RELIGION IN SOCIETY, 
 
 OR THE 
 
 SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS, 
 
 PLACED WITHIN 
 
 THE REACH OF EVERY MIND. 
 
 TRANSLATED PR03I THE FRENCH OF THE ABBE MARTINET. 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION 
 
 MOST REV. JOHN HUGHES, D.D. 
 
 ARCHBISHOP OF NEW YORK. 
 FOURTH EDITION. 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 N E \V-YORK : 
 
 D. & J. SADLIER, & CO., IG-i WILLIAM STREET. 
 BOSTON: 128 FJcaERAL-sTRftRT. 
 
 MONTREAL, C. E: 
 CORXER OF XOTRE-DAME AXD ST. FRANCIS XAVIEIJ STREirTS.
 
 Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1850, 
 
 By D. & J. SADLIER, 
 
 In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, for the 
 Southern District of New- York. 
 
 VINOHNT L. DILL. Stereotyper, 
 128 Fulton-street, N. Y.
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 BY THE 
 
 MOST REV, JOHN HUGHES, D,D, 
 
 ARCHBISHOP OF NEW YORK. 
 
 THE work of which these volumes are a translation has been very 
 extensively read and much spoken of in France, where it was first 
 published. It passes under review a great variety of interesting topics, 
 bearing on Religion and Society, which the author has arranged in an 
 appropriate order, and discussed with more than ordinary tact and 
 ability. His labors in the Catholic cause are not unworthy of being 
 placed next to those of Moehler and Balmez. It has not, indeed, the 
 metaphysical depth of the one, nor yet the tranquil scientific spirit 
 and arrangement of the other. But for the masses, as a popular man- 
 ual against the discordant but numerous errors of the day, it is per- 
 haps superior to either. 
 
 It bears in the original the stamp of French national genius, which will 
 not take away from its interest in the translation. No country in 
 Europe has exhibited so desperate and protracted a struggle between 
 truth and error, as that which has been going on in France with almost 
 unabated earnestness during the last seventy-five or eighty years. In 
 no other country have errors of almost every description found such 
 able and enthusiastic advocates. But on the other hand, no nation 
 beside has furnished, during the same period, so brilliant an array of 
 great and glorious men engaged in the defence of truth. Every error 
 whether against faith or morals, against society or humanity has been 
 taken up as soon as broached, examined, exposed and triumphantly 
 refuted. 
 
 Whoever has paid any attention to the more recent wanderings of
 
 IV INTRODUCTION. 
 
 the human mind, must have obsei ved that within the last quarter <>f 
 a century, the system which the spirit of error had previonsl , 
 ted in making war on truth, has been entirely changed. Former.1. 
 its advocates were in the habit of appealing sometimes to Scripture 
 and at all times to human reason, in support of its destructive theories 
 But the defenders of truth pressing closely on its march, possessed ot 
 equal ability and a better cause, had exposed its fallacies and made i) 
 clear that both Scripture and reason with one voice repudiated its bad 
 principles and false doctrines. Hence the change of tactics. At pre- 
 sent the appeals to Scripture and lo reason are few and feeble. The 
 advocates of error, who would regard it as a merciful dispensation if 
 religion were once for all banished from the thoughts of men, have 
 learned to disguise their enmity, and to speak of religion with affected 
 hypocrisy and expansive hollowness. To attack the Holy Scriptures, 
 they have discovered, would be to sound the alarm. To appeal to 
 reason for support, would be to expose the threadbare condition of 
 their hopes, as well as their cause. Hence the actual phase which 
 the spirit of error presents at this moment, in its mode of warfare 
 against God and man, is different from any thing that it has hitherto 
 exhibited. It now stoops to cajole, to flatter, to enlist, to conciliate 
 and bring into coalition with itself, the mere sensual, faculties sus- 
 ceptibilities and passions of our poor fallen nature. Having lost its 
 cause before the high tribunal of public reason, to which it had for- 
 merly appealed, it would now accept a favorable verdict from the low 
 animal feelings and propensities, by which man, especially when he 
 indulges them, is most nearly assimilated to the brute creation. It 
 elevates the sentient faculties above the intellectual, the lowest attri- 
 butes of our nature above the highest, which it treats with indifference 
 or affects to ignore. It confines its zeal to the condition of man, 
 in his present state, and adjourns the question of his eternal future. 
 It sheds bitter tears of sympathy over the miseries to which God (that 
 is, if it admits such a being) in the actual economy, has left him exposed. 
 It insinuates and proclaims aloud, where it can do so with impunity, 
 that, in providing for the temporal well-being of man, religion has 
 proved recreant to its mission, and society has abused and betrayed its 
 (rust In contrast with the actual inequalities and sufferings which 
 afflict our race, it spreads out before us its embellished and tempting 
 theories of society organized on new and imaginary principles. The 
 family, the school, the guild, the State, the Church, all and each must 
 be remodeled, in strict accordance with the wants, the wishes, the 
 complex tastes, the sympathies, the varied susceptibilities and special
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 aptitudes of men and women, individually considered, as they shall 
 be found in this " Paradise Regained," which the spirit of error is 
 preparing for the future abode of " humanity." 
 
