
you. Would you stand upon the point of junction of those
two formidable events ? Would you deny that Jesus Christ
¦has verified the Messianic idea in His person, that He was a
Jew, of the tribe of Judah, of the house of David, and the
founder of the Catholic Church upon the double ruin of the
synagogue and idolatry ? The two interested parties — and
they are irreconcilable enemies — confess all this. The Jew
affirms it, and the Christian affirms it. Would you say that
this juncture of colossal events at the precise point of Jesus
Christ is the result of chance ? Were it even so, chance is but
& brief and fortuitous accident — its definition excludes the
idea of continuity ; there is no chance of two thousand years'
duiation and of eighteen centuries added thereto. In fine,
would you say that it is the result of a long conspiracy, by
which the ambitious and theological Jewish people sought to

94 THE PRE-EXISTENCE OF
create for itself a great existence ? What ! a conspiracy lasting
two thousand years founded upon a chief whom sixty
generations had to wait for, and whom it was necessary to
create after having so patiently waited for him ! Alas ! it is
no easy matter to conspire in favour of a living man; wha\
must it be to conspire in favour of a man who does not exist,
and who, it is supposed, will be born at an indefinite epoch?
And remark that when that Man came, the Jews crucified Him
— doubtless because His crucifixion formed part of the con
spiracy. Observe also that they denied Him after as well as
before the crucifixion — doubtless in order to secure the final
success of the conspiracy and all the success of ambition and
theology which they expected therefrom !
Gentlemen, when God works there is nothing to be done
against Him. The proportions of the work of Christ in the
times which preceded Him are yet more striking than all the
divine proportions of His life and His after-life. For, in fine,
when a man lives, He is a power, He has an action; it is
possible to conceive that certain circumstances may have
favoured a man of rare genius, and have given him great
ascendency over his contemporaries. Even after death there
remain friends, disciples, the remembrance of an existence
which was real, and consequently a surviving means of action.
But what are we able to do upon that which precedes us, upon
the past ? Who among us, however eminent he may be, is
able to make an ancestor for himself? Who among us,
desiring to found a doctrine, is able to create for himself an
avant-garde of generations already faithful to a teaching which
had not yet been heard? Who among us will present his
doctrinal ancestry to the world, if he be not truly the son of a
doctrine anterior to himself ? Ah ! the past is a land closed
against us ; the past is not even a place wherein God can act,
unless He act there beforehand, and by wa)' of preparation.
Had Jesus Christ been like one of us, fallen without a
providential pre-existence between the past and the future, He
would in vain have demanded from history accomplished and
closed a pedestal which would bear Him back twenty centuries
beyond His cradle. Instead of this, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob,
David, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, a whole people, the
human race itself, came to meet and^salute Him in the arms of
the aged Simeon, exclaiming in the name of all the past, of
which he is the last representative : " Now lettest thou thy

JESUS CHRIST. 95,
servant depart, O Lord, according to thy word, in peace.
Because mine eyes have seen thy salvation, which thou hast
prepared before the face of all people : a light to lighten the
Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel."*
We have reached the summit, gentlemen; Jesus Christ
appears before us as the moving principle of the past as well
as of the future, the soul of the times which preceded Him as
well as of the times which follow Him. He appears before us
in His ancestry, upheld by the Jewish people, the most
important social and religious monument of ancient times ;
and in His posterity, upheld by the Catholie Church, the
greatest social and religious work of modern times. He
appears before us, holding in His left hand the Old Testament,
the greatest book of the times which preceded him, and in
His right hand the Gospel, the greatest book of the times
which come after Him. And yet, so preceded and so followed,
He is still greater in Himself than His ancestors and His posterity,
than the patriarchs and the prophets, than the apostles and
the martyrs. Supported by all that is most illustrious before
and after Him, His personal physiognomy still stands out from
this sublime scene, and, by outshining that which seemed
above all, reveals to us the God who has neither model nor
equal. Therefore, in presence of this triple sign of divinity —
before, during, and after — in ancestry, in posterity, and even
during life, let us stand up, gentlemen, let us all stand up
together, whoever we may be, believers and unbelievers. Let
us stand up, believers, with feelings of respect, admiration,
faith, love, for a God who has revealed himself to us with SO'
much evidence, and who has chosen us among men to be the
depositaries of that splendid manifestation of his truth ! And.
you who do not believe, stand up also, but with fear and
trembling, as men who are but as nothing with their power
and their reasoning, before facts which fill all ages, and which.
are in themselves so full of the power and majesty of God !
* St. Luke ii. 29-32.

THE EFFORTS OF RATIONALISM
TO DESTROY THE
LIFE OF 'JESUS CHRIST.

My Lord — Gentlemen,
Jesus Christ lived as God, He has outlived Himself as
God, He pre-existed as God ; He pre-existed in the Jewish
people, He has expressed His life in the Gospel, He has
out-lived that life in the Church ; and it is this triple circle of
His manifestation that has rendered His divinity triumphant
here below. As soon as the human race possessed full con
sciousness of this, it became, so to say, overwhelmed by such
a demonstration, and from Theodosius to Louis XIV. — for the
space of thirteen hundred years— discussion seemed impossible
against Christ — in this sense at least, that all yielded to Him,
or accepted Him as their foundation. But, this time
having passed, rationalism, which had been dethroned
by Jesus Christ, attempted to claim again the empire
it had lost ; it thought that, as ages had covered all
that formidable edifice with their billows, some chances were
possible in favour of doubt and negation, and that the
eighteenth century of the Christian era could be called upon
to render willing reprisals and new judgments against a doctrine
grown old by time. Rationalism thus found itself again in
presence of Jesus Christ, standing Himself between the Catholic
Church and the Jewish people, as between the right and left
wings of truth; and a triple war was planned, in order to
overthrow the work whose building up was in past times
accomplished in spite of the powerless efforts which were now
to be renewed. The Jewish people was described as a vile, an
ignoble, an odious race, unworthy of any credit or respect;

JESUS CHRIST. 95
the Catholic Church as an instrument of misery for the people,
of bondage for the intelligence, of subjection for nations and
kings. I have defended the Church before you, gentlemen, for
many long years ; yesterday, I restored the true physiognomy
of the Jewish people; I shall not return to either of these
during these discussions. Jesus Christ calls me to-day into the
very heart of the combat of which He is the object and the
chief. The Jewish people was composed of men, and so is
also the Catholic Church ; and, however great men may be,
they are not altogether exempt, even when bearing in their
hearts the Spirit of God, from some failing and some infirmity ;
it is not so with Christ. Miraculous in His perfection, He
does not suffer, as the Gospel shows Him, any human doubt ;
and if He really stands upon that faultless pedestal, it is vain for
rationalism to fulminate, on the right hand and on the left, its
powerless thunder against Him. Christ, impassible in the
centre of Catholic truth, shelters all under His impregnable
divinity. It was, then, necessary to destroy Jesus Christ, either
by annihilating His life, by perverting it, or at least by ex
plaining it away. This has been attempted, gentlemen ; and
the exposition of this triple effort will terminate our conferences
for this year. Let us commence with the most decisive of the
three — that which had for its object the annihilation of the life
of Christ. Is Christ a chimera or a reality ? Does He belong to fable
or to history? This is the question. It may astonish you,
gentlemen, and yet it is serious ; for clever men have boldly
denied the existence of Jesus Christ; and others, without
venturing to this extreme audacity, have sought at least to
weaken the certainty of His life, and artfully to lessen its
historical splendour. It becomes necessary, then, to place, or
rather to maintain, Jesus Christ in history; and to this end we
must first of all learn the nature and the laws of history ; for as
long as we are unacquainted with them, it will be impossible
for us to decide whether Jesus Christ is or is not an historical
personage. I proceed, then, to treat of history; we shall
afterwards see whether Christ is present in it or absent from it.
Man lives in time, that is to say, in a singular element,
which causes him at the same time to live and to die; he
advances between a past which is no more and a future yet to
come ; and if he did not possess the faculty of concentrating
in himself these three states of his existence, he would be but
H

98 RATIONALISTIC EFFORTS TO DESTROY THE LIFE OF
incessantly coming into the world without ever attaining to
the possession of life. For hardly would he have made a step
in advance before forgetfulness would have obliterated its
traces, and thus he would be constantly before himself like a
vapour rising from the earth and vanishing away. Against this
terrible power of time, God has given him memory, by which
man lives in the past as well as in the present; so that
resuscitating his ancient days at pleasure, he beholds himself
in the plenitude of his personality, like an edifice whose stones
have been placed successively, but which the eye surveys and
perceives entire. Now the memory that suffices for the life of
a single man is not sufficient for mankind ; whilst man is one,
with a memory subsisting as long as himself, mankind is
multiple, and its memory expires with each generation, or at
most but little of it is transmitted to the future generation.
The father tells the son what he has seen, the son relates it to
the grandson, but at each stage remembrance grows more
obscure, and little by little the light of that tradition brightens
only the distant heights of the most important events. It ends,
however, by becoming defaced ; its lines grow confused to the
eyes of a posterity continually retreating before them ; and if
God did not intervene to bring help to the human race losing
all traces of itself, we should be living in an eternal state of
infancy, between a past about which we are untaught and a
future entirely unknown to us. Experience, the source of all
progress, would constantly be wanting. Neither truth nor
error, neither good nor evil would be known, save by a puerile
combat recommencing always at the same point — a spectacle
unworthy of man, unworthy of God — where truth and good,
having no adequate field of action, would never be able to
display their characters of stability and immortality. God,
who, by memory, had provided for the progressive identity of
man, should evidently have provided also for the continuous
perpetuity of the human race by a memory conformable to
the destinies of this vast body, that is to say, by a united, a
universal, a certain memory, capable of giving to mankind
complete consciousness of its works from the beginning to the
end. In so speaking, gentlemen, I have defined history.
History is the life of mankind present to itself, as our life is
present to us ; history is the memory of the world. But what
difficulties lie in the way of its formation ! God lights a torch
in our intelligence which enlightens our past, because He is our

JESUS CHRIST. 99
intelligence itself, one and indivisible ; but how is the human
race, multiple and divided, to be endowed with a similar light ?
How is an immortal memory to be given to the human race
which dies daily ? An immutable memory to that which is but
change? A certain memory to that which doubts so easily
about all that it does not see ? God provided for this in giving
us writing. By means of writing, a thing once said may be
always heard, a spectacle once witnessed may be always
visible ; writing seizes the passing wave and renders it eternal.
This is already immortality and immutability ; but it is not yet
certainty. For the false can be written as well as the true. A
thing may indeed be written, but who will guarantee its truth
to us ? A man two thousand years ago writes a book, wherein
he relates things which he says he witnessed : who will prove
to us that he speaks the truth, and that a fable has not reached
us under the seeming garb of history ? Evidently, writing
alone does not answer to this question ; history begins with it,
but it is not history in all its elements. History, if there be any,
should command our minds with the same authority as the other
powers which have received a mission to govern them. As
there is a moral force in the world which does not permit us to
say it is lawful for the child to kill his father, a mathematical
force which does not permit us to build a house upon a plan
without equilibrium, so also there should exist in the world a
historical force which would not permit us to say to history :
Thou hast spoken falsely. If this force exist not, there is no
history. What are, then, the conditions of history ; or rather, what
are the conditions of an historical writing ? For writing is the
fundamental, persisting, substantial element of history. With
out writing, there remains to us nothing but tradition more or
less confused ; but as writing may deceive, it is needful that we
should know the conditions which elevate writing to the state
of historical writing, that is to say, to the state of authentic,
certain, infallible, true writing. These conditions are three in
number. In the first place, writing must be public. All that is secret
is without authority ; every mysterious document is valueless
because it has not been verified. Nothing of this is powerful
but by public verification. The people form the only notary
capable of certifying their own history, because they form the
assemblage of all ages, of all ideas, of all interests, and because
H 2

roo RATIONALISTIC EFFORTS TO DESTROY THE LIFE OF
a popular conspiracy formed to lie to posterity is even im»
possible to conceive. A man fabricates error ; a people has
too many diverse ideas and passions to be able to combine
together to deceive future generations. Moreover, a people
never stands alone ; it exists among contemporary peoples
whose history is blended with its own : and even were it capable
of unanimous falsification, it would inevitably call forth the
protestation of the very age under whose eyes it would have
inaugurated its conspiracy.
The second condition of writing, in order for it to attain to
the state of history, is that it must bear upon public events.
Every fact that is not public does not belong to the domain of
history, for the reason I have just given; for who has witnessed
a fact that is not public ? A single man, three men if you will,
but history cannot be based upon the testimony either of a
single man, or of three men ; this is not history, it is only
memory. Memory bears upon private facts, whilst history
bears upon public events. For example, that Louis XIV.
conquered Flanders, Alsace, Lorraine, that he joined these
provinces to the kingdom of France, first by force of arms,
then by treaties, is history ; these are events which interested
France and all the nations of Europe, and which had a hundred
millions of men for spectators. But that Louis XIV. in his
chamber at Versailles said something in presence of M. le Due
de Saint Simon, which is related in the works of that talented
person, is nothing more than memory. Doubtless this secondary
element enters largely into the formation of the annals of the
human race, because we should not be satisfied with recitals
wherein only the main features of historical architecture would
be visible ; we are attracted more even by the private details
than by the general movements of the world ; they approach
nearer to our personal existence, and cause the most eminent
personages of past times to descend even to us. Moreover,
although destitute of the solemn certainty of history, they are
not always without a grave sanction, although of an inferior
order; private acts become interwoven with public acts;
numerous concurring witnesses establish each other's state
ments ; and the whole advances in a manner not too unequal.
Nevertheless, as soon as absolute historical certainty is aspired
to, it is necessary to separate the two elements, and to give to
the former, by that separation, all its force, and all its lustre.
The third condition necessary to raise writing to the state

JESUS CHRIST. 101
of history, is that the events should blend together and form f
a public and general web. Nothing is isolated in the events
of this world ; they are connected with each other by a chain
of succession similar to that which unites ideas in the logical
tissue of a discourse. History should reproduce that con
tinuous generation in such a manner that all the facts it
relates should enter naturally into the course of things of
which the progressive whole constitutes the life of the human
race. A solitary fact is not an historical fact ; it has no real
place, it floats in air. Still much less should we give this
name to a fact which cannot take its place in the general web
of history without deranging its whole economy ; this is the
infallible sign of imposture. The force of history, like the
force of every other real order, is in its completeness and unity.
When a man stands alone, he is nothing ; when a fact stands
alone, it is nothing. But let a man enter into association with
others, they form a family, a people, the whole human race.
And, in like manner, when a fact enters into historical
association with others, and not with others only, but with all
the rest, let it become necessary to the general web of history,
so that history cannot be constructed without that fact, then it
possesses not only the force of an historical fact, but the force
of all history ; we must accept it or deny the entire life of the
human race.
The three elements of history are, then, public writing,
public events, public web of events ; and when these three
elements are united, I affirm that history exists, and that it
cannot be resisted without resisting the very force of common
sense. In effect, gentlemen, for history to be false in this case
see what must be possible : that a man, no matter who,
relating in public events of a public nature, those events
supposed to be false must be received as true, and, notwith
standing their falsity, be interwoven in the general web of
history. Now this is altogether impossible, and nothing is
more easy than to prove it to you. Allow me only one
supposition. I suppose that to-morrow morning it may please
me to publish a work the substance of which I thus sum up.
On the ist of January, 1847, France declared war against the
three great Continental Powers of Europe. The object of this
war was to re-establish the rights of nations and faith in
treaties compromised by acts of violence. The hostile armies
met on the plains of Mayence. France had six hundred

102 RATIONALISTIC EFFORTS TO DESTROY THE LIFE OF
thousand men under arms, the enemy had a million. The
battle lasted ten consecutive days ; on the morning of the
tenth day the French were victorious. The plenipotentiaries
of Europe assembled at Mayence, and signed a treaty which
put an end to the war by a new partition of the European
continent. I ask you, gentlemen, do you believe that this political
romance would have any chance of imposing upon posterity ?
Is it not manifest that France would treat it with the deepest
scorn? If France accepted it, is it not manifest that the
whole of Europe would hold it up to public derision ? And if,
by an act of universal folly, France and Europe consented to
invest it with an absurd authority, is it not manifest that it
would be found impossible to introduce it into the web of
history, since the state of all contemporary affairs, and,
consequently, of all future affairs, would be in contradiction
with that pretended war and that fictitious treaty ? To sustain
falsehood, perpetual falsehood is necessary; and the con
spiracy of a single moment against truth would require a
conspiracy continued to the end of the world. The im
possibility of such a concurrence and of such perseverance in
a universal imposture is not only a moral impossibility, but a
metaphysical and an absolute impossibility.
Now, gentlemen, to whatever epoch in the history of
mankind we may turn, that impossibility would be the same.
In all times and places, public writing describing public events
which naturally arrange themselves in the general course of
history would be authentic and true, because in all times and
places it would have been impossible under such circumstances
to deceive the human race in regard to its own life, or to
persuade it to deceive itself without object and against all
reason. And — mark it well, gentlemen — history once existing,
time has not the privilege of lessening its force ; so far from
lessening, it confirms it. I say, first, that it does not lessen its
force ; and as proof I propose this to you : Think of Caesar,
then think of Louis XIV, and ask yourselves whether the
historical certainty of Louis XIV. and the historical certainty
of Cassar differ in the slightest degree in your mind.
Evidently, they do not differ; and yet seventeen centuries
separate Louis XIV. from Caesar. But those seventeen
centuries vanish from your thought by the electrical glance
which suddenly carries it from the one to the other, and causes it

TESUS CHRIST. 103
to perceive not only that the historical basis of Ceesar is the same
as the historical basis of Louis XIV, but also that in doubting
in regard to the first it would be needful to doubt the second,
since without Caesar history would lose all its connection, and
therewith the principal cause of its reality. I say still more, I
say that time confirms, instead of lessening, the certainty of
history. And why so ? Because time at every step unfolds the
historical canvas, and because each point of history entering
into participation with the united force of the whole, the more
that force increases by the repercussion of events upon each
other, the more each particular point becomes settled, sus
tained, and extended. Thus, Moses has been consolidated by
Jesus Christ ; for although Moses wrote publicly on public
events, the web of history was short in his time, and wanted
breadth; and when Jesus Christ took His place there, His
presence lighted up the Mosaic past, as the Christian future
had in its turn to reflect back again even to Jesus Christ.
Whence it follows that we do not advance a step in the
present time without again bearing to Moses the glory of a
new confirmation, because in all that we do he supports us,
and we in our turn explain all that he has done. The thread
of history unceasingly goes and returns from the past to the
future, from the future to the past; and that which we see
with our eyes will be more clear to our posterity than it is to
us, because upon the canvas which represents us they will
complete designs which have not yet left the hands of the
workmen. Like a building that covers its foundations, so is
history ; as land that grows firm by being trodden upon, so
also is history under the footsteps of generations. In a word,
Time, which seemed the greatest enemy of history, as soon as
history is founded, protects and consolidates it.
But does history exist? Is all that we have just said
anything but a magnificent speculation? Does the human
race know its own life ? Is there in the world a history of the
world ? This, gentlemen, is to ask if there exist public writings
containing a long web of public events; now these writings
and this web of events are before your eyes. Mankind learns
its primitive life by certain fundamental traditions collected in
due time, and confirmed by their universality ; it learns its
subsequent life from Moses by an unbroken history which
advanced in constant development. From Moses to Herodotus
is the dawn of history ; from Herodotus to Tacitus its morn-

J04 RATIONALISTIC EJ FORTS TO DESTROY THE LIFE OF
ing ; Tacitus is its noon, and that noonday still lasts. It is
even become more striking for the last three centuries, through
a celebrated invention which has greatly increased the
publicity and immortality of writing. As God had given
writing to our fathers when tradition was in danger of growing
obscure, he gave printing to them when writing itself was also
menaced with becoming forgotten and confused from the
superabundance of documents. Printing saved history fifteen
hundred years after Jesus Christ, as writing saved tradition
fifteen hundred years before Him.
Such being the case, gentlemen, and history having existed
for thirty centuries, it remains to be seen whether Jesus Christ
does or does not form a part of history. I affirm that He is in
history, and that none other in the world helds in it a place
more important or more certain than His own.
What have I to do, gentlemen, in order to prove this?
Evidently three things : I have to show that the life of Jesus
Christ is contained in a public writing ; that it is a tissue of
public events ; and that it enters naturally into the public web
of history. Now the life of Jesus Christ is contained in the Gospels, and
the Gospels form a public writing ; this is my first proposition.
But you at once ask me where I find the proof that the Gospels
form a public writing. Is it not, say you, in the Gospels them
selves ? And do you not thus prove the question by another
question? Gentlemen, if the Gospels commenced or formed
the whole of history it would, perhaps, be difficult to reply to
you ; but you have not, I think, so soon forgotten that history
existed before Jesus Christ ; and God, who willed to give us
the certainty of the existence and works of His Son, had
apparently prepared the ground upon which we were one day
to meet Him. That ground is history ; and at the time in which
the life of Jesus Christ is placed, that is to say, about the time
of Augustus, history held a position in the world which did not
depend upon us. It is not Catholics who make history ; it is
made without us and against us. It was in the hands of our
enemies, and if we then began the history of the Church, that
of the world continued its course upon a plan which was not
ours, and in which no power was reserved to us. Now this is
the history that I invoke to establish the publicity of the
Gospels ; and first of all I rest upon an observation which I

JESUS CHRIST. 105
consider fundamental; the Gospels, I say, were public writings,
because they belonged to a public doctrinal society.
That the first Christians formed a doctrinal society is clear
of itself; that that society was public is also beyond doubt;
nevertheless, it is necessary to establish this in the most positive
manner, for it is the groundwork of the whole matter. It can
indeed be conceived that a few men, secretly united, and
preaching a secret doctrine, may have been able secretly to
prepare a mysterious book, which had not been subject to any
investigation, and which was spread from hand to hand, gaining
authority with time. But if the Christian community was from
the very first public ; if, from the morrow of the death of Christ,
His Apostles appeared in the public places of Judaea, and soon
after in the public places of the Roman empire, provoking, not
an occult war, but a visible and notorious struggle ; if they said
boldly to the Jews : " Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of
God among you, by miracles and wonders and signs, which
God did by Him in the midst of you, as you also know ; this
same being delivered up, by the determinate counsel and fore
knowledge of God, you, by the hands of wicked men, have
crucified and slain. Whom God hath raised up ; " * if, being
dragged before all the tribunals of the empire, when asked who
they were, they answered : We are Christians, that is to say,
the children of Christ, who has been put to death, but whom
the arm of God — more powerful than all the conspiracies of
men — has raised from His tomb, and elevated to be for ever
the head and chief of all nations. If they said this, if it be
certain that they said this — certain, not only from our writings,
but from writings derived from strangers, from our enemies, by
a multitude of documents — I shall have the right to conclude
that the Christian society, at its beginning, was a public society,
and that, differing from so many things formed in secret —
because they have no faith in their strength and legitimacy —
the Catholic Church began in publicity, as she has continued I
in publicity. '
Let us come to the proof, and hear Tacitus, the most
celebrated of historians — Tacitus, charged by God to grave in
history the certificate of the birth and death of His only Son
Jesus Christ. Twenty-seven years after that great drama of
* Acts ii. 22-24.

106 RATIONALISTIC EFFORTS TO DESTROY THE LIFE OF
Calvary, Nero was pleased to burn Rome; and to hide the
horror of that abominable action, he caused to be seized, says
Tacitus, an immense multitude of men — ingens multitudo.
AVho were those men ? Tacitus defines them : they were
men whom the common people called Christians — quos vulgus
Christianos appellabat. Remark this word vulgus ; twenty-
seven years after the death of Christ the name of His disciples
was common in Rome, the capital of the world. But what
were Christians ? Tacitus tells us : the author of this name
was Christ — auctqr nominis hujus Christus. You hear,
gentlemen, you hear ; and the date of this text, which has
never been contested by anyone, is authentic ; it is marked by
the burning of Rome, in the year 64 of the Christian era, that
is to say, twenty-seven years after the death of Jesus Christ.
But is this all ? No ; you will hear more, you will hear the
Apostles' Creed, written by the pen and with the ink of Tacitus.
The historian had to say who Christ was ; he continues, then :
They derived their name and origin from Christ, who, in the
reign of Tiberius, had suffered death by the sentence of the
procurator Pontius Pilate — auctor nominis hujus Christus,
qui, Tiberio imperitante, per procuratorem Pontium
Pilatum supplicio affectus eeat. Once more, is it Tacitus
who speaks, or is it the Apostles' Creed? The Apostles'
Creed says : Qui passus est sub Pontio Pilato ; Tacitus
says : Qui per procuratorem Pontium Pilatum supplicio
affectus erat. It is indeed Tacitus — a stranger, a Pagan,
a man who, in writing these things in indestructible memorials,
did not even know what he said. And what said he of
the Christians, of that immense multitude whom the common
people called Christians ? He said this of them, in the
same text : For a while this dire superstition was checked;
but it again burst forth, and not only spread itself over fudcea,
the first seat of this evil, but even in Rome — repressaque
in pr^esens exitialis superstitio rursus erumpebat, non
MODO PER JunffiAM ORIGINEM HUJUS MALI, SED PER URBEM
etiam. What a text, gentlemen ! what precision ! what matter
in two lines ! Twenty-seven years, then, after the death of
Christ, the Christians formed an immense multitude in Rome,
they were commonly known by their true name ; even before
this epoch they had already been repressed by public authority,
but that repression did not hinder them from spreading such
power, that Tacitus calls it an irruption ; they appeared before

JESUS CHRIST. 107-
the tribunals, and there bore testimony to their faith ; for
Tacitus adds that they were seized by their own avowal —
primo correpti qui fatebantur. They were odious to all —
invisos : and their morals differed so much from general morals-
that, according to the remark of the historian, they were less
convicted of the crime of revolt than of hatred of the human kind
— HAUD PERINDE IN CRIMINE INCENDII, QUAM ODIO HUMANI
generis convicti sunt.* And Tacitus knew all this ; he
knew the life of Jesus Christ ; he knew Pontius Pilate ; the
drama of Calvary was present to him.
Would you have another proof of the public life of
Christians from the very origin of Christianity ? God and
history will not refuse it to you. In the year 98 of the
Christian era — sixty-one years after the death of Jesus Christ —
Trajan mounts the throne ; and history brings us a letter of
one of his proconsuls on the subject of the Christians, the
proconsul of Bithynia and Pontus, Pliny the Younger, a
celebrated man. For observe, gentlemen, when God wills to
write history, he is not unskilful in choosing his historians.
We have just heard Tacitus; let us now hear Pliny the
Younger, in an official letter to Trajan. He writes to the
emperor to consult him about the measures to be taken against
Christians ; for, says he, " I have never had to deal with cases
of this kind, and I know not what it is the custom to pursue
and punish in them, or in what degree. I have no little
difficulty in ascertaining whether it is needful to take account
of difference of age or to be indifferent to it; whether pardon
is to be granted on repentance, or whether it is useless to cease
to be a Christian after having once professed Christianity ;
whether it is the name which is to be pursued, even when
exempt from crime, or the crime attached to the name."
What questions, gentlemen, for an able and good man ! A
name criminal ! Crimes attached to a name ! But what
could he do ? -Pliny found in his way customs already
inveterate against a society of men in open struggle with the
Roman empire ; and we perceive, even in the absurd things
which he says, a desire to be as lenient as possible without
offending the emperor. His letter ends with the remark,.
" that a great number of persons of every age, rank, and sex,
were compromised, and that others would be ; that not only.
* Annals, Book 15.

*o8 RATIONALISTIC EFFORTS TO DESTROY THE LIFE OF
the cities, but the towns and villages, were overrun with that
contagious superstition; that, in fine, the deserted temples,
and the sacred ceremonies which had for a long time been
interrupted, began to revive, in consequence of the measures
taken against the Christians."
This picture, gentlemen, joined to that of Tacitus, leaves
no doubt upon the capital point before us, namely, that from
the origin of Christianity, the Christians lived in a publicly-
constituted society. And, moreover, the very result obtained
by them in the short space of three centuries is a super
abundant proof of it. At the end of three centuries, the
Christians were masters of the Roman empire ; they bore to
the throne the first Caesar who embraced their faith, and, not
content with this prodigy of their power, they said to
Constantine : " Withdraw to the Bosphorus, for here, in Rome,
the chair of St. Peter, the fisherman of Galilee, must be placed."
And Constantine, from instinctive obedience to that un
expressed command of Providence, withdrew, and so bore,
even to the borders of the Euxine, a proof, still subsisting, of
the social mission of Jesus Christ. Now, gentlemen, no secret
society has ever been capable of such success. All that
begins in secret is accomplished in secret. When men speak
to you of a secret society, it is as if they told you that nothing
had formed an association. Doubtless these secret conspiracies
may work secretly, shake the foundations of states, prepare
the day of ruins; but they never attain to a regulated and
public life. All that begins in darkness is struck with in
capacity to live in open air and in open day. Therefore
the attainment of empire by the Christian society, under
Constantine, is of itself a sufficient proof that the Christian
work was a constantly public work.
But if the first Christians formed a public society, and at
the same time a doctrinal society, it necessarily follows that
their writings were public. Endeavour to conceive a public
doctrinal society which hides its writings ; you will never
succeed. For how would it be public, if it did not boldly
proclaim what it believed, and how would it proclaim what it
believed, if it secreted its writings, and those even which
formed the foundation of its faith? Although the Gospels
may not have been written on the very instant after the death
and resurrection of Jesus Christ, they were published over the
•whole world by the preaching of the Apostles, and when they

JESUS CHRIST. ,09,
appeared successively, the young and living tradition became
blended with them in one and the same authenticity. A
contest of nearly three hundred years began upon the very
text of the Gospels between Catholics on one hand and
heretics and philosophers on the other. This contest has left
very numerous monuments. We see, then, Celsus and
Porphyry following step by step upon the Gospels, the life of
the Saviour. They do not dispute their publicity or their
authenticity. Heretics do something more. Not only do
they discuss upon the text consecrated by the adhesion of the
Church, but they fabricate for themselves apocryphal Gospels
to oppose them to the approved Gospels, so true is it that the
whole discussion bore upon those fundamental texts. They
were simple enough to make for themselves an arm against us
of apocryphal Gospels, that is to say, to invoke against Jesus
Christ books wherein the principal mysteries of His life and
death were recognised, and where the very alteration of certain
passages served but to prove so much the more the truth of
the whole. It is very natural that great publicity should call
forth counterfeits ; this is even the greatest sign of success.
Every idea, every style, every fashion that succeeds, raises up
a cloud of imitators or speculators. But what is that to the
man or to the thing which is the object of such effort ? At
least, it is not publicity which suffers from it ; now, the
publicity of the life of Jesus Christ by the Gospels and the
primitive Christian books is precisely the point that I desire
to establish, and I do not think you will require more from
me. The life of Jesus Christ was, from the first, surrounded by
immense publicity. His disciples, from the first, formed a
public society ; their profession of faith, their writings filled all
the tribunals and all the schools of the earth ; and finally, in
three centuries, the emperor was publicly Christian, and the
vicar of Jesus Christ was publicly seated in Rome. All this is
as certain in profane history as in Christian history. This
first point is gained.
As to the events which compose the very life of Jesus
Christ, their nature is also that of manifest and striking
publicity. What was in question? Was it a philosopher
teaching certain disciples under a porch or in a garden ? Was
it but a Socrates, however celebrated he may be ? No ; it
was a question of a Man, the founder of a new religion, a

no RATIONALISTIC EFFORTS TO DESTROY THE LIFE OF
thing that touched all — traditions, laws, customs, sentiments,
even the most sacred interests ; it was of a Man the founder of
an exclusive religion, and who designed nothing less than the
overthrow of all existing religious and sacerdotal bodies ; it
was of a Man working, it was said, in public unheard-of
miracles, and accompanied everywhere by an innumerable
multitude, attracted by His works and His doctrine; it was of
a Man called before the supreme tribunal of His country,
condemned, put to death, and afterwards, it was said, raised
again from the dead, and who sent His disciples to the moral
conquest of the world ; it was of a Man having succeeded in
raising up an unshaken faith in the hearts of a multitude of
men of all nations, and become, by His name alone, the
rallying-point of a new society. If ever there were public
events, assuredly they were these.
And these events, which contradicted all the past life of the
human race — which must, consequently, if they were false, have
been rejected from the general web of history by an invincible
impossibility of ever forming a part therein — have they or have
they not taken their place in that rigorous chain of the human
life during three thousand years ? They have done more than
this, gentlemen ; without them history is an incomprehensible
enigma. What, indeed, is the principal question of history,
from Moses to Pius IX., those two extreme terms of the world's
annals ? Is it the rise and fall of the empires of Assyria, the
Trojan war, the conquests of Alexander, the fortunes of the
Romans, the rise of modern nations, the discovery of America,
the progress of science and history in modern times ? No ;
none of these questions, however vast they may be, is the
principal question of history, the one that embraces the totality
of the three thousand years that live in the memory of mankind.
The principal question, because it contains all the past, the
present, and the future, is this : the world having lived in
idolatry in the times before Augustus, how has it become
Christian since His time ? These are the two sides that divide
all history, the side of antiquity, and the side of later ages ; the
one idolater, plunged into the most licentious materialism ; the
other Christian, purified at the sources of a complete spiritu
ality. In the ancient world the flesh publicly prevailed over
the spirit ; in the present, the spirit publicly prevails over the
flesh. What has caused this ? Who has produced a change so
great and so general in extent between the two periods of man-

JESUS CHRIST. ni
kind ? Who has so greatly modified the human form and the
course of history ? Your fathers adored idols ; you, their
posterity, descended from them by a corrupted blood, you
adore Jesus Christ. Your fathers were materialists even in
their worship; you are spiritualists even in your passions.
Your fathers denied all that you believe; you deny all that they
believed. Again I ask what is the reason of this ? There arc
no events without causes in history, any more than there is
movement without a motive power in mathematics. What is
this historical cause which converted the idolatrous world into
the Christian world, which gave Charlemagne as a successor to
Nero ? You are compelled to know or at least to seek it. We
Catholics say that this prodigious change corresponds to the
appearance upon earth of a Man who called Himself the Son of
God, sent to take away the sins ' of the world — who preached
humility, purity, penance, gentleness, peace ; who lived piously
among the poor and the lowly ; who died on a cross, with His I
arms extended over us to bless us ; who left us His teaching '
and His example in the Gospel ; and who, having thus touched
the souls of many, subdued their pride and corrected their
senses, has left in them a tranquil joy so marvellous that its
perfume has spread to the ends of the world, and has won even
sensuality. We say this. Yes, a man, a single man, has
founded the empire of Christians upon the ruins of the idola
trous empire ; and we do not marvel thereat, because we have
remarked in history that all good as well as evil invariably
springs from a single principle, from a man, the depositary of
the hidden force of the demon, or of the invisible force of
God. We say this, and we base our declaration upon un
interrupted monuments which begin with Moses and reach to
us ; we appeal also to a publicity of thirty-two consecutive
centuries ; we join together the Jewish people, Jesus Christ, the
Catholic Church, or rather we do not join these, they appear
before us closely linked together in a course of things sustained
the one by the other ; we appeal, in fine, to the whole web of
history, and in the name of that immense monument which it
is absolutely necessary to admit and to explain, we say to you :
Jesus Christ is the supreme expression of history, He is its key
and its revelation. Not only does He form a part of history,
He has taken His place in it in the midst of all its events, with
out difficulty and without effort, but history is not possible
without Him. Endeavour, in following the line of these monu-

ii2 RATIONALISTIC EFFORTS TO DESTROY THE LIFE OF
ments, to pass from the ancient to the new world, and to
explain to yourselves how, without Jesus Christ, the Pope has
replaced the Caesars at the Vatican. Is it possible to do this ?
And if a gleam of good faith remain in the depths of your
soul, will you not be compelled to say with us : Yes, it is in
Christ on Calvary, in that blood which was shed, that the
renovation of the human race began ?
Therefore, gentlemen, before our epoch, none dared to
deny the historical reality of Jesus Christ, not one. Before
you, long before you, Jesus Christ had enemies; for before you
pride existed, and pride is the chief enemy of Jesus Christ.
Before you Jesus Christ had enemies ; for before you sensuality
existed, and sensuality is the second enemy of Jesus Christ.
Before you Jesus Christ had enemies ; for before you egotism
existed, and egotism is the third enemy of Jesus Christ. And
yet, when He appeared for the first time, when He came with
His cross to sap your pride, to insult your senses, to drag down
your egotism to the very dust, what was said to Him ? Pride,
sensuality, egotism, had then as now able men in their service
— Celsus, Porphyry, all the Alexandrian school, and the lovers
of this life, and the throng of courtiers, ever ready to find in
truth a secret enemy to power. What said they of Christ ?
They pursued Him by putting His followers to death; by
deriding His life ; by disputing His dogmas ; by oppression
called to the help of a cause which betrayed liberty ; but their
books, subsisting in a thousand remains by the aid of printing
— which I just now called the salvation of history — their books
confirm Him ; not one of them has denied the reality of the
life of Jesus Christ. You alone, coming eighteen centuries
after, and thinking that time, which confirms history, is its
destroyer, you have dared to battle against the very light of the
sun, hoping that every negation is at least a shadow, and that
human folly, seeking a refuge against the severity of Jesus
Christ, would accept of any arm as a defence, and of any
shield as a protection. You have deceived yourselves. History
subsists in spite of negation, as the heart of man subsists in spite
of the debauchery of the senses ; and Jesus Christ remains
under the shelter of unexampled publicity, and of a necessity
to which there is no counterpoise, upon the summit of history.
Nevertheless, as a last hope you say to me : If it were a
question of human events only, such as those of which the
ordinary annals of nations are composed, it i«s manifest that the

JESUS CHRIST. 113
life of Jesus Christ contained in the Gospels would be beyond
all discussion. But in that life it is a question of events which
bear no comparison with those we habitually witness. It is a
question of a God who made Himself Man, who died and rose
again ; how is it possible for us to admit such strange things
upon a mass of human evidence ? For in fine, public writings,
public events, the public and general web of history, all this
assemblage of proofs is purely human ; and it is upon this
mortal foundation that you base a history where all is super
human. The base must evidently sink under such a weight.
Gentlemen, I do not undervalue the force of that objection.
Yes ; I understand that when it is a question of the history of
a God it needs another pen than that which traces the history
of the greatest man in the world ; this is true. But I also
believe that God has solved this objection by creating for His
only Son, Jesus Christ, a history which is not human, that
is to say, which, in its proportions, is so much above the
nothingness of man, that the ordinary power of history would
evidently not have sufficed for it. Where indeed will you find
such connection as that of the Jewish people, Jesus Christ,
and the Catholic Church ? Where is there anything to be
compared to it ? And, moreover — without returning to what
has already been said — where, amongst all the histories known
to you, do you find any which for three centuries had
witnesses who gave to it the testimony of their blood?
Where are the witnesses who have given their lives in favour
of the authenticity of the greatest men or the greatest events ?
Who died to certify the history of Alexander ? Who died to
certify the history of Caesar ? Who ? No one. No one in
the world has ever shed his blood to add another degree of
evidence to the historical certainty of anything whatever.
Men leave history to take its course. But to form it with their
blood, to cement historical testimony with human blood for
three centuries, is what has never been witnessed, save on the
part of Christians for Jesus Christ. We were interrogated
during three centuries, and asked to declare who we were ; we
answered : Christians. They then said to us : Blaspheme the
name of Christ ; and we replied : We are Christians. They
put us to death for this in frightful tortures ; and in the hands
of our executioners our last sigh exhaled, as a balm for the
dying and a testimony for the living to all eternity, the name
of Jesus Christ. We did not die for opinions, but for realities

U4 RATIONALISTIC EFFORTS TO DESTROY THE LIFE OF
— the very name of martyrs proves it ; and Pascal has well
said : " I believe in witnesses who give the testimony of their
blood." And although there may be presumption in attempt
ing to speak better than Pascal, I shall however say some
thing better : I believe in the human race dying for its
faith. Shall I give you another sign which shows the elevation of
Jesus Christ, in history, above all history ? Tell me which
amongst the ancient peoples of the world, the most celebrated
in your eyes, has left guardians upon its tomb to protect its
history? Where are the survivors of the Assyrians, the
Medes, the Greeks, the Romans ? Where are they ? What
defunct people renders testimony to its life ? One alone, the
Jewish people, at the same time dead and living, a relic of the
ancient world in the new, and a self-accusing witness in favour
of Christ— by the Jews crucified. God has preserved them for
us as an irreproachable witness; I produce them, they are
there. Behold them ! The blood is in their hands. And we
also, Catholics, we the Church, we are by their side, we speak
with them and as loudly as they. As a living and a universal
society we bear, in the wounds of our martyrs, the blood shed
by us to render testimony to the history of Jesus Christ ; and
on their side, as a society, living also, universal also, the
Jewish people bear blood which is not their own, but which is
not less eloquent than ours. There are two witnesses here,
and two streams of blood. Behold them ! Look on the
right hand and on the left of Christ, behold the people who
crucified him ! Behold the people who sprang from his cross !
They both speak the same thing to you, both, during eighteen
centuries, suffer a martyrdom which is not the same, but
which has the same source, both are enemies — they meet but
in one single thing, Jesus Christ ! Ah ! you would defy God !
Learn that when man defies God, his Providence inevitably
prepares an answer for him ; and you have just heard, on the
subject of Jesus Christ, the answer He has given to you.
I conclude, gentlemen. To deny the historical reality of
the life of Jesus Christ is an act of folly, an act of desperation.
And you wonder perhaps why this has been done, directly or
indirectly, with or without precaution. It is, because the
historical reality of Jesus Christ once admitted, or taken for
granted, the sentiment of His divinity begins to shine in the
mind> and it is difficult not to yield more or less. It was

JESUS CHRIST. us
necessary to gather clouds around an existence so remarkable,
connected, moreover with so many things which are remark
able also. Were the result of negation only to call forth proof
of the fact, it would already have provoked discussion, and
discussion is of value on unattackable ground; its prestige
seems to be thereby lessened. It is better, in fine, to attempt
something than to remain inactive. Then, hatred blinds, it
renders the vision insensible to the clearest evidence;
and, in this sense, it was fitting that the historical reality of
Jesus Christ should be attacked, as a proof of the intellectual
diminution of those who become His enemies. Truth gains by
the attacks of the mind as by those of the body ; and, tranquil
in the inacessible eyrie where God has placed her, sure of
herself, however she may be attacked, she can say to man,
imitating a celebrated line :
Contest, if thou canst; and if thou dar'st, consent 1

T s

THE EFFORTS OF RATIONALISM
TO PERVERT
THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST.

My Lord — Gentlemen,
In our last conference I proved to you the historical reality
of Jesus Christ. But what is it to have proved to you the
historical reality of Jesus Christ ? Does it mean that a Man
called Jesus Christ undoubtedly lived at a certain epoch ? If we
have proved but this we shall have proved nothing, for a name
is nothing. To prove the historical reality of a personage is to
prove the reality of the living type which constitutes that
personage. Thus, when I name Caesar, I do not name an
indifferent person, I name the Roman who, before Augustus,
conquered and governed the Gauls, who, recalled by the
Senate, passed the Rubicon, assumed the dictatorship, and at
last fell under the daggers of a band of conspirators. So also,
when I name Jesus Christ, I name Him who, in the time of
Tiberius, preached a religious doctrine in Judasa, supported
His preaching by acts, about which you reserve your judg
ment, but which were at least extraordinary, who was sur
rounded by disciples, and, after a condemnation followed by
His death, was presented to the whole world as living, and
who, in fine, founded that hierarchy, that dogma, that worship,
that Catholic Church, which we see still living before our eyes.
And to have proved the historical reality of Jesus Christ is to
have proved the reality of this type whose leading features I
have just traced. I have done more, gentlemen ; I have at
the same time proved the authenticity of the Gospels. For a
book is authentic when it is historical; and I have shown

JESUS CHRIST. 117
that the Gospels possess all the characters of history, that is to
say, that they were public writings, containing public events
adapted to the general and public web of the annals of the
human race. This is its great authenticity. There is another,
secondary and of little importance, which consists in knowing
the precise date of a book and the exact name of its author.
I place it below the former, because a book may have a
certain date and a certain author, without possessing any
historical value, whilst an historical book bears with itself the
date and the course of things authentically promulgated by
invincible publicity. The Gospels are authentic in both ways ;
but as the first and great authenticity is of itself sufficient, I
have confined myself chiefly to establishing it.
Perhaps in listening to me, gentlemen, you have asked
yourselves whom I was addressing, why I took so much pains
about a thing which did not seem to be contested. In this
you would have deceived yourselves. Not only in a cele
brated work on the " Origin of all Religions " has Dupuis
denied the historical reality of Jesus Christ, but so also in
some degree does every unbeliever, endeavouring to raise up
clouds between his mind and that formidable figure of the
Son of God manifest in the flesh. Hence it is that you hear
it so blandly and so falsely repeated that no contemporary
testimony, out of the Christian school, attests the presence of
Jesus Christ upon the stage of history. Hence it is that the
famous text of Flavius Josephus on the life and death of
Christ has been made the object of so much suspicion. There
are no unbelievers whom the historical certainty of the early
times of Christianity does not disturb and importune, and who
do not set a high value upon the slightest doubt in regard to
it. It was necessary then to take away this consolation from
them — the more so, gentlemen, as in demonstrating to you
the divinity of Jesus Christ I had previously supposed the
authenticity of His person and history, and because if I had
not retraced my steps in order definitely to establish this, the
whole edifice of my demonstration would have rested upon a
gratuitous hypothesis. Let us to-day complete the substi
tution of the reality for the hypothesis by treating of another
effort of rationalism, no longer to destroy the life of Jesus
Christ, but to pervert it. For, after having said or suggested
that the life of Christ was a fable, rationalism itself perceived
that it was too much to ask of human credulity .• it feared the

118 RATIONALISTIC EFFORTS TO PERVERT THE LIFE OF
all-powerful light of common sense ; and at the beginning of
this century, not in England, not in France, but in Germany,
a new system has been developed. The life of Christ, they
say, is not a fable, but a myth. What is a myth ? Is the life
of Christ a myth? Such is, gentlemen, the object of this
conference and of your attention.
Let us first clearly understand the causes which have kept
rationalism from sanctioning, by its adhesion, the historical
reality of Jesus Christ. Assuredly there remain many questions
to solve, even when it is admitted that Jesus Christ lived, that
His history is authentic, that publicity sheds the clearest light
upon the origins of Christianity and Christendom. Yet,
gentlemen, when we have advanced thus far, we immediately
find ourselves before a very simple dilemma : either Jesus
Christ and His apostles were sincere, or they were impostors.
To say they were sincere is in the main to admit the divinity
of their work ; for, the reality of the life of Christ being
established on the one hand, and the sincerity of their work
being admitted on the other, we cannot, before the nature and
the course of events which form its tissue, avoid this con
clusion : Jesus Christ is God. If, on the contrary, it is
affirmed that Jesus Christ and His apostles were impostors, the
position is one which the mind will hardly accept. And why ?
Because all that belongs to Jesus Christ, all the apostles, all
the martyrs, manifest the sincerity of man in its highest
degree ; because God has placed in the person of Jesus Christ,
in the life of His apostles, in the death of His martyrs, a
character of truthfulness, which leaves no room for the
supposition that all that beautiful history, for three whole
centuries, is nothing but a mass of imposture steeped in blood.
Moreover, Christianity is now sincere ; it is impossible to
accuse of falsehood the multitude of civilised men who believe
in Jesus Christ, who profess to have the daily demonstration
of His divinity, who say that, even independently of the
Gospel history, the action alone of Christ upon them manifests |
its all-powerful reality ; and it is the thesis of a celebrated
German, who, having made the historical void around him,
and inwardly verifying to his mind the influence of the Saviour
of men, said to Germany : But I who live, who feel, who
think, I live with Jesus Christ, I feel with Jesus Christ, I think
with Jesus Christ ; He raises me above myself, He purifies
me, He gives me that which nothing in this world has ever

JESUS CHRIST. 119
given me ; He is then more than myself, more than the world,
more than the soul, He is God. Yes, we are sincere ; and if all
Christians do not prove their sincerity by their virtues, many
of them at least render to Jesus Christ this testimony of their
faith. Will you dare to charge them with hypocrisy ? Will
you dare to insult the hearts and actions of so great a number
of men bound to you by so many ties ? Hypocrites ! And
why? With what object? What pleasure is there in being
chaste from hypocrisy ? What a strange design, and what a
strange salary for such a sacrifice ! We are then sincere, and
we are able to say of Jesus Christ, the spouse of our souls,
that which Pauline said of Polyeuctes, and with the same
feeling : My spouse in dying has left me his light,
I see, I know, I believe !
But if Christianity is now sincere, how is it possible that, from
the highest of all imposture, namely, that of assuming the
name of God, this torrent, this sea of sincerity, should have
spread its bays and horizons even to us, to the very centre of
existing mankind ? An impure cause cannot produce a pure
effect ; and if Christianity is now sincere, it was so yesterday,
the day before, in the days of its youth ; it was so in Jesus
Christ, in the first heart whence it issued to fire our own and
render it true. Or, if you deny the consequence under that
form, recognise at least in Jesus Christ, in His apostles and
martyrs, signs of sincerity still greater even than those of
Christianity in the present time, and learn why unbelief needs
to reject from history the primitive times of Christianity —
fearing lest, having once given admission to them, they would
too readily attain the crown of incontestable divinity. Yes,
our ancestors, the unbelievers of France, showed the necessary
boldness ; they placed the question in its true light, and who
soever does not follow them, at all risk and peril, is a coward
or an infant in the order of negation. Our fathers, here as
elsewhere, advanced straight to the heart of things ; with the
native intrepidity of their minds, they comprehended that it
was needful to deny all or to admit all. I laud them for it ;
for, after all, when men love error it is better to steer in it like
Columbus than like those timid barks which fear to brave the
ocean, and break up on the very edge of the shore. By
advancing boldly, the end is sooner reached, and the very

120 RATIONALISTIC EFFORTS TO PERVERT THE LIFE OF
mind which pursued error has thus greater chances of entering
in full sail into the harbour of truth.
German genius is not, it seems, endowed with this advantage
of brightness and rapidity. It is this genius which has created
the theory of the myth around which it has hovered for fifty
years. But what is a myth ? Sweep away the vaulted roof of
this cathedral, and gaze upon that other vault of which Pascal
said : " The eternal silence of that unknown space terrifies me."
Beyond the luminaries which your eye easily discovers there as
it were on the extreme frontier of space, you will still perceive
an array of unknown stars. Are they the result of vision
deceived by distance ? Have they a total subsistence ? Or
rather is the cause of their apparition at the same time an
optical illusion and a certain reality ? So will it be if, instead
of exploring the profound regions of the firmament, you cast a
prying glance upon the frontiers of antiquity. You will find
there recitals which will trouble your mind, uncertain whether
to reject or to admit them. I take Prometheus, for example.
You all know the story of Prometheus — that daring man who
stole fire from heaven, and whom Jupiter, in punishment for so
great a sacrilege, caused to be chained to a rock, where his
liver is devoured by a vulture. Antiquity was full of this story,
upon which ^Eschylus formed one of the most remarkable
tragedies of the Greek stage. What in fact was Prometheus ?
Was it a pure fable ? It is very difficult to think so, gentle
men ; man always founds the objects of his belief upon some
reality, and when these objects have a universal character it is
not logical to treat them with absolute disdain. But, on
another hand, would you range the story of Prometheus in
history? This is equally impossible. How can we admit
that a man stole fire from heaven, that God chained him to a
rock, and that his liver, never diminishing, was ever preyed
upon there by an insatiable vulture ? We are here evidently
between fable and history. An event relative to the religious
destinies of the human race occurred in the depths of primordial
ages ; the people carried its remembrances in their emigrations;
but as the shadow of the past deepened upon the world, the
true physiognomy of that antique tragedy lost its clearness ;
imagination came to the help of memory, and Prometheus
chained to his rock became the popular expression of a great
crime followed by a great expiation. This is a myth. A myth is
a fact transfigured by an idea ; and the frontiers of antiquity — I

JESUS CHRIST. I2»
repeat the expression — appear to us as it were guarded by a legion
of myths, which are all adulterated expressions of certain truths.
Such being the case, says Dr. Strauss — one of the most
celebrated masters of the mythic school — why should not
Jesus Christ be a myth? Why should not the Gospels be a
collection of myths, that is to say, of real facts transfigured by
ideas ? Let us see if this be not possible ; and, in the second
place, if it be not real.
That it is possible, in the first place, analogy leaves us
hardly room for doubt. Is there a religion, whether idolatry,
or Brahminism, or Buddhism, which subsists otherwise than by
a vast assemblage of facts and ideas adulterated the one by the
other ? If you deny this, Christians, you will inflict a heavy
blow upon yourselves. For you would thereby affirm that man
kind is so wanting in common sense as to be capable of adoring.
for centuries fables devoid of every kind of foundation, tradi
tional or ideal. Evidently you cannot deny it ; you must
admit, under pain of wounding your own selves, that wherever
men have bent the knee with some universality and perpetuity
they have had before them facts incrusted in conceptions. But
if this be the general phenomenon, why may not Christianity
have been produced under the empire of the same law ?-
Doubtless Christians adore realities ; Jesus Christ is a reality ;
but with the course of time and the fascination of a pre
conceived idea, as in all occasions of like nature, the prim
ordial fact, although certain, has undergone modifications in
the idea of its adorers which take it from pure history and
range it in the category of myths. That Jesus Christ has not
undergone so complete a transformation as the more distant
events of remote antiquity, may be readily granted ; but the
degree of more or less is a secondary question only ; and it
nevertheless remains that the person of Christ and the Christian
event are comprised in the general law which links to the myth
all known religions.
So much the less is this to be doubted, as the publication
of the Gospels is not contemporary with Jesus Christ. From
the very avowal of Christians, many years of tradition and
preaching preceded the era of the evangelical writings ; and, if
we come to exact criticism, we shall not be able to place the
assured reign of the New Testament before the middle of the
second century. What a space left to the imagination and to-
faith for transforming Jesus Christ !

J22 RATIONALISTIC EFFORTS TO PERVERT THE LIFE OF
It is especially worthy of remark that this transformation
was so much the more easy, as the Messianic idea pre-existed
Jesus Christ. Long before He appeared that idea flowed in the
veins of the Jewish people ; a vast number of men, attentive to
the voice of the prophets, looked for the Messiah who was to
come ; and after Christ had attributed this mission to Himself
it was natural that all its features should be applied to Him.
The Messianic idea was the mould in which, for three centuries,
the myth of Jesus Christ was formed. Jesus Christ had, so to
say, but to leave things to their own course, and when He
died His life entered of itself, like matter in fusion, into the
mould of the Messianic idea, whence at length it came forth
such as it now is before the astonished eyes of generations.
Analogy, the time, the preconceived idea of the Messiah,
all these circumstances lead to the conclusion that Christianity
may have been found, like all the religions of antiquity, by the
principle of mythical transfiguration. But a closer examination
will lead us far beyond that conclusion, and cause us to
perceive in the New Testament all the characters of an
accomplished myth.
In the first place, the life of Jesus Christ, as related in the
Gospels, is stamped with a character of continuous marvel.
From the angel who announced His conception in the womb
of the Virgin Mary, up to His resurrection and ascension, not
a single event in the whole of that existence is conformable
with the course of nature. Every word develops a prodigy,
every step is a miracle, and the miracle seems constantly
struggling to surpass itself and to confound the last hopes of
reason. Now, the marvellous is precisely the inseparable
companion of the myth, and its seat is the same. Where, in
fact, do we find the marvellous ? Is it before our eyes — near
to us, in the modern world? Never. All that we see is
simple and natural ; general laws, whence proceeds a constant
order, governing the world which is before us ; God does not
act in it by any sudden and capricious intervention, but he
leaves to secondary causes their indissoluble succession. Where
then do we find the marvellous ? There — even where we
find the myth — in antiquity. Antiquity is the seat of the
one and the other; and the myth itself is revealed to us
only by the presence of the marvellous. For if nothing were
marvellous in antiquity, all would be history. But what then
is it that distinguishes the marvellous in regard to Jesus Christ

JESUS CHRIST. 123
from the marvellous elsewhere? In Himself, nothing; as to
place, nothing still, since that place is antiquity. Why, then,
may we ask, do you divide antiquity in twain, and call one false
and the other true ? Why reject in the myth that which was
marvellous before Jesus Christ, and raise to the rank of history
the marvellous which is contemporary with Him? Reason
seizes no motive for this distinction, if it be not that you call
the time of Jesus Christ an historical period, in opposition to ,
other epochs which you call fabulous. But the marvellous is *
the very character that distinguishes fabulous from historical
ages ; for, without this, where would be the principle of their
distinction? In the second place, it is manifest, on the first reading
of the Gospels, that they present no chronological suite,
nothing which announces history, but that they are simple
materials collected in minds at hazard, without the slightest
-attempt having been made to give them any appearance of
harmony. All is in confusion and contradiction there. Dr.
Strauss has had but to read and let his pen run freely, to
form four volumes of the inconceivable blunders of which
they are full. And we must not blame the evangelists for
this ; it is the very proof of their sincerity. They took the
myth as they found it, vague, indefinite, contradictory — like
all that comes from the gloomy confluence of facts and ideas.
More than a century had passed over the life of Jesus Christ ;
shreds of that life had been carried from the East to the West,
under the impression of sentiments and ideas of diverse origins;
and, although the type possessed some unity because of the
Messianic form which was the primitive starting-point, it was
nevertheless impossible for the final elaboration of so many
elements not to bear visible marks of disagreement and variety.
Such, gentlemen, is the reasoning of the mythic school. I
believe I have not hidden any of its force from you ; I do not
like to depreciate the enemies of truth. Why should I ? Were
I to succeed for a moment in abusing your penetration and
memory, on returning to your homes a glance at the work of
Dr. Strauss would reveal to you my want of sincerity, and
the cause I defend, for the half-hour it may have gained, would
have lost a century in your minds. No, gentlemen, it is less
than a duty, it is a pleasure to be sincere when we have truth
on our side ; and if the arguments of the mythic school have
wanted force in passing by my mouth, it is because, after three

124 RATIONALISTIC EFFORTS TO PERVERT THE LIFE OF
months devoted to the study of them, it is not possible for me
to impart to them more attractiveness and more authority. Do
not, however, deceive yourselves ; the work is as skilful as it
could be. You perceive that the historical reality of Jesus
Christ is no longer denied ; they no longer rush to their de
struction against the very constitution of history ; and yet Jesus
Christ, although remaining as a reality, is disarmed of the power
of that position. On another hand, it is no longer necessary to
combat the impression of sincerity which results from His life
and that of His disciples. That sincerity is admitted. Jesus
Christ believed in Himself, and men believed in Him. They
believed in Him before Caesar, they believe in Him before
incredulity. Your fathers gave their blood for realities and
ideas ; you do the same. Only you do not properly under
stand them ; and it is permitted, it is honourable, it is glorious,
to live and die for things which we do not properly understand.
Gentlemen, I believe this exposition is sufficient. I will
now meet this great engine of Germanic warfare.
Shall I deny the existence of myths ? No, gentlemen ; the
myth appears to me historically as of all things in the world
the most veritable. I admit that man, left to tradition during
a long course of ages, ends by no longer clearly perceiving the
limit and the primitive text of events. Like a picture before
which the spectator constantly retreats, the human race
retreats before the past ; and however attentively it may be
watched, at length it becomes obscure. The imagination,
however, dwelling upon this now distant scene, adds new
features to it, the idea governs the fact, and something is
produced which is neither history nor fable, but that which we
call a myth. Mythology is the assemblage of all the creations
of the human mind between the gloom and the light of
antiquity. For, remark where is the theatre of myths. It is
antiquity, or rather it is tradition abandoned alone to the
course of mankind, which bears it along in advancing and
pressing onward. The seat of the myth is in pure tradition.
But wherever writing appears, wherever there is a fixed recital,
wherever the indelible record is placed before the eyes of
generations, at that moment the mythic power of man vanishes.
For then the reality remains before him in its true proportions,
it remains in command of his imagination, and a thousand
yeais can do no more against it than a single day. Never,
since the time of Herodotus and Tacitus, has anyone shown you

JESUS CHRIST. 125
myths in history. Has Charlemagne become a myth after a
thousand years? Clovis after thirteen hundred years?
Augustus, Caesar, in retreating into the past, hate they
assumed any mythical appearance ? No ; the most distant
point where the modern historian seeks to discover the myth
is, for example, the beginning of Rome, Romulus and Remus.
And why ? Because although they approached writing,
although it existed before them in other countries, it had not
yet received the guardianship of Roman history. But, as soon
as writing exists, as soon as it seizes the general web of history,
the mythical mould is from that moment broken.
Now, Jesus Christ does not belong to the reign of tradition,
but to the reign of writing. He was born at a period when
writing was fully established, in a land where it was impossible
for the myth to take root and grow. Providence had foreseen
all and prepared all beforehand ; and if you have sometimes
wondered why Jesus Christ came so late, you now see a reason
for it. He came so late not to be in antiquity, to have his
place in the centre of writing ; for He does not stand first
there ; He was careful to provide against being so placed ;
fifteen hundred years preceded Him, and if you count only
from Herodotus, five hundred years preceded Him. Therefore
He is modern, and even should the world last for numberless
ages, as by means of writing all is present, since at a glance and
with the rapidity of lightning we survey the whole chain of
history, Jesus Christ is ever new, standing in the full reality of
the events which compose the known and certain life of the
human race.
I might stop here, gentlemen ; for you see clearly that the
mythic engine is overthrown, since the fundamental condition
of the myth, which is the absence of writing, is wanting in
regard to Jesus Christ. Dr. Strauss himself expressly admits
that the myth is not possible with writing, therefore he
endeavours to strip Jesus Christ of the scriptural character by
placing at as remote a period as possible the publication of the
Gospels. We shall soon see the weakness of that resource, if
you will permit me to follow step by step the trace of his
reasoning. Analogy, says he, is against Jesus Christ, since the myth is
the basis of all known religions. This I deny. The myth is
the basis of all the religions of antiquity, save the Mosaic,
because all those religions plunged their roots in a tradition of

126 RATIONALISTIC EFFORTS TO PERVERT THE LIFE OF
which writing had not fixed the shadows, and so rendered
deflections impossible. But writing having appeared, even the
false religions, such as that of Mahomet, have taken an
historical consistency which manifestly separates them from
the priesthoods and corrupted dogmas of antiquity. The
difference is clear. This is why we Christians, and you who
fight against Christianity, never think of combating Mahomet
by making a myth of his person, and of the Koran a mythical
compilation. The force of writing, under the empire of
which he lived, interdicts to us even the thought of such
chimerical temerity. We are constrained to avow that he is a
real personage, that he wrote or dictated the Koran, organised
Islamism ; and our sole resource against his pretensions in
regard to us is to treat him as an impostor, to say boldly
to him : Thou hast lied ! But here the difficulty is greater,
the success much more costly; and this is why rationalism
disputes with so much art the powerful reality of Christ.
However this may be, the analogy which is invoked to spread
over Him the clouds of the myth is an analogy without founda
tion. A great line of demarcation separates into two hemi
spheres all known religions — the mythic hemisphere and the
real hemisphere ; the former contains all the religions formed
in primitive times under the empire of floating traditions, the
latter contains the true or false religions which writing has
enchained in a settled history and dogma. To reject the
former, it suffices to oppose to them their mythical nature ; to
reject the latter, it is necessary to enter into the discussion of
their historical, intellectual, moral, and social value.
It is true that the scriptural character of Jesus Christ is
contested, but how? Because, say they, it is impossible to
prove that the promulgation of the Gospels took place before
the year 150 of the Christian era, whence it follows that the
type of Christ floated, during more than a century, at the
mercy of tradition. Suppose, gentlemen, that I admit this;
suppose that I admit that our Gospels did not appear before
the year 150. Bear in mind that before 150 writing existed
elsewhere than in the Christian school ; it existed among the
Jews, the Greeks, the Romans ; over the whole space upon
which the question of Christianity was disputed ; history was
founded by the publicity and immutability of the monuments.
Before 150, Jesus Christ, dead and risen again, was announced
in all the synagogues that covered the surface of the Roman

JESUS CHRIST. I2jr
world, and even beyond it ; He was publicly announced in the
palace of the Caesars, and in the praetorium of all the pro
consuls. Before 150, I have cited Tacitus and Pliny the
Younger, who attest that it was so. That preaching, those
testimonies, those discussions, that struggle, that blood, all
was public, was written ; it was not a dead tradition left to
the chances of time and imagination during a thousand years
of indifference and peace. At the same moment men gave
their teaching and their life ; and three communities together,.
supremely interested in what was passing — the Christian
community, the Jewish, and the Roman — met upon the battle
field, the traditional limit of which you circumscribe within the
period of little more than a century. What ! those Jews to
whom it was said : You have killed1 Jesus Christ ; those
princes and those presidents whose orders were trampled
under foot in the name of Jesus Christ; not one of them
perceived that it was all only a myth in the state of formation?
No ; all was steeped in blood, and consequently in reality -r
all was in discussion, and consequently in the strength and
glory of publicity, which is the foundation of all history. It
matters little then what date the Gospels bear, for history
supports the Gospels. If they did not appear before a hundred
and twenty years after Jesus Christ, they existed before they
appeared, they lived in the mouth of the apostles, in the
blood of the martyrs, in the hatred of the world, in the breasts
of millions of men who confessed Jesus Christ dead and risen
again ! What a pitiable resource, gentlemen, what weakness !
To compare a religion whose origin is so public and militant,.
and whose tradition could have preceded writing only a
hundred and twenty years, to those religions without history,
plunged for two thousand years in the still waters of a tradition
which was confided to no one, and for which no one ever gave
a drop of his blood !
I hardly need to tell you, gentlemen, that we do not accept
the date which they attempt to assign to the promulgation of
the Gospels. The Gospels are public writings, containing
public facts which enter into the public web of history ; they
bear the names of three apostles, and of a celebrated disciple,
who were public men in a public society ; now, it is impossible
that such an attribution, under such circumstances, should be
contrary to truth. The mathematical laws of publicity do not
permit it. The Gospels are apostles ; they possess the value

128 RATIONALISTIC EFFORTS TO PERVERT THE LIFE OF
of their testimony, and the date of their life, that is to say, the
date of a contemporary life, and the value of a contemporary
testimony. This detail of authenticity blends itself with the
general authenticity of the Christian origin, and it is not
separable therefrom. Judge yet once more of the relation
existing between such monuments and the obscure myths
emerging from the silent and dark abyss of remote antiquity.
In vain, in order to place Jesus Christ in a more remote
period than His time, have they had recourse to the Messianic
idea which prepared His coming. In the first place, the
Messianic idea was not a myth ; it appertained to a scriptural
people, a people who wrote and who were written about ; and the
Messianic idea itself was a part of their writing. The idea and
the fact were fixed. But even had Messianism primitively been
a myth, it could no longer preserve that character in its appli
cation to Jesus Christ. For that application to Jesus Christ
was modern ; it took place at a scriptural and public epoch,
and, consequently, whatever it may have been in the past, the
myth disappeared in the broad day of Jesus Christ and of His
age. The real question extinguished the chimerical question.
There remain, gentlemen, the mythic characters which
they pretend to discover in the very history of Jesus Christ.
The first of these characters is the marvellous. The marvellous,
say they, is the mythic character, properly so called ; wherever
it shows itself history disappears ; for a miracle being impossible
in itself, every narration containing it would evidently not be
historical. Therefore, says Dr. Strauss, I overthrow your dog
matism by this single expression : The Gospel is a tissue of
miracles ; now miracles are impossible, their history is then im
possible also, and consequently that history does not exist. It
can be but a myth.
Whether a miracle be impossible or not, is a metaphysical
question of which I have already treated, and to which I shall
not return. But, at least, it is a question. You rationalists do
not admit the possibility of the sovereign action of God in this
world; we Christians admit that possibility. Now, we are
men like yourselves, intelligent beings like yourselves ; if you
are numerous, we are more so than you ; if you are learned, we
are as learned as you. And whilst you deny the possibility of
a miracle, we daily ask God to perform miracles, being fully
persuaded that He thus manifests His power and goodness
towards us, even in the present day. We go further, we do

JESUS CHRIST. 129
not comprehend the idea of God without the idea of a
sovereignty able to manifest itself by the omnipotence of its
action ; so that, for us, the negation of the possibility of the
miracle is the negation of the very idea of God. God, accord
ing to us, is miraculous in His nature; and if history ceases by
miracles, we think that God ceases without them. You see
that an abyss separates these two sentiments. What follows ?
It follows that the possibility of miracles is a question ; and
consequently to determine the reality of history by the presence
or absence of miracles, is but to decide one question by another
question — a mode of proceeding which is contrary to the rules
of logic and common sense. What ! documents are authentic,
they are linked together and form a visible and continuous
order, they blend with the whole course of the public life of
mankind, they are irrefragable, certain, sacred, it is an act of
folly to assail them ; but the finger of God is seen in them,
that power which created the world — and that is enough,
history has disappeared ! You will not ask me, gentlemen,
even supposing that miracles may be problematical in them
selves, to deny the certain because of the uncertain. We
Christians admit the uncertain on the faith of the certain : each
has his own logic.
Nevertheless, say they, the marvellous is the only character
that distinguishes fable from history. It is not so, gentlemen,
the line of demarcation between history and fable lies else
where; it lies in the difference between things without con
tinuity and without any public monuments, and things which
possess continuity, and are firmly based on all sides upon
publicity. I have already said this ; I shall not repeat it.
Is Dr. Strauss more fortunate in that which forms the basis
of his work — the exposure of innumerable mistakes and con
tradictions of our evangelists ? I think not. I have read his
work with attention and labour, and I did so in this manner.
After having studied a paragraph — always a very long one —
and there are a hundred and forty-nine of them, filling four
volumes, I closed the L„uk in order to recover a little from
fatigue and from a kind of involuntary terror caused by the
abundance of erudition. Then opening the Gospel — which I
kissed respectfully — I read the texts under discussion, to see if
by the simple aid of ordinary literature, and without the help
of any commentators, I could not succeed in unravelling the
difficulty. With the exception of three or four passages, I have

130 RATIONALISTIC EFFORTS TO PERVERT THE LIFE OF
never required more than ten minutes to dissipate the charm
of vain knowledge, and to smile within myself at the powerless-
ness to which God has condemned error. I cannot, gentlemen,
pass in review before you all that legion of texts distorted by
rationalism ; I will limit myself to two examples taken at hazard.
Saint Luke, having to narrate the birth of Jesus Christ at
Bethlehem, away from the country of His parents, writes in
these terms : "And it came to pass that in those days there
went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that the whole world
should be enrolled ; this enrolling was first made by Cyrinus
the governor of Syria." Upon this Dr. Strauss, after having first
shown very learnedly that the enrolling was not possible, opens
the " Judaical Antiquities " of Flavius Josephus, and shows by
a formal text that Cyrinus did not govern Syria until ten years
after the birth of Jesus Christ. Judge what a triumph this
was ! Now, how was this difficulty to be solved ? You think,
perhaps, that we shall have to change a word or a letter ? No ;
it is less than that. You all know the value of an accent in the
Greek language ; change then an accent, and see what will be
the meaning of the evangelist: "And it came to pass that in
those days there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that
the whole world should be enrolled ; this is the same first
enrolling which was made by Cyrinus the governor of Syria."
That is to say, that the order having been given to number the
Roman Empire, and the execution of that order having been
commenced, it was not, however, accomplished until ten years
after, under Cyrinus the governor of Syria. And if the sacred
historian makes mention of the name of Cyrinus, it is precisely
to give an authentic character to his declaration ; for had he
been content with saying : " There went out a decree from
Caesar Augustus that the whole world should be enrolled," it
might have been said that the enrolling did not take place at
the time of the birth of Christ. He anticipated the objection
then by saying : " This is the same first enrolling which was
made by Cyrinus the governor of Syria."
Here is another example : It is said, in regard to the
resurrection of our Lord, that the holy women went to the
tomb, according to St. Mark, the sun being then risen, and
according to St. John, when it was yet dark. Dr. Strauss
notices this contradiction amongst a great number which he
pretends to discover in the event of the resurrection — and he
does ,i»ot fail to turn them to account. But how shall we solve

JESUS CHRIST. 131
this terrible difficulty ? It suffices to comprehend that when a
distance is to be reached early in the morning it is possible to
start before sunrise, and to arrive at daybreak.
I assure you, gentlemen, that, save a very few passages,
nothing has caused me any greater trouble. So that after the
work had often left my hands from weariness, my hands fell
from me again when I thought that this was learning, German
learning — that learning in whose name they pompously defy
Catholic preachers and writers, saying to us : You speak of
Christ and the Gospel — you cite them; but you are behind
your age, Germany has now destroyed Christ and the Gospel ;
she has examined them by the light of criticism, and all that is
nothing but a shadow, a dream, a myth !
Let us leave this triumph to pride ; and with our sounder
sense let us seek why the history of Jesus Christ lends itself to
the attacks which I have just pointed out to you. Had
Providence so willed it, Jesus Christ would have had but one
single historian, conducting from one end to the other the
thread of His life with a chronological clearness which would
have given to each part its true place; and have raised the
whole above any possible discussion. But Providence did not
so will it. Providence desired that the Gospel should be the
work of several men differing in age, in genius, in style, and in
judgment, and not one of whom should collect under his pen
all the materials of the life of Christ, but only simple fragments,
the very choice of which was arbitrary. The idea of God in
this was to make of the biography of His Son a miracle of
intimate truth which the most vulgar eye might discern, and
which was to be found in no other life of any man whatever.
Indeed, from the first glance, the multiplicity of the Gospels is
striking, not only from the title-page, which bears different
names, but from the" reflection of their personal nature in each
of the Gospels. We see and feel that St. Matthew, St. Mark,
St. Luke, St. John, are different souls, and that each traces in
his own manner the likeness of his beloved Master, without
taking the least account of what his neighbour is doing, or
even of what the continuity of chronology requires. Thence
an arbitrary choice of fragments, a default of connection,
apparent contradictions, details omitted by one and related by
another, a multitude of varieties of which men render no
account to themselves. This is true. And yet in these four
evangelists there is the same portraiture of Christ, the same
k 2

132 RATIONALISTIC EFFORTS TO PERVERT THE LIFE OF
sublimity, the same tenderness, the same force, the same
language, the same accent, the same supreme singularity of
physiognomy. Open St. Matthew the publican, or St. John
the young man, chaste and contemplative; choose whatever
passage you will in the one or in the other, different alike in
matter and expression, and speak it before a thousand men
assembled together, all will raise their heads ; they recognise
Jesus Christ. And the more the exterior disagreement of the
Gospel is shown, the more that intimate agreement whence the
moral unity of Christ springs will become a proof of their
fidelity. If they unanimously represent so well the inimitable
features of Christ, it is because He was before their eyes ; they
saw Him such as He was and such as they were not able to
forget Him. They saw Him with their senses, with their
hearts, with the exactitude of a love which was to give its
blood ; they are at the same time witnesses, painters, and
martyrs. That sitting of God before man has been witnessed
only once, and this is why there is but one Gospel, although
there were four evangelists.
And what soul is insensible to this ? What soul will not
one day forget science at the feet of Jesus Christ, represented
by His apostles ? To close this subject, listen to the words of
a Frenchman, which will console you for the frenzies of that
learning which the Gospel has not disarmed. They are those
of a man whose judgment upon Jesus Christ I have already
cited to you, and they express in clear and forcible language
the impression which the reading of the Gospel leaves in the
mind of the profane as well as in that of the Christian : " Shall
we say that the Gospel history is a pure invention ? My friend,
men do not invent in this way, and the acts of Socrates, which
no one doubts, are less fully proved than those of Jesus Christ.
In truth, it is to push aside the difficulty without destroying it ;
it would be much more inconceivable that several men together
should have fabricated that book than that only one should
have furnished the subjects of it. The Jewish authors would
never have acquired that tone or that morality ; and the Gospel
possesses characters of truth so great, so striking, so perfectly
inimitable, that the inventor of it would be more marvellous
than the hero ! "
This is French language and French genius; and there
fore you should not be surprised at returning to Christ after
having quitted Him. The lucidity of our national intelligence

JESUS CHRIST. 133
sustains within you the light of grace, and causes you like
giants to cross those thorny abysses of science, but of a science
which braves the soul. Be faithful to this double gift which
bears you towards God ; judge of the power of Jesus Christ
by the efforts, so contradictory and so vain, of his adversaries ;
and permit me to recall to you in terminating this discourse a
celebrated trait which paints that power, and the eloquent
prophecy which fifteen centuries have confirmed.
When the Emperor Julian attacked Christianity by that
stratagem of war and violence which bears his name, and,
absent from the empire, had gone to seek in battles the con
secration of a power and popularity which he thought would
achieve the ruin of Jesus Christ, one of his familiars, the
rhetor Libanius, on meeting a Christian, asked him derisively
and with all the insolence of assured success, what the Galilean
was doing ; the Christian answered : He is making a coffin.
Some time afterwards Libanius pronounced the funeral oration
of Julian over his mutilated body and his vanished power.
What the Galilean was then doing, gentlemen, he does always,
whatever may be the arm and the pride men may oppose to His
cross. It would require much time to deduce all the famous
examples of this ; but we possess some which touch us closely,
and by which Jesus Christ, at the extremity of ages, has
confirmed to us the nothingness of His enemies. Thus, when
Voltaire rubbed his hands with joy, towards the close of his
life, saying to his followers : " In twenty years, God will see
fine sport ; " the Galilean prepared a coffin : it was that of the
French monarchy. Thus, when a power of another order, but
sprung, in some degree, from the same, held the Sovereign
Pontiff in a captivity which threatened the fall at least of the
temporal power of the vicar of Jesus Christ, the Galilean
prepared a coffin : it was that of Saint Helena. And now, on
seeing Germany agitated by the convulsions of unregulated
science, of which you have just witnessed so lamentable a
production, we may say with as much certainty as hope : The
Galilean prepares a coffin, and it is that of rationalism. And
you all, sons of this age, ill-instructed by the miseries of past
errors, and who seek out of Jesus Christ the way, the truth,
and the life, the Galilean prepares a coffin for you ; and it is
that of all your most cherished conceptions. And so it will
ever be, the Galilean ever working but two things, living of
Himself, or either by blood, oblivion, or shame, entombing all
that is not of Him.