 Yes, all " humanity," no Divinity. A God, a Christ, Redemption, 
 Revelation, Grace, Sacraments, a blessed and beautiful connexion, 
 between man's present condition and his future state these the spirit 
 of error treats in the present day with the courtesy of silent indiffer- 
 ence, or ill-disguised contempt. It does not quarrel with its dupes for 
 believing and hoping in them all. To do so would be at variance 
 equally with its policy and its politeness. 
 
 But, to mitigate the strictness of human and divine laws, to build 
 palaces for the future abode of the working classes where hovels now 
 stand ; to hold out to them gilded promises of warm clothing in 
 winter, and light dresses in summer ; to abridge their hours of labor 
 and augment its compensation ; to economize thus abundant leisure 
 during which " humanity" may play on the piano, and improve itself 
 by reading reviews, novels and newspapers; to anticipate and provide 
 for a broad margin in domestic and social manners, on the central and 
 dividing line of which, like shall meet like by sympathetic affinity, and 
 mutual attraction ; in short, to dazzle the eye and seduce the hearts of 
 the suffering portion of our race by a cruel, because visionary, exhibi- 
 tion of such results, which cannot be realized, and which in many 
 respects would be execrable if they could, is the latest and actual 
 system of warfare against both God and man, which is now being pro- 
 claimed and carried on by the spirit of error and its living, speaking 
 and writing agents and advocates. 
 
 There is much low, mean cunning in this system. It erects human- 
 ity into the Idol and calls upon men to reverence, worship and adore 
 their own fallen nature. It does not mention the fact, that in this 
 worship, the priest and the Deity are one and the same. The former 
 swings the censor, it is true, but the fragrance of the burning incense 
 reaches only his own nostrils for he is "humanity." 
 
 God and revelation, the Church, Scripture and even reason, though 
 not specially proscribed, are left out, or considered as topics of sheer 
 indifference, in this new complex heresy, emanating not so much from 
 the wandering ol the human mind as from the passions of the human 
 heart. It is known in different countries by different names; and the 
 leveral schools into which its advocates are divided are contending as 
 to which will have the honor of giving it ultimate stability of shape, 
 form and dimensions. So far as it is yet known in the United States, 
 its minor degrees may be all comprehended in its aggregate term
 
 VI INTRODUCTION. 
 
 transcendentalism. Its oracles have invented for its communication to 
 the world, a special but very indefinite style of their own. They 
 employ accurate Anglo-Saxon terms to express, whether in speech, or 
 in writing, the abstract sentimentalities, vague aspirations and unjointed 
 affections, which they offer to the public as substitutes for those per- 
 manent convictions by which mankind have been held together so 
 long, but which are now to be removed and overthrown. Their expo- 
 sitions, it is true, of the new system are a compound of the sublime 
 and ridiculous, in equal proportions. They are sublime, inasmuch as 
 the people to whom they are addressed, wonder at their eloquence, 
 whilst they can only catch feeble and evanescent glimpses of their 
 meaning ; ridiculous, because the authors themselves, as to their own 
 meaning, are precisely in the same predicament. 
 
 Still whether such exhibitions are sublime or ridiculous or both 
 together, the progress of the doctrines which they are intended to 
 propagate cannot but be productive of serious damage to the cause of 
 religion ; in all its good influences on society. Some of the grounds 
 on which this conclusion is founded, are obvious to all. Protestantism 
 is drifting, or rather has drifted, in all directions, from its primeval 
 and central moorings. True, it still professes to cling to the Bible, as 
 its anchor ; but thread by thread and twist by twist, ils friends have 
 been undoing the cable, by the strength of which it supposed itself 
 riding in safety. The Bible among Protestants has been made a com- 
 mon anchor for religious error as well as for religious truth. Accord- 
 ingly, when we reflect on the success with which Mormonism, Miller- 
 ism, and other extravagances have recently appealed to Protestantism 
 for sympathy and sustenance, we are forced to conclude that, so far as 
 the truth of revelation and religion are. concerned, the Protestant mind 
 has been weakened by the successive shocks which it has had to 
 undergo, and is wearing down by the daily abrasions and attritions to 
 which it is exposed, between the bold enunciation of religious errors, 
 claiming a Biblical sanction, on one side, and the ambiguous, timid 
 and stammering defence of religious truth, on the other. It began its 
 own unhappy career by rejecting the " cloud by day," and having thus 
 violated the condition on which the privilege of guidance was vouch- 
 safed to man by pitying Heaven, the "pillar of fire by night" has 
 equally disappeared from its vision 
 
 If the Protestant mind be itself thus debilitated and defenceless, how 
 can it protect Christianity against the stealthy and subtle approaches 
 of the passion-god which the spirit of error is no v introducing among 
 men, to be worshipped under the name cf " humanity."
 
 INTRODUCTION. Vll 
 
 But the children of the Catholic Church themselves, although they 
 have the rock of ages to stand, and the pillar of truth to lean upon 
 for support, are yet not beyond the reach of danger from the rising 
 heresy. Already \ve have observed unmistakeable symptoms of the 
 new infection, in the speeches and writings of some who still call them- 
 selves Catholics. Their religious health must have been already un- 
 sound, or the poison could not have taken such precocious effect. 
 One of the worst signs of their malady is that they labor with desper- 
 ate zeal to inoculate wilh its virus all who come within the reach of 
 their influence. We would recommend them to procure a brochure 
 published by our author, and which attracted much attention at the 
 time, under the quaint title of "A Cure for the Bite of the Black 
 Serpent." 
 
 Whether, then, as enabling Protestants to preserve those doctrines 
 of Christianity to which they still cling, as " fundamental ;" or as 
 enabling the Catholic to stand forewarned and on his guard, not for his 
 Church or its doctrines, but for himself; the work which is now 
 offered to the American public in an English dress is one which in my 
 opinion cannot be too widely circulated. It treats of many errors 
 besides that to which special attention has been directed in these 
 introductory remarks. I mean that vague, misshapen and as yet in- 
 definite heresy of the passions, which is now springing forth and is 
 daily giving signs of dangerous and increasing vitality. When origin- 
 ally published in France, this work was hailed with general approbation 
 as equally able and opportune. I cannot doubt but that in its new dress 
 it will be received in this country with similar tokens of approval. The 
 translation has been accomplished by one highly competent and in every 
 way qualified for the task. It is not a little difficult to give a good 
 translation of such a work, and yet it will be acknowledged that it has 
 been executed, in this instance, with taste, judgment and fidelity. 
 These volumes will come to the American reader with pleasing fresh- 
 ness and novelty. They will take their place amongst our standard 
 works of literature, and both the gifted and accomplished translator 
 and the spirited publishers will have merited, and I trust will receive, 
 the sincere thanks and liberal patronage of the Catholic and literary 
 public.
 