THE EFFORTS OF RATIONALISM
TO EXPLAIN
THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST.

My Lord — Gentlemen,
Rationalism has then made but vain efforts to destroy
and to pervert the life of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is not
dethroned ; the power of history protects and upholds Him
against all these attacks. Therefore rationalism has been
forced to attempt a last and supreme effort to explain at least
that life which it was unable either to destroy or to dishonour.
We Catholics explain the life of Christ, we explain the success
He has obtained — the greatest of all success, that of producing
in minds the rational certainty of faith ; in the soul, holiness
by humility, chastity, and charity ; in the world, a spiritual
community, one, universal, and perpetual — we explain it by
that single expression : Jesus Christ is the Son of God. But
if it be not so explained ; if it be supposed that Christ is but
a man, it is nevertheless necessary to give a reason for that
greatest success ever obtained, which is His own. Now, as
after the power of God there remains only the power of man,
if Jesus Christ did not act by the power of God, He acted by
the power of man. But the power of man in its results being
manifestly inferior to that which Jesus Christ has accomplished,
it follows that we must seek in man a certain root of power
which, in rare cases, may suddenly appear and explain what
Christ was, and what he has accomplished. That is to say,
that Jesus Christ, not being the Son of God, nor, as He
Himself said, the Son of man, He is the Son of mankind, the
illustrious production of that silent and progressive action

JESUS CHRIST. 135
which is the life of mankind, and which, on certain solemn
occasions, buds forth, so to say, blossoms, produces an
extraordinary being, and surrounds him with a halo which all
who come after Him will confirm, up to the time when m n-
kind, ever pregnant with the future, feels that it is imperfectly
represented by the heroic and sovereign being it has produced,
and at length salutes Him with a last mark of respect, brings
Him down to the level of earthly things, and says to Him :
Adieu. I shall devote our last conference of this year to the
refutation of this system. This done, all that belongs to he
constitution and character, alike of the Church and of Christ,
having been manifested to you in our teaching, it will only
remain for us to enter upon the doctrine itself of the Church
and of Christ, in order to present it to you in all the fulness
of its harmony ; after which we shall have but to repose, you,
gentlemen, from your attention, and I from the happiness of
having taught you so long.
Three things have to be explained in the life and success
of Jesus Christ : His doctrine, which appears to surpass all
others; the faith which the world has given to that doctrine;
and, thirdly, the union of that doctrine and faith in a body
hierarchically constituted, which is the Church. This triple
phenomenon, it is said, is easily explained by the general
state of doctrines, minds, and nations, at the time when Jesus
Christ appeared. First, by the general state of doctrines.
That of Jesus Christ is ordinarily considered to be a new
doctrine, unknown, creative, as something which had neither
root nor model in the past ; this, as rationalism says, is a very
palpable error. The human race has never been without
doctrine ; it is a necessary part of its life. That some simpleton,
satisfied in the debauch of pride and of the senses, may pass
through the world without troubling himself about doctrine, as
a grain of dust carried along by the unstable wind passes and
disappears, no one will deny. But mankind has other desires
and other destinies. Mankind requires to know, to seek, to
render account to itself of itself and of the universe, to possess
a faith ; and never, in reality, has it lived without that
spiritual element. As men dig the earth that bears them, as
they scan the sky that covers them, so they unceasingly labour
upon the fertile soil of doctrines in order to draw from them
an aliment which they deem divine. This working is not less

136 RATIONALISTIC EFFORTS TO EXPLAIN THE LIFE OF
active in itself than that which is external and scientific, and
they form together a tissue of unwearied action. Now there
were three principal theatres of this action before Jesus Christ,
the East, the West, and Judaea, which was the connecting link
between the two others.
The East preserved doctrine under this form : that man
had fallen, that he needed an expiation to return to a better
condition — an expiation which, from cycle to cycle, favoured
mysterious incarnations of God. The Eastern incarnation, its
expiation, its metempsychosis or trial — nothing is more famous
than these in the history of doctrines ; and it will suffice to
place these terms before your minds for you to perceive in a
single moment, on penetrating to the heart of Judaea, this
order of ideas still existing. In the West, a work of another
nature had been accomplished. Under the reign of free dis
cussion, it more effectually stripped itself of past myths; it
sought wisdom, founded less upon tradition than upon the
decisions of pure reason ; and Plato was the most memorable
instrument of these explorations of the human mind. He
comprehended that God was in communication with man, not
only by corrupted or lost traditions, but by the perpetual
effusion of his Verb or Word within us, the Divine Word, the
eternal Logos, absolute reason — of which our reason and our
word are the transparent image, so that in contemplating his
own ideas, man beheld, as in a mirror, the very ideas that
are in God, and form there the first Word. And this theory of
the manifestation of God by His Word, of which the word of
man is but the diminutive and the reflection, had become the
most elevated point of the doctrines of Greece and of the West.
The Jewish people, on their part, had maintained, with extra
ordinary fidelity, fhe dogma of the unity of God, that of the
creation, and in addition a certain hope of the fundamental
unity of man, which should eventually be restored as it existed
in the original family.
This was evidently the general state of doctrines at the
time of Christ, and these doctrines, long isolated, each in its
place, had at length met together after the conquests of
Alexander and the invasions of Rome reaching to Asia. The
East, the West, Judaea, and with them the Brahmins, the
prophets, the sibyls, the sages, all the documents, and all the
efforts of the past, had, as it were, met together by common
accord before the throne of Augustus, on the day when he

JESUS CHRIST. 137
closed upon the world the prophetic gates of the temple of
war. At that moment Jesus Christ was born. Endowed with
a -genius answering to the marvellous circumstances of His age,
He saw with a sure glance the confluence of doctrines; in that
confluence He unravelled more than one fortuitous junction, He
discovered there the germs of deeply-seated unity, and imagined
that by giving satisfaction to all, by engrafting the East upon
the West, the West and the East upon the Hebraic trunk, He
should attain to a doctrine which would at least captivate a
great multitude of minds in the divers parts of the world. He
laid down as a foundation the Eastern dogma of the fall, and
declared that He Himself, the last incarnation, superior to all
that had preceded Him, had come definitively to expiate the
fault of the human race, and to restore to men with their
native purity all their birthrights. Next, as the Eastern incar
nation was dishonoured by too many fabulous elements, He
based the idea of His own incarnation upon that Word of Plato,
who had detached the communication between God and man
from the traditional myth, in order to reduce it to a permanent
communication of ideas inthe very seat of the understanding.
He declared that He was the Word of God, the reason of God,
the one who, by His nature, enlightened every man coming into
the world; and who, by the effective presence of His personality,
by the exterior lights of His teaching, brought to the mind a
more complete vision of truth. The Divine Word was thence
forth in presence of the human word ; the image had but to
look upon the model, the consequence had but to consult the
principle, and from that confronting of within to without, of
light to light, the supreme enlightenment of the human race
would come. Plato thus became allied to jthe Brahmins of
India, the West to the East ; and, in fine, to give satisfaction
to the Hebraic ideas, Jesus Christ not only proclaimed Himself
the Messiah, He also accepted the dogmas of the unity of God
and of the creation, which were inscribed in the first pages of
the Bible, and which were the special patrimony of the Hebrew
people. Such was, gentlemen, according to rationalism, the theme
of Jesus Christ, the mode of the formation of His doctrine, and
of the efficient cause of His doctrinal success. He was not
creator, but electric; His success was not a success of creation,
but of fusion. Before seeking to discover how far this is con
firmed by comparing the Christian doctrines with the doctrines

138 RATIONALISTIC EFFORTS TO EXPLAIN THE LIFE OF
of antiquity, let us first see how Jesus Christ declared Himself.
Did He declare Himself as a creator ? Did He say : I am the
inventor of truth ? No, gentlemen ; He said : "I am the
truth." * He said : " I am not come to destroy the law, but
to fulfil it ; " t which means : I am the truth of all times and
places ; I am that truth which was in the bosom of the Father ;
which appeared to the first man in the innocence of the ter
restrial paradise ; which the patriarchs, his successors, knew ;
which Noah, on quitting the ark, received and promulgated
afresh ; which Abraham, in the fields of Chaldsea and Syria,
saw and heard ; which Moses, at the foot of Sinai, received,
graven by the hand of God. I am that truth which is the first
and the last, and which no man has ever been able totally to
set aside. Behold, gentlemen, what Jesus Christ said of Him
self, and what the Church still says of Him daily. He did not
seek, nor do we seek for Him, a success of creation ; we have
never pretended that Christianity commenced with the appear
ance of Christ under Augustus. To have given it a character
of novelty would have been to ruin Christianity. From the
first day of the world, from the first word of God, from the first
divine ray which shone in our soul, it was Christ who acted,
who spake, and who revealed Himself; and that revelation
spread over the whole earth with the dispersion of the primordial
branches of the human race.
However, by the side of this phenomenon of the primitive
and universal propagation of Christianity, we must remark
that there grew up another of a very different character : I
mean the progressive adulteration and corruption of Chris
tianity by forgetfulness, reasoning, and unbelief. So that Jesus
Christ, although not new, brought into the world something
which the world no longer knew save by ill-defined hopes and
disfigured recollections. And, to begin by the East : it is true,
the East had preserved the idea of the fall, of expiation, of the
divine intervention for the restoration of man — no one will
contest it ; but the East had stifled that idea between two absurdi
ties, namely, pantheism and metempsychosis ; the one and the
other affirming that the purification of man had for object and
for effect the return of man to the very substance of the
Divinity, from whence He had sprung, and that after cycles of
trials, more or less prolonged, the final state of mankind
* St. John xvi. 6. t St. Matt. v. 17.

JESUS CHRIST. 139
would be that of the external and absolute repose of complete
deification. Now, did Jesus Christ admit this doctrine ? Did
He compromise with the East in regard to pantheism or
metempsychosis ? No, He taught the very opposite ; He said
to us : You are but nothingness which has responded to the
creating power of God; and your destiny, although great, is
not to attain to God by confounding your substance with Him,
but by simple vision. You will one day see Him, if you have
believed in Him ; you will possess Him present, if you have
loved Him absent ; but your nature and your personality will
subsist before Him. Pantheism bears you alike too high and
too low — too high in promising you that you are one in
substance with God ; too low in taking from you your proper
nature and youi principle of distinction. Your place and
truth are not there. God and man are for ever two ; two in
their essence ; two in their personality ; two in their love, for I
God made man from love ; and if man correspond to that love
which sought him the first, that same love will eternally reward
him. If, on the contrary, man be unfaithful and ungrateful,
that love will reject him eternally.
I ask you, gentlemen, was this the Eastern dogma, or was
it not rather its destruction ?
And as to the West, they speak of Plato. But, in the first
place, was Plato the whole West r Did he resume the West in
himself? Did not Aristotle, Epicurus Zeno, Pyrrho, exist by
the same title, and did not their doctrines share with those of
the Academy the empire of minds ? You say that Plato was
the highest expression of Western wisdom ; let us not contest
it, and in seeing what he thought, let us see what Jesus Christ
owed to him. In the metaphysical order, Plato believed in
the eternity of matter and of chaos, placing the world in
presence of God as a substance inferior, but parallel and
uncreated; in the moral order, he denied the existence of
freewill, and affirmed in proper terms that no one was
voluntarily bad, because the principle of all evil is an in
deliberate error of the mind. Dualism and fatalism, such is
that Plato so much admired — whom I have lauded myself,
whom I shall still praise, a man admirable indeed, who, being
plunged like all the others in the faint and almost extinguished
light of antiquity, caught here and there glimpses of the
shadow of truth, and made plaintive cries to it, as if he had
beheld it ; but being unable to seize it, had thrown again over

140 RATIONALISTIC EFFORTS TO EXPLAIN THE LIFE OF
his desires and his regrets that royal vestment which has
become the charm of his thoughts, the beauty of his discourse,
and the majesty of his renown. No sage ever equalled him in
the invocation of truth, none foresaw its future more clearly,
none ever tinged the twilight of error with a halo more
gorgeous or better formed to solace the soul for wedding but a
dream. But to make him an ancestor of Jesus Christ, and the
tie by which the Gospel attached the West to itself, is to
expect too much from his glory. Jesus Christ denied the
Platonic dualism and fatalism, as He also denied the pantheism
and metempsychosis of India ; and if He called Himself the
Word, the Son of God, that expression sprang from a mystery
which, to Plato, was unknown — the mystery of a triple
personality in the substance, one and indivisible, of God.
The Jews, in their turn, although possessors of primitive
Christianity and the expectation of the Messiah, had corrupted
this deposit in their ideas, by making of Christian truth — which
is the patrimony of all — their own special heritage, by sub
stituting the idea of the law for the idea of faith — Moses for
Christ, the personal for the universal. This is what St. Paul
reproaches them with in the Epistle to the Romans, where he
takes so much pains to explain to them the inferiority of the
law to faith ; how Christ was the principle of salvation from
the time of Abraham, and how the works of the law, understood
and performed without Jesus Christ, were a cause of death.
The Jews rebelled against that forcible teaching ; already
steeped in the liberating blood, and even in communion with
it, they persisted in venerating the idol which raised their
national pride to the rank of a duty and a virtue, and persuaded
themselves that Judaism was to subjugate the universe. In
the Christian sense, this was true ; in the sense in which they
held it, it was false. Jesus Christ had then to combat Judaea as
well as the East and the West. And if you would see yet
more clearly that Christian doctrine was not a success of
fusion, but a success of contradiction — of contradiction to the
East, to the West, to the Hebrew people — you have but to
study pantheism as the East has preserved it, Judaism as the
remnant of Israel still understands it, and Platonism as it has
been resuscitated before our eyes.
Pantheism lives in India. India is now, as in past times,
its land of predilection, it lives there under the same forms and
in the same doctrines as in the time of Jesus Christ. Now, no

JESUS CHRIST. 141
country, no system, has offered more resistance to the Christian
apostolate. For three centuries the great Indian peninsula
has been open to us ; many European nations have together
and successively governed it. England is now its mistress ;
we hold it by our missionaries as by our arms under the grasp
of our domination, and nowhere, not even in that China which
is closed to us, has the action of Jesus Christ been less
rewarded with success. Brahminism has resisted example as
well as discussion ; it has been like granite against truth, like
a thing incompatible with another thing, and which rejects it
so much the more as it approaches nearer. Many reasons
have been given for this, such as the rule of caste, and the
aversion resulting therefrom for our principles of equality. It
may be also that on account of the many traditions it has
preserved on the fall and reparation, Brahminism has been
less sensible to the mystery of redemption by the blood of
Jesus Christ, as we see men in whom the possession of a
certain measure of truth serves as an obstacle to the acquisition
of the rest. The honest man is often in this state, gentlemen,
when he has the misfortune not to be a Christian ; his probity
keeps him from God, whilst the unworthy sinner, looking upon
himself, sees nothing within that raises an illusion for him.
This is why Jesus Christ said : " Those women whom you call
lost will go into the kingdom of heaven before you."* They
are, in fact, nearer to good by being far from it ; they
touch the feet of Jesus Christ by humiliation ; and when we
are at the feet of Jesus Christ we are very near to His heart.
So perhaps is it with nations that have lost all truth ; they feel
the need of regaining it, whilst those who still preserve
vestiges of truth, grow proud with the little they have, scorning
to desire and seek that which they have not. Be that as it
may, Indian pantheism has not changed ; it is now what it was
in the Augustan Age ; and whatever may have been the cause •
of its insensibility towards Jesus Christ, it no less proves to us
how chimerical is the idea of that fusion of doctrines by which
it is desired to explain the formation of the Christian dogma.
The spectacle of Judaism as it lives before us leads us to
the same conclusion. And as to Platonism, God has permitted
it to resuscitate in our time, so that on witnessing it in action
we may be able to judge of its doctrinal sympathy for Jesus
* St. Matt. xxi. 31.

142 RATIONALISTIC EFFORTS TO EXPLAIN THE LIFE OF
Christ. You all know to what school I allude ; you know how
that school has restored Platonic dualism to honour, by
rejecting from its philosophy the fundamental dogma of the
creation of the world by God, and you know also how it treats
the rest of Christianity. In contemporary literature we have no
more avowed enemies than the friends of Plato. Whether then
we regard pantheism, Judaism, or Platonism — all three sub
sisting before us as in the time of Jesus Christ — it is easy for us
to judge that Christianity was not the result of a fusion between
the doctrines of the ancient world, but a work of renovation
and of contradiction. The Gospel has renewed all, because all
had been forgotten; it has contradicted all, because all had
been denied or disfigured ; it has had all doctrines for
adversaries, because it has disavowed and rejected all. And
as it was aforetime, so it is now. The dogmatic intolerance of
which it is accused defines its nature and proves its originality.
But the success of Jesus Christ was not only realised in the
powerful and aboriginal formation of His doctrine ; it was also
a success of faith. A doctrine is as nothing as long as it has
not taken possession of minds by faith, which gives it life and
action. How did the ancient world believe in Jesus Christ?
How did the men of the East and the West, the learned or the
unlearned, and, in fine, the great nations, abdicate the teaching
they had received from the past, in order to become the dis
ciples of a Jew crucified in Jerusalem ? Rationalism explains
it thus : At the epoch of Augustus the human mind was weary.
On the one hand, it no longer accepted idolatry, which was the
popular form of ancient doctrines ; and on the other, philosophy
having founded nothing, a double lassitude of the intelligence
ensued — lassitude as to public religion, and lassitude as to
the powerless efforts of philosophy. Men wandered in the
void and at hazard, invoking a new faith. Jesus Christ came ;
He inaugurated before the world, fatigued and ready to receive
it, an affirmation which did but slight violence to general
opinion ; He was listened to, men wanted to believe, and they
believed in Him.
For my part, gentlemen, I have no belief in this genesis of
the Christian faith. When an epoch has lost faith il is not so
easy to give it back again ; and we have some proof of this
before our eyes. Rationalism, in such limes, invades all hearts;
and rationalism is never convinced of its impotency, or weary
of itself. If four or five centuries of useless efforts before

JESUS CHRIST. 143
Jesus Christ had discouraged it, it should now, when it counts
eighteen centuries more of vain endeavours, be on the eve of
abdicating its pretensions. Does it, I ask you, even dream of
so doing? Do we not see it more affirmative, more arrogant,
more sure of itself than ever ? So will it be a thousand years
hence. A thousand years hence our posterity will see masters
who will ascend the rostrum and say to them with imperturb
able self-possession : Gentlemen, we are about to create
philosophy, or at least, if we have not that honour, we touch
the fortunate epoch which will place the crowning stone upon
its edifice. Such is rationalism. No experience has wearied
or will ever weary it of itself; ir rises anew from its ashes, or
rather, it neither lives nor dies, but is a credulous infant who
aspires to maturity without ever once leaving its cradle. Let
us not wonder thereat : it takes its starting-point in a principle
which excludes life, because it excludes faith ; and yet faith
will destroy it. It has but the choice of death ; and it naturally
prefers that which leaves to it the appearance of being some
thing, were it but a doubt and a negation. Rationalism is
incorrigible, because to correct itself it must cease to exist.
To admit, then, that the general state of minds, in the
Augustan Age, was a state of void and lassitude, is by no means
to explain the propagation of the Christian faith then accom
plished with so much power and rapidity. But I do not admit
that such was, under Augustus, the general state of minds.
Doubtless idolatry had become an object of contempt to a
great number of enlightened men, but the people did not
despise it. The popular mind sympathised with idolatry, which
more than ever included all the recollections which the multi
tude adored, and all the spectacles they needed. The political
spirit favoured that tendency ; it supported idolatry as a State
necessity. And when Jesus Christ came to ask from Rome
that right of citizenship which she had refused to none of the
.rods she had vanquished, it was easy to see what was the state
of the popular and political spirit upon this head. Do we not
know what answer she gave to Him ? Do we not know who
replied to the martyrs of Christ, in the amphitheatres, by
insults and cries of death ? Whilst the emperors and the pro
consuls gave sentence against them in the name of the political
spirit, the people issued theirs also in the form and power
peculiar to them. The* empire shed the blood, the people
called for it ; and, after having obtained it, they threw it at the

144 RATIONALISTIC EFFORTS TO EXPLAIN THE LIFE OF
face of Christ. And, behind the empire and the people,
rationalism, forming the rearguard of idolatry, eagerly fed its
pen from the sources of error. Those Platonists, so puffed up
with their spiritualism were seen tearing up the Gospel page
by page, perverting its meaning, and launching forth their
maledictions against it ; they were seen parading their affection
for Jupiter and all the old gods, writing genealogies for them,
consecrating a new philosophy, bearing offerings to them ;
nothing was left untried — neither science, nor sarcasm, nor
energy — nothing that could be turned into an outrage or an
argument against Christianity. Is this what they call the lassi
tude of minds? Is this the tacit conjuration of the times in
favour of Christ? Ah ! when at length He had won the faith
of the world, and when the successors of His apostles appeared
at Nicaea, their mutilated visages showed whether they came
from peace or war, whether they had been favoured or perse
cuted, whether the popular spirit, the political spirit, the
rationalist spirit, had or had not been their servitors, and what
was the real value of those systems invented after the fact, by
which the life of the patient is explained by the tyrant who
caused His death. Julian, at least, said what was true : "Galilean,
thou hast conquered ! "
Here we find again in regard to the formation of the
Christian dogma, not the principle of fusion, but the principle
of contradiction. Jesus Christ contradicted all minds as He
contradicted all doctrines, He conquered all minds as He
conquered all doctrines : such is the truth.
It was not, however, enough for Him to found a doctrine
and obtain faith ; it was not enough to found a doctrine in
contradicting all other doctrines, to found a spirit of faith in
contradicting every other spirit. He had in addition to found
a Church, that is to say, a society of men living by that doctrine
and faith. Rationalism, in order to explain His success, in
vokes here the general state of nations. It says that in the
time of Augustus a double want was felt, namely, a want of
liberty and unity. The nations one after another had borne
the yoke of the Romans ; and, stripped of their independence,
victims of the increasing rapacity of the proconsuls, they marked
the progress of Roman corruption, watching, like all who are
in bondage, for that hour of weakness which inevitably follows
prosperity when it is without limit or counterpoise. That hour
advanced rapidly ; Jesus Christ came also, at the same time, at

JESUS CHRIST. 145
the precise moment. And what brought He ? The elevation
of the lowly, in the idea of a common origin and a holy
brotherhood ; strength to the weak, to women, to children, in
the idea of a new domestic right ; help to oppressed peoples,
in the idea of a universal republic founded by God Himself
and governed by Him. What could be more attracti'-e, more
sure of success ? When then Jesus Christ appeared, and when
from the heart of Judaea the very air had borne even to the
ends of the world His emancipating word, with what a thrill of
sacred hope must the world have stood up and watched ! What
wonder if women, children, those who toiled, the slaves, the
poor, the despised of every kind and of every country, went
forth to meet Him, cast their garments under His feet, cut
down branches from the trees and strewed them in His way,
not once only, when He entered into Jerusalem on the eve of
His death, but even after His death, unwilling to believe He
was dead, and crying to His disciples as to Him : " Hosanna
to the Son of David ! Blessed is He that cometh in the name
of the Lord." * That hosanna was the cry of deliverance, the
response to Him who had heard the groanings of men ; and
from wheresoever He came, whatsoever name He took, what
soever His race or His design, Man or God, it was impossible
for Him not to be accepted as He presented Himself. What
matters it to the prisoner, set free, whence liberty comes to
him ? To the miserable, to the oppressed, whence the deliverer
comes? Who saves his country is inspired from Heaven !
I grant, gentlemen, that these ideas are full of charm ; it
touches us to think that when nations are slaves and corrupted,
they aspire to their emancipation. But, alas ! history pro
nounces another judgment than the heart of man. We learn
from history that nations fallen into servitude do not desire
liberty. As the apostate from truth inveighs against truth, so
the apostate from liberty, the nation which has lost it by its
fault — and it is always lost by its own fault, by taking the heart
of a slave — that nation no longer aspires to regain it. It suffers,
it is degraded ; but to feel its misfortune and to reconquer the
treasure it has lost requires the heart of a free man ; that heart
it has no longer. It loves the wages of servitude, and dreads
• St. Matt. xxi. 9.

146 RATIONALISTIC EFFORTS TO EXPLAIN THE LIFE OF
the duties of liberty, especially of that which it has lost, and
which is to be purchased at such a price. It would have to
despise even its very life, to be ready to throw it to the winds,
so that some slight lesson might be learned from its death, and
that its last sigh, even remotely, might serve to bring about
deliverance and honour. The enslaved nation knows not this
heroism, and perhaps despises it. You have proofs of this,
gentlemen, elsewhere even than in history ; and passing over
the continent of Europe, I will take you at once to the shores
of Africa. Observe the negro there. You send your squadrons
to protect his liberty against the conspiracy of the slave-dealer ;
doubtless you do well ; it is perhaps a duty, it is certainly an
honour. But are you simple enough to believe that you will
prevent this traffic ? Wherever man wills to sell himself, he
finds buyers ; wherever hearts of slaves meet together, they
form masters, even when they do not find them already pre
pared. As long as the negro will sell the flesh and blood of
his countryman, all the squadrons of the civilized world will
not lift him from the consequences of that horrible baseness of
heart ; and it is the same, more or less, with all nations bent
under the yoke of servitude and corruption. They seek no
deliverance, but the price only of their soul and body ; and
they are sufficiently recompensed for the abjection of slavery
by the abjection of vice. This was the state of the Roman
world. Jesus Christ, it is true, brought them liberty, but with
virtue and by virtue. The cost was too great for them ; they
did not accept it. Even after the Church was founded, the
empire continued in decadence ; it fell from Diocletian to the
eunuchs of Constantinople ; and when the West, renewed by
the barbarians, willed to go to its help, even to the very centre
of the East, when it armed all its chivalry to save it, that
wretched people extended to the Latin hand only a hand
incapable of sincerity. They treasonably rejected the blood
given to it, fearing the too near approach of men who knew
how to wield the sword and to devote themselves.
Jesus Christ may well found a Church, but not regenerate
an empire. He formed free souls in forming pious souls, whom
He drew to Himself from the midst of the general corruption ;
but the nations did not answer to His call, as nations, in order
to manifest that His work was not the result of political cir
cumstances in which the course of things had led mankind.

JESUS CHRIST. 147
He had against Him the passion of servitude, instead of having
in His favour the want of emancipation. And such is still the
state of His Church here below. Although favourable to all
the legitimate rights which together form the honour and
liberty of nations, she unceasingly raises up against herself
the instincts of servitude under the very name of liberty.
They ask license from her, and propose to her oppression :
it is the cry of nature in all times. In refusing both of
these, now as heretofore, she doubtless responds to the real
wants of mankind ; but she responds to them after the manner
of God, by a force which imposes itself and by a blessing whose
glory none but the benefactor can claim.
It is the same in regard to unity. I do not deny that the
Roman empire, by subjecting many diverse peoples under a
common administration, had spread in minds the idea of a
vast social organization. But that idea, in the degree in which
it existed, did not pass over the very limited circle of a purely
political domination. They did not perceive, even in the
depths of that unity, the idea that the human race was a single
being or a single body. By unity, they understood that one
single nation became master of the others ; one Caesar, the
Caesar of the world ; but of the spiritual unity of souls by faith,
hope, and charity, under a single visible chief, the representa
tive and vicar of God, they had not even the most confused
notion. As soon as the universal Church had advanced a step
in the world, and had thus revealed this secret of her destiny,
it gave rise only to an immense fear, the enduring repercussion
of which she still feels. The passion of nationality is as strong
now against the Church as it was eighteen centuries ago ; and
those even who aspire to the social unity of the human race
cannot endure the idea of the Christian republic, other than as
a figure or a pattern which they use to represent their own
conception. What philosopher or what statesman dreams of
unity in the Christian sense, save to fear and detest it ? You
see, gentlemen, that in examining facts, not only ancient but
present, we arrive at the same conclusion, namely, that the
principle of the success of Jesus Christ, whether in regard to
the formation of His doctrine, or to the propagation of His
faith or the establishment of His Church, was not a principle
of fusion, but- a principle of contradiction. As He had con
tradicted all doctrines by His own, all minds by His own,
L 2

148 RATIONALISTIC EFFORTS TO EXPLAIN THE LIFE OF
He has contradicted all nations by His Church, that is to say,
He has braved and still braves, in the perpetuity of His work,
all the combined forces of mankind.
Let us go further, gentlemen, and seek the supreme cause
of that contradiction. Let us seek why Jesus Christ contradicts
all and is contradicted by all — too often even by those who
possess His faith, who belong to His Church, who eat His flesh
and drink His blood. The cause of this is not in the region
of the mind ; rationalism deceives itself in seeking there the
explanation of the Christian mystery. Jesus Christ advances
beyond the intelligence, He reaches even the soul, which is
the centre of all, and demands from it the sacrifice of its most
cherished inclinations, in order to convert it from evil to good,
from pride to humility, from sensuality to charity, from enjoy
ment to mortification, from egotism to charity, from corruption
to holiness. And man opposes thereto an'obstinate resistance;
he arms against Jesus Christ his reason, his heart, the world,
the human race, heaven and earth ; and even when vanquished
by the sense of his misery and by the tested gentleness of the
yoke of the Gospel, he does not cease to feel within himself,
even to his last moment, a possibility and a secret desire to
revolt. Here the whole secret lies. And if you would under
stand how difficult is the triumph of Jesus Christ, I propose to
you, not the conversion of the world, but of one single man.
I ask you, princes of nations — you who command by intelli
gence, wealth, or power — I ask you to make a man humble
and chaste, a penitent, a soul who judges his pride and his
senses, who despises himself, who hates himself, who struggles
against himself, and either as proof or as the means of his con
version, humbly avows the errors of his life. I ask but this
from you. Can you accomplish it ? Have you ever done so ?
Ah ! if a king, radiant in the majesty of the throne, were to
call you into his cabinet, and press you to confess your faults
at his feet, you would say to him : Sire, I would rather confess
them to the man who makes shoes for my feet ! If the most
famous philosopher of his age were to use all his eloquence to
persuade you to kneel and confess your sins to him, you would
not deign even to turn away from laughing in his face. Pardon
these expressions, gentlemen, they would be ill-placed on other
occasions ; here, they are but just and grave. And yet, what
kings, philosophers, and nations are unable to obtain, a poor
priest, a man unknown, the most obscure among men, daily

JESUS CHRIST. 149
accomplishes in the name of Jesus Christ. He sees souls
touched by their misery, coming to seek Him who knows them
not, and avow to Him in all sincerity the degradation of their
passions. It is the door by which men enter into Jesus Christ,
by which they repose in Him, by which the Church herself
enters; for the Church is but the world penitent; and that
single word reveals to you the whole miracle of her foundation
and perpetuity, as it will also explain to you the force of active
and passive contradiction which is in Jesus Christ. Jesus
Christ contradicts all doctrines, because His doctrine is holy
and the world is corrupt ; He contradicts every spirit, because
His spirit is holy and the world is corrupt ; He contradicts all
nations, because His Church is holy and the world is corrupt ;
and for the same reason the world contradicts the doctrines,
the spirit, and the Church of Jesus Christ.
It was then with justice, in a certain sense, that in the first
proceedings directed against Christians, by the orders of Nero,
they were convicted, according to Tacitus, of " hatred against
the human race." They hated, in fact, all that the world
esteemed ; they pursued all its ideas and all its affections, in
order to destroy them utterly; and although they did this from
love for the world, the world was not bound to understand and
thank them for it. Even charity, so new was it, clothed herself
in hostile colours, and the death of Jesus Christ upon the cross
— that masterpiece of love — appeared rather like an insult than
devotedness. All was contradiction, because all was God ;
and in order to prove that nothing of this was of man, Jesus
Christ was for ever to be recognised by this sign, according as
it was said of Him at the moment of His first appearing among
men : " This Child is set up for a sign which shall be contra
dicted." * And He Himself, recalling the prophecies, said to
His enemies : " The stone which the builders rejected has
become the corner-stone ; the Lord hath done this, and it is
wonderful in our eyes." f The prophecy is still accomplished
daily; princes, nations, savants, sages, the skilful, the builders,
in fine, reject the stone ; they declare it to be unfit or worn
out by time ; they will accept it no longer ; and yet it is still
"the corner-stone, and it is wonderful in our eyes." It sup
ports all, although it is rejected by all ; it possesses the double
character of necessity and impossibility. Recognise here,
* St. Luke ii. 34. t St. Matt. xxi. 42.

ISO JESUS CHRIST.
gentlemen, a struggle between two unequal wills — the will of
man which revolts, and the will of God which causes itself to
be obeyed by man, in man, and in spite of man. And you
Christians, sons of this work wherein God gives you so
favoured a place, learn the need of constant suffering, of not
triumphing by triumph, that Jesus Christ may not be accused
of owing something to man, but of triumphing upon the cross,
so that your victory may be of God, and that you may be able,
now and henceforth, to repeat those words which, after so
many other signs witnessed by you, express the highest sign of
the Divinity of Jesus Christ: "The stone which the builders
rejected has become the corner-stone ; the Lord hath done
this, and it is wonderful in our eyes ! "

GOD.

GOD.

THE EXISTENCE OF GOD.

My Lord,* — Gentlemen,
We have proved the divinity of Christian doctrine in a
twofold manner ; by its results, in showing that it produces
that marvel the Church, to which nothing is comparable, and
which evidently surpasses all human power ; and also by
showing that her founder is Jesus Christ, the envoy of God
and the Son of God. The effects and source of this doctrine
being divine, it is manifestly stamped with the seal of divinity,
or, in other words, it is divine. It would seem then that our
task is ended, and that having crowned the doctrine whose
minister we are with the most sacred and certain of all cha
racters, we have but two things to demand from you, or rather
to impose upon you, namely, silence and adoration.
But the human mind is so formed, it has been so steeped
in light, that even if it saw the very hand of God bearing doc
trine to it, it would not be willing to receive that doctrine
without receiving therewith the right and power to sound its
depths. The road of authority is doubtless a just, a natural
road, and necessary for our present state ; but it does not
suffice for us. For our present state includes the foretaste of
the future promised to us, and in regard to that future, nothing
will fully satisfy us but light seen by us in the very essence of
God himself. We do not desire henceforth to behold that
light in its infinite fulness ; we understand that limits have
* Monseigneur Affre, Archbishop of Paris.

154 THE EXISTENCE OF
been placed to our mental vision and to our horizon : but how
feeble soever that vision may be, it is that of an intelligent
being ; how limited soever its horizon, it is an horizon traced
by the hand of God. Our mind seeks light, and our horizon
receives its rays. As soon then as a doctrine is proposed to
us, from whatever hand it may come, we thirst to fathom it, to
scrutinise it from within, to assure ourselves, in fine, that it
possesses other marks of its truth than merely outward signs,
however great they may be. I cannot escape from this law of
our being, nor do I desire so to do. I respect it in you as in
myself; I recognise therein our origin and our predestination.
After having led you then for so many years through the
externals of Christianity, I must now, under the eye of God,
pass the threshold of the temple, and, without fear as without
presumption, contemplate doctrine itself, the daughter of God
and the mother of your soul.
I do not promise to show you its absolute superiority ; this
can be done only by leaving the present world and reaching
the bright shores of the infinite. But I promise you that in
comparing it with all the doctrines that have endeavoured to
explain the mysteries of the world, you shall .easily discover in
it an unquestionable and a divine superiority. I promise you
that a light shall shine from it, which, without always attaining
to evidence itself, will form at least a glorious dawn of evi
dence, and perhaps even at times a blending, as it were, of
the reason of man with the reason of God. Your soul elevated
by veiled truths, will see them gradually growing clearer in the
dawn of contemplation ; in that holy exercise it will become
accustomed to flights before unknown to it, and at length
wonder at the sublime simplicity of the greatest mysteries.
But where shall we find a basis in order to found doctrine
and appropriate it to ourselves ? Where shall we find terms
of comparison and means of verification? We shall not need
to seek far. God has placed near to us the instruments
destined by His Providence to lead us toward Himself. He
has given them to us in nature and in intelligence, in con
science and in society. This is the quadruple and unique
palace which he has built for us ; quadruple in the diversity of
its construction, unique in the relations which they hold to
one another, and in our indivisible abode therein. As God is
whole and ever present to every part of the universe, man is

GOD. ,55
whole and always present to nature, to his intelligence, to his
conscience, to society ; he draws from them a life which con
stantly receives light from their reverberation, and which
never leaves him in the solitary gloom of himself. Nature
speaks to his intelligence, his intelligence responds to nature,
both meet in his conscience, and society places the seal of
experience to the revelations of all the three. Such is our life,
and there all doctrine finds its verification. A doctrine con
trary either to nature, intelligence, conscience, or society, is a
false doctrine, because it destroys our life ; a doctrine in
harmony with these is a true doctrine, because it strengthens
and enlarges our life, and because our life, taken in its totality,
is heaven and earth, matter and spirit, time and space, man
and mankind, whatever comes from God and bears with it a
demonstration of Him and of ourselves.
It behoves me then to show you the conformity of Catholic
doctrine with nature, intelligence, conscience, and society ;
and to draw from that comparison, unceasingly rising before
you, rays of light which will lead us to the depths of the
invisible and the immensity of the supernatural. This will
form the last part of our conferences, and although it must
necessarily employ several years, I cannot divest myself of a
feeling of sadness in thinking that the day draws nearer when
I must separate from you, and when I shall see no longer,
save from a distance in the feebleness of remembrance, those
great assemblies in which God was with us. Nevertheless
some consolation is blended with the feeling of our coming
separation ; the consolation of the man who reaches his end,
who has finished a career, and who foresees the hour when he
will be able to say with Paul : " I have fought the good fight,
I have finished my course."* Share with me this sadness and
this joy ; for our conferences belong to you as much as to me ;
they form a monument which has risen up from your hearts
and from mine as from a single principle ; and some day, if it
please God to grant us the repose of old age, we shall each
alike be able to say, on recalling the times which we loved : I
formed part of those conferences of Notre Dame which held
our youth captive under the word of God.
• 2 Tim. iv. 7.

156 the existence of
My Lord :
The Church and the country thank you together for the
example you have given to us in these days of great and
memorable emotion.* You have called us into this cathedral
cm the morrow of a revolution in which all seemed to have
been lost ; we have responded to your call ; we are here
peaceably assembled under these antique vaults ; we learn
from them to fear nothing either for religion or for country ;
both will continue their career under the hand of God who
protects them ; both render thanks to you for having believed
in this indissoluble alliance, and for having discerned in pass
ing things those which remain firm and become strengthened
even by the changeableness of events.
Doctrine is the science of destinies. We live, but why do
we live ? We live, but how do we live ? We, and all that is
passing around us, move by a motion which never ceases. The
heavens move onwards, the earth is borne along, the waves
follow each other on the old shores of the sea; the plant
springs up, the tree waxes great, the dust drifts along, and the
mind of man, yet more restless than all else in nature, knows
no repose. Whence and why is this? All motion supposes a
starting-point, a term to which it tends, and a road by which it
passes. What is then our starting-point ? What our end ?
What our road ? Doctrine must answer us ; doctrine must
show us our beginning, our end, our means ; and, with them,
the secret of our destinies. All science does not reach so
far. The lower sciences teach us the law of particular move
ments ; they tell us how bodies attract and repel each other ;
what orbit they describe in the undefined spaces of the uni
verse ; how they become decomposed and reconstituted, and
numberless secrets of that restless and unremitting life which
they lead in the fertile bosom of nature : but they do not make
known to us the general law of motion, the first principle of
things, their final end, their common means. This is the
privilege of doctrine, a privilege as far above all the sciences
as the universal is above the individual.
Now of these three terms which comprise the system of
destinies, the one which doctrine should first reveal to us is
doubtless the principle of things; for it is easy to conceive
that upon the principle depends the end, that from the end
* The Revolution of 1848.

GOD. 157
and the principle proceeds the means. The principle of
beings evidently includes the reason of the end assigned to
them, as their principle and their end determine the means by
which they are to attain and fulfil their vocation.
I ask then this supreme question, I ask it with you and
with all time : What is the principle of things ? Catholic
doctrine answers us in these three first words of its Creed :
Credo in Deum, Patrem Omnipotentem — / believe in God,
the Father Almighty.
Hear its own explanation of this answer.
There is a primordial being : by that alone that it is
primordial, it has no beginning, it is eternal, that is to say
infinite in duration ; being infinite in duration, it is so also in its
perfection; for if anything were wanting to its perfection, it
would not be total being, it would be limited in its existence ;
it would not exist of itself, it would not be primordial. There
is then a being, infinite in duration and perfection. Now the
state of perfection involves the personal state, that is to say,
the state of a being possessing consciousness and intelligence
of itself, rendering an account to itself of what it is, dis
tinguishing from itself that which is not itself, removing from
itself that which is against itself; in a word, of a being who
thinks, who wills, who acts, who is free, who is sovereign. The
primordial being is then " an infinite spirit in a state of per
sonality." Such is Catholic doctrine on the principle of things,
the doctrine contained in that short phrase : Credo in Deum
— / believe in God.
Let us now hear the contrary doctrine, for there is a con
trary doctrine ; and you will never find Christianity announcing
a dogma without at once meeting with a negation, a negation
intended to combat it, but which must serve to prove it. For
error is the counterproof of truth, as shadows are the counter-
proofs of light. Do not wonder then at so prompt an
opposition to so manifest a dogma ; invite it rather, and
listen to the first expression of rationalism against the first
expression of Christianity: Credo in naturam, matrem
omnipotentem — / believe in nature, the mother almighty.
You hear then that rationalism, like Christianity, admits
the existence of a principle of things ; but for rationalism, nature
is the primordial, necessary, eternal, sovereign being. Now,
nature is not unknown to us, and it is evident to us that nature
is in the state of impersonality ; that is to say, nature has no

158 THE EXISTENCE OF
consciousness of what it is, it does not possess that intellectual
unity by which each of its members should live of the uni
versal life, and the universe of the life of the least blade of
grass comprised in its immensity. We are, so to say, immersed
in nature, we draw from nature the aliment of our existence :
but so far from forming there one single life by common
knowledge, we know nothing even of the beings nearest to
us. We pass each other by as strangers, and the universe
answers to our laborious investigations only by the mute
spectacle of its inanimate splendour. Nature is derived of
personality, and this is why Rationalism, which declares that
nature is self-existent, defines the principle of things as "an
infinite force in a state of impersonality."
Such are the two doctrines.
And observe that the human mind could not conceive
a third doctrine upon the principle of things. For either
nature exists of itself and suffices to itself, or we must seek its
cause and support above itself, not in an analogous nature
subject to the same infirmity, but in a superior being answering
in its essence to the idea and function of a principle. It is
the one or the other. If we choose nature, as nature wants
personality, we must say that the principle of things is " an
infinite force in the state of impersonality. If we reject nature,
we must say that the principle of things is a supernatural
being, the logical conception of which necessarily leads to the
conclusion that the principle of things is "an infinite spirit
in the state of personality." Therefore human reason, in
regard to the first question concerning the mystery of des
tinies, the question of principle, is inevitably condemned to
one or the other of these professions of faith: "I believe in
God ; — I believe in nature."
This is the reason why there are but two fundamental
doctrines in the world : theism and pantheism. The first
of these builds upon the idea of God, the second upon the fact
of nature ; one starts from the invisible and the infinite, the
other from the visible and the indefinite. Whoever is not
a theist is logically a pantheist, and whoever is not a pantheist
is necessarily a theist. Every man chooses between these
two doctrines, and the life of mankind cleaves to one or the
other, as to the tree of life and the tree of death. Pantheism
has perhaps been brought before you as a rare discovery
of modern times, as a treasure slowly drawn forth from the

GOD. 159
fields of contemplation by the labour of sages : the fact is,
it is as old as corrupted mankind, and the mind of a child
is able to conceive that there is a God, or if there is not, that
nature is itself its principle and its god.
It is a gift of truth, that upon a question so capital as that
of the principle of things, you should have but to choose
between two doctrines, and that on the rejection of one of
these, the other becomes invested with the infallible character
of logical necessity.
What do you now expect from me ? You think perhaps
that I am about to demonstrate to you the existence of God ?
I assure you I have no such intention, not because the thing
is impossible, but because this is not the question before us.
The existence of God is not a dogma overthrown, which it is
needful to raise up again from the dust ; it is a dogma standing
erect, which holds its place between the Church, whose divine
authority I have shown you, and Jesus Christ, whose personal
divinity I have proved to you. God has been the basis of all
that we have yet seen. He has revealed Himself to us as all
beings reveal themselves, namely, by His action. If God had
not acted upon earth, and if He did not still act here day by
day, no one would believe in Him, whatever demonstration
metaphysics and eloquence might make of Him. Mankind
believes in God because it sees Him act. We have not, then,
to demonstrate God, but to examine the idea of- God, and to
place it before our minds in all the splendour that we can draw
from it.
Let us even put aside those positive proofs of God ; let us
forget His works in the world, and suppose that we have before
us the bare question of His existence. The necessity of a
direct demonstration of Him would not even then follow. For
our mind carries in itself the certaint}' that a principle of things
exists, and, in addition, that this principle is either God or
nature. Nothing remains, then, but to choose between them,
and a matter of choice is quite another thing than a position
in which reasoning has all to create. I have to oppose theism
to pantheism, this is my task ; I have to seek which of these is
in harmony with nature, intelligence, conscience, and society ;
such is the strength of my position.
Before entering upon this comparison, or rather on entering
upon it, I will make one observation. It is that God is here
below the most popular of all beings, whilst pantheism is a

160 THE EXISTENCE OF
purely scientific system. In the open fields, resting upon his
implement of toil, the labourer lifts up his eyes towards heaven,
and he names God to his children by an impulse as simple as
his own soul. The poor call upon Him, the dying invoke His
name, the wicked fear Him, the good bless Him, kings give
Him their crown to wear, armies place Him at the head of
their battalions, victory renders thanksgivings to Him, defeat
seeks help from Him, nations arm themselves with Him against
their tyrants ; there is neither place, nor time, nor circum
stance, nor sentiment, in which God does not appear and is
not named. Even love itself, so sure of its own charm, so
confident in its own immortality, dares not to ignore Him, and
comes before His altars to beg from Him the confirmation of
the promises to which it has so often sworn. Anger feels that
it has not reached its last expression until it has cursed that
adorable name ; and even blasphemy is the homage of faith
that reveals itself in its own forgetfulness. What shall I say of
perjury ? A man possesses a secret upon which his fortune
or his honour depends : he alone upon earth knows it, he
alone is his own judge. But truth has an eternal accomplice
in God ; it calls God to its help, it places the heart of man to
struggle against an oath, and even he who may be capable of
violating its majesty would not do so without an inward
shudder, as before the most cowardly and the basest of actions.
And yet what is there contained in those words of an oath ?
Only a name, indeed, but it is the name of God. It is the
name which all nations have adored, to which they have built
temples, consecrated priests, offered prayers ; it is the highest
name, the most holy, the most efficient, the most popular name
which the lips of men have received the grace to utter.
Is it so with pantheism ? Where shall we look for it ? Come
with me, let us knock at yonder door ; it is illustrious, and
more than one celebrity has already been there. We are in the
presence of a sage. Let us beg of Him to explain to us the
mystery of our destinies, for He has sounded it. What says
He to us? That there is in the world only one single
substance. Why? Because substance is that which is in
itself, and that which is in itself is necessarily unique, in
finite, eternal, God. Behold then the whole explanation
of our life based upon a metaphysical definition. I do not
now examine whether it be true or false, whether the con
clusions drawn from it are legitimate, whether it is easy other-

GOD. 161
wise to define substance, and so to overthrow the whole structure
of this doctrine. I simply defy mankind to understand it ; even
you, who from your childhood have been initiated to specula
tions of words and ideas, you would not seize its tissue without
great difficulty were I to expose it to you. Many of you,
perhaps, would not succeed so far ; for nothing is more rare
than metaphysical sagacity, than that vision which dispels
before it all realities and penetrates with a fixed regard the
world of abstractions. You would soon feel the swelling veins
of your brow, a kind of dimness would seize even upon the
most hidden recesses of your thoughts, and all would disappear
before you, the real and the ideal, in painful obscurity. And
we are to believe that truth lies hidden in such subtle and
inaccessible depths ! That there it awaits the human race to
declare to it its destiny ! Can you believe it ? For my part, I
do not believe it. I believe in the God of the poor and the
simple-minded ; I believe in the God who is known in the lowly
cottage, whom infancy hears, whose name is dear to misfortune,
who has found ways to reach to all, how humble soever they
may be, and who has no enemies but the pride of knowledge
and the corruption of the heart. I believe in this God. I
believe in Him because I am a man, and, in repeating with all
nations and all ages the first article of the Church's Creed, I
do but proclaim myself a man and take my rank in the natural
community of souls.
Need I avow it ?— Since I have been charged with the work
of preaching the Divine Word, this is the first time that I have
approached this question of the existence of God — if indeed it
can be called a question ! Hitherto I have disdained it as
unnecessary. I have thought it needless to prove to a son the
existence of his father, and that he who did not know him was
unworthy of such knowledge. But the course of ideas constrains
me to touch upon this subject. Nevertheless, in making this
concession to logical order, I could not allow you to think that
I purposed to satisfy a want of your hearts, or of the people and
the age in which we live. God be thanked, we believe in Him,
and were I to doubt of your faith in Him, you would rise and
cast me out from amongst you ; the doors of this cathedral
would open before me of themselves, and the people would
need but a look in order to confound me. That same people
who in the intoxication of victory, after having overthrown
many generations of kings, bore off in their submissive hands, M

162 THE EXISTENCE OF
and as the associate of their triumph, the image of the Son of
God made man. (Applause.)
Gentlemen, let us not applaud the word of God; let us
love it, believe in it, practise it ; this is the only applause that
mounts to heaven and is worthy of it.
I might here close this discourse, since you happily show
me that it is needless. Allow me, however, before doing so,
to seek why the idea of God is popular, and whether that
popularity is but a vain illusion of mankind.
We have said that we possess four means of verifying doc
trines ; namely : nature, intelligence, conscience, and society.
If the idea of God be legitimate, it should derive strength from
these four sources of light, whilst pantheism should necessarily
find its condemnation in them.
Nature is a grand spectacle which easily exhausts our vision
and our imagination ; but does it bear the stamp of a being
without cause, of a being existing of itself? Can nature say
like God, through Moses : Ego sum qui sum — I am who am ?
Infinity is the first mark of the being without cause ; does
nature bear this sign ? Let us examine it. All that we see
there is limited, all is form and movement, form determined,
movement calculated ; all falls under the straitened empire
of measure, even the distances which remain unknown to our
instruments, but are by no means unknown to our conceptions.
We feel the limit even where our eye does not perceive it ; it is
enough for us to seize it at one point, to determine it every
where. The infinite is indivisible, and were but one single
atom of the universe submitted to our feeble hands, we should
know that nature is finite, and that its immensity is but the
splendid veil of its poverty.
If nature existed of itself, it would moreover possess the
character of absolute liberty, or sovereignty : for, what can a
being be said to depend upon which has no cause ? But do
we find this in the operations that manifest the life of nature to
us? The universe is a serf; it revolves in a circle wherein
nothing spontaneous appears ; the stone remains where our
hand places it, and the planet describes an orbit where we
always find it. Those worlds, so prodigious by their mass and
their motion, have never revealed to the observer anything but
a silent and blind mechanism, a slavish force, a helpless power-
lessness to deviate from their law. And man himself — man in
whom alone upon earth appears that liberty whose traces we

GOD. 163
vainly seek for in all the rest — is he a sovereign ? Is he born
at his own time ? Does he die when it pleases him? Can he
free himself from that which limits and embitters his existence?
Like nature, of which he forms a part, he has his greatness, but
it is a greatness which so much the more betrays his infirmity.
He is like those kings who followed their victor to the Capitol,
and whose abasement was but increased by the remnants of
their majesty. The spectacle of the universe then awakens
two sentiments, namely, wonder and pity. And these, strength
ened by one another, together lead us to see the emptiness of
nature, and to seek its author. Such is the language of worlds,
their eternal eloquence, the cry of their conscience, if we may
give such a name to the force that constrains them to speak for
a greater than they, and to repeat to all the echoes of time and
space the hymn of the creature to the Creator : Non nobis,
DOMINE, NON NOBIS, SED NOMINI TDO GLORIAM — Not unto US,
Lord, not unto us, but to thy name be the glory 1 Yes, sacred
worlds that roll above us, brilliant and joyous stars that pursue
your course under the hand of the Most High, happy islands
whose shores are traced out in the ocean of heaven, yes, you
have never lied to man !
It matters little whether pantheism does or does not endea
vour to pervert the meaning of the spectacle of nature. It is
of importance for us to know, however, that man, taken in
general, the man of mankind, sees at a glance that the universe
does not exist of itself. Metaphysics will never destroy that
deep impression made upon mankind by the spectacle of things
which forms the scene upon which we live. A child perceives
the incapacity of the heavens and the earth ; he sees, he feels,
he touches it ; he will always return to it as to an invincible
sentiment forming a part of his being. In vain will you tell
him that he is God, it is enough for him to have had but a
fever to know that you are laughing at him.
In contemplating nature, man sees realities; in contem
plating his intelligence, he sees truths. Realities are finite like
the nature that contains them ; truths are infinite, eternal,
absolute, that is to say, greater than the intelligence in which
we find them. Nature shows us geometrical figures ; the intel
ligence reveals to us the mathematical law itself, the general
and abstract law of all bodies. It does more, it reveals to
us the metaphysical law, that is to say, the law of all beings
of what kind soever, the law which is as applicable to spirits
M 2

164 THE EXISTENCE OF
as to bodies. At this height, and in this horizon, the universe
disappears from our mental vision, or, at least, we no longer
perceive it save as the reflection of a higher world, as the
shadow of a boundless light ; the real becomes absorbed in the
true, which is its root, really becomes measured by truth.
But where is truth? Where its dwelling-place, its seat,
its living essence ? Is it a pure abstraction of our mind ? Is
it nothing but the universe magnified by a dream ? If it
were so, our intelligence itself would be but a dream ; truth,
which appears to us as the principle of all things, would be only
the exaggeration, and, as it were, the extravagance of sensible
reality. Shall we say that truth has its seat in our own mind ? But
our mind is limited, truth has no limits ; our mind had a
beginning, truth is eternal ; our mind is susceptible of more or
less, truth is absolute. To say that our mind is the seat of
truth, is to say in obscure terms that our mind is truth itself,
living truth : who is so mad as to believe this ? Besides the
contradiction existing between the nature of our mind and the
nature of truth, do we not see the minds which form mankind
engaged in a perpetual war of affirmations and negations ?
Truth would then be battling with itself? It would affirm and
deny at the same time, although remaining absolute. It is the
very height of folly !
If truth be not a vain name, it is in the universe only in the
state of expression, and in our mind only in the state of
apparition; it is in the universe as the artist is in his work,
it is in our mind as the sun is in our eyes. But beyond the
universe and our mind, it subsists of itself, it is a real, an
infinite, an eternal, an absolute essence, existing of itself, pos
sessing consciousness and intelligence of itself ; for how could
it be that truth should not understand itself, since it is the
source of all understanding? Now, so to speak of truth is to
define God ; God is the proper name of truth, as truth is the
abstract name of God.
There is then a God, if truth exists. Would you say that
there is no truth ? It is for you to choose. I do not deny your
liberty. Perhaps you will still better understand the force of this
conclusion by applying it to the order of conscience. Even
as truth is the object and life of the mind, justice is the object and
life of conscience. Conscience sees and approves a rule of the

GOD. 165
rights and duties between beings endowed with liberty. That
rule is justice. But where is justice? Is it a simple result of
human will? In that case justice would be but a convention, a
fragile law called into life to-day and which may fall to-morrow.
Is it an order founded on the very nature of man ? But that
nature is variable, corruptible, subject to passions that lead it
astray. What is order for one would be disorder for another.
If then justice be a reality, it must be an eternal and absolute
law, regulating the relations of free volitions, as mathematics
are an eternal and absolute law regulating the relations of
material beings, and metaphysics an eternal and absolute law
regulating the relations of intelligent beings with all beings,
either existing or possible. Beyond this notion, justice is but
a name which arms the strong against the weak, the prosper
ous against the needy. Now, this notion necessarily calls
forth the notion of God, since an eternal and absolute law could
only be a reality in the person of a being subsisting of himself,
possessing a will active and just, able to promulgate an order,
to maintain it, to reward obedience and punish rebellion.
Truth is the first name of God ; justice is the second.
Now it is easy to conceive that there may be men for whom
truth and justice are nothing but philosophical speculations,
men who shut themselves up in the proud solitude of their own
thoughts, and build up in them their own glory upon systems
that bear their names. But it is not so with poor and suffering
mankind : it needs truth for its nourishment, justice for its
defence, and it knows that the real name of both is the name
of God, and that the real strength of both is the power of God.
The poor and the afflicted have never been deceived herein.
When they are oppressed, they lift up their hands towards God,
they write his name upon their banners, they pronounce to the
oppressor that last and solemn expression of the soul that
believes and hopes : I cite you before the tribunal of God !
The time of that tribunal comes sooner or later, its temporal
and visible, as well as its eternal time. Kings even here below
are cited before it, and nations also. It is the permanent
tribunal set up in the midst of error and wickedness, and which
saves the world. In vain would pride destroy it ; the people
saved by it save it in their turn. If there were none but sages
among us, the idea of God might perish here, for a man alone
is always powerful against God ; but happily nations are feeble
against him, because they cannot do without justice and truth.

166 THE EXISTENCE OF
They protect him against the learned chimeras of false wisdom ;
they preserve his memory with a faithfulness which does not
always preserve the perfect idea of him, but which at least has
never yet permitted the sun and history to see a nation of
atheists. Notwithstanding all that men have done, God
remains as the corner-stone of human society ; no legislator has
dared to banish Him, no age has ignored Him, no language has
effaced His name. Upon earth as in heaven, He is because He is.
But if God has on his side nature, intelligence, conscience,
and society, what remain* there to pantheism ? Where is it to
find its basis ? It seeks its basis in the obscurities of abstruse
metaphysics ; withdrawing from all realities, from every feeling
and every want, in order to form a labyrinth from whence
thought can find no exit. It loses itself the clue, and, shut up
in the subtle prison which it has made, takes refuge in the
sneer of self-deceived pride, and calling to its help, from the
corrupted depths of ages, the prying spirits of subtle doctrines,
it hurls against God and mankind the anathema of scorn.
God passes by without hearing and mankind without answering.
Let us do likewise, let us pass by also.
We have a threefold intuition of God : a negative intuition
in nature ; a direct intuition in the ideas of truth and justice ;
a practical intuition in human society. Nature, in manifesting
characteristics to us incompatible with a being existing of itself,
causes us to mount to its source ; the ideas of truth and justice
name God to us, without whom they would be nothing ; human
society, which cannot do without Him, proves to us His
existence by its need of Him. But besides these continuous
and inadmissible revelations, there are others which Divine
Providence scatters from time to time on the road of nations.
He strikes with His thunders and rends the veils, He gives so
full and deep a consciousness of His presence that none can
be deceived, and causes a whole nation to utter from its inmost
heart that unanimous and involuntary cry : It is the hand of
God ! We are witnessing one of those times when God unveils
Himself; but yesterday He passed through our gates and the
whole world beheld Him. Shall I then remain silent before
Him ? Shall I hold upon my trembling lips the prayer of a
man who, once in his life, has seen his God before him ?
O God, who has just dealt these terrible blows ; O God,
the judge of kings and arbiter of the world, look down in
mercy upon this old Frank nation, the elder Son of Thy right

GOD. 167
hand and of Thy Church. Remember its past services, Thy
first blessings ; renew with it that ancient alliance which made
it Thy people ; touch its heart which was so full of Thee, and
which now again, in the flush of a victory wherein it spared
nothing royal, yielded to Thee the empire which it yields to
none other. O God, just and holy, by the cross of Thy Son
which their hands bore from the profaned palace of kings to
the spotless palace of Thy spouse, watch over us, protect us,
enlighten us, prove once more to the world that a people that
respects Thee is a people saved !

THE INNER LIFE OF GOD.

My Lord, — Gentlemen,
God exists, but what does He ? What is His action ?
What is His life ? This question at once rises in our thoughts.
As soon as the mind has recognised the existence of a being,
it asks how that being lives; and still more so in regard to
God, who, as the principle of beings, excites within us a thirst
for knowledge of Him, so much the more ardent and just as
His action is the model of all action, and His life the pattern
of all life. What then is the life of God? How does He
employ His eternity ? This is doubtless a bold question.
Nevertheless it is a question which men ask and which they
desire to solve. But how is it to be solved ? How are we to
penetrate the Divine Essence in order to catch a glimpse of the
incomprehensible movement of an eternal, infinite, absolute,
and immutable spirit ?
Three doctrines come before us. One of these affirms that
God is condemned by the sovereign majesty of His nature to
isolation dreadful to imagine ; that, alone in Himself, He con
templates Himself seeing only Himself, and loves Himself with
a love which has no other object than Himself ; that in this
contemplation and this love, eternally solitary, the nature and
perfection of His life consist.
According to the second doctrine, the universe shows us
the life of God, or rather it is itself the life of God. We behold
in it His permanent action, the scene upon which His power is
exercised, and in which all His attributes are reflected. God
is not out of the universe any more than the universe is out of
God. God is the principle, the universe is the consequence,
but a necessary consequence, without which the principle would
be inert, unfruitful, impossible to conceive.

GOD. 169
Catholic doctrine condemns these two systems. It does
not admit that God is a solitary being eternally employed in a
sterile contemplation of Himself; nor does it admit that the
universe, although it is the work of God, is His proper and
personal life. It soars above those feeble ideas, and, bearing
us with the word of God beyond all the conceptions of the
human mind, it teaches us that the divine life consists in the
co-eternal union of three equal persons, in whom plurality
destroys solitude, and unity division ; whose thought corre
sponds, whose love is mutual, and who, in that marvellous
communion, identical in substance, distinct in personality, form
together an ineffable association of light and love. Such is the
essence of God, and such is His life, both powerfully expressed
in those words of the Apostle St. John : Tres sunt qui tes
timonium dant in ccelo: Pater, Verbum, et Spiritus
sanctus — There are three who give testimony in heaven : the
Father, the Word, the Holy Ghost. And these three are one.*
Here, and very soon after having promised you light, it
would seem that I am leading you into a maze of darkness ;
for, can anything be conceived more formidable to the mind
than the terms by which I have just expressed, according to
the Scriptures and the Church, the relations that constitute the
inner life of God ? Do not, however, yield to this first im
pression ; trust rather to my promises, since they are those of
the Gospel, wherein it is written : Egq sum Lux Mundi —
/ am the Light of the World. And again : Qui sequitur Me
non ambulat in tenebris, sed habebit LUMEN VITM — He
that followeth me walketh not in darkness, but shall have the
light of life.f Yes, be confident, count upon God, who has
proposed nothing to you unnecessary to be believed, and who
has hidden marvellous treasures in the most obscure mysteries,
as He has hidden the fires of the diamond in the depths of
the earth. Follow me, let us pass the pillars of Hercules, and,
leaving truth to fill our sails, let us fearlessly advance even to
the transatlantic regions of light.
We would understand something of the divine life : the
first question, therefore, we have to ask is : What is life ? For,
as long as we do not know what life is in itself, it is clear that
we shall not be able to form any idea of the life of God.
What, then, is life ? In order to comprehend this, we must learn
* I John v. 7. t St. John viii. 12.

17° THE INNER LIFE OF
what being is ; for life is evidently a certain state of being. We
thus arrive at that first and supreme question : What is being ?
And we shall solve it by seeking for what is permanent and
common in the infinitely varied beings which surround us.
Now, in all of these, whatsoever their name, their form, their
degree of perfection or inferiority, we find a mysterious force
which is the principle of their substance and organization, and
which we call activity. Every being, even the most inert in
appearance, is active ; it condenses, it resists foreign efforts, it
attracts and incorporates to itself elements which obey it. A
grain of sand is in contest and in harmony with the whole
universe, and maintains itself by that force which is the very
seat of its being, and without which it would become lost in
the absolute incapacity of nothingness. Activity, being the
permanent and common characteristic of all that is, it follows
that being and activity are one and the same thing, and that
we are warranted in making this definition : Being is activity.
St. Thomas of Aquinas gave us an example when, having to
define God, who is being in its total reality, he said : " God is
a pure act."
But activity supposes action, and action is life. Life is to
being what action is to activity. To live, is to act. It is true
that spontaneous, and, above all, free action, being perfect
action, the birth or apparition of life is generally marked at the
point where that kind of action is manifested. Thus we say
that the stone is, that the plant grows, that the animal lives -r
but these different expressions mark only the gradations of
activity, whose presence, how feeble soever it may be, every
where constitutes the living being.
We know what life is. Let us advance another step, let us
learn what are its general laws, and then apply them to God.
The first general law of life is: The action of a being is equal
to its activity. In fact the action of a being can be limited
only by a foreign force, or by its own will. Now a foreign
force checks it only at the point where its own energy ceases,
and as to its own will, should it possess any, that necessarily
bears it as far as it can reach by its own nature. An action
superior to its activity is impossible to it ; an action inferior is
insufficient ; an action equal to its activity is the only action
that places it in harmony with itself and with the rest of the
universe. Therefore whether you consider the general move
ment of worlds or the tendency of each being in particular,.

GOD. i7»
you will find them all acting according to the measure of their
forces, and placing limits to their ambition only because they
exist to their faculties. All, and man among the rest, advance
as far as they can ; all, having reached the point which exhausts
and stops them, write like the poet, proudly accusing their own
powerlessness :
Sistimus hic tandem nobis ubi defuit orbis.
This first general law being recognised, I at once draw some
conclusions from it touching the life of God ; for as the action
of a being is equal to its, activity, and as God is infinite activity,
it follows that in God there is infinite action, or, to speak still
more clearly, that infinite action constitutes in God the very
life of God. But what is an action? Nature and mankind
are composed only of a tissue of actions ; we do nothing else
from the moment of our birth to our death. Nevertheless, do
you know clearly what an action is ? Have you ever weighed
the sense of that word which comprises all that passes in
heaven and upon earth ? An action is a movement ; it is im
possible for us to conceive its nature under a more clear and
general form. The body moves when it acts, thought moves
when it works, the heart moves when it conceives affections ;
from wheresoever the action comes, the tongue has but one
term for expressing it, and the understanding but one idea for
conceiving it. All is in movement in the universe because all
therein is action, and all therein is action, because, from the
atom to the planet, from the dust even to intelligence, all is
activity. But movement supposes an object, an end to which
the being aspires. I move, I run, I risk my life : Why ?
What do I seek? Apparently I seek something wanting to
me and which I desire ; for if nothing were wanting to me,
my movement would have no cause, repose would be my
natural state, immobility my happiness. Since I move, it is to
act : to act is at the same time the motive and the end of
movement, and consequently action is a productive movement.
Do not grow weary of following me ; it is true I am lead
ing you by ways whose outlets perhaps you do not yet see ;
you are passengers in the ship of Columbus, you seek in vain
the star that announces the port to you ; but take courage, you
will soon hail the shore, it is already near.
Action is a productive movement, as I have just shown,.

172 THE INNER LIFE OF
and, as action is the consequence of activity, it follows that
production is the final end of activity ; that is to say of being,
since being and activity are one and the same thing. But in
what proportion does being produce? Evidently in propor
tion to its activity ; since, according to the first general law of
life, the action of a being is equal to its activity. Therefore,
to live is to act ; to act is to produce ; to produce is to draw
forth from self something equal to itself. Doubtless we can
conceive a production inferior to the being from whence it
emanates ; but that production, were it to take place, would not
be the principal act of such life, it would but be accessory and
accidental thereto. Every being tends to produce in the
plenitude of its faculties, because it tends to live in the pleni
tude of its life, and it attains that natural term of its ambition
only by drawing from itself something equal to itself. It is
easy to prove this by observation, after having established it
by reasoning. In what, for instance; consists the painful
labour of the artist ? The artist has had in his soul a vision
of the Beautiful and the True ; the horizon has opened before
him, and in the luminous distance of the infinite he has seized
an idea which has become his own, and which torments him
day and night. What would he do, and what is it that troubles
him? He would produce what he has seen or heard; he
thirsts to make a piece of canvas, a stone, or words, express
his thought as it is in himself, with the same clearness, the
same force, the same poesy, the same tone. As long as he
does not obtain that desired equality between his conception
and his style, he is troubled and desponding, for he remains
beneath himself, and sheds burning tears over the inefficacy of
his genius, which is as a reproach and as death to him.
" From him to whom much is given," says the Gospel, " will
much be required." Such is the law of production, in the
order of nature and art, as in the order of virtue.
But in order for life to produce something equal to itself,
it must produce life ; in order for the living being to produce
something equal to itself, it must produce a being like itself,
or, in other words, it must be fruitful. Fecundity is the
extreme and complete term of production, which is itself the
necessary term of activity. Thus we learn and lay down that
second general law of life : " The activity of a being is resumed
in its fecundity."
Here the spectacle of the world around us is so striking

GOD. ^3,
that it is almost needless to invoke it. Where in nature can
we find any being so abject and disinherited as not to have
received from God the grace to produce a being like itself, to
see itself in another emanating from itself? The plant ceases
not to sow in the earth the germ that multiplies it ; the tree
sheds around it and confides to the winds of heaven the
mysterious seeds that assure to it a numerous offspring ; the
animal gathers its little ones to its unfailing breasts ; and last
of all, man, spirit and matter, combines in his fragile life the
double fecundity of the senses and thought. He bequeaths
himself as a whole to a posterity which perpetuates him by the
soul as much as by the body, a father twice blessed and doubly
immortal. Shall I dare to advance further, and, passing from
man to the opposite frontiers of life, show you the prodigy of
fecundity even in those beings to whom science refuses organi
zation, and which, notwithstanding their apparent insignificance,
still find in themselves the power to seduce nature and be per
petuated in its bosom by alliances that manifest their vital
energy? In vain, from one pole to the other, from man to^
the worm of the earth, I seek sterility. I find it only in one
place and in one thing, in death. So that we may say with
rigorous exactness, that life is fecundity, and that the fecundity
is equal to the life.
Let us now lift up our eyes, for we can do so ; let us turn
them towards God. If what we have said be true, God, being
infinite activity, is also, and even thereby, infinite fecundity.
For, if He were active without being fruitful, if He were infi
nitely active without being infinitely fruitful, one of two things
would follow, either His action would be unproductive, or
He would produce only outside of Himself in the region of
the temporary and the finite. To say that the action of God
is unproductive is to say that He acts without cause, and
that His life is consumed in the powerlessness of eternal
sterility ; to say that His action is only productive outside of
Himself, is to say that His life is not His own, which is
absurd, or that the universe is His life, which brings us to
pantheism. We must then conclude that the life of God is
exercised within Himself by an infinite and a sovereign
fecundity. Do not seek beforehand how this adorable
mystery is accomplished ; do not hurry your curiosity beyond
the light and the abyss. Be masters of yourselves, examine
the point you are investigating, hear the sounds that you hear,

174 THE INNER LIFE OF
and no more. The infinite, in heaven, is seen at a glance ;
here upon earth it is difficult for us to lift even a little of the
veil that hides it from us.
I ask you now but one thing, I ask you if you can form
any idea of being without the idea of activity ; any idea of
activity without the idea of production ; any idea of production
•without the idea of fecundity ? I ask you if your mind con
sents to pronounce this judgment : God is infinite activity
¦which ends in infinite sterility. You may say : He sees and
loves Himself, is this nothing? Yes, but His regard and His
love are sterile ; does that satisfy you ? What ! Your regard
and your love are fruitful; they produce a living being like
yourself, equal to you, in whom you see and love yourself;
and God, the principle and pattern of all things, does not
possess, under an infinite and a supernatural form, the mystery
which you possess under a finite and natural form ! His
outer activity is great enough to give life to the universe,
whilst his inner and personal activity is to produce nothing
but the silence of unmeasured solitude ! Is fecundity then a
calamity, and sterility a state of perfection ? If it be a state
of perfection, do you not see that God contains them all in a
supereminent degree ? We must then conclude with St.
Thomas of Aquinas, in his marvellous treatise on the divine
persons : " The consequence of all action being something
which proceeds from that action, even as there is an outer
procession that follows the outer action, there is also an inner
procession that follows the inner action . . . and thus the
Catholic faith establishes a procession in God."*
Let us still advance and ask why fecundity is the sum or
term of the activity of beings ? Why beings tend to produce
other beings like themselves, and, in fact, do produce them?
The reason of this is contained in the very idea of activity and
action. For an action is a movement ; a movement supposes
a starting-point, which is the acting being; a point to be
attained, which is the desired being ; and a relation between
the principle and the end of movement, between the acting
being and the desired being. Without that relation there
would be no cause of movement, and consequently no more
action, no more activity, no life, no being, nothing. Relation
is the very essence of life, and we have but to examine our
* Question 27, art. r.