 TRANSLATOR'S NOTE. 
 
 THE original work, of which the first portion is now offered to the public, 
 consists of four volumes in two parts, published at different times. If the 
 present volumes should receive sufficient encouragement to warrant the 
 undertaking, they will be followed by the two remaining volumes at an 
 early day.
 
 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 WHAT IT IS TO BE A MAN. 
 
 To be a man is not to eat, drink and sleep, as so many 
 imagine. The animal does all that, and much better than 
 we. He eats and does not suffer from indigestion ; he drinks 
 and never staggers ; he sleeps, and the sun always finds his 
 couch empty. 
 
 To be a man is not to build houses and cities. Whilst we 
 laboriously arrange the pjan of a habitation, the bird con- 
 structs one, complete in convenience, solidity and elegance. 
 The prince royal reposes less luxuriously in his gilded apart- 
 ments, than the young linnet in its aerial palace. The beaver 
 builds large villages and towns, and our engineers admire the 
 perfection of his embankments. 
 
 To be a man is not to ascend in space, nor fly over the 
 surface of the earth behind a cloud of smoke. The smallest 
 gnat could instruct our best aeronauts, and surpasses our loco- 
 motives in swiftness. He never breaks his neck against a 
 tree, nor is crushed by a fall because he has heedlessly lost 
 his wings. 
 
 We must not believe that the arts in themselves give us a 
 real superiority over the animals. Destined to satisfy wants 
 which die animal never experiences, or which he provides for
 
 10 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PUOBLEiMS. 
 
 at a less expense, they are rather a proof of our physical 
 inferiority. Our manufactures will never produce a fabric, 
 equal in durability and beauty to that which covers the sable. 
 There is no animal that would change with us. 
 
 In general, as to everything that appertains to the preser- 
 vation and comfort of the individual, and the species, the 
 animal shows himself better provided, better instructed, and 
 more moral than we. 
 
 What is it then that makes us men, and leads us to regard 
 the name of animal as a reproach ? Every one answers : it 
 is reason ; it is intellect. But is it intellect itself, or the use 
 that is made of it, which places us at an immeasurable dis- 
 tance from the brute ? The latter is perfect in its kind, because 
 it is all that it can be : it uses freely the faculties it has receiv- 
 ed, and never buries any of its talents. If man neglected the 
 sublime gift of intellect, or, what is worse, if he abused it, he 
 would sink beneath the animal. To be a brute, with the 
 power of not being so, is to be more a brute than the brute 
 itself. 
 
 We are men then only so far as we are guided by reason, 
 and make use of our intellect. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 IN WHAT CONSISTS THE USE OF THE INTELLECT. 
 
 THE intellect, being the faculty of discerning truth from 
 falsehood, good from evil, is only made use of, in proportion 
 as we know the truth with regard to the points that are most 
 important to us, and as we conform our conduct to it. No\v, 
 what are the things which it is most important for us to know.
 
 THE USE OF THE INTELLECT. 11 
 
 Are they the animals that surround us, the plants that we 
 trample under our feet, the stars that roll over our heads ? 
 Not at all. Vanity apart, of all the animals which people 
 the round globe, the most interesting, in my opinion, is one- 
 self. I see them all occupied with themselves ; why should ] 
 not do the same. Before asking what they are, it seems to 
 me natural to know what I am. I say the same of the plants 
 and the stars; I will study them as soon as by a profound 
 study of myself, it shall be demonstrated to me that nature 
 has imposed on me no other task than to watch the stars, or 
 collect herbs and flowers. 
 