GOD. 175
own life to find abundant proof of it. What do we from the
first of our days even to the last? We hold relations with
God, with nature, with men, with books, with the dead, and
with the living. The very time that measures our age is a
relation, and our mind would lose itself in vainly endeavouring
to imagine life otherwise than as an indivisible tissue of
numberless relations.
What, then, is a relation ? It is more than needful for us
to know, since this is the last link of our whole being. A
relation consists in the bringing together of two distinct terms.
The perfect conjunction of these terms is unity, their perfect
distinction is plurality, and consequently their perfect relation
is unity in plurality. Survey the whole web of your relations,
you will find nothing else there. The life of your intelligence
is unity of mind in plurality of thoughts ; the life of your body
is unity of action in plurality of members ; your life as a family
is unity of affection and interests in plurality of persons ; your
life as citizens is unity of origin, duties, and rights, in plurality
of families ; your Catholic life is unity of faith and love in
plurality of souls tending towards God ; and so is it with all
the rest. What am I now doing? Why are my words addressed
to you? What is there between them and this auditory?
Nothing, if it be not that my soul seeks yours to lead it to
the seat of a light which, without destroying the distinction
between your personality and mine, would, nevertheless, bring
us together in the present unity of the same hope and in the
future unity of the same beatitude.
Now this marvel of unity in plurality could be produced
only by the likeness of beings, and the likeness of beings
supposes their equality of nature by their community of origin.
Fecundity, which produces beings like their authors and like
each other, is then the natural principle of unity in plurality ;
that is to say, of the relations which form the life of beings by
the continuous totality of their acts. It is true that we hold
relations with beings to whom we are neither drawn by a
similar origin nor by an exact likeness ; but these relations are
also feeble and distant, and the degree of likeness is always
marked by the degree of kindred which measures the strength
and intimacy of the relations. Thus members of the same
family are nearer to each other than fellow-citizens ; nations of
the same race are more closely united than nations of different
races ; and all created beings derive from God, their common

176 THE INNER LIFE OF
Father, the reason of likenesses and relations, more or less
direct, which bind them together in the vast unity of nature.
We are then entitled to lay down this third general law of
life : " The end of fecundity is to produce relations between
beings, that is to say, to give an object to and a reason foi
their activity."
Already you cease to wonder at those prodigious words by
which the Apostle St. John defined the divine life for us:
" There are three who give testimony in heaven, the Father,
the Word, and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one." *
You see that the mystery of life is a mystery of relations, that
is to say, a mystery that involves these two terms — unity in
plurality, plurality in unity. Before we arrive at a still more
formal conclusion, let us halt for a moment to consider the
effect of relations in beings.
Life is not the only phenomenon they offer to us. Above
the movement that mingles and bears them onward, we find a
charm which we call beauty. Beauty is the result of order ;
wheresoever order ceases, beauty vanishes. But what is order,
if not the unity which shines in a multitude of beings, and
which, notwithstanding their distinctions and their variety,
brings them together again in the splendour of a single act ?
Goodness is the sister of beauty. It is the gift which
beings reciprocally make of their advantages, and consequently
it is also the effect of relations. In order to give and to receive,
it is necessary at least to be two.
Thus life, beauty, and goodness, have one and the same
principle, which is unity in plurality ; and to refuse this double
character to God is at once to refuse life, beauty, and good
ness to Him. Would you do this? Even should you not
understand how one and the same being could realize in
Himself one and many, unity and plurality, would that feeble
ness of your intelligence destroy the chain of the reasonings
and observations which have initiated us into the most pro
found secrets of the nature of things ? But let us meet the
difficulty face to face.
God is one : His substance is indivisible because it is
infinite ; this is beyond doubt for faith as for reason. God
cannot then be many by the division of His substance. But if
he is not many by the division of His substance, how can He
* I John v. 7.

GOD.

•77

be many ? How can a being who is one and indivisible at the
same time be many ? Gentlemen, I require but one word,
and I ask you in return : Why should God need to be many ?
Is it not in order to possess relations in Himself, those
relations without which we can neither conceive activity, nor
life, nor being ? Let the substance of God, then, remain what
it is and what it should be — the seat of unity ; and let it
produce in itself, without being divided, terms of relation, that
is to say, terms which are the seat of plurality in relation to
unity. For these two things, one and many, are alike necessary
in order to form relations ; and if the substance of God were
divisible, unity being wanting thereto, relations would be
wanting also.
I divine your thoughts. You would tell me that you do
not even understand the expressions which I employ, and
that there is manifest contradiction between the idea of a
unique substance and the idea of several terms of relation to
be contained therein without dividing it. I will show you that it
is not so, and had you but the intelligence of a child, it would
suffice to enable you to follow me and to render justice to truth.
I stretch forth my hand. Where is it ? In space ! What
is space ? Philosophers have disputed about its nature : some
have thought that it is an exceedingly delicate and subtle
substance ; others that it is something void, a simple possibility
of receiving bodies. Whatever it may be, whether substance
or not, space is manifestly a capacity constituted by three
terms of relation, length, breadth, and height ; three terms
perfectly distinct, equal, inseparable save by an abstraction
of the mind, and yet in their evident distinction forming
together but one single and indivisible extent, which is space.
I say that length, breadth, and height are terms of relation,
that is to say, terms which relate to each other, since the
sense of length is determined by the sense of breadth, and so
on. I say that these terms of relation are distinct from each
other ; for it is manifest that length is not breadth, and that
breadth is not height. I say, in fine, that these three terms,
notwithstanding their real distinction, form but one single and
indivisible extent. This, moreover, is perfectly clear to the
senses and to the mind. There is then neither obscurity nor
contradiction in this proposition : God is a unique substance,
containing in His indivisible essence terms of relation really
distinct in themselves.

178 THE INNER LIFE OF
Shall I give a more positive example than that of space ?
For, notwithstanding the reality of space, you may perhaps
accuse it of being a kind of abstraction. Take then the first
body you meet with. Every body, whatever it may be, a
stone or a diamond, is comprised under the three forms of
length, breadth, and height. Prisoner of extent, it bears it in
its simple and triple form, and becomes wholly incorporated in
it by a reciprocal penetration which makes of both one single
thing. Body is space, and space is body. Length, breadth,
and height are body, inasmuch as it is high. Divide the body
. as you will, change its inmost matter at pleasure, the same
phenomenon of unity in plurality will always subsist ; so that
there is nothing in nature, space and body, that which
contains and that which is contained, which does not fall
under this definition as simple as it is marvellous — a unique
substance in three terms of relation really distinct from each
other. The universe speaks then like St. John. Not only does it
contain nothing contradictory to the logical rectitude of the
expressions which represent the mystery of the divine life ;
not only do these expressions take in it the character of a
general ai.d algebraic formula of beings; but the force of
analogy leads us also to apply this formula to the very principle
of beings, to that being who should have placed in his works a
copy only or a reflection of his own nature.
As soon, however, as we apply expressions or laws of
the visible order to God, their proportions at once become
changed, because they pass from the region of the finite to
that of the infinite. You must not wonder then, if Catholic
doctrine teaches you that terms of relation take, in God, the
form of personality. Let us clearly understand this word.
Every being, by that alone that it is itself and not another,,
possesses what we call individuality. As long as it subsists, it
belongs to itself; it may increase or decrease, lose or gain; it
may communicate to others something of itself, but not itself.
It is itself as long as it is ; none other is or will ever be so,
save itself. Such is the nature and force of individuality.
Suppose now that the individual being possesses consciousness
and knowledge of its individuality, and it sees itself living and
distinct from all that is not itself, it would be a person.
Personality is no other thing than individuality having con
sciousness and knowledge of itself. Individuality is the

GOD. 179
characteristic of bodies : personality is the characteristic of
spirits. Now God is an infinite spirit ; all that which con
stitutes Him, substance and terms of relation, is spirit. Conse
quently each term of thedivine relations possesses consciousness
and knowledge of itself, sees itself distinct from the others as
term of relation, one with them as substance : its distinction
marks its relative individuality ; consciousness and knowledge
of its individuality make it a person. Imagine space become
a spiritual being, you will have before you an analogous
phenomenon. Length, breadth, and height would possess
consciousness and knowledge of their relative individuality,
consciousness and knowledge of their absolute unity in space;
they would be one by substance, many by distinction raised to
the state of personality.
It remains for us to consider how many persons there are
in God, how and in what order they are manifested in Him.
Up to this point we have only employed analogies drawn
from external nature, but now, having to consider the number
and genesis of the divine persons, we must seek in more
distant regions a light approaching nearer to the light of God.
Our horizon and light are not limited to external nature.
We come in contact therewith by our body ; but it is out of us,
even of our body, and in addition, it is but dust and ashes ;
and if we possess something of God, it is but a vestige and not
an image of Him. Let us leave the dust and limit, and enter
into ourselves : Are we not spirits ? Yes, I am a spirit ! In
this material sepulchre which I inhabit as a traveller, a light
has been kindled, an immaterial and a pure light enlightening
my life, which is my true life, which descends from eternity,
and leads me thitherward as to my origin and nature. Why
do I speak of time and space ? Who shall stay me in these
abject comparisons ? Ah ! I feel that you are ready to upbraid
me. You wonder that I imprison my soul and your own
in these inanities of the universe, where I see shadows only,
and touch but the dead; from whence I have drawn only
faint and defaced images of truth. You impatiently expect
me to open to you the arena of a higher vision ; I feel that it
is there before us. I see that which is unseen, I hear that
which is not heard, I read that which has neither form nor
colour. Truth has still a veil, but it is its personality ; it still
has secret, but they are the last. Nature, withdraw; and let
us behold God in the spirit !
n 2

iSo THE INNER LIFE OF
The mind lives, like God, of an immaterial life, and
consequently it knows that life in which the senses have no
part, and which is that of God. What, then, does the mind
when, shut up within itself, imposing silence on all the rest, it
lives of its own life ? What does it, gentlemen ? Two things
only — two inexhaustible acts, which are constantly renewed,
which never tire, and whose progress forms its whole labour
and delight — it thinks and it loves. First it thinks, that is
to say, it sees and combines objects divested of matter, form,
extent, and horizon ; a kind of universe before which the one
that we inhabit by the senses is but a close and dreary
dungeon. It dilates in that boundless sea of ideas. It calls
into life, to form its own life, nameless and endless worlds
which obey it with the quickness of lightning. It may be
ignorant of their value and disdain them ; pure contemplation
will be so much the more burdensome to it as it exercises
it the less and enchains its faculties to the abasements of
the body. But I speak not of these treasons of the mind
against itself; I speak of the mind as it is of its own nature, as
it lives when it wills to live at the height where God has
placed it. It thinks, then ; this is its first act.
But thought; is it the mind itself, or something distinct
from it? It is not the mind itself, for thought comes and
goes, whilst the mind always remains. I forget on the
morrow the ideas of the eve; I call them up and dismiss
them; sometimes they beset me in spite of myself; my
thought and my mind are two. I speak to myself in the
solitude of my understanding; I interrogate myself. I answer
to myself, my inner life is but a continual and mysterious
colloquy. And yet I am one. My thought, although distinct
from my mind, is not separate therefrom ; when it is present,
my mind sees it in itself; when it is absent, it seeks it in itself.
I am at the same time one and two. My intellectual life is a
life of relation ; I find again therein what I have seen in
external nature, namely, uiiity and plurality — unity resulting
from the very substance of the mind, plurality resulting from
its action. What, indeed, would the action of the iiiinu oe if
it were unfruitful? What would be its reason, its end, its
object ? The mind, like the whole of nature, but in a much
higher manner, is then prolific. Whilst bodies divide in order
to multiply, the mind, created in the likeness of God, remains
inaccessible to all division. It engenders its thought without

GOD. 181
emitting any of its incorruptible substance ; multiplies it without
losing anything of the perfection of unity.
You see that in rising from the outer to the inner life — from
the life of the body to that of the mind — we find again the
same law ; but we find it, as was inevitable, with an increase of
light and precision. Bodies, notwithstanding their marvellous
revelations, kept us too far from God ; the mind has borne us
even to the sanctuary of His essence and His life. Let us
enter, or at least, if we are forbidden to pass certain limits, let
us approach as near as divine goodness will permit us.
God is a spirit ; His first act, then, is to think. But His
thought could not be like ours, multiple, unceasingly appearing
but to vanish, and vanishing but to appear again. Ours is
multiple, because, since we are finite, we can but represent to
ourselves one by one the objects susceptible of being known
to us ; it is liable to perish, since in the crowding on of our
ideas one upon the another, the second dethrones the first,
and the third overthrows the second. On the contrary, in
God, whose activity is infinite, the mind at once engenders a
thought equal to itself, which fully represents it, and which
needs no second expression, because the first has exhausted
the abyss of things to know, that is to say, the abyss of the
infinite. That unique andabsolute thought, the first-born and the
last of the mind of God, remains eternally in His presence as
an exact representation of Himself, or, to speak the language
of the sacred books, as " His image, the brightness of his
glory, and the figure of his substance."* It is His word, His
utterance, His inner word, as our thought is also our utterance
and our word ; but differing from ours inasmuch as it is a
perfect word which speaks all to God in a single expression,
which speaks it always without repetition, and which St. John
heard in heaven when he thus opened his sublime Gospel :
" In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with
God, and the Word was God."t
And even as in man the thought is distinct from the mind
without being separated therefrom, so, in God, the thought is
distinct without being separated from the divine mind which
produces it. " The Word is consubstantial with the Father,"
according to the expression of the council of Nice, which is but
the forcible expression of truth. But here, as in the rest,
• Cor. iv. 4. Heb. i. 3. John i. 1.

182 THE INNER LIFE OF
there exists a great difference between God and man. In man
the thought is distinct from the mind by an imperfect dis
tinction, because it is finite ; in God, the thought is distinct
from the mind by a perfect distinction, because it is infinite :
that is to say, that in man the thought does not attain to
becoming a person, whilst in God it does attain thereto. The
mystery of unity in plurality is not totally accomplished in our
intelligence, and this is why we cannot live of ourselves alone.
We seek from without the aliment of our life : we need a
foreign support, a thought other than ours, and yet nearly
allied to it. In God plurality is absolute as well as unity, and
therefore His life passes entirely within Himself, in the
ineffable colloquy between a divine person and a divine
person, between a father without generation and a son
eternally engendered. God thinks, and He sees Himself in
His thought as in another so akin to Him as to be but one with
Him in substance ; He is Father, since He has produced in
His own likeness a term of relation really and personally
distinct from Him ; He is one and two in all the force which
the infinite gives to unity and duality ; in contemplating His
thought, in beholding His image, in hearing His word, He is
able to utter in the ecstasy of the highest, the most real
paternity : " Thou art my Son, to-day have I begotten thee."*
To-day ! In this day which has neither past, nor present, nor
future ; in this day which is eternity, that is to say, the in
divisible duration of unchanging being. To-day ! For God
thinks to-day ; He engenders His Son to-day, He sees Him
to-day, He hears Him to-day, He lives to-day in that ineffable
act which has neither beginning nor end.
But is this all the life of God ? Is the generation of His
Son His sole act, and does it consummate with its fecundity
all its beatitude ? No, gentlemen ; for, in ourselves, the
generation of thought is not the term where our life ends.
When we have thought, a second act appears : we love.
Thought is a movement which brings its objects into ourselves ;
love is a movement which draws us out of ourselves towards
that object in order to unite it to us and ourselves to it, and
thus to accomplish in its fulness the mystery of relations, that
is to say, the mystery of unity in plurality. Love is at the
• Psalm ii. 7.

GOD. 183
same time distinct from the mind, and distinct from the
thought ; distinct from the mind in which it is engendered and
in which it dies ; distinct from the thought by its very
definition, since it is a movement of drawing together, whilst
the thought is a simple perception. And yet it proceeds from
the one and from the other, and forms but one with both. It
proceeds from the mind, whose act it is, and from the thought,
without which the mind would not see the object which it
should love ; and it remains one with the thought and the
mind in the same fount of life where we again find all the
three, always inseparable, and always distinct.
In God, it is the same. From the coeternal regard inter
changed between the Father and the Son, springs a third term
of relation, proceeding from the one and the other, really
distinct from them, raised by the force of the infinite to
personality, and which is the Holy Ghost, that is to say, the
holy, the unfathomable and stainless movement of divine love.
As the Son exhausts knowledge, the Holy Ghost exhausts love
in God, and by Him the cycle of divine fecundity and life
closes. What more could be possible to God ? As a perfect
spirit He thinks and He loves ; He produces a thought equal
to Himself, and with His thought a love equal to both. What
more could He desire or produce ? And what more could you
desire if, like Him, you possessed unbounded thought and
unbounded love in the unity of your substance ? But, poor as
we are, thought and love are in our souls only a perception
and a possession of a foreign object ; we are obliged to leave
ourselves in order to seek our life, to appease our thirst for
knowledge, our hunger for love. And instead of turning to
the only source of truth and charity, which is God, we wed
ourselves to nature, which is but a shadow ; to the life of time,
which is but death. Or, returning to ourselves in a hopeless
effort, we ask from our own powerlessness the accomplishment
of the one and triple mystery which is divine felicity; we
endeavour to satisfy ourselves in the pride of a solitary thought,
in the delight of personal love, and, like deist which consumes
itself, we waste away in a withering grasp of egotism which
ivould be infinite if nothingness could be infinite.
Oh ! lift up your eyes to heaven ! There is life because
there is true fecundity. It is there that the spectacle of the
laws of nature, and the study of the laws of your own minds,

184 THE INNER LIFE OF
lead you. All teaches you that being and activity are one
and the same thing, that activity is expressed by action, and
that action is necessarily productive or fruitful ; that the end
of fecundity is to establish relations between similar beings ;
that relation is unity in plurality, from whence results life,
beauty, and goodness. And that thus, God, the infinite being,
the pre-eminently good, beautiful, and living being, is infallibly
the most magnificent totality of relations, perfect unity and
perfect plurality, the unity of substance in the plurality of
persons ; a primordial mind, a thought equal to the mind that
engenders it, a love equal to the mind and the thought whence
it proceeds ; all the three, Father, Son, Holy Ghost, ancient as
eternity, great as infinity, one in beatitude as in the substance
from whence they derive their identical divinity. Behold God !
Behold God, the cause and pattern of all beings ! Nothing
exists here below which is not a vestige or an image of Him,
according to the degree of its perfection. Space reveals Him
in its single and triple plenitude ; bodies proclaim Him in the
three dimensions which constitute their solidity; the mind
shows us a nearer vision of Him in the production of the two
highest things of this world, if indeed they are of this world,
namely, thought and love; in fine, the very tissue of the
universe which is everywhere but relations, is before us, as it
were, a picture which the divine light passes over, penetrates,
and so gives to us above the visible heaven a glimpse of the
invisible heaven of the Trinity.
All laws take their source in this seat of primordial relations.
If human society would aspire to perfection, it has no other
model to study and to imitate. It will find there the first
social constitution in the first community ; equality of nature
between the persons who compose it ; order in their equality,
since the Father is the principle of the Son, and the Holy
Ghost proceeds from the Father and the Son ; unity, the cause
of plurality; thought, receiving from above its being and its
light ; love, terminating and crowning all the relations. These
laws are full of beauty, and if legislators could realise them
upon earth, they would produce a work whose privilege and
secret have until now belonged to the Catholic Church alone.
Let us halt here. I have not demonstrated the mystery of
the Holy Trinity to you, but I have placed it in perspective,
where pride will not mistake it without insulting itself. Let us

GOD. 185
forgive that satisfaction to pride if it be jealous of claiming it.
For yourselves, inspired by humbler and higher wisdom, give
thanks to God, who, in revealing to us the mystery of His life,
has not overwhelmed our intelligence by a sterile light, but has
given to us the key of nature and of our own mind.

THE
CREATION OF THE WORLD BY GOD.

My Lord, — Gentlemen,
We have penetrated even to the inner life of God ; we
know what He is, and what is His life. The course of ideas
would lead us now to seek what is His character; but two
words will suffice for us on this head. The character of God
is perfection ; whatever is included in the idea of perfection —
immutability, wisdom, justice, goodness — must be attributed
to God in an infinite degree, and forms His metaphysical and
moral character. The difficulties which may spring from these
divers attributes will naturally be solved when we come to
treat of the relations between God and created beings. We
pass over them then at a bound, and find ourselves logically in
presence of this question : God being the admitted principle
of things, how have they emanated from Him? By whaf
process, and above all, from what motives ?
Here we begin to touch more directly the secret of our
destinies ; for they unquestionably take their source in the
process by which we have sprung from the bosom of our
cause, and yet much more in the motives that led the self-
existing being to produce something which was not himself.
What then is this process ? What are these motives?
Before I answer, I beg your particular attention to the state
of the question. We are not now inquiring whether the
world is or is not a work : that question is judged. Who
soever is not a pantheist is compelled to admit that the world
has a cause, that it is the work of a superior intelligence and
power; now we have discarded pantheism, we have recognised

GOD. ty
God in the very infirmity of nature, and therefore we say of
Him with the people and the poet :
" The Eternal is His name, the world is His work."
It is worthy of attention that the philosophers of antiquity
who believed in the eternity of matter, such as Plato, could
not however help recognising in the totality of visible things
the character of a studied work, and they called God the great
Architect of the universe. In fact the universe bears the
visible sign of its personal powerlessness, if I may so speak ;
and those even who do not reach the idea of its creation, see
in it the hand of the artist who formed and constructed it.
They see it made, although they do not see it created, other
wise the idea of God would have no reason in their minds.
The production of the world is a dogma which logically
precedes the dogma of the existence of God. We say : The
world is produced, therefore God is ; and not : God is, there
fore the world is produced. It is the reasoning of the ancient
•theist philosophers as well as of the Christian philosophers,
only it was less complete in the former than in the latter.
Aristotle, for instance, after having admitted the eternity of
¦matter, could no longer mount to a supreme cause, save by
discovering something in nature whose presence could not be
explained without a higher principle. Such to him was the
movement of bodies. The analysis of this phenomenon led
him to see the necessity of a first motor, and he wrote this
proposition, which is almost divine in its depth and originality :
'" There is something immovable which is the principle of
movement." Once more, then, we are not inquiring whether the world
is produced, but how and why it has been produced.
Two systems have divided minds outside the pale of
Catholic doctrine. The first affirms that the world has been
produced by the co-operation of God and a certain inferior
substance coeternal with God. Picture to yourselves, on the
one hand, the absolute and perfect being : on the other, a vile,
shapeless, lifeless substance, unable of itself to rise from that
abject state, and yet uncreated like God, eternal like God,
self-existing like God— matter, in a word, and yet matter
stripped of the glory in which we see it clothed ; that had
God left it there, it would be there still, a sort of empty

188 THE CREATION OF THE WORLD BY
and eternal tomb, receiving neither life nor death. But God
beheld it, He was moved with pity at the infinite greatness of
its poverty. He spake a word, and the world, bursting the
inflexible bonds of its conception, appeared as our eyes now
admire it, ancient in itself, new in form, father and son at the
same time, son of one more perfect than itself, father of itself
by co-operation. This ingenious poesy has not satisfied all minds. Many
have refused to accept it. Before logic as well as in itself they
have seen the poverty of that singular substance, half God,'
half nothingness — God in the eternity of its being, nothingness
in its powerlessness to give itself the mode of its existence —
and in order to explain the birth of the world they have
imagined the system of emanation. In this second order of
ideas God has drawn the substance of the universe from His
own substance, but without communicating to it His personality
or His divinity.
Catholic doctrine rejects this system as well as the other.
For either the divine substance is entire and indivisible in the
world, in which case the world is God ; or the divine substance
is but in part in the world by virtue of emanation, and then it
loses the absolute character without which the mind cannot
conceive it.
It is not necessary to make a great effort of thought in
order to seize the vice or rather the absurdity of these theories
on the origin of the world. We find here a striking example
of the strength and the weakness of the human mind. It has
seen clearly that visible nature is inexplicable without the inter
vention of a higher nature ; but — I know not why — it has not
been able to determine the mode and measure of that inter
vention. Struck by the poverty of the universe, it denied to
it self-existence in order to make it an emanation of the divinity;
then, not conceiving either that God could come forth from
Himself, or that His substance became impoverished by that
emission, it attributed to the world a fund of original vitality,
but poor and held within the most extreme limits of incapacity.
It is always the same contradiction. It would seem that only
a little logical vigour was needed in order to draw positive con
clusions in the fulness of truth ; man was unequal to this. His
eye, wandering between two abysses, dared neither to accept
the one nor the other, and sought between them an imaginary
resting-place.

GOD. 189
Open now the Bible and read its first phrase : " In the
beginning God created heaven and earth." What simplicity,
and what certainty ! Moses does not affirm even the existence
of God ; he names and defines by an action which at the same
time explains the universe. The universe is not eternal, nor is
it an emanation of the divine substance ; it was made in the
full meaning of the word, it was made by a pure act of will.
" God spake, and all was made," said David ; and this is the
idea which the human mind was unable to discover, even in
order to dispute it. The human mind ignored it, although it
was the key of all, and, since it has been revealed, the human
mind has rejected it as an incomprehensible fiction. What,
says the mind, is it to make being by an act of the will ? How
oan that magical operation be conceived ? And what is an
idea that offers no seizable image to the understanding ? Man
acts, but always upon a substance pre-existing his action ; he
produces, but only simple modifications in the subject where
he exercises his power. Creation is an abyss in which he sees
nothing but a name and despair ; a name instead of an idea,
despair instead of a solution.
What think you ? Is it necessary for us to represent an
act to ourselves in order to have an idea of it? Is it not
enough that the force of logic constrains us to affirm its exist
ence ? I grant for the moment that reason in no way seizes
the creating act ; but it sees that the world is neither eternal,
nor has it emanated from the substance of God, and, driven
to the last extremity, concludes that it was made by means of
creation ; for what other issue remains to it ? Assuredly if the
mind sees anything here it sees but an impossibility, and there
fore it takes the only road open to it, an obscure one however,
but enlightened at least by the light contained in every logical
necessity. Is it true moreover that the word creation represents
nothing to our understanding? Is it true that we cannot
conceive how the divine will is able to pronounce that sovereign
word : fiat ! I should wonder if it were so ; for, if we have
unravelled in our intelligence images which have led us even
to the sacred vestibule of the uncreated essence, why should
not the mystery of our personal will teach us something touch
ing the mystery of the divine will ? The will is the seat of
power ; by it man commands and is obeyed. Command 1
What a word ! Have you ever reflected upon it ? One man
utters a word: it is heard, and all is in motion. Another speaks:

190 THE CREATION OF THE WORLD BY
nothing is done. Both pretended to command, only one has
succeeded. It is because one only uttered the word that con
tains power, the word that expresses will. Many think they
express it, because they speak the word ; but few do so in
reality. It is the most rare expression in the world, although
it is the most often usurped ; and when a man possesses its
terrible secret, were he the poorest and the last of all, be sure
that some day you will see him above you. Of such was
Caesar. Have you ever remarked the part which the will plays in
the occult sciences, and how no one becomes master of another
there save by the energy of a kind of imperative fluid? Virile
natures offer greater resistance to the perturbations of these
secret arts, and this is why the ancient oracles chose the feeble
mouth of the pythoness for their organ. Pardon this allusion
to questionable mysteries ; truth penetrates all, even those
things whose nature is veiled and uncertain. Thus the clouds
bear the sun in concealing it.
Be that as it may, none will dispute that the seat of power
is in the will. It is by the will that man wields empire over
his fellow-men, and by it also he moves his own body. There
fore, when Catholic doctrine teaches us that the world has
sprung from an act of the divine will, it teaches us something
which is verified by our own experience of the seat where lies
the principle of our own force. In ourselves, as in God, the
will produces force ; but what is force ? I stand still ; suddenly
my arm is raised, my hand is outstretched, my head is erect,
my eye brightens : what has happened ? Has any foreign
power seized upon me and deprived me of my repose ? No ;
within myself, in a calm and immaterial chamber, an act has
been produced. I have said : Let my body move, and it has
moved. At the same time I have conveyed to my members,
and in an exact proportion, the quantity of force necessary to
their movement ; I have willed, and acted. Observe ! the
movement did not exist. It did not exist in my body, which
was still : it did not exist in my soul, which is of a spiritual
nature : I have produced it by a simple act of my will. I have
created it. The proposition of Aristotle is verified in myself:
" Immobility is the principle of movement." What is this but
a creation? Say you that the motive power pre-existed in my
will ? Be it so ; but what is the motive power but the prin
ciple that produces movement ? Catholic doctrine does not

GOD. 19 v
teach that God creates without a creative power of which this-
will is the seat and the organ. The divine fiat, like the
human fiat, has an efficient cause, without which it would be
but an empty word, a fruitless desire.
Observe that the bodily movement is exterior to the soul
which produces it by an act of the inner will. Herein lies the
difference between generation and creation. When the mind
conceives a thought, it engenders, because the thought is of
the same nature as itself and dwells in itself; when the will
suscitates the movement of the body, it creates, because the
movement is not of the same nature as itself, and springs from
without. These two acts have nothing in common. The first is
the principle of the inner life; the second of the outer life. The
first is the life of God and of our soul ; the second is the life of
the world and of our body. All activity is reduced to these
two terms, to engender and to create, that is to say, to pro
duce within and without. No being exists without this double
faculty. Were the first wanting it would have no inner and
personal life ; were the second wanting it would have no outer
life. Generation concentrates, creation dilates ; they form
together the mystery of all life.
Judge now whether reason forms no idea of the creating
act. It is true that in God that act assumes a strength which
surpasses our feeble powers. Whilst the movement created
by us decreases and soon- dies, the things created by God
strengthen into a durable substance. This is the same dif
ference which we have already remarked between the produc
tion of the divine thought and the production of human
thought ; the characteristic of the work of God is subsistency,
whilst whatsoever man does passes from being to nothingness
with lamentable speed. But this passing away of our works
does not destroy their reality, or their analogy with the works
of the infinite. We really engender like God, we really create
like Him ; we in an incomplete and a relative manner, God in
a perfect and an absolute manner. And we understand the
two mysteries of generation and creation, which form life,
because we are really, though imperfectly, generators and
creators. This established, your place and your condition are hence
forth known to you ; you are not sovereigns, you are servants.
Sovereignty is existence by itself; you do not possess it in any
degree. You have been made, you have been " made out of

192 THE CREATION OF THE WORLD BY
nothing," according to the energetic expression of the mother
of the Maccabees, and at the very most you can but pretend to
the title of children of God. This is the extreme term of your
ambition. If the divine goodness has shed in your soul and
upon your brow some traces of likeness to Himself, you are
His children, and He permits you, from your very dust, to
address to His throne the name of Father. This is your
highest glory. Pretend not then to sovereignty ; what is sove
reignty in a being who lives by another ? And yet there are
men who would invest you with it. For this, rationalism
strains all its efforts to prove the eternity of the world, and to
seek for signs of indefectibility in ruin and death. For do you
think that the human mind would rush so eagerly upon these
questions if they did not involve consequences for the direc
tion of the soul and life ? Be sure that all is there. To say
that the world is uncreated is to say that man is sovereign ; to
say that it is created is to say that man is a servant or at most
a son. The first doctrine gives us the right to define our
selves like God : " I am who am." * The second places in
our hearts the prayer of the Gospel : " Our Father who art in
heaven." Between these we have to decide ; we must live here below
as God or as creature, in the modesty of obedience or in the
pride of sovereignty. Which will you choose ? Some sages
will tell you that you are great ; they take the sublime part of
your being, and would persuade you that there is nothing
above you. Others will place a low and dishonoured image
of yourselves before you ; in the lowest regions of your nature
they will discover secrets that will fill you with shame, and yet
it is still but to flatter your pride. Catholic doctrine alone
places you in your true position, without insult or adulation.
It sees your greatness and proves it to you ; it sees your
wretchedness and shows it to you ; it supports you against the
pride that inflates and against the pride that dishonours you ;
in fine, it reveals to you at the same time the knowledge of
your greatness and your wretchedness, in that single phrase
which it alone has pronounced : Man is a creature, but he is
the creature of God.
The creature of God ! Why ? What has moved that
inaccessible being to look beneath Himself and call forth that
* Exodus iii. 14.

GOD. ig3
which was not ? It concerns us to know, for it is evident that
the beginning and end of our destinies lie in the motive of our
creation. Lost as we were in the cold shadows of inexistence,
unable of ourselves to rise from the depths of that tomb, we
had no other hope, no other germ of life, than in the will of
God, and the will of God could only turn towards us, pity, and
call us, by virtue of a motive which determined it. No reason
able being, in fact, acts without reason under pain of acting at
hazard, and of ignoring what he does by ignoring why he does
it. Therefore St. Thomas of Aquinas, seeking before us the
motive of creation, begins by laying down this maxim : " Every
being acts for an end ; " and he calls the end by the name of
final cause, in order to show that, being the motive of the acts
of the will, it is really the principle of that which the will pro
duces. God, in creating the world, was then moved by an
end, that is to say, by an object which He purposed to attain,
and which was the term of His thought, His will, and His
action. What was that end? If, in order to learn this, we
study the springs of our own determinations, we shall easily
find among them the motive of interest or of utility. We will
and we act because we have wants; our movements are the
efforts of a being which does not live of itself, and which seeks
from without the support or the increase of its life. But God
has no wants ; He lives of Himself, and in Himself ; nothing is
wanting to the plenitude of His being and His felicity ; how
should He act from interest? How should He have created
man and the world to fill the void of His nature, or to add to
the infinite resources and delights not yet to be found therein ?
Evidently He possessed them all; He had nothing to gain,
nothing to lose, in the creation of the universe. The out
ward manifestation of His omnipotence was a supremely
disinterested act.
It is true — I have often heard, and you have heard it your
selves — that " God created the world for His glory." But that
expression has two meanings, one which is exact, and which I
will soon explain to you ; the other, which is not admissible,
because it supposes that the divine will may be moved by the
reason of personal utility. Let us put aside, then, for an
instant, terms ill-defined, and continue to seek what was the
motive of God in calling the world into existence.
Man does not act from interest only : he is capable also of
acting from duty, that is to say, of sacrificing his own to the
o

194 THE CREATION OF THE WORLD BY
common benefit, in the name of a supreme law regulating the
relations between beings, and imposing acts upon them which
turn to the benefit of others. This motive is infinitely more
noble than the first : it draws the soul from egotism, and, as a
moving principle, gives it an impulsion from above, which,
being no other thing than the view and the sentiment of
eternal justice, appears worthy to concentrate itself in God and
to have commanded His resolution when He created the world.
Nevertheless it is not so. God is justice itself. As soon as He
acts, He acts under the empire of that law of equity which is
comprised in His essence ; but before acting externally for the
first time, before founding the universe, He owed nothing to it.
He was free towards it in all the liberty which being possesses
before nothingness. He could communicate existence to it or
refuse it, according to His pleasure, without affecting any right,
without neglecting any duty. Man himself owes nothing to
nothingness, and in drawing forth another man from his generous
bosom, he performs an act of full and absolute sovereignty.
He is a father because he has so willed it, as God is a creator
because He has so willed it.
But did no motive then inspire the creative will ? It can
not be so, and this we have already shown. The motive
exists ; let us not grow weary of seeking for it in the mystery
of our own deliberations.
Above duty, if it be possible, or at least in a place not less
elevated and sacred, lies another moving principle of our
actions : it is love. We advance, because we love ; we suffer,
we live, we die, because we love. Love guides our most ardent
designs, and if we sometimes feel ourselves able to do all
things, if, urging life and death before us with a force almost
sacrilegious, we sometimes think that already we possess the
energy of immortality, it is love assuredly, it is love that per
suades us and bears us along. No courser is more rapid, none
will ever bound over more abysses with greater pleasure, none
will carry us farther, higher, or give us a stronger sensation of
a being about to create. Was it then love that moved the
divine will, and unceasingly urged Him to create ? Was it love
who was our first father ? But, alas ! love itself has a cause in
the beauty of its object, and what beauty could that dead and
icy shadow which preceded the universe have possessed before
God ? That shadow to which we can give a name only by
betraying truth ! What could nothingness have said to

GOD. 1 35
the heart of God ? How is it possible to love that which is
not ? Or even, how is it possible to love finite beauty when
in possession of perfect and immeasurable beauty ? Already
love had produced in God its ineffable fruit ; already the Father,
Son, and Holy Ghost coeternally respired in the intimate
colloquy of their triple, and single, and infinite beauty. They
saw, they felt, they spake together their beatitude, and all three
immutable in one and the same rapture, they could neither
see, nor feel, nor hear anything which merited from them a
single sensation of their love. The mystery was fully accom
plished — great God ! and what remained then to move Thy
heart, and cause Thee to see us from afar in that complete
inanity in which we did not even wait for Thee ?
Something remained, do not doubt, something more gene
rous than interest, more elevated than duty, more powerful
than love. Sound the depths of your own hearts, and if you
find it difficult to understand me, if your own gifts are unknown
to you, hear Bossuet, who speaks of you : "When God," said
he, " made the heart of man, He first placed in it goodness."
This is divine language, and had Bossuet uttered but this
single phrase, I should call him a great man. Goodness !
That is to say, that virtue which consults no interest, which
does not wait for the command of duty, which needs not to be
solicited by the attraction of the beautiful, but which leans so
much the more towards an object as that object is poorer,
more wretched, more abandoned, more worthy of pity ! It is
true, it is indeed true, man possesses that adorable faculty. I
appeal to yourselves as witnesses. It is not genius, or glory,
or love, that measures the elevation of his soul ; it is goodness.
It is goodness that gives to the human physiognomy its highest
and most invincible charm ; it is goodness that draws us
together; it is goodness that brings blessings to misfortune,
and that is everywhere, from earth to heaven, the great medi
ator. See the poor cretin at the foot of the Alps : his eye has
no lustre, he neither smiles nor weeps, he knows not even his
own degradation, he seems as it were an effort of nature to
insult herself in dishonouring her noblest production. Do not
think that he has not found the way to some heart, and that
his abjection has snatched from him the friendship of the
universe. No, he is loved, he has a mother, he has brothers
and sisters, he has a place by the cottage hearth, the best and
most honoured place, because he is the most disinherited. o 2

196 THE CREATION OF THE WORLD BY
The bosom that nourished him holds him still, and the super.
stition of love speaks of him only as a blessing sent from God.
Such is man !
But can I say : Such is man, without saying also : Such is
God ? If God were not the primordial ocean of goodness,
and if in forming our heart He had not infused into it some
thing of His own, from whence should we have obtained it?
Yes, God is good. Yes, goodness is the attribute which in
Him concentrates all the other attributes, and it is not without
reason that antiquity graved upon the pediments of its temples
that famous inscription in which goodness preceded greatness.
But all perfection supposes an object to which it is applied.
An object, then, as vast and profound as divine goodness itself
was needful to it : God has found it. From the centre of His
fulness He beheld that being without beauty, form, life, or
name, that being without being which we call nothingness ; He
heard the cry of worlds that were not, the cry of immeasured
misery calling to unbounded goodness. Eternity moved and
said to time : Begin ! Time and the universe obeyed the will
of God, as the will of God had yielded, but freely, to the
inspiration of goodness.
I say freely, because all the divine perfections operate
within themselves in the mystery of the Holy Trinity, and
because their outer action is thenceforth no longer necessary
to their dilation, but a spontaneous effect of the free will of
God. God was good before He created the world, and His
absolute goodness was infinitely exercised in the eternal com
munication of the three uncreated persons. Therefore, when
He made the universe, He made it from a free impulsion of
His heart, and not from any necessity. He made it gratui
tously, without the motive of interest, the constraint of duty,
or the inducement of merited love, in the sole object of
satisfying His goodness by communicating life. Therefore,
St. Thomas of Aquinas, in treating this question, says that
"God is the only perfectly liberal being, because He alone
acts not for His own benefit, but because of His goodness." *
This conclusion is of the highest importance for the whole
course of Christian dogma, and it is needful to solve the diffi
culties which it presents, in the theological as well as in the
rational points of view. * Sumina, quest. 44, art. 4.

GOD. 197
Theologically, a text of Scripture is opposed to us which
is thus written : Universa propter semetipsum operatus
est Dominus — The Lord hath made all things for himself*
These words possess a character of precision and clearness
which would seem to overshadow all the ideas we have been
placing before you. It is, however, easy to explain them.
God could not, more than any other being, draw from outside
of Himself the motives of His determinations. He finds them
in His nature, and in yielding to them, if I may so speak, it is
manifest that He acts for Himself, since He acts under the
impulsion of something which is Himself. But goodness
possesses that excellent and singular quality, that its object is
the good of others, and that in acting from goodness we never
theless act for others and in a disinterested manner. Therefore
it is true to say that in creating the world from goodness, God
has created it for Himself, since His goodness is Himself; and
yet it is equally true to say that He created it freely, since
He intended the good of His creatures, and since that good
could not increase His own felicity. But even had it in
creased His felicity, the motive of goodness would still remain
pure and irreproachable, for nothing is more perfect than to
find happiness in communicating our own happiness. That
egotism, if such it be, is that of great souls, and although
the creature may be profitless to God, doubtless we must
believe that our love is not indifferent to Him, and that, with
out increasing His happiness, it makes us dear and precious
in His sight.
It would also be easy for me to explain that other ex
pression to you : " God created the world for His glory."
The inner glory of God is in His sovereign perfection; His
outer glory consists in being known and loved by free
intelligences; and it is beyond question that He has in fact
given being to those intelligences in order to be known and
loved by them. But why has He willed to call them to know
and to love Him ? Is it for their happiness or for His personal
benefit ? from the motive of goodness or that of interest ? We
have shown, with St. Thomas of Aquinas, that it was from the
motive of goodness, and the expression under our notice
decides nothing, since it does not even touch the question. It
suffices to define the word glory in order to be convinced
of this. * Proverbs xvi. 4.

198 THE CREATION OF THE WORLD BY
Let us now approach the objections of rationalism.
So far from admitting that the world is a work of divine
goodness, rationalism does not even see in it a work of justice.
Is it just, say they, to dispose of another's condition without
his sanction ? When, in the exercise of His incomprehensible
omnipotence, it pleased God to call intelligent beings into
life, beings capable of judging whether existence was a blessing
or a curse, had He the right to act without their consent ?
The Romans have written with as much eloquence as truth :
Nemini invito beneficium confertur — There is no benefit
without the will that accepts it. By what right have we been
drawn forth from nothingness to be thrown, without our con
sent, into that gulf of misery called life ? What ! we reposed
peacefully in the eternity of our sleep, when suddenly an
invisible hand seized upon us, a strange voice called us ; it
said with power : Come forth, see, feel, think, love ! And,
obeying that merciless order in spite of ourselves, after having
spent hours or years amidst confused realities and vanished
illusions, suddenly, again that hand which had dragged us from
our first tomb, that hand rejects us ! And the same voice
which called us cries out to us : It is enough, lie down, close
thy eyes, quit this world, begone ! But if we were made for
ourselves, should we not have been consulted in order to learn
when, how, and under what conditions life was to be given to us ?
This has not been thought of: life came to us as death comes,
with insult and scorn to us. Ah ! let vain theology speak as it
will, this is not the lamentation of the mind; it is the groaning
of the soul, it is the sincerity of suffering and the accusation of
the universe. Leave us, at least, to weep over ourselves,
respect the desolation of ages, and do not add to the misery of
our destiny that other misery of desiring to understand it.
I should be silent before the sound of those accents which
have sometimes troubled you, and which perhaps still trouble
many wounded hearts in this assembly. I should be silent, or
rather I should lend my lips to the tremblings of complaint and
ingratitude if I took in this question the same starting-point as
yourselves. Yes, if this life were the life, if this light were the
light, if this world were the world, yes, I should hide my fore
head in my hands, and sink with you into an abyss of despair
wherein I would hear no word of consolation. But do you
believe this, and has Christianity so taught you ? Do you
believe that this life is the life, that this light is the light, that

GOD. ,99
this world is the world ? Do you believe it ? and who has so
taught you? Yourselves, none but yourselves. Learn then
this from me : I do not believe you. I believe that this life is
a road, that this light is a shadow, that this world is a prelude.
I believe that life is God, that light is God, that the world
is God. And I believe with all my soul, at the price of
my blood, if needful, that God has created us to live by Him,
to be enlightened by Him, to find in Him the substance of
which all that we see is but an incapable and a painful image.
This is my faith, it is this faith which I proclaim to you ; and
in order to dispute it you must deal with it such as it is, and
not such as you take it in the injustice or discouragement of
your own minds.
Yes, we all suffer : woe to him who denies it ! But we
suffer from the road and not from life. Life is abundance,
peace, joy, fulness; when we love God we receive certain
hallowed foretastes, certain yet imperfect delights, which suffice
to make us forget the present world, or at least courageously to
accept its passing trials. Is it meet, indeed, for a traveller
awaited by unerring love, to complain of the road, to curse the
dust he treads upon, and the sun that lights up his way ? For
my part, born to sorrow like the rest, charged with the two
wounds of my forefathers— anguish of soul and infirmity of
body — I bless God who has made me and who waits for me,
I ask not to be consulted by Him about my condition ; between
the nothingness from whence He called me and the eternity
He has promised me the choice is doubtful only to parricidal
folly, and God should have counted upon my virtue as He
counted upon His goodness. Eternal justice could not suppose
the refusal of eternal beatitude : it was entitled to expect from
us gratitude, love, and the acceptation of a trial without which
love could not have been shown, and at least in ingratitude
itself, silence and just remorse.
Nevertheless you continue, and you recall to me a thought
which for a long time troubled the adolescence of my reason.
If all of us, such as we are, intelligent and free creatures,
attained the life of eternity, it is certain that the sufferings of
the present life would vanish from our minds, not being
" worthy," as St. Paul says, " to be compared with the glory to
come, that shall be revealed tous."* But it is not so. Catholic
" Rom. viii. 18.

200 THE CREATION OF THE WORLD BY
doctrine teaches that a portion of created intelligent beings do
not attain to the reign of God, and thus that creation, instead
of turning to their happiness, turns finally to their eternal woe.
By their own fault, it is true, but what does that signify ? God
knew it, God had foreseen it. Was it an act of goodness to
place beings in the world whom infallible foreknowledge beheld,
whether or not from their own fault, excluded from the benefit
of their primitive vocation, and hurled into a depth of ruin
equal to the good prepared for them ? If God, in creation, had
intended to act only in virtue of His sovereignty, by an act of
power and choice, it might perhaps be conceived that He had
not looked to the result, and that the final misery of a part of
His creatures, caused by their prevarication, might have appeared
to Him as an accident incapable of disarming the right and effi
cacy of His will. But you tell us that the supreme fiat was
pronounced from goodness, from the desire to communicate
life and glory to possible beings whom God perceived in the
horizon of His thought. Are this end and motive compatible
with the eternal fall of the lost intelligences ? Doubtless we
admit that Catholic doctrine does not teach as an article of
faith that it is the smaller number of mankind who are saved.
Much less does it teach that in the totality of intelligent
hierarchies it is the lesser number who maintain their titles
before the justice of God. But what of this ? Were there but
one man, but one single intelligence disinherited from the true
life and for ever reprobated, it would be enough to accuse
divine goodness, or at least not to attribute to it the creation
of the universe. Seek then another motive for the omnipotence
of God ; say that He has done what He willed to do because
He willed it ; that He was Master, that crime and ingratitude
could not deprive him of His sovereign rights. You may
perhaps be listened to, but do not talk of the goodness of God
in presence of that terrible image of eternal damnation : let us
tremble before His justice, and be silent before His impenetrable
majesty. I shall not be silent, for what you have just said suffices to
answer you. You admit that the creative power enters into the
attributes which constitute the divine essence ; it is impossible
for God to be stripped of it by the disobedience of His
creature. To say, in fact, that God has no right to create a
being who might misuse His gifts, is to say that the wicked are
able to destroy God by hindering the exercise of one of His

GOD. 201
essential attributes. What could be more vain or more unreason
able ? Now, this admitted, the difficulty vanishes. In fact,
even when God acts from goodness, He acts in the indivisible
totality of His essence ; He acts with His power, His wisdom,
His justice, and all the inalienable totality of His perfections.
Goodness moves Him, but goodness which abdicates nothing
of the rest of His divinity. Goodness could not hinder Him
from being wise, just, powerful, supreme, and if by His fore
knowledge He perceive a creature so ungrateful as to turn His
gifts against Himself, He will not withdraw the blessing from
him, since He would then take from Himself the power to
create under just conditions ; this He should not do, this He
could not do without ceasing to exist. You will say, perhaps :
One thing is power in itself, another is the exercise of power ;
God could not lose power, but He is free not to exercise it.
Assuredly; but you must understand that whosoever is free
not to exercise a power, is free also to exercise it, under pain
of not possessing it. If then you grant that God is free, all His
attributes considered, to create a being who may abuse the
blessing of life, why should you wonder that in fact He has
exercised that liberty which belongs to Him and which you
attribute to Him?
You still say, however this may be, metaphysically, the
heart naturally rejects such a conclusion. Where is the father
who would place a son in the world if he foresaw that life
would even by his fault be a fatal gift to him ? And is not
God our father? Ought He not to feel more tenderness
towards us than is felt by a mortal man ?
Here the comparison wants force, because it is wanting in
justice. God has not created isolated individuals, or even
worlds ; He has created one unique world in which all beings
are linked together by relations of mutual dependence and
service, and not one of these can be withdrawn without
entailing the suffering of all the others. In the human race
especially, each man contains a posterity in himself whose
term is not assignable, and which makes of its generations
one united assemblage in which no single member can lose
his place without drawing after him the multitude of his
descendants. To suppress a single man is to suppress a
race; to suppress a wicked man is to suppress a people of
just men who may spring from him. For good and evil are
entwined together in the changeable course of mankind;

202 THE CREATION OF THE WORLD BY
a virtuous son succeeds to a bad father, and the ancestor but
too often contemplates in his distant progeny crimes which
to him were unknown. Now, the glance of God perceiving
at once all the successions of life, all the regenerations of
good in evil and of evil in good, no destiny appeared solitary
to Him; so that in cutting it off from the anticipated book
of life, He would but cut off a course unworthy to be con
tinued. In His sight Adam, a prevaricator, included the whole
posterity of the saints. To refuse being to him because of
his crime, even had that crime never obtained pardon, would
have been to destroy in him all the merits of the human race.
How could the goodness of God have required such a
sacrifice ? How could it have required that the wicked should
have been preferred to the just, that life should be withdrawn
from those who would make good use of it, because of those
who would have turned it into a curse instead of a blessing ?
I know God, I love Him, I hope in Him, I bless Him in life
and death : why should the fault of one of my ancestors,
eternally foreseen by divine goodness, have intercepted my
birth, and not have permitted me for a single day to respire
in the mystery of liberty from whence my beatitude might
result ? Why should I have been condemned to nothingness
because one of my forefathers would have abused his existence ?
Where in this would have been justice, wisdom, or goodness ?
God had not to choose between creating or not creating a
wicked man, but between creating or not creating generations
of good and evil together ; and as all presented this mixture
to His prophetic glance, He had to choose between creating
the universe or not creating anything. The question is very
different, and assuredly the most tender father would not
choose to die without posterity, if God, revealing to him their
future, were to show to him, in the transformations of his
race, the inevitable alternatives of glory and shame, of happi
ness and misery. What would it be if, instead of a single
generation, it were a question of all human generations ?
What would it be if to you were given the choice of destroy
ing or creating the universe ? For such is the question which
was weighed in the counsels of God.
God has judged it, and heaven and earth proclaim how.
You may, however, judge it otherwise ; you may complain
of life and not consider it so great a gift. But learn that the
life of which you complain is not that which God prepared for

GOD. 203
you, it is that which you have made for yourselves. You have
cut off God from it, and you wonder that nothing remains.
You have produced the void in your soul, and you wonder
that the infinite is wanting to you. You have run after every
vanity, and you wonder that nothing is left to you but doubts,
darkness, bitterness, affliction. Ah ! return, return to life,
regain your rights in creation by the courage of faith, the holi
ness of hope, the divinity of love, and then, having returned
to your place and your glory in the universal harmonies, you
will repeat with all the worlds the testimony which God bore
to Himself after He had finished His work : " God saw all the
things that he had made, and they were very good." *
* Genesis i.

THE GENERAL PLAN OF CREATION.

My Lord, — Gentlemen,
In our last conference we sought to discover by what
process or from what motive the world came forth from the
hands of God ; we have seen that it was by means of creation
and from the motive of goodness. Goodness is, in fact, the
characteristic under which the human race has always pre
ferred to conceive God, as it is also that of the men who have,
in the highest degree, attracted the love and veneration of
ages. Whosoever has not been distinguished by this august
sign has not reached the fulness of glory, and neither the fame
of brilliant conceptions, nor the success of arms, nor scorn of
life, has sufficed without goodness to uphold the remem
brance even of Alexander or Marcus Aurelius. That of God,
more especially, rests upon the same basis, and nothing is
more natural to us than to repeat with David : " The Lord is
sweet to all, and his tender mercies are over all his works."*
God, then, having made the world from goodness, that is
to say, in the design of communicating to it His properties,
which are none other than perfection and beatitude, we must
now learn the plan followed by Him in the realisation of that
generous purpose. Now every plan is composed of two neces
sary elements ; of the materials which served to found it and
the ordinance to be given thereto. I have, then, to-day, to
treat of the materials of creation and their general ordinance.
According to Catholic doctrine, God employed in His
work; which is the universe, two perfectly dissimilar materials,
namely, matter and spirit.
In the first place, what is matter? If I tell you that it is
* Psalm cxliv. 9.

GOD. 205
something possessing weight, you will oppose to me the
imponderable fluids. If I say that it is something possessing
extent, you will reply: Many philosophers consider that it
may be reduced to atoms, that is to say, to points indivisible
and consequently unextended. If I say that it is something pos
sessing colour, you will object that it may easily be conceived
as colourless. So is it also in regard to taste and sound. But
this work of spoliation, by which we successively deprive
matter of its apparent attributes, has nevertheless a limit
where the critical effort of our minds must halt. Whatever
we may do, there will always remain to it the permanent
susceptibility of receiving form and movement. I say of
receiving them, for we see clearly that it possesses neither
thought, nor will, nor liberty, no personal activity or com
mand. It is at the same time active and inert : active, since
it is a force ; inert, because it does not act spontaneously, but
under the empire of an irresistible necessity.
Spirit, on the contrary, has neither form nor movement of
translation from one place to another ; it does not fall under
the investigation of our senses. It thinks, it wills, it is free ;
no necessity acts upon it. In vain is it commanded, if it does
not command of itself, and all the assaults of power are as
nothing against a single soul that respects itself.
Such are the materials of the world. Catholic doctrine
knows none other; the senses and reason reveal to us only
these. Shall we here also find rationalism in our way ? Yes,
we shall find it ; and again I remind you that Catholic doc
trine will never establish a single dogma without finding that
rationalism sets up a negation against it. It is so now and
always. It is the nature of error to create resources against
all truth, otherwise the liberty of our intelligence would be but
a chimera. If anything is clearly proved it is certainly the coexistence
in the world of matter and spirit. What is more manifest ?
Matter is the object of our senses ; they see, they handle, they
feel it, they make use of it as they please, according to
invariable laws discovered by science and verified by expe
rience. No effort of the will is capable of destroying the
impression produced in the whole human race by the constant
spectacle of the universe. Spirit is not less evident and elo
quent to us, it is even more so. For, spirit is ourselves. We
have no need to place ourselves in communication with it as

206 THE GENERAL PLAN OF CREATION.
with an object foreign to us ; it is intimately present to us ;
each of its acts reveals it to us in its special faculties, in its
empire over matter and ideas, in its spontaneity and its liberty.
Yet, who would believe it ? ^two contradictory doctrines have
appeared in the history of human reason ; one which denies
the existence of matter, another which denies the existence of
spirit. Idealism maintains that all, in nature, is immaterial ¦
materialism affirms that all is body.
_ And truly, if ever error could be a noble and a sacred
thing, we should be entitled to say so of idealism, which pre
tends to deny the existence only of the inferior part of
creation, and fails to understand what relations a substance
deprived of all intelligence and sentiment can hold with God.
Why, in fact, did Mallebranche, that illustrious Christian
philosopher, say that, without the authority of faith, he should
not believe in the existence of matter, if it were not because he
could not explain to himself the object of God in creating it?
And have we not ourselves shown that the object of God in
creation was to communicate His perfection and beatitude to
beings the issue of His omnipotent goodness ? Now, in what
manner does matter, incapable of knowing and loving, respond
to that view of the Creator? How is it able to reach even the
frontier of the divine order, where all is knowledge, love,
comprehension ? We can conceive the motive and work of
God in creating spirits, images of His own nature, endowed
with the privilege of scrutinising the invisible world, presumptive
inhabitants of eternal glory, vessels of voluntary praise, humble
yet possible companions of the most holy Trinity. But who
will ever conceive the office of matter in relation to God, and
even in relation to created spirits ? If not eternal, why should
it have been created for a day ? If it is to outlive time, what
will be its part in eternity, that is to say, in the pure reign of
God? Some ancient sages, endeavouring to penetrate this mystery,
had thought that the function of material substance was the
limitation of spirits, which, from their nature, as they believed,
had no barriers between them and the infinite. But sound
theology rejects that interpretation. Created spirits have their
measure in the divine will that produces them ; since they are
created they are limited, seeing that uncreated existence enters
into the notion of the infinite. Let us suppose, however, that
•¦he immaterial and intelligent being meets with no limit in its

GOD.

207

personal essence, you cannot suppose that God would impose
a limit upon it from jealousy — from fear lest it should become
equal to Himself — and therefore imprison it in the sepulchre
of a body ! Can you suppose that men are but gods enslaved
to a sensible organisation ? Ah ! had God been able to create
infinite spirits, be sure He would have created them. He
desired nothing more than to extend the orbit of creation ; and
you will soon learn that matter itself, so far from having
become an instrument of restriction in His hands, has been
one of the resources employed by His wisdom to enlarge the
field of the universe.
Matter, like spirit, has been called to enjoy divine per
fection and beatitude, and the more incapable it was of this
the more God has willed to make naught of such difficulty,
reserving to Himself the glory, if I may so speak, of stamping
the seal of His power and mercy upon a substance in which
nothingness appeared to dispute the empire with Him. How
ever inert matter may be, however dumb, deaf, blind, insensible,
it is indifferent thereto : listen to the Apostle St. Paul taking
up its cause and speaking to you of its destiny : " All flesh,"
he says, " is not the same flesh. . . . there are bodies celestial
and bodies terrestrial ; but one is the glory of the celestial and
another the terrestrial. . . . The body is sown in corruption,
it shall rise in incorruption ; it is sown in dishonour, it shall
rise in glory ; it is sown in weakness, it shall rise in power ; it
is sown a natural body, it shall rise a spiritual body." * You
hear that St. Paul is not troubled about the meanness of our
dust : he does not believe in its final wretchedness ; he beholds
it so transfigured as to become spiritual, and if you would hear
him again foretelling its future, listen once more : " For the
expectation of the creature waiteth for the revelation of the
sons of God. For the creature was made subject to vanity,
not willingly, but by reason of him that made it subject, in
hope : because the creature also itself shall be delivered from
the servitude of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the
children of God." t What language ! What splendour ! What
promises ! Thus the most vile matter is in labour for its
future greatness, as well as man himself; it awaits the final
revelation, which will distinguish the children of God and
mark out a place for them in the ages which have neither
* I Cor. xv. 39, 40, 42-44. + Rom. viii. 19-22.

208 THE GENERAL PLAN OF CREATION.
shadow nor turning ; it will take part in the deliverance of
spirits, and their beatitude will, in a certain degree, depend
upon its own, since its own will serve to the liberty of their
glory. What singular expressions, gentlemen, and how truly
may the substance honoured by such prophecies hold in
contempt the premature insults of ignorance and error !
The king of Macedonia once said : " If I were not
Alexander, I would be Diogenes !" Let me say : " If I were
not spirit, I would be matter 1 " For I should still be the
work of God, the fruit of His thought and of His goodness.
His eye would still be upon me, and, united in human nature
to an immortal soul, after having served it here below in its
need I should one day serve it in its felicity, which I should
share. In proceeding to expose to you the general ordinance of
the world, I shall, however, hope to show you the part which
matter fills there, and consequently enable you more clearly to
see the reason of its existence and its creation.
The other rationalist camp denies the reality of spirit It
aspires to convince us that there is nothing in the world but
the palpable, divisible, and miserable substance which falls
under the investigation of our outer senses, and if it acknow
ledges the phenomena of thought and will, it attributes them
to the very organism of the living body. You perceive that
this doctrine is very different from the other. The first,
although false, tended to the elevation of man ; this tends to
his abasement. The first induced us lowly to estimate the
inferior part of our being ; this tends to degrade, to immolate
its superior part. What can have led sages — this is the name
they bear — what can have led them to this parricidal act ?
The natural tendency of beings is to grow great ; all, even
those who obey only instinct, have a tendency towards pride.
How is it that man, the visible masterpiece of creation, has
employed his thought, which raises him above all the others,
to destroy the very basis of his greatness, and to descend by
his own choice from the rank of immortal intelligences ? I
know not whether there are any materialists in this assembly,
and you know with what pious respect I am accustomed to
treat, not error, but individuals. On this occasion, however, I
cannot curb the liberty of my ministration, and I shall fear
lessly say that materialism is a doctrine against nature, an
abject doctrine, whose origin can only be explained by the

GOD. 20g
corruption of the human heart. We are too manifestly spirits,
there are not reasons enough against the dignity of our being
to lead us to depreciate our own selves, if passions of a lower
and dastardly order did not rise up within us against ourselves,
in order to dethrone, with our spiritual essence, our ideas of
truth, justice, order, responsibility — illustrious and incorrup
tible guests whose presence wearies vice and excites revolt.
Vice knows no peace and wills to possess it. The soul opposes
to it remorse, that last crown of corrupted man, that domestic
and sacred voice which invites us to good, that good genius of
the republic which inhabits ruins, and which appeared again to
Brutus, in the fields of Pharsala, on the eve of the day when
Rome was to fall. Oh ! — pardon my doubts ! — But if you
were not pure, if remorse troubled you with its stern voice, in
mercy and love for yourselves, do not drive it from you : as
long as it is the companion of your soul you will not have lost
the remains of your greatness and your hope; remorse precedes
virtue as the dawn precedes the day, and vice should respect it
out of respect for itself.
But when vice has no longer the instinct of its rehabilita
tion, remorse becomes its chief and last enemy, and spares
nothing in order to extirpate its very roots, which is our mind
itself. Materialism is the result of that exterminating war of
evil against good ; it is no other thing than the supreme effort
to stifle remorse. And this is why I call it an abject and an
unnatural doctrine. If this should seem rash, I offer no excuse
for it. What ! You attack my very essence, you reject me to
the limits of mere animality, you treat me as the equal of a
dog ! What do I say ? — you dare to write that " Man is a
digestive tube pierced at both ends." . . . Ah ! gentlemen, do
not laugh ; it would grieve me bitterly to have excited your
laughter; hear, hear these things with the silence of scorn.
What ! men dare to write that "man is a digestive tube pierced
at both ends," and, armed in all the greatness of truth against
imposture, shall I not turn back in scorn and trample under
foot that most vile doctrine ?
I ought to say no more on this subject ; I ought not to
give so much honour to materialism as to ask it to explain
itself. We will do so, however, with your permission. We will
ask these proud gladiators of matter what they have seen in
man to lead them to contest his intelligent and free nature.
Do they deny the phenomena of thought ? Are they blind to
p

210 THE GENERAL PLAN OF CREATION.
those of the will? No, they admit them; they admit that
something extraordinary takes place within us which resembles
nothing that falls under the investigation of the senses. But
they consider that earth, having attained to a certain degree of
perfection, is susceptible of producing sentiment, thought, and
will, as it produces roots, flowers, and fruit. Nature, they say,
is in a progressive labour which is nowhere interrupted, and
which at each degree is manifested by a more perfect produc
tion. Man is the term of that fertile progression ; he unites in
himself all the anterior progressions, and his brain, the master
piece of the wisest organisation, causes thought to emerge from
it as naturally as the tree puts forth its buds.
How is it that this ingenious picture, for I will not call it
analysis, has excited only coldness and incredulity in nearly the
whole of mankind ? How is it that the spiritualist philosophy
has always obtained the glory of moving the heart of the people
as well as that of the thinker ; whilst materialism, a doctrine of
decadency, seduces only a few souls in declining nations ?
Because spirit affirms itself with a presence so vigorous that
reasoning and analysis perish before the splendour of that
affirmation. How should it be otherwise ? My spiritual being
is myself : I feel the truth of it. I feel the distinction between
my soul and my body with such force that my whole life
appears to me to be but a confronting of the one with the
other, and that each instant brings to me a conviction of their
duality as strong as the certainty of their union. I see that I
am two and one with a clearness which nothing diminishes,
because nothing combats against the real presence of things.
And what indeed is said against it ? They oppose to it a pro
gression of matter ; but a progression is but the development
of a g;rm which never changes" its nature in that develop
ment. Elevate a force, according to the mathematical expres
sion, to the second, the third, the tenth power ; you will never
gather in the force doubled, tripled, decupled, anything but
the primitive element contained therein. In order that matter,
transfigured in its form, may produce sentiment, thought, and
will, the smallest material particle must be a being exer
cising feeling, thought, and volition, but in an inferior degree,
susceptible of increase or of perfection as it is seen in the
infancy of man compared with his maturity. Now, is it so ?
Does materialism even pretend that it is so? It does not
Relieve that a grain of dust includes in miniature the in-

GOD. 211
tellectual functions of man, as a drop of water includes the
properties of the ocean. Common sense too strongly rejects
such folly, consequently matter elevated by organisation to
whatever point you will, to the hundredth or the thousandth
power, will never produce anything but the development of
what it is, that is to say, more perfect forms, more compli
cated movements, sculpture and architecture more worthy of
admiration. Men wonder — and it is another objection against spiri
tualism — at the reciprocal influence which the soul and the
body exercise over each other. Why not, if they are really
united ? This union may appear strange, inexplicable, but
what of that? It is a fact. The fact once proved by the
certainty which we have of our double nature, spiritual and
material in one sole personality, it is very natural that there
should be an action of one upon the other, without which there
would be no communication between them ; and if there were
no communication between them, they would be separated
instead of being united.
Thus even as exterior objects, acting upon the brain by the
intermediary of the senses, convey to the soul impressions
from without, the soul in its turn conveys to the brain, and by
it to the rest of the sensible organisation, the rebound of its
intimate and immaterial life. Thence arise those inveterate
habits which take their source at the same time in the two parts
of our being, both being in some manner bent thereto by the
repetition of the acts, and become the slaves of our depraved
wills after having been at first only their instruments. It is
this which has given birth to that new science of phrenology,
which abuses phenomena of the correspondence of the soul
with the body and the body with the soul, in order to attack
the free-will of man. I do not examine whether aptitudes and
passions have really a representative sign in the exterior enve
lope of the brain; let us suppose it. What does it prove
against human liberty ? It is manifest that the soul and the
body are in unceasing communication, and that every act —
even an inward act — of vice or virtue, resounds somewhere in
our mortal envelope and marks out traces of happiness or
misery. These subtle traces, in their turn, react upon the
profound seat of our internal activity, and solicit there the
return of the same movements, that is to say, of the same
thoughts and the same desires. Catholic doctrine consents to
P 2

212 THE GENERAL PLAN OF CREATION.
this ; it does more than consent : it is the basis of its spiritual
therapeutics, or, if you prefer it, of the medicinal treatment
which it applies to the maladies of our soul. This is why the
Gospel commands Christians to chastise their bodies in order
to liberate and purify their hearts. This is why the Church
imposes abstinences and fasts ; this is why she commands
labour, and why, after the example of Jesus Christ, her founder,
she blesses those who weep and suffer ; because, besides the
benefit of an accepted expiation, there is in the afflictions of
the body the infallible efficacy of reforming the senses. How
ever ancient, however powerful, may be the traces of sin in the
mysterious recesses of the body, the soul, aided by grace,
fortified by penance, is able slowly to efface them, and to
substitute the restoring vestiges of virtue. Thence, even in
physiognomy, spring those singular illuminations which pene
trate through the obscure traces of vice. The soul, after having
ennobled the subterranean regions which crime had polluted,
reaches the brow of man, and sheds upon it those serene and
holy rays which soften the regard even of those who know not
God. The gloomy shadows of sin fly away before the creative
glory of virtue, and that which still remains of them in the
premature sinking of the body is only a sign of mortality
vanquished by the eternal beauty of Christ.
O visages of the saints ! gentle yet firm lips accustomed to
name the name of God and kiss the cross of His Son ; regards
full of kindness and love which perceived a brother in the most
poor and lowly among creatures ; hair silvered by meditation
on eternity, sacred rays of the soul resplendent in old age and
in death : happy are those who have beheld them ! more happy
those who have understood them and received from their
transfigured glebe lessons of wisdom and immortality !
But what am I doing? — Am I pretending to demonstrate
to you the existence of spirit, the reality of matter? God
forbid ! I do not stand before you as a philosopher, supported
by his reason alone, and trusting only to the discoveries of his
own sagacity. I stand here as the envoy of God, as one who
bears His word to you, as one armed with the tradition and
authority of the Church, and after having established the titles
of my mission, I promised you only that rationalism should
never oppose to a single Christian dogma negations more
probable than the affirmations of faith. Once more I have
kept my promise. For I ask, between the faith that affirms the

GOD. 213
presence in the world of two constitutive elements, matter and
spirit, and the rationalism that denies the one or the other,
where, even humanly speaking, lies the greater probability of
truth? I do not say the certainty, because having found cer
tainty in the order of the divine teachings, it is unnecessary
for me again to seek it even there, where, in so many ways, I
should be sure to find it. Against rationalism the semblance
of truth will suffice for me, and I believe I possess it, and
much more, in that question of the double nature of things.
Let us hasten now to see the ordinance which God has given
them ; we shall gather here some rays of light upon the
motives that induced the Creator not to content Himself, in the
structure of the world, with only one order of materials.
We have said that God, in drawing beings forth from
nothingness, proposed to communicate to them His perfection
and beatitude. Now the divine perfection is of three kinds ;
it is metaphysical, intellectual, and moral, and consequently it
should be reflected under this triple aspect in the production
and disposition of the universe. Let us commence by the
metaphysical aspect, which is naturally the first.
God is infinite, He is one, He is many ; it is the reunion of
these three terms that constitutes His metaphysical perfection.
He is great in the depths of His essence, by infinity, unity, and
plurality ; and this also should be the fount of the grandeur of
the universe. But even thereby, the creating thought appears
at the very first to meet with an insurmountable obstacle ; for,
the infinite is incommunicable in its nature. As soon as a
thing is created, however vast it may be, it does not exist of
itself, and therefore the radical attribute of the infinite is
wanting to it. Nevertheless, the world — the work of the in
finite in person, the manifestation of his glory — could not be
wanting in extent, representative of uncreated immensity. It
needed a projection which manifested its origin, and by which
every eye on beholding it revolving in the majesty of its
orbit might recognise the hand that had launched it forth upon
a course and in a space worthy of it. God provided for this.
He devised — if I may be permitted to animate the divine
action by these human expressions — He devised, between the
infinite and the finite, something intermediary, which here
below we call the indefinite. I will explain these terms if you
will allow me. The infinite is that which has neither beginning
nor end ; the finite is that which has a beginning and an end ¦

214 THE GENERAL PLAN OF CREATION.
the indefinite is that which expands between two terms in
finitely distant, in such a manner as continually to draw nearer
to them. God then resolved to construct the world upon the
projection of the indefinite, and thus to impart to His work a
figurative character of His unlimited essence.
Nothing opposed this design. Between God, who was
about to create, and the nothingness whence being was about
to emerge ; between God, who is all, and nothingness, which is
nothing, there existed of itself an infinite distance. It sufficed
to fill it by a progressive creation, which, starting from a
unique centre, should tend at the same time, and upon two
different roads, towards the two extremities of things ; towards
nothingness by a graduated diminution, towards God by a
constant ascension. But this plan supposed the existence of
two quite dissimilar elements; one susceptible of constant
diminution in descending towards the negative pole of creation,
another capable of constantly perfecting itself in mounting
towards the positive or divine pole. You anticipate me, you
name matter and spirit: spirit, which is indivisible; matter,
unceasingly divided: spirit, the element'of the infinitely great;
matter, the spirit of the infinitely little : both, in their diverse
natures, sufficient to fill by their calculated elevation and
degradation the infinite space which separates the supremely
imperfect from the supremely perfect. It is St. Augustine who
has revealed to us in a single phrase this beautiful law of the
genesis of things : listen to this great man : Duo fecisti,
DOMINE, UNUM PROPE NIHIL, SCILICET MATERIAM PRIMAM ;
ALTERUM PROPE TE, SCILICET ANGELUM — Thou hast made two
things, O God; one near to nothingness, which is primary
matter; the other near to thyself, which is pure spirit. In virtue
of that conception, which was as it were the exordium of
the world, God created two lines or two series of beings ;
one series descending on the side of nothingness, the
other ascending towards Himself. The one is known to
you by your own senses and by the instruments with which
science has endowed the eye of man ; the other is revealed to
us by faith, and also by the inductions of analogy. For how
could we believe that creation stops at ourselves, and that
having by our bodies an inferior kindred which extends even
into the regions of the imperceptible, we should not have by
our spiritual essence a superior kindred which penetrates even
into the region of the substantial infinite ? Faith teaches us

GOD. 2is
this, reason confirms it to us, the order of the universe abso
lutely requires it.
Launched from earth to heaven upon that infinite projec
tion, the world, as far as it was possible, had a relation of
greatness with God ; and by the innumerable multiplication of
beings appertaining to each series, and to each degree of these
series, it possessed also the divine character of plurality. But
unity, the third term of the metaphysical perfection of God,
was still wanting to it. There were two worlds, the world of
matter and the world of spirit ; the terrestrial and the celestial
worlds : a supreme unfitness which deprived creation of all har
mony and all possibility of being the mirror of its author. But
how was this to be remedied ? How were two orders so dis
tinct, so radically separated as the material order and the
spiritual order, to be really united ?
God withdrew within Himself ; He took counsel as it were,
according to the beautiful indication of Scripture, and in pre
sence of all that was accomplished, before the attentive heavens
and trembling earth He pronounced the last creating word ; He
said : Faciamus hominem — Let us make man ! Man obeyed
that voice which should never more cease to give him life and
light. A being appeared participating in matter by which he
became united to the inferior world, and in spirit by which he
became united to the superior world ; at the same time body
and soul, the body acting with the soul and the soul with the
body ; not as being two, but as one only ; not as brother and
sister, but as one single personal being called by the same
name, man. In man the mystery of universal unity was solved;
placed in the lowest rank of the ascending line of beings, and
on the first step of the descending line, concentrating in his
personality all the gifts of the mind and all the forces of matter,
communicating by his wants with the arctic and antarctic poles
of things, the real centre of the creation — he, by his presence,
stamps upon it the seal of its unity, and with unity the seal of
perfection. Behold man ; behold his place and his glory ;
behold why all the great religious scenes have been enacted
upon the earth which he inhabits and in the very bosom of
mankind. Rationalism is greatly troubled about the importance
which man attributes to himself; it has not disdained to call
astronomy to its aid in order to deprive us of the eminent posi
tion to which Providence has raised us, and, comparing the
insignificance of our race and the inferiority of our planet with

?«6 THE GENERAL PLAN OF CREATION.
all the suns fixed in space, it is pleased to make of us pigmies,
not to say the abortions of the universe. Let us leave to
rationalism these pitiable gratifications of apostasy; and, as we
are not afraid of being kings because we are not alarmed by
the duties of the throne, let us learn to measure greatness by
the essence and functions of beings, and not by their size or
material rapidity of motion. The earth, it is true, is not the
astronomical centre of the world; it suffices for it to bear man
kind — the real centre of creation.
It is thus that God has communicated to His work the
metaphysical perfection with which He is endowed. As to
¦ntellectual perfection, the second term of His total perfection,
it was naturally to be found in man and in the spirits superior
to man, since all of them, by their very essence, are capable of
knowing. Matter alone, relegated to the frontiers of nothing
ness, seemed shut out for ever from the glorious privilege of
thought. For God Himself cannot accomplish that which
includes an express contradiction, and matter, an inert and
divisible substance, rejects, with all the force of an absolute
incompatibility, the idea of activity indivisible as thought, free
as the will. But God, without, performing an impossibility,
performed a miracle. He willed then to spiritualise matter,
according to the expression of St. Paul, by giving it a share in
the most elevated functions of the human soul, and this is the
secret which was faintly perceived by Aristotle, when he said :
" There is nothing in the intelligence which was not before in
the senses." Not that the soul does not receive, prior to all
intercourse between itself and nature, a direct illumination from
God, an illumination which is to its inner vision what light is to
the outer eye ; but, notwithstanding that divine communication,
thought does not take its form, and, so to say, its outline, until
the senses, by means of images and language, have brought to
the soul, in its inmost sanctuary, the tribute of their exploration
in the visible world. Man thinks only by means of the totality
of his being, as he lives only by means of the totality of his
being. All idealist or materialist systems are false, because
they divide man by making him a simple intelligence or
only a body. Man, in all his operations, is neither a body
nor a spirit ; he is man, that is to say, that marvellous unity
resulting from two substances intimately interwoven, the
material substance and the immaterial substance. Everything
that separates these destroys man.

GOD. 217
Thus matter is raised to an incomprehensible state of
dignity. Contemplate that unnamed dust at your feet, which
is the last degree of abasement that being reaches before
your eyes. Contemplate it. You bore it along but just now
without deigning to notice it ; a puff of air will cast it into a
field ; darkness and light embody it in the frail tissue of a
plant. It is already wheat. The same chance that cast it
under your feet brings it upon your table in its new form.
You recognise it no longer, and yet it will soon become
a part of yourself. See, it flows in your veins ; it penetrates
the tissues of your body ; it mounts even to the supreme seat
of your exterior activity, to that calm and elevated throne,
where, under the protection of a powerful shield, the purest
elements of life are silently elaborated. There it encounters
the reciprocal action of the soul and the body ; it comes
between them ; it knocks at the august portal of your intelli
gence ; it helps you to think, to will ; it is yourself, and
yet is the grain of dust under your feet.
I was then justified in calling St. Paul to bear witness to
the grandeur of the world even in its lowest element.
What if I were to advance yet further — if I pronounced to
you that famous phrase : " The Word was made flesh " ? If I
showed you dust in its eternal wedlock with God? But let
us not rob the future to serve the present ; let us leave a
shadow upon the Thabor of truth, and terminate this discourse
by showing you how God has communicated His moral per
fection to the world.
The moral perfection of God is resumed in two words :
justice and goodness. In order for the world to receive its
communication, it was not enough that man and the superior
spirits were endowed with the double faculty of knowing and
willing, of knowing good and realising it — another gift was
needed, that of choosing between good and evil. For,
without that free choice, what, in them, would justice or
goodness have been ? A necessary perfection stripped of all
personal merit, which would have made of their life a
succession of acts irresistibly ordered and accomplished.
Now in God, whose total perfection was to be reproduced,
that fatality does not exist. God is a free being. Naturally
held in the immutable order of His essence, He acts with
out in full liberty; He creates or He does not create, He
gives in the time and measure determined by His sove-

2i3 THE GENERAL PLAN OF CREATION.
reign will ; and even wnen He remains within His necessary
operations, such as the relations of the three divine persons,
He is subject to nothing exterior to Himself. He is neither
commanded nor necessitated. If, on the contrary, man and
pure spirits had no choice between God and themselves,
between the infinite and the finite, their personality would
exist only as an absolute dependence upon the divine person
ality ; they would be others and not themselves. They would
not give themselves from justice or goodness, but from sub
jection to an empire foreign to their own deliberation. They
would be deprived of moral perfection, because they would
possess a morality totally inamissible, and consequently im
personal. In God, it is true, morality is inamissible, but it is so with
out being impersonal, because it is not the action of another
that subjugates the divine will, whilst in the creature deprived
of free will it would be the infinite who oppressed the finite.
The human will would become absorbed in the divine will.
It is needless to add that matter itself, raised to the state of
humanity, shares, by its association with the soul, the honours
of free will, and that it thus enters into participation of the rights
and perils of the moral order. You will have already drawn
this conclusion if my words have but thrown a little light upon
the ways of divine wisdom in communicating to the world its
triple and adorable perfection.
The consequence of perfection is beatitude. God is in
finitely happy, because He is infinitely perfect. Having then
called the world to enjoy His perfection, He should also have
called it to enjoy His beatitude ; and as beatitude terminates
all in God, it is also necessarily the final term of creation for
every being who has not been unworthy of his destiny. Here
I touch the Gordian knot of truth, and I venture to believe
that you have severed it yourselves. You will not ask me why
God has not given beatitude without conditions of merit ; if I
am not deceived, you know the reason. If, indeed, God had
willed to communicate to the world all His properties, He
should have communicated them in the order in which He
Himself possesses them, and in the only order in which it was
possible for Him to communicate them all. Now, the divine
properties are simply perfection and beatitude; perfection, the
cause of beatitude ; and beatitude, the effect of perfection. If
God had changed the order, in plunging us by the sole act of

GOD. jig
our birth into the possession of Himself, whence His felicity
springs, He would have deprived us of the first of His pro
perties, which is perfection. For, as we have seen, free will is
a necessary element thereof, which the direct and beatific
vision of God would not have permitted us to possess, even for
a single instant. Lost at the moment of our birth in the abyss
of an infinite attraction, we should have offered to divine
goodness no representation of His own liberty, no virtue, no
merit, no return worthy of His gratuitous and liberal dispen
sation towards us. God owed it then to us and to Himself to
retard our beatitude in favour of our perfection. But to retard
it was to hide Himself for a time from created beings, to clothe
Himself before them in the veil of finite things, in order that,
choice being possible to them, trial should be also possible
with choice, and that from trial there should spring up within
them justice worthy of praise, goodness worthy of love.
Thus the world was given possession of a sovereignty which
placed it with glory in presence of God. Thus, having God
for principle and end, it should gravitate towards Him by a
voluntary and grateful perfection, even to the day when, the
entire orbit of its trial being achieved, it will repose in the
bosom of God Himself in a degree of beatitude equal to its
fidelity. I have traced for you the whole plan of Creation. I have
shown you the materials employed therein, the ordinance they
received, the reasons of that ordinance, and already knowing
your beginning, you have learned to know your end. Your
end and your beginning do not differ ; God is your father, and
God is also your end. He is the Alpha and the Omega of
your destiny; you cannot look lower without losing yourselves,
rise less high without perishing. In vain, being ungrateful,
will you appeal to His goodness against His justice. I have
just destroyed that hope by showing you in goodness itself the
root of your duties. It is doubtless goodness that said : "Come,
ye blessed of my Father, possess you the kingdom prepared for
you from the foundation of the world."* But it is also
goodness that said : " Be you therefore perfect, as also your
heavenly Father is perfect."t For the natural movement of
goodness is to communicate its properties, and God having
only His perfection and His beatitude, the effect of the divine
* Matt. xxv. 34. t Matt. v. 48.

220 GOD.
goodness is to communicate both to you in the same order in
which they are in Himself. If you refuse perfection because
it exacts sacrifice from you, at the same time you refuse
beatitude, which is its consequence. That order does not
depend upon God ; it is His proper and rigorous nature ; the
very nature of goodness of which justice is but the sanction.

MAN AS AN INTELLIGENT BEING.

My Lord, — Gentlemen,
We already know the two terms of the mystery of des
tinies ; we know what is our principle and our end. But that
knowledge, all-important though it be, is far from being sufficient
for us. It is a great thing to be assured that God is the source
from whence we spring, that our end is to attain to His per
fection and beatitude ; it remains, however, for us to be directed
upon that perilous road of which God occupies the two extreme
points ; for if we are unacquainted with its secrets, we are in
danger of going astray in our very way, and of descending
towards death instead of advancing towards Him from whom
proceeds all life, all perfection, all felicity. Where is then the
road which we ought to follow ? Is it traced out ? Is it known
with certainty ?
You cannot doubt about it ; God, who has revealed to us
our principle and our end, must also have revealed to us the
means of proceeding from one to the other, otherwise the object
He had in view, which was to satisfy His goodness by com
municating Himself to His creatures, would not have been
realised. Here we quit the universe in order to concentrate
our attention upon man in particular ; for it is man who first
interests us, and moreover, in seeking the paths which God has
opened to us that we may mount towards Him, we unceasingly
encounter the rest of creation either disputing the passage with
us or opening it before us ; and the theology of man, in virtue
of the unity that co-ordains and combines every part of the
divine work, will constantly blend with the theology of the
universe. But man himself, within his proper nature, is an
infinitely complex being. By his thought, he belongs to the
intellectual order ; by his will, to the moral order ; by his

222 MAN AS AN INTELLIGENT BEING.
union with his fellow-creatures, to the social order ; by his
body, to the physical order ; by his entire soul, to the religious
order : and, under all these relations, he has received means of
attaining his end, which is perfection and beatitude. It is
needful then, in order completely to unfold his destiny, to
study man himself, and successively as an intelligent, moral,
social, physical, religious being ; and under these divers aspects
to take account of the roads which eternal wisdom has prepared
for him, and in which he must walk in order to avoid perishing.
The course will be long ; it will embrace not only the remaining
conferences of this year, but all those which will follow even
to the last day in which God may permit me to instruct you.
In a word, the principle and the end of man being known to
us, nothing remains in the development of doctrine but to
expose to you, in all their historical and dogmatic course, the
means given to man to attain his end.
I enter at once upon this subject, and man as an intelligent
being will form my exordium. Intelligence is the faculty of
knowing. To know, is to see that which is ; and to see that
which is, is to possess truth ; for truth is no other thing than
that which is, inasmuch as it is perceived by the mind. Whence
it results that truth is the object of the intelligence, and that
the function of the intelligence is to seek, to penetrate, to
retain truth ; to live by truth, and for truth ; this is its perfection
and its beatitude. In the first place, it is its perfection; for
the mind out of truth is in the state of ignorance or error ; it
sees not or sees badly, and in either case it is deprived of its
object and function. It is like an eye which looks without
seeing, or which sees that which has no reality ; an organ
useless and dead in the first case, a false and dangerous
instrument in the second.
But if truth be the perfection of the intelligence, it may be
said without further proof that it is also its beatitude. For the
one is the inevitable consequence of the other. As soon as a
faculty is united to its object, as soon as it accomplishes its
mission, it attains a state of repose because it attains its object;
a glorious repose, because it is legitimate; full of joy, because
it has been produced by God according to the pattern of His
own operations, wherein all ends in transport. Therefore, in
receiving the light of truth, the intelligence reposes, rejoices,
exults ; in fine, is happy according to the nature of the vision
that enlightens and fills it. Daily we experience this beatifi-

GOD. 223
cation of the understanding. Even in the lowest regions of
nature there is no being or phenomenon, how imperceptible
soever it may be, how indifferent soever it may appear, the
discovery of which does not cause us a kind of magic transport.
You all know the history of that great geometrician who, after
having long battled with a problem that arrested his genius, all
at once penetrated its secret whilst he was in a bath. For
getting himself, he rose, and, the folly of enthusiasm depriving
him even of the consciousness of his nudity, he ran through
the streets of Syracuse, exclaiming : " I have found it ! I have
found it ! " This is the living image of those holy nuptials
between the mind and intelligible light, when man has shown
himself worthy of that immaterial alliance by a life which
lessens the subjection of his double nature to the inferior order.
Those blissful joys depend together upon the greatness of the
mind and the greatness of the ideas that inundate it ; they
blend with the shores of the intelligence and the luminous
course which flows between them.
Sometimes the mind is great without the light being also
great; then come those times of mysterious sadness whose
traces you may have observed on the generous brows of many
of your contemporaries. Victims of doubt, they have drunk
from the cup of knowledge without drinking from the cup of
truth. They have studied past ages, interrogated the seas,
followed the orbit of the heavenly bodies, nothing has escaped
the perspicacity of their meditations, and yet a veil has remained
before them which hinders them from thoroughly fathoming
what they see, and from taking account of the illuminations of
their own life. Light itself is darkness to them ; each new dis
covery opens to them a new abyss ; and like the labourer
ploughing in the fields of Thebes or Babylon, who constantly
strikes against unaccountable ruins, these mighty investigators
of worlds, at each furrow which they trace in the immensity of
things, raise up, even from the very bosom of science, great
and painful obscurities. They have neither the peace of
ignorance nor the peace of error ; they see too much not to
know, too little to understand, and however great may be the
crime that hides truth from them, they have at least the honour
of being unhappy because they do not possess it.
But after these long torments of doubt, if the veil be at last
drawn aside, then the intelligence receives one of those vibra
tions whose voluptuous pain no tongue can describe. Then

224 MAN AS AN INTELLIGENT BEING.
Augustine rises, and, for the first time, finding even friendship
irksome, he withdraws to give current to his feelings in a
torrent of solitary tears. He, who was lost in the vain love of
glory and creatures, sees all the charms that deceived his youth
vanish in a moment. Truth enraptures him; the azure plains
of Lombardy, the hopes of renown, the most tender profes
sions of erring hearts, have no longer any power to move him ;
he departs, leading his aged mother by the hand, and already
from the port of Ostia he sees the obscure solitude which he
thinks will hide him for ever from the admiration of the world
as from the dreams of his past life. Tears of great men, heroic
sacrifices, virtues born in a single hour, and which ages cannot
destroy, you teach us the price of truth ! You prove that it is
indeed the perfection and beatitude of the intelligence !
Therefore one of the most formidable crimes is that of
betraying and labouring against truth ; for it is to betray our
highest good, to strike us at the very height from whence our
glory and felicity descend. What is man without intelligence,
and what is intelligence without truth ? If you deprive man
of intelligence, he is nothing more than the dethroned king of
the animal world ; if, leaving intelligence to him, you withhold
from him the gift of truth, you dig out for him an abyss as
deep as the infinite ; you prepare for him a torment of hunger
never to be appeased, an aspiration which can never attain to
anything but grasping shadows in an immense and deceptive
void. What can be more terrible than this condition ? What
more criminal than to be its willing instrument? Therefore,
falsehood has ever been abhorred by the human race; and,
even in things where its insignificance would seem excusable,
it brings infallible scorn upon the lips which give it utterance.
We do not forgive the man who, knowing truth, willingly sub
stitutes for it the adulterous language of error. How much
less will God and mankind pardon those who designedly stand
up against the most holy doctrines that ages have bequeathed
to us, and who, despairing of conquering them by calm discus
sion, arm themselves against them with all the resources of
violence and cunning ! This has too often been witnessed, and
we must never lose an opportunity of protesting against those
pusillanimous conspiracies of might ; the powers instituted for
the conservation of all rights and possessions have been seen
to declare open war against the highest of all rights, the right
to know ; against the richest of all possessions, namely, truth.

GOD. 225
Jealous of its power, which, indeed, is the greatest known in
the world, they strive to dethrone it, in order to set up in its
place and to their own profit the reign of interests and passions.
Anything suits them better than truth ; they accept, protect,
give liberty to everything but truth. They pursue truth so
exclusively, with so much art and perseverance, that they make
it known by that same sign, and their very persecution becomes
a mark of certainty which presents it to the legitimate adorations
of the whole earth.
But do not wonder if truth some day or other takes
vengeance upon its oppressors. As men are not able to ruin
authority without striking at the root of the human under
standing, sooner or later a kind of frenzy urges them beyond
all fear and respect, and drives them with open arms against
that which is. This is the time of reprisals, the time foretold
by St. Paul when he wrote thus to the Romans : " The wrath
of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and
injustice of those men who detain the truth of God in in
justice."* Then kings grow pale and kingdoms are troubled;
night gathers in Babylon ; Baltazzar sees the hand that con
demns him, and the sword of Cyrus waits not for to-morrow.
I am not reciting history ; no, it is not history. Look around
you ; we are in Babylon, we sit at the feast of Baltazzar ! f
Must I ask your indulgence if I have allowed myself to
yield to the emotions of a time so fertile in great lessons?
Have I betrayed the interests of truth by showing you, in
the catastrophes of our age, the avenging part which truth
plays therein? If it be so, may you and truth forgive me, and
let us remount together to the peaceful regions where nothing
earthly disturbs the contemplation of causes and laws.
I have just proved that truth is the perfection and beatitude
of the intelligence ; and, since God in creating us has willed to
communicate to us perfection and beatitude, I draw therefrom
this consequence, that He has communicated truth to us. And
it is, in fact, what Catholic doctrine teaches. If we listen to it,
it teaches that God in sending us into the world did not
abandon our mind to the hazard of its own discoveries, but
enlightened it from the beginning with such knowledge that
truth really existed therein. What was that primitive knowledge
which, without being infinite, was nevertheless truth? That
* Rom. i. 18. + a.d. 1848.

226 MAN AS AN INTELLIGENT BEING.
question leads us back to the definition which I gave you on
commencing this conference. Truth, I said, is that which is,
inasmuch as it is perceived by the mind. We halted there
without advancing that other question, which we can no longer
avoid. What, then, is that which is ? Do we understand by this
the heavens, the earth, and the seas? Is this that which is?
What ? the heavens, the earth, the seas, mankind even, all that
we see, is stamped with such a character of limit and change
that we find there nothing of the grandeur contained in that
powerful word — being : human tongues have exhausted their
energies to express the nothingness of visible things, and how
ever pride may desire to magnify the theatre upon which it
acts, all that it can add to the universe is to discover in
it a ray of being, and consequently a ray of truth. Where
then is being? Where is that which is? Ah, already I per-
•ceive, and even know it. Being is absolute, eternal and infinite
unity, plurality without division, the ocean without shores, the
centre without circumference, the plenitude that contains itself,
the form without figure ; the whole, in fine, without which all
that is, is but an act and a gift. But in so speaking whom have
I named? I have named Him who has said of Himself, Ego
sum qui sum — I am who am* I have named Him who said
also, Ego sum Veritas — I am the truth.\ I have named God.
Behold being, and behold truth. God alone is truth, because
He alone is being; He does not possess truth as something
foreign to Himself, but He is substantial and personal truth,
because He is being, possessing Himself; because He is at the
same time, and by the same act, the eye that sees, the object
seen, and vision. Whoever knows Him knows all ; whoever
knows Him not knows nothing. What know you indeed out of
Him? The phenomena of the world, their laws, the com
position and decomposition of bodies, the science of dust.
You do not even reach so far ; for, to attain to this, you must
at least penetrate the last reason of an atom, and where will
you find it if you ignore God, the principle and the end of all ?
From thence come those lamentations of the greatest minds
about the poverty of science, lamentations so eloquently
expressed by Solomon, one among them, when he said : " I
have seen all things that are done under the sun, and behold
all is vanity and vexation of spirit." % It is, in fact, because
* Exodus iii. 14. + John xiv. 6.
X Ecclesiastes i. 14.

GOD. 227
truth is not under the sun, it is above ; it is in God, without
whom man knows nothing, neither earth, nor heaven, nor
present, nor future, nor man, nor even his own heart. And
the more he learns without God and out of God, the more he
enlarges, with the circle of his investigations, that of his doubts
and torments. On the other hand, the man to whom God is
revealed finds himself at the same moment in the centre and
at the circumference of things ; he sees their initial germ, their
development, their term, their reason ; if he knows nothing of
the detail, he measures the whole, and his mind peacefully
reposes in the double joy of knowledge and certainty. In a
word, God, being truth, is the proper object of our intelligence,
He is its perfection and beatitude ; and when I said to you but
now, that from the first He had given to us the gift of truth, I
said that from the first He had revealed Himself to us.
I find a beautiful confirmation of this in the first page of
the Gospel of St. John — "There was," says the Evangelist, "a
man sent from God, whose name was John. . . . He was not
the light, but was sent to give testimony of the light. That
was the true light which enlighteneth every man that cometh
into this world." If indeed there exist a supreme light, mother
of all minds, its first act, when they come into the world, should
be to enlighten them, and it can enlighten them only by making
known to them their principle, which is God ; their end, which
is God ; truth, which is God. If it failed to do this, what means
would they have of accomplishing their destiny by tending to
wards their end ? They would have none. And thus truth is not
only due to them by right of the perfection and beatitude of the
intelligence, it is due to them also as the first and necessary
means, without which, being ignorant even of the object of
their life, it would be impossible for them to advance towards
that object, still more impossible to attain it. It is then with
justice that Catholic doctrine makes truth — that is to say, the
knowledge of God — one of the primitive gifts of man, the
starting-point, and I shall add, the milestone of his destiny.
To this, what does rationalism oppose ? You shall hear.
Eighteen hundred years ago a Roman proconsul called a
prisoner before him, and after having attentively examined him
as a man whose appearance was remarkable, he spoke to him
these few words : " Thou art the King of the Jews ? " The
accused replied : " My kingdom is not of this world. If my
kingdom were of this world my servants would certainly strive
Q 2

228 MAN AS AN INTELLIGENT BEING.
that I should not be delivered to the Jews ; but now my
kingdom is not from hence." The proconsul continued :
" Art thou a king, then ? " The accused answered : " Thou
sayest that I am a king. For this end was I born, and for
this cause came I into the world, that I should give testimony
to truth." The proconsul stood up and said : " What is truth ?" *
This terrible question is the same that rationalism even now
addresses to us whenever we speak of the basis of all faith and
knowledge. Like the Roman, it asks : What is truth ? And
it must ask this question under pain of not protesting against
the very foundation of the whole religious edifice, which is the
idea of truth in itself. Now how could rationalism avoid
protesting up to this point? How could it permit truth to
affirm itself without being contradicted ? How could it refrain
from digging out under truth an abyss as deep as itself, and
from making of the intelligence a faculty without certainty and
without any other object than that of an incomprehensible
enigma ? It would be too weak on the part of rationalism, or
too disinterested. It has not committed this fault, it has
advanced straight to the question that precedes all others, and
whilst the universe proclaims the works of truth, ages repeat
its name, minds contemplate it, and its action is perpetuated
by evidence and faith through the whole course of human
generations, rationalism, opposing to that triumph the imper-
turbation of some of its sages, has boldly and fearlessly asked :
What is truth ? It has not denied ; for to deny boldly is also
to affirm. It has not said : There is nothing ; but, Is there
anything? It has not said : I know not; but, What do I know?
In a word, it has raised up against absolute truth the icy arm
of absolute scepticism.
Must we listen ? Must we do so much honour to the reason
which abdicates its throne, as to listen and reply ? Yes, let
us listen ; let us learn how far intelligence afraid of God is
able to annihilate itself from fear of adoring Him. Scepticism
reasons thus : Man sees in his mind something which he calls
ideas, some, secondary and deduced, others, primordial with
out a generating principle, and which constitute the inscrutable
foundation of his reason. All the ulterior conclusions of the
understanding flow from this primary source, wherein analysis
readily discerns the notions of being, unity, the infinite, the
* John xviii. 33, 36-38.

GOD. 225
absolute, order, justice, which together take the august name
of truth, or a still more august name, that of God. This is
the fact. But because the mind possesses such ideas, does it
follow that out of itself there are realities which correspond to
them ? It is not the mind itself which is being, unity, the
infinite, the absolute, order, justice ; nor does the mind
directly perceive these. It sees but their shadow, if we may
so speak, and the very word idea, in its origin, means only
an image. But who can assure us that the image is exact, or
even that it is produced by a real object? How can the
intelligence, which is limited, be the mirror of the infinite ?
How, being contingent, relative, fallible, can it be the mirror
of the necessary, the eternal, the just, the perfect? What
proof have we that the ideal vision does not deceive us, and
that it is any other thing than the permanent dream of a pass
ing being ? We believe that it is not so, but we believe this
without demonstrating it, and we vainly endeavour to establish
that demonstration ; for every demonstration supposes prin
ciples upon which it is based, and these very principles of the
understanding we have now to verify. Man encounters there
an invincible obstacle ; he may be able to ascend the Nile of
his thoughts even to the elements which begin its course ;
beyond this, he becomes lost in a contemplation which renders
to him but the sterile repetition of the ideas which he employs
to enable him to advance farther. The mind becomes an
echo which answers to itself, and its voice appearing to it to
come from a greater distance adds only an illusion to its
powerlessness. I do not think that scepticism has said anything stronger
than what you have just heard ; it has perhaps said this in a
more scientific manner, that is to say, in a more obscure
manner, but not with more energy and sincerity. And I
confess in the first place that it is impossible to demonstrate
the primary ideas which form, as it were, the intimate substance
of our reason. If they could be demonstrated, they would not
be primitive ; others would be so, and the same difficulties
would arise in regard to them. We demonstrate only that
which is a consequence, and not that which is a principle.
N ow our intelligence, being the faculty of a finite being, can
be enlightened only by a transmitted light, a light which begins
at a certain point and ends at another, a light which has a
principle and an end. As principle, light is an axiom; as end,

230 MAN AS AN INTELLIGENT BEING.
it is a mystery. Both of these, the axiom and the mystery, are
indemonstrable, but the axiom is so on account of its clearness,
the mystery on account of its obscurity. As the obscurity of
the mystery is insurmountable, the clearness of the axiom is
irresistible, and thus the understanding, at the two extremes of
the horizon which it embraces, encounters a limit where its
power is broken, or where its liberty ceases. It is powerlesi
against the splendour of primary truths, and against the obscu
rity of final truths; it is exhausted before the former, and
yields inevitably to the latter. This is why absolute scepticism
is an effort against nature, which terminates only in self-decep
tion, and in placing the actions of the man in perpetual
contradiction with the reasonings of the sage. "If," said
Pascal, " there is an impossibility of proving, which is invin
cible to all dogmatism, there is an impossibility of doubting,
which is invincible to all pyrrhonism." We make no higher
pretensions. For, what is certainty, but the impossibility of
doubting? What is rational certainty, but the rapture caused
by evidence which captivates the mind? Scepticism, it is
true, stands up against the evidence of primordial ideas ; it
accuses this evidence of being purely subjective, that is to say,
speaking so as to be understood, not attaining to a vision of
the object which the ideas represent. But what matters it, if
that evidence assures us naturally and invincibly of the reality
of the things which the ideas represent ? There is none but God,
who — as being, unity, the infinite, the absolute, order, justice —
confounds in His vision the subject and the object, the subject
seeing and the object seen. For us who possess truth without
being truth, we have no other natural means of beholding
it and of being sure of its presence, than the light by which
it appears to us, an intervening light. which identifies itself
with our minds, and which, seizing it as a part of itself, leaves
it no other room for doubt than the resource of an act of
suicide, so much the more powerless as it is never accomplished.
Indeed it may be said that there is nothing to reply to
absolute scepticism ; because there is nothing to reply to those
who make objects of doubt of their ideas, their words, their
very doubts. To reply, is to suppose a reality, were it only
that of the objection. Now, as the sceptic destroys all reality,
his objection becomes lost with him in the void which he
hollows out for himself. It suffices to be silent before a
shadow ; to live before a dead body. So much the more as

GOD. 231
scepticism is but the malady of a small number of depraved
minds, who, notwithstanding all the energy of their pride and
all the glory of their aberrations, have never been able to
escape from the chastisement of solitude. The generality of
intelligent men have constantly disdained their sophisms, and
believed with incorruptible faith in the reality of truth. What
need you more ? Error is something only by the adhesion of
men ; wherever mankind is not in a certain measure, nothing
is left to error but a little noise in an empty tomb. It is a
phantom which hopes to scare us, but the laugh of God and
man render justice to it. This suffices for God and mankind ;
it is sufficient also for me.
If, however, absolute scepticism is but an unimportant
chimera, it is not so of another kind of scepticism, which,
attacking truth from a lower point, and not contesting its
principal basis, produces a serious state of mind which it is
necessary for us to notice. Absolute scepticism places in
doubt the primitive notions that form the basis of human
reason, and consequently the very idea of God; relative or
imperfect scepticism gives its adhesion to these ideas, but
refuses its faith to certain consequences which flow from them,
and which embrace the nature of the divine acts. Absolute
scepticism is atheism under a negative form ; imperfect scep
ticism implies only an ignorance of the attributes and opera
tions of God. It believes that God exists, but it does not
take account of what He is, of what He does, or of what He
wills to do. This is vulgar unbelief, and this very expression
teaches us that it is no longer a question of a rare and
chimerical condition, but a condition too real, in which man,
so far from abdicating his intelligence, derives from it, on the
contrary, forces for resisting truth, that is to say, God. Now
God, we have said, manifests Himself to man from his cradle,
not in an incomplete manner, but to the full extent required
by the need in which we stand of knowing our principle, our
end, and the means of attaining it. How, then, should a
certain portion of mankind be ignorant of God, or are they in
a state of doubt with regard to Him which hinders them from
appreciating and accomplishing their true destinies ? Is it the
fault of man or the fault of God ? It is needful for us to know
this, in order that obscurities may not be left in your minds,
which would be so much the more grievous, as it is now our
object and yours that you may be instructed in the intellectual

H32 MAN AS AN INTELLIGENT BEING.
ways which God has opened to us that we may ascend towards
Him. I repeat, then : Is that imperfect scepticism — such as I
have defined it, and in which so many reasonable beings pine
— the work of God or the work of man? Has God been
sparing of light, or is it man who has retreated from it ? In order
to solve this question, we must seek to learn by what means and
in what measure God primitively communicated truth to the
human race.
Doubtless God could have shown Himself to us face to
face, in all the brightness of His essence, and, in this case,
scepticism would never have appeared upon earth. Every
veil being withdrawn, truth, which is but the divine nature,
would have taken irrevocable possession of our intelligence.
Intelligible light, instead of appearing to us between the axiom
and the mystery, that is to say, with a principle and an end,
would have risen for us in all the ineffable plenitude of its own
immensity. Evidence would have been ecstasy, certainty
would have taken the character of immutability, truth would
have become the eternal life of our minds. But that state, so
far from being our original state in the divine plan, was pre
cisely the supreme term to which we were called. I have
already told you for what reason. I have shown you, in
exposing to you the general ordinance of the universe, that
God, moved by His goodness, willed to communicate to us His
perfection and beatitude, and that beatitude, given without
the previous condition of free will, would have deprived us of
the merit and glory of perfection. From whence it follows
that a state of trial should precede the final state of beatifica
tion, and that state of trial, founded upon free will, necessarily
included the possibility of believing or not believing, of
admitting or rejecting truth, that is to say, the liberty of the
understanding. Now, the liberty of the understanding was
incompatible with a direct vision of the divine essence, and
consequently it was needful that God should veil Himself
from our sight, and be for us at the same time a hidden God
and a God known, hidden without envy, known freely.
But how are we to see that which is unseen ? How are we
to know that which does not fall directly under the eye of the
mind ? If this difficulty could not be solved, the plan of God
in creation would be impossible to realise. Can it therefore be
solved ? God possessed in His double nature the pattern of a

GOD.

233

double vision, the intuitive vision and the ideal vision. Present
to Himself by the intuitive vision He discovered by the ideal
vision the things which He should one day create. These
things evidently formed no part of His essence under their
positive and realised form ; He did not then behold them in
Himself under that substantial form ; nor did He behold them
out of Himself before communicating to them the being which
was wanting to them. Where then, and how, did He behold
them, if not, as I have just said, by way of image, of repre
sentation, under that intelligible and mysterious form which we
call an idea ? St. Thomas of Aquinas proposes this question :
" Are there ideas in God ? " And he answers: "Yes; for as
the world was not made by chance, but by the action of the
divine intelligence, there must have pre-existed in the divine
intelligence a form or likeness of the world, and that form or like
ness is the idea itself."* Now, if God beheld the sensible world
by the ideal vision, why did not man see the divine world by the
same kind of vision ? Why, without discovering the very sub
stance of being, unity, the infinite, the absolute, order, justice
— all of which things are God under different aspects and under
different names — did he not receive the idea of Him in his
mind, and with the idea a distinct knowledge of Him, worthy
of being called truth ? Can we say that we do not understand
what is being, unity, the infinite, the absolute, order, justice ?
And if we do understand this, if this is the very torch that
enlightens all the rest, what is within our soul and what is
without, can we accuse God of not having enlightened us, of
not having cast before our life the pale and uncertain light of
visible things ? Yes, whilst hiding Himself from us, that is to
say, whilst leaving a veil upon the substantial fount of His
being, God has fully given Himself to us, by the exact impres
sion of His likeness in the living flesh of our understanding.
He has traced out in it luminous furrows, and with a generous
hand has sown that incorruptible germ of truth which teaching,
reflection, experience, and even the course of our years, un
ceasingly develop, so far as to cause us to attain, save by our
own fault, lo divine maturity ; to that glorious moment when
the image of God, fully formed within us, bursts the envelope
which covers it, and rejoins in immortality the ineffable type
which was its father, and which recognises its son.
* Summa, first part, quest. 15, art. I.

234 MAN AS AN INTELLIGENT BEING.
It is not then the want of light that precipitates a part of
mankind into scepticism and keeps them away from truth, it is-
the abuse of their free will. The darkness wherein they lose
God, is voluntary darkness ; God shows Himself, and they fly
from Him; God is the object present to their intelligence, and
they choose to make of their intelligence a sepulchre or a
chaos, rather than adore the star that shines upon it. They
abandon that inner light, the only true light, to pursue the
obscure and powerless attractions of the material universe
from which they expect the joy of apostasy in the pride of
false science. And yet the universe, all limited as it is, all
pale and silent as it rises before our minds, is itself full of
God. If it be not His likeness, it contains at least a vestige, a
lineament of Him ; from the hyssop to the cedar, from the dew
of morning to the evening star, all nature is a reflection of the
divine power, beauty, and goodness. God, who in the body
of man has associated matter with the most subtle operations
of the mind, has willed, in the body of the world, to associate
it with the revelation which His mind perpetually makes to our
own. To each ray of ideal light there corresponds a ray of
sensible light ; to each vision of the uncreated world, a vision
of the created ; to each voice of the one, the voice of the
other. But man separates what God has united ; enlightened
by a double light, because of his double substance, he does
not perceive that both meet in a single fount, as our double
substance terminates in one single personality, and, dividing
truth by a divorce which destroys it, he opposes the revelation
from without to the revelation from within, nature to God,
matter to spirit. Or at least he disdains the superior light, as
a sort of vague apparition in a badly defined horizon, whilst
he cleaves to the inferior light as to the only one which pos
sesses a precise and positive character. From that moment,
all that relates to God, His attributes, His acts, becomes
obscured in that adulterous understanding ; even if he does
not descend to absolute scepticism, he clearly distinguishes
only that which strikes the senses, and the true, in his eyes,
is that alone which bears the stamp of a palpable and vulgar
reality. Are there then really more obscurities in the mind than in
the body? Does the sensible world possess more clearness
than the intelligible world ? Is earth instead of heaven the
great illuminator of man, and has God erred in the construe-

GOD. 235
tion of our being so far as to have sacrificed the part which
tends towards Him to that which tends towards nothingness ?
You do not think so : Catholic doctrine affirms the contrary
for us, and the most simple observation of the exercise of our
faculties will show us that Catholic doctrine is in the right.
Even natural science — that is to say, that which occupies itself
only with the visible order — would be unable to subsist with
out employing notions which it draws from the invisible or
metaphysical order. Despoil man of these fertile principles,
take from him the ideas of being, unity, extent, force, relation,.
what would the universe be for him ? Precisely what it would
be for an animal — a spectacle. He would behold it without
thinking about anything but beholding it ; so far from pene
trating its laws, he would not even have a confused presenti
ment of what a law is. A purely instinctive being, rendering.
to the world nothing superior to the world, he would stand
mute before it, and his hand, which now leads the distant
stars, would never beforehand have traced out for them the
inevitable course which they unconsciously follow. It is the
mind that sheds light upon the obscurity of nature ; it is the
mind that discovers the connection and the cause of pheno
mena ; it is the mind that measures, calculates, analyses,
defines, dictates orders to matter ; in fine, that unravels in that
labyrinth the thread left there by God, and by which He still.
holds it suspended to the will that created it. But the mind.
without the idea is but an unlighted torch, and the idea with
out a germ sown from above, greater and clearer than all the
worlds, is itself but the powerless reflection of nature upon a
faculty which, possessing nothing, has nothing to respond
thereto. In vain materialism tells us that sensation becomes.
an idea on falling into the intelligence ; it is as if it said that
limit on entering into void becomes infinite. Sensation,
because of the intimate union between the soul and the body,
may awaken the intelligible grain that reposes in the depths of
the mind ; it may draw it forth from a kind of solitary abstrac
tion, which is not in relation with the constitution of a being.
at the same time spiritual and material ; but it is impossible
for it to give to the mind what it does not possess, or to receive
from the mind that which itself had not. Two lights become
strengthened by uniting ; a ray of light does not become the
sun by passing through darkness.
It is then by an abuse even of the forces of the intelligible

236 MAN AS AN INTELLIGENT BEING.
and divine order, that man withdraws from the exalted regions
of the mind to bury himself in the science of terrestrial pheno
mena. He draws from his intelligence treasures of knowledge
and harmony; he scatters them with profusion upon the world;
next, beholding it reinvested with that sublime beauty which
he has made for it, he believes that it is the world which has
enlightened him, that in it alone is full certainty, that it alone
merits the honour of assiduous cultivation, and, banishing
God to an inaccessible throne, he is not slow to lose sight of
Him, to forget Him, to misunderstand Him, to have no other
notion left of Him than a notion vague and profitless. Thus is
imperfect scepticism formed from the voluntary predominance
of the material order over the ideal order.
But there is another cause of this, about which I must not
be silent, and the exposition of which will fully make known to
you the means which God has employed to initiate our intelli
gence to the perfection and beatitude of truth.
In depositing within us the ideal or intelligible seed, in
placing us by our senses in relation with the phenomena and
laws of the universe, God enlightened us by a double revelation,
the one interior, the other exterior. This was a great gift ; but
it was not to communicate Himself to us personally, inasmuch
as He is truth ; had He remained there and given us nothing
more, we should have known Him only by means of nature
and ideas, that is to say, indirectly. He willed to advance
further, and, without however revealing to us His essence, to
establish personal relations between our minds and His own.
He spoke to us then. It is a fundamental point of Catholic
doctrine that a word of God was, from the very first, shed upon
mankind, and that it has never ceased to exist and to spread
in the world, either adulterated or in a pure state, as an im
mortal echo of truth ; an echo often weakened, often corrupted,
but rising again from its ruins through all generations, and
recalling to us, with the eloquence of perpetuity, the existence
of God, His nature, His acts ; that He is the principle, the end,
the means, the key of our destinies. Traditions, common to
all nations and all ages, continually attest that oral revelation
primitively made to the human race; human language itself,
'.onstantly transmitted by hereditary succession, and neither
historically nor logically permitting the possibility of an origin
by way of invention to be even perceived, bore testimony also
to the reality of an anterior and a divine language, from whence

GOD. 237
our own issued. In the forests man has been found lowered
to the rank of animals, from a precocious abandonment which
had deprived him of all teaching. Language from his lips was
nothing more than a vague, an inarticulate sound, a barbarous
cry indicating the presence of sensations and incapable of
transmitting ideas. All these facts confirm the page of Scripture
which shows God speaking with man ; and by the effusion of
oral light achieving that which the gift of intelligible and
sensible light had commenced within him. But it was reserved
for our epoch to acquire from that truth a demonstration as
marvellous as it was unlooked for.
Towards the end of the last century, a French priest,
touched by the misfortunes of those poor creatures who are
born deprived of speech because deprived of hearing — a cir
cumstance which again bears witness to the close connection
between the mystery of language and the mystery of a previous
instruction — a priest, I say, touched by the condition of the
deaf and dumb, devoted his life to leading them out of their
sad solitude, by seeking an expression of thought which might
reach their own and succeed in drawing from their bosoms, so
long closed, the secret of their inner state. He attained this
object. Charity, more ingenious than misfortune, had the
happiness of opening the issues which nature held closed,
and of pouring into these obscure and captive souls the in
effable, although imperfect, light of speech. The benefit was
great, the recompense was still greater. As soon as these un
known intelligences were penetrated, investigation discovered
in them nothing resembling an idea. I do not speak only
of a moral and religious idea, but of a metaphysical idea.
Nothing was found there but an image of what falls under the
investigation of the senses, there was nothing of what falls
from a higher region into the mind. Sensation was caught here
in the very fact of powerlessness. What do I say, sensation ? —
the intelligence itself, although endowed with the ideal seeds
of truth, although assisted by the revelation of the sensible
world, the intelligence appeared in the deaf and dumb in a
state of sterility. Men already ripe in years, born in our
civilisation, who had never quitted it, who had been present at
all the scenes of family and public life, who had seen our
temples, our priests, our ceremonies, those men being inter
rogated on the intimate working of their convictions, knew
nothing of God, nothing of the soul, nothing of the moral law,

338 MAN AS AN INTELLIGENT BEING.
nothing of the metaphysical order, nothing of any one of the
general principles of the human mind. They were in a purely
instinctive state. The experiment has been repeated a hundred
times, and a hundred times it has produced the same results ;
and hardly do we perceive, in the multitude of documents
published up to this time, a doubt or a difference of opinion
on so capital a fact, which is the greatest psychological dis
covery the history of philosophy can boast of. Has thought
then received in language an auxiliary so indispensable that,
without its help, man was condemned to incapability of emerg
ing from the reign of sensations ? Was language, for all the
operations of the intelligence, the point or means of junction
between the soul and the body? Did our double nature
require that sort of incarnation of what is most immaterial in
the world, or had God willed to make us comprehend the
dependency of our mind by rendering it incapable of becoming
fertile without the exterior action of oral instruction ?
Whatever may be the explanation of this, it has always
been found certain that man does not speak before he has
heard language, and that he thinks only after the ideas contained
in language have awakened the intelligible germ deposited in
the depths of his understanding. If he did not possess this
intelligible germ, language, in passing through the organs of
his hearing, would vainly solicit his intelligence; he would hear
it only as a sound, and not as a living expression of truth.
But truth pre-exists in him in the same manner as the tree
pre-exists in its seed and as the consequence pre-exists in its
principle. Just as after-teaching causes to bud forth within
each of us an innumerable multitude of deductions included
in primary ideas, but of which our mind had no consciousness,
so initial teaching causes the primary ideas themselves to
appear to our inner vision. You find it natural that language
should reveal to you mathematics, although you possess them
entire in the primordial notions of unity, number, extent,
weight: why does it appear strange to you that language
should cause you also to perceive notions of unity, number,
extent, weight, which are the base of mathematics? One of
these phenomena is not more remarkable than the other;
perhaps even it is more easy to understand the integral and
profound sleep of a faculty which nothing analogous to it had
yet disturbed, than to understand why that faculty, once called
into exercise, halts in its way, and waits for language to mani-

GOD.

23S

fest to it the simple consequences of what it clearly sees. The
fact, however, remains incontestable, and that language is
.always the primitive and necessary motor of our ideas, as the
sun, in agitating by his action the vast extent of air, produces
Ihere the brilliant scintillation which gives light to our eyes.
Thence it follows that Catholic doctrine is true when it
exhibits to us God teaching the first man, whether in causing
the truth of his intelligence to emerge by the percussion of the
verb, or in announcing mysteries to him which surpassed the
forces of the purely ideal order, as we shall by-and-by perceive.
In fact, since man thinks and speaks only after having heard
others speak, and since, on another hand, human generations
take their beginning in God, their Creator, it follows that the
first movement of language and thought remounts to the hour
of creation, and was given to man, who possessed nothing, by
Him who possessed all, and who willed to communicate all to
him. This movement once impressed, intellectual life began
for the human race, and has never since ceased. The divine
word, immortalised upon the lips of man, has spread like an
inexhaustible stream divided into a thousand branches through
the vicissitudes of nations, and preserving its force as well as
its unity in the infinite mixture of idioms and dialects, it per
petuates in the very seat of error the generating ideas' which
constitute the popular fund of reason and religion. If human
liberty vitiates its teaching, it is but in a limited manner ; its
efforts do not attain so far as to reach the lowest depths of
truth. Language, by that alone that it is pronounced, bears in
its essence a light which seizes the soul and renders it an
accomplice, if not in all, at least in the fundamental principles
without which man altogether disappears. Therefore, God, by
the effusion of His word continued in our own, does not cease
to promulgate the gospel of reason, and every man, whatever
he may do, is the organ and missionary of that gospel. God
speaks in us in spite of us ; the mouth that blasphemes still
contains truth ; the apostate who renounces Him still makes
an act of faith, the sceptic who mocks at all employs words
that affirm all.
However, if absolute scepticism is powerless against the
revelation of language, it is not the same with imperfect or
vulgar scepticism, which does not disavow human reason, but
contests only certain applications of it relative to the superior
order which does not fall under the investigation of our senses.

240 MAN AS AN INTELLIGENT BEING.
This kind of scepticism rejects in particular all personal rela
tion between God and us by means of language ; and maintains
that our ideas spring of themselves from the living sources of
the understanding, and in supposing that language may be
necessary to their intimate emission, does not recognise in that
marvellous functionary any traditional and divine character.
God has not spoken to man ; man has spoken of himself. He
is the son of his own works, and all that he possesses of truth
he owes to the success of his own investigations.
I have refuted this system, which is the corner-stone of
rationalism, and which explains to you the blindness wherein
so many creatures destined to know and love God live far from
Him. God has given light to us under three forms, which are
perfected by each other — the intelligible form ; the sensible
form; the oral or traditional form. Now rationalism admits
only the two former, and rejects with tradition the invincible
certainty found in the dogmas affirmed by God. It opens to
its adepts the field of unlimited speculation, to which the best
disposed bring but an imperfect intelligence, obscured by
prejudices of birth and education, still more dangerously
vitiated by the domination of the senses over the mind. But
were all these obstacles surmountable, there would still remain
the greatest of all, namely, the order established by God in the
communication of truth which He has made to man. If man
were a pure spirit, he would see truth in intelligible light,
without the help of any sensible element. If, being unity
composed of body and soul, he had not been destined to hold
personal relations with God, he would probably have seen
truth in the combination of intelligible and sensible light,
independently of all oral tradition. But he is at the same time
spirit and matter, and in addition he is called to live in society
with God ; and this is why truth has been communicated to
him under a mode which is triple and single, corresponding to
his nature and vocation. Would he think as an angel thinks ?
He cannot ; some exterior image always intervenes in his most
subtle operations. Would he think as an animal? He is
equally unable; the height of his speculations elevates him
even in the act by which he degrades himself, and even in
concluding that he is only matter he proves that he is spirit.
In fine, would he think like a being separated from God, inde
pendent of all personal relation with Him, supported by his
reason alone ? Doubtless he can do this, but only by losing

GOD. 241
at the same moment the equilibrium of his intelligence ; he
seeks, he hesitates, he deceives himself, and even when he
touches truth, the clouds that cover it and the horizon that
limits it take from him the hope of lifting by himself alone the
immense weight of earth and heaven. The history of the
human mind offers on every page superabundant proof of this.
Two systems of philosophy dispute for empire — religious and
traditional philosophy, and rationalist or critical philosophy.
The first, even when it is mixed up with errors, settles minds
and founds nations ; the second, even when it affirms a portion
of truth, destroys what the other builds up.
In a word, God, who is truth, has made Himself known to
us by three revelations which are but one, by ideas, by the
universe, and by language. Whoever breaks the bond that
unites these, confuses and divides the light that lightens every
man coming into the world ; he condemns himself to a state of
ignorance which knowledge does but increase ; he will live at
hazard like a being without principle or end, because he will
voluntarily have abdicated, with truth, that is to say, with the
knowledge of God, the highest means given to us to accom
plish our destiny— which is to tend towards God, and, by
imitating Him, to obtain the perfection of His nature and the
beatitude of His eternal life.

MAN AS A MORAL BEING,

My Lord, — Gentlemen,
Man is not simply an intelligence, he is not simply a
contemplative being. If God had given him only the activity
of contemplation, his life would have been limited to a simple
and perpetual vision, to an impassible adoration of truth.
But man is also an affective and an operative being; he is
endowed with a second faculty, which is the consequence of
the first, and has two acts, one expressed by the words : I
love; the other by: I command. This faculty is the will.
We have then to learn what God did for the will when He
created man, and what means He has communicated to us, in
and by the will, for attaining our end, which is perfection and
beatitude. But before entering upon this grave subject, gentlemen, I
have two requests to address to you. I pray you first, never to
applaud me, whatever may be the sentiment that moves your
hearts. Not that I do not comprehend the involuntary move
ment which, even at the feet of the altars, causes an assembly
to stand up, so to say, in unanimous witness of its sympathy
and its faith. But although on certain occasions these accla
mations might appear excusable, so much do they spring with
piety from the souls of an auditory, nevertheless I conjure you
to respect the constant tradition of Christendom, which is to
respond to the word of God only by the silence of love and the
immobility of respect. You owe this to God ; you owe it also
perhaps to him who speaks to you in His name. Although he
may not have been tempted jnto pride by your applause, he
may be suspected of not being insensible to it; it may be
supposed, that, instead of giving freely to you that which he
has freely received, he comes to seek its price in the glory of

GOD. 243
popularity, a recompense sometimes honourable, but always
fragile, and still more fragile, more vain, between those who
receive and him who gives the lessons of eternity.
The second request I would address to you is in favour of
a nation to which on more than one occasion, and even from
this place, I have already proved my respectful attachment.
Yesterday, three noble sons of Poland visited me ; they told
me that four thousand of their companions, after fifteen years
of exile, were about to approach their country, with the consent
of France, which opens to them her gates, and of Germany,
which permits them to pass through her territory. They asked
me, after having obtained permission from the chief of this
diocese, here present, to beg of you in their name, a last proof
of your pious fraternity ; for, if time has respected their glory
and not lessened their courage, it has left them those precious
remains, and nothing more. I bent before their desire as
before their misfortune ; I present them to you together. You
will not give them alms ; for although that word is dear to your
Christian hearts, there are times when the heroism of mis
fortune constrains you to seek a higher title. You will not pay
them tribute ; although that word supposes a debt, and a debt
of an important character, yet it does not sufficiently express
the unction of Christian language. Therefore, borrowing a
celebrated expression of the Middle Ages, I ask you to give
them a viaticum, that is to say, the travelling pay given in those
times to the members of religious orders and to the knights
who went to combat in the Holy Land for the emancipation
of Christendom. You will give a viaticum to those sons of
another hallowed land, to those soldiers of another generous
cause ; you will give them the triple viaticum of honour, exile,
and hope.
This said, this double satisfaction proposed to your heart
and to my own, I enter at once upon the subject which claims
your attention.
As truth is the object of the intelligence, good is the object
of the will. But what is good? What distinction is there
between the good and the true? Is it not the same thing
under two different names ? I grant that the good and the
true have the same root, the same substantial support, since
the true is being, and the good is also being. But as the
unity of th6 divine essence does not exclude the' triplicity of
persons, the unity of being does not hinder it from possessing

244 MAN AS A MORAL BEING.
many aspects. In the first place, it is light ; and under that
form reveals itself to the intelligence, and is called truth.
Next it is order, harmony, beauty ; and under that form it seizes
the will, and is called good. Our nature thus corresponds to
its own. Inasmuch as it is light, we respond to it by a faculty
destined to know the true ; inasmuch as it is order, harmony,
beauty, we respond to it by a faculty destined to reproduce
good in loving and practising it. And as -truth is the perfection
and beatitude of the intelligence, good is the perfection and
beatitude of the will.
In the first place, it is its perfection ; for outside of good
all is evil, that is to say, disorder, confusion, deformity : and
evidently the will which loves and produces disorder, confusion,
deformity, is in a false or an unjust state, as, on the other
hand, the will which loves and produces good, that is to say,
order, harmony, beauty, is in a state of justice or perfection.
I add that good is also the beatitude of the will : for thereby
and therein it produces the most powerful sentiment of man,
that sentiment which moves and fills from its very depths the
vast solitude of his soul. No doubt the joy of truth known is
great ; there is in the regard that encounters the splendour of
the true a motionless thrill, almost ecstatic ; but if it reach to
ecstasy, to tears, be sure that the intelligence has not alone
been touched, the vision has penetrated still further, man has
received the supreme shock from on high, the touch of love
which terminates all in itself as in God. In the intuition of
truth, man did not emerge from himself, he regarded the light
present to his mind, and entered into enjoyment of it as an
element or a part of his proper personality. By the impulsion
of love, he emerges from his own personality or his life ; he
seeks a foreign object, he attaches himself to it, he embraces
it, he longs to be transformed and absorbed into another than
himself. This rapture from self to self, which may be called
an attempt at suicide, gives him a bound of unspeakable
happiness, and the abandonment of his being becomes its
plenitude. This is love. But what has caused him to love ?
What has been powerful enough to take possession of that
being, and so to subject him as even to make him feel that
death in another is the best and highest life ? A power, gentle
men, has wrought this miracle, the power of good. Behind the
li^ht where being appears to him, or in that very light, man
has seen order, harmony, beauty, and this spectacle drawing

GOD. 245
him from the sterile contemplation of his own excellence, he
feels that he is led to divest himself of himself in order to live
in the object of his vision.
Nothing is more familiar to us than this movement ; of all
those of our nature it is the most universal, the most common,
and that which we most willingly push to extravagance. Our
life is passed in undergoing or regulating it. Every being possess
ing a certain amount of good, that is to say, endowed with
order, harmony, and beauty in a certain measure, there is not
one which is not capable of exciting within us some impression
of love. But from man to man especially that impression
appears and increases. Man is here below the masterpiece of
good. He draws to his noble form the charm of the two worlds
to which he belongs, the world of bodies and the world of
spirits. Superior in the ordering of his features even to the
imagination, which has never been able to conceive anything
more perfect, he also calls to them from the depths of his soul
the reflection of thought and the expression of virtue. If he
open his eyes, a spirit looks at you ; if his lips are left silent,
the grace of the heart animates in closing them ; if serenity
brighten his forehead, the peace of an upright conscience sheds
upon it light and repose ; every bend of his body, every move
ment of his life contains under a single expression of beauty
the double empire of visible and ideal good. Thence come
those attachments which make of human life a long course of
sacrifices rewarded by the happiness of loving and being lov -d.
We do not seek elsewhere the secret of being happy ; we k low
that it is there, and even when we abuse it by culpable passic ns,
in the very crime we still bear witness to that law of our nature.
Should man refuse us the love which we need, rather than
renounce that precious treasure, we shall seek it from beings
placed berieath us, but distantly preserving in their instinct
some likeness capable of beguiling our heart. The poor man
who has no other friend, makes one of some creature more
neglected than himself; he warms in his bosom that obscure
and faithful animal which a Christian writer has so well called
the poor man's dog. He smiles upon him with that ineffable
look of the forsaken ; he confides to him those unknown tears
which no tenderness wipes away; he shares his daily crust
with him, and that sacrifice made by hunger to friendship causes
him even in his poverty to enjoy the great happiness of riches,
the happiness of giving.

246 MAN AS A MORAL BEING.
Nor is this the last effort made by man to give and receive
love. The prisoner goes beyond the poor. Separated from
nature and mankind by inexorable barriers, he perceives in the
chinks of his dungeon some lowly insect, the imperceptible
companion of his captivity. He draws near to it with the
trembling emotion of hope and the delicacy of respect ; he
watches the mystery of its existence, marks its tastes, spends
long days in teaching it not to fear him, in leading it from
timidity to confidence, in order at last to obtain from it some
' reciprocal sign which will lessen the solitude of his heart and
widen his prison walls. The dog consoles the poor, the spider
melts the prisoner ; man, the child of good, carries everywhere
with him a love of it which turns into a resource and a joy
even the very horrors of isolation.
Need I say more ? Have not your souls passed beyond
my words, and do you not see that good, real or apparent,
disposes of our will and is its beatitude ?
But what, then, is good? It is true I have already told
you; I have said that good is the order, harmony, beauty,
which the intelligence discovers in the light where being
appears to it. Nevertheless, this definition, all exact though it
be, is not the term where your minds halt. You desire a more
profound explanation, you ask me where order, harmony,
beauty, are to be found?
Where ? Doubtless everywhere in nature, everywhere
before your eyes. There is not a leaf of the tree, not a blade
of grass, not a cloud skimming the heavens, which is not order,
harmony, beauty ; but not all order, all harmony, all beauty,
not all good. Every being, even the one perverted by his fault,
contains a portion of good, which is perceptible and excites our
sympathy ; it does not contain the totality of good. That is
order, which includes in its essence the rule from whence all
the relations of beings proceed; that is harmony, which has
weighed the worlds, and has traced out for them in space roads
in which they never wander ; that is beauty, which has made
man, and stamped upon his visage so much grace and majesty ;
that is good, from whence all good comes, and which has shed
it so profusely in the universe, without being able to give it all,
because it could not give the infinite. Order, harmony, beauty,
good, in one word, is God. As He is being and truth, He is
also good. Inasmuch as He is being, He has communicated
to us existence ; inasmuch as He is truth, He enlightens our

GOD.

247

understanding ; inasmuch as He is good, He inspires us with
the love, which, according to the language of the Gospel, is all
the law and all justice. For we can receive nothing greater,
give nothing greater, than love; it is the supreme credit or
debt, and whoever is quit towards it, is quit towards all. Now
the first to whom we are accountable for it, the first who has a
right to this highest treasure of our soul, is God, since God is
the only good, and since good alone is the cause of love.
Whoever has not loved God is certain not to love good.
He may, I grant, love particular things which are good, his
family, his friends, his country, honour, and even duty, if we
take duty in the narrow sense which governs the relations of
men among themselves ; he will not love the universal and
absolute good from whence proceed all the other phases of
good to which he has devoted his heart. And this is why he
will not attain to the perfection and beatitude of the will,
which, being in the love of good, can be found only in the love
of God. You see that in the mystery of love as well as in the
mystery of truth, we arrive at the same conclusion, namely,
that in God alone lies our perfection and our beatitude. And
it is impossible that you should wonder at this, since we have
established, as the foundation of doctrine, and as the knot of
our destinies, that God is at the same time our principle and
our end. Being our principle, He is the principle of each of
our faculties ; being our end, He is also the end of each of our
faculties. And that end identifying itself with the divine
perfection and beatitude, it is necessary for each of our
faculties, by the way proper to it, to draw from God the life
which renders it perfect and happy. Nevertheless, the
developments through which I have led you are not sterile
repetitions of the points of doctrine which we have before
advanced and demonstrated ; for, besides causing you to see
their application to each of the springs of human activity, they
verify those doctrines superabundantly by the analysis of our
acts and of their objects. What joy do we not feel, in simply
defining the intelligence and the will, on meeting God at the
term of their operations ! What ecstasy to be unable to name
either truth or good, without naming God Himself ! And, in
addition, those investigations lead us straight to the means
which we must have received for attaining our end. Already,
in the last conference, we have proved that the first of these

248 MAN AS A MORAL BEING.
means is the knowledge of God; we are now prepared to
conclude that the love of God is the second.
In fact, that love being the perfection and beatitude of our
will, and God having designed to communicate the one and
the other to us, as we have seen, it follows that, according to
the order of His design, He should create us in a state of love
with Him ; of initial love, it is true, subject to the trial of our
free will, but preparing us and leading us, save prevarication on
our part, to the final and beatific union of consummated
charity. This is what Catholic doctrine teaches us, when it
represents tous the fii3t man being born in original charity
or justice. Remark, I pray you, that beautiful alliance of
expression ; in Christian language, charity is the synonym of
justice, and justice is the synonym of charity. I have just
told you for what reason. Without that divine justice of love,
man is separated from God, even in knowing Him ; and,
being separated from Him, he can but descend towards misery
and death, by the road directly opposed to that into which the
order of his creation calls him. According 'to that order, he
has received God for his end, truth for his guide, charity for his
motor. If he wander, it is not in default of means, but of will.
Here we again encounter the intervention of free will in
our destinies, and, if its presence disturb you, I might limit
myself to repeating that without free will the gifts of God
would remain in us as we received them, with a character of
fatality which would make of our perfection a work unworthy
of God or of us. But this explanation, all sufficient though
it be, calls for developments which would have been premature
when we exposed to you the general plan of creation, and
which are no longer so when we touch, in the question of the
will, the foundations of the moral order. The will is the seat
of free choice as well as of love ; we love by the same organ
which gives us the empire of our acts, and which, with that
empire, imposes our personal responsibility. And these three
things blended together, free will, love, and responsibility, are
those which indivisibly constitute the moral order. Free will
presents the choice, love chooses, man responds. Why is it
so? Is it arbitrary wisdom that has enchained these three
elements of our activity ? Or is there some profound reason
for this which it is our duty to penetrate, in order to illuminate
with a final trait the mystery of God in the creation of this
world ?

GOD. 249
You think I shall adopt the last conclusion ; I do adopt it,
and I ask that question which includes all the rest in itself :
Is there any essential relation between love and free will which
makes the one the condition of the other ? To know this, it
is necessary for us thoroughly to scrutinise love. It plays also
so important a part in our souls and in Christianity, that we
shall not regret the thoughtful regard which we shall have
thrown upon its essence.
Nothing is more simple, more single, than love ; and yet
it includes three acts in the unity of its movement. In the
first place, it is an act of preference. Man, however great his
heart may be, cannot cleave alike to all ; surrounded by objects
which, in divers degrees, bear the stamp of good, he feels
degrees in the attraction which inclines him towards them, sym
pathetic degrees, whose order does not solely depend upon the
comparative goodness of the beings, but also upon their secret
resemblances to ourselves. Often even we do not take account
of the motives of our preference ; what is certain is that we have
preferences, and that love begins in us by that first movement,
which is choice. What is also certain is that choice, in him
who is its author, as in him who is its term, gives the impulsion
to the elevated joys of love. We are happy in choosing, happy
also in being chosen. Two beings meet in the immensity of
time and space, through the numberless chances of creation ;
they meet as if they had given rendezvous to each other from
all eternity ; they are united by a reciprocal preference which
honours both, and flatters in their pride that which is pure and
venerable. Nothing surpasses the original charm of that
instant which remains the first in our memory, as it was the
first in our heart. After years had weakened other impressions,
that still subsists in its serene youth, and carries us back to
those happy days when we felt the glory of choosing and of
being chosen. But what would choice be without free will ?
What would it be without the faculty of preferring what pleases
us ? Doubtless the motives of preference exist in the perfec
tion of the being who is its object ; but they exist also and
equally in the will which makes the choice. It may despise,
it may reject an excellence towards which it feels no sympathy,.
for another with which it corresponds, and herein consists the
value of its act, a sovereign act which confers honour and pro
duces joy only because it is sovereign.
Love, however, does not stop at the act of choice, it exacts

.25° MAN AS A MORAL BEING.
devotedness to the being chosen. To choose is to prefer one
being to all others ; to be devoted is to prefer that being to
ourselves. Devotedness is the immolation of self to the object
loved. Whoever does not reach this point does not love. In
fact, preference alone implies only an inclination of the soul
which seeks to dilate in that which has caused it, an inclination
honourable and precious, doubtless, but which, thus limited,
results only in seeking itself in another. If many affections
stop at this point it is because many affections are but disguised
egotism ; we feel an attraction, we yield to it, we think that we
love, we have perhaps the glimmerings of real love ; but when
the hour for devotedness comes, the dread of sacrifice shows
us the vanity of the sentiment which preoccupied without pos
sessing us. We see frequent and lamentable examples of this
in the passions which have for their principle the fugitive
beauty of the body. Nothing intelligible and immortal inter
vening between the souls which yield to these sad seductions,
their charm soon disappears in the very ardour which produced
them, and they leave in the heart nothing but the devastations
of egotism increased by deceptive enjoyments. Virtue alone
produces love, because virtue alone produces devotedness. We
¦see proof of this in all the affections in which virtue mingles
the divine balm of its presence. It is virtue that inspires the
mother bent night and day over the cradle of a child ; it is
virtue that inspires the breast of the soldier, and leads him on
to death for the cause of his country ; it is virtue that fortifies
the martyr against the threats of tyrants, and causes him to
recline in the tortures prepared for him as in the nuptial and
joyful couch of truth. These are the signs by which the world,
all corrupt though it be, recognises and admires love, and if
love cannot always manifest itself by heroic sacrifices, it con
stantly shows by lesser immolations that it bears with it the
germ which renders it as " strong as death,"* to use an expres
sion of Solomon.
But devotedness is not possible without free will. To
devote ourselves, we have said, is to prefer another to our
selves, is to give ourselves to another to be his own. Now,
how can we give ourselves if we are not free ? How can we
prefer another to ourselves, if we cannot dispose of ourselves ?
A being, deprived of free will, is under the fatal ascendency of
* Canticle of Canticles, viii. 6.

GOD. 251
a foreign dominatiori ; he thinks, he moves only by the thought
and will which hold him captive, by that inner captivity in
which nothing remains to the proper action of his personality.
Does such a being, thus despoiled of himself, preserve the
right to give himself? He may die, but he^dies as the stone
falls, the slave of death and not of love. Even then, as free
will is the condition of love, inasmuch as love is a sentiment
of preference, it is also its condition, inasmuch as love is the
impulsion of devotedness.
There remains a third act which crowns the marvellous
drama of which our will is the theatre and the author. After
we have chosen the object of our preference, after we have
given ourselves to that object by sacrifice, all is not achieved.
That object must prefer us, must give itself to us, and from
that reciprocal choice and devotedness results a fusion of the
two beings in the same thoughts, the same desires, the same
wills — a fusion so ardent and so intimate that it would attain
even to consummating them in one unique substance, if that
power of joining substantial unity to personal plurality were not
the exclusive privilege of the most holy and indivisible Trinity.
At least we feel as it were the foreshadowing of this, and the
limit where, with the power of union, the power of created love
•expires, is most painful to us. Union is the term of love, the
term where it has nothing more to produce but the persever
ance of its acts and the immortality of its happiness. But
union, as well as preference and devotedness, needs free will ;
for to unite it is necessary to be two, and we are two only on
condition of preserving on either part the plenitude of our
personality, and this we cannot do without free will. The soul
in which free will does not exist, or has never existed, which
has never been capable of emitting a thought or an act of
volition of its own, that soul is absorbed in another ; it is
annihilated, by its powerlessness to be the equal of a free soul,
and to give to it, in reciprocal love, the preference, devotedness,
and union which it receives.
I know not if it be an illusion, but it seems to me that
nothing is more clear than this essential relation between free
will and love; and consequently nothing is more clear also
than the reasons whence divine wisdom has drawn the reso
lution of placing us in the world with the perilous gift of liberty.
God had no need of us ; He has freely chosen to communicate
His blessings to us and unite us to Himself; He has also freely

252 MAN AS A MORAL BEING.
loved us. Now, in its nature, love exacts love ; it is impossible
to prefer without willing to be preferred, to devote ourselves
without willing that our devotedness should be returned, and,
as to union, it could hardly be conceived without the idea of
reciprocity. Reciprocity is the law of love ; it is the law of
love between two equal beings ; how much more so must it be
between two beings of whom one is the Creator and the other
the creature ; of whom one has given all, and the other has
received all ! God had an infinite right to be loved by man,
because He had loved him with an eternal and infinite love, and
consequently He should place man in the only condition in
which He could render him preference for preference, devoted
ness for devotedness, union for union, that is to say, in the
glory and trial of free will. It was the right of God ; but,
strange to say, it was also the right of man, or at least his
honour, since, without that gif: of free will, man would neither
have been able to choose nor to devote himself, nor, con
sequently, to love in the true and generous sense of the word.
Ask, then, no longer why man is free ; why he is not born
in a state of perfection and beatitude without peril of failure.
He is free, because he should love ; he is free, because he
should choose the object of his love ; he is free, because ¦ he
should devote himself to the object of his choice ; he is free,
because in the union which terminates love he should bring
the stainless dowry of an entire personality ; he is free, in fine,
because God has freely loved him, and has willed to receive
from him the equitable recompense of full reciprocity.
I do not, however, disguise to myself the difficulty which
rises in your minds ; it is grave, and I will endeavour to be its
exact interpreter.
According to Catholic doctrine, the trial of free will ceases
with the present life of man; once disappeared from this
world and called before the supreme judge, man passes into a
state of happy or miserable consummation which leaves him
neither the honour, nor the danger, nor the resource of choice.
If, then, free will be essential to the reality of love, it follows
that the saints, in the beatitude of eternity, love God only
under the form of incomplete and impersonal affection, which
it is absurd to suppose.
Doubtless it is absurd to suppose, and 1 shall neither
suppose nor say this. When the saints enter into heaven,
vanquishers of death and life, they do not enter there deprived

GOD. 253
of their anterior existence, as beings without past, without
future, without acquired habits; on the contrary, they enter
into full possession of a personality laboriously perfected, with
all their soul and all their works, according to that beautiful
prophecy of the apostle St. John, who, by the Spirit of God,
beholding the last days of the world, heard from on high a
voice which said : " Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord
.... for their works follow them."* Their works follow them
because they are living like them and in them, living in the
love which was their fruit, and which mounts with the saints
to heaven, not to lose there its primitive character of choice
and devotedness, but to preserve it there for ever in the
immutability of beatific vision. The saints have not another
heart in heaven than that which they had on earth ; the very
object of their pilgrimage was to form in them, by means of
trial, a love which should merit to please God and subsist
eternally before Him. So far from that love changing its
nature, it is its nature itself, it is its degree acquired in the free
exercise of the will which determines the measure of beatitude
in each elect of grace and judgment. According as man
brings to God more ardent affection, he derives deeper ecstasy,
more perfect felicity from the vision of the divine essence. It
is the movement of his heart, as death has seized it, which
regulates his place at the seat of life, and it is the unalterable
perseverance of that movement, caused by the view of God,
which alone distinguishes the love of time from the love of
eternity. God recognises in His saints the apostles, the martyrs,
the virgins, the doctors, the hermits, the hospitallers, who have
before confessed and served Him in the tribulations of the
world ; the saints in their turn recognise in God the being to
whom they gave their undivided love in the time of their
suffering and their liberty. Nothing is foreign to them in the
sentiments which they feel, nothing is new to them in their
heart. They love Him whom they had chosen; they enjoy Him
to whom they had given themselves ; they ardently embrace
Him whom they already possessed ; their love expands in the
certainty and joy of an inamissible union ; but it is not"
separated from the stalk that bore it. God gathers, but does
not detach it ; He crowns, but does not change it.
It is thus that the trial of free will ceases, and that, not-
* Apocalypse xiv. 13.

254 MAN AS A MORAL BEING.
withstanding, love subsists entire in the soul where God rewards
it. But up to this point there is a struggle in the heart of man
between good and evil, between his tendency towards God by
charity, and towards himself by the egotism of the passions.
The outer world arms itself to overcome him by all the beauties
which it has received in another design ; it opposes the visible
charm to the eternal order which should obtain all our regards
and regulate all our acts. Balanced as we are between these
two attractions, we need strength to keep us attached to the
polar star of real good, and that strength we call by a still more
illustrious name than that of love — we call it virtue. Love
without virtue is but weakness and disorder; by virtue, it
becomes the accomplishment of all duties, the bond that
unites us first to God, next to all the creatures of God; it
becomes justice and charity, two things which form but one,
and which were given to us on the day of our creation, to be,
after truth, the second means of responding to our destiny and
attaining our end.
I should have nothing more to say to you if, now as always,
we had not to seek in rationalism for the counterproof of the
doctrine I have just exposed to you. This doctrine attests
that there exists an infinite difference between good and evil,
since good is God, inasmuch as He is order, and evil is oppo
sition to order, that is to say, to God; it attests that good is
the object of the will, its perfection, its beatitude, and that the
will corresponds thereto by love, the disinterested fruit of free
jvill and virtue ; it affirms, in fine, that man, being free to love
or to hate, to do or not to do good, is responsible for his
actions before the supreme justice of God. Is this also the
doctrine of rationalism ? In affirming the contrary, I have no
need to tell you that I take the word rationalism in its general
acceptation, and not as representing this or that class of philo
sophers. Rationalism has but one principle, which is the suffi
ciency of reason alone to explain the mystery of destinies.
but it has a thousand heads which contradict each other, and
which consequently never bear together the responsibility
of the same errors. This diversity discharges such philo
sopher from such condemnable system ; it does not discharge
rationalism, whose starting-point is the cause of all the dogmas
that deceive thought by corrupting truth.
I wished to give you this explanation at the moment when
rationalism 5s about to appear to you in its most odious form.