 The truly important question for me is then this : What 
 am I ? Whence do I come ? W^here am I going ? What 
 is the beginning and end of my existence ? In fact on this 
 point depends the whole movement of my life. According 
 as I recognise in myself an immortal spirit, or a handful 
 of organized dust, which will be dispersed at the first breath 
 of death, I shall give to my thoughts and actions a very diff- 
 erent direction. While I am uncertain what to believe on 
 this subject, I shall be confused, ignorant if I am doing 
 right or wrong, if I advance or recede. Following only the 
 impulse of my appetites, I shall be like the animal, and even 
 in a worse condition. The appetites of the brute regulated 
 by a superior reason are laws, and never cause his destruction. 
 Mine, on the contrary are false and perverse if reason does 
 not correct them. How many men daily perish, the victims 
 of excesses unknown to the brute ! Vainly then do I flatter 
 myself that I am a man, vainly do I repudiate the name of 
 animal if I have not found a complete solution to this great 
 question : from whence do I come ?
 
 12 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 VARIOUS SOLUTIONS. 
 
 THE solutions given to this question at the present day 
 may be reduced to four. 
 
 From whence does man come ? I do not know, and I care 
 not to know, answer the indifferent. 
 
 Man, says the pantheist, is one of the innumerable fractions 
 of absolute unity, a modification, a transient form of the 
 great whole. 
 
 Man, says the atheist, is the work of nature, the sponta- 
 neous production of the earth, a very singular effect of that 
 blind force which animates eternal matter. 
 
 Man, says the Christian philosopher, is the work of an 
 infinite intelligence and power, which existing alone from all 
 eternity said, at the beginning of time : Let the universe and 
 man be ; and the universe and man were. 
 
 Of these four solutions, which is the most rational, the 
 most worthy of a man ? 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 SOLUTION OF THE INDIFFERENT. 
 
 Ignorance is generally a thing of which no one boasts. 
 The appellation ignorant is every where esteemed injurious, 
 and synonymous with brute. It is the custom to parry it, 
 in the street by a blow ; in the saloons by a sword-thrust. 
 The words, " I do not know," " I am ignorant," which should
 
 SOLUTION OF THE INDIFFERENT. 13 
 
 be in such common use, seem a foreign language, when we 
 speak of questions however trivial. There are persons from 
 whom one could more easily tear their beard hair by hair 
 than exact from them expressions so uncouth. 
 
 How is it then that these modes of speech, in matters of 
 religion, far from appearing humiliating, have something 
 pleasing in certain literary and scientific illustrations ? How 
 is it that a man of talent believes himself disgraced if he is 
 thought to be occupied with religion ? Is it because nothing is 
 so popular as religious instruction ? But this would be a great 
 weakness. If it is an honor to know what most men an? 
 ignorant of, it is stupid to be ignorant of what every one knows 
 
 What ! can ignorance be the proof of an elevated mind, 
 the seal of genius ! Then let the ass raise his ears, and 
 mount the shield. I salute him king of unbelievers. By no 
 effort is it in the power of man to descend low enough to 
 dispute the palm of ignorance with the brute. 
 
 Certainly it is very much amiss to carry the head so high, 
 when the heart is so degraded, when one has so little self- 
 respect as to take no interest in the question : Am I the work 
 of chance or of a superior intelligence ? Will the being which 
 thinks in me be consumed by the worm of the sepulchre ; or 
 freed from its gross envelope, will it go to take its place 
 among immortal beings ? In fact, on what does this strength 
 of mind which goes so far as to stifle reason, rest? On 
 meanness of soul. It has long been said; "The impious will 
 believe nothing, because they aspire to the right of doing 
 everything." If they refuse to examine dogmas, it is because 
 they see the chapter of duties at the end. Leave them the 
 secret of their fortune, permit them certain degrading amuse- 
 ments and "you will induce them to believe the most incred- 
 ible things. 
 
 What can be more absurd than this conduct. Will there 
 be no God, because man chooses to doubt his existence ? 
 
 2
 
 14 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 Will the eternal prisons destined for the despisers of his law 
 be less terrible, because they plunge into them blindfold ? At 
 the word hell, the indifferent smile, but is a smile sufficient to 
 overthrow the faith of the human race ! Shall one, " I do not 
 believe," founded on ignorance, prevail over the conviction of 
 thousands of men, who have preceded us ? For as to the 
 existence of future rewards and punishments, there is, arid 
 there never has been, but one voice among men. 
 
 The indifferent cannot say ; " I am certain that the future 
 life is a chimera." How could they have acquired certainty 
 on a question which they have never examined ; especially 
 when the immense majesty of the race affirms the contrary, 
 and gives very good reasons for it. 
 
 If they cannot rationally affirm the falseness of religion, it 
 is then possible that religion is true, and hence they reason 
 thus ; " It is possible that God, the creator and legislator 
 exists ; it is possible that he has imposed on man duties whose 
 observance may one day be recompensed with a divine 
 munificence, and whose transgression on the contrary, will 
 plunge him into eternal misery. It is then possible, that when 
 I leave this life, my affected ignorance of the laws of the 
 great master may deprive me of incalculable happiness, may 
 draw down upon me punishments, of which the sufferings of 
 this life are only a feeble image. Yet it would be weakness 
 of mind to occupy oneself with such a question." Was not 
 Pascal right in saying that there were no terms to characterise 
 so extravagant a creature ? 
 
 On whatever side we examine indifference to the affairs of 
 religion .... but I remember there is a book on this subject, 
 and a book so well written that for ten years the author has 
 striven to destroy it. I commend the indifferent to it, and if 
 after having read it, they are still puffed up with vain glory, 
 I must hand them over to the physician.
 
 SOLUTION OF THE PANTHEIST. 15 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 SOLUTION OF THE PANTHEIST. WHAT IS PANTHEISM ? 
 
 IF it were not known that there is no degree of folly too 
 great for pride, when it attempts to escape from God, it 
 would be impossible to conceive how pantheism could find a 
 place in the human mind. 
 
 A Christian philosopher has said to guilty man : " Do you 
 wish to escape from God ? cast yourself into his arms *" 
 The pantheist thinks it best to throw himself into the divine 
 essence. " I am God, a fraction of God," he declares ; " how 
 could he strike me, and the blows not rebound upon himself?" 
 
 When through various transcendent speculations, an intel- 
 lect has become sufficiently proof against absurdities to con- 
 found its miserable individual existence with the infinite exist- 
 tence ; when it has been seriously attempted to form from all 
 intellectual and material unities, the absolute unity ; from all 
 successive existences, eternity ; from all imperfect, transitory, 
 corruptible beings the incorruptible, immutable, infinite being; 
 
 when but I see most of my readers yawning, little 
 
 versed, as it appears, in the j'antheistic system, although it is 
 the foundation of all the religious, philosophical, political, lit- 
 erary and artistic errors of our age. Let us endeavor then 
 to explain it, in a few words. In this case, to explain is to 
 refute. 
 
 Until recently, all philosophers who, without aversion to 
 God, were studying the origin of the universe, finished by 
 rendering homage to the system, or rather to the fact of the 
 creation: GOD spoke and everything began to be. A system 
 so grand, exclaims J. J. Rousseau, so consoling, so sublime, 
 so fitted to elevate the soul, and lay a foundation for virtue 
 
 * Vis fugere a Deo ? fuge ad Deum. (S. Auguslin.)
 
 16 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 a system so striking, so luminous, so simple ; a system pre- 
 senting less that is incomprehensible to the human mind, than 
 other systems contain that is absurd ! 
 
 At that time, it is true, it was no better understood than at 
 present, how infinite power had brought the universe out of 
 nothing ; but this was a fact established by divine testimony, 
 and confirmed by reason, which easily demonstrated the 
 weakness of every other hypothesis. Men believed then in 
 the creation, and did not blush at their belief, supported as it 
 was by these two eminently philosophical axioms ; 1. An infi- 
 nite intelligence can do many things, which a limited intelli- 
 gence cannot conceive; 2. The privilege of believing nothing 
 belongs to the brute. 
 