GOD. 255,
Already you have seen it denying the existence of God, the
creation of the world by God, the primitive intercourse be
tween God and man, and placing in doubt even the very
notion of truth. After such ruins, could it respect the dis
tinction between good and evil? That distinction is but a.
consequence of the idea of God ; this overthrown, the moral
order disappears of itself. However, it is one thing to attack
moral order in its source, another to attack it in front and
directly. Were there nothing of God there, or were He a God
indifferent to the acts ot man, the soul might still endeavour
to take refuge in itself, and by its own strength create for
itself sacred duties. Notwithstanding the profundity of
negations upon which it rests, it might choose not to deny
itself, but by a generous contradiction, acknowledge laws and
impose duties upon itself. However feeble that barrier may
be, it is a vestige of conscience, an honour for man, a safe
guard for society. What a crime, then, is it to dispute our
possession of it, and pursue the idea of good even to the
ruins amongst which we have formed this last and miserable
refuge ! Rationalism has not been ashamed to do this ; after
having attacked moral order in its principle, which is God, it
has seized upon our soul as upon the remains of a prey, and
defying us in this our supreme refuge, it contests the reality of
love and the reality of free will.
Ingenuous that I was, I spoke to you but just now of
sympathetic attractions, of disinterested preferences, of volun
tary sacrifices. I represented to you the ascendency of
good over the heart of man ; I deceived you, if we must
believe rationalism, I deceived you cruelly, and myself with
you. Would you know the truth ? Man acts only from one
single motive, his own interest; he calls good that which is
useful to him, evil that which lessens the value of the things
and enjoyments of which he is in possession. Duty, if he
observe it, is but a means 'of preserving his rights ; love, if he
feel it, is but a sentiment of pleasure. Egotism is at the
fount of every human act, under whatever appearance or what
ever name it may be hidden ; and those grand expressions of
devotedness, abnegation, immolation of self, serve but to dis
guise our true inclinations under a show which flatters our
pride. The mother loves and seeks herself in her child ; the
soldier idolises himself in the glory of his captain or his
country; death even is atoned for by the admiration which

256 MAN AS A MORAL BEING.
causes us to live again, as we believe, in posterity. Assuredly,
if we may hope to find in man a pure sentiment of personal
interest, we should seek for it in the soul of the Christian,
since Christianity reposes upon the mystery of a God who
gratuitously died for us. And yet to what does the Christian
devote his life 1 To labour for his salvation, that is to say, to
avoid hell and obtain paradise. His most heroic works are
but a bargain which he makes with God. He knows that they
are all registered, that not one falls to the ground, and that he
will one day find again the smallest particle in an increase of
felicity. Is this forgetfulness of self? Is this that charity
come down from heaven, immolated on a cross, and raised
again from the tomb to live in the heart of generations ? Alas !
it would be better to confess our indelible egotism, and to
recognise with the sincerity of true philosophy that every
being, whatever it may be, acts and lives but for itself.
We are asked for an avowal ; let us begin by making it.
Yes, it is impossible for any being endowed with intelligence
and will to separate himself completely from his acts. I think,
I will, I love ; in whatever way I take it, it is I, myself, who
thinks, who wills, who loves, and it is not in my power to
take that I from myself. Whether I perform a good or a bad
action, I am present in it, and have the enjoyment of it. Yet
more, I should not perform it if I had no enjoyment in it.
For every action supposes an end, and the last end of man
being beatitude, for which God has expressly created him, it
is absolutely chimerical to imagine that he acts without having
before him the thought and motive of his happiness. And .
let me ask you, was there no difference between Nero and
Titus ; between Nero killing his mother, and Titus contributing
to the happiness of the human race ? Is there no difference
between the soldier who turns his back in a battle, and the
soldier who dies with his face towards the enemy and his
•country in his heart ? Leonidas at Thermopylae, Demosthenes
at Chaeronea, are they the same ? You may say so, but I
defy you to think so. You will not even say so before an
assembly of men who honour you by listening to your words ;
even if your conscience lie to itself, it would not be bold
enough to lie in the face of mankind. If there is one indi
vidual here who confounds in the same estimation and the
same contempt crime and virtue, let him stand up ! let him
speak ! And yet it is most true : Titus, like Nero, sought his

GOD. 257
happiness ; there was no difference between them on this
head ; and if egotism consists in willing to be happy, Titus was
an egotist by the same title as Nero.
But does egotism consist in willing to be happy ? This is
precisely the question. It would be very strange if happiness
and immorality should be one and the same thing. Happiness
is the vocation of man ; it is the natural and predestinate
patrimony of all intelligent beings. Whoever among them
comes into the world comes into it to be happy. It is his
right : what do I say ? It is his duty. For his duty is to obey
God, and God has pointed out to him two equal and parallel
orders in calling him into life ; the order of perfection and the
order of beatitude. But, remark attentively what I have said ;
happiness is the patrimony of all, of all without exception ; it is
the natal land and the future country of all those who have not
voluntarily repudiated it. And from this a great consequence
follows, it is that no one should attribute to himself the happi
ness of others, and that all being children of the same father,
inheritors of the same kingdom, we are commanded to live
together in the divine fraternity of one and the same beatitude.
He who usurps the part of another, who would be happy at the
expense of his brethren, who, by cunning or violence, divides
the spotless and seamless garment of felicity, is guilty of a
crime which includes all other crimes; he is guilty of egotism,
and since the beginning of the world he has borne a name and
a mark — the name of Cain, and the mark of reprobation. He,
on the contrary, who desires to be happy with all, who takes
from another no part of his patrimonial right to happiness, who
gives even of his own, he also, since the beginning of the world,
has borne a name and a mark — the name of Abel, and the
mark of charity. Charity does not consist in being unhappy
any more than egotism consists in being happy ; it consists in
not troubling the good of others, and in communicating to
them our own ; a communication which, so far from im
poverishing, enriches at the same time the receiver and the
giver. Good has received from God that admirable elasticity,
that the sharing it multiplies without lessening it, and that
falling from the right hand, it returns to the left, like the ocean
which receives all the waters of the earth, because it renders
them all back again to the heavens.
This explanation, you will say, justifies the intimate senti
nent of mankind, which has always placed an infinite difference

258 MAN AS A MORAL BEING.
between good and evil, which has execrated Nero and idolised
Titus ; but, in granting that personal happiness is the necessary
end of all the acts of man, do you not destroy the very notion
of love and devotedness ? How can there be any sacrifice, any
preference of others to ourselves, where we seek ourselves ?
I have not said that personal happiness was the necessary
end of all the acts of man ; for that word personal excludes
from the happiness of each the happiness of all, and I have
declared, on the contrary, that happiness is a universal and
indivisible patrimony, which no one could appropriate exclu
sively to himself without being guilty of the crime of egotism.
Learn, then, that duty, love, devotedness, consist in making of
our happiness the happiness of others, and of the happiness of
others our own happiness, whilst egotism consists in deriving
happiness from the misfortunes of others. Nero wished the
Roman people had but one head, that he might take it off at a
single blow : this is egotism. Titus considered that day to be
lost in which he failed to render someone happy : this is love.
"To love," Leibnitz has said, "is to place our happiness
in the happiness of another." That sublime definition needs
no commentary : it is understood or not understood. He
who has loved understands it; he who has not loved will
never understand it. He who has loved knows that a
shadow in the heart of his choice would darken his own ;
he knows that nothing would be a sacrifice, prayers, tears,
watchings, toil, privations, that would bring one smile upon
the sorrowing lips ; he knows that he was dead to redeem
a compromised life ; he knows that he was happy in another,
happy in another's graces, happy in another's virtues, happy
in another's glory, happy in that other's happiness, and that,
had his blood been needed to increase that other's happi
ness, become his own, he would have given it, even to the last
drop, with the sole regret of being able to die but once. He
who has loved knows this. He who has not loved is ignorant
of it ; I pity him, and I do not reply to him.
I pity him, because he has known nothing either of human
or of divine life ; I do not reply to him, because the testimony
of a dead man proves nothing against the living. What is it to
us, Christians, if we must appeal to ourselves ? what is it to be
accused of indifference towards God by a man who has never
loved God ? Does he know what passes within us ? Can he
even conjecture it? He thinks that, with our eyes fixed upon

GOD. 259
heaven and hell, with our works in one hand, the scales in the
other, we make a bargain with God for the price of our ab
negation ! He knows not that fear and hope are but the
preliminaries of Christian initiation, and that in virtue of the
first commandment, which includes all the others, according
to the words even of Jesus Christ, the Christian ought to love
God with all his heart, with all his mind, with all his strength,
above all things, under the penalty, adds St. Paul, of " being
nothing."* He knows not that beyond the threshold of faith
the soul is touched by the invisible beauty of a love which the
most heroic affections of this world will never equal, either in
endurance, depth, or sacrifice ; and that that love drawing us
into the abyss of charity where God Himself respires, we draw
therefrom the desire to associate all creatures in the perfection
and felicity of which we have a foretaste, and of which we
await the ulterior revelation. Who can deny this enlargement
of the heart of man in Christianity ? Who can deny it, save
those who have never known what it is, and who, abased in
the narrow passions of the senses, where all is egotism, measure
by their own souls the soul of the Christian and the soul of
man ?
I am ashamed to prove to you the reality of love and
devotedness, but rationalism compels me. It compels me
also to say a few words to you on free will, which is, with
disinterestedness, the principal condition of the moral order.
As the moral order is destroyed if man acts only with a view
to his interest, it is likewise destroyed if man be not master of
his acts. Therefore, rationalism has not assailed our liberty
with less ardour than our generosity , it needs our servitude as
much as our egotism ; our egotism to confound good with evil,
our servitude to take from us the responsibility either of good
or evil. Are we free? Your conscience and mine answer: Yes.
Rationalism says : No. And does rationalism give any proof
of this? None. It asks us, on the contrary, to prove that we
are free, and if we oppose to it the testimony of c ur intimate
conviction, which knows apparently what it judges, that
is condemned as blind and insufficient. It fears that our
intimate conviction may be the victim of a superior power,
which, unknown to it, makes it the instrument of its irresistible
* I Corinthians xiii. 2. S 2

«6o MAN AS A MORAL BEING.
will. For us who believe in God, who, bending the knee
before His adorable supremacy, have acknowledged Him as the
Father, the Master, the principle, and the end of things, we do
not entertain the strange doubts of rationalism in regard to
what passes within us. Offspring of unequalled goodness and
immeasurable wisdom, we do not imagine that God tortures
His omnipotence to deceive the heart of His work, and give to
it in servitude the illusion of liberty. We trust in the divine
sincerity, and we do not seek whether it be in His power, even
if He so willed, to lead us to so contradictory an impression on
the subject of ourselves and our own acts. Truths, like errors,
link together. God, once rejected or placed in doubt, I per
mit rationalism to mistrust the human conscience ; the edifice
being destroyed at its base, how can any detached part be
sustained, and moreover, what interest would exist for so
doing? What is man if God is not? What are good and
evil ? What the past and the future ? It is needless for us to
trouble ourselves about a dream in a night passed in sound
sleep. But if God is, if the name that sustains all is written in
the vault of our intelligence as in the vault of heaven, then I
will no longer even listen to the rationalism which suggests
mistrust to me on the subject of that liberty whose real presence
I feel in myself. I take account of myself and of all things
with me. My conscience is a sanctuary which gives me
oracles; my life is a power which answers for itself; the
divine solidity descends into all my being; and doubt, to my
mind, is nothing but blasphemy and folly. I am free ; I pass
from good to evil, from evil to good. Suspended between
these two terms which infinity separates, a voluntary captive or
a culpable rebel, at each moment I choose and decide my
condition. I choose to love myself, or to love God above all
things ; I withdraw, I return, I obey, or I resist remorse ; and
even in crime, I feel my greatness by my sovereignty. I
need but a tear to remount to heaven, but a look to fall back
into the gulf. This struggle is great, this responsibility is
terrible ; but woe and scorn to him who descends from the
throne from fear of the duties that sit there with him !
Must I, in concluding, enlighten that other difficulty which
rationalism opposes to the reality of free will, and which it
draws no longer from the vanity of our conscience, but from
the very attributes of God? I will do so rapidly, fearing to

GOD. 261
weary your attention, and hoping to abuse it but little. Truth
is brief, because it is clear.
Catholic doctrine ranges amongst the divine attributes,
that of foreknowledge, that is to say, the anticipated and infal
lible knowledge of the future, even of the future which depends
upon our free will. Now, how can God foresee this last kind
of future, if it be not because He is Master of our acts and
directs them at pleasure ? How does He know infallibly what
I shall do to-morrow if not because He has decreed it, and
because He possesses in His omnipotence the certainty of our
determinations ?
I shall have replied to this if I show, in the nature of God
and in the nature of man, a means of foreseeing the effects of
free causes which in no way destroys their liberty.
Now it is manifest that no reasonable being acts without
motives, that is to say, without something that determines his
actions. Hence these avowals constantly made by us : " Here
is a reason, an interest, a circumstance, which decides me ; in
other terms, which persuades me to act." And when we
examine the motives whose efficacious impression draws man
from repose or uncertainty, we find that there are but two : the
motives of duty and passion. Man decides either by a view of
what is true, good, suitable ; or by the inducement of a personal
satisfaction independent of any idea of order. The question
simply is to know who will decide him to the one or the other
motive. If he were not free, the stronger attraction of his
nature would decide him, as the greater weight brings down
one of the scales of the balance. But man is free ; between
two attractions equal or unequal in themselves, it is he who
pronounces sovereignly. Nevertheless he pronounces by virtue
of a motive which persuades him, and not without cause, or
arbitrarily. He knows what he does and why he acts; he
knows even why he is persuaded to act. Persuasion reaches
him not only from without, it comes to him especially from
within, from the intimate state of his will, from his tastes, his
virtues — the fruit of free will, free will itself in activity,
such as it is formed, such as it wills to be, such as it pre
sents itself to the outer attractions which come to solicit
him for good and evil. It is the state of volition, the seat of
free will, that decides the choice of man between the two
motives of duty and passion. Suppose that state known, you

262 MAN AS A MORAL BEING.
would know what man would do in a given case, and in all the
cases where the knowledge of the soul would for you have
preceded its actions. Such is the basis of human, as well as of
divine, knowledge. Have you never confided your fortune or
your honour to the word of a man ? You have done so ; or, if
you have never had occasion, you name within yourselves
those to whom you would voluntarily give a high mark of your
esteem. Whence comes that assurance? How are you certain
that you will not expose your life to treason ? You are sure of
it, because you know the soul to whom you abandon your
own ; that knowledge is sufficient for you to see that in no
case, under whatever peril or temptation, will your fortune or
your honour be basely sacrificed.
They, may be, however ; the heart to which you give your
faith is fallible, it is subject to unforeseen assaults ; it matters
not, you sleep peacefully, and no one accuses you of impru
dence or credulity. If it happen that you are deceived, what
will you say? You will say, " I was mistaken in that man, I
thought him incapable of a bad action." Such is the chance
which you would run, the chance of being mistaken ; because,
being a finite intelligence, you cannot read directly in the soul
of another, nor even in the depths of your own. Whence it
results that you possess only a moral certainty of your judg
ments, and of your foresight only an assurance of the same
degree. It is not the same with God. " God," to use the expres
sion of St. Paul, " penetrates even to the division of the soul
and the spirit, of the joints also and the marrow of our being,
and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart."*
We are eternally naked before Him. He sees with infinite
precision the state of our will, and, knowing in the same light
all the outward circumstances to which we are exposed, He
possesses an infallible certainty of the choice we shall make
between good and evil, between the motives of duty and
passion. From that moment, He knows our history, which is
but a struggle more or less prolonged between the two opposite
attractions, one which bears us towards our real end, another
which turns us aside towards a base or false end. And that
anticipated knowledge of ourselves being in no way the cause
-of our acts, no more obstructs our liberty than if it did not
exist. * Hebrews iv. 12.

GOD. 263
The error in this matter is in supposing free will to be a
kind of abstract power, independent in its proper state, having
no other movemant than unlimited caprice. If it were so, man
himself would not be capable of foreseeing his own actions an
instant beforehand. His sovereignty would be but a state of
permanent unreason. He would choose between good and
evil without knowing why, and passing at hazard from crime to
virtue, because of his liberty, we should find in him nothing
more than an unregulated automaton. Such is neither man
nor free will; I have shown you this, and I have but to leave
your conscience. to choose between the ethics of Christianity
and the ethics of rationalism.
Christianity leads to charity and liberty; rationalism to
egotism and fatality. If in the preceding questions, which
appeal only to reason, some slight cloud still obscured your
need of light, that cloud has vanished. The abyss of error
has enlightened the abyss of truth. As the speculative dogmas
of the existence of God, the Trinity, creation, the substantial
diversity of matter and spirit, the vocation of man to perfection
and beatitude, lead to the practical dogma of the distinction
of good and evil ; so the speculative dogmas of pantheism,
dualism, materialism, scepticism, lead to the practical dogma
of the confusion of good and evil, the supreme term which
discerns all, and where darkness becomes light.

MAN AS A SOCIAL BEING.

My Lord, — Gentlemen,
When God had made man, and when, after having
animated him with the breath of life, He also shed in his soul
light and justice — the light of truth and the justice of charity,
He halted, if I may so speak, to contemplate His work, and
seeing the eyes of man opening, his ears hearing, his lips
trembling with the first vibration of speech, that clay, in fine,
which He had touched with His mighty hand, become a
sensible and a reasonable creature, He remained thoughtful,
as if something were wanting to the masterpiece He had just
produced. In fact, the mystery of our creation was not accom
plished ; God withdrew a second time within Himself to stamp
our nature with the seal of a higher perfection, and beforehand
He declared His design by saying : " Non est bonum esse
homixum solum " — It is not good for man to be alone*
Why was it not good for man to be alone? In what
manner was he to cease to be alone? This is the object which
I now propose to your meditations, and in which you will see
that society is the third primitive gift with which God has
endowed us, the third means given to help us in the fulfilment
of our destiny.
No being is alone. Whether we look above or below us,
in God or in nature, we see plurality and association on every
hand. God, who is one, is not solitary; He includes three
persons in the unity of His substance, and the inferior world,
divided into an innumerable multitude of different groups,
presents none of which the condition and law of the creature
is solitude. At each degree of existence we find number and
* Genesis ii. 18.

GOD. 265
union, that is to say, society. Number without union would
still be only isolation ; but when beings, distinct by individu
ality, alike by nature, approach and give each other their life,
blend together reciprocally, act upon each other by mutual
relations, then there is society, and such is the state of all
creatures inferior to man ; such is the state, under a more
perfect mode, of the divine persons in heaven. Endeavour to
imagine an absolutely solitary being, that is to say a being who
has no resemblance or relations to anything, you will but create
an abstract phantom in your imagination, a sort of God —
nothing, because it would be at the same time infinite and
void, infinite from want of bounds, void from want of activity.
Isolation is the negation of life, since life is a spontaneous
movement, and since movement supposes relations ; still much
more is it the negation of order, harmony, and beauty, all per
fection and all beatitude, since none of those things can be
conceived without the double idea of plurality and unity.
Plurality without unity is positive disorder; unity without
plurality is negative disorder. In the first case, the bond is
wanting to the beings ; in the second, the beings are wanting
to the bond. Now, wherever there is disorder, it is evident
that harmony, beauty, perfection, and beatitude vanish at the
same time. It was then with justice that God, regarding man
in the solitude of his creation, pronounced the words : " It is
not good for man to be alone."
It is true that, by his intermediary position between the
superior and inferior worlds, man — body and spirit — found
himself in relation with nature and God; but that double
relation did not the less leave him alone of his species, alone
in the rank he occupied, a sort of stylite lost between earth
and heaven. Even had nature sufficed for the wants of his
body and God for the wants of his spirit, man, deprived of
relations with beings of the same form and degree, would not
have sufficed for the greatness of the position which he was
charged to occupy. His history would have been too short,
his perils too limited, his virtues too restrained ; as he had a
world above and below himself, it was needful that he should
become a world, and that in this manner all the parts of
creation, although unequal in themselves by their place and
their essence, should answer to each other in a certain propor
tion of immensity. Man was to extend without being divided,
to increase in number in order to increase in union, and to

266 MAN AS A SOCIAL BEING.
become, in the majesty of number and the harmony of union,
a theatre of virtues such as the perfection of the universe and
his own perfection required. Circumscribed in isolation, God
alone would have been the object of his duties ; member of a
body composed of beings like himself, his offices embrace,
with God, the whole of mankind. The law of love, the sum
of all justice, no longer radiated only from the creature to the
Creator ; it animated with its life all the orbs of creation.
This great work is before your eyes; for sixty centuries
human society has covered the field of history with its
institutions. Stronger than time, it has resisted all disasters,
and has constantly recovered its youth in the ruins under
which degenerate nations have buried themselves. It is
human society which has led our infancy through the hazards
of the primitive emigrations, which divided the earth for us,
and, after having dispersed us upon all the habitable shores,
drew us together in spite of the jealousy of the deserts and
the tempests of the ocean. It is human society which has
built celebrated cities, encouraged arts, founded sciences,
propagated letters, raised the mind of man to perfection, and
given to his heart the glory of all virtues with the occasion of
all sacrifices. In fine, human society is the permanent mode
of our terrestrial life ; and if, in the depths of forests or on the
rocky shores of distant isles, the traveller discovers groups of
people deprived of all civilisation, he still finds among them
some rudiments of the social state, certain vestiges or outlines
of relations which show how incapable man is to live alone.
And yet, who would believe it ? the dogma of society has
not been subject to fewer attacks than the rest. As sages have
been found to deny God, creation, the distinction of matter
and spirit, truth, the difference between good and evil, there
have also been found men who maintain that society is a
purely human institution, and, yet much more, that it is an
institution against nature. They have endeavoured to per
suade us that society is the source of all our evils, and that
with our civilisation our decadency began. Who among us, in
the time of his youth, has not imagined himself wandering
freely in the solitudes of the New World, having no roof but the
heavens, no drink but the water of unknown streams, no food
but the spontaneous fruit of the earth and the game which fell
by his hand, no law but his will, no pleasure but the continual
feeling of his independence and the chances of a life without

GOD. 267
limits on a soil without possessors ? These were our dreams.
Our heart, recognising itself, thrilled when our eyes fell upon
that passage in a celebrated book, where the man of civilisation
says to the man of the desert : " Chactas, return into thy
forests ; take up again that holy independence of nature which
Lopez will no longer deprive thee of; were I younger, I would
follow thee." On reading these words it seemed that we heard
them ourselves ; our oppressed soul soared with them into ideal
regions, and returned but with pain to the monotonous burden
of reality. Were we then in the true ? Was that movement of our
soul out of society an aspiration towards the primitive state
which God had made for us, or a revolt against the order
established by Providence in our favour ? It was a revolt, a
bound of egotism impatient of the limits which universal
communion with our fellow-creatures imposes upon us, an
attempt to subject the universe to our individuality alone.
Whilst, in the plan of divine goodness, happiness is the right
and patrimony of all, we sought to leave mankind in order to
withdraw from sharing its blessings and evils, and rid ourselves
of the duties which inevitably result from a great assemblage
of relations. We hate dependence and labour in society.
Dependence first : for society exists only by unity ; unity is
formed by ties ; those ties, when intelligent beings are con
cerned, change into obligatory laws for the conscience, and are
maintained by the double authority of public power and
opinion. This is a yoke accepted by the virtue which does
not separate its condition from the condition of others, but
which weighs upon the egotism that lives only for itself; and
therefore, as solitude is destructive of all laws because it
destroys all relations, egotism seeks solitude in order to escape
from dependence. In no less a degree it hates labour, another
consequence of civilisation. A few men scattered over an
immense territory live at little cost. Nature, abandoned to
herself, supplies their wants, and isolation lessening in them the
attraction which reproduces life, their number increases so
slowly that it does not disturb their indolence. The man of
society, on the contrary, has a paternity as prolific as his heart ;
he sees, under the blessing of God, the family changing into a
tribe, the tribe into a community, the community into a nation ;
the tents are sheltered under walls ; territories are defined by
boundaries ; nature fails before the increase of mankind. Art

268 MAN AS A SOCIAL BEING.
must supply its want of space and vigour. Assiduous labour
must second the inventions of art. Numberless employments
solicit the arms of men, and the arms of men in their turn
solicit employment. Our veins are filled with the fruit of our
toil. Each drop of our blood is purchased from the land at
the price of a virtue.
This is more than enough to alarm egotism, and persuade
it that social order is but an imposture in a state of martyrdom.
I do not refute it, I simply explain to you how it is that the
Christian dogma of society has contradictors and enemies.
Dependence, labour, are hard words, I cannot deny it ; and
whoever does not accept them is necessarily in revolt against
the reality of human things.
But a few days ago you engraved upon the monuments of
your capital that memorable inscription : Liberty, equality,
fraternity. It is, in fact, a part of the primitive charter which
has united men together and founded the human race ; but it
is not the whole of it. It is the charter of rights not that of
duties. Now man, living in society, can no more deprive
himself of duties than of rights. If liberty is necessary, that
he may remain a moral creature, that he may not be over
whelmed in the pressure of an exaggerated and unjust domi
nation, obedience is also necessary, to enable him to keep his
place, by the help of a common and sacred law, in the living
home which a nation makes for him. If equality is necessary,
that he may not decline from the rank in which God has placed
him by a common origin with all his fellow-creatures, hierarchy
is also necessary that he may not, in default of a chief and a
commanding authority, fall into the powerlessness of individual
dissolution. If fraternity is necessary in order that confidence
and love might widen the narrow ties of social order, that
mankind might remain one great family sprung from one
common father, veneration is also necessary, to acknowledge
and strengthen the authority of age, the magistracy of virtue,
the power of laws, in those who possess this character whether
as legislators or as sovereigns. Write then, if you would found
durable institutions, write above the word liberty, obedience ;
above equality, hierarchy ; above fraternity, veneration ; above
the august symbol of rights, the divine symbol of duties. I
have said this to you elsewhere ; right is the selfish side of
justice ; duty is its generous and devoted side. Appeal from
it to devotedness, that devotedness may respond to you, and

GOD. 269
that your work may triumph over the ardent passions, which,
since the origin of society, have never ceased to conspire for
its ruin. Human society is not only hated for itself, on account of
the duties that it imposes, it is also hated for another reason
which it is important for you to learn. God, who was the
founder of society, is its preserver. He maintains it by the
power of His name, which is perpetuated under the guardian
ship of dogmatic traditions and religious observances. No
nation has been able to exist without that venerated name, no
community has been built up without that corner-stone of the
temple. And vainly will the impious hope to abolish the
memory of God until that society be abolished which is its
depository, and which lives upon this hereditary treasure of
mankind. Human society and religious society are two sisters
born on the same day of" the divine word, the one having
regard to time, the -other to eternity; distinct in their domain
and end, but indissolubly united in the heart of man, sustaining
one another, falling together, rising again together, braving
together by their common immortality the hatred that pursues
both of them. Do not lose this point of view, if you would
take account of the leaven of anarchy which rouses the heart
of man against society. Society is no other thing than order,
and order has in God its invulnerable root. Whoever does not
love God has by that alone a permanent cause of aversion
towards the social state, which could not do without God.
Thence it comes that anti-religious epochs infallibly produce
anti-social theories. You witnessed this in the last century.
Whilst the doctors of a superficial generation held up to
ridicule Jesus Christ, the Bible, and the Church, others, with
a pen no less bold, wrote against human society. The savage
state was exalted as the primitive state of man, and incom
parably the best ; the effeminate gentlemen of the Trianon
were invited to return to that state with bows and arrows in
their hands. It was demonstrated that society was at least
formed by a voluntary contract, and, with a gravity but too
formidable, they sought the clauses of that fabulous contract.
Is it necessary for me to prove to you that social order
is neither an institution against nature, nor a facultative
institution? We are far removed from the time when men
discussed these questions, puerile in themselves, but which
were rendered important by the decadency of the monarchy

270 MAN AS A SOCIAL BEING.
under which they were treated. Now that this monarchy has
disappeared in a tempest, and the epoch of reconstruction has
succeeded to that of ruins, intelligent minds are interested
much more about the economical problems of social life than
about the circumstances of its origin and the primary causes of
its establishment. Therefore I shall confine myself to the few
words which are necessary rationally to confirm the dogma of
society such as Catholic doctrine professes it.
A thing is natural when it is in conformity with the real
constitution of a being. Now the social state is evidently in
conformity with the constitution of man, since everywhere and
always he has lived in society. It is true that some oppose to
us the savage tribes of America, and of many islands scattered
in the ocean ; but those very tribes, although deprived of
civilisation, live nevertheless in the unformed rudiments of
community. They are branches accidentally detached from
the great human trunk, and which deprived of the sap of
traditions, withdrawn from the law of oral' instruction, vegetate
on the extreme confines of sociability without having burst the
last link that holds them thereto. If truth and charity should
seek them at the ends of the world ; if the words of the gospel,
borne by the clouds of heaven, should fall upon the uncultivated
glebe of their souls, you will see them extending their hands to
the apostolate, covering their nakedness, plunging the plough
into their forests, assembling round the wood and sign of a
cross, and bowing their heads before the invisible presence of
God, of whom they know nothing save a remembrance as un
certain as their life. You are not ignorant that Oceania now
witnesses the accomplishment of these marvels, and those
fortunate islands send back even to our old continents the
virginal balm of a civilisation which finds again a cradle in the
ruins of the desert.
I do not mean to say that the savage passes easily, or that
he always advances, to the state of social perfection ; no,
gentlemen, this is a difficult work which requires time, a com
bination of favourable circumstances, and which, on this
account, is rarely crowned with success. An entire population
is not drawn in a single day out of the torpor of an inveterate
state of indolence and free indulgence of the passions. It is
enough that it has been done, or even that it has been begun, for
the savage state to cease to be an objection against the social
temperament of man. The Iroquois, or the Huron, is not

GOD. 271
civilised, but he is fit for civilisation, and if he does not become
civilised alone, by the aid of his proper forces, it is for the same
reason that the deaf are dumb. . No one is an initiator to him
self; every man or every tribe having left society, which is the
great and universal initiator, can return to it only by means of
a legislator bringing from the common centre, truth, justice,
order, and devotedness. We need not travel to the Pacific
Ocean to find the savage ; whoever rejects the social tradition,
by ungoverned passions, is a voluntary savage ; so much the
more degraded as he touches the source of truth and goodness.
You have met with those beings fallen by their fault below
civilisation, and assuredly you have drawn no conclusions from
their moral misery against the dignity of our nature and against
its sociability. The exception has never destroyed a rule, and
here there is not even an exception. The savage is to the civilised
man what an abortion is to a plant which has received a regular
development ; by its very deformity it bears witness in favour
of the normal type to the plenitude of which it has not
attained. Man lives then socially by virtue of his native constitution ;
he is naturally sociable, and consequently naturally social. It
is not a facultative contract which has placed him in society ;
he is born in society. And if it happen that he leaves it by a
lamentable accident which separates him from the common
stock, it is impossible for him to return to it of himself under
the form of a contract or a deliberation. He vegetates in that
state until the civilised man touches his hand, and raises him
by the fraternal sovereignty of language to the rank of an in
telligent being enlightened by God. For it is God who first
initiated the human race to the social life, and who, after
having with truth and love deposited in mankind the germ of
mutual attraction, gave to it the first impulsion. Truth and
love are the basis of social order ; wherever souls meet, having
received these gifts, the principle of society meets in, and tends
to unite, them. But this principle maybe deadened or degraded,
and this is why it exacts, all pre-existing though it may be, an
initiatory intervention, to rouse it if it be deadened, to purify it
if it be degraded. So that these two things are equally true,
namely, that society is natural to man, and that it is neverthe
less of divine institution. It is natural to man ; because man,
an intelligent and a moral being, has received in his creation
the intelligible germ of truth ;od love : it is of divine institution;

272 MAN AS A SOCIAL BEING.
because it is God who first placed man in active possession
of truth and love, and who, the first also, gave him the
opportunity of applying truth in relations of like to like, of
equal to equal.
It is time for us to arrive at that supreme moment of the
drama of creation, and see human society unfolding under the
blessed hand to whom we owe all.
When God had uttered that beautiful expression : " It is
not good for man to be alone," the Scriptures tell us that He
caused a deep and mysterious sleep to fall upon Adam, our
first father. It would seem that God, so to say, feared to be
troubled by the look of man during the sublime work He was
about to perform ; He willed that no other thought than His own
should intervene in the act which was about to give plurality
to man without destroying his unity. For such was the work
which His sovereign power purposed to accomplish. Taking
the eternal order of the divine society as the pattern of human
society, He designed that there should not only be moral unity
in the relations between man and man ; but that those relations
should take their source in one substantial unity, imitating as
much as possible the tie that unites the three uncreated persons
in an ineffable perfection. Mankind was to be one by nature,
by origin, by blood ; and, by means of that triple unity, to form
but one single soul and one single body of all its members.
This plan was in conformity with the general end of God,
which was to create us in His image and after His likeness, in
order to communicate to us all His blessings ; it was worthy of
His wisdom as well as of His goodness; and when I think that
vulgar impiety has been able to laugh at the magnificent act
which realised it, I am overwhelmed with pity for the abase
ment^ to which the intelligence falls that misunderstands the
intelligence of God.
Man was, then, at the feet of his Creator and Father, over
come by the inertness of a superhuman sleep, knowing nothing
of what was intended for him, and God looked thoughtfully
upon him. Was it necessary to divide that beautiful creature
in order_ to multiply him ? Was it necessary to create by his
side an image of himself, without other community than like
ness, and cause the human race to spring from one primitive
being associated with a second? It would have destroyed
unity in the very root from whence it should blossom. There
would have been two bloods, and only one was required. It

GOD. 273
was needful that all mankind should come from one single
man, in order that living plurality should spring from living
unity, and that man, multiplied without division, should recog
nise in his fellow-creature, emanated from himself, " the bone
of his bones and the flesh of his flesh."* With this thought
God bends towards man and is about to touch him : but where
will He touch him ? The brow of man, where, with his intelli
gence, reposes the eminent seat of his beauty, naturally presents
itself to the creating hand, and seems to invite the new bene
diction about to descend upon us. God did not touch it.
However beautiful the faculty of intelligence may be, it is not
the term of our perfection. Calm as light, and cold also, it
was not from the point which corresponds to him in the outer
architecture of man that God was to draw forth the miracle of
our consubstantial plurality. He knew a better part, He placed
His hand upon it. He placed it upon the bosom of man ;
there, where the heart by its movement marks the course of
life ; there, where all the holy affections have their echo and
rebound. God listened for a moment to that heart so pure
which He had just created, and by a thought of His omnipo
tence removing a part of the natural shield that covered it, He
formed woman of the flesh of man, and her soul of the same
breath which had made the soul of Adam.
Man saw his fellow-creature. He saw himself in another
with his majesty, his strength, his gentleness; and with an
additional grace, a delicate tint that manifested a dissemblance
only to produce a more perfect fusion between the two parts of
himself. First regard of man upon his fellow-creature, what
was it ? First nuptial moment of mankind, who shall reveal it ?
We will not endeavour to paint it, we will not lessen by vain
poesy the solemnity of that wedlock whose consecrator was
God ; but imitating the austere simplicity of Scripture, we will
repeat what it says to us.
After, then, God had led to man his companion, according
to the expression of the sacred pages, He pronounced over them
in these terms the blessing of inexhaustible fecundity: "Increase
and multiply, and fill the earth."f And with these words,
efficacious like all the words of God, man received the gift of
producing and perpetuating the miracle of the diffusion of his
being, in offshoots personally distinct from himself, but one
* Genesis ii. 23. + Genesis i. 28.

274 MAN AS A SOCIAL BEING.
with him in form and blood. Mankind was founded, and the
man in whom it had just become being, the man king, hus
band, father, bearing in himself the innumerable posterity of
his sons, sang the hymn of the first nuptials, the song of the
first love, the law of the first family, the prophecy of all
generations. Listen, gentlemen, listen to our forefather speak
ing to his race in the name of God ; listen to those first words
of man which have traversed ages and taught the human race.
" This," said he, " is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man;
wherefore shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave
to his wife ; and they shall be two in one flesh."* Such is the
law of family, society, civilisation ; such is the oracle which
will for ever regulate the condition of mankind. Every legis
lator who may despise its commandment will but found bar
barism ; no nation that withdraws from it will ever attain to
the era of justice and holy morality. It is upon the constitu
tion of family that the progress or decadency of society will in
all ages depend ; and the constitution of family, signed by
man and God, is written in the charter which has just been
proclaimed to you. Woman is not to be the slave of man ;
she must be his sister, bone of his bones, flesh of his flesh.
Wherever she may be degraded from this rank, man himself
will be degraded ; he will never know the pure joys of true
love. Subjected to the domination of the senses, woman
would be nothing to him but an instrument of sensuality ; she
would not speak to him of God with the authority of tender-
liess ; she would not soften his heart by the constant charm of
her own ; she would not adorn his life by the innate delicacy
of her voice and gesture. The domestic threshold, as the
symbol of servitude, instead of recalling to man the holy and
happy hours of his terrestrial passage, would recall to him
only the inconstancy of his pleasures, the tyranny of his
passions. But woman is not only to be the sister of man by virtue of
community of origin, she is to be his wife ; in the virginity of
her body and her soul she is to bring to him an inestimable
gift, a gift which man will not be able to receive from another
until death shall have broken the oath which purchased it.
"She shall be called woman," said Adam; " therefore a man
* Genesis ii. 23, 24.

GOD. 275
shall leave his father and mother, and shall cleave unto his
wife ; and they shall be two in one flesh." They shall be two,
and not more than two ; they shall be two even to being but
one flesh; and as death dissolves the unity of the flesh, death
alone also shall destroy the unity of marriage, the source of
life. Should the frailty of the human heart forget that order,
should it profane marriage by daring to elevate adultery to the
sanctity of marriage, woman would no longer exist either as
wife or as mother. The infant born of her by an imperfect
union would recognise in her only a dishonoured victim, and
in his own days nothing but the fruit of selfish paternity.
Therefore, fraternal alliance between man and woman,
exclusive and indissoluble alliance, in which, however, man
exercises the chief authority, because he is the trunk whence
his companion was taken, and because she was given to him
by God, according to the language of Scripture, as "a help like
unto himself."* Such is the regular constitution of family,
without which there is but oppression of the woman and
child, weakening of the sense of moral obligation, sensuality
instead of love, selfishness instead of devotedness, and in fine,
barbarism or decadency, according to the age of the nations
which have been led to despise the fundamental laws of society.
Society is but the development of family; if man leave his
family corrupted, he will enter corrupted into the community.
If the community would destroy family in order to regenerate
itself, it would substitute an order factitious and against
nature for the order established by God, and fall into the
double abyss of unmeasured tyranny and licentious dissolu
tion. It would be the high road to death.
Society being but the development of family, the general
laws that regulate family regulate society also. As at the
domestic hearth woman is the sister of man, the citizen at the
forum is the brother of his fellow-citizen ; as man is only the
husband of one wife, the citizen belongs only to one nation ;
as, in fine, the wife and child owe obedience and respect to
the father, the citizen owes obedience and respect to the
magistrate. If from the community we survey the human
race, we shall recognise there, notwithstanding the difference
of language, customs, and physiognomy, the dispersed council
of a single race, the branching out of a single stem, and
* Genesis ii. 18.
T 2

276 MAN AS A SOCIAL BEING.
shall say to each man: Thou art my brother; to each
nation : Thou art my sister ; to all, whatever may be their
colour, their history, or their name : This is bone of my
bones, and flesh of my flesh. It is true we shall no longer
find in the human race the unity of one single father, common
obedience, unanimous respect ; that order has been destroyed.
The fields of Babylon saw the branches of man breaking off
with great noise, and heard our forefathers utter in confused
language the adieu of a separation which still exists. But the
hour of the unity prepared and begun by Christ seems to draw
near ; the mountains bend, the seas diminish, the Christian
family, with the vicar of God at its head, urges on, and, by its
superiority henceforth assumed, enlightens the nations which
have not yet adored the regenerating language of the gospel.
The desire for peace keeps the sword in its sheath ; fraternal
language is exchanged from one end of the world to the
other ; the negro sits down with the white man in the great
assemblies of nations ; everything forebodes to attentive minds
an era of reconciliation and the age in which, without destroy
ing the variety or liberty of nations, the antique prophecy will
be accomplished which announces to us, " one single shepherd
for one single fold."*
I halt before this glorious hope which should console all
who are concerned about the future of the human race. How
is it that here also I find rationalism as the adversary of the
truths which so greatly interest the dignity and happiness of
man ? Not content with having presented the social state as a
state against nature, rationalism has attacked its constitution
under three important relations : it has denied the unity of the
human race, the unity of marriage, and its indissolubility. I
shall not notice the last two errors, having had occasion to
touch upon them in the conference in which we treated " of
the influence of Catholic society upon natural society in regard
to family;" and I shall limit myself to confirming, in a few
words, the substantial unity which makes of the human race a
family issued from a single love, and from one and the same
blood. It seems that in the age we live in, an age wherein ideas
of equality and fraternity generally predominate, if there is a
dogma which should escape from negation, it is the dogma
* St. John x. 16.

GOD. 277
that gathers into unity all the nations that form mankind.
But rationalism thought to seize Christian truth here in the
very fact against the documents of science, and could not lose
the opportunity of compromising it in those minds which
attach more weight to the appearance of things than to the
evidence of their laws. It endeavours then to establish the
absolute diversity of the human races by the comparative study
of the profound dissimilarities that mark their most important
branches. These dissimilarities cannot be denied ; the igno
rant discover them as well as the learned. The Malay, the
Mongol, the negro, have characteristic features which do not
permit us to confound them either among themselves or with
the European. This is true. The whole question is whether
the difference is substantial, or only an accident, whether it
constitutes a separate nature having an origin of its own ; or
whether it is but a shade caused in a primitive uniform type
by the circumstances of time, place, customs, and even by
fortuitous events whose effect and impress are afterwards
perpetuated. It is incontestable that sensible varieties appear in beings
of the same kind and of the same progeny ; it is the result of
two forces which keep life in a just equilibrium, namely :
spontaneity and immutability. Without spontaneity, that is
to say, without a proper and original movement, beings would
remain in the monotonous mould of barren uniformity ; with
out immutability, they would lose the type of their true
organisation under the force of their individual action. They
are, then, at the same time free and restrained ; they become
modified without losing their nature. Such is the case of
those changes of physiognomy which have no name when they
are not perpetuated ; and which are called varieties when they
are powerful enough to be transmitted and maintained. For,
as the primitive form of the living being resists all mutations,
the secondary or acquired form may also share this privilege
when the causes that produced it are inveterate, and have
passed, so to say, to the very roots of life. The father or
mother, and sometimes both together, communicate to their
children the features and expression which they themselves
received from their authors. If this hereditary vestige promptly
disappears in families of little distinction, it acquires an obstinate
persistence in the more strongly marked races, which guard
their blood with more watchful care. It is above all remarkable

278 MAN AS A SOCIAL BEING.
in the particular physiognomy of each nation, whatever ap
proximation of climate or customs may exist between them.
The Frenchman, the Englishman, the German, the Italian, the
Spaniard, who touch each other on a soil limited in extent,
who drink the same waters, and are invigorated by the same
sun, who adore the same God, who have been mingled by an
uninterrupted communion of from twelve to fourteen centuries,
have a type of face personal to each, and by which they are
instantly recognised by the least attentive observer. If it be
so among nations subject to the influence of common elements,
what must it be of those separated by distance, light, heat,
food, religion, customs, all those material and spiritual causes,
in fine, which act upon life and produce profound modi
fications ?. And if the dissimilarity of two European nations
does not manifest the diversity of their primitive origin, how
should the dissimilarity between the negro and the white man
manifest anything but the diversity of their religious, political,
and natural history ? That which makes man is an intelligent
soul united to a body endowed with certain proportions. Now
has not the negro the same soul as the white man, and has he
not the same body ? Who will say that the soul of the negro
is not human, and that his body is not human ? And if the
soul of the negro be human, if his body be human, is he not a
man ? And if he be a man, why should he not have had the
same father as yourselves ?
A physiological law, promulgated by the illustrious Cuvier,
has also decided the question. It is known to science that all
living beings which unite together, and whose posterity remains
indefinitely prolific, belong to the same nature and remount to
a primordially unique stem. In order to maintain the great
lines of creation, God has not willed that beings of diverse
origin and kind should be able, by means of capricious alliances,
to confound all bloods. Should this irregular event happen,
it may obtain from deceived fecundity a first result ; but it
never advances beyond this ; order immediately reassumes its
empire, and sterility punishes the fruit of a connection reproved
by the will of the Creator. Now this anathema does not reach
the union of the negro and the white man; their oaths received
at the feet of the same altars, under the invocation of the same
God, obtain in an indefinite posterity the glory of an act legiti
mate and holy. Much more, the two bloods recognise each
other; the purer elevates co its splendour the one that had

GOD. 279
contracted an adulteration; from degree to degree, from alliance
to alliance, all disparity vanishes, and the sons of Adam find
themselves again, as sixty centuries ago, in the fraternal features
of their common father.
Away, then, with those shameful attempts of fratricidal
science. Let us no longer listen to the voices which do not
respect the inviolable unity of the human race ! Rather,
Christians, let us hail from afar, and on every hand, let us hail
our brethren dispersed by the tempest on such diverse shores.
Let us, who have better preserved the primitive tint of our
creation, who have received with a softer influence of natural
light a better share of uncreated light ; let us, the elder sons of
truth and civilisation, hail our brethren whom we have preceded
only to lead, whom we have surpassed only that they may one
day equal us. Let us hail in them our past and our future
unity, the unity which they had in Adam and that which we
wait for in God. Let us stretch out our hands to the Malay
and the Mongol ; to the negro, the poor, and the leper. All
together, uniting our blessings and our misfortunes m one
immense and sincere act of brotherhood, let us draw near to
God, our first Father. Let us draw near to God who made us
from the same clay, who vivified us with the same breath, who
has penetrated us with the same spirit, who has given us the
same word, who has said to all of us : " Increase and multiply,
and fill the earth, and subdue it, and rule over it." He alone
can bless us ; He alone can open to us a veritable era of liberty,
equality, and fraternity. Without Him you will write those
sublime words in vain upon your public monuments. Thirty
centuries ago, they were written on the tables of Sinai by a
more powerful hand than yours, and yet the tables of Sinai fell
from the hands that carried them, and were broken in pieces
at the foot of the mountain. It was because their laws were
written in stone, and not in the heart of man. Write not then
yours upon stone, write them with the finger of God in yorji
own hearts, that they may speak therefrom to the hearts of a\
and so insure a durable immortality.

THE DOUBLE WORK OF MAN.

My Lord, — Gentlemen,
It remained for me to treat of the condition in which God
created man as a physical being, and afterwards as a religious
being. Under the first head, God endowed him with immor
tality ; under the second, He prepared him for sharing the
divine life itself by a gift which Catholic doctrine calls grace,
that is to say, the gift par excellence. This should then be the
present object of your attention. But having at a future period
to treat before you of the mystery of the resurrection of the
body, I reserve for that period all that concerns the exterior
immortality of man ; and as to his vocation to sharing the
divine life by the effusion of grace, it is too vast a subject to
be dealt with on the day which will close our conferences for
this year. I reserve it also, then, and I am consequently led
to the expression which in the Scriptures closes the account of
creation. That expression is singular ; it is as follows : " On the
seventh day God ended his work which he had made ; and
he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had
done : and he blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it :
because in it he had rested from all his work which God
created and made."*
By this you see that the world was not the work of a
moment, but that God produced it in a progressive order dis
tributed in six epochs, which the Scriptures call days. I shall
not stop to expose or to justify that order, which is already
known to you. Science has taken this upon itself during half
a century ; each of its discoveries comes unawares to prove
the profundity of Biblical cosmogony; and at length the bowels
* Genesis ii. 2, 3.

GOD. 281
of the earth, brought to light by tardy investigations, have
revealed, in the state of their different strata, the reality of the
successive formation which is the basis of the account in
Genesis. It was necessary to acknowledge either that Moses
was inspired by God, or that, fifteen centuries before the
Christian era, he possessed a science which was not to be dis
closed until three thousand years later. I would willingly treat
of this magnificent triumph of our faith, if the nature of my
labours permitted me to add thereto the weight of a personal
authority, and if it were not more fitting that whatever concerns
scientific developments should rather be treated in a book than
from a Christian pulpit. I confine myself then to this incon
testable fact, that the Christian cosmogony is henceforth assured
of the respect of all who do not despise the testimony of the
most authentic realities. But this testimony, which suffices to
confound the reproaches of the mind, does not suffice to satisfy
its desire to know. It still asks why God created the world
gradually, why He in a manner diminished His power to restrain
His action. It is easy to conceive that time may be necessary
to a finite cause ; it is not easy to conceive its utility to a
cause which can do all things of itself. How is it that God
abased Himself to the measure of a common workman ? How
is it that He began, quitted, and returned to His work ? How
is it that He rested from it ? All these ideas are strange, and
in seeing them united to the first act which has revealed God
to us, to the act of creation, the intelligence vacillates and
remains under the weight of unappeasable wonder.
I dare to say that your instinct deceives you, and that
there is nothing greater in God than His abasement. Yes, God
abased Himself in creation, as we shall see Him at a later period
abasing Himself in the incarnation and in the redemption ;
He abased Himself because He laboured for us and not for Him
self, because strength and greatness are communicated only by
descending. Yes, God had no need of time as an auxiliary to
His eternity : no motive drawn from Himself induced Him to
divide the formation of the earth into six periods, and to await
the help of ages for that which depended upon an act of His
sovereign thought. But if it were the same for Him to act sud
denly or slowly, it was not so for man. Destined, in our
passage upon earth, to a work which ends only with itself and
us, it is important for us to know the general law of labour ; and
God, in establishing outside of Himself the operation whence

282 THE DOUBLE WORK OF MAN.
all ulterior operation was to flow, willed that His manner of
proceeding should for ever contain and reveal the rule of our
own activity. That rule indeed has never been effaced from
the memory of the human race. It has outlived the wreck of
the most sacred traditions, and its vestiges are found in the
division of time observed by most of the ancient and modern
nations. Bur in order to comprehend in what it consisted,
what was its object and its importance, it is necessary to take
account of the labour even of man.
This word labour seems to awaken an idea incompatible
with the primitive state in which God placed us ; a state of
perfection and happiness which I have represented to you, and
which bears the image of perfect repose. Does not labour
imply fatigue ? Is not a chastisement imposed upon man in
consequence of a prevarication which caused him to fall from
the prerogatives of his primitive state ? And moreover, before
that catastrophe had impaired the harmony of our faculties and
drawn down the divine malediction upon earth, what would
have been the object of labour to us, either of body or mind?
These reflections so much the more prove to me the necessity
of exactly defining the labour required of man in the design of
his creation. To labour is to act. We may act with pain ; but pain is
not a part of the essence of labour. Its essence is summed
up in that energetic and glorious word : to act. Now, you do
not suppose that God, who made all things, has destined man
to eternal idleness. The most insignificant being, in coming
into the world, brings into it a mission corresponding to the
end for which it was -created, a mission or a function which it
accomplishes by labour. The very worm of the earth does
something, it performs its task, it co-operates for an end; it
belongs to the sacred band of useful creatures. How should
man, raised so high by his faculties and by the place which he
occupies in the universe, have received no other function than
that of sterile idleness ? It could not so be, and it was not
the language of idle repose that God addressed to man when
at the hour of his birth He said to him : "Increase and multiply,
and fill the earth, and subdue it, and rule over the fishes of the
sea, and the fowls of the air, and all living creatures that move
upon the earth."* It was not a lesson of idleness that God
* Genesis i. 28.

GOD. 283
gave him in bringing before him — according to the history of
Genesis — " all the animals of creation, that he might give them
a name which should explain their nature and remain to them
for ever."* In fine, when He led him to a dwelling-place,
called by Scripture the Paradise of Pleasure, it was not to
slumber there in the sleep of inaction ; for it is said God
placed him there to dress it and to keep it — ut operaretur et
custodiret iLLUM.f Do not then unite in your minds the
idea of perfection and happiness, or even the idea of repose,
with that of inactivity or idleness. God was infinite activity
before He assumed, in the creation and government of the
world, a work worthy of all His attributes ; by an eternal action
He produced in Himself the Word which ever speaks to Him,
the Holy Ghost which responds to both; by a fecundity as
ancient as Himself He diffused between three the unity of an
essence whose inner movement is perfection, beatitude, and
repose. So far from the idea of action — which is that of labour
¦ — being incompatible with the notion of a happy and perfect
state, it is the necessary element which constitutes all that we
know of that state ; for, to think is to act, to will is to act, to
love is to act, and apparently none of these acts will be rejected
from the definition of happiness and perfection.
Placed in the centre of created things, belonging by his
soul to the higher world of spirits, by his body to the lower
world of nature, having the earth for passage and God for end,
man was indebted by a double labour to a double function.
His first function was to tend towards God, who had given him
truth that he might know Him, charity that he might love Him,
the participation of His own life as perspective and term ; but
with all these gifts the gift also of liberty, which raising him
to the glory of a person master of himself, permitted him to
repudiate his legitimate end, and opened before him the
honourable but perilous career of virtue. This was the first
work, the great work of man. However pure he might have
been in his soul and body, he was free ; he could withdraw
from God and perish. Prayer, reflection, vigilance, perpetual
care of his heart, were necessary for him to prevent his falling
from the virginal splendour in which God created him.
Our present state includes other difficulties, which leave us
no doubt as to the importance of the spiritual work imposed
* Genesis ii. 19. t Genesis ii. 15.

284 THE DOUBLE WORK OF MAN.
upon the human race. The abuse of liberty has covered every
part of our being with ruins ; our intelligence is darkened ,
our love has grown cold ; the struggle between good and evil
has assumed a character of alarming depth, with the develop
ment of generations. God, without disappearing from our
midst, has found amongst us enemies conspiring against the
remembrance of Him, and employing all the resources of the
mind and the passions to destroy that remembrance. There
is no tradition which has not been denied, no duty which has
not been outraged, no divine institution which has not been
subjected to the violent attacks of mad impiety ; and if God
has remained visible during the whole course of ages, if He
still reigns over the posterity of His first creature, it is but at
the price of a combat rife in tears and blood. You are
engaged in this divine war, you form part of it, and, victors or
vanquished, I have nothing to teach you on the painful price
of truth. Even had we but the work of the soul; if man could extend
towards God a look free from all other care, a hand free from
all other burden ! But it is not so. From the first, a function
and a labour of a different order have been confided to us.
God, because He would not leave us without occupation for the
forces of the body by which we hold to the inferior world,
called us to share His temporal government. He gave us the
earth to guard and fertilise, not at first at the price of our toil,
but by an administration which partook of the nature of empire
and added to our other prerogatives the glory of useful com
mand. In exchange for a royal and blessed culture, the
obedient earth rendered back to us a substance necessary to
sustain our immortality during its earthly existence. " Behold,"
said God to us, " I have given you every herb bearing seed upon
the earth, and all trees that have in themselves seed of their
own kind, to be your meat."* This reciprocal intercourse
between nature and man possessed nothing primitively which
was an obstacle to the relation between our soul and God.
The soul rather found therein a spiritual aliment, a source of
joy which sprang forth without effort and reached even to its
author. But that state did not last, and you know what
temporal labour has become for the posterity of Adam. A
curse has fallen upon it ; the earth, which yielded to our
* Genesis i. 29.

GOD. 285
desires, refuses to us all that we do not pay it for beforehand
in toil and fatigue : it doles out its gifts to us with avarice that
nothing can move, with uncertainty that nothing can disarm.
Nearly the whole of the human race, with brow bent towards
it, implores it with assiduous devotedness, and gathers for
recompense only the bitter bread of hard poverty. Now,
poverty 01 tne body easily entails that of the soul : it has
created modes of servitude which draw all the human faculties
together in their many folds, and by pressing upon their action,
plunges them into a state approaching to death. Man descends
towards the instinct of the animal; absorbed in his material
wants, he forgets his origin and his end ; he throws to the
winds the divine life whose germ is within him, and his only
care is to force the earth to render to him the blessings of
eternity. We can only accuse ourselves ; God is not responsible for
our faults and our blindness. He foresaw them, doubtless;
and I have told you why, notwithstanding that prevision, He
did not refuse us the blessing of liberty. But, since He foresaw
them, His wisdom and His goodness commanded Him to come
to our help, and, by a primitive, fundamental, and imprescrip
tible law to regulate the relation between temporal and spiritual
labour, both necessary to mankind, the one as the principle of
its divine life, the other as the principle of its terrestrial life ;
both of which should be reciprocally limited in an equitable
proportion. Now, who should have discovered this, and who
should have established that proportion, if God had not done
it? Who should have had wisdom to determine the time
which man owed to his soul, and that which he owed to his
body ? Who should have possessed the authority necessary, in
so difficult a matter, to obtain the sanction of universal respect?
Who should have saved man from the tyranny of his own
cupidity, and from the tyranny, not less to be feared, of one
stronger than himself? In the question of labour lies the
root of all servitude ; it is the question of labour which has
made masters and servants, conquering and conquered nations,
oppressors of every kind and oppressed of every name. Labour
being no other thing than human activity, everything necessarily
has relation to it, and according as it is well or ill distributed,
society is well or ill organised, happy or miserable, moral or
immoral. We have now before us a proof of this which the
most blind are obliged to comprehend. What has agitated

286 THE DOUBLE WORK OF MAN.
the world during the last twenty years ? What is the cry of
the civil wars which we now witness ? Is it not : " Organisa
tion of labour"? Is it not also: "Live by labour, or die
fighting"? And, if we examine the chain of historical revolu
tions, shall we ever find for them, whatever may be their name,
another primary cause than the question of labour? The
migrations of nations, the invasion of the barbarians, the
servile wars, the troubles of the forum, all the great human
agitations, hang directly or indirectly upon that terrible question,
which rises again from its own ashes with obstinate immortality.
It is the axis upon which the destinies of the world turn.
And, consequently, the first religious and civil law is the law
of labour. Now who should, who could, lay it down? Who,
save He who owes nothing to anyone, but who, having from
love made Himself the Father of minds, willed to be the light
whence they should derive their direction? Who, save He
who has created the soul and the body of man, who knows
their wants, who has measured their powers, and who alone
possesses the secret of limits, because He has none ? It was
just that, in the act of creation, God should promulgate all the
bases of the physical, moral, and religious orders, and that He
should promulgate them by acts sufficiently powerful for the
remembrance of them to bear their commandment even to the
last generations. Language alone would not have sufficed;
God was not content to proclaim His laws by language alone,
at the origin of things any more than on Sinai and Calvary.
He has constantly graven them in acts whose eloquence is
more enduring than brass. The cross of Calvary, the tables
of Sinai, the waves of the deluge, the days of creation, are the
four great monuments of divine legislation ; imperishable
monuments, which, after so many ages, exist in all the vigour
of the first day. The cross of Calvary covers the five divisions
of the world ; the tables of Sinai are read in all the places
crowned by the cross ; the waves of the deluge have left their
traces from the Alps to the Caucasus, from the Caucasus to
the Himalayas, from the Himalayas to the summit of the
Andes ; and the days of the creation, religiously preserved in
the strata of the globe, in the furrows of our ploughs, revive
that magnificent law of labour which has preceded all others,
and which we must now more clearly define to you.
You have already heard the terms of this law : " God," it
is said, "ended on the seventh day the work which he had

GOD. 287
made, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work
which he had done, and he blessed the seventh day and
sanctified it, because in it he rested from all his work which
God created and made." Such is the proportion of temporal
to spiritual labour, of the labour of the body to the labour
of the soul, according as God determined it by the sovereign
example of His own work. And, indeed, if the question had
depended upon man, we may be sure that it would not have
been solved in this manner. Knowing the law, are we even
capable of explaining it to ourselves ? Why should the number
seven express the totality of the two kinds of labour ? Why
should spiritual labour amount only to a seventh part of
temporal labour ? Why should the one occupy six consecutive
days, and not a longer or a shorter time ? Is there nothing
in the powers of the body and the soul that leads us to this
proportion of six to one ? Or is it nature that reveals it to
us by the general harmony of its laws? No, gentlemen,
neither do the phenomena of nature, nor the necessities of
the body, nor the wants of the soul, give us the elements of
such an induction. When the rationalist dictators of the
French Revolution, from hatred of all traditional and sacred
origins, resolved to efface the ancient period of seven days
from the calendar of a great people, they knew not where to
take the basis of a new' calculation, save in the convenience
of a system of numeration. They decreed that the week
should be ten days, in order to introduce the uniformity of
the decimal mode into labour, as into weights and measures.
The French citizen was to labour for nine days and rest on
the tenth, simply because a like division had been established
in things of number, and because it is easier to compute figures
by this mode than by any other. No one troubled himself
to learn whether the body of man would bear such an increase
of labour ; and, had they done this, it is manifest that every
precise limit would have been the result of an arbitrary choice,
and not the fruit of experience or reasoning.
The number seven, chosen by God, has no relation to any
mathematical fitness. Nor is it justified by the degree of the
bodily forces ; for it is not easy to see, for instance, that man
would not have been able to labour for seven days and to rest on
the eighth. It is a number taken from a higher region than
physical order; and so it should be, since it was a matter of regu
lating the relations of two kinds of labour, one material and the

288 THE DOUBLE WORK OF MAN.
other spiritual. Evidently, between two kinds of things so com
pletely diverse, the mediator could come only from a point which
governed both, that is to say, the soul and the body. Now,
God alone governs all the beings which compose the hierarchy
of the universe; He alone, in His universal and creating essence,
possesses the pattern of their own, the reason of their existence,
the law of their relations, the principle of their harmony. It
is then in Himself, in the higher and mysterious mathematics of
His own nature, that God has chosen the number suitable as
the rule of our double activity. This number does not appear
in the work of cosmogony only, it plays an important part in
all the rest of the divine operations, as the Scriptures show us,
We see it shining in the seven weeks of years of the Hebrew
jubilee, in the seven branches of the candlestick of Jerusalem,
in the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost, in the seven sacraments
of the Church, in the seven seals of the Apocalypse, and in a
multitude of occurrences which it would require too much
time to enumerate. In almost every page of the sacred books
its importance is manifested by the use which God has directly
or indirectly made of it.
In short, to the eyes of pure reason the number seven is an
arbitrary number ; to the eyes of reason enlightened by faith
it is a divine number ; to the eyes of history it is a traditional
number ; to the eyes of experience it is a number which has
reconciled the wants and duties of the body with the wants
and duties of the soul. Six days of temporal labour have
sufficed for man in all times and under all climates to gain his
subsistence without weakening his strength, to fertilise the earth
without compromising his health or his happiness ; the seventh
day, consecrated to repose in the worship of God, has also
sufficed for him to refresh his soul, to preserve truth, to
rekindle his love, and, in fine, to advance peacefully and
joyously towards the august end of a creature blessed by God.
Whatever metaphysical judgment you may pronounce upon
this memorable division of temporal and spiritual labour, there
are two things which you cannot deny, namely, its universality
and its efficacy; so much the more remarkable, as we do not see
any rational cause for it, whilst we are forced to conclude that
that cause exists. Would you destroy the balance of human
activity, engender the degradation of souls, the oppression of
the weak, the cupidity of all, and the misery of the greater
number ? Would you do this ? It is easy ; touch the law of

GOD. 289
labour as it was promulgated by the work of creation ; increase
temporal labour; lessen, by violence or artifice, spiritual
labour; abandon man to the inspirations of his covetousness
and the will of his masters ; do this, and you will be sure to
gather its fruit in a generation which will satisfy you, if you
like the moral and physical degradation of mankind.
I say the physical as well as the moral degradation ; for
the observance of the seventh day was not established simply
with a view to religious sanctification, but also and directly
with a view to terrestrial preservation. This is why Scripture
employs two remarkable expressions at the same time ; it says
that God "rested" on the seventh day,and thatHe "sanctified" it.
And as the object of God was to trace the rule of our activity
by His example, it follows that He recommended two things to
us at the same time, repose and the sanctification of the seventh
day. And if you doubt this, if you do not think that God has
so great a regard for the equitable well-being of the body of
man, hear it again proclaimed by Moses, at the foot of Sinai,
in the great law of the Sabbath : " Six days shalt thou labour,
and shalt do all thy works ; the seventh day is the day of the
sabbath, that is, the rest of the Lord thy God ; thou shalt not
do any work therein, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor
thy man-servant, nor thy maid-servant, nor thy ox, nor thy ass,
nor any of thy beasts, nor the stranger that is within thy
gates."* This is the law. Now listen to the reason which God
immediately gives for it : " that," He says, " thy man-servant
and thy maid-servant may rest even as thyself't And going
still further, He said on another occasion to all the assembled
people : " Six days thou shalt work ; the seventh day thou
shalt cease, that thy ox and thy ass may rest, and the son of
thine handmaid and the stranger may be refreshed." J. Here
God stipulates in favour of the animals who share the labour
of man ; He associates them in the benefit of His merciful
providence, and since they are fatigued with the reasonable
creature, He wills that the repose of the reasonable creature
should extend even to them. You recognise here the heart of
God, and if your intelligence still doubted of the temporarily-
philanthropic sense attached by Scripture to the law of the
seventh day, there remains no longer any excuse for you before
texts which from their clearness defy interpretation. Listen
* Deuteronomy v. 13, 14. + Ibid.
t Exodus xxiii. 12.

29° THE DOUBLE WORK OF MAN.
again, however. After God had recommended to His people
the observance of the seventh day in favour of the poorest and
most laborious, He terminates by this solemn adjuration:
"Remember that thou also didst serve in Egypt, and the Lord
thy God brought thee out from thence with a strong hand and
a stretched-out arm : therefore he hath commanded thee that
thou shouldst observe the sabbath day."* Thus it is in remem
brance of the bondage in Egypt, and in recalling it to them,
that God imposes upon the posterity of Jacob the charter of
rest from labour, that is to say, the first and fundamental
charter of all liberty. For what is the liberty of a man attached
to the glebe of unremitting labour ? What is the liberty of a
body never uplifted towards the vault of heaven, and the
liberty of a soul never raised towards the light of God?
It is to you, gentleman, to all generations of masters, that
these formidable words are addressed, which, three thousand
years ago, resounded in the deserts of the Red Sea: "Remember
that thou also didst serve in Egypt !" All of us, in our fore
fathers, have served ; all of us, in our posterity, shall serve in
Egypt. In vain do we wear the signs of emancipation, and
ask from the future the fidelity which it refuses to kings;
we are of a blood which servile labour has formed, which
servile labour will form again. See in your hands the trace of
earth ; we come from the earth, and to it we shall return.
There is no exception for any one of us, for the child of the
palace any more than for the child of the cottage. Sooner or
later the long hand of misfortune will again seize upon us and
bring us back to the obscure labour which was our cradle.
And if it was so in the ages of stability, how much more now
when every corner-stone has been destroyed, and we build in
the tempests of equality the shifting edifice of our destinies I
Hearken then to the words which remind you of the bondage
of Egypt, respect in your brethren living in service the service
which was your own, and which will return to you again.
Take not away from them the day of relaxation which was
prepared for them from the beginning as the liberty of their
souls and bodies, and with a degree of munificence of which
you do not perhaps form an idea.
For remark that God has not made of the seventh day a
private institution, a day to take at hazard by each of us in any
* Deuteronomy v. 15.

GOD. 291
particular course of occupied days. No, He has made of it the
great social institution ; He has convoked the human race on
the same day and at the same hour in the whole course of
ages, inviting it to repose, to rejoice, and be exalted in Him.
In a word, He has founded a periodical and perpetual festival
for mankind. For man needs festivals. Withheld far from
the permanent city which is the term of his pilgrimage, and
bearing in his heart the sadness of this trial of absence, he
needs, by certain emotions, to leave the monotonous shadow
of his life. Like Saul, he needs to hear the sound of the
harp, or like David, to dance to music, before the ark of
God. But who will give these festivals to the poor of
this world ? Who will give them palaces, statues, paintings,
voices, and lights? Who will give them emotions worthy of
them, and that rare joy in which the conscience is enraptured
as well as the heart ? The people are poor and without art ;
they posess nothing great but themselves and God who protects
them. The people and God come together and form the
festival of mankind. For sixty centuries these two have been
faithful to this meeting, and enjoy together without interruptions
that festival which costs nothing to the people but their
assembling, to God but looking down upon them.
The legislators of nations have recognised this popular
want of common and public enjoyments ; they have sought to
satisfy it by religious pomps, by spectacles, triumphs, games,
and combats. But instead of instructing and elevating man,
nothing has helped more to degrade him ; the most shameful
passions came there to seek gratification and applause.
Sensuality and blood met together there before the sacred
images of country; and publicity, the mother of modesty, is
there for the multitude only an additional debauch. This is
because, in fact, the pleasures of the crowd turn easily towards
all the vices. A celebrated politician has said: "Whoever
assembles the people makes them factious." It may with no
less truth be said : Whoever amuses the people corrupts them.
In modern times rationalist legislators have been seen
endeavouring to create festivals in order to replace that of the
seventh day which they had abolished. They have only
succeeded in inventing imitations of antiquity with the addition
of ridicule and without the people. Public common sense
was too just and too profound, under the inspiration of
Christianity, to enjoy these puerile renovations. It then
u 2

292 THE DOUBLE WORK OF MAN.
became necessary, in the great occasions of civil life, to limit
them to vulgar amusements, and God alone remained to give
to the human race grave solemnities which draw men together,
move, ameliorate, and bring them repose.
Is there any one among you who has not been touched by
the spectacle which a Christian population presents on the
day consecrated to God ? The public places covered with a
multitude of beings dressed in their best apparel; all ages
appearing there with their hopes and fears, each tempered
by a sentiment higher than life. The eyes that meet each
other are animated by fraternal joy; the servant is nearer
to his master ; the poor less removed from the rich ; all
by the community of the same duty accomplished and the
same grace received, feel more fully that they are sons of
the same Father who is in heaven. The silence of servile
labour is compensated for by the joyous and musical sound of
the bells, which make known to thousands of men that they
are free, and prepare them to endure for God the days when
they will not be free. No austerity clouds their features ; the
idea of observance is moderated by that of repose, and the
idea of repose is embellished by the image of a festival.
Incense burns in the temple ; lights shine upon the altars ;
music fills the vaults and speaks to all hearts ; the priest
goes from the people to God and from God to the people ;
earth mounts upwards and heaven descends. Who does not
leave the temple more calm? Who will not return to it
better ? Oh ! for my part, gentlemen, this day has never
passed without having moved me ; and even here, in this
capital, where so many souls do not respect it, I never witness
its popular effect without lifting my heart towards God in
an aspiration of gratitude and love.
Such is then the sense, such is the result of that great law
of labour which God willed to promulgate and to hallow in
the very act of creation. After having interpreted it to you,
can I withhold a painful sensation which oppresses me ? Can
I refrain from complaining that there is a Christian people
which despises this law, and that people is our own? Is
it really France that, in this point, neglects the most sacred ol
duties between man and man? Is it France that tears in
twain the fundamental pact of mankind, that delivers over to
the rich the body and soul of the poor to use at their pleasure,
that tramples under foot the day of liberty, equality, fraternity,

GOD. a93
the sublime day of the people and of God ? I ask you, is it
really France ? Do not excuse her by saying that she grants to
each the free exercise of his own worship, and that no one,
against his consent, is constrained to work on the seventh day.
For it is but to add to the reality of servitude the hypocrisy of
freedom. Ask the workman whether he is free to abandon his
labour on the dawn of the day that commands him to rest.
Ask the young man who consumes his life in a daily lucre of
which he does not profit, if he is free to breathe only once in
the week the air of heaven and the still purer air of truth. Ask
those withered creatures who people the manufacturing cities
if they are free to save their souls in comforting their bodies.
Ask the innumerable victims of personal cupidity and of the
cupidity of a master, if they are free to become better, and if
the gulf of toil without physical or moral reparation does not
swallow them up alive. Ask those even who repose, but who
repose in the degradation of unregulated passions, ask them
what becomes of the people in that rest which is not given
and protected by God. No, gentlemen, liberty of conscience
here is only a veil that covers oppression ; it covers with a
golden mantle the cowardly shoulders of the most vile of all
tyranny, the tyranny that abuses the toil of man by cupidity
and impiety. If liberty of conscience were a reality here,
doubtless Protestant England would have perceived it ; doubt
less the democracy of the United States of America would
have learned it : and where in the world has the right of the
seventh day been more respected ? Learn then, those who
know it not ; learn, enemies of God and of the human race,
whatever name they bear, that between the strong and the
weak, between the rich and the poor, between the master and
the servant, it is liberty that oppresses, and law that gives
freedom. Right is the sword of the powerful, duty is the
shield of the weak.
It is high time for us to remove from France this lament
able error, which has lasted but too long. The tempests also
warn us that it is not good to violate commandments which
were promulgated with the creation, renewed in the thunders
of Sinai, and reinvigorated by the blood of Calvary. Whoso
ever is against God is against mankind, and if a few unhappy
men, armed with what they call reason, fear not to make these
two enemies, we may trust to the vengeance of the future
alone  that future which is already the present, and which

294 GOD.
warns us all to think of our faults and generously to combat
them by a salutary reparation. France will do this ! Yes,
Lord, France will do this ! We see its foreshadowing in the
respect she pays to Thee in the midst of the ruins she has so
suddenly made. She will listen to the forewarnings of
experience, she will rise again towards Thee by the difficulties
which surround her, she will recognise the principle of her
salvation in that beautiful saying which Thou hast pronounced
to all nations of the earth by Jesus Christ Thine only Son :
" Seek first the kingdom of God, and his justice, and all other
things shall be added to you."* Hearken, O God, to that
voice which speaks to Thee from France ; and when another
year fallen from Thy eternity upon our short life shall bring us
again together in this temple, grant that we may find here
more steadfast, stronger, and more glorious than ever, our
country and truth ! * Matt. vi. 33.

GOD AND MAN.

GOD AND MAN.

THE SUPERNATURAL INTERCOURSE
BETWEEN GOD AND MAN.

My Lord,* — Gentlemen,
We will begin by establishing the point we have reached
in expounding the mystery of destinies, as it is professed by
Catholic doctrine. According to that doctrine, there exists
an infinite, eternal Being, subsisting of Himself, who is one
without being alone ; for He finds in His own essence relations
whence, with the necessary movement of His life, results the
absolute plenitude of His perfection and His happiness. A
Being unique and complete, God suffices to Himself. No
necessity, no utility called Him out of Himself; He saw in His
intelligence the inexhaustible image of a multitude of beings
variously limited ; He felt His power to cause them to pass
from the possible to the real state ; but being perfect and
happy in the inner development of His triple personality, He
was free not to exercise His power, and, in the depth of His mind,
to leave in repose the eternal spectacle of the worlds which
were not. Goodness alone incited Him gratuitously to com
municate life ; and therefore, on the day when it pleased Him,
or rather in that indivisible day which has no distinct move
ments save for the passing beings who behold it, God created
the universe. He created it so as to realise the indefinite
perspective of the possible, as He beheld it in His intelligence,
* Monseigneur Sibour, Archbishop of Paris.