 If reason, which is not naturally very craving of mysteries, 
 persisted in asking how God could create real beings out of 
 possible beings, and how these beings could be from God 
 and by God, without .being one with God; it was answered: 
 " O Fool, enter into thyself, and thou wilt find phenomena 
 analagous to the creation. Daily thy intellect struck by the 
 idea of an object purely possible, for example, by a dis- 
 course, a picture, or a statue, hastens to realise it outwardly 
 by language, the pencil, or the chisel. These objects which 
 exist only through thee, are yet distinct from thee, distinct 
 from the idea of which they are the expression, distinct from 
 the mind that has conceived them, from the will that has 
 freely produced them. After that, wilt thou refuse to believe 
 that the Infinite Being, by the power of His Word, has been 
 able freely to realise some of the beings, conceived by his 
 intelligence, and that these beings are from him, by him, in 
 him, without being him ?" 
 
 This cosmogony was not so bad as is seemed ; but to the 
 eye of pride, which pretends to accomplish everything, it had 
 the capital defect of being completely finished. It must then 
 proceed upon its own foundation, and as the foundation of
 
 SOLUTION OF THE PANTHEIST. 17 
 
 pride is foil}', the old and foolish theory of emanation was 
 substituted for the very rational theory of the creation. It 
 is really an old theory, for it was the first which presented 
 itself to the human mind not illuminated by divine light. In 
 fact, most of the philosophers of antiquity, destitute of the 
 idea, to human reason inscrutable, though so simple, of the 
 creation, believed that beings came forth from the Supreme 
 Being, either by generation, as the child comes forth from 
 the womb of its mother, or by coming to light, as the bird 
 escapes from the egg, or by evolution as the tree springs 
 from the surface of the soil which conceals its germs. 
 
 A stupid conception, which gave birth to the monstrous 
 cosmogonies of Egypt, India, and Greece, and which think- 
 ing men beyond the Rhine, reproduce at the present day 
 under the name of the science of the absolute, or transcend- 
 ental philosophy. Heavy as are the clouds behind which 
 Kant and his disciples love to intrench themselves, through 
 their ambitious terminology, we see the folly of the early 
 days always revealed. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED. 
 
 THE creative principle, variously named in the ancient 
 cosmogonies, is denominated indifferently, in the schools of 
 Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Herder, &c. ; the Absolute, 
 the One, the Great Whole, Idea, Being, the Absolute Me, God. 
 
 This absolute, eternal, infinite, imperishable, has the idea 
 of himself, but still an idea too confused to permit a full 
 conception. Intensely curious, as might be imagined, to 
 know what he is, and of what value he is, he endeavors to 
 
 2*
 
 IS THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 elucidate and develope this idea, that he may know precisely 
 everything which is contained in his existence. How is this 
 to be done ? As we do when we wish to develope an idea 
 which torments us ; we strive to give it a form, by placing it 
 on paper in presence of an intellect. If this first sketch fails 
 of rendering our thought we change it, and we continue to 
 erase and write until finding the perfect expression of an 
 idea we can say : " I have succeeded ; I have fathomed my 
 thought." 
 
 In the same way, God or the Absolute, moved by the 
 desire of knowing himself, is eternally occupied with pro- 
 jecting his thought, by making himself objective to himself, 
 or to speak transcendentally by placing himself opposite 
 to himself, as not himself. As he is spirit and matter at 
 least potentially his intellectual being is displayed in a mul- 
 titude of intelligences, his material unity is broken up into an 
 infinity of sensible substances. 
 
 What is the universe according to this system ? It is a 
 divine evolution, an act by which the Absolute unfolds him- 
 self, displays himself to the eye of his intelligence that he 
 may describe himself to himself. 
 
 Men are not, as they have hitherto had the simplicity to 
 believe, individuals, really enjoying their personal existence. 
 Their spirit is only one of the manifold forms of the infinite 
 spirit ; their body like all bodies only a mere modification of 
 universal matter. In a word, the human race, animals, vege- 
 tables, minerals, all various transformations of the divine 
 essence are only forms in which God seeks to contemplate 
 himself, and to study his own nature. 
 