298 THE SUPERNATURAL INTERCOURSE BETWEEN
and man, who in his double nature drew together all its
elements and all its features, was placed in the centre of that
work, as its connecting link, and its most complete represen
tation. God is thus the principle of things. But by the
same reason which determined Him to be the principle of
things, He is also their end — that is to say, their term or object.
For, having created from goodness, He willed to communicate
His own perfection and beatitude to His creatures, and this
can be accomplished only by the intimate union of their life
with His own. Whence it follows that the general law of all
created beings is to aspire towards God — minds, by a free and
direct effort ; bodies, by their association with minds in the
person of man. And in order for that ascension of the finite
towards the infinite to be possible, on the very day of their
creation, God, the author of intelligent beings, gave to them
truth and love — truth, to know Him ; love, to love Him — and
the Father of beings became altogether and at the same
moment their principle, their means, and their end.
Such is the first plan of Catholic doctrine, and the first
plan of our destinies.
But is this all ? Has God, in order to attract us towards
Him, limited Himself to spreading out before us the spectacle
of nature, and to lighting up in our intelligence the sun of
reason ? Is all other communication between Himself and us
— communication more direct, nearer, more profound — im
possible ? Have we nothing more to hope for or pretend to,
until the day when the mystery of our creation will be con
summated in eternity ? Rationalism affirms this ; it declares
— and this it is which separates it from us in the very fount of
its essence — that there is no communication between God and
ourselves, save by the intermediary of reason, that every other
mode is chimerical, all other intercourse an imposture or an
illusion. Catholic doctrine does not accept this decision — it
believes, it teaches that nature and reason form but the peri
style of truth, the first torch of the temple, and that man,
with this help alone, however great he may be, is an incomplete
being, who would be incapable of attaining the term of his
destinies — that is to say, God. Behold the formidable question
now before us. All that I said to you last year of the Christian
dogmas contains in itself only a spiritualist philosophy ; there
are sages who bend with respect before that portion of religious
truth, and if we did not advance further, we should remain

GOD AND MAN. 299
within the limits of human wisdom. Catholic doctrine does
not permit us to do this ; it constrains us to pass these narrow
limits, and to show you that beyond and besides the creating
act to which we owe the elements of life, knowledge, and
love, which are within us, there exists in regard to us an action
of God more penetrating and more profound. What is that
action ? Does it exist in reality ? This is what we must now
endeavour to learn.
My Lord,
You are the third Archbishop of Paris before whom I
have here announced the word of God. Your two last pre
decessors were both struck by the thunderbolt; they both
prematurely carried to God the account full and yet incom
plete of their episcopacy. One of them saw his palace razed
to the ground by the hands of the multitude, and, after having
responded to that act of violence by ten years of good deeds,
he died without having obtained from the justice of men the
reparation due to his piety, his courage, and his goodness.
The other offered himself as a holocaust ; he fell in disarming
civil war, and the people, moved by that victim who had become
their peacemaker, brought him back into this temple, and
made here for him a sepulchre greater than his throne, and a
resurrection as glorious as his death. God has chosen you,
my lord, to succeed these two men, and to continue the history
of the See of St. Denis ; He has considered you worthy to
occupy a place which henceforth can only be filled by the
charity that makes the martyr, and the greatness of soul that
makes the citizen. I wish you happier days than theirs, a glory
less agitated, and an end less precocious — not that I doubt of
your heart, should God call you to equal them in the peril and
honour of tribulations, but because it belongs only to God to
desire for men, and send to them, tribulations as great as their
virtues.
Gentlemen,
I shall not render an account to you of my public acts
in the memorable year which has just closed upon us. Time
perhaps has taken upon itself to explain and ratify them — I
shall not say more to you than time. My mission is not to
speak to you of mystlf, but to speak to you of God, and of

300 THE SUPERNATURAL INTERCOURSE BETWEEN
yourselves in your relations with God. This is the mountain
upon which I have placed my life, and upon which I would
place yours. Let us ascend it together, and from this height,
which surveys time and the passions of men, let us proclaim
to earth the only truths which are able to save it
Since God is the end of man, since He has created us to be
perfect and happy in Him, it is manifest that if the designs of
the creation have not here below been entirely frustrated, there
should be found men who tend to their end in seeking and
loving God. And nevertheless, because of human liberty,
there should also be found other men who neglect God, their
principle and their end, and yield to the seduction of created
things. Such, indeed, is the spectacle which the history
of the world unceasingly presents to us. At whatever
epoch it is consulted or regarded it will be found struggling
with the two great parties which contend for the government
of minds — the party of God and that of man — the party
of saints and that of sages. Now, if it be true that we
have no other means for arriving at our divine end than
nature and reason, it is manifest that the party of God should
take its basis in the sole resources of the natural order.
And yet it is not so. The party of God exists, it has always
existed, it is endowed with a force which none other has been
able to destroy — neither ages, nor kings, nor sages. Ages have
come with the empire and stratagems of duration; the party of
God has seen them pass away, and made use of them but to
outlive them. Kings have held in their hands all the power of
man ; the party of God has blessed or cursed their passage,
and in the one, as in the other case, has covered their head
with earth and remained living. Sages have written books,
and made names for themselves ; the party of God has taken
possession of their books, and now that their renown is but a
fruitless remembrance, it still uses their ashes to insure its im
mortality. And whence, amidst general decay, does this
persevering and victorious party derive its imperturbable life ?
I have said that it is not from nature and reason. Doubtless
it acknowledges their rights, it employs them to its own profit,
but as principles which have no elevation corresponding to the
greatness of our destinies, and which form but the dawn of a
more perfect day. Its force, it declares, is in a doctrine which
does not come from nature, and which disconcerts reason. It
is there, from that mysterious fount, that the party of God

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301

derives the light which guides it, the virtue which purifies it,
the courage which raises it above the persecutions of time.
This it does not hide, it is its glory and its boast.
If we now, on the contrary, consider the other party — the
party of man — and seek to know the basis of its convictions
and its acts, it is no more hidden from us than the other ; it
boldly declares to us that there is no other science than that
of nature, no other truth than that of which reason is the
principle, the seat, and the demonstration. That if beyond
the universe there exists an invisible Being, freed from the
limits in which all beings are retained, the party of man
pretends to have no idea of Him save by the inner revelation
of the mind, or by the conclusion to be drawn from the
phenomena of the world. But whether it admit or reject the
existence of that superior Being, the party of man holds no
real intercourse with Him. Those among the sages who, like
Plato, have left a religious memory, were all penetrated with
serious respect for the vestiges of a tradition whose history they
ignored. They avowed the infirmity of human thought left to
its own resources, and endeavoured to raise themselves towards
God by the irrational effort of prayer. They belonged to the
party of saints by desire, to the party of sages by ignorance.
Behold the fact ! Wherever God is adored, He is adored in
virtue of a supernatural doctrine ; wherever He is despised, He
is despised in the name of nature and reason. However
strange the result may be, it is not possible to deny it. Turn
your eyes whither you will, enter into whatever temple you
please, you will find there on the very threshold Prophecy
and Sacrament ; prophecy — a word of God containing truths
inaccessible to reason; sacrament — an act endowed by God
with an efficacy superior to all the forces of nature. And you
will see that whoever despises these two things infallibly bends
towards earth, knowing nothing of God but His name, and
holding with Him no other relations than ingratitude and
forgetfulness. Again, behold the fact ! But what must we conclude
therefrom ? We must conclude that the intercourse between
man and God is not founded upon the purely natural order,
but upon an order more intimate and more profound, which
places human personality and the divine personality in direct
contact. If you refuse to draw this conclusion, you are free to
do so, but learn that you thereby destroy all intercourse

302 THE SUPERNATURAL INTERCOURSE BETWEEN
between man and God, since in reality there exists none other
upon earth. Perhaps you will say it is of little importance to
you, and that your opinion is precisely that this intercourse is
no other thing than an imposture or an illusion.
Here the question changes its face. It is no longer a
question of knowing what is really in mankind the mode of its
religious acts, but what is the logical value of those acts, as the
human race performs them. I say the human race, and I
ought first to establish this in order to give a basis to my
argument. Is mankind religious? Is mankind religious under
the supernatural form ?
It seems impossible to pretend that mankind is religious,
since I have myself confessed that it is divided into two parties
— the party of God and the party of man — the party of faith
and that of unbelief. But it is easy to see that this division,
all real though it be, does not destroy the universality and
perpetuity of religious worship among men, and therefore does
not deprive us of the right of affirming that mankind is religious.
In fact, whilst no people appears in history without the sign
and palladium of a positive faith, without temple, altar, priest
hood — that is to say, without a constituted religion — unbelief
appears only under an individual form, sometimes proscribed,
sometimes tolerated, seldom powerful, and never becoming
established as the public and social expression of a nation.
Far from obtaining a character of universality, unbelief does
not even acquire the honour of nationality ; it leagues man to
man, like a venom which inoculates itself, and which, were it
even to become a plague, would still remain, in regard to its
expansion, in the state of accident and scourge. There are
considerable portions of mankind which have never known
it; such is the East. There, under a glowing sky, man
more naturally raises his eyes towards the invisible sphere
inhabited by God; he believes, he prays, he adores, he
contemplates, so to say, without thinking of whatnhe does ; and
doubt or unbelief, if they enter into his mind, leave there
rather the trace of a dream than of a temptation.
It is the same with epochs as with nations. Epochs, taken
in their suite, are religious. If certain periods form exceptions
— that is to say, present a greater number of individual apos
tasies — they are periods of decadency which, in performing
their painful and corrupt cycle, soon bring back fix m the depths
of eternity, with younger days, more respected faiths. And as

GOD AND MAN. 303
there are races to whom irreligion is unknown, there are also
epochs in which this mystery of iniquity has not even a name.
Such were the first centuries of the Roman Republic ; such
was that memorable epoch when Christianity, having accom
plished the baptism of Europe, held its ardent nations under
the sceptre of a still unanimous faith.
Whether, then, we consider mankind in the numerous
nations which form its total body, or whether we regard it in
its secular development, incredulity shows itself only in the
state of protestation, with the weakness of isolation even in
number ; with the powerlessness of attaining perpetuity even
in duration ; and, in his heart and his history, man remains in
the eyes of all, a religious being.
But under what form is he a religious being? Nothing
assuredly is more varied than the spectacle of the religions
which fill the earth. They differ in doctrine, in morals, in
ceremonies, in priesthoods, in their aversions, and it seems
impossible in whatever light we may regard them, to bring
them together into one common architecture. And yet there
is not one among them which, in regard to form, has not the
same starting-point and the same constitution. All require
their proselytes to bend with the respect and obedience of
faith before a sacred dogma — that is to say, before a doctrine
descended from God by an inspired or a prophetic revelation.
Whilst science starts from the observation of nature, and
philosophy from the investigation of reason, in all times and
places religion invokes prophecy — that is to say, the word of
God, communicated first to an envoy, next transmitted by
tradition to the lips of the priest, who delivers it as he received
it, as an inviolable heritage from on high. The man of
science, the philosopher, and the priest, are the organs of
a threefold teaching, whose lights might aid one another by
mutual reflection, but which have all their own principle and
their incommunicable character. Noi j will ever be deceived
in this. The man of science verifies, the philosopher reasons,
the priest affirms in the name of God. And thus the very
definition of these three kinds of men shows to us, that all
worship is founded upon a prophecy, whether the author were
really inspired by God, or whether he may have usurped, by
a culpable imitation, the title and the power of prophecy.
We shall soon see the means of discerning the true or the
false in a matter where imposture has such grave consequences ;

304 THE SUPERNATURAL INTERCOURSE BETWEEN
but here the imposture itself proves the truth which I wish
to establish. For, I ask, why invent falsehood in the name
of God, if the name of God, called in testimony of the dogma,
were not necessary to the life of all religion ?
Thus as each nation preserves the memory of the legislator
or conqueror who was its founder, each worship, true or false,
has consecrated the history of the prophet who brought to it
from heaven the word of God. Christians name Jesus Christ ;
the Jews, Moses ; the Persians, Zoroaster ; the Hindoos,
Buddha ; the Mussulmans, Mahomet ; and if there are forms
of worship which do not personally know their divine founder,
that ignorance arises because they are, like the polytheism of
the Greeks and the Romans, only a confused corruption of
anterior systems.
See, then, that all religions — that is to say, mankind itself
inasmuch as it is religious — confess that the intercourse between
man and God reposes upon truths of another order than that
of reason, upon a light different and more elevated than that
which naturally enlightens created intelligences. This is not
all ; by the side of prophecy, that universal and perpetual
torch by which faith is enlightened, sacrament, another
institution reputed divine, imposes and manifests itself — an
institution whose object is the purification, the elevation, the
sanctification of the soul ; its union with God, by a virtue
which surpasses and astonishes the powers of nature. You
who listen to me are the children of sacrament. Almost as
soon as you drew the breath of life, before your eyes were
opened to the light, before you thought, desired, or demanded
anything, those who loved you, being full of anxious solicitude
for you, took you from the first watchings of a mother, to bear
you to the vast and solemn shade of a mysterious place. A
man appeared, he poured water upon your head, and pro
nounced a few words; he commanded the evil spirit to go
out of you ; he entered into your soul to eradicate evil there
from and sow the seeds of good ; he gave you his faith and
that of your fathers, an infinite hope, a love which the united
beauty of all creatures would not have been capable of impart
ing to you ; he drew you from the limits of nature and the
obscurities of reason; he made you living members of an
invisible community ; sons and co-heirs of God, worthy of
hearing and repeating His name, of contemplating His works,
of finding them too limited for you, and of aspiring, in fine,

GOD AND MAN.

3«S

to His eternity as to your natural and true country. All this
was done for you without your concurrence. Your friends
were in haste, they feared lest a single day might deprive you
of the benefit of that incomprehensible action, and had it been
necessary to choose between your present death and your
future life, those who loved you most, and who loved you the
first — your mother even — would not have hesitated to lose you
in your birth, provided you bore away with you the sign of the
cross in the symbol of water. You may now despise these
gifts ; but whatever your will may be, you have received them ;
whatever you may do, they exist ; and the faith of three
hundred millions of souls, based upon the faith of a hundred
generations, affirms to you, that the consecration of your
baptism is of an immortality against which no revolt has any
power or effect.
I pass over the other sacraments of Christianity ; you all
know them, and none of you doubt that they are an essential
part of the religion of Christ — the means which it offers to
raise us from earth to heaven. But is it the same in other
religions? Is sacrament everywhere the inviolable mode of
communication between man and God? Yes, amongst all:
from the sacred forests of Scandinavia to the grotesque pagodas
of China ; from the stone of the Druids to the altar of Greece ;
from the most modern periods to the most remote ages — in
all times and places, worship is sacramental as dogma is
prophetic. Sacrifices, lustral waters, expiations, initiations.
bloody or joyous rites — these have formed the life of all
liturgies and the function of all priesthoods. One single
worship, that of Mahomet, has appeared sparing in this regard
because it is scarcely anything but a form of deism clothed in.
revelation, and yet Mahomet preserved the vestige of sacrifice
when he made prayer the practical foundation of his religious
edifice. Now, prayer itself is a sacrament, when it is supposed
to possess a power of impetration which evidently surpasses
the character of a natural act.
Instead, then, of supposing that morals should be the
sole and true means of uniting us to God, if we consult only
the light of reason, we see that, in order to obtain that supreme
object, all religions present to us strange operations whose
virtue lies solely in the will which institutes them ; and as
reason is subordinate to faith in the mental order, morals are
subordinate to sacrament in the order of the will. Not that
x

306 THE SUPERNATURAL INTERCOURSE BETWEEN
faith should destroy reason, or sacrament morals, but on the
contrary faith is given to increase reason, and sacrament to
perfect morals. Now, the more extraordinary this result is,
the more its universality and its perpetuity, so far from
inspiring us with sterile astonishment, merit from us profitable
and respectful consideration.
Therefore I beg you to remark that prophecy and sacra
ment are not secret works, hidden in the depths of sanctuaries
and revealed only to the initiated, but they both stand forth
with the boldness of faith, and are both public like religion.
Now, publicity is not a slight thing, and above all, publicity
which is universal and perpetual. Better than in any other
age, you are now able, to judge how formidable is its trial,
since we are surrounded by the ruins which it produces daily,
and by which it replies to the audacity of those who affront it
with so much the less reflection, as there has never been in
the world less of self-distrust and more facility for speaking
boldly and without restraint, than now. Formerly, when a
man, endowed with the highest intellectual gifts — Pythagoras,
for instance — believed that he had received from heaven an
idea useful to the happiness of human beings, he was somewhat
alarmed : for a long time he carefully considered it within
himself, then, uncertain of his own genius, he sent from
sanctuary to sanctuary to interrogate the sacerdotal orders,
famous by their tradition, the sciences, "silvered by age,"
according to the expression of Plato, and, after years nourished
with those divine intercourses, he hardly felt entitled to open
his lips and teach in his turn. He did not dare to deliver to
the world the fruit of his long meditations, but only to a few
disciples, proving himself with them in abstinences, fastings,
and all the austerities of a life of seclusion from men. There
fore glory, at least, rewarded this respect for truth ; the name
of Pythagoras lived, if his doctrine did not survive. It is far
otherwise in our age — the youngest of our contemporaries is
not afraid, as soon as he discovers an idea in his mind, to
deliver it to the wind of publicity ; he speaks, he writes, he
prints, he is dissatisfied if in eight days his idea has not made
the tour of Europe. Publicity obeys him ; it bears from the
West to the East the light sheet which an intrepid conscience
has confided to it, but on the morrow it brings back, even
more quickly, silence and forgetfulness. Mystery would have
protected it, publicity destroys it. It is true that publicity is

GOD AND MAN. 307
the high-road of great men ; but it does not suffice to follow a
high-road, it must be followed to the end, and nothing is more
difficult or more rare, to judge by the spectacle which we
witness. Our age is the age of high-roads, but they are
short. It is in fact, because publicity involves an immense con
fronting of the idea with all minds, rights, interests, institutions,
acquired truths, settled customs — with all that passes in space
and time. It is a contest of the new against the old — of
progress against stability, and reciprocally of the old against
the new, of stability against progress ; a terrible and a daily
struggle wherein it is impossible for that which is vain long to
resist. This is why, even now, error seeks its empire in the
shade of secrecy. You think, perhaps, that the peril of the
nineteenth century is in unbridled publicity, and it is true that
this publicity occasions many evils, but they are not com
parable to those formed in the invisible conspiracies of thought.
Day is but the reflex of night, publicity is but the echo of
silence. Before the thunder escapes from the mouth of the
volcano, it has furrowed underground the courses whence it
derives its energy. If Europe trembles, it is not because it
speaks, but because it has long been silent in the gloom of
secret societies. Now is the hour of judgment, for it is the
hour of publicity. Doctrines must appear before the tribunal
of the human mind and of historical experience ; they must
cast away the charm of the unknown and the evils of hypocrisy ;
they must answer every question, satisfy every want, be in
open struggle with the inconstancy of mankind. Therefore,
young as you are, of how many of them have you not already
seen the end? How many more will die before your own
mortality will snatch you away from this scene of powerlessness
and change? This is painful to witness, but at least we
learn therefrom the vanity of error before the test of discussion
and duration.
Admire, then, with me, in the sacramental and prophetic
institution, a publicity of sixty centuries. The temples were
open, the smoke of sacrifice rose freely towards heaven, the
blood and the water flowed upon the brow of the faithful in
face of the unbeliever, the world beheld and still beholds.
Nothing was hidden, nothing is now hidden from it. See,
there is the baptismal font ; there, the spot where faith kneels,
avowing and repairing its faults; there, the tabernacle in
x 2

3o» THE SUPERNATURAL INTERCOURSE BETWEEN
which, under the appearance of bread, the living flesh of a
God reposes : and you hear the word which reveals and
animates all these things, it does not flee from you, it stands
before you, urges you, commands you in the name of God.
You may laugh, it is permitted to you, or you may smite your
breast, for you are able to do so. But whether you respond
by insult or adoration, prophecy subsists, sacrament perseveres;
to-morrow you may die, and to-morrow they will seal your
tomb. Is it not needful for you to think of it ? Is it not
needful for you to know whence that strange institution derives
a duration equal to its publicity — duration throughout all ages
before publicity throughout all times ?
And yet publicity is not the last character by which we
may judge of the part which prophecy and sacrament play in
mankind. If mankind has destinies which have God for their
end, it has also those which have nature for their horizon ; if,
by its relation with God, it forms a divine society, it forms,
during its sojourn here below, a purely human society.
Between these two societies, so different in their object, mode,
and end, it would seem that there should exist no point of
contact, or at least that the supernatural means of the one
should be foreign to the natural effects of the other. It is not
so. Prophecy and sacrament, which form the basis of religion,
form also the basis of civil society. Such has been the estima
tion of all nations, since all have aggregated religion under one
form or another to their public acts, and have venerated in the
priesthood one of the principal instruments of the stability of
empires. The priest, the warrior, the magistrate, have always
been the three pillars of human society — the magistrate by
justice, the warrior by the sword, the priest by the prophecy
and sacrament, of which he is the living incarnation. Not
that many other offices do not contribute to the stability as
to the movement of social order ; all even, whatever they may
be, hold an honourable part there ; but honour has its hier
archy as well as all the rest, and it is assuredly remarkable, not
to say marvellous, that among so many human administrations,
whose utility and glory are not questioned, the supernatural
ministration of the priest should have obtained from nations so
exalted a place in the organization of their temporal life.
Even now, when for the first time, the idea of separating
divine and human things is introduced, it is not thereby
intended that religion should be banished from national affairs

GOD AND MAN. 309
and interests, but only that it should act upon them by an
action more independent of their outward operations. In
this position it has lost nothing of its social influence, it is not
less the recognised soul of actual civilization, and perhaps
there has rarely been an epoch in which its necessity as a
principle of the human order was more powerfully felt. What
ruins surround us ? For sixty years what has not the hand of
France touched in order to destroy? What has it left
standing ? What is there which it has not at least wounded ?
Veneration has flown away from kings ; neither war nor
hereditary inheritance, nor the choice of revolutions, has been
able to create a monarchy for us ; we overthrow thrones with
out having the faith of the republican ages ; we are wanting
even in respect for our own works, and we have no longer
strength save to disturb our ruins. I am wrong : something has
remained great and honoured in this shipwreck of all institu
tions — the magistrate under his toga, the soldier under his
banner, the priest in his temple. These remain to us, and
because they remain, all is still saved.
What more is required in order to conclude with certainty
that prophecy and sacrament have penetrated even to the root
of the life of mankind, and thence that mankind is religious
under the supernatural form ? I do not think you can contest
the fact ; you can but reject its consequences, and those very
consequences 1 am about to establish.
Already more than once in the course of our conferences,
I have called your attention to the logical importance of
every establishment which bears in itself the characters of
universality, perpetuity, publicity, and organization. We shall
find these significative characters in the prophetic and
sacramental establishment, but with a new force which they
derive from the very essence of prophecy and sacrament.
For whilst the other institutions in which they are generally
found proceed from the wants and faculties of man — that is
to say, from the natural constitution of his being — here we
can no longer explain their presence by that motive, since
prophecy and sacrament belong to an order which confounds
rather than satisfies human nature. We willingly understand
that mankind may be religious ; reason announces to us the
existence of a Supreme Cause, to which we owe all that we
are, from which alone we can hope for all that we need, and
religion, being no other thing than an intercourse of dependence,

310 THE SUPERNATURAL INTERCOURSE BETWEEN
gratitude, and love, with that Supreme Cause, it is easy for an
upright heart to conceive its justice and to follow the inner
attraction to it. But outside of this circle, reason only meets
with abysses, or at least it discovers nothing in its own light
that opens to it another mode of knowing, loving, and adoring
God. Consequently it is not reason that urges mankind
towards that other mode ; it is not reason that opens before us
the obscure career wherein priesthoods have led all nations
and all times. Nothing is produced save by a principle of
impulsion, no impulsion is given save in conformity with the
spirit whence it emanates. Reason might create a worship of
reason ; it could not create a worship of which it possessed no
element whatever.
But it is still more remarkable that in no age or place has
reason ever created a rational worship. In all times and places,
prophetic and sacramental worship has stifled rational worship
and hindered its production. If this worship has existed in
certain hearts, such as those of Pythagoras and Plato, it
remained there uncertain of itself, in the state of an aspiration
which vainly seeks to define itself — an incomplete and painful
state, which drew from the greatest of sages that confession so
often cited : " It is needful that a master should descend from
heaven to instruct us."
How then should reason, incapable of forming a worship
for itself, have led all mankind to a form of religion of which
it had neither consciousness nor intelligence ? And if reason
be not the author of that religious form, who then is its author ?
Who has been powerful enough to impose it upon the human
race ? You will, perhaps, say — Man is made for God ; he
feels it, he knows it; he is so straitened upon this earth,
which affords him but a poor and transitory shelter; by the
natural impulsion of all his faculties, he aspires towards the
infinite region, which is the term of his destiny. But he does
not clearly know that term where he is waited for, he has a
presentiment rather than knowledge of it; and, by the
combined effect of what he desires and what he ignores, in
order to attain to God, he creates for himself means which
reassure him in his faith and console him in his desire. He
believes that God speaks to him ; he supposes that certain acts
performed in His name receive in that sublime invocation an
efficacy which nature alone cannot impart to anything.
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GOD AND MAN. 311
hope. In the intercourse between a limited being and an
infinite being, the impossible becomes natural, and extra
vagance seems to be an effort of reason.
Lucretius invoked fear as the creator of the gods and of
their worship ; you appeal to better sentiments in order to
explain this mystery ; and, indeed, if it were a question only
of individual or local practices, we might, perhaps, consider
positive religions as an aberration, more or less excusable,
of religious sentiments. But that aberration, whatever may
be the influence which caused it, and the names by which it
has been distinguished, could not become the law of mankind.
It is mankind that believes in prophecy and sacrament —
mankind, without exception, that has submitted to dogmas of
which the mind has no evidence, and to rights of which reason
does not accept the concurrence ; it is mankind, in its eminent
nations as in its degenerate races, in its ages of civilization as
in its ages of barbarism, in its sages as well as in its simple-
hearted. It is impossible that all mankind has, in regard to
God, suffered so persisting an eclipse of its true and natural
light ; it is impossible that God should have permitted this.
Truth is the highest good we have received from His
equitable beneficence — it is in all things the principle of our
perfection and beatitude — we cannot lose it, without losing
the root of all the divine gifts. And you would say that it is
God Himself, His acts, His memory, His rights over us which
have become the corrupted source of a universal and inveterate
superstition ! — that mathematical truth shall have been pre
served, and religious truth shall have disappeared from the
earth ! Doubtless, human liberty has produced errors of every
kind ; but, besides that they have never universally destroyed
anything necessary to the life of the human race, they still
preserve traces of truth. We recognise in them the source
from which the passions of men were turned aside, and its own
inability to create even an error. Error is but a deviation from
the truth, an adulteration of the natural order of things, which
cannot be totally destroyed or changed, except by God.
Now a universal error is here supposed which, however,
would have had no root in the physical, intellectual, and
moral constitution of man. According to that constitution, as
rationalism supposes it, man includes no element superior to
reason— reason is the most elevated point of his being, the
principle and moderator of all his other powers ; beyond it he

312 THE SUPERNATURAL INTERCOURSE BETWEEN
attains only to dreams, chimeras, and follies. Thence it is
manifest that whatever is not rational is repugnant to mankind ;
and, consequently, it is impossible to conceive where mankind
could have obtained the idea of holding relations with God
issuing from any other source than reason.
But, say you, although reason is truly the most elevated
point of human nature, yet it does not know God with sufficient
clearness to unite to Him by its own powers, and hence it
aspires to that union by means which are not its own, such as
prophecy and sacrament.
Pardon me for so speaking to you, but it is impossible to
concentrate in one single phrase more contradiction and
unreason. What 1 reason has not in itself the means of uniting
to God, and yet it desires to be united to God ! But why does
reason desire this? What obliges, what urges reason so to
desire, since it does not possess the faculties which justify that
ambition? Either God has willed that man should hold
intercourse with Himself by the intermediary of reason, or He
has not willed it. In the first case, He has evidently given to
our intellectual movement a vibration powerful enough to raise
it even to Himself; in the other case, reason, not being at all
called to that high prerogative, would feel no more the need of
it than the duty of exercising it. You must choose, and
whichever you may choose, you will not explain how man, a
purely rational being, tends to God by a mode foreign to his
nature. The vulgar among reasoners solve the difficulty by
supposing that the human race has been the victim of a certain
number of impostors, who from age to age, have abused its
good faith. Primarily, they think, man had for prophet only
his reason, for sacrament only his heart ; he spake to God, and
God talked with him in the sanctuary of the soul ; philosophy
and religion, being confounded together by their object and
method, were but one and the same institution. There was no
altar, nor worship, nor priesthood — there were only man and
God. But as there sprang up an ambitious man to found the
first throne, so there came another to found the first temple. A
second followed ; then a third, and soon the prophetic and
sacramental leprosy, consecrated under the name of revelation,
covered with its irremediable impurity the conscience of the
human race. Philosophy separated from religion, some scattered
sages preserved in their hearts the pure light and holy liberty

GOD AND MAN. 313
of the first ages of the world ; the rest, a vile herd of error,
became captive under the yoke of a superstition which nothing
could uproot, doubtless because it is supported by the habit, the
antiquity, the name of God, and also by the innate weakness
of the greater number of minds.
I will not expose the injury which that doctrine does to
mankind ; you know that it is common in those who separate
from the multitude. Let us leave to pride the argument of
scorn, and accept the glory of a logic, calm and worthy of
truth. That there have been false prophets is not doubtful, that
many have succeeded, history proves and Christianity admits.
But why have they succeeded ? Have they not succeeded
precisely because there are true prophets? Have they not
succeeded, because, even in corrupting religion, they have
accepted its dogmatic and practical basis, grafting into this
divine trunk foreign branches which thence derive their life ?
Have they not succeeded, because they found in the heart of
man, as God had made it, a ready accomplice ? Imposture,
like every other thing, needs a soil analogous to its grain; it
germinates only in virtue of a fecundity which it receives from
the unique source of all fecundity — namely, nature. Suppose
an impostor, who recognised no received idea, no real sentiment,
no pre-existing force : do you think he would succeed in
deceiving a single man, a single hour ? And yet, to explain
by imposture the mystery which occupies our attention, it is
necessary that it should deceive all ages and all generations.
We possess the history of some of those extraordinary men
who have set up false religions in the world ; we know, very
near to us, Luther and Mahomet ; what were they, but
plagiarists and falsifiers ? Issued from a pre-existing religious
institution, they laid their rash hands upon it, and in order
to curtail it, they made use of the passions of their times.
They have degraded the temple, they have not built it. A
portion of mankind has believed them, because it believed
before — it believed them to be prophets, because it believed
in prophecies — it has received their sacraments, because it
had sacraments before. They have been causes of error only
by an effect of truth.
This is why the last rendezvous of the question is always
in nature itself; imposture having no hold elsewhere, it is
necessarily forced to seek its support therein, and in order

314 THE SUPERNATURAL INTERCOURSE BETWEEN
so to do, it is heedful that it should not contradict all the
elements of human nature. Now you have seen, and I must
again repeat it, if God has given nothing to man beyond his
body and his mind, if reason is the supreme term of our
faculties, it is clear that all which does not take its origin there
is for us unnatural, chimerical, and vain. Such is prophecy —
our adversaries avow it — such is sacrament. And therefore
they cannot be the fruit of imposture, above all, the universal
fruit of a continued imposture, since there would, in that case,
be an effect without a cause, an edifice without foundation.
It is not, then, by hazard that Catholic doctrine, after having
shown us all that God has done for man in the sensible and
intelligible order, warns us that this is not the limit of the
divine action in regard to us, but that above those precious
and first gifts there is another which raises us higher and
places us in immediate communication with the Author of
our being, with the principle and end of our destinies. By
the creating act God raised us up before Himself as a living
and free personality ; by the act of revelation He entered into
communication with us, and we with Him : He delivered to
us the secrets of His thought, the plans of His will, and in that
effusion at the same time exterior and interior — exterior by
the word, interior by light and unction — He created the
supernatural and religious order. And as the nature which
left His all-powerful hand perseveres in the conditions in which
He enchained it, so religion, no less faithful, perseveres under
the form which it received from Him. As it is folly to act
against nature, so it is equally vain to act against religion.
The one and the other remain as God has willed ; what the
sun and moon are in the visible firmament, prophecy and
sacrament are in the firmament of truth. You will not make
the luminaries fall, and you will not silence the word of God.
And if, jealous of the divine work, you aspire to create some
thing by yourselves, you will succeed only in producing
imitations, which, even in their powerlessness, will attest the
dogmas you fear, and add lustre to the glory you would destroy.
What has Luther done, but confirm the Church ? What has
Mahomet done, but increase the grandeur of Jesus Christ?
What have all the usurpers of the prophetic title done, but
maintain in shadows the remembrance and need of revelation?
And what do you, in denying revelation, but prove by your

GOD AND MAN. 315
example that religion is extinguished in every mind that denies
the reality of a supernatural order ?
The world has reached a remarkable epoch of its destiny.
For a century it has endeavoured to found all human things
upon nature and reason ; it believed itself capable of reigning
alone without the intervention of any mysterious idea, any
indefinite power. You have before you the result of this grand
attempt. Social discipline has fallen to pieces in your hands ;
the ingenious springs to which you purposed to subject it have
been found too feeble against resistance and aggressions.
What was generous in your plans of reform has had no better
success than what was chimerical, and justice wonders that it
cannot give to your works either duration or majesty. Will
you linger much longer before you doubt of yourselves ? Will
you not suspect that something is wanting to you, and, painfully
warned by the innate providence of things, will you not lilt
your eyes towards the eternal pole where you haYe left the
science of the past and the future ? It is high time : let us call
God to our help ; let us acknowledge that we have relations
with Him more profound than those of nature, and that to
renounce them, from weakness or pride, is to take from the
human race, with its highest duties, its highest virtues and its
most necessary faculties.

TWO OBJECTIONS
AGAINST
THE SUPERNATURAL INTERCOURSE
BETWEEN GOD AND MAN.

My Lord — Gentlemen,
After having established that the intercourse between
man and God is not based upon nature and reason, but upon
a higher order, which Catholic doctrine calls supernatural, the
course of ideas would lead us to seek why it is so, and what are
the motives which have determined God not to include in our
sensible ard intelligible faculties all the means that we need
for entering into relations with Him. But rationalism does
not permit us to advance so rapidly. The question of the
supernatural order is too grave for rationalists to yield to the
demonstration which we have given without endeavouring at
least to weaken it. Let us then hear their objections.
It is true, they say, that if we look only to the surface of
things, prophecy and sacrament possess a character of uni
versality and perpetuity by which they seem to advance side
by side with nature and reason ; but this is only an appearance
which vanishes at the first serious glance thrown upon that
illogical institution. In fact, before it could possess a real
universality, a real perpetuity, the subject or thought that
aspires to these great characters must be the same in all times
and places; without unity, universality and perpetuity are
impossible, since universality is but the expansion of unity in
space, and perpetuity is expansion in time. Thus nature is
really universal and perpetual, because her laws, in whatever
age or place they are consulted, give to all who interrogate

GOD AND MAN. 317
them an answer that never varies. At the pole as at the
equator, under the instruments of Newton as under the eyes of
Aristotle, physical light falls upon and emerges again from an
object in forming a constant angle. It is the same with reason.
As the faculty of a free being, it does not follow the caprices
of the will, it approves or condemns according to rules which
do not bend. Speak to the Athenian of Pericles, to the Arab
of the desert, to the savage of unexplored forests, to the
child of barbarism, or the full-formed man of civilization,
all understand you, and even when they dispute their own
opinions among themselves, they invoke uniform principles to
maintain them, which are as clear and certain to the intelligence
of the ignorant as to that of the learned. Is it so in regard to
the supernatural order? Or, rather, is there anything com
parable to the chaos of superstitions of which it is composed ?
Open yonder Pantheon ; what see you there ? Gods insulting
one another; dogmas contradicting one another; religions
disavowing, priesthoods anathematising one another ; altars in
violent opposition ; discord infinite as the sacred object which
those frightful controversies of powerlessness and pride pretend
to attain. Behold the supernatural ! Behold it as it appears in
history and before our eyes ! And this is called a divine thing,
an institution not only equal to nature and reason, but which,
superior to all created things, should serve as a law to the
conscience, a light to the mind, a crown to the universe ! For
us, whatever may be the cause of this terrible phenomenon,
we accuse it of being human ; it is human, because it is not
one. If you reply that among all religions one only is the true
one, of which the others are but impious or pitiful imitations,
the difficulty will, perhaps, lose its force on one side, but only
to regain it on the other, and with usury. For one single
religion being true, one alone is good for the soul, one alone
establishes an efficacious communication between God and
man. Thenceforth it is necessary to discern it among the
crowd of others, it is necessary to choose it without error.
And what a task is imposed upon the human race in a matter
where it is a question of finding or losing God ! Can it be
that to us feeble creatures, already wasted in the toils which
our transitory existence costs us, an enigma to solve should
have been given as the condition of our eternal life ? Is it
possible? Is it possible that eternity costs us anything but

318 GOD AND MAN.
virtue, and that, sparing in regard to the infinite, God takes
cruel delight in becoming a sphinx to man ? Ah ! if truth be
our nourishment, it should fall from heaven like rain, pass on
like the wind, swell its waves like the sea, grow like the harvest
in the days when man waits for that blessing upon his labour
which created the earth, and commanded it to serve us.
Every man is able to trace a furrow and cast seed into it : is
every man able to unravel the confusion of the innumerable
religions that contend for the honour of coming from God and
of leading mankind to Him ? None will dare to advance such
a pretension ; and, consequently we oppose to the super
natural order, as a double accusation, first, its want of unity;
next, the impossibility of discerning the true among all the
positive religions, supposing even that one of them is true.
Such are the difficulties which arrest us, and which I must
solve before advancing another step.
It is certain that unity is an essential character of the works
of God, not a dead unity which would exclude variety — that is to
say, harmony in number and extent — but a fertile unity, which,
coming from God Himself, brings back to Him, as to their source,
all irradiations of light and life. Unity is but order, and order
is evidently an attribute of God and of His works.
It is certain also that, considering the mass of religions,
although they all spring from the idea and fact of a super
natural revelation, although they have among them the very
significative relationship of prayer, their dogmatic constitution
nevertheless establishes a flagrant contradiction between the
greater number of them. Unity is at their base, it is not in
their architecture, and that diversity necessarily suggests in the
secondary origin of the greater number the presence of another
¦ hand than the hand of God.
Whose is that hand ? Who has touched the divine work
after God ? What power has suddenly appeared behind the
Creator, to introduce even into religion, which was the crowning
work of the universe, the seeds of discord and death ? That
power is yourselves. God did not place you among His works
to remain there in the inertness of captive contemplation, but
to be there the free co-operators of His thought and His glory ;
He did not create you to adore Him in a servile manner, but to
love Him so much the more as you are able to hate Him,
to serve Him so much the better as you are able to rebel against
Him, to be so much the more efficacious instruments of His

GOD AND MAN. 319
name as you are able to dishonour it. This is why wherever
God is in this world there are you also ; wherever He works
you work also, whether in the sense of His designs, or in
a contrary sense. And it is not upon a part of His work only
that this power has been given to you ; you possess it upon the
whole, in the natural as well as in the supernatural order,
against nature and reason as against prophecy and sacrament.
You are able to deny all ; you are able to deny God as well as
Jesus Christ, society as well as the Church, mathematical truth
as well as revealed truth, visible good as well as invisible good,
time as well as eternity. Nothing escapes from your empire,
because, on the one hand, your liberty has no limits, and, on
another, since all is linked together in the world, the blow
which you give to one point is necessarily felt in all the spheres
of creation and of the infinite. Nature, reason, and religion
are three progressive laws whose light is reciprocal, and whose
force is in common — the intelligence divides them only by a
schism which wounds all the three, and pride obtains great
success only in ruins which form a tomb alike for both. The
will of pride is not to obey, and it obeys as long as a law exists,
whatever may be its origin, its form, or its name. Thence it
comes that pride rests only in its absolute sovereignty, and
that, measuring its force by the greatness of its desire, it has
not despaired of attaining to the two sovereign acts which
belong only to God — the acts of destroying and creating, of
destroying the world as God had made it, in order to create a
world as man wills it to be.
You think that I exaggerate, and that if man has really
attacked religion, because it is but a supposed part of the divine
work, he has at least always respected nature and reason, which
are that work itself in all its certainty and its sincerity. You
have said this in opposing the constant uniformity of the
natural order to the contradictory variety of the religious order ;
but, I ask, does not the sound of the world reach you ? Do
you not hear from this very place the secular clamour of its
divisions? It is only at the portals of the temple that the
combat is engaged between man against man and man against
God ? Stand upon the forum of nations, enter their academies,
open their laboratories of science — wherever you meet with the
human mind, you find war, doctrines against doctrines, politics
against politics, history against history, facts against facts,
affirmations against negations. Can you question this ? And

320 GOD AND MAN.
thenceforth in what is the natural order more united man the
supernatural order? In what does it escape more from the
attacks of our liberty ? Religious contradiction even holds a
rational contradiction; for the dogma which I accept and which
you reject, I accept with my reason, and with yours you reject
it. We differ in regard to faith only because we differ rationally.
Say you that if we differ about consequences, we recognise
the same principles, and that in them the immutable unity of
reason survives and consists ? But by the same title religion
may pretend to unity and immutability; it also claims principles
upon which all forms agree, such as the existence of a Supreme
Being, His action upon man, His positive intercourse with us
by revelation, ceremonies, laws, rewards and punishments.
Where begins the contest if it is not in the dogmatical
development of these common principles ?
There is then parity between the two orders, and if your
accusation concludes to the prejudice of the one, it concludes
no less to the prejudice of the other. Therefore learn that the
same thing you say against religion, scepticism has said against
reason — even as you deny supernatural unity, because of the
divergence of religions, scepticism denies rational unity, because
of the multitude of opinions and practices which divides sages
no less than nations. Pascal scornfully remarked it : " Truth
on this side of the Pyrenees, error beyond them ! " Survey
then the whole abyss; see what in the hands of man that
reason becomes which you do not doubt of, and if you refuse
to believe in the avowals of philosophy, believe at least in what
is passing around you. What truth is not denied? What
instinct of nature is not outraged ? What human institution,
how familiar soever it may be to us either by tradition or by
the heart, is not treated as an enemy? You wonder that
Christ found contradictors and judges eighteen hundred
years ago. Lift up your eyes, behold reason itself before the
tribunal of Caiaphas and the Romans !
Be not alarmed, however, and in learning what man may
do against the work of God, learn also what he cannot do.
Yes, there is a great power in man, for God is with him;
there is a great power in man, for Satan is with him ; there is
a great power in man, for man is with himself : but with God
on his right hand, Satan on his left, and himself between, man
is neither capable of destroying nor of creating an atom. An
atom suffices eternally to arrest all his power : he-*? much more

GOD AND MAN. 321
the universe ! Sixty centuries in the service of our liberty
have not given us the glory of making or destroying a grain of
dust ; how much more will nature, reason, and religion resist
us ! Be not alarmed then ; neither you who doubt, nor you
who believe, be not alarmed. God is in all that is, He main
tains all that He has once willed ; and our liberty, howevei
important, is but the rock upon which the ocean breaks,
remaining still the ocean. Therefore, being a child of truth
in this most troubled age, I hear the tempest unmoved; I
receive light from the flash that falls upon the temple, and
with my head resting upon the threshold of the parvis, I repose
in the divine slumber of infallible faith.
Powerlessness to destroy, powerlessness to create, such is
in man the limit of pride, such is the law which protects all
that is — nature, reason, religion — against the attempts of
liberty. And yet it is very essential that liberty, even in its
abuse, should be a fertile power ; for were it otherwise, it
would be but a mainspring poised in the void, a responsible
name of an imaginary activity. God, in assuring His own
empire, that the world might not become the toy of unbridled
disorder, should have left such an effect to our action that
even in its errors it should not be the vain effort of an abortive
being. What is then the part of God, and what the part of
man ? God, as we have seen, has reserved to Himself the
substance of things; He has willed that man should never
attain to it ; for if the substance of things had been given to us,
God would have remained only as the tranquil spectator of
the ruins of the universe. But if substance escapes from us,
what remains to us ? If we cannot destroy a grain of dust in
nature, a principle in the intelligence, an element in the
supernatural order, what can we do in reality? In order to
understand this, we must remark that all substance has a
mode of being, and that the substance remaining invariable,
the mode is subject to change. It is then the mode which our
liberty seizes. The mode is the figure of things ; being
powerless against things, we have the resource of disfiguring
them. We disfigure nature, reason, religion.
You have received from the Creator a visage in which
power and goodness shine. Your lips become animated with
a smile whose grace outlives their motion ; your eyes flash
forth a light which springs from the fount of a living intelligence,
but which, tempered by modesty, excites respect without Y

322 GOD AND MAN.
fear ; your brow, pure and calm, crowns with its serenity the
living charm of your features, and wherever the regard of
a soul lights upon you, that soul knows and loves your own.
O youth, these are great gifts ! But a single hour is sufficient
to tarnish them, a single crime is sufficient to dishonour them.
Nature, whose masterpiece you are, will not resist the blows
you inflict upon it in the secret of your conscience, beauty
departs from you in proportion as God leaves your heart, and
soon that head, the object of admiration and love, remains
but the ignoble crown of a reprobate or a debauchee. You
will not have destroyed in yourself the natural image of God,
you will have disfigured it.
So also you may lay waste the earth, burn the forests,
disperse the sources of rivers, infect the air, doom admirable
portions of our common heritage to solitude and sterility, and
you have done this but too often ! The hands of barbarians
withered Latium ; the tyranny of the sons of Mahomet, touch
ing the soil of Greece and Syria, dried up sources which were
deemed inexhaustible, and destroyed charms which were
believed to be under the eternal protection of the purest light
that has ever shone upon creation. But how cruel soever
those injuries may be, the earth subsists and nourishes man.
Better generations may succeed those hordes which have not
respected the common mother of the human race ; they may
rouse the fields of Attica and the hills of Messina from their
involuntary sleep ; shade, invited by cultivation, may descend
again from heaven upon the deserts of Rome ; life, which had
but turned aside, may shoot forth on every hand, and the very
ruins become witnesses to our inability to deal the blow that
causes death.
So it is with errors and crimes against reason. A century
dawns, it is bold in the things of the intelligence, it agitates
ideas as the traveller, at the close of a long day, shakes the
dust and weariness from his feet ; it takes pleasure in doubting,
pride in contradicting; it strikes the pillars which aforetime
supported the structure of science and wisdom ; tradition loses
its influence upon it, conscience becomes but a mute or a
suspicious oracle. A moment arrives when astonished minds
ask if truth is not a dream and good an imposture. But in the
very midst of this orgie of scepticism, reason is attacked only
by reason ; it triumphs even in the very wound which it inflicts
upon itself. Negation affirms that the intelligence lives and

GOD AND MAN. 3.3
¦sees, as the eye, closing before the sun, attests the presence and
the power of his rays. It is needful to live, and notwithstand
ing the universal delirium, the course of human things follows
its ancient ways ; mankind marches before Phyrrho who denies
motion. Mankind believes, hopes, combines its thoughts and
its actions. Then, time sounds an hour ; a new age opens
which raises up truth again, as the freshness of morning raises
up in the fields the grass which had drooped at evening. The
altars of doubt are overthrown ; the negations but yesterday
idolized are scattered to the winds ; those who despised are
despised ; they are forgotten who forgot ; a period is marked in
history, and the future mounts to the horizon of eternity. There
was a deformation of the human mind, but no destruction.
Do you any longer wonder that religion, struggling with the
liberty of man, should be subject to the same injuries and the
same vicissitudes ? Why should religion be more fortunate
than nature and reason ? Why, in drawing nearer to heaven,
should our ambition for sovereignty lose the energy which
permits it to violate the inferior sanctuaries ? Whatever shores
we may touch, higher or lower, we bear with us, as an inde
fectible attribute, the power of good and evil. And that very
power increases in proportion as we rise in the hierarchy of
things ; it is greater against reason than against nature, greater
against religion than against reason. This is because we can
raise ourselves only by drawing near to the infinite, and because
the infinite, by its disproportion to our personal limits, necessarily
offers a greater obstacle to revolt and error. Who does not
oonceive how easy it is to substitute chimerical imitations for
religious dogmas ? Man has done this ; he has done this from
impatience under too heavy a yoke ; from weariness of antiquity,
from forgetfulness of tradition ; from aversion towards a negli
gent or corrupt priesthood ; from obedience to the ascendency
of famous sectaries. But whatever may have been the motive
of his separation, under whatever point of heaven and in what
ever time it may have begun, never has man, living in the state
of a people — that is to say, in the natural state — been able to
abrogate religion or change its essential characters. He has
always believed in the positive communication between the
human race and God, by means of the word direct from God.
The perverted religions prove this no less eloquently than the
Christian religion. What was a temple, but an oracle in the
minds of the Pagan nations ? What an idol, but marble and
Y 2

324 GOD AND MAN.
gold speaking in the name of God ? What a priest, but a body
and soul inspired by the breath of God ? What are they now in
every part of the earth — priest, temple, idol — but an incarna
tion, more or less living and near, of the Divinity ? The unity
of the idea outlives the multiplicity of form ; moreover, when
that form is studied, there is found, in the variety of the signs,
the mutilated remains of an identical tradition.
To faith in prophecies all religions have joined faith in
sacraments ; all, we have said, and proved it, called sacrifices,
ceremonies, and prayer, to the help of the soul striving to tend
towards God. Homer immolates victims with the liturgy of
Leviticus ; Delphos commands expiations in the same language
which Benares speaks ; the Etruscan augury blesses the Roman
hills as the Druid consecrated the forests of Gaul ; and above
all those living rites of invincible custom, the sacrament of
prayer rises towards God to demand miracles of Him in the
name of all grief that hopes, and of all weakness that believes.
Doubtless prayer has not always known God under the same
name ; it has not everywhere known His true and eternal
history : but the want was everywhere the same, the aspiration
similar, and when the heart was sincere, prayer did not fail
to be efficacious. The suppliant charged with grief, on bending
the knee before a deceptive statue, forgot the fable that educa
tion had graven in his mind ; he remembered the unknown
God whom Athens revered at the foot of the Parthenon, and
that God who seeks uprightness and knows misfortune, heard
the cry of faith in the lamentations of a humbled heart. The
darkness of idolatry became enlightened ; truth descended with
grace, and the soul of man met the Spirit of God through the
illusions of error.
Acknowledge then that you have no more destroyed religion
than you have destroyed reason and nature ; you have no more
changed its essence than you have changed the essence of logic
and chemistry. You have disfigured all, and God has saved
all. Nature has resisted your mutilations ; reason, your systems;
religion, your unbelief; and all these, being universal and per
petual, attest so much the more the power which founded them,
as that power has respected yours in permitting you not to-
respect its own. Tell me, what has withheld you ? Why is it
that so much life remains amidst so many ruins ? You desired,
you still desire, to destroy religion, in which you see only a
chaos of baseless ideas and practices ; why is religion still-

GOD AND MAN. 325
standing ? You would exercise the sovereign act of destroy
ing, in order to arrive at the sovereign act of creating, and,
indeed, there is a greatness in that ambition which would
entitle it to praise; if nothing could be great against justice and
truth ; why have you neither destroyed nor created religion ?
Look at Luther . . . Luther is an old shadow, but since we
are permitted to evoke shadow, let me evoke him and call him
to account for the mystery which holds my mind and yours in
suspense. Well, Luther ; since thou despisest the Church, since
thou hast resolved to extirpate from Europe the faith which was
once thine own, why dost thou not strike the only blow that
touches the root of the question? Why not overthrow the
architect with the edifice ? Why not deny Jesus Christ ?
Ah ! why ? Luther did not himself know. He obeyed faith
at the same time as revolt, and was illogical in the one as in
the other — he was the formidable expression of great weakness
in great power. His conscience responded to the conscience
of his time, as the conscience of his time to that of all ages. It
included with an element of protestation an imperious want of
belief, and the success of Luther, like all the other heresiarchs,
was, that he struck at the very heart of his epoch, by taking
from its faith all that it could lose, and leaving to it all that it
wished to keep. Had he denied Jesus Christ, he would have
been a Voltaire without ancestors — that is to say, a madman ;
and Voltaire himself, preceded by two centuries of Pro
testantism, could only attain to the position of a sage — that is
to say, a chief of a school and not a chief of the people.
This example includes all the others. It initiates us into
the secret of religious revolutions, which are so much the more
sure of success as they swerve less from the primordial sacra-
mentary and prophetic basis ; so much the more decisive in
favour of the truth of religion as they preserve it in violating it.
For, in fine, if for sixty centuries the human race obeyed the
same dogma and. the same liturgy, would you not recognise in
that tranquil unanimity the sign of a divine institution ? Now
the sign of unanimity combated, of unanimity contradicted and
persevering, notwithstanding such controversy, is manifestly
still more worthy to move an attentive mind. For the first
unanimity may be explained by the absence of examination
and the force of habit, whilst the second can only be explained
by a power superior to all the springs of human thought and
all the attacks of its liberty. To affirm in denying, to maintain

326 GOD AND MAN.
in destroying, to consent in protesting, this is doubtless to rise
up against truth, but it is also to render to truth the highest of
all homage, since it is the homage of an enemy.
It remains to be seen whether God has not done still more
for the preservation of His religion upon earth, and whether
among all those who have adulterated its original purity, there
is not one which has preserved that purity unstained, and
which may be easy to recognise by inimitable characters of
grandeur and sincerity. I hope to show you this without
trouble as well as without delay.
Let us first of all banish from our minds the vain idea that
there are an infinite multitude of different religions here below.
It is not so. Nothing has been more sterile than the imagina
tion of man in the matter of religions. As, in considering the
common features of beings, we collect them with a certain
number of primitive families, so also in comparing together the
religious branches which spread out in mankind, we find them
terminating in three principal trunks, the only ones really distinct
by their physiognomy and by an invisible and mutual repulsion
— I mean idolatry, Christianity, and Mahometism; I do not
name Judaism, because before Jesus Christ it was but
Christianity awaiting its crown, and since Jesus Christ it is
but Christianity without its crown. There remain then the
Christian churches, which cleave to the trunk of the Gospel
and Christ ; the idolatrous sects, neither of which excommuni
cated the other, and whose symbols vied with one another in
mutual respect in the council of the Roman Pantheon — in
fine, the branches of Islamism, which all bend at the feet of
Mahomet and the Koran. Name me a religion, I will trace it
either to the idol, the cross, or the crescent ; but there is no
peace possible, there is no common ground, between the idol,
the cross, and the crescent — those memorable banners which
still divide the generations of men, and which bear in their
folds three theologies separated by a radically different con
ception of the intercourse between man and God. In fact, in
this intercourse, which constitutes religion and supposes an
approaching of two beings so naturally removed from one
another, either the mind conceives an alliance between the
divine nature and human nature that attains even to con
founding them — which is idolatry ; or it conceives that alliance
under a form that excludes compatibility between the two
natures — which is Mahometism ; or, in fine, it admits the

GOD AND MAN. 323
union of the two natures remaining distinct even in theii
intimacy — which is Christianity. Idolatry confounds man and
God ; Mahometism keeps them at a distance from each other ;
Christianity associates them : these three systems resume all
existing and all possible religions.
Antiquity in general was lost in idolatry, and even the
superstitions which had not begun in idolatry ended by falling
upon it as upon an inevitable shoal. The reason of this is, in
fact, that it is difficult to halt just at the point of Theandry — a
name by which Christian theology expresses the participation
of God in man and of man in God. As soon as the intelligence
is no longer enlightened by the full light of religious truth, it
vacillates before that prodigious mystery, and according as it
yields more to reason or to remembrance, to the inspiration of
nature, or the impulsion of theological instinct, it remains behind
or runs beyond the true. Instinct, remembrance, and a confused
presentiment vanquished the intelligence in the intermediary
period of mankind — I mean in that comprised between the
deluge and the coming of Christ. When Jesus Christ appeared,
that wonderful restitution of the eternal type of the alliance
between God and man struck the world with such a flash of
light, that the pagan theogony, notwithstanding its twenty
centuries of empire, was no longer able to maintain the honour
of deceiving the human race. Error was obliged to take
refuge upon another basis, and to assume another form. Arius
prepared its edifice, Mahomet completed it — Arius denied the
divinity of Jesus Christ, Mahomet declared the union between
the divine and human natures in one single personality to be
impossible, impious, idolatrous; and, separating, as far as
possible, the two terms of religious intercourse, he pronounced
the fundamental sentence of Islamism, or the new faith : " God
is God, and Mahomet is His Prophet." God is God — that is
to say, God can be only God ; Mahomet is His prophet — that
is to say, the divine action with regard to man is limited to
prophecy, and the action of man in regard to God is limited to
the faith which accepts prophecy by adoring and praying. No
other religion has appeared since Mahomet; none other will
appear in the future. For, below Mahomet there is but pure
rationalism; above him we necessarily find idolatry or
Christianity. Christianity fills the middle place between Mahometism
and idolatry. It humanises God without causing Him to

528 GOD AND MAN.
descend, it divinises man without changing his substance,
equally removed from the extravagance of pantheism, which
confounds all beings in a divine chaos, and the coldness of
theism, which relegates the creature to a hopeless distance from
the Creator.
Here, then, lies the choice; here, the contest. For who
ever would come out of practical atheism, there are in all
history but these three doors open ; he must be an idolater, a
Christian, or a Mussulman; he must bend the knee before
an idol, bear the cross, or hoist the crescent — the one or the
other; or remain indifferent among the spectators who heai
unmoved the name of God, and who regard the future without
preparing for it.
The choice being thus reduced to these, the only possible
terms, nothing is easier than to recognise where is the true
religion, the religion instituted by God and preserved in the
integrity of its dogmas, its morals, and its liturgy — that is to
say, in the integrity of prophecy and sacrament. It is said
that Tacitus abridged all, because he saw all. God is a still
greater abbreviator, because He labours in eternity for creatures
who have only time. You are in haste. God is so more than
you. You are eager to know truth — God is still more eager
to impart it to you. Listen then: you will need but a ray
of light and an instant of good-will.
Although idolatry and Mahometism start from absolutely
contradictory points, I place them upon the same line in the
discussion, because they bear upon their front the same
characters of shame and inanition. I do not say to you—
Mahomet- has wrought no miracles, nor has idolatry; idolatry
has not prophesied, nor has Mahomet. This is the detail of
the question. It requires time to examine it, and we must
advance quickly. Now to him who wishes to advance quickly,
God has prepared a way which shortens all. He has placed
in religion, as in all other things, a physiognomy. Behold
a man whom you have never met ; his origin and his acts are
unknown to you — who is he ? What does he desire ? What
is the secret of his soul? You know nothing of it, and you
have neither opportunity nor leisure to learn. Brought to
gether for a moment, which may never return, you need to
judge him by the light of a glance. You will judge him, in
fact, and if some experience has initiated you to the play
of the inner life upon the features which form the accent

GOD AND MAN. 329
of the visage, you will not be deceived — above all, you will not
De deceived if great vices or great virtues have ploughed their
furrows in the moving flesh in which you study truth.
So is it with religion. Every religion has a soul which
is reflected in the body of its doctrines and its history ; and,
consequently, every religion has a physiognomy. What is the
physiognomy of idolatry and of Mahometism ? Do you feel
in them the pulsation of anything divine ? Is your conscience
moved by them, and with your eye fixed upon Jupiter or
Mahomet, would you ask yourself that formidable question-
May not God be there ? No, gentlemen, no ; not one of you
has ever given to either of those religions the honour of a
doubt ; not one of you has ever interrogated himself in their
presence, and been tempted to exclaim — Perhaps ! The per
haps comes to you from elsewhere ; it descends into your soul
from another region, and if there were here below only idolatry
and Islamism to represent God, you would not even give
yourselves the trouble to deny — you would pass them by
without hatred, without scorn, without pride, as you pass
before a heap of stones which has not even the architecture of
a ruin. In the celebrated assembly which inaugurated the un
achieved era of our revolutions, two men met together endowed
with unequal eloquence, who both sat for a long time on
the same side, and defended together the coming of the age
from which we have issued. But, at length, the hazards of
public life fell between them, and separated them ; the day
came when they were to ascend the tribune to combat there
before the eyes of a population awaiting this trial, and who
had prepared applause for the younger and feebler of the two.
He appeared first ; the popular movement, which he was sure
of, raised his language above itself, genuine enthusiasm
responded to him; he felt that he had nothing to fear, and
that, at least, he should share the honour of the rostrum with
the powerful enemy arrayed against him. This man ascended
calm and collected ; received by unusual silence he measured
with his soul all the popularity which he had lost, and drawing
from that obstacle, new to him, a power of desperation, he
turned like a lion in the terrible lair of his eloquence. In
voluntary bursts of applause taught him what he already knew —
his triumph ; when, suddenly, he turned towards his adversary,
no longer as orator against orator, but like an eagle hovering

33° GOD AND MAN.
over his prey, and hurled to him that sublime and crushing
apostrophe — " Barnave, there is no divinity in thee ! "
This expression of Mirabeau to Barnave is the expression
which ends the controversy with regard to Mahometism and
idolatry; or, rather, controversy is not even possible, and
from the first observation thrown upon those miserable cor
ruptions of religious truth, the mind disdainfully turns, and
exclaims — There is no divinity in you ! Why ? How ? What
is it then that gives or takes away the divine physiognomy ? I
know not, perhaps. What I do know is, that there is a feature
of baseness which descends even to the face of the brute, as
there is a feature of greatness which rises even to a super
human transformation. What I do know . . . but listen a
moment. On a day known in history, a Roman proconsul
appeared upon a balcony ; by his side stood a criminal covered
with wounds, a reed was tied to His hands, His brow pierced
with a crown of thorns, His body muffled in a purple robe,,
which added to His humiliations the injury of ironical majesty.
The proconsul turned timidly towards the multitude, and
said — Behold the Man ! The people replied by an acclamation
which called for His blood, and the Roman obeyed and
delivered Him up to them. But behind that infuriated man
kind has stood up ; it has regarded the Man in its turn, the
Man condemned, scourged, crucified ; and striking its breast,
it has exclaimed — Behold God ! On another day Greece
assembled her artists to obtain from their genius an image
worthy of their adorations. Phidias was chosen. He took
his chisel — he cut out one of those famous marbles which
well-nigh breathed before the hand of the sculptor had touched
them, he gave to it light, thought, glory, repose, and when
Greece drew aside the veil which covered the Olympian
Jupiter, she cried with a serious and unanimous voice —
Behold God ! But mankind has risen behind that gifted
people; it has regarded the object of a memory which has
remained so great, and pitying Athens still more than its
statue, it has exclaimed — Behold man !
Behold man ! All the arts of Attica, all the poetry of
Homer, all the grandeurs of Latium — nothing in twenty
centuries of duration has been able to hide the ineffable misery
of idolatry ; and Islamism has conquered a half of the world
only to exhibit in it, under a form opposite but equally vain,
the powerlessness of all religions, save that which has made
sages believe, and which makes the impious doubt.

GOD AND MAN. 33*
This striking absence of divinity, which is the prominent
feature of idolatry and Islamism, suffices to judge them. In
fact, it is easy to understand that man, whatever he may do,.
will never be able to give to his works a really divine character.
The more he mounts beyond his sphere, in order to attain a
glory which surpasses him, the further he falls away from truth,
in which alone is the source of the beautiful. As conqueror,
legislator, philosopher — simple mortal, in fine — he has days in
his history worthy of admiration; would he touch the holy
arch by uplifting himself in imposture, he loses the secret of:
the grandeurs of this world and the elevations of the other.
He makes a parody of the name of God ; and that name, to be
avenged, needs but itself. Not only have the false religions-
no divine physiognomy, but to this negative character they
infallibly join the sign of flagrant immorality. Lift your eyes
to the antique altars ! Dare I even ask you to lift your eyes.
to these? Notwithstanding the distance which veils them
from us, dare I counsel you a glance, however obscure, upon
their mysteries and their ceremonies ? I dare not — I dare not
paint to you what those Greeks adored — those Greeks so
delicate, our masters in the art of feeling and expressing the
beautiful. I dare not describe to you the pomps wherein they-
exposed, in the name of God, their wives, their children, their
own heart. That which was their religion we cannot even
make a matter of discourse ; that which was sacred for them,
on passing from my lips to your ears, would be a sacrilege for
you and for me. They had raised up their gods in such sub
lime infamy, that we cannot perceive them in it, were it but to
accuse them. All those gods, I admit, were not of equally
degraded mire; some of them drew near to man by their
virtues. I believe even that a better image of the Divinity
rose up from the conscience before those idols, and inwardly
braved the public worship which was rendered to them ; but
this was the effect of antique truth — it was the groaning of
God in the presence of falsehood, and falsehood did not the
. less subsist with the chastisement of its corruption.
Mahomet, I also admit, in his dogmatic and liturgical
exposition of God, has not incurred the immorality of idolatry.
His design, which was the reverse of the fables of polytheism,
did not permit it to him. But that even renders more striking.
and more formidable against him the shameful materialism
which has resulted from his work, and whose germ, although
perhaps dissimulated, is nevertheless visible in the Koran.

332 GOD AND MAN.
Mahometan morals have not put to the blush the morals of
paganism ; and these in certain things — such as the unity and
indissolubility of marriage— have left far behind them the
habits of the children of Mahomet. Neither Islamism nor
idolatry has known and taught the spiritual life; they have
not drawn the soul above the attractions of this earth, in order
to impart to it the joy of an immaterial aliment. Even in
¦revealing immortality to the soul they have left it a prey to the
passions, the torments, the virtues which death ends.
What other sign would you desire against those miserable
religions ? And yet there is another not less palpable, not less
striking ; it is their logical incapacity. Men may be wrong
and yet discuss — it seems even that nothing is more easy, so
common are its examples — what then shall we say of a religion
which reasoning fails to defend ? And if you believe that
-such an excess of powerlessness is not possible, take the
trouble to seek for the theological, historical, and polemical
works of Mahometism and idolatry. Where are they? In
India, as well as in Greece and Rome, idolatry has had poets
¦for theologians ; and when Christianity taught it what was a
ireligion that wrote and spoke, it had for defenders, philosophers
who overthrew its mythology in attempting to justify it.
Mahometism has in no greater degree dreamed of establishing
its divinity by discussion; it has reigned where its scimitar
was master, it has perished where its scimitar has been broken.
Now, under our own eyes, it maintains the rest of its empire
only by a law which interdicts the conversion of its followers
-under the penalty of death. Paganism, menaced by the
preaching of Christianity, did not act otherwise under the
Caesars of Rome ; it does not now act otherwise under the
despots of China and Japan. What is the cause of this, if it
be not logical incapacity, or, if you like it better, the incapa
bility of reasoning ? Pascal said, " It is easier to find monks
than reasons." The true version was, "It is easier to find
¦executioners than reasons." The history of Islamism proves it
to the envy of the history of paganism. We ought to find there,
by the disposition of God and the force of things, an incurable
imbecility; by the disposition of God, who willed not that religion
should be corrupted without preserving the cruel marks of its
adulteration ; by the force of things, which does not permit
that an error of such magnitude should anywhere find
foundations. The foundations of the true religion are an

GOD AND MAN. 333,
antiquity which mounts by certain monuments to be the very
origin of the world ; an uninterrupted course of miraculous and
prophetic acts leave here and there their ineffaceable sign in
the history of nations; a dogma serious and profound; a
moral teaching which explains itself by revolutions in the
morals of the human race ; a priesthood worthy to speak of
God to vice and virtue ; a providence which governs this
extraordinary whole, and, in fine, maintains it by a constant
prodigy ; a tissue wherein all blends together — wherein each
sustains the other in a duration of sixty centuries, notwith
standing the magnitude of the obstacles and the weakness of
the means. How could a religion issued from man by an
accidental degradation, attribute to itself or preserve such
foundations? We may give the appearance of truth to a
system of philosophy, because it is but a combination of ideas ;
but religion being an immense order of universal and perpetual
acts, how should we create these facts if they do not exist, or
how should we call them to the help of error if they exist to
the profit of truth ? It would be more easy for man to create
the world than to create a religion with divine characters ; for
the world had but to vanquish nothingness, and that religion
would have to vanquish the essence of things.
Such is the reason of the logical incapacity which you
remark in Islamism and in idolatry, and which would deprive
them of all power upon the mind, if the vileness of their
physiognomy and the spectacle of their immorality left them
any chance of seducing an intelligence free to judge them.
Of the three religions which divide the world, two are out
of the lists : Christianity alone is now before us.
Regard it, gentlemen, not to ask yourselves if it be true,
but if it resemble the two others. Does it resemble them ? Is
there here the same logical incapacity, the same immorality,
the same absence of the divine physiognomy ? You may well
combat it, you must combat it. For it teaches, it discusses, it
writes, it has filled the earth with its language/and your libraries
with its works. Whatever you touch, you meet with it. It
opposes its sages to your sages, its scholars to your scholars,
its writers to your writers, its politicians to your politicians, its
men of genius to your men of genius ; during eighteen
centuries, preceded by traditions and works for four thousand
years, it follows your steps, never leaving one of your reproaches
unanswered, any more than one of your wants unsuccoured.

334 GOD AND MAN.
If you deny, it affirms : if you despise, it honours ; if you
trample it under your feet, it rises up again ; if you believe it
dead, it comes back again to life. Is it wrong ? I cannot say.
Is it right ? I know not. What I see, what all the world sees,
is that it reasons and keeps the human mind in suspense.
Sometimes the political authority has served it, sometimes it
has ignored it ; but in good as well as in bad fortune, under
persecution as under protection, it has done its work and held
on its way. None of the vicissitudes which it has witnessed have
astonished it — it has seen the science of the times which ended
with that of the times which began, and it will be accused of
all, save of having been wanting in greatness and power of
.mind. As much as the other religions have been incapable, I do
not say of sanctifying, but of ameliorating public morals, so
much has this religion raised and divinised them. Who will
¦compare the life of the Christian nations with the life of the
nations governed by the law of idols, or by that of Mahomet ?
Ah ! doubtless I know the failing of Christendom, since I
know my own ; but notwithstanding the traces which flesh and
blood leave upon it, what purity in numbers of chosen souls !
What respect for virtue in the conscience of all ! What a
struggle in those even who fall, and who with their eyes fixed
upon the model of all holiness, retain even in vice the hope
and desire to become better ! If the secret of this salutary
labour is not sufficiently known to you by your own experience,
if the history of souls in Christianity has not been revealed to
you, judge at least from what you see; compare the pleasures,
the amusements, the spectacles of the heathens with ours;
place before your eyes our weaknesses and the abominations
of the East. Christianity has not destroyed evil, since evil
forms a part of fallen human nature ; but it has dishonoured it
in opinion, driven it from the public places, pursued it even to
its repairs, attenuated it in the life of the greater number, and
effaced it from the hearts of many. It is the only religion
which has wrought a moral revolution in the world; all the
others have adored the evil inclinations of man, or ineffectually
proscribed them. And that moral revolution is not of an age
or a nation ; from the debaucheries of Augustus to the adulteries
of Louis XIV., it has reigned over a multitude of nations which
daily feel the persevering benefit it confers upon them. There
is not a Christian mother who is not its instrument, and who

GOD AND MAN. 335
does not communicate a virtue of purification and honour to
the souls whom she has received from God. Before the
Christian becomes corrupted he has passed by the joys of
purity, and he preserves in his bones a remembrance of it,
which all the profanations of vice are unable entirely to eradi
cate. Vice is so incompatible with the Christian faith, that
that faith grows weak and languishes in those who will no
longer combat their passions, and under this head, unbelief is
one of the most glorious crowns of Christianity. Neither the
Mussulman nor the heathen need to apostatise in order to be
tranquil in the opprobium of their senses : the Christian alone
has a God who forces him to blush.
And yet this God became man, He bore a flesh like our
own ; He was similar in His body to the idols of nations, and
differing from all who had preceded Him, and from all who
should follow him, He has exercised upon earth a regenerating
power. In Him as in their source, in His form as in their
centre, are reflected all the characters which have made of
Christianity an incomparable monument. Lift up your eyes
now : behold Jesus Christ ! Who among you will blaspheme
against Him without a certain fear that he may err? On
emerging from infancy, perhaps, at the age when the eyes
measure nothing because they as yet have compared nothing,
you may pass before Him without halting or bowing your
head; but wait a little. The shadows of life will increase
behind you ; you will know man, and returning from man to
Christ with regards more humble, because they will have seen
more, you will begin to discover in that physiognomy signs
which will trouble you. A day will come when you will say to
yourselves : Is God really there ? Whatever may be the
answer, your conscience will have asked the question. And
what a question ! What a man must he be who constrains
another man to propose to himself the question of his divinity !
And even should you not feel the presentiment of that doubt,
think that for eighteen centuries it moves and divides mankind.
Now more than ever it is the great question of the world.
Behind the political quarrels which resound so loudly, there is
another which is the true and the last — it is whether the
nations civilised by Christianity will abandon the principle
which has made them what they are, whether they will reach
the point of apostacy, and what will be their lot. To be or
not to be Christian, such is the enigma of the modern world.

336 GOD AND MAN.
And however you may solve it in your minds, it exists, and T
leave it there. It exists, Jesus Christ reigns by that doubt
suspended over our destinies, as much as by the faith of those
who have given Him their whole soul. His divinity is the knot
of the future, as it was of the past, and were it but a ruin, it is
a ruin that bears all. We know what has become of the
nations which have been converted from paganism to the
gospel ; we are ignorant of what would become of the Christian
nations on the departure of the Gospel which has nourished and
formed them. For we see no doctrine ready to receive them,
but an abyss where matter would sit down alone upon the
vacant throne of God.
All these things, gentlemen, require but one look — they
are seen and felt as quickly as light is seen and warmth is felt.
As it is impossible to confound life with death, it is impossible
to confound Christianity with the false systems which have
corrupted its traditions. Far from being obscured by the
disfigurations which human liberty has formed, Christianity
draws from them proof that it is indestructible and inevitable,
and consequently divine. It remains so much the more great
as it is brought into comparison, so much the more alone as it
has rivals, so much the more easy to recognise as it ought to
be discerned. Were there a thousand luminaries in the
firmament of religion as in that of nature, the eye discerns
there only one sovereign luminary. He who denies the sun is-
materially blind, he who denies Christianity is spiritually
blind.

THE NEED OF
SUPERNATURAL INTERCOURSE
BETWEEN
GOD AND MAN.

My Lord — Gentlemen,
We have made a great advance. We required to know
whether, in the intercourse between man and God, there
existed an order of relations superposed upon the order of
nature and reason. We have proved that such an order
existed, since mankind, in all times and places, acts as if it
were real. Afterwards, in replying to an objection drawn from
the want of unity which the supernatural order presents in the
mass of positive religions that divide the world, we have shown
that in fact it was adulterated by the free action of man —
which, however, is unable anywhere to destroy it — so that we
have here in favour of truth the testimony of error itself. For
error, notwithstanding its corrupting power, not only has not
destroyed the supernatural form of the religious establishment,
but it has in no greater degree attained to the point of giving
a specious character of divinity to false religions. Christianity
alone possesses a superhuman physiognomy which imposes
upon the mind examination and respect; alone it appears
between man and God as the possible expression of their
relations. That done, gentlemen, the question of the supernatural
order is not exhausted; we have only considered its outer
z

338 NEED OF SUPERNATURAL INTERCOURSE BETWEEN
side, and rationalism calls us within. Rationalism asks what
is meant by an order superior to nature and reason — an order
which supposes that the intelligence is deprived of what is
needful in order to know, and the will of what is needful in
order to act. When Omar was consulted as to what was to be
done with the Alexandrian library, he replied : " Either the
books of the Alexandrian library say the same thing as the
Koran, in which case they should be burned as useless; or
they say what the Koran does not say, and in that case they
should be burned as dangerous." So also, either the super
natural order blends with the light and activity of the natural
order, and then what ends does it serve ? — or it does not, and
then, being unintelligible to reason, irreconcilable with nature,
what further end does it serve ? What motive, moreover, could
have moved God to refuse to our inner organization the unity
which He has placed in all His works, and to form for us a
mind which, in order to fulfil its function, needs to be perfected
by something from without.
In a word, the very notion of the supernatural order is
disputed ; it is accused of introducing into the plan of creation
a motive, at the very least arbitrary and superfluous. Now in
the name of the Church I affirm that this motive is necessary
— absolutely necessary — supposing that God has willed to give
us full knowledge and full possession of Himself, as from the
beginning of things He has in fact willed and prepared. I
shall prove this for the one and the other elements of the
supernatural order — that is to say, for Prophecy, which is the
complement of our inner light ; and for Sacrament, which is
the complement of our free activity.
When we consider the intellectual labour accomplished by
man here below, we cannot refrain from a feeling of stupor
and wonder. Placed upon this earth, as upon an island whose
ocean is heaven, man has willed to know the route by which
he is to pass ; but innumerable barriers raised up around him.
have opposed his design, and forbade him to take possession
of his empire and his exile. The sea opposed to him the
jealousy of its waves ; he looked upon the sea and passed over
it. The prow of his genius has touched the most inaccessible
shores ; he has explored and examined them, and after a few
centuries of daring, more stubborn even than tempests, peace
fully ruling the waves, he travels where and when he wills
upon the subjected surface of their immensity. He sends his

GOD AND MAN. 33g
orders to all the shoals now become his ports ; by commerce
which will never cease, he draws from them the luxury and
pride of his life, blending all climates, how distant soever
they may be, to make of them but one single servant
obeying his will at every point of the globe.
Another sea, greater and deeper still, a treasure of infinite
mysteries, spread out over his head its waves peopled with
stars. He, a simple shepherd then, wandering after his flocks
in the fields of Chaldsea, observed the heavens through the
pure nights of the East. Aided by silence, he named the
stars, learned their course, penetrated the secret of their
obscurity, foretold their disappearance and their return ; and
all that luminous army, as if it had received its orders from
the eyes of man, has never failed to appear in an exact cycle
at the rendezvous where the observer waited for them.
Even the star which appears but once in many centuries has not
been able to hide its course from us ; called forth at an hour
fixed, it emerges from those unspeakable depths where no
vision follows it — it comes, it shines at the point marked for it
in our horizon, and, saluting with its light the intelligence
which had foretold its appearance, returns back to the solitudes
where the Infinite alone never loses sight of it.
But between earth and heaven — between the abode of man
and the abode of the stars — a space intervenes different from
both, less subtile than the one, less dense than the other,
inhabited by winds and storms, and penetrating by its active
influence all the springs of our life. Man has recognised those
invisible companions of his being ; he has decomposed the air
which he breathes, and seized the gradations of the fluid which
gives him light ; the quickness of the one has no more escaped
him than the weight of the other. In vain the thunder — that
striking image of divine omnipotence — appeared to defy the
boldness of his investigations ; like a giant who has vanquished
all around him, and is indignant against every obstacle, he has
struggled hand to hand with this terrible array of the powers of
nature, and, more than ever master, he has treated the thunder
bolt like a child in leading-strings, causing it to halt respect
fully on the summits of palaces and temples, forcing it to
descend by inoffensive routes to the silent abyss of the earth.
Earth, sea, heaven and all its luminaries, air and all its wonders,
nothing within or without has been able to hide from the mind
of man ; observation revealed facts to him, and facts led him
z 2

34° NEED OF SUPERNATURAL INTERCOURSE BETWEEN
to causes and laws. And those particular sciences, rays diffused
from a common centre, drew together and became enlightened
in a more general science, which, in developing the abstract
mysteries of number, extent, and motion, unveiled before us
the eternal elements of all created things.
But is this all? Has the king of the world stopped there?
Beware of believing it. Had he not advanced further, he
would already have been poet, scholar, artist — already man,
but not divine man. Now he was divine, and all the visible
worlds did not possess in themselves the means of satisfying
his intelligence, and of giving repose to his heart. He mounted
higher ; he asked himself what there is beyond the stars, what
that orb is which moves all those orbs measured by his
compass, and he replied — the Infinite 1 For the finite, not
containing itself, can be limited only by the infinite. But
what is the infinite? Is it an empty space unceasingly
enlarging before itself, a boundless abyss calling to itself, in
order to give them place, all real and all possible life with
out being itself living? Man, who had surveyed the sea
and the heavens, fearlessly surveyed that other heaven and that
other sea ; whatever the nature of the intellectual space wherein
his thought dilated above all sensible things, he comprehended
that the principle of being, life, and movement, was not there.
He advanced beyond it ; he left the imaginary infinite, to con
template face to face the real Infinite, and seeing, without fully
seeing it, defining, without fully defining it, he exclaimed with
a voice which was the first, and will be the last :
Beyond the heaven, the God of heaven dwells !
Behold me, gentlemen, behold me trembling before the
greatness of man ! Just now he shook but the dust from his
feet, and see, he touches God !
And yet is there not some trace of sadness in your soul ?
Is there in your intelligence nothing obscure and unknown ?
In the palmy days of Greece there once lived a sage who
served his country with his sword, whilst at the same time he
served it by lessons which merited the honour of preparing
human wisdom to bend before the Gospel of divine wisdom.
Socrates — for it was he — one morning went out of his tent,
sat down before it, and with his head resting upon his
hands remained thoughtful. The sun rose, the army was in
motion, the coursers passed by, all the noise of a camp

GOD AND MAN. 341
surrounded his reverie ; but he remained motionless, and, as
it were, enraptured out of himself, and it was evening before he
had power or thought to remember his head weighing upon his
knees. What was the subject of that great man's thoughts?
What painful mystery was able to hide time from him and fill
up the space of so lengthened a meditation ? Alas ! gentle
men, the same mystery that troubles you, and that brings you
here. Without wishing now to insult your reason after having
so highly exalted it, may I not ask with Socrates, What do
you know? May I not ask you, the children of sages, the
question which he addressed to the sages of his time? Have
the twenty centuries that have passed since Socrates changed
the condition of the human mind, and brought down upon
you the plenitude of light which was wanting to the master of
Plato? A light, indeed, a great light has shone upon the
world since the mouth of Socrates was closed by a draught of
hemlock ; but it came from Calvary, and not from reason.
Those who have not received it in the obedience of faith, so
far from being enlightened by it, have seen the gloom and
uncertainty of their ideas increasing ; for a formidable question
for them has been added to all the questions that perplex our
understanding. I say to you then, without fear of contradict
ing myself or of offending you, There is something which you
know not, when in order to know it you interrogate only your
own intelligence. Philosopher or peasant, transcribing with a
golden pen pages which will fill posterity with immortal
incense, or obscure labourer in a life without morrow, whoever
you may be, there is a thing which you know not. What you
know, I have declared ; what you know not is yourselves, your
soul, the reason of your soul, your destiny. You know all,
except the secret of your life. I do not yet seek the reason of
this, I expose the fact, Is your soul imperishable in its nature ?
Why is it united to a body ? Why does it withdraw from that
body at a certain moment ? Whither does it go on leaving its
prison of a day ? What is death ? What is that place to which
your fathers have gone, where they wait for you, that place
which calls you, which tells you by the voice of Bossuet, "that
the ranks are crowded there?" Do you knowwith any certainty?
Do you know better than Socrates, placed by injustice face to
face with the future, and drawing from his condemnation a
new assurance of our immortality ?
If I consult the history of human wisdom, I see it arriving

342 NEED OF SUPERNATURAL INTERCOURSE BETWEEN
at this mystery by all its roads, but by very different roads.
Plato affirms, Cicero doubts, Epicurus denies, and the human
mind constantly dilates in these three zones of thought. Would
it, after the ages of faith, restore in modern times the inde
pendent philosophy ? Descartes begins by affirmation, Bayle
continues by doubt, Voltaire ends by negation. Less than two
centuries are needed by philosophical activity to accomplish
that fatal cycle, the result of which is what you see, that is to
say, a society without certain belief, divided by a thousand
opinions, each of which claims to be true, each of which has
its herald, its hopes, its reverses, and which, disputing in order
to build up, meet together but to destroy ! The Greeks pre
sented its spectacle to the world, the Romans renewed it, and
we, two thousand years after the lesson of these ruins, choose
to receive from ourselves their formidable teaching. It is
before you, gentlemen ; examine it ; learn from it at least the
limit of your intelligence, and the need which you have of
another light than yours to know your own selves.
But whence comes to us this ignorance of our own
destinies? Whence comes it that, having penetrated so far
and mounted so high into the mysteries of nature, our sight
grows dim when we exercise it upon what is intimate and
personal to ourselves? It is not difficult to understand the
reason. All the phenomena of nature are facts present before
our eyes, and the mathematical laws which govern them,
besides that they are manifested in perceptible and limited
bodies, appertain to the invariable essence of things, which is
present to our mind and constitutes the intelligible light with
which it is enlightened. The Divine Being Himself reveals
Himself to us by the universe, which, all great though it
be, constrains us to seek for it a cause, a cause which can
only be the Infinite in a state of personality, that is to say,
God. We thus hold the two ends of the chain, the finite and
the Infinite, the world and God. But when it is a question of
penetrating the secret of our destiny, all our natural means of
knowledge fail us. Our destiny is not a phenomenon present
to our observation ; it embraces a past invisible to us, a future
alike invisible. Nor is it a law belonging to the essence of
things, since we may be or not be — live for a day or a thousand
years. Our destiny is a revelation between two free beings,
one of whom is finite and the other infinite. It depends upon
the concurrence of two wills differently sovereign, one of which

GOD AND MAN. 343
has given what it did not owe, the other is able to refuse what
it did not expect.
Now how are we reasonably to know the will of another ?
How is reason to attain to an inner and a necessary perception
of an act which may be or not be ? Doubtless God has in His
nature immutable rules of justice and goodness, whose re
flection enlightens our conscience and places us on the road
of His operations. But neither justice nor goodness impose
upon Him,1 in regard to His gifts, a measure absolutely de
termined. He was free to create or not to create, free to call us
into life sooner or later, free to unite Himself to us more
or less durably and intimately. Who would say, for example,
that the alliance of the divine nature with human nature by
the incarnation was metaphysically necessary ? Now if it were
not necessary, it was free; and being free, how would the
intelligence have perceived it otherwise than under the form
of a simple possibility ? And it is the possibility even which
makes the mystery. Behold me, a living being, behold me in
presence of the eternity which my mind discovers all around
me as the natural horizon of my being: am I there for an
hour, for a century, for ever? Is eternity, which is my
principle, also my right and my object ? If I saw clearly that
it is not, there would then be no mystery ; if I saw clearly that
it is, there would be no greater mystery ; but I hesitate before
the affirmation and the negation, because both are possible.
That which is necessary is visible, that which is possible is
but dimly perceptible. That which is necessary is like the
day, that which is possible is but as the night. Who is to
solve the doubt? Who will say to us of two contradictory
things equally realisable, This is realised, that is the real?
Reason cannot, for reason could do this only by changing that ;
which is possible into that which is necessary, which is absurd.
I declare that between what is necessary and what is possible,
;stands the probable ; but the probable does not give certainty,
it inclines the mind without subjugating it. Socrates died •
avenging himself towards his judges by the hope of immortality, ,
and the Phsedo is the imperishable memorial of that heroic
-vengeance : but what sufficed for the remorse of his judges and
the greatness of his soul, did not suffice for the consolation of
his friends. Another death than that of a sage, another
language than that of a man, was to give to the human race the
certainty of its immortality.

344 NEED OF SUPERNATURAL INTERCOURSE BETWEEN
But immortality is not all ; many things therein still remain
obscure, and were it even assured, the mind would still ask,
What is immortality ? Shall we see God in it ? Shall we see
Him there face to face ? Will it be for our transformed vision
what the yesterday of nature is for our mortal vision? The
abyss of the infinite is fathomless, and this is the second cause
of the powerlessness of reason to render an exact account
to itself of the last ends of man, as Christianity eloquently
calls the dogma of his destinies.
In every other science the question rises from the finite
to the finite. Even mathematics are but the general laws
of bodies, and if they are considered in an abstract manner,
inasmuch as they subject undetermined quantities to their
calculation, they attain to nothing beyond the indefinite — that
is to say, beyond a supposed progression constantly increasing
or decreasing, to which unity serves as a starting point. But
in the science of the last ends of man, the question rises from
nothingness to the infinite. It is a question of knowing whether
death brings us back again into existence, or leads us to
eternity; whether we are a simple phenomenon measured
by time, or a luminary emanated from God to return to Him
again ; and what is the law of that curve which we describe
round the centre which is our principle and our end. Even,
putting aside the intention of God towards us, an intention
evidently not to be sounded by reason, as I have just shown,
there still remains the difficulty as to the infinite considered
in itself. St. Thomas of Aquinas has said, "Truth is the
equation between the intelligence and its object." Now how
can a finite intelligence be in equation with an object which is
not finite ? And if that equation be impossible, how should
we of ourselves possess truth in regard to God and to our
relations with Him? We are able to affirm that God is,
because our mind, superior to the universe, discovers therein
the need of a cause superior to it. We can also affirm that
that cause is infinite, because if it were not, it would be but
another universe, equally incapable as the first of subsisting of
itself. But our mind, although superior to the universe, is not
equal to God ; it floats between two extremes, surpassing the
one, surpassed by the other, and not even knowing entirely
that which is beneath its sphere ; because the total knowledge
of the phenomenon would require the total knowledge of the
cause, which is God. God, says the Scriptures, dwells ia

GOD AND MAN. 345,
" inaccessible light ; " He is, at the same time, that which is
most clear, and that which is most impenetrable. Remove the
idea which we have of Him, all light disappears from our
understanding; truth becomes only a dream, aud justice a
name. But, also, would we penetrate the Divine Essence to its
very depths, our eyes grow dim, and we perceive in immeasur
able distance only a sparkling that dazzles us, and veils light
from us by light itself. For example, would we study the
metaphysical nature of God, we ask, Is God a solitary being,.
or does He possess relations in Himself? Whatever may be
the answer, it is a mystery. Would we study His moral nature,.
we ask, What, in God, is the proportion of justice and good
ness ? Whatever may be the reply, we must reply again by
another mystery. And, yet, if I ignore these things, can I
possibly know the law of my relations with God? Can I
know what I ought to fear, or what I ought to hope ?
Perhaps you will say to me, But why has God not given
us a more penetrating mind ? Ah ! gentlemen, whatever
penetration He might have given us, would it ever have
equalled the profundity of His essence, which is infinite.
Would it have answered to the definition of St. Thomas of
Aquinas, " Truth is an equation between the intelligence and
its object?" You have but two courses open to you, either to
deny that definition, or to maintain that God had power to.
create spirits his equals — that is to say, God. In the first
case, it is to affirm that the effect might be greater than its-
cause ; in the second, that that which exists by another, never
theless exists of itself. Yield, therefore, to evidence, and no-
longer contest against Christianity that great and powerful-
truth, that no created intelligence is of itself capable of attain
ing to a perfect knowledge of God, and, consequently, to a
certain knowledge of its destiny. History proves this to you,
and reasoning has just confirmed history by explaining it to you.
What, then, is wanting, in order that man may know him
self and God? A mediating light must interpose between.
God and himself — a light which should aid his nature without.
destroying it, which should draw him near to the Infinite with
out being itself the Infinite. And if that mediation seems
impossible to you, give me your attention yet a moment longer.
You to whom I speak are a soul, and I who speak to yon
am a soul also. Now do you know my soul, and do I know
yours ? The infinite is not between us, and yet, although by

346 NEED OF SUPERNATURAL INTERCOURSE BETWEEN
our bodies we touch each other, an abyss separates us. What
are you, and what am I ? What is the hidden motor of our
actions ? Whence do we tend by our weaknesses and by our
virtues ? What is our degree of power in good and in evil ?
I repeat, What are you and what am I ? You see plainly in
.my actions, and I see in yours, a certain reflection of what
we are inwardly ; physiognomy adds its revelation to that of
our works, but can you say that you know me as I know my
self, and can I persuade myself that I see you as you see
yourself? The soul ignores the soul, inasmuch as their essence
is not seen by a direct vision. There is but one remedy for
this evil, namely, confidence or confession — that is to say, the
opening of the soul to the soul by means of sincere language.
Language is the mediating light between equal things which
are unseen ; by a stronger reason is it, also, between things
doubly separated by their invisibility and by their inequality.
Why should not God speak to man ? Why, seeing us incapable
of attaining to Him by the feebleness of our nature, should He
not condescend to unveil Himself to us in a confidence which
would reveal to us, with the mysteries of His being, the order
of His thoughts and designs ? I have proved to you that this
supernatural or prophetic revelation was necessary to the
intercourse between man and God, and I have just shown
you the instrument of this revelation in language. I will
^terminate this conference by proving also to you the necessity
of Sacrament, not to enlighten the mind, but to strengthen the
will — not to teach us our destiny, but to help us to fulfil it.
The mind is the remote principle of our actions, the will is
their immediate principle; the mind sees, the will commands,
man acts. What is it then to act ? To act is to produce
something. If you have produced nothing — if no result has
been the fruit of your will, you have done nothing ; it is the
expression consecrated by language itself. Therefore man
never moves but to produce, and each of his movements, even
when it is abortive, still produces something, were it only noise.
But why does he produce ? Why is not man in a state of
;repose? What does he seek in that incessant production
which is the effect of his activity ? What he seeks is life. If
he breathes, it is to live ; if he digs the earth, it is to live ; if
3ie walks, it is to live ; if he sleeps, it is to live ; if he dies, it is
still to live. And he never rests, because life escapes from him
in proportion as he produces it. He drinks it from a parsi-

GOD AND MAN. 347
monious cup, which contains and affords but one drop at a
time. To halt is to die. But to die ! — did I not say just now
that to die was still to live ? Yes, in the truth of our destinies
death is the high-road of life, provided we have known the
secret of the course on which we act, which is to produce in
ourselves the very life of God — a life full, stable, each instant
of which includes eternity, and which has no more need to
produce itself because it is. This is the true and final object
of all our actions. I have demonstrated it to you in showing
you that God is our principle and our end. Whatever you
may do, if you do not this you will do nothing. If you do not
this you are but like the herdsman who sits down on the bank
of a flowing stream and beats the wave as it- passes, pleased
with the noise which he himself causes. The present life,
when it is not the instrument of the eternal life, has no other
form, and is nothing more worth. In vain will you clothe it
with the consul's purple ; in vain will you call it glory, power,
immortality — illustrious names which elevate nothingness only
to exhibit it from a higher place and to a greater distance.
History is full of these extinguished beacons, famous mortals
who, because they conquered for a day the admiration of this
world, esteemed themselves great in life, and expected from
their tomb a persevering reign. Do this if you will. Build
up pyramids for yourselves in the devastated solitudes of
memory ; surround your death with moats and barriers against
time; eternity will permit you, as it permits the child who
totters in his first efforts to reach the arms of his nurse that he
may feel proud of being greater there than on his feet.
But if these puerilities wound you, if you are ashamed of
adding ridicule to nothingness, consider that it is a question of
producing in yourselves the life of God, and seek in your nature
if you can find there the instrument of such exalted ambition.
The life of God is infinite ; it consists in the perpetuity of
an indivisible moment in which God, one and many, beholds
Himself fully in His essence and loves Himself fully in His
persons. Now we are totally incapable of such life. Subject
as we are by our nature to succession and change, we cannot
aspire to the indefectible state of immutable duration ; neither
are we more able to behold the Divine Being face to face, nor
to love Him with that perfect love which, in Himself, results
from the direct vision of His ineffable beauty. If we behold
Him, it is through the obscurity of ideas ; if we love Him, it is

348 NEED OF SUPERNATURAL INTERCOURSE BETWEEN
as the invisible principle of the incomplete blessings by which
we are surrounded. But to behold Him in His substance, to
love Him with that regard which possesses the object loved, to-
become blended so completely in Him as to feel only the steady
movement of His eternal life, is a prodigy so far beyond our
power to perform that faith alone gives us the certainty of its
future accomplishment. Reason laughs at that hope, so much
does it feel incapable of realising it. For reason, the most
glorious future of man is immortality ; that is to say, the attain
ment by the soul of a duration which the senses could no longer
measure — a life the ideas of which alone would fill indefinite
space. Or, if reason pass beyond this, it casts to us the dreams
of pantheism, boasting that it creates God for us on condition
that we lose ourselves in the abstract immensity of being.
Christianity has marked our place between these excesses;
knowing that God is our end, it commands us to begin to live
imperfectly in Him, in order one day to live there in the
fulness of vision, which, without confounding us with the Divine
Essence, will give it to us as the present object of direct know
ledge and of love in possession.
Now, whether in its initial or its final form, that divine life
— I have just shown it — surpasses the forces of all mortal'
nature. As there is no natural equation possible between a
limited intelligence and a truth not limited, so also there can
exist no possible natural equation between the life of a finite
being and that of an infinite being. If, then, God calls us to
His eternity, if our destiny is to live by Him, in Him, and
with Him, he must necessarily communicate to our soul a
mediatorial element, by means of which it may be raised above
its own limits, and borne towards Him by a movement of a
supernatural or divine order. Our present life is the painful
crucible from whence our future life should flow ; if only matter
be found there, even were it the most precious, nothing but
mire will come from it ; if spirit only be found there, even were
it the most penetrating, nothing would result but human ideas
and sentiments. Let God then intervene, let Him pour in the
gold of His eternity, or, to speak plainly, let Him attract us
towards Himself by a direct action upon our souls ; let Him
draw us without violence from the affections of nature, and
inspire us with such a love that the present life may appear to
us only as a burden, and this earth but a place of exile.
This love exists, you cannot deny it. David exhaled it

GOD AND MAN. 349
in his Psalms, the martyrs embalmed their sufferings with it,
the saints have lauded and glorified it from generation to
generation : all, in different modes, have poured forth before
God the melancholy of souls oppressed by the workings of
superhuman love. "As the hart," said they, "panteth after
the fountains of water, so my soul panteth after thee, O God !
My soul had thirsted after the strong and living God, when
shall I come and appear before the face of God. My tears
have been my bread day and night, whilst it is said to me
daily : Where is thy God ? These things I remembered, and
I poured out my soul within me, for I shall go over to the
place of the wonderful tabernacle, even to the house of God,
with the voice of joy and praise, with the noise as of one
feasting. Why art thou sad, O my soul, and why dost thou
trouble me ? Hope in God, for I will still give praise to him
because he is the help of my countenance and my God."*
These accents are not of earth — they rise from hearts delivered
from time, and which began already really to inhabit the region
which gives a distaste for all the rest. But how did they reach
that region? Is it by the natural effect of intellectual con
templation, or of a movement of enthusiasm ? Assuredly not ;
and never, either in Orpheus or Plato, or in any mind possess
ing only the spirit of man, have such vibrations moved the
sanctuary of our sensibility. They proceed from an art
unknown to genius, from a tradition which reveals its secrets
only to saints. Interrogate the saints ; they are not jealous of
their gifts, freely they have received them, freely will they give
them to you. They will tell you whence they derive that
painful but hallowed life which draws them above the world.
Look yonder : under the shelter of a chiselled stone, under the
still more lowly symbol of bread kneaded by man, lives the
hidden virtue that gives holiness, and, with holiness, produces
and fertilises in the soul the germ of the divine life. What
Prophecy is for the intelligence, Sacrament is for the will.
Prophecy reveals to us the impenetrable mysteries of the
essence and mind of God ; Sacrament communicates to us the
spirit, the desire, and the hunger for God, the right to possess
Him by grace, since we cannot by nature, and even a real fore
taste of that possession.
If the experience of the saints does not suffice for you,
* Psalm xiii.

350 NEED OF SUPERNATURAL INTERCOURSE BETWEEN
consult the opposite experience. You who have only the
heart wherewith to love God, as you have only reason where
with to know Him, do you love God ? I do not ask you if you
love Him with tender and profound love, better than you love
your dearest friends, better than a mother loves her son, better
than all things and yourselves — not from the spectacle of
visible blessings of which He is the author, but from an antici
pated contemplation of the personal beauty that is in Him. I
do not ask you whether you love Him so as to be able to
address to Him some of those accents which David has just
lent us. But do you love Him with the faintest and most
feeble love ? Are your thoughts always turned towards Him ?
Have you any secret pleasure in Him ? Does He form a part,
how small soever it may be, of the treasure of your heart ? I
venture to say, No, and that the falling leaf which the wind
bears along touches you more than the immensity of the
divine perfections.
Seneca has said, Amicitia pares invenit vel facit —
Friendship finds or makes equals. Such is the reason of your
coldness towards God ; you know that He is infinite, and you
do not conceive what there can be between Himself and you.
He is in His place, and you are in yours ; you ask from Him
only forgetfulness, and you give to Him but the same thing
which you ask from Him. And never, by the sole effort of
nature, will you rise from that state of insensibility. Nature
will inspire you with ardent passions, or even with heroic
affections, but for the things that are felt and for beauties
seen ; nature will prostrate you before a little dust ; it will
make of that dust the soul of your existence, your life itself,
so that you would be ready to die, if in a last embrace, you lost
that precious gift of love to which you have a thousand times
vowed immortality. You would do even more, you would die
for a beloved object ; you would die joyfully, offering to that
object your last sigh as a holocaust of eternal adoration. All
this you are able to do, when God is not in question ; but if
God be in question, that great faculty of loving dies within you,
and your heart, so prompt for all the rest, refuses the Infinite.
If you loved nothing we should have but to pity you ; being
loving by nature, and placing in it the felicity of your short
life, we must wonder to see you insensible to God, and
conclude therefrom that something is wanting to you in order
to attain that supreme affection. A sage has just told you

GOD AND MAN. 35 j,
what is wanting to you. As St. Thomas of Aquinas has
defined truth — " an equation between the intelligence and its-
object," Seneca, with a precision not less eloquent, has defined
love — "a fusion which finds or makes equals." Now as no
equality exists between God and us, it is for Him to lean
towards His creature by a movement of grace, and divinely to-
attract that creature to a life common with Himself. If we
consent, it is our merit and our salvation ; if we do not consent,
it is our fault as well as our ruin.
These truths which I endeavour to demonstrate to you,.
were one day announced by Saint Paul before a Roman pro
consul and a king of the East, assembled more from curiosity
to hear him than from desire to know the ways of God. After
having related to them the madness of his youth against Jesus
Christ, and how He whom he had persecuted had appeared to
him at the gates of Damascus to confide to him the Gospel of
nations, he thus continued his discourse : " But being aided.
by the help of God, I stand up unto this day witnessing both
to small and great, saying no other thing than those which the
prophets and Moses did say should come to pass, namely, that
Christ should suffer, and that he should be the first that should
rise from the dead, and should show light to the people and
to the Gentiles." Here the proconsul interrupted him, and
with a loud voice cried out to him, "Thou art mad, Paul!"
And Paul, unmoved, replied, " I am not mad, most excellent
Festus, but I speak words of truth and soberness, and the king
before whom I speak knoweth of these things, none of which
were hidden from him, or were done in a corner." Then-
turning towards the king he said — " King Agrippa, believest
thou the prophets ? I know that thou believest ! " And the
king answered, " Paul, almost thou persuadest me to be a.
Christian."* Gentlemen, the same dialogue is now passing
between your soul and mine ; neither the truths nor the hearers-
have changed. There are here many, like Festus, puffed up in
the pride of reason, to whom the history of their own weakness
is unknown, and who, having never felt any need of the help-
of God, marvel that it is necessary to treat with Him other
wise than as equal to equal. These say to me, "Thou art
mad, Paul ! " But there are also those, who, like Agrippa,.
more infatuated by their passions than by their knowledge,.
*Acts xxvi. 22 and foil.

352 GOD AND MAN.
secretly warned of the misery of man, sometimes lift their eyes
towards the Omnipotent Goodness which has made them.
These say to me, "Almost thou persuadest me to be a
Christian." And I, making no distinction between either,
between those who are near and those who are further away —
confiding in Him who has died for us all, I say to all, imitating
the language of Saint Paul, " Would to God that you were as
lam!"* Would to God that, recognising the powerlessness
of your nature abandoned to itself, you would sing in the peace of
the joy, the certainty of the children of God, that short and
consoling hymn, Credo — / believe !
* Acts xxvi. 29.

PROPHECY.

My Lord — Gentlemen,
The reality and necessity of a supernatural order, as a
means of communication between man and God, having been
demonstrated to you, it remains for us to penetrate the
intimate nature of that order. You have already seen that it
divides into two acts, one corresponding to our faculty of
knowing — namely, Prophecy; the other relative to our operative
faculty — namely, Sacrament. In causing you more deeply to
sound the mystery of these two acts I shall attain my object,
which is to lead you to a knowledge of the supernatural order,
as far as its profundity and the limits of our minds will permit.
I begin by Prophecy.
Prophecy is a word of God manifesting truths to man which
his reason alone would not have attained, and which, however,
are necessary for the accomplishment of his destiny.
That which predominates in this definition is language —
language is the first prophetic element. But what is language?
A man comes into the world. His eyes, his ears, his lips —
all his senses are closed. He has no idea of the nothingness-
from whence he is emerging, or of the being to which he is
attaining — he is ignorant of himself, and of all the rest with
himself. Leave him as nature has just sketched him, leave him
there naked, dumb, dead rather than living; he will live
perhaps, but he will live without knowing it, an unformed
guest of creation, a soul lost in powerlessness to find its own
life. His eyes will open, but no thought will be visible in them,
and his heart will beat, but no virtue will be felt therein.
Happily something watches over him. The providence of
language covers him with its fertile wings — language incessantly
bends over him, watches him, touches, turns him, strives by
2 A

354 PROPHECY.
its vibration to awaken that sleeping soul. And at last, after
days which have been ages, on a sudden, from that dull and
insensible abyss, from that infant hardly able to express by a
smile that he understood the love which had placed him in the
world, language escapes and replies. The man then lives ; he
thinks, he loves, he names those whom he loves, he renders
back to them in language all the love he had received from
them. But this is only the beginning of man. He, the predesti
nated of the Infinite, as yet knows only the bosom of his
mother, his cradle, his chamber, a few pictures hanging on the
walls, the space which his eye discovers from a window — an
hour is for him history, a house the universe, a caress the last
end of things. He must leave this limited horizon and prepare
to mark his place in that restless society where all, having the
same rights in the same duties, will dispute with him the glory
of existence. Soon he will descend the staircase of the
paternal house, he will appear in public, his ears will hear the
painful din of clashing ambition and contending ideas, and
like a leaf fallen upon the waves of a stormy sea, he will, for
the first time, wonder at the cost of life, and the mysteries
which it contains. Who will explain them to him? Who,
rightly or otherwise, will teach him the science of man, that
science whose elements are the past, the present, the future,
earth and heaven, which by one of its poles touches nothingness,
and by the other the infinite? It will still be language, no
longer the language of his falher and his mother, but perilous
language, which will, perhaps, stifle within him the germs of
truth; which will, perhaps, develop them according to the
spirit of the masters who may direct his own. For he will
have masters ; he cannot escape from that second reign which
language will exercise over him. Language launched him into
the world, language roused and gave the first course to his
ideas : whatever he may will, whatever he may do, for his
happiness or his misery, language will perform its work ; it will
make of him a vase of faith or of unbelief, a victim of pride
or of charity, a slave of the senses or of duty, and if he always
remains free against evil, he will, nevertheless, be free on
condition of calling to his aid the language of better teaching
than that which had deceived him.
Such is the history of man ; listen now to that of the people.
A tribe is found slumbering in barbarism ; they know not even

GOD AND MAN. 355
the first of arts, which is that of subjecting the earth to their
wants. Like the beasts, they live on prey. When they find it
they lie down and sleep before the fire that warms, or under the
tree that covers them, until hunger commands them again to
dispute with the forests, and with chance, their precarious
subsistence. They have no country. The very soil on which
they wander has received no consecration from their labour, no
limit from their power ; and although it may hold the bones of
their forefathers, they live there without past or future. If
attacked, they defend themselves, like wild beasts in their lairs,
but are unable, even of the staff with which they defend them
selves, to form either a sword or a standard. Idea is wanting
to them, and with it, virtue, progress, history, stability.
But behold a change I This people settles ; they build
tents, they dig out trenches, they place guards, they have some
thing durable and holy to watch over. A temple offers to
them, under a sensible image, the God who made the world,
the Father of justice and the Indweller of souls. They adore
Him in spirit, they pray to Him with faith. The sun no longer
passes over their heads as a fire which becomes extinguished
in the evening and is lighted up afresh in the morning, but as
the grave measure of ages, bringing to each day its duty, to
each century its duration. They count his revolutions, and
distribute their own history in the cycle wherein all nations have
included their own. In fine, they live as a nation, they reveal
their presence by men of name — by acts of power. But what
has raised them from their former lethargy? What has made
of that barbarous tribe a regular and civilized society ? What,
gentlemen ? The same power that made the man — the power
of language. Orpheus came down from the mountains of
Thracia, he sang, and Greece rose up full of life at the sound
of his lyre. A missionary appeared in the desert with a crucifix
instead' of a harp ; he pronounced the name of God, and the
savages, simple even to nakedness, covered their nascent bash-
fulness with the leaves of the forest. Children smiled at the
man who spoke, and mothers believed in lips which brought
to their sons the blessing of the Great Spirit.
Shall we contemplate other scenes taken from more advanced
communities ? A people, after having long held with honour
the sceptre of their destiny, lost little by little the sentiment of
great things ; they no longer knew how to believe, to deliberate,
or to devote themselves ; they were seen bending over a counter,
2 A 2

35« PROPHECY.
weighing coins in a balance, instead of weighing the destinies
of the world, having no longer any desire beyond the mono
tonous and senseless clinking of money. With abasement of
character came servitude ; tyrants sported with that people and
imposed upon them laws worthy of their morals. Those tyrants
found accomplices even in the traditions of liberty, and the
forum, the tribune, the senate, were names with which they
covered the degradation of souls and the opprobrium of their
tyranny. But whilst this corruption and fear reigned over that
degenerate race ; whilst all was silent save falsehood, calumny,
delation, baseness of heart and mind, at a moment unlooked
for, that people awoke and looked around them : Domitian has
disappeared, Nerva has succeeded him. What was it that thus
suspended the course of ruins ? What power recalled, even
were it but for a day, honourable names and remembrances ?
Do not ask, gentlemen : language glided between the interstices
of tyranny ; here and there, as in a field harvested, it met with
souls who had remained true even in their generation, and
scattering by them the leaven of the antique power, it reani
mated the senate, the people, the forum, the extinct gods, the
fallen majesty, and altogether resuscitating at the same time,
they gave to the living and the dead a sacred and a last
apparition of country.
Beyond a people there is only the human race, and perhaps
we shall find that the human race also has felt the magic
power of language. Perhaps also the human race, plunged in
corruption and servitude, may, once in the course of its long
history, have felt the divine shock of resurrection. If you have
forgotten it, recall to your minds what the world was at the
dawn of the times which we call our own. Endeavour in
thought to be present at one of those festivals to which it bore
at the same time its gods and its morals, its ideas and its joys.
Choose the circus or the amphitheatre, the games or the
mysteries — any scene whatever of antiquity. Such was the
world ! That world is no more. Chaste altars prepare genera
tions laboriously to restore their senses to their proper functions,
and the cross, the sign of mortification and humility, instead
of presenting the slave as a source of amusement to cruel and
dissolute masters, advances before princes to teach them gentle
ness, before the people to give them courage to sustain a grave
and impoverished existence. Bloodshed no longer excites

GOD AND MAN. 357
applause, if it be not given in a great and voluntary sacrifice ,
the flesh, dishonoured by the shamelessness of the soul, is no
longer presented as an object of public adoration, and in the
very midst of great cities, spotless purity has built retreats
which are not even celebrated, so much is the heart of man
raised in the knowledge and sentiment of virtue. The eye no
longer sees traces of mutilations on the brow of the passers-by;
the ear is no longer shocked with the abject sounds of private
executions, and even public justice appears but rarely before
the respected gaze of citizens. A street is an asylum where
creatures meet who all bear in themselves the sign of their
rights, and the visible inequality of conditions in no way takes
from the poor their place and their dignity. What more shall
I say? The heart of man is still feeble and devoured by
passions, and yet mankind is transformed ; in the very depths
of its being it bears a germ of good against which no crime can
prevail, and which condemns to the scorn of all the same
things which in the ancient world usurped the homage of all.
What has accomplished this ? Yet once more, and I grow
weary of repeating it, it is language. A man came who called
himself God, and who said in the name of God : " Blessed are
the poor ! Blessed are they who weep ! Blessed are they who
hunger and thirst after justice ! Blessed are the clean of
heart ! Blessed are they who suffer persecution for justice'
sake ! " * He said that ; and language, which makes man,
which founds civilization, which emancipates nations, that same
language from the lips of Christ gave a new force, or rather a
new birth to mankind.
Hereby it is manifest that language is the highest power of
the world ; that it is the cause of all the revolutions, whether
good or evil, whose succession forms history, and consequently
you must not wonder to find it an element of supernatural
order, and that to prophecy is to speak.
I have said, moreover, that Prophecy is a word of God.
And here rationalism, which has up to this point consented
to my discourse, does not permit me to advance further.
Rationalism considers that the idea of God and that of
language are two incompatible ideas ; that as God is a purely
spiritual being and language a simple vibration of air caused
• St. Matt. v. 5 and foil.

358 PROPHECY.
by the physical organs of the voice, we cannot, without de
grading the Divine Majesty, attribute to it so insignificant an
operation. Is it necessary for me to reply to this ? Is it necessary for
me to show you that they degrade the notion of language
in order to refuse it to God ? Do you imagine that air agitated,
no matter how, possesses the power of obtaining the prodigious
effects which I have described to you ? Doubtless, because of
our present state in which the soul is united to a body, language
also has a body ; it occasions an outer action which vibrates
the air. But this is only the phantom of language. Close
your eyes, collect yourself, shut up your soul within itself. Do
you not hear that it speaks to you? Do you not hear that
without disturbing any physical organ it inwardly articulates
words, pronounces phrases, forms a discourse within you ? Do
you not hear that it grows animated, ardent, eloquent, that it
persuades you, and that, nevertheless, all is still in the centre
and at the extremities of your body? Outer language is but
the pale and dying expression of inner language, and inner
language is thought itself engendering in the depths of the
soul by an immaterial fecundity. Were it otherwise — if to
speak were but to vibrate the air — could you conceive that air
is the vehicle of ideas and sentiments, that it seizes upon your
intelligence in its impenetrable recesses, and withdraws it from
its proper conceptions ? Language is a spiritual power, united
in man to a sensible organ, and giving it impulsion, as the soul,
in the totality of its forces, gives impulsion to the whole body.
God, who is spirit, may then be language, He may speak to us
inwardly without the utterance of any voice heard by the
senses, and speak to us outwardly if it please Him to give His
communications a character of publicity and authenticity. It
is true that in Himself God is not united to a body, that there
fore His language has not an organ naturally and personally
subject to Him ; but all nature is more obedient towards Him
than our bodies are to us. Over nature He has the right of the
whole creative power, and it is as easy for Him to use it, as it
is for us to use the portion of organised matter subject to us.
As a spiritual power, then, language belongs to God. But
it belongs to Him still more manifestly under another point of
view. In fact, if, considered in its first root, language is no
other thing than thought making its appearance within and
before the soul ; if it is the intercourse of the soul with itself,

GOD AND MAN. 359
it is also the faculty by which the soul enters into relations
with another soul, initiates that soul to its views, its tastes, its
desires, spreads out within it, if I may so speak, and receives
in its turn, by a systematic exchange, the plenitude of the
foreign soul. Language is the bond of spirits, not only of
spirits united to a body, but of pure spirits, and who are
reciprocally visible in the splendour of their essence ; for that
brightness in which they are does not deliver them over to the
mercy of one another. They have their closed sanctuary —
the free place where they think before themselves — and it
is by voluntary language, by language abstract and sublime,
that they communicate with each other in order to give them
selves to one another in more abundant and more perfect
effusion. Language is, at the same time, the intercourse of
spirits with themselves and with other spirits ; it is an outer as
well as an inner faculty ; it is the highest means of initiation
and communion. Now, I ask, shall we refuse to God the
power of initiation and communion ? Shall we refuse to Him
who has established all the relations between beings — from the
grain of sand to the seraphim — shall we refuse to Him the
power of holding relations with intelligent beings, of com
municating His thoughts and His will to them — in fact, of
speaking to them ? "There is nothing in the world without
voice," * said the Apostle Saint Paul ; there is nothing without
voice, because there is nothing without communication, and
God alone is to be at the same time silence and isolation !
God alone is to be silent, and to stand aloof in an exile
as immense as His nature ! No, gentlemen, my reason can
no more conceive this thing than my heart ; and with the joy
of evidence I repeat those words of the Book of Wisdom :
"The spirit of the Lord has filled the whole world, and that
which containeth all things hath knowledge of the voice." f
You hear ! " That which containeth all things." In fact,
God being the primordial type of beings, they possess nothing
which God does not possess more perfectly; and since language
is within us, it is necessary that it should be in God in an
ineffable and infinite manner. This is also what Catholic
doctrine teaches, and what the Apostle Saint John says to us
with such profound elevation at the commencement of his
Gospel : " In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was
• 1 Cor. xiv. 10. + Ibid. i. 7.

360 PROPHECY.
with God, and the Word was God."* As your language is the
fruit of your soul — the expression and effusion of your soul-
there is also something in God which is the fruit, the expres
sion, and the effusion of His soul, which is "God of God, Light
of Light," to use the expression of the Council of Nice. And
as all the force of your language is in your soul, all the force
of the divine language is also in the source from whence it
springs. Have you remarked that there are dead as well as
living words — words that fall upon the earth like a spent
arrow, and others that fall into the mind like a devouring
flame? And certainly you have not believed that the dif
ference between them sprang from the air more or less agitated
by the mechanical force of the lungs. Their difference springs
from the soul, which is the principle of language. Dead words
are those which come from a dead soul ; living language is that
which comes from a living soul. When an orator, in a matter
capable of eloquence, speaks without moving you, when he
leaves you master of your resolutions, insensible to error or to
truth, be sure that a soul has not spoken to you. For it is im
possible, if a soul had spoken to you, that your own could
remain a stranger to it ; it is impossible for a soul to receive
without emotion the expression of another soul.
And you would take from God that expression of the soul !
From God, who is the soul eternally and infinitely living, who
is all life, all effusion ; you would take from Him that which
remains to us under the icy walls of the flesh ! Oh ! how God
abhors that prison wherein the unbeliever seeks to confine
Him ; and how eloquently He says to us in His Gospel : " Man
does not live by bread alone, but by every word which
proceedeth from the mouth of God."+
In fact, whilst the language of man, even the most en
lightened and the most eloquent, contains of itself only verities
insufficient for the life of the human race, the Word of God
abundantly diffuses treasures of wisdom such as our own can
only acquire by accepting it. It is the mediating light by
which the infinite intelligence raises created intelligences
towards itself, and communicates to them ideas which, whilst
surpassing their nature, draw them nevertheless nearer to their
end. This operation includes nothing which is not very con
ceivable and very simple. All language is necessarily in equa-
* St. John i. I. + Matt. iv. 4.

GOD AND MAN. 361
tion with the thought which it expresses ; as is the value of
the thought of a being, so is it also the value of his language.
Now, the thought of God is as great as Himself — that is to
say, without measure — and consequently His Word, whether
He retains it within Himself, or whether He produces it out
wardly, necessarily contains truths which are inaccessible to
our minds by means of evidence and demonstration. But
things inevident and undemonstrable are not unintelligible ;
and when enounced by God, and affirmed by Him, they become
an incomparable seat of certainty and light for the intelligence
which receives them. The intelligence does not see the
infinite, but knows it.
This phenomenon, in due proportions, is presented to us
in the purely human order. What, indeed, is the action of
human language upon man in a state of infancy ? Does it
not act upon infancy as the Divine Word acts upon mankind
— that is to say, by way of affirmation and initiation? The
infant believes his father, who communicates to him in simple
but affirmative language truths which that feeble intelligence is
not yet capable of demonstrating, and which nevertheless
gradually draw him from the native ignorance in which he lies,
form his thought, elevate his heart, and make of him a being
moved by knowledge and love.
I will go further ; I will say that in all language which
teaches, there is a mystery of authority and initiation. I will say
that you, my contemporaries, whatever degree of maturity you
may have attained, are but men initiated in the language of the
nineteenth century. You think, perhaps, that you have formed
yourselves. You err ; the nineteenth century has formed you.
And what is the nineteenth century ? A spirit expressed by
language, which language becomes transformed into public
opinion, lives in the air which you inhabit, penetrates even to
your bones, and governs you without your knowledge, unless a
more powerful language has emancipated you from it by causing
you to respire other and higher truth. Whatever mental
power you may think you possess, whatever greatness of
character or genius nature may have endowed you with, not
one among you is of himself independent of his age — not one
among you, of his own power, speaks higher language than the
language of his time. Even when in advance of it, you are
but its echoes and its servants. So much does man need to
be instructed by a mind superior to his own. So much is

362 PROPHECY.
it part of his destiny to hear, to receive, and to obey. Now to
whom, rather than to God, does he owe that obedience ? The
language of an age is doubtless an authority worthy of respect :
it is the result of a great movement of the human mind, caused
by a long course of events which have turned the scale of
things and ideas. But this is only a station in vicissitude.
The tempest of the future will soon bear the mobility of the
world on other anchors, and although there is a certain degree
of logic in that inconsistency, there is nothing even in all ages
taken together possessing a character worthy of our faith.
Nevertheless we give our faith to them because even the
natural order, although pressing upon us on all sides, is so
profoundly complicated that we require a master to teach
us the secret of a single day.
And God is not to teach us the secret of eternity? But
we oppose him in vain. There is in the world another teach
ing than that of ages, another language that that of man.
This language changes and passes. Although so many
ingenious lips have been its eloquent organs, although writing
has lent its durability to the immortality of eloquence, the
human tongue has not been able to found the temple of truth.
The columns lie upon the ground, moved from age to age by
constructions upon which men have graven the prophecy of
their duration, and which turns to ruins under the hands of the
builders who come after. Man destroys man, and time reaps
time. One single edifice stands erect amidst the rubbish where
- the contradictory works of the human mind are heaped together.
The inscription upon this edifice is " The Word of God."
It is that word which, after having created the world and man
has not abandoned them to the mercy of their own thoughts,
too feeble before such a work, but has taught them the
mystery of their principle and their end. It is that word
which, having once pronounced its secret, known to itself alone,
has never ceased to repeat it before heaven and earth, calling
ages and races by their proper names, creating prophets against
all forgetfulness, apostles against all falsehood, circulating in
the human mind as its very blood, often adulterated, never
destroyed, drawing forth light from error and life from death.
This word is Christianity, — the Church, — unity in stability,-^
all that remains amidst all that passes away. Take it from the
world if you can, what would remain ? Time and man : time
which passes, and man who doubts. It is too little for a soul.

GOD AND MAN. 363
I have analyzed prophecy, gentlemen, inasmuch as language
is its first element. My intention is to seek if it does not
contain another, and what is the nature of that second element.
Before doing this I will immediately examine with you the
mechanism of language, as being the prophetic root in which
we may be able to discover what we do not yet know.
The effect of language is the enlightenment of the under
standing and the direction of the will. How is this miraculous
phenomenon produced ? By what process does language
enlighten the mind and move the will ? We must first suppose
that it is addressed to an intelligent being, that is to say, to a
faculty capable of knowing, for if it were addressed to a being
of what kind soever, which was incapable of knowing, it would
at most produce only a sensation. Thus the animal hears
language materially — some even faithfully reproduce it — but it
causes in them only instinctive movements connected with the
sensible order of which they form a part. This first condition
necessary to the efficacy of language being established, what
passes between the intelligence that speaks and the intelligence
that listens ? Evidently the first presents to the second an
intelligible object — that is to say, a truth. For every truth
however profound it may be, is intelligible, and may be
enounced by means of language, which is the mould and
representation of the true. I suppose, for instance, that you
are ignorant of mathematics, and that it is my mission
to teach them to you — here is a truth of that order which I
should have some day to present to you : If a square be
constructed upon the hypothenuse of a right-angled triangle,
the surface of that square would be equal to the surface of
the squares constructed upon the two other sides of the same
triangle. This is a portion of elementary geometry which is incon
testable and proved, yet those of you who have not studied the
elements of that science have not even understood me ; they
have felt the sensation of the words which I have pronounced,
and no more. Why is this? Is it because this proposition is
not a truth? It is a truth. Is it because that truth is not
within the comprehension of the human intelligence? It is
within the comprehension of the human intelligence, and even
within the power of a simple student of mathematics. Why
then do you not understand it ? Manifestly because, in order
for language to have its effect of illumination, it is not sufficient

364 PROPHECY.
that it presents to the mind an intelligible object. It is also
necessary that the terms whose logical enchainment constitutes
language should possess their individual evidence in order that
the mind might seize their sense — that is to say — discover
under each sound the idea which it contains, and next, the
general idea which the discourse includes. This takes place
by definition. By means of definition, language enlightens
language by decomposing it into such simple elements, that
each word becomes a light, or, if you prefer, a ray of that total
light which becomes the evidence of the mind.
Let me give you proof of this by defining the proposition
which I have chosen as an example.
A triangle is a figure determined by three lines which meet
so as to produce three angles. When one of these angles is
right — that is to say, formed by two lines which fall perpen
dicularly upon one another — the triangle is called right-angled.
In this case, the side of the triangle opposed to the right angle
is the longest of the three, it being manifest that as the angles
increase the side corresponding to them increases in propor
tion. This long side of a right-angled triangle is the hypo
thenuse. If it be taken as the base of a square, and two others
are constructed on the short sides of the same triangle, the
surface of the square of the hypothenuse will be equal to the
surface of the two other squares.
You now understand the proposition ; it is no longer for
you an enchainment of words, but of ideas, which by their con
nection form a new idea. Language has become enlightened
by being defined.
But is this all ? Is the mystery of initiation accomplished ?
Has your understanding become enlightened ? Certainly not ;
you see clearly what the words would convey to you, but you
do not yet see that what they say to you is true. Nothing
convinces you that the square of the hypothenuse is, in fact,
equal in its surface to the squares of the other two sides of the
right-angled triangle ; you possess neither the evidence nor the
certainty of it. It is for language to give you these, and it will
do so by demonstration — that is to say, by showing you that
that idea, which is new to you, is nevertheless contained in
other ideas which, by their invincible and primordial clearness
form the very foundation of your reason. Language will take
the obscure idea, will lead it step by step even to the intelligible
seat which is the centre and the torch of your soul, will present

GOD AND MAN. 365
it there to the principle from whence it emanates, and give to
you in the sentiment of their unity that ray of light which is
evidence, that repose of the mind which is certainty. Or even,
if demonstration be not possible, whether because the truth
proposed belongs to an order whose principle is not in the
human understanding, or because it belongs to the profundity
of a science which you have not the time or the will to acquire,
then language, initiating you by a shorter road, presents a
character of authority to you which will invest the idea with a
sufficient and legitimate sanction.
Such is the natural strategy of language. And yet, not
withstanding that triple power of proposition, definition, and
demonstration, language is not certain of success. You are
able to resist it ; you are able to refuse your assent to it, to
brave its light ; and, intrenched in the fortress of your own
convictions, not even to feel, to the distant remorse of your
conscience, that truth has spoken to you. You are feeble and
free ; feebleness and liberty protect you against the ascendency
of language. Feebleness veils from you the sp'endour of truth
which it contains, liberty permits you to refuse to accept its
yoke. It is needful then to do more than pre pose truth to
you, more than define it, more than demonstrate it to you ; it
is needful to persuade you. Persuasion is the eteinal glory of
language human and divine ; this is the victory, of which
Montaigne should have said, rather than of Marathon or of
Plataea, " that it is the most glorious which the sun has ever
seen," since it is the victory of thought over the two greatest
powers of the world, namely, feebleness and liberty.
But how and by what are we to persuade ? I will give you
an example. .
In 1738, England was ruled by a ministry who desired
peace, and at any cost. Now, at that very time, an English
sailor was captured at sea, outraged and mutilated by the
Spaniards, and this event produced a great movement of
public indignation throughout England. Nevertheless the
ministry had resolved to preserve peace, and the British Parlia
ment had formed the same determination. The sailor appeared
in the streets of London, he showed the wounds and injuries
which he had received, and so excited popular indignation,
that the parliament could not avoid seeing him, and listening
to his complaint. He appeared then in the House of Commons,
and after relating with calm and simple brevity the history of

366 PROPHECY.
the assault of which he had been the victim, he ended with
these words — " When the Spaniards mutilated me in this way
they wanted to make me afraid of death, but I accepted death
as I had accepted outrage, recommending my soul to God,
and my revenge to my country." War was declared. That
unlettered man needed but a quarter of an hour to change the
councils of his country, to force the ministry to draw the
sword, the parliament to vote the subsidies, the nation to
applaud, and human blood to be shed in order to avenge his
outrage. He had persuaded.
And daily you witness these triumphs of language ; or at
least, if they are more rare than I say, you witness them some
times, were it only in remembrance, on recalling to mind the
famous exhibitions of eloquence. You hear Demosthenes
obtaining the condemnation of ^Eschines, Cicero drawing from
the hands of Caesar the condemnation of Ligarius, and you ask
in what consists that sovereign art without which reason and
justice are not sure of victory, -by which error and passion
obtain it but too often. Yes, eloquent language is a domi
nating power which commands obedience ; but what is elo
quence ? What can it impart to language but light and truth?
Is there anything in the world more persuasive than light, more
powerful than truth ? Yes, gentlemen, what is more powerful
than truth is the principle from whence it emanates ; what is
more persuasive than light is the centre from whence it springs ;
what is greater than language is the soul from whence it pro
ceeds. Eloquence is the soul itself; eloquence is the soul
bursting all the bands of the flesh, quitting the bosom that bore
it, and casting itself headlong into the soul of another. Can
you then wonder that it commands, that it reigns? It is a
soul which has taken the place of your own. Is it not plain
that that soul which is within you, which is yourself, more
than yourself, says to you, Go ! and you go ; Come ! and you
come ; Bend the knee ! and you kneel ?
In short, the mystery of language at the state of eloquence,
is the substitution of the soul that speaks for the soul that
listens ; or to speak with justice that leaves nothing incom
plete, it is the fusion of the soul that speaks with the soul that
listens. Eloquence has but one rival, and yet that rival is one
only because it is eloquent ; it is love. Love, like eloquence,
melts hearts, and their power, so dissimilar in appearance, has
the same cause and the same effect.

GOD AND MAN. 367
Now, it is not sufficient, either for God or man, to propose
to define and to demonstrate truth. For God meets with the
same obstacles to His word as man to his own, and even
greater. Whilst human language is but the organ of thoughts
accessible to finite intelligences which have their root and
their proof in the natural orbit of reason, the Divine Word,
essentially revealing in its nature, bears with it truths of which
the universe forms hardly the shadow, of which reason is but
a reflection, and to which no measure is applicable but the
infinite. If then man is feeble before the things which he sees
and touches, if his own history is a labyrinth before him, and
his own mind an abyss, what will he become before the infinite
unveiled by a simple affirmation ? If he is free against man,
how much more free will he be against God, a being placed at
so great a distance from him, and so much the less violent in
His operations as He is absolute master of all ? Doubtless in
order to give credence to His word, God supports it by striking
signs; but those very signs are subject to discussion, and
even if the mind, mute in their presence, knows not what
to oppose to the splendour of their testimony, it will always
find within itself, whether from the obscurity of the thing
revealed, or from the sole effort of liberty, a principle of
resistance and illusion. The Jews, for three years, saw
Jesus Christ acting among them as a supreme master of
nature ; for three years they brought to Him all the infirmities
of the body to be healed by a word from His mouth, or a
touch of His raiment; they witnessed the miracles of His
death after having been spectators of the miracles of His life ;
and yet, notwithstanding so many signs witnessed by them,
notwithstanding the anterior prophecies whose depositaries
they were, and whose accomplishment they looked for, a veil
remained before their eyes. They were not able to believe in
the humility of God; the thunderbolt would perhaps have
converted them, goodness made them blind and ungrateful.
God made Himself too little for them, and the terrible
majesties of Sinai hid from them the mercy that visited them.
It is the same with that multitude of souls who exhaust or
torture themselves into incredulity. The miracles of sixty
centuries pass before them as a chance without cause; they
admit that it is grand and wonderful, but without humbling
their hearts before the mystery that covers those marvels lost
to them. According to the expression of Scripture, " they see

368 PROPHECY.
and they do not see, they hear and they do not hear : " * the
book of life is in their hands with the inimitable seal of the
Divine Omnipotence ; they see it, they touch it, they think of
it for an instant, and pass on.
And if here under the walls of Notre Dame, I were to raise
the dead in the name of Christ, do you suppose you would all
leave this place convinced and converted? No; I am sure
you would not, and the whole history of Christianity is an
undeniable proof of this.
It is not enough then for the word of God, in order to
become established in souls, to be authorised by certain
miracles it must also vanquish the resistance of man to divine
truth ; it is necessary for it to move, to touch — in fine, to
persuade. The Spirit of God, the only Spirit capable of
containing the infinite, must descend by an immediate in
fluence into the narrow vase of our heart, must incite it,
inspire it, produce in it, in a more powerful manner than
human eloquence, the assimilation of the inferior to the
superior soul. It is there whence springs all the intercourse
between God and man, and man and God. If the eternal
soul does not really approach the created soul here below,
religion is but a dream over which we ought to weep. We
should inscribe over the portals of its temples, as over the
portal of hell, " Whoever enters here must leave hope behind
him." It is the Spirit of God that gives life to the Divine
Word, as it is the spirit of man that gives life to human
language. Language separated from its spirit is nothing more
than a dead body in a tomb. Now God being always living
His word also exists always. Once sent from Him, wherevei
it may go and in whatever form it may subsist, it is aided
by its Father who lives in it and it in Him. Whilst human
language perishes on the first furrow which time makes, and
gives to the ear of generations only an echo disdained by
those who think they still hear it, the Divine Word sows its
immortality in the ruins of the world. It is as fertile aftei
a thousand years as on the day when it was first enounced ; it
inspires the same faith, creates the same works, is recognised
by the same signs, and effaces them all by that of its own
life. That life has a name celebrated in the history of the
• St. Luke viii. 8.

GOD AND MAN. 369
relations between man and God; it is called grace — that is
to say, the unmerited gift, the highest of all gifts. And what
gift indeed can be greater than the Spirit of God Himself
placed in intimate contact with the spirit of man ! This is
the marvel which began with the world, and whose con
summation by Christ the prophets announced from hour to
hour. David said, " Cast me not away from thy presence, and
take not thy Holy Spirit from me."* Solomon said, "And
who shall know thy thought, except thou give wisdom and
send thy Holy Spirit from above !"t Isaiah said, "And the
Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him ; the spirit of wisdom
and of understanding, the spirit of counsel and of fortitude, the
spirit of knowledge and of godliness." J Joel said in the name
of God, " I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh ; and your
sons and your daughters shall prophesy ; your old men shall
dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions." § The
precursor said, " I indeed baptize you with water ; but there
shall come one mightier than I, the latchet of whose shoes
I am not worthy to loose, he shall baptize you with the Holy
Spirit and with fire." || And Jesus Christ said, " When they
shall deliver you up for my sake, take no thought how or what
to speak ; for it shall be given to you in that hour what to
speak; for it is not you that speak, but the Spirit of your
Father that speaketh in you." ST He said also, "I will ask
the Father, and he shall give you another Paraclete, that he
may abide with you for ever, the Spirit of Truth whom the
world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, nor knoweth
him ; but you shall know him, because he shall abide with
you, and shall be in you." * * Not that Jesus Christ, the Son of
God and Very God, did not communicate to His disciples the
grace and truth whose fulness He was ; but because, being the
eternal Verb, He was especially charged with the sowing of
the Word, which is the first prophetic element, whilst the
effusion of grace, the second element of prophecy, was reserved
in a!! its plenitude to the third person of the Holy Trinity,
coeternally issued from the Father and the Son, the fruit and
bond of their love, the last term of their divine fecundity, and
therefore charged with placing the final seal of life to the work
* Ps. H. n. + Wisd. ix. 17.
X Wisd. xi. 2. § Joel ii. 28.
|| St. Luke iii. 16, If St. Matt. x. 19, 20.
** St. John xiv. 1 6, 17. 2 B

370 PROPHECY.
of God in time. It was fitting also that the two prophetic
elements, the word and grace, although inseparable from one
another, should, nevertheless, have had a distinct emission, so
that mankind, warned by the grandeur of that double accession,
should feel that it was not capable of communicating with
God, even by means of His Word, without the perpetual and
intimate assistance of the Divine Spirit. Such was the object,
and such is the sense of that great day in which the Paraclete
announced by Jesus Christ descended visibly upon the apostles,
and taking from them the remains of weakness and obscurity
which they had still in them, made of them those men whose
blood, after that of Christ, has founded upon earth the reign
of truth. There are but few among you who have not known by
personal experience the reality of the prophetic mystery. You
have all received the seeds of that language, which resembles
none other ; all of you at some time or other, as children or as
young men, have felt in your souls an unction that filled them
with light, and brought to you in chaste tears the taste for
good, forgetfulness of the senses, the peace and presence of
God. On that day all was said to you. No man will ever give
you back its joy ; no love will ever bring you back its perfume,
but the love which was then given to you, and, which, being
the divine goodness itself, waits but for a regret and a desire
from you to love you again. May you draw from your heart
that desire and that regret, and, by a second experience of
grace, become again and for ever the children and the apostles
of that Word which alone never deceives !

MYSTERY AS THE OBJECT OF
PROPHECY.

Mv Lord — Gentlemen,
It results from our last conference, that the things revealed
by God through prophecy surpass the natural power of our
understanding, and are therefore for us beyond all demonstra
tion and above all comprehension. Were they only undemon-
strable, the mind might perhaps accept this condition, since,
even in the natural order, there are truths which may be
attested but not demonstrated, such as the ancient events
which form history ; and since man obtains credence to his
testimony in regard to human things, it is not easy to under
stand why it should be refused in regard to divine things. But
there is this difference, that the object of prophecy is incom
prehensible as well as undemonstrable, and this is what
rationalism will not forgive. What ! (says rationalism) you
show forth prophecy as the light of the world, and yet you
yourselves confess that you do not comprehend it ! You call
your dogmas by the significant name of mysteries ; you seem
to make a boast of the obscurity that reigns in revelation. After
reading your books you exclaim, " O the depth of the riches of
the wisdom and of the knowledge of God ! How incompre
hensible are His judgments, and how unsearchable His ways !"*
Now, how can that which is mysterious, obscure, unsearchable,
incomprehensible, in fine, be the light of the world ? For us —
that is to say, for every man who does not renounce his reason
,  mystery is at the same time useless and absurd ; useless,
* Rom. xi. 33. 2 B 3

372 MYSTERY AS THE OBJECT OF PROPHECY.
since its sense is not to be seized ; absurd, since wherever the
sense escapes nothing rational remains.
Such is the double difficulty which rises before us, and
which requires from me a double explanation. We are told
that mystery is useless — I shall prove its utility. They add
that it is absurd — I shall prove its reasonableness.
It is certain, and it would be a great illusion to wish to
hide it from you, that the Word of God reveals to us things
which surpass our reason ; and were it otherwise, God would
have no motive in speaking to us, since we should be able of
ourselves to discover the truths about which it may please
Him to communicate with us. But God is greater than we
are ; placed on the horizon of the infinite, which is His essence,
He sees what we do not see, and tells us what no one but
Himself can say to us. Why does He communicate this to
us ? ' Being unable or unwilling to give us evidence of the
things which He reveals to us, why does He reveal them to us ?
Where lies the utility of such communication ? In proving to
you in a former conference the necessity of the supernatural
intercourse between man and God, I have already answered
this question. But I did so metaphysically ; and if you will
permit me we will to-day leave metaphysics aside. Utility is a
matter of fact. You deny the utility of the incomprehensible,
I maintain it. It matters little now about the exact definition
of those words — understand or not understand. To define
them would perhaps suffice to put an end to the question ; but
I shall not do so. I leave them in your minds as they are, and
starting from the vulgar idea that to be useful is to do good, I
ask, Does the incomprehensible do good to man ? If it does,
if history proves it perfectly, whatever reasoning you may
oppose to that result will fall powerless. In a question of
utility, the result decides all. It matters not whether we
explain to ourselves or do not explain the benefit ; it exists.
Is there anyone here who has ever despised a benefit because
he did not render account to himself of the process by which
his benefactor had served him ?
I renew, then, my question. I ask myself and you : Does
the incomprehensible do good to man ?
There are some among you who think they owe nothing to
this strange Benefactor. Disciples of reason, they think they
are formed by themselves, and that nothing but evidence has
entered into the structure of their minds. But even were this

GOD AND MAN. 373
true, a man is not a man, and I speak of man. I speak of
you all, contemporaries of the nineteenth century, connected
by your fathers with the ages which have gone by ; belonging
altogether to a great historical movement, which has changed
the face of the world, and prepared for each of you another
destiny than that which the course of ancient civilisation would
have formed for him. This is the real man, the man whom I
interrogate, and not the ideal man who believes he has sepa
rated himself from the paternity of his times. Now, what has
formed that real man ? What has formed modern mankind ?
Is it not Christianity ? And is there even one among you who
would deny the superiority of the Christian man over those
who have sprung from another generation ? If you doubt
this, I would say to you, Compare yourselves with the most
illustrious and perfect specimens of mankind that the world
has produced before and since you have occupied your place
therein. Certainly that was a great race whose country was
Athens and Rome — a race fertile in legislators, in sages, in
heroes ; memorable in war by its conquests, in politics by its
institutions, in peace by its arts, and which, although ex
tinguished for many centuries, draws us even now around its
ruins to give us lessons. But however marvellous its history,
which of you would consent to live again in that antiquity ?
Which of you would sacrifice the rights and duties of the
Christian man for all the glory of the Greek or the Roman ?
On reading the most glorious things which they have left to
us, we feel, from their gods to their virtues, that they were but
infant peoples, and that the very excellence of their literature,
so far from being a veil to their inferiority, is its striking and
immortal revelation. The masterpieces of those two languages
will live to the latest posterity as a testimony that habits of
barbarism may be joined to an exquisite cultivation of the
mind, and great feebleness of thought to marvellous science of
style. Therefore, when Christianity, born with the world but
unknown by it, rose up before that ingenious and powerful
society which had never known an equal upon earth, it had
but to speak and to die in order to ruin its civilisation. The
man of Greece and Rome cannot hold his place before the
Christian man.
And what, then, was the Christian man ? What did he
bring with him that was more powerful than Athens and
Rome ? — Athens, mistress in the science of speaking ; Rome,

374 MYSTERY AS THE OBJECT OF PROPHECY.
mistress in the art of fighting and governing. What did he
bring, gentlemen ? One single thing — which contained all
the rest — the incomprehensible. He announced to the world
that the human race, defiled from the beginning, received and
transmitted with its blood the joint responsibility of an inex
piable fault ; but that God, one in three persons, had sent His
Son upon earth to take our nature in the womb of a virgin,
and, by a voluntary sacrifice, to redeem us from sin and death.
He announced that this mystery was accomplished, that the
Son of God, come in the flesh, had appeared in Judaea, that
He had taught there, and that, having been put to death upon
a cross, buried in a sepulchre, He was raised again on the third
day, assuring by His death His triumph over sin, and by His
resurrection His triumph over death. Such was the Christian
dogma, and such also was the principle of the civilisation
which has made you what you are, by overthrowing all the
antique society. Either you must deny your superiority over
the ideas and the things of paganism, or recognise the utility
of the incomprehensible.
You may suppose that Christianity includes two distinct
elements — the one reasonable, which is the source of the good
wrought by it in the world ; the other mysterious, which is but
an envelope by which exalted truths and holy virtues have by
chance been covered. In fact, does not the Gospel naturally
explain itself? If it speaks of miracles and dogmas which
alarm reason, it speaks still more of a sage who teaches the
people simple and sublime morality, gentleness, modesty,
patience, disinterestedness, justice, and that which includes
all in a single precept — the sincere love of God and man.
Must we wonder that a code so perfect, emanated from a pure
soul which maintained even to death the lessons He had given,
should at length have produced in the human race a salutary
and memorable effect? It is impossible to read the Gospel
without wishing at least to be better ; and this desire, become
that of a great number, has at length been realised in some,
who, from age to age, have adorned the world by their virtues.
The incomprehensible is here but an unimportant help; it is
the fable that precedes or that clothes truth. I grant that
Christianity results entirely in the love of God and mankind ;
and here lies the secret of the prodigious change which it has
introduced and maintains among us. But this love, so long
despised upon earth, so difficult even now to know by proper

GOD AND MAN. 375
experience, is that revolution itself in its last, its most profound
effect. _ The Gospel, you say, has caused you to love God and
man : it is so — I know it, I proclaim it — but how did it
produce this love for those who had not been loved for four
thousand years ? How has it drawn the human heart from the
egotism of its passions, and above all from the egotism of its
virtues ? Is it because it has said, Love God, love mankind ?
Alas ! if it had said but that, it would have exercised just the
power which so many dead philosophers exercise over us, who
honour us with their counsels. Men would have set up a
statue of Jesus Christ at the door of an academy ; they would
have preserved his portrait in the museums of civilized nations ;
and, since the invention of printing, they would have written
in all the languages of Europe that the Gospel is a great book ;
but the poor would neither have known the book nor the sage,
and the hearts of all would have continued to find enjoyment
in selfish sensuality and pride.
Would you learn how Jesus Christ has raised us towards
God, and inclined us towards man? Leave the Church of
Notre Dame, and turn to your left. Upon a building there,
without architectural merit, you will read this inscription,
Hotel Dieu. Perhaps the inscription may have disappeared
from the stone. I know not ; but it subsists in the memory
and language of the people, and that is enough. Cross the
threshold, mount the staircase, raise your eyes to the image
above the door, you will read, L'Homme Dieu. Advance
still further, enter the cell of one of those voluntary servants
who devote their days to the infirmities of the poor. You are
young, attractive, rich ; she is clothed in beauty which comes
from virtue ; offer her your hand. She will answer you, To
me, L'Epouse de Dieu ! If these three incomprehensible
worlds — the House of God, the Man God, the Spouse of God
— do not yet enlighten you, ask that soul why she has quitted
the hopes of the world to consume herself in this hospital,
amongst misery which is not her own ; she will tell you its
secret. Of whom would you learn it if not of those who
possess the love whose cause you seek? She will tell you that
she loves God, because God loved her even to death ; that she
loves mankind, because God, in taking their nature upon Him,
and dying for them, has caused them to share in His adorable
goodness. If God is not man, if He did not die, be sure there
is no Spouse of God, or House of God ; the virtue of the

376 MYSTERY AS THE OBJECT OF PROPHECY.
Christian comes from the incomprehensible, as the flower from
the earth. The incomprehensible is the soul of the Christian ;
it is his light, his strength, his life, his breath. Say that this is
madness, if you will. I have not undertaken to prove that it is
not so, but that it serves you. For sixty years you have been
endeavouring to do without this madness, and to preserve the
benefits of Christianity whilst repudiating its dogmas : it is for
you to judge whether you have succeeded.
Man is a divine animal, and the incomprehensible is his
food. Were this gift of heaven ever fully withdrawn from him,
you would behold a spectacle which I cannot describe, because
it has never been beheld. Even paganism, all divested as it
was, included the confused remains of the primordial incom
prehensible, and these very remains formed its greatness in
certain nations, and in certain times. When Rome had
resolved to set up the centre and foundation of her future
power upon a solitary hill, she built there, at the same time, a
temple and a camp, leaving between the two an empty space,
which was, as it were, the seat upon which she held her place,
with one hand resting upon her arms, and the other upon
heaven. From that place she watched and governed the
world, deriving therefrom wisdom as invincible as her courage,
and when her victors brought to her the kings and the spoils of
nations, they mounted to that Capitol as the tutelary spot
where their victories had taken their birth in the will of the
gods that dwelt there. This religious character lasted as long
as the virtue and liberty of Rome. The sacred mysteries
presided over all ; they were borne even before the enemy,
and those famous generals, who had received from fortune
and from their genius so many assurances of victory, dared not
trust to a battle without having consulted, through auguries,
the impenetrable counsel of the gods of the world and the
country. But when Cicero was able to declare that he could
not conceive how two augurs could look at one another with
out laughing, Rome fell from the Capitol to the Palatinate,
from the temple of the gods to that of the Caesars ; and soon,
Tiberius, followed by Nero, heaped the scorn of his tyranny
upon the living and dead oif the people-king. Laugh as you
please at the sacred chickens ; but learn at least that when they
were no more, there were no more Scipios. And you will find
the same spectacle, resulting from the same cause, everywhere
in the history of the world. Everywhere the decline of nations

GOD AND MAN. 377
follows the decline of the incomprehensible, and the earth has
devoured all those who have no longer regarded heaven save
as the eye discovers it on the horizon.
I admire, then, the Egyptians, for having placed the
Sphinx at the entry of their temples. It is the old friend of
man, and his natural herald to the infinite. Despise it as
much as you will, appeal from it to pure reason, to the sacred
rights of the human intelligence ; for my part I shall hold to
the Sphinx, as long as I see it at the door of virtues that found,
and glories that have, a posterity.
Yet you will say, Why the Sphinx ? Why the incomprehen
sible ? Here, gentlemen, you change the question ; you no
longer ask me to prove the utility of the incomprehensible, but
to give you the reason of its existence in the human race.
Now, I believe I have given you this in the Conference where
I recently treated of the need of supernatural intercourse
between man and God, and I shall succeed perhaps in en
lightening you in regard to it by what I am about to say on
the subject of the reasonableness of the things whose certainty
we possess without understanding them.
Nothing absurd can be useful, and above all useful to all
mankind ; it suffices that the incomprehensible does good to
men for us to conclude from it that it is essentially rational.
Therefore, whoever says of Christianity that it is the benefactor
of the world, says at the same time that the incomprehensible,
so far from contradicting reason, is its last and most magni
ficent effort. I feel, nevertheless, that this proof, all-sufficient
though it may be, does not respond to the want which you
feel of fathoming so grave a subject. I will then take a more
direct path, and show you that in every rational thing there
enters an incomprehensible element, as in every incompre
hensible thing there is a rational element. It will then be no
longer permitted to you to think that reason and mystery
mutually reject each other, since the one is never without the
other, and as the shadow accompanies light in nature, so
it is also in the infinite depths where our intelligence combats
truth. I affirm in the first place that into every rational thing
there enters an incomprehensible element. Nothing is more
within the comprehension of reason than the bodies that
people space, and especially the bodies that form the globe
which we inhabit ; reason sees, touches, weighs, measures, con-

378 MYSTERY AS THE OBJECT OF PROPHECY.
fronts, analyses them, makes of them whatever it wills. And
yet what do men call that which in bodies is subject to the
investigations of reason ? They call it a phenomenon — that is
to say, something that appears. A forcible and sincere avowal,
which proves that reason does not see all the body, and that ii
a part of it unveils to its curiosity, something also still remains
hidden. Do you doubt this ? Consider that other expression
by which science designates the body itself, an expression much
more formidable and despairing, and which is to the pheno
menon what night is to day. It calls a body a substance —
that is to say, what is under ; that something which is under
what appears. And what, indeed, is a body in itself? When
you have proved its colour, its weight, the mode of aggregation
of its parts, the action which it exercises on other bodies, do
you know what it is? Modern chemistry and, before it,
alchemy, have doubtless endeavoured to pursue substance to
its last depths, and draw from it the secret of its composition.
They have even succeeded to a degree almost prodigious, and
which has opened to us mysteries long hidden by nature from
our investigations. Nevertheless the shadow has but retreated
without disappearing, and the place which it has yielded to
light has not lessened for us the abyss of the unknown. We
know that bodies, forced by analysis, resolve into a certain
number of substances which we call elements ; but what the
element is we know not. Matter takes refuge therein as in a
fortress, where it braves the pride of our experiments and the
dictation of our will.
It is the same with the vegetable and animal germ as with
the universal element, but with a circumstance which it is well
to notice. Science has power over the universal element, in
the sense that it is able to make it again constitute a body
properly so called; but when analysis has decomposed the
germs of the animal and vegetable order, it is powerless to
recall the principle of life which was contained therein. Under
its instruments only inanimate refuse remains. It sees, it
touches, the mysterious dust from whence the mighty oak of
the forest, or the agile inhabitant of their hidden paths, should
spring ; but that dust is henceforth dead. Why dead? Whence
is it that the sepulchre being broken, the living being has dis
appeared? What is life? Life is in a germ; it will remain
there for ages, solitary and silent, without becoming lost and
without acting ; but let analysis touch it, and life disappears,

GOD AND MAN. 379
as if jealous nature determined to become more incompie-
hensible in proportion as its work became more perfect.
In man you will find too undeniable a proof of this. Man
is a body, and he includes in his body all the unknowns of
the material world, all the things that are visible but unex
plained. But conjointly with this first mystery, in the complex
tissue of a sole personality, he holds a second abyss more
terrible than the first — the abyss of his thought. Man thinks,
he wills, he is free, he governs himself, all things of which no
trace is seen in the body, and all things which escape from the
most ingenious researches of scientific analysis. Never has
science been able to attract thought into its crucible, never
has it been able to subject it to any instrumented power. The
spiritualist affirms that it is not the fruit of the body, but of
another substance which he calls spirit, and which, deprived
of form, extent, colour, weight — of whatever is known to us by
the senses — constitutes a reality of which nothing visible could
give us the faintest- and most distant representation. Therefore
but just now, the lowest of beings — the universal element —
although remaining under our eyes, escaped in its essence
from the efforts of our investigation ; a little higher, in the
animal and vegetable germ, life retreated before our researches,
and did not even leave us the consolation of catching a glimpse
of the source from whence its activity springs ; now behold
spirit, which never, under any form, by any image, has per
mitted us to approach it, although it is ourselves. The
materialist, it is true, denies spirit, and maintains that thought
is a simple effect of the body attained to a certain state of
perfection : but is this clearer ? Do we thereby learn any
more clearly how matter, which does not think at all of itself,
derives in a certain organisation the faculty of thinking ?
However it may be, we think, and in the personal mystery
of our thoughts there arises another still higher, which we call
the Eternal, the Infinite, the Principle — God. As nature is the
natural horizon of our physical vision, God is the necessary
horizon of our intellectual vision. We cannot open our eyelids
without seeing the indefinite space wherein bodies move, and
we cannot awaken our thought without disclosing the first
cause that contains in itself all the possible and all the real.
The infidel may refuse it the name of God ; he may endeavour
to confound the cause with the effect by transporting to the
visible world the idea which we have of being subsisting of

380 MYSTERY AS THE OBJECT OF PROPHECY.
itself: but that despairing effort in no way lessens the depths
of the mystery which dwells in thought, and, whatever thought
may do, eternity is before it. However, gentlemen, I never
address atheism ; that forlorn hope of the last follies of the
heart has too few representatives to render it needful to speak
to it in a great assembly of men ; your number alone tells me
that you believe in God, and therefore it is my right as well as
my duty to oppose to your ambition to understand all, the
incomprehensible light of His nature and of His name. What
intelligence placed before this last abyss can say, I have
fathomed it ? What soul, how vast soever it may be, does not
halt, sad and pensive, before that short word, God ? An atom
confounds us — and behold us in the presence of the Infinite !
Can you represent the Infinite to yourselves ? Can you conceive
a substance without beginning in its duration— without limits
in its being — filling all with its presence and its action, although
concentrated in an indivisible unity which has no place but in
itself? The day would run its course before I could even
name all the mysteries contained in this supreme mystery ; in
which, however, all life takes its birth with all light. For, such
is our condition, we meet with darkness in the very things from
which we desire light. From earth to spirit, from spirit to God,
in the three spheres of our speculation and our activity, a
sparing as well as a prodigal hand has wisely mingled the
shadow that blinds us with the splendour that enchants us. In
vain will reason grow indignant at this adulterous wedlock ; it
must accept the incomprehensible as the shore that contains
evidence ; or, renouncing truth, address to it, in scepticism, an
irrevocable adieu.
Scepticism, gentlemen, is but the despair of a mind great
enough to know that it does not see the "whole of anything,"
according to the expression of Pascal, but too feeble to respect
in mystery the inevitable limit imposed upon the created spirit.
Whilst the vulgar rationalist, inebriated by his own ideas,
thinks he comprehends all that he thinks, the sceptic, with as
much pride and more penetration, discerns the weak side of
human science, and conceives a gloomy distaste for truth.
Surveying with his melancholy regard the progressive enchain
ment of things, and halting at God, he asks himself, Do 1
comprehend God ? No ; remove Him then ! But do I com
prehend myself, my mind? No; away then with the mind.
But matter, at least ! Doubtless, I see matter. I make experi-

GOD AND MAN. 3gt
ments upon it ; and, yet, do I know what it is ? Can I say
that I comprehend it ? Away with matter I Thus from one
degree to another, from one kind of despair to another,
reason " vanishes " within itself, according to the energetic
expression of St. Paul, and upon the uncertain ruins of
all reality, it exclaims with lamentable despair, What do I
know, and what, am I ? Doubt, it is true, does not often
descend to that depth where nothing subsists in the mind ; but
wherever it may halt it is the destroyer of the soul, and whether
higher or lower, it has but one and the same cause, which is
the refusal to consent to the incomprehensible as a necessity
and an element of reason. For my part, if I were in this state,
if I recognised the sign of truth only in an absolute light, I
declare to you, I should not believe in matter any more than
in spirit ; any more in spirit than in God ; I should be to my
self a painful enigma, a puff of air in the desert, a lamentation
in a sepulchre, the plaything of an existence without principle
or end ; I should advance in my days at the hazard of each
sun, between the sadness of yesterday and the joy of to-morrow.
expecting nothing more from life, nothing more from death.
But, thanks to God, I adore in evidence the shadow that limits
it ; I know that truth, the single and sacred object of my
entire soul, is as great as the infinite, and that the infinite,
being only comprehensible to its equal — that is to say, to itself,
it is natural that I should not see anything entirely, but in a
measure sufficient to know without sufficing to exhaust.
And as in every rational thing an incomprehensible
element is found, in every incomprehensible thing a rational
element is also found — that is to say, the idea. The idea is
all that which the mind sees ; and the mind, seeing nothing
but by its primitive light, which is reason ; it follows that every
idea, how problematic soever it may be, is a rational element.
Now Christianity, whose dogmas we confess to be incom
prehensible, bears evidently in its very dogma the treasure of
the idea ; and, if you doubt this, I will give you but one proof
of it, namely, that it speaks. Christianity speaks, it has spoken
dogmatically for eighteen centuries ; therefore, however incom
prehensible its dogma may be, its dogma is an idea, and
consequently something rational.
Does this reasoning astonish you, gentlemen ? Have you
never reflected upon what it is to speak ? To speak is to
enchain words together, and words being only ideas living

382 MYSTERY AS THE OBJECT OF PROPHECY.
under an expression, to speak is to enchain ideas. Whoever
speaks gives proof that he sees something in his mind, and
transmits to the mind that listens to him the whole, or part, of
the light by which he is enlightened. Were it otherwise,
language would be but a continuation of sounds falling into
the ear, and not into the intelligence ; it would be noise, and
yet noise without signification. But, you ask me, does not the
absurd also speak ? And, since it speaks, is it not a light, an
idea, a rational element? Doubtless it is all that, and if it
were not, it would be impossible to speak and to be under
stood. The absurd is the evidence of the false, and the false
being only a truth which is abused, it is truth hidden in the
false which consents to be enounced. An absolute error,
representing nothing to the rnind, would call forth no expres
sion in the thought ; it would be pure nothingness. The glory
of truth is to live even in error, and to enlighten the language
which expresses it, so that the absurd becomes manifest to the
eyes of the understanding. So far, then, from there being no
idea or rational substance in the absurd, it is found there in
so elevated a degree that all at once exclaim, That is not
common sense. The absurd is the second revelation of the
true, more powerful perhaps than the direct revelation, and
that is the reason why mathematics employ so often that form
of reasoning which is called demonstration ad absurdum.
I return, then, to my declaration : Christianity speaks, it
has spoken dogmatically for eighteen centuries; and, there
fore, however incomprehensible its dogma may be, its dogma
is necessarily an idea — that is to say — something rational.
This is true, perhaps you will say, but it is something rational
ad absurdum; for since the absurd speaks as much as the in-
. comprehensible, what hinders it from confounding the incom
prehensible with itself? What hinders it, is that the one is
not the other, that the absurd is the evidence of the false,
whilst the incomprehensible fails, at the same time, in the
evidence of the false and of the true. The incomprehensible
is something which reason does not explain, nothing more.
Would you deny its existence ? Would you deny that particular
state of the human mind? But I have shown you that the
incomprehensible follows us even into the objects of science ;
I have presented it to you as the necessary term of our highest
light. If the incomprehensible became confounded in its
nature with the absurd, there would be no shadows, since the

GOD AND MAN. 383
absurd is as clear as a demonstration. It being then proved
that the incomprehensible is a distinct category of the human
mind, a separate condition, if you like it better, where the
understanding has neither the evidence of the false nor the
evidence of the true, there remains this difficulty : that to
understand not is to see nothing. What have I to do against
this difficulty ? Must I show you that the incomprehensible is
not the exclusion of all idea ; and, consequently, of all rational
vision ? On this account I have said : Christianity is incom
prehensible in its dogma ; and, yet, dogmatic Christianity is an
idea ; it is an idea, since it speaks. Your reply to that is, The
absurd speaks also. Yes, but it speaks with the character of the
absurd — that is to say— with the absence of decisive clearness,
whether for the false or the true.
If, however, the example of Christianity should embarrass
you, from the notion which you may entertain that its doctrine
manifestly bears the sign of the absurd, I shall withdraw it from
a discussion into which it does not necessarily enter, and ask
you, Do you comprehend eternity, the infinite God? Do you
comprehend a Being who exists of Himself, who is because He
is, without beginning and without end ? Do you comprehend
the union in one single person of two substances as opposed
to each other as body and spirit? Do you understand the
action of body upon spirit, and of spirit upon body ? Assuredly
no. These mysteries then which are so profound, so im
penetrable — do they, or do they not, present any idea to your
understanding? If you answer me, yes — and you cannot
reply in any other manner — I conclude therefrom, that the
incomprehensible, notwithstanding its obscurity, does not bear
with itself the exclusion of every rational element, and this is
what I had to prove. Now remark attentively, it is now a
question between us only of the general essence of the incom
prehensible. You have said that the incomprehensible con
sidered in itself, in its very nature, is an absurdity ; and, I,
following you step by step, have had to prove to you that it is
not so, and that to propose to man the contemplation of a
mystery, so far from dishonouring his intelligence, is to elevate
him to regions whose natural and sublime guest he is. For, I
have said, reason itself includes an incomprehensible element,
and the incomprehensible in its turn contains a rational
element; evidence, in mounting towards the higher pole of
things, to which it is the great road, meets obscurity there ; and

3?4 MYSTERY AS THE OBJECT OF PROPHECY.
mystery, in descending from heaven, bears to us a light worthy
of its proper name, which is revelation.
Hereby you see that the difference between the natural and
the supernatural order does not consist in the idea that all is
comprehensible in the first, whilst all is comprehensible in the
second, but in this, that the truths of the latter are not
susceptible of a direct demonstration, whilst the truths of the
former flow as a consequence from the luminous germ which is
our reason. Thus God, although inscrutable in His essence, is
a dogma of nature, because we draw conclusions in regard to
Him by the very light which is within us ; but the unity of God
in three distinct persons is a dogma of revelation, because it is
impossible for us to deduce it from any rational principle.
At the very last, you will perhaps think that there is more
obscurity in the supernatural incomprehensible than in the
natural incomprehensible. Now, I can but repeat to you those
words of Jesus Christ, " I am the light of the world : he that
followeth me walketh not in darkness, but shall have the light
of life."* And those other words, "I am come a light into
the world : that whoever believeth in me may not remain in
darkness. "f And those of the Apostle St. Paul to the
Christians of Ephesus, "You were heretofore darkness, but
now are ye light in the Lord ; walk then as children of the
light." | Everywhere in Scripture the natural order compared
to the supernatural order is called darkness; and the super
natural order, light, life, the way, the truth. It is because.
however far and however high the most pure reason may reach,
it knows God only by imperfect notions derived from the
spectacle of finite things, or from the contemplation of itself.
Now, God is all. Whoever knows Him not, knows nothing ;
whoever knows Him imperfectly, knows imperfectly ; whoever
knows but little of Him, knows but little. And since reason
approaches Him but imperfectly, as is too manifest, it is just
to say that it is but a faint dawn of a bright day, an enigmatical
and painful mirror of truth. But if God, touched by our
natural ignorance, brings to us a knowledge of Himself; if He
reveals to us what He is, what He sees, what He feels, what
He wills ; if He opens to us the depths of His eternity, His
action upon time, the motives and plans of His Providence ;
then doubtless our inner vision will discern, but with difficulty,
* St. John viii. 12.
t St. John xii. 46. J Ephes. v. 8.

GOD AND MAN. 385
the infinite lines of such revelation ; it will remain under the
celestial horizon as it is under created immensity. And yet
who will say that he does not know more ? Who will not call
his former state darkness, and his new state light ? I grant
that the shadow increases with the light, but that is the law of
all science and of all light. Is there a man of science who
does not discover more abysses in proportion as he penetrates
further into nature ? Is there a sun whose light, falling upon
a body, does not draw a shadow from it so much the deeper as
its rays are the more ardent ? If the finite, itself, on becoming
revealed to our vision, becomes so much the more mysterious
as it is more visible, what must it be with the infinite ?
Accept, gentlemen, with a firm mind, that condition of
things, that necessity of the incomprehensible which pursues
us everywhere. March on, like Israel, under the guidance of
that column, half cloud, half fire, the only one that still
enlightens and guides the human race. Watch the cloud, in
order to learn in it the limits of your nature ; watch the light,
in order to learn there the greatness of your destiny. Should
the one afflict you, take comfort in the other ; should the
West trouble you, turn to the East ; and, in fine, lifting your
eyes yet higher, wait in patience and faith for the pure day
which is promised to us, and which will dawn from eternity
for every soul worthy to behold it ; for although the incompre
hensible cannot even then disappear, since it belongs to the
nature of the infinite considered by the finite, nevertheless the
vision of God in His very substance will impart to us a posses
sion of Him which will transform the mystery into the joj'
of ever knowing and ever exhausting our knowledge,

2 c

THE HUMAN ACT CORRESPONDING
TO PROPHECY.

My Lord — Gentlemen,
Having explained the nature of prophecy, and solved the
difficulties relative to its object, we must now consider the act
by which man, prophetically taught by God, corresponds to
that revelation ; for as prophecy has no other object than to
establish a supernatural intercourse between God and man, it is
not sufficient that God acts on his side — it is necessary that
man should respond to Him by a positive act. What is that
act ? What is the act by which man responds to God, inasmuch
as God enlightens him prophetically — that is to say, manifests
to him, by means of language, truths that surpass the power of
his rational understanding? This act, gentlemen, could not
be an act of knowledge, for knowledge supposes demonstration,
and God, in prophecy, does not demonstrate, he affirms with
authority. He affirms, and man believes. Faith is the answer
which prophecy solicits ; not blind faith, but faith based upon
the divine characters that surround and penetrate the revealing
testimony. In our two last conferences of the year 1836 — a year
already so distant from us — I treated the question of Faith.
It comes before us again, brought back by the inflexible
enchainment of things, and I shall reject it so much the less
as I must now consider it under a new aspect. It was neces
sary then more especially to study its nature ; to-day, supposing
that nature known, I will reply to two difficulties, and thereby
explain to you what faith is.
We are told, in the first place, that the act of faith, by which
man corresponds with the Divine Word, is an act which has no

GOD AND MAN. 387
parallel in the natural order, where all takes place by way of
knowledge and demonstration ; and that therefore, under this
head, there is an anomaly which destroys the synthesis between
the two orders— the natural and the supernatural. Although
the necessity of a constant synthesis, or similitude, between the
two orders is not clearly manifest, I shall nevertheless prove
that it exists in the case in question.
We are told, in the second place, that the act of faith, being
irrational in its nature, since it is not the consequence of a
demonstration, man is not able to produce it at will, by a simple
application of his intelligence and liberty ; but that it is the
fruit of chance, custom, certain inclinations of the soul, and
that therefore it cannot be an absolute duty upon which our
intercourse with God depends. I shall prove, against this
objection, that the act of faith is a regular power of man, and
that, revelation being known to him, unbelief is a free refusal
on-his part, consequently a culpable refusal, and one that severs
his relations with divine light and love.
Let us begin with the first difficulty — that of the synthesis
between the natural and supernatural orders in regard to
faith. You have already seen that it is not the prophetic reve
lation alone that brings into our intelligence the element of
the incomprehensible ; reason itself is subjected thereto, and its
most sensible rays merge on all sides into profound mysteries.
At the same time that nature displays its phenomena, that
science demonstrates, and the mind is satisfied by evidence,
the incomprehensible appears and exacts from us an act of
faith. I say an act of faith ; for, in what manner soever the
incomprehensible may be presented to us, even when a direct
demonstration is given to us of its existence, it brings to our
need of knowledge a limit which supposes on our part that
submissive acceptation whose proper name is faith. Doubtless
it is not faith of the same order as that which adheres to
revealed dogmas guaranteed by the word of God ; but it is a
real faith given to the testimony of nature upon realities which
it does not explain to us, and which are enveloped in shadows
inaccessible to all the efforts of our penetration. Therefore as
the word of God makes unbelievers, so also do nature and
science. Scepticism is no other thing than a revolt of reason
against obscurities wherein' it becomes lost as soon as it wills
to penetrate the depths of truth ; and this is why science as
2 c 2

388 THE HUMAN ACT CORRESPONDING TO PROPHECY.
well as religion requires from its sectaries that humility which
is a great part of common sense. The true sage, initiated to
the secret of his weakness by the marvels which he has inter
rogated, bends before Him who created the universe, and who
alone knows the secret of all its forces. He avows that he
knows nothing, not in an absolute sense, like the sceptic, but
in the sense which implies a voluntary abasement of the mind
of man before the Spirit of God, and that voluntary abasement
is faith itself.
In fact, knowledge, however imperfect it may be, is not the
general state of mankind ; it is the privilege of a very small
number of men scattered here and there. The multitude, sub
jected to labour which leaves them no leisure to cultivate their
minds, are ignorant of the demonstration of the things which
they employ and of the rules which they apply to their lives.
Whether error or truth govern them, they are governed by
persuasion and by authority — that is to say, by faith. They
go whither they are impelled by the privileged battalion of the
princes of the intelligence, itself impelled by an unknown
ascendency which has its source in anterior ages, and in the
logical current of all accomplished events. The revolutions of
the human mind have no other cause, no other law ; they never
operate by way of demonstration, any more than battles are
gained by the knowledge of the soldier. The soldier is ignorant
of what he does and why he does it ; immovable under fire,
or marching towards the enemy, he gives and receives death
by orders whose principle he does not know, whose result is a
mystery to the very last moment. He obeys in perils an in
visible thought in which he has faith, and that faith is half of
his strength. An army that doubts is a lost army ; an army
that believes commands defeat and draws therefrom its safety.
So it is with the battles of the intelligence, with those great
movements of opinion that lead nations to new destinies — the
throng follow chiefs who persuade them ; they obey, believing
that they command. You have proof of this in the history of
which you form a part. Sons of an epoch fertile in vicissitudes,
you witness a social revolution which shakes Europe in its
very foundations. How many minds, think you, are there in
Europe capable of rendering an exact and scientific account
of it? A party was formed, which for sixty years directed
opinion and dispersed popularity as a sovereign; this party
was supported by most of the seats of science and learning;

GOD AND MAN. 389
its organs were a multitude of journals which bore its ideas to
the extremities of the world; its subjects were governments
and laws ; all bent before it, and at length it felt sure of having
founded an eternal empire by free discussion. But yesterday
it still reigned; to-day it is hardly defended. Publicity,
learning, science, liberty, its own strength and its own work,
have turned against it, and see, it gathers around its ruins for
its protection the ruins which it had caused, and which it
proudly called the relics of the past. How has this power
been brought to an end ? By the same power which established
it — by faith. A new language has risen up from the general
lassitude of minds ; it has boldly anathematised the language
which preceded it, and which, although so long master, was
found feeble in persuasion and authority. Doubtless there is
a cause for this, and a logical cause, but the multitude who
are led by it do not discern it. The multitude changed faith
in changing their chiefs. And never upon this earth is the
language that persuades and commands silent for a single day.
It perishes upon the lips of one but to be reproduced upon the
lips of another, and should the people cease to understand it,
having no longer either faith or knowledge, there would remain
to them of the human intelligence only the faculty of deeper
degradation. But reassure yourselves, whatever is needful to mankind,
happen what may, will not be wanting to it. _ Knowledge will
be subject to eclipses among men because it is the light of a
small number ; authority will outlive all its catastrophes, and
if, after having been the organ of the opinion which it enounced,
you lose that authority, no matter from what cause, learn that
another will take up the sceptre as it falls from your hands, and
that an interregnum of faith is no more possible here below
than an interregnum of life.
How should mankind know its own history if faith from
man to man could be subject to any real interruption ? History
is not of itself visible on the horizon of posterity ; as soon as
the actors and spectators of an age have passed away to the
tomb, they disappear also to the generations that take their
place, and the course of ages, following its rapid flow, rejects
them more and more to the obscure solitude where death hides
them. What has caused them to live again in spite of time ?
What is it that keeps the buried form of the ancestor standing
erect before his most distant descendants? It is faith alone—

390 THE HUMAN ACT CORRESPONDING TO PROPHECY.
the faith of the man living in the man dead, the testimony ot
the man who has seen passing from memory to memory to him
who has not seen. Try whether any demonstration, beyond
human authority, will bring before your eyes Sesostris or
Cyrus, Babylon or Memphis, or any other vanished object of
antiquity. The instrument that follows the heavenly bodies
in the immeasurable heights of the firmament, can discover
nothing in the narrow orbit of the tomb ; and the arithmetic
that subjects numbers can neither count, range, nor sum up
the dead. Eternity alone sees them in their order and in their
secrets and history, that pale copy of eternity, presents a repre
sentation of them to every man who believes in man. If you
do not believe in this, mankind loses all traces of itself for
you, and its generations are nothing but a fall of leaves be
tween two summers ignoring one another. If you do believe
it, no longer blame religion because it asks from you for God
that faith which you have in man ; confess that it is very simple
to know God by faith, since mankind has no other knowledge
of itself. You have seen the past ; let us look now at the present.
We are to-day upon earth a thousand millions of men spread
over four or five continents and in a hundred nations. How
do we know one another ? How many have we seen of those
beings, our fellow-creatures, who breathe the same air, who
tread the same earth, who live in the same times, who form
together, and in the same labour, the life of one single body ?
We have seen one or two thousand of them at most, and even
of that number, so limited, how few could we name ? All the
rest escape us, save by relations which books and travellers
bring to us — that is to say, by our faith in the recitals which
they bring to us.
Let us go further ; let us leave our absent contemporaries,,
and speak only of those who live with us, whom we meet in
our public streets, and even, if you will, only of those who are
here in Notre Dame, within the walls of this great cathedral of
Paris. Assembled together in one place we see each other —
it should be easy for us to know one another by direct know
ledge, in which faith would have no part. And yet, is it so ?
What are you, and what am I ? What are your sentiments,
and what are my own ? I shall vainly strain the powers of my
mind in order to penetrate at a glance, and by a clear view,
the folds of your being ; the gleams that come from them.

GOD AND MAN. 39i
suffice only to attract or to repulse me instinctively, but not to
give me the knowledge of your heart. Man is a soul, and the
soul ignores the soul until a word spoken in the ear, in the
outpourings of friendship or religion, has revealed its mystery
and merited to hear the response, " I believe you." Faith is
the knot of our personal relations ; an untiring and a cherished
mediator, it passes from friend to friend, from husband to
wife, from the child to the mother, from the right that com
mands to the liberty that obeys ; and in the most solemn acts
of empires, as in the most tender effusions of love, man
expresses himself fully by these same words, " I believe you ; I
trust in you." It is never sold, it is given, because it is so
priceless that whoever sells it is incapable of holding it. And
upon those simple words, " I trust you," man risks his fortune,
his life, his family, his honour. He believes or he is believed,
and it is enough. Better would it be for him to lose all than
to betray that faith, so low, even among the vilest actions, does
the heart fall which is convicted of it. Even falsehood,
although it may not bear the character of a treasonable act
properly so called, but by that alone that it does not merit the
confidence which an honest man owes to the word of another
— falsehood excites scorn, and in the days of chivalry our
ancestors considered as the highest of all insult those words,
" Thou hast lied ! " In fact, when a man has been guilty of
falsehood, his word exists no longer, because he merits no
faith, and, having no word, what remains to him of a soul ?
But who would believe it, gentlemen, the most material
thing in the world, that which seems to be entirely subjected
to the laws of arithmetic, money itself, is an object of faith
among men. It passes from hand to hand, it multiplies in a
fertile circulation only by the effect of credit, and every event
that lessens confidence in the future lessens at the same time
the value of money. But just now it solicited the hand to
take it ; under the form and upon the faith of a scrap of paper
it passed from one nation to another, everywhere accepted
under that ideal form which gave to it a value far beyond its
real quantity ; and suddenly that paper falls, money is hidden,
manufactories stop their works, commerce fails, labour becomes
scarce — a kind of universal failing holds society in suspense,
and seems to paralyse it. What powerful blow has it then
received ? I have already told you : there has been a with
drawal of faith. That nation has ceased to believe in itself;

392 THE HUMAN ACT CORRESPONDING TO PROPHECY.
its moral resources are not equal to its perils ; and whilst
Rome sold the field upon which Hannibal encamped, because
Rome had faith in his virtue, this people, measuring its fate by
its corruption, has given itself over to the chastisement of fear.
It has hidden its gold as the ancients, in the catastrophes of
their country, hid their gods. Remove fear, and money,
appearing again and circulating, will stimulate labour, enter
prise, commerce — wealth, in fine, which, as you see, is a
daughter of faith.
I have said enough to show that faith plays an important
part in the human as well as in the divine order, and that,
therefore, there is no antithesis, but synthesis, between the
two orders under this head. However, it will not be unprofit
able for us, before leaving this part of our subject, to ask the
reason of this ; for, if we have understood that faith is neces
sary in the relations between man and God, we do not see
clearly why it is necessary in the relations between man and
man. Let us learn, then, that the life of the intelligence proceeds
from two poles — the one immutable and absolute, which is the
pole of truth ; the other movable, which is the pole of liberty.
Without the first, minds detached from any fixed point would
wander at hazard in the night of doubt and ignorance ; without
the second, being deprived of their own movement, they would
be nothing but the obedient satellites of a fatal mechanism.
Their life is then at the same time a work of truth and of
liberty. As a work of truth, it is an object of knowledge ; as a
work of liberty, it is an object of faith. For as the ancients
said, Fluxi non est scientia — There is no science of that which
passes. Now, nothing is more unstable, ' more rapid, more
unforeseen than liberty, and this is why it is so difficult to know
ourselves, all-present though we may be to our own hearts.
What shall I do to-morrow ? Where will the inconstancy of
my will lead me ? To what temptations shall I be subject ?
Shall I yield to them, or shall I not yield ? I may perhaps
suppose, but I cannot be absolutely sure. A book which may
fall into my hands, a word which I may hear, an insult which I
may receive, a leaf which the wind may carry beneath my feet
— I know not what, in fine — all and nothing may be capable
of changing my sentiments and of inspiring my will with
unlooked-for resolutions. You ask me to give you the know-

GOD AND MAN. 393
ledge of myself, and I do not even possess it. I myself am
ignorant of it. I am to myself an object of faith 1
It is liberty, gentlemen, that brings into human things the
element of faith, and makes it the only means by which we
reciprocally know ourselves. If we were not free, science
would dispose of us as it disposes of the rest of nature ; it
would weigh a man in the same manner as it weighs a little
earth, and, all the laws of mankind being reduced to numbers,
we should require for our rules only an academy of mathe
maticians. Such is also the final dream of materialism in
regard to us. Persuaded that there is nothing in man but
organised matter, it seeks the supreme combination which,
keeping the passions in an equilibrium, would produce a purely
scientific order wherein crime and virtue would hold neither
place nor name. Make all men equals, for example, by
mathematical equality ; make so many figures of them ; dis
tribute to them in the same measure the objects which natter
the senses and satisfy pride ; what would they need in order to
be equally and supremely happy ? Nothing, doubtless, if they
were but bodies ; but if by chance a soul lives in them, and in
that soul the liberty of volition, be sure that the heavens, the
earth, and the sea, given in pasture to each of them, would not
satiate the reciprocal jealousy of their felicity. A moment
suffices for passion to devour worlds ; and if liberty is not the
infinite by substance, it is the infinite by desire. This is why
there are no mathematics of liberty, and those who seek its
equation in matter are like that child whom St. Augustine saw
upon the African shore endeavouring to empty the sea with a
shell which its waves had thrown up. These great calculators are
the worst of men for the government of man : they are amazed
at the resistance made against their genius, never suspecting
that liberty is greater than any empire, stronger than any
Csesar, deeper than any abyss, and that faith alone commands
it, because faith is itself an act of liberty.
Therefore, by the same reason that we are free beings, we
are beings of faith, and we must say in the natural order what
Jesus Christ said in a higher order, "Blessed are they that
have not seen, and yet have believed."* That is to say, blessed
are they that have no need of demonstration, because demon-
* St John xx. 29.

394 THE HUMAN ACT CORRESPONDING TO PROPHECY.
stration is attained only by a few minds in things of secondary
degree ; whilst faith, altogether popular and sublime, passes
from the soul of all to the soul of all, in things which, taking
their root in liberty, are the foundation of human life !
I repeat that faith is the correlative of liberty, as science is
the correlative of necessity; and to ask why we ought to believe,
is to ask why we are free. From thence follows a consequence
upon which I cannot be silent, and which will fitly explain to
you the important part which faith fills in the purely natural
order. Science relates to necessity — that is to say, to what is immut
able in itself; it suffices to have intelligence to be learned, it is
not the same in order to be a believer. Faith is an act of
confidence, and consequently an affair of the heart. It sup
poses in him who grants it the same uprightness as in him who
inspires it, and no ungrateful man, no impostor, no egotist, nor
any of those whom the Scripture energetically calls " the
children of unbelief,"* were ever capable of it. To confide is
to give oneself ; none give themselves but the magnanimous,
or, at least, the generous — not that faith excludes prudence,
and that it is needful to give ourselves up to the first word that
falls from unknown lips, but because, after prudence is supposed
to be satisfied, another effort is still necessary to draw from us
that difficult word — I believe.
Alexander, the King of Macedonia, was on the banks of
the Cydnus. He was there attacked by a malady which
threatened to save Persia, and his physician, whom he tenderly
loved, was to prepare for him a decisive draught. But, in the
evening, a letter, written by a known hand, warned the invalid
to beware of his friend as a traitor who had sold his life.
Alexander kept silence. On the morrow, when the cup was
brought to him, he drew from his bed the accusing letter, gave
it to his physician, took the cup, and swallowed its contents at
a draught. All antiquity has lauded this act of Alexander, and
his most celebrated victories — Granicus, Issus, Arbela — have
not encircled his head with more admiration. Upon this a
celebrated writer, whom I shall not name, asks what is there
so worthy of admiration in this act so highly vaunted ; for, in
fine, Alexander was the chief of a numerous army engaged in
an enemy's country, the master of a rising kingdom, the man
* Eph. ii. a.

GOD AND MAN. 395.
of Greece who was charged with its vengeances and its designs ;
he should, on every account, have respected his life, upon
which depended the fate of so many others ; and what merit
was there in exposing it without defence to the chances of
poison? But the writer whom I have quoted, after having
made these remarks, goes on to say : " What is there so
worthy of admiration in that action of Alexander ? Unhappy
men, could you understand it if it be needful to tell you?
What is so worthy of admiration is, that Alexander believed in
virtue — that he believed in it fully, at the peril of his life ! "
This is a magnificent explanation of the faith of a noble
heart, and it is also the explanation of all faith, whether
exercised towards man or towards God. Whoever makes an
act of faith, whether he knows it or not, drinks the cup of
Alexander ; " he believes fully, at the peril of his life ;" he enters
into that lineage of Abraham, who is called " the father of all
those that believe," * because when he was old — wasted in age,
but not in heart — he raised his obedient knife upon his only
son, who was all his love and his race, hoping against hope in
that declaration which had promised him a posterity. And if
there be a creature who, in opposition to these great examples,
has never drawn from his soul an act of faith, you may fear
lessly accuse that creature of having dishonoured in himself the
work of God. For faith is not only a virtue — that is to say, a
generous and an efficacious effort towards good — it is the sacred
portico through which all virtues pass — the sanguinary pro
drome where the sacrifices commence and where the victims
justly immolated return to the sanctuary of God. There is no
act of devotedness, no act of love, no honourable or holy act
which was not at first an act of faith, and this is the reason why
the Scriptures so often declare that by faith man is justified
and saved. The Jews imagined that the principle of salvation
was the observance of the law in view of the recompenses of
God; St. Paul unceasingly tells them that their works are
powerless if they are not vivified by a higher element. _ " It is
one God," he exclaims, " that justifieth circumcision by faith, and
uncircumcision through faith. " + What are works, in fact, if they
are performed under the impulsion of a purely scientific view ?
A simple calculation of interest, or of good government of our
selves and others. Men are just, sober, careful, industrious,.
* Rom. iv. 11. t Rom. iii. 3°-

396 THE HUMAN ACT CORRESPONDING TO PROPHECY.
faithful keepers of their word, because this is an order whose
exact observance produces more than it costs ; but place these
well regulated minds before the cup of Alexander — that is to
say, before a sacrifice which may be avoided without loss,
before a virtue which has no visible reward — you will then
learn the void in the heart where faith is wanting. I do not
even mean divine faith, but that vague, unnamed, indescribable
faith, which is the basis of all that is great. Therefore, when
St Paul pronounced that sovereign sentence, " Without faith it
is impossible to please God,"* we may add — and men.
Thence comes the weakness of society in the present time.
Never has science thrown upon things a more living and a
more complete illumination than now ; nor has the social tie
ever been so easy to burst in the hands of those who, turn by
turn, endeavour to bind society together. It is because science
is not the principle of the human order — it is only one of its
glorious ornaments — and where it oppresses instead of sustain
ing faith, it is but the parricidal instrument of ruin wherein man
will learn too late that it is necessary to believe in order to live
a single day, even were it not necessary to believe in order to
live eternally. Human faith is the life of the natural man as
divine faith is the life of the man supernaturalised, and those
two men forming but one, divine faith maintains human faith
as human faith supports divine faith, were it but in proving the
synthesis which exists between the two orders whose distinct,
but harmonious, elements compose our destiny.
This first difficulty solved, I am urged to notice a con
siderable difference between the faith that serves as a means
of intercourse between men among themselves, and the faith
that serves as a means of intercourse with God. In the former,
they say, it is easy to see when and in what degree confidence
should be given to purely human testimony, relating to things
and ideas not removed from the sphere in which we are; in
the latter, on the contrary, every thing surpasses our faculties
—divine revelation itself — in its exterior signs, as well as the
mysteries contained therein. We believe in man voluntarily
and naturally, because man is ourselves; we believe in God
by chance and with difficulty, because God is not ourselves.
How, then, should we make of that faith the chosen instru
ment of our relations with the invisible world ? Is it our fault
* Heb. xi. 6.

GOD AND MAN. 307.
it does not subjugate our heart ? You tell us that it is a work
of persuasion : persuade us, then ! Behold us at the foot of
your pulpit ; we listen to you; what hinders you from persuading
us ? Just now, in an apostrophe which you thought eloquent,
you told us that, when language lost its authority in the world,
it infallibly found a successor which took possession of its
vacant throne. This is what happens to the teaching whose
organ you are ; but why impute it to us ? Is it needful to
condemn or pity us if human teaching has been substituted
for divine teaching, if we are born in an age wherein man
is stronger than God, wherein men listen to sages rather
than to theologians ? It is possible that our generation
may be decried; but it is not the author of its darkness,
it is its victim. Our fathers prepared the cup from which
we drink : they mixed with it so much art and power
that our lips are naturally inebriated therewith, and that our
birth and error form but a single act in one and the same day.
Instead of condemning us, let God, then, come to our help ;
let Him speak, let Him give grace to His word ; and if it be
true that His Son, heretofore visible among us, did raise the
dead, ah ! let Him, then, raise up the whole human race ; this
is the real corpse. You have said that eloquence is the substi
tution of the soul that speaks for the soul that listens : let God,
then, be eloquent ! Is it too much to ask of Him for the
salvation of the world ? And if He will not — if He does not
do this — if incredulity remains our natural state, whilst faith is
but exceptional, why should He complain ? Is it because we
are such as He has created us ?
Gentlemen, your objection supposes that divine or religious
faith is an accident of the human mind, and already many
times, in the course of these conferences, I have proved to
you that it was the universal, perpetual, and public state of
mankind. I proved it to you again this very year, at the
beginning of our quadragesimal reunion, and without returning
to that historical demonstration, I will limit myself to one
remark — it is, that there have been in the world only two
epochs where incredulity has had any hope of domination : the
Augustan Age and our own : the Augustan Age, which saw the
Roman Republic perish, and our own, which has as yet pro
duced only tempests — two epochs in six thousand years, both
marked by the signs and the effects of decline. Not that I
would prophesy your ruin ; even in the Augustan Age it was

398 THE HUMAN ACT CORRESPONDING TO PROPHECY.
not ruin : the unbelief of the ancient world was the happy
forerunner of a new world, the Christian world. So will it be
with you. Your bark quivers and sinks, but the wave that
draws it into the abyss will lift it towards heaven, and your
posterity, guided to the haven, will admire in your history and
in its own a new proof that unbelief, so far from being a station
of mankind, is hardly a danger for it. Already certain fore-
shadowings of the future justify this presentiment, and even if
my hope be not a proof for you, it will always remain that the
only epoch of incredulity of which we know the integral
development was followed by the exaltation of Christianity —
that is to say, of the greatest and most memorable expansion
of faith which has ever taken place in the human race. This
suffices to give me the right to conclude that divine or religious
faith is not an accident of our mind, but its general and true
condition, and that man believes in God as spontaneously as
he believes in man. I do not say that he so believes without
an effort, and even without a struggle. Nothing is more natural
to man than to live, and yet life is not a thing that does not
cost any effort. Life is a labour and a struggle ; how much
more should faith be so, since faith, in its very definition, bears
the idea of a virtue, and since all virtue is a laborious effort,
because of the passions which are opposed to its reign over
the soul.
Do not wonder, then, that it requires some care to believe,
as well as to be just, true, chaste, an honest man, and wonder
even that so little is needed, faith being not only a human but
a divine virtue, and the gate of all the virtues that lead to God.
You do not believe, and you conclude that faith is impossible ;
for my part, I conclude that you do not do what is necessary
in order to believe, and I shall prove this to you in a few
words. The first cause of unbelief is voluntary ignorance. Faith
cannot be acquired any more than knowledge without a certain
application of the mind. As soon as the mind does not apply
itself, it is inert, it ceases to be a power, it is in regard to the
object from which it turns away as if it were not. What are
mathematics for a mind which has never reflected on the laws
of number, extent, and motion ? What is philosophy for a man
who has never asked himself what are being, idea, the absolute,
the relative, cause and effect? And, by the same reason,

GOD AND MAN. 399
what is faith for a soul which has never seriously thought on
the necessary relations between the creature and God ?
Gentlemen, be true to yourselves ; at what age and after
what studies have you decided that religion is an error ? At
the age of forty ? No, you decided it in the flower of your
age, at the moment when, rising from infancy, reasoning and
passion made their joyous appearance together on the agitated
surface of your being. Simple and subject up to that time,
pious adorers of the thoughts of your mother, you had inter
rogated nothing, contested nothing— you lived upon a faith as
pure as your heart. But hardly had that double puberty of
man made known its living sting to your senses and your
mind, than, without giving yourselves time to ripen your power,
impatient of the mysteries of nature and the mysteries of God,
you were seized with shame at believing at the same time as
you lost that other shame which is the divine guardian of
innocence. As yet incapable of a virile act, you nevertheless
pronounced sovereignly upon man and upon God ; you doubted,
denied, apostatized, despised your fathers, accused your masters,
traduced before your tribunal the virtues and the sufferings of
ages — made, in fine, of your soul a desert of pride. Then,
that ruin accomplished, you chose for your object one of the
ambitions of man — the glory of arms, letters, or of something
less elevated, as the case may be, and all the effort of your
faculties is employed towards the idolatry of your future. You
have learned nothing more than to be one day the actual hero
of your dreams. You have sacrificed your days and nights to
that egotistical image, reserving no hidden, no unknown part
of them, save only for that other egotism of man, sensuality.
And never, during that double and sad dream, has religion
appeared to you other than as a futile recollection of your early
years, a weakness or hypocrisy of humanity. You have not
deigned to give to it an hour, a thought, a desire; and if,
perchance, attracted by a celebrated name, you have passed
the threshold of a book or a temple, you have done so in the
haughtiness of a mind which had judged and which did not
intend to change its sentence. O confidence of youth in
error ! O security of souls who have as yet seen nothing of
life but its dawn ! Oh ! how good God has been not to call
us at that hour of ignorance and enchantment ! For, already
the greater number among you are not in the state of simple

400 THE HUMAN ACT CORRESPONDING TO PROPHECY.
certainty; time has brought back to you doubt and obscure
presentiments of truth. You understand that your unbelief is
the result of a puerile act of weakness, and that for your honour
and your repose it needs a ratification.
It is this second work, this work of return and examina
tion, that founds faith in man and maintains it in mankind.
Faith, doubtless, is also a gift of infancy ; it throws out its
roots in the soul entering into existence, but it is the tardy
action of life that brings it to its maturity. When man has
seen man during a long series of years, when he has known
his weakness and misery by experience which leaves him no
more doubt, and already the mighty form of death brings
nearer- to him the last of the prophecies, then his look
becomes naturally more profound. He discerns better the
divine trace, because he knows better what man cannot do,
and the lassitude of present things creates for him also a taste
for things unseen. Therefore a writer, whose name I cannot
now remember, has well said : " At twenty, men believe
religion to be false ; at forty, they begin to suspect that it may
be true ; at fifty, they desire that it may be true ; at sixty, they
no longer doubt its truth." Light advances step by step with
life, and death, by disabusing us of all things, completes that
continued revelation whose first words we heard from the lips
of our mother. The infant and woman are the vanguard of
God ; the full man is His apostle and martyr; you, young men,
are but deserters for a day from Him.
I know that voluntary ignorance does not of itself explain
the painful phenomenon of unbelief, and that there are men
versed in religious things who do not attain to the happiness
of faith. Such examples are rare, but I have met with them.
They are victims of a passion which is the most obstinate of
all, the pride of knowledge. The pride of knowledge is that
infatuation of a mind intoxicated with itself, which sees itself
in what it knows, like Narcissus in the lake, and which, con
sidering every limit as an insult to its capacity, presumes to
treat with God as between equal and equal. Such a man no
longer studies from a love of truth, but against it ; he rejoices
in gathering clouds around it, in finding a grain of sand which
may be made a blasphemy, and which he may hurl against
Heaven. Does he watch the firmament, it is but to draw
forth from it the secret of the eternity of the world ; does he
descend into the bowels of the earth, it is but to seek for arms

GOD AND MAN. 401
against a great biblical fact ; does he interrogate the necropolis
of Egypt or the ruins of Babylon, it is but to endeavour to find
there a voice that denies something of the mcst ancient tra
ditions. His knowledge is but a stubborn duel between himself
and God.
Who could remain true under the influence of such a
passion ? Who would accept it as a judge ? Faith, we have
said, is an act of confidence ; it supposes the sincerity of an
upright and a loving heart. Now, the men of whom I speak
would not even believe in mathematical demonstrations if their
object and end were the truths of their religious order. Like
Jean Jacques, they would rather declare themselves to be mad
than say they were convinced. And indeed this is not an
imaginary picture. Consult the recollections of your own
conscience. Have you never felt a thrill of joy on discover
ing something in history or in nature that appeared to you to
be stamped with an anti-Christian sign? Have you never
clapped your hands on hearing it said, Here is an argument
against Jesus Christ ? " Ask, and it shall be given to you ;
seek, and you shall find ; knock, and it shall be opened to
you."* Such is the first condition for arriving at faith. The
sun halts in vain in the height of the firmament, if his light is
but a reason for us to refuse to acknowledge his presence.
In fine, a third cause of unbelief is the depravity of morals.
I will not say that all the weaknesses of our frail flesh are
obstacles to faith, since faith is itself the principle of chastity,
and since Jesus Christ pronounced against the Pharisees that
divine saying, " The women whom you call lost shall go into
the kingdom of God before you."t There is a form of vice
which is humble, which knows itself, which despises itself,
which beats its breast. I will not say that it is agreeable to
God, but God is able to heal it, as he healed Magdalene.
On the other hand, there is a vice poisoned with pride,
which raises its head, which laughs and mocks. This vice
God hates ; it is an almost invincible obstacle to faith,
because it is the re-union of two kinds of perversity, which
naturally exclude one another, and whose meeting takes from
the soul the last resources of good. Pride alone of itself is
so insupportable to God, that He prefers humble vice to
haughty virtue. How, then, must He regard proud vice?
* St. Matt. vii. 7- + IUd- xxi- 31- 2 D

402 THE HUMAN ACT CORRESPONDING TO PROPHECY,
Now, nothing is less rare than that lamentable disposition of
the heart ; slaves as they are to the most vile inclinations
and the most shameful practices, they plume themselves in
the pride of a pure conscience ; they appeal from it to their
honour, their probity, their genius, and cover with the name
of amiable weaknesses the prostitution of all the senses to
voluptuousness. They employ half a century in perverting
the ignorance of youth and the beauty of virtue around them,
and, after having driven to shame a number of souls, whose
ruin they do not even deign to respect in their memory,
instead of saying to God with St. Peter, " Depart from me ;
for I am a sinful man, O Lord," * they complain of the little
light which God has thrown upon His works, and impute to
him their misfortune of not knowing and serving Him. Do
you believe, gentlemen, that miracles are due to such com
plainings, and that God is at fault for not answering them
otherwise than by silence and coldness ? Oh, yes, " the
women whom you call lost will go into the kingdom of God
before you," because nearly all of them have been victims
before having been mercenaries, and because from the depth
of their abasement they sometimes raise towards God that
plaintive and humble look which is more than remorse, if it
be not yet virtue. God will hear them ; He hears the faintest
sigh that is sincere, and He perfects every tear which has begun
to form for time. But He despises the pride of ignorance, the
pride of knowledge, and the pride of vice ; He will await them
on the day when, in presence of the assembled universe,
angels will sing again the hymn of God made man, " Glory
to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good
will."t Gentlemen, I shall not conclude without casting a thought
upon the great week whose doleful events we are about to
celebrate. It was the week of our salvation, and it is so
now. From that cross which the Church has just covered
with a veil, not to hide it from us, but to make its mourning
more apparent and more bitter to us, for nearly _ twenty
centuries justice and love have appealed to you. Listen to
them now, and do not disdain such great patience in so much
light. You, to whom age gives warning of serious things,
listen to the counsel of time, which for you joins to the voice
* St. Luke v. 8. t Ibid. ii. 14.

GOD AND MAN. 403
of God. You, to whom youth promises long hours of grace,
listen to what is most touching for you in the cruel appeal of the
Passion. It is written that after the arrest of the Saviour, when
all His disciples had left Him, a young man was seen following
Him having a linen cloth cast about his naked body. The
guards seized upon him in order to take him, but, casting off
the linen cloth, he fled from them naked. That young man
was yourselves ; it was the youth which should one day spring
from Christianity no longer dishonoured by hopeless vices,
but subject to seductions and returns to good, preserving in
evil the search after good, incapable of persecuting the Just
and following Him at a distance in the shadow of the world
with sympathetic presentiments. Such were you on the eve
of the Passion ; in that young man your precursor, such are
you now. You are naked, you are wrapped in the linen sheet
of death and sin, and whilst here you listen uncertain to the
spotless word of truth, perhaps Providence will touch you
with that blessed hand which has made and which seeks man.
Ah ! I conjure you not to fly from Him ; leave Him your
linen garment by giving Him your hearts.

SACRAMENT.

My Lord — Gentlemen,
Prophecy does not suffice for the supernatural inter
course between man and God. Prophecy enlightens the intelli
gence by elevating it to ideas which the spectacle of finite things
would not inspire ; but the intelligence is only a part of man,
and in order to be moved, it depends upon a faculty which
rouses it and is the mainspring of all our actions, although it
is subject in its turn to the influence of the doctrines deposited
in the understanding — I mean the will. The will is the
principle of free activity. If it were to halt in the orbit of
nature whilst the intelligence mounts higher, there would be
discord in the tendencies of our being, and the work of divine
communion would not be accomplished. It is needful that
the will should receive a supernatural impulsion at the same
time as the intelligence receives an illumination of the same
order, and that thus all our faculties should advance together
to the conquest and full possession of the infinite. This is
why the Spirit of God, which is called the " Spirit of truth," *
is also called the " Spirit of power," t and Jesus Christ, in
promising this Spirit to His apostles, announced it to them
under that double form — the one of light, the other of power,
or virtue. And unquestionably, in the prophetic action, this
double effusion is produced. Illuminative grace includes also
an attractive grace, but which, although sufficient to aid. the
will, is not sufficient to found in it the constant reign of divine
justice, life, and love. As Jesus Christ, after having revealed
to His apostles the mystery of the Gospel and after having
begun in them the work of regeneration, fulfilled it by the gift
* St. John xiv. 17. t Acts i. 8.

GOD AND MAN. 405
of the Holy Spirit which was to confirm them by His
omnipotent power, so every soul already prepared by the
hearing of the word of God, should resort to Sacrament in
order to derive from it the vivifying virtue which exalts the
will, and establishes it in the plenitude of the rights and
functions of the supernatural order.
What, then, is Sacrament ? If I limited myself to showing
you what it is in the religious sense, perhaps you would not
understand me ; but I am sure that in considering it in a
higher manner — that is to say, in its metaphysical and absolute
nature — you will be constrained to respect it, if even you are
not yet induced to practise it.
I propose, then, again this question, and I ask in an
abstract and general sense, What is Sacrament ?
Sacrament thus considered is no other thing than an
instrument — that is to say, an organism which contains a force.
The idea of force is the parent idea of sacrament, and it is
consequently impossible for us to reason about it if we do not
know beforehand what force is. When we were treating of
Prophecy, the fundamental question was, What is truth ?
When Sacrament is under discussion, the fundamental question
is, What is force ?
It seems, gentlemen, easy to answer this question ; for ever
since we have been in the world, and at each moment of our
lives, we have performed, and we still perform, only acts of force
or weakness ; and weakness itself is but a force inferior to what
is required for the object to which we apply it. If you walk,
it is a display of force ; if you sit, it is the display of another
force ; if you stand up, it is still force. And so it is with all
our outward actions, with all those that are performed by the
organs of the body. The movements of the soul, whatever
they may be, depend upon the same principle, and follow the
same law. Are you bold in danger ? It is force. Are you
above the seductions of the world and the senses ? It is force.
Are you firm in your resolutions ? It is force. Are you cast
down by grief or fear ? It is force that grows less in you, and
if you did not retain it by an effort against your impressions,
life would slowly and painfully escape from you. Life is but a
tissue of actions which proceed from a force more or less
energetic, more or less imperfect, whose seat is at the same
time the soul and the body. _
If from man you pass to nations, you will find there no

406 SACRAMENT.
other spectacle. Nations begin by an act of energy, they live
upon a principle which formed them, and they expire from
physical and moral exhaustion. Their history lasts as long as
their power, and their power as long as that force lasts which
collects all the others in its essence and in its name — virtue.
The universe, in its turn, says the same thing to us as man
and nations. All those immense orbs which compose its
architecture obey two forces — one of projection, which impels
them in a right line ; the other of attraction, which calls them
to repose in a fixed centre — and, dividing between these two
contrary impulses, they describe that constant and glorious
curve which unceasingly dispenses to us light, heat, time,
space, and harmony.
All is then force in heaven and upon earth, because all is
action, and science, of whatever nature it may be, to whatever
object it may be applied, is employed solely in calculating
forces, some physical, others moral, mathematical, metaphysical
or abstract, and, in fine, beyond all things and all number, the
most elevated speculation encounters, under the name of God,
the supreme, eternal, infinite, immutable force, from whence
flows, in each being, by measured participation, the germ of
activity. Consequently nothing should be more familiar and
more known to us than force. And yet, precisely because
force is a primary element of our thoughts, I can only imper
fectly define it to you, less by its essence than by its effects.
I shall say, then, that it is the energy of a being, holding
existence in itself by means of an effort of concentration, or
diffusing it without by means of a movement of dilation.
Every act of force reduces itself to this. Either we restrain
ourselves within ourselves, in order to concentrate our life,
and give to ourselves the highest possible sensation of it, or
we diffuse our life, in order to communicate it to others, and
according to the degree of that double tension, we produce, to
a greater or less degree, the incomprehensible phenomenon
which we call force. The hand contracted to refuse is the
symbol of the force of concentration; the hand open to consent
is the symbol of the force of expansion ; and if you recall to
mind the acts perpetually renewed which form the life of man
and nature, you will find nothing in them which does not
conclude in that alternative movement which our heart un
ceasingly manifests physically and morally.
The force of concentration at its height, is eternity. He

GOD AND MAN.

407

alone possesses it who, in an unique, indivisible, and absolute
moment, feels in Himself and for ever the infinite sensation of
being, and is able to say, I am who am* The force of expan
sion at its height, is creation. He alone possesses it who,
sufficing to Himself in the plenitude of existence, is able to
call into life, without losing anything of his own, who and
what He will — -bodies, spirits, worlds — and this always in untold
ages and unbounded space. Such is God.
Now God, in giving us being, has given us force, without
which no being could comprehend itself, and he has given it
to us in its double element — one by which we have duration,
another which enables us to multiply ourselves ; one by which
we tend to the act eternity, the other by which we tend to the
act of creation. But between God and ourselves, under this
relation, there is a great and capital difference. ' God possesses
of Himself the force of concentration and expansion, whilst
we have it only as a loan, by means of the instruments which
Divine Providence has prepared for us. Therefore, living
beings as you are, you would make vain efforts to live by the
sole aliment of your substance, and the sole command of your
wants. Were you like Ugolino, shut up in a tower, with your
children at your feet crying to you in all the tortures of inanition
— you men, you fathers — it would be impossible for you to
draw forth from the most energetic action of your soul any
thing but despair or resignation. You would be compelled to
fall powerless upon the bodies of your children who had fallen
from the same cause. Doubtless the force of your will would
more or less retard that catastrophe of hunger. The soul
sustains the body combating against affliction and death, and
martyrs have been seen in whom the divine assistance seemed
to delight in braving tyrants, and in surpassing the genius of
cruel inflictions by the patient courage of faith. But that
exaltation of virility, whilst being the triumph of virtue, does
but lead it gloriously to the tomb ; it must succumb in the
material order, and bear witness that no creature possesses of
itself the right or power of immortality. Life is in us on
condition of our maintaining it by something other than
ourselves — that is to say, by means of the instruments to
which God has communicated force to retain and sustain our
own. If nature did not bear us like a mother in her bosom,
* Exodus iii. 14.

408 SACRAMENT.
if nature did not, with inexhaustible fecundity, prepare for us
the milk of the plant and the blood of the animal, our life
would not even be a dream. We subsist by the invisible force
contained in a visible organism, and Sacrament, or the instru
ment, being no other thing, we must conclude that we subsist
by the natural and daily use of Sacraments.
So it is in regard to the force of expansion. If you would
act outwardly upon the being the least capable of resisting,
you cannot do so directly by a simple act of .the will. In vain
would you command a grain of sand to move out of your
way. God moves the universe without even speaking to it;
as for you, an atom braves your commands. You call to it,
you command it to be gone. It is silent, and it despises your
orders. If you would remove it, your hand must bend even
to the earth, and cast from you the insolent dust which scorned
the desire and power of man. But the body is a limited instru
ment, a slight increase of resistance, and the force which your
body contains no longer suffices to maintain your empire;
you must seek help for it, and add to its action the foreign
action of the lever. The lever itself must increase in propor
tion to the weight which it is required to lift, and with that
material aid resting on a fulcrum, you build your palaces, your
temples, your tombs, and all those monuments conceived by
your genius, but executed by your hands aided by a mean
organism. You might even, said Archimedes, displace all the
worlds with the lever, by giving it sufficient length and finding
for it a fulcrum capable of bearing its weight and the effort of
its movement. Glory to you, gentlemen, but glory to you because you
know how to employ instruments capable of raising even to
heaven the ambition of your works ! Without their help, you
would know nothing of the firmament but its appearances, of
the earth but its surface, of history but a vague and limited
remembrance, of yourselves but the narrow limit of your
faculties. The instrument is your whole force, without as
well as within, in the order of expansion as in the order of
concentration. But the instrument and Sacrament being the
same thing, what shall we say, but that man is nothing save by
Sacrament — that Sacrament is his life, his power, his sovereignty,
his immortality ? I say this after having proved it, and that
you may not be left in wonder thereat, I desire to learn why it
is so, and to show it to you.

GOD AND MAN. 409
Why, then, does our force come to us from without ? Why
does it come to us from a source inferior to us ? — or, at least,
why can we only sustain and develop that which is our own by
the help of something foreign to us, and which is contained
in the lowest regions of nature? Why, gentlemen? Is it
so difficult to understand? If we possessed the force of
concentration and expansion of ourselves, as that double force
is the essence of life, we should have life in us and by us ; we
should be to ourselves our subsistence and our reason of being,
we should be God ; or, at least, not having consciousness of
the silent and insensible action by which God would inwardly
infuse life to us, we should easily believe that we possessed it
of ourselves, and that, instead of rising in humble gratitude
towards the Author of that magnificent gift, we should halt at
ourselves as before our principle and our end. Our greatness
would deceive us, and nature being under our feet only an
observant and a passive slave, we should draw from it the
idea that it is not distinct from man, and by a pantheism which
would justify its obedience, we should adore in nature the
reverberation of our sovereign majesty. God was too just ;
he was too much a father to deliver us to such easy risings of
pride ; he made us first among visible beings, but in warning
us of our dependence towards Him by the state of dependence
in which we are towards the whole of creation. We command
only on condition of obeying ; we live only by soliciting life ;
we act only by the help of the dust which soils our feet. God,
in giving us a soul greater than heaven and earth, has not
permitted it of itself alone to vivify the glebe of the body
which it inhabits, and to communicate to it an action equal
to its volitions. He has placed an intermediary between us
and force ; He has hidden it in the bosom of nature, under
forms which we accept without understanding them, and the
employment of which necessarily but partially humbles our
pride, because we have the glory of discovering them, and
because we believe that we make them our servitors by proving
the law by which we depend upon them. But since you
despise the supernatural Sacrament, learn at least the value of
the natural Sacrament. You, the kings of the world— you can
live only by eating; only by sitting at a table, and devouring
blood flesh, herbs, which you dispute with the beasts of the
field • only by bearing within you an inexplicable transmutation
of inanimate matter into the glorious and living -ubstance o,

410 SACRAMENT.
man. You, the kings of the world, for whom this earth is ton
limited — you cannot lay two stones one upon another save by
the help of an instrumentation which subjects your genius to
a piece of dead wood. For what is a lever ? A lever is a pole.
Yes, proud men, mathematicians, savants, artists, to found this
temple in which I speak to you, you require a pole ! Your
thought conceived it, but it was a pole placed across another
pole that built it.
And yet, where is the scholar in philosophy whom the idea
of Sacrament has not revolted? What young mind, exercising
in mathematics by calculating forces, has not laughed at the
idea of Sacrament ? He who daily employs it with imperturbable
faith, who advances surrounded by instruments, who counts,
weighs, measures, observes by instruments — he who stands
wondering before a machine, and who never contemplates a
collection of them in the museums of science without a feeling
of pride — he, that same man, passing before a church, cannot
suppress a smile at the thought that there are reasonable beings
availing themselves of something which they call Sacraments.
Ah ! yes, gentlemen, the Christian lives by Sacraments as you
live by them — religion has its Sacraments as science has its
Sacraments, and, before complaining of this, it would have been
.but just to learn whether such is not the universal mode of
life ; for it is hard to live by the very thing which we despise
the most.
Had God created man only for time and space, he would
have given to him only the force corresponding to time and
space, and the only instruments known to us would have been
natural instruments. But such was not the vocation of man.
God having placed him in the world from a motive of good
ness, willed to communicate to him His perfection and His
beatitude — at first indirectly, under a finite, representative,
and enigmatical form, which constitutes the order of nature ;
next directly, by a higher effusion of light and love, we should
prepare man, by means of his free co-operation, to see and
possess fully the Author of all good. In a word mighty and
wonderful, but a word taken from Scripture, and brought even
to us by Christian tradition, the final end of man is his deifica
tion — that is to say, so intimate a union with God that, with
out destroying our personality, it should make us partakers of
the divine life and the divine nature, This is what the Apostle
St. Peter wrote in these terms to the faithful of his times :

GOD AND MAN. 411
" Simon Peter, servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, to them
that have obtained equal faith with us in the justice of our
God and Saviour Jesus Christ : Grace to you, and peace be
accomplished in the knowledge of God, and of Christ Jesus
our Lord, ... by whom he hath given us the most great
and precious promises : that by these you may be made par
takers of the divine nature."* And St. Paul, writing to the
Hebrews, said to them : " For we are made partakers of
Christ : yet so if we hold the beginning of our substance firm
unto the end."t And at every page of the Gospel eternal life
— that is to say, the life of God — is promised to us as the
reward of our works performed in the faith and fulfilment of
the divine plan in regard to us. Now, the life of God, con
sisting in an infinite force of concentration, which is eternity,
and in an infinite force of expansion, which is creative charity,
it is this double infinite force which should be initially com
municated to us in order that we may respond, even here
below, to the marvellous vocation of omnipotent goodness. I
have not now to discuss that vocation. I have already done
so, and if I had not it is unimportant. Is there any soul here
who accepts time and space as his destiny ? Do we not all,
believers and unbelievers, hold the faith that space is not our
horizon, that time is not our measure, that we pass beyond
and higher, and that the present life is but the painful portico
of a greater future ? Yes, save the atheist — and ought I even
to except him ? — save the atheist, there is no man who does
not feel a germ of divinity. Therefore, we are all able to die
for our ideas and our affections, for truth and justice, because,
all feeble as we are, we feel on certain occasions so vivid an
impression of the God obscure who is within us, that death
appears to us as a fiction, and the duty of dying an immortality.
Ah ! I thank God, that in this great mystery of our union
with Him, there is dissent among us only as to the mode and
the degree ! I thank Him, I bless Him for this ; I feel happy
and full of joy to find one point in hope and in the infinite,
where, whoever we may be — ancients or moderns, pagans,
Mussulmans, heretics, unbelievers — we meet, and for once
understand each other ! Hail, promised land of man, duration
which will no longer be a beginning and an end, incompre
hensible substance which will bear us without increasing or
* 2 St. Pet. i. I, and foil. t Heb. iii. 14.

412 SACRAMENT.
lessening, air, light, heat, respiration of our soul— hail ! We
do not' all understand thee in the same manner, we do not all
possess the same certainty of thee, but we all possess, even in
the despair of suicide, thy inexplicable augury : and if thou
art, if thy dawn seen from so far deceives not the heart of
man, what canst thou be but God ? What other land, what
other heaven, what other ocean but God, could bring to our
weary minds a better vision than the vision of the present ?
Yes, even here below, for all of us, God is our perspective, He
is our aliment ; even when we have driven Him from us, He
still dwells in us plaintive and consoling, like those unknown
winds which pass in the evening over the desolate summit of
the high mountains, and gently agitate some solitary plant
which the pious hand of the traveller has never touched.
God is our future, or we have no future ; we shall fall into
His life, or we shall fall into death — the one or the other.
Immortality without intimate union with God is the abstract
dream of beatification, or the adulterous dream of infinite
materialism. I do not believe that your hope has fallen so
low, and consequently you must eternally enjoy God if you are
not to perish eternally.
To enjoy God, to be in God and with God, plunged into
his bosom as we are in nature, such is the vocation of man,
and that vocation cannot have been given without a corre
sponding force to prepare us, in this world, for our final state.
As beings destined to a transformation in the infinite, we
should somewhere derive the efficacious germs of that divine
change. As nature pours out its treasures for us to maintain
our terrestrial life, God necessarily pours out also His own to
elevate us to His life, and, according to the general law of
the communication of forces, it is by an instrument that
supernatural energy is presented to, and incorporates itself
in, us. Jesus Christ, having sat down by a well in the land of
Samaria, saw a woman come there who began to draw up
water, and He said to her : " Woman, give me to drink. . . .
Then the Samaritan woman said to him : How dost thou, being
a Jew, ask of me to drink, who am a Samaritan woman ? . . .
Jesus answered and said to her : If thou didst know the gift of
God, and who he is that saith to thee : Give me to drink, thou
perhaps wouldst have asked of him, and he would have given
thee living water." That woman, full of the obscurities of

GOD AND MAN. 413
man, and who represents so well to us the poverty of our
reasonings, replied to her interlocutor: "Sir, thou hast nothing
to draw_ with, and the well is deep ; from whence then hast thou
that living water ? " Jesus, not wearying of showing mercy,
which had been twice rejected, replied to her : " Whosoever
drinketh of this water shall thirst again : but he that shall drink
of the water that I will give him shall not thirst for ever ; but
the water that I will give him shall become in him a well of
water springing up into life everlasting."* Such is the dif
ference between the Sacrament of nature and the Sacrament of
grace — in the one and in the other the force is contained in a
sensible element ; but the first communicates only a passing
life, the second gives a life that springs up into eternity, because
it nourishes the soul with God.
Nourishes the soul with God ! What an expression, you
will say, and what reality can it signify ? We can conceive
that a body may be nourished by another body, since both are
of the same nature and are composed of parts which may be
indefinitely divided ; but how can a simple substance, such
as the soul, be nourished by another substance still more
simple, such as the essence of God ? Doubtless a spirit
is not nourished like a body; yet it is not in vain that
human tongues possess the tradition of those bold figures,
and transport to the spiritual life the operations of the animal
life. Being, in whatever rank of honour or inferiority God
may have established it, lives only by the forces received
from without, and the eminent act by which it receives and
assimilates these forces, is the very act of receiving nourish
ment. Now the spirit receives and assimilates forces as well
as bodies, consequently it receives nourishment; and if the
forces which vivify or sustain it are given to it of God by an
immediate effusion, it is eloquently and truly said to nourish
itself with God. However, the expression is of little import
ance, provided that the thing exists. God, in the supernatural
Sacrament, communicated to the soul a force of expansion
which bears it directly towards Himself, and a force of concen
tration which attaches it intimately to Himself, and if you are
weary of expressions borrowed from the physical sciences, I
will say to you in the language of St. Paul : Caritas Dei
DIFFUSA EST IN COKDIBUS NOSTRIS PER SPIRITUM SANCTUM QUI
* St. John iv. 7 and foil.

414 SACRAMENT.
datus est nobis — The Charity of God is poured forth in our
hearts by the Holy Ghost who is given to us* Charity, that is to
say love, which does not come from flesh and blood but from
the beauty of God presented to the soul by faith — charity is
that force of expansion and concentration which united us
supernaturally to God. By charity, we raise ourselves above
the senses and above all the enchantments which the visible
world offers to us; by charity, having once seen the divine
personality in the figure of Christ, we find therein more plea
sure, more peace, more joy, more delight than in any created
thing, and as the patriarchs under the nuptial tent forgot the
death of their mother, we forget ourselves and lose ourselves in
that superhuman love. We pass into God, and embracing Him
with all our strength in an inexplicable certainty of possessing
Him, we draw from Him a part of His life in abandoning to Him
all our own.
Who among you, having been loved, and supposing that we
are able to love God, does not understand what I mean ? Who
among you has not known that movement of the heart, which
pours out itself and finds itself again in another? Even inani
mate creatures possess its instinctive secret ; they seek each
other, and unite by secret affinities, and those famous laws
which lead the celestial bodies are but the sensible revelation
of the forces which move us in God in the mystery of initial
and consummated beatification.
Perhaps you do not deny these forces, or that love in all
its degrees is their principle; but you wonder that, in the
supernatural or religious order, they should be communicated
to us under a form humble, so little in relation with themselves,
as Sacrament. In the natural Sacrament or instrument, say
you, there is proportion between the cause and the effect. I
take a lever, I move a body, the effect is natural like its cause :
but what relation can be discovered between a few drops of
water poured upon the head of a man, and his transformation
in God by charity.
The objection supposes that in the natural Sacrament there
is proportion between the cause and the effect : I deny it. I
now maintain that between the lever and the body moved by
it, there exists no more relation than between the water which
baptizes and the soul which is purified by that water. What,
* Rom. v. 5.

GOD AND MAN. 415,
indeed, is a lever ? I have already said it is a piece of dead
wood placed upon another piece of dead wood, which serves it
as a fulcrum. This definition is not scientific, but it cannot be
contested. Now, is it there, in this inert organism, where lies
the force that will lift the weight ? Not in the least degree.
The weight would remain eternally motionless if my arm did
not give an impulsion to the lever, and my arm itself would
remain still if my will did not command it to move and
strengthen it so much the more as the obstacle of the weight
is greater. Where, then, is the force ? It is not in the lever,
since it needs to be moved by the arm ; it is not in the arm,.
since it needs to be moved by my will : it is in the will which
moves the lever by the arm — that is to say, in a faculty of the
soul, in the mind. Now, I ask you, what natural relation
is there between the mind and the movement of a body ?
The lever alone could do nothing, my arm alone could do
nothing ; they were both inactive, incapable, dead : an order
of my will weighing upon my arm, has weighed upon the lever,
which, in its turn, has given an irresistible impulsion to the
body. And you find that simple ! And you say that the
effect is of the same nature as the cause ! For my part, I say
that the cause is spiritual, the effect material, and that therefore
the proportion which you fondly assume, is as foreign to the
physical instrument as to the religious instrument.
But there is something more. It is true, my will moved
the arm, which moved the lever : yet it can do nothing without
the co-operation of the lever and the arm. If my will, however
active it may be, had not these instruments at its service, it
would have endeavoured in vain to communicate a movement.
The force is in my will, and, nevertheless, the force can come
from it only by means of an instrument which has it not ; the
living and first cause depends in its action upon a cause inert
in itself. Withdraw the lever, withdraw the piece of dead wood
resting upon another piece of dead wood, let it refuse its help
to the will, the will would waste itself in powerless_ desires.
Spirit needs matter, as matter needs spirit : the miracle is
reciprocal — the effect becomes cause, and the cause becomes
effect. You have not, however, yet exhausted that strange com
plication of mysteries. If, whilst the will acts upon the
instrument, the instrument were to double its length, its force
at the same moment becomes doubled, without the soul making

416 SACRAMENT.
any other effort, and so on indefinitely, even to the power of
raising worlds, according to the boast of Archimedes. The
instrument which is not the principle of force multiplies it
without measure : it receives the initiative of the mind, and
gives back to it in exchange an increase which exhausts all
calculation. Do you understand that force, springing from
the will, passes into a pole, and there increases simply because
the pole increases in length ? What relation is there between
the immobility of the soul and the progress of force — between
a principle which remains at the same point, and a consequence
unceasingly developed by the aid of something inert and
dead ?
I leave you now free to declaim against the water of
baptism ; ask, as often as you please, how a little matter
applied to the brow of a man raises him from earth to God.
If I know not, nature has prepared too many reprisals against
science for me to distrust myself on this head. But I am not
ignorant about it ; I comprehend that force is essentially
spiritual, that it resides in the omnipotent will of God, as in its
first principle, and that from thence it descends upon every
creature in order to communicate to it movement and life,
according to fixed laws, and in a measure whence universal
order results. I comprehend that the Spirit breathes where
it wills, and how it wills, and that it is not more difficult for it
to cause a saint to rise from a drop of water than a world
from a word. I comprehend that under that action of the
divine will, dust seeks dust, the plant rises from its germ,
the animal devours and assimilates its prey to itself, the soul
acts upon the body, the body upon the soul, the planet upon
the planet, and that the entire universe in its most lowly atom,
responds by a force to every hand that touches it, and asks
help from it. God is all in all things, even in the liberty
which rejects Him, for that liberty is His work, and He maintains
it at the peril of the evil which it engenders in spite of Him.
Without liberty the world would be but a mechanism : liberty,
a supreme power, gives to it in the being which possesses it
self-possession, government, responsibility, a real intercourse
with God — an intercourse of which Prophecy and Sacrament
are but the proof and the means. Prophecy reveals to the free
man direct truth in regard to God, and inspires him with faith;
Sacrament pours into his soul the fermentation of charity, which

GOD AND MAN. 41 7
no image drawn from creation would be capable of raising up
and maintaining therein. The one and the other, however
feeble they may be in appearance, form the foundation of the
divine life in the bosom of mankind, and for sixty centuries
they have there resisted the unanimous conjuration of created
forces. All has been tried against them, but all in vain. To
the demonstrations of science, the brilliant dreams oi genius,
the sword of potentates, the judgments of the magistracy, the
revolts of opinion, the children of faith and charity have replied
in these short phrases : God has spoken to us ! God has
blessed us! Death has found them firm upon these two
anchors, and their blood has been but another Prophecy and
Sacrament. The world mocked at the word and at water ;
they added their blood, and proved to the world that a fluid
shed was not so insignificant a thing. Language is air put in
motion ; but when the soul enters into it, it becomes eloquence,
justice, truth. What will it become when God enters into it ?
Water is hydrogen mixed with oxygen : but when the genius of
man penetrates it, it becomes vapour, celerity, commerce,
power, civilisation. What will it become when God touches
it ? Glory to God, who has remained so great in such feeble
means !
Gentlemen, I have yet to show you how prophetic and
sacramental grace, how supernatural truth and charity were
given to the ancestor of all our race : but the order of our
conferences now arrests me for a year. We will resume them
next year by this question, and immediately after, having learned
the whole plan of man in regard to God, having scrutinised the
gifts which were granted to him by the intermediary of nature,
and the highest and most direct gifts which he has received
from grace, we will halt before that splendid masterpiece
of divine goodness, no longer to study that divine goodness
in its gifts but in its acts. We shall see man struggling with
liberty — a depositary in liberty of his own destiny and »f the
destiny of all his descendants— master to lose all, master to
bless all ; in fine, conducting in his heart the pious and terrible
drama of our common destiny. There, under the virgin shades
of the primitive Eden, I give you rendezvous. There, in the
ignorance of evil, and in the all-youthful glory of God, we shall
find our first Father; and we, His sons, who too fully prejudge
bv our misfortunes the possible issue of so much innocence in
3 2 E

41 8 GOD AND MAN.
so much felicity, let us each return to our works, and may we,
in another year, be able to bring back into this place less of
remorse than remembrance, fewer faults than virtues, a soul
capable of understanding the fall of man, and worthy to
repair itl

THE END.

CHARLES DICKENS AND EVANS, CRYSTAL PALACE PRESS.

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