 Unfortunately these formulas, being the fruit of a first 
 essay, are incomplete, and fail of rendering worthily the 
 divine thought. Hence, we see in the eternal author, a con- 
 tinual effort to modify and perfect his theme. The incessant 
 revolutions of the moral and physical world have no other
 
 SOLUTION OF THE PANTHEIST. 19 
 
 aim than to establish the supremacy of the idea, by disengag- 
 ing it from its ancient forms, and carrying it out to its fullest 
 manifestation. If these operations are tedious and painful, 
 if sometimes God, in order to erase more quickly a page 
 which displeases him, casts on it some drops of human blood, 
 let us not weep like men of weaker minds. 
 
 All violent destruction is progress. When God erases so 
 suddenly an ill-sounding phrase, it is to write a better one. 
 Who knows if this may not be the last ; if the divine idea, 
 having completely given form to itself, the God Universe 
 may not remain eternally fixed in ecstatic self-contemplation? 
 
 It is true that, if before this happy epoch, the guillotine, 
 the bullet, or inability to live longer annihilates our present 
 existence, it is not easy to see how we can participate in the 
 felicity of the Great Whole : but away with selfishness ! 
 Humanity will then subsist in our descendants, who, thanks 
 to the perfection of their intellect, which reflects the idea of 
 the Absolute, will be preserved with the same care that we 
 give to the learned pages on which our thoughts are worthily 
 recorded !* 
 
 This is the fundamental theory of the modern pantheist, or 
 of the transcendental and progressive philosophy, under what- 
 ever form or name it presents. I would call upon all those 
 who like myself, have had the patience and courage to pursue 
 this hideous phantom through the obscurity in which it con- 
 ceals itself, to decide if I have been faithful in the sketch 1 
 have made of it. 
 
 * Yet this is not entirely certain. It is possible that God, after 
 having perused his formula enough to impress on his memory the con- 
 sciousness of his own existence, may use it as authors often use their 
 manuscripts as soon as they have obtained the honor of being printed. 
 And is not this the fatal termination which the transcendental philo- 
 sophy seems to prophesy, when it announces in oracular style that 
 " the absolute after having displayed himself in manifold forms retires 
 towards Unity, and tends to re-establish himself in Unity?"
 
 20 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 If I am now asked how this horrible folly has found in 
 Germany and elsewhere so many partisans, in most of whom 
 we must acknowledge a rare degree of talent and information, 
 I shall give two reasons. 
 
 The first is entirely a Christian reason. When a man, 
 reared in the bosom of evangelical light, dares in his pride 
 to reject the simple and sublime philosophy that Jesus Christ 
 came to teach us, at the price of his blood ; the spirit of God 
 departs from his guilty heart, and the demon of brutality is 
 summoned to rule there, by virtue of this divine law : Whoever 
 exalts himself shall be humbled. 
 
 These are the archangels of the Catholic hosts, whose 
 fall still makes our hearts bleed. In the filthy mire where 
 they grovel after they have lost the wings of faith, they ex- 
 haust our pity, as they have before exhausted our admiration. 
 On their pages which we should think written by the light 
 of the infernal gulfs, what do we see ? A profusion of ab- 
 surdities, which hold the reader perpetually suspended between 
 indignation and contempt. 
 
 The second reason for the success of the pantheistic doc- 
 trines, demands an entire chapter. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 MORAL SIDE OF PANTHEISM. 
 
 EXCEPT in the case of organic disease, man does not play 
 the fool unless he is freed from responsibility with regard to 
 the consequences of it. We naturally love truth ; the heart 
 must be fully recompensed for the violence done to reason, 
 before it can yield itself captive to error. 
 
 If a system is fruitful of immoral consequences, if it gives
 
 MORAL SIDE OF PANTHEISM. 
 
 the reins to all the passions, its fortune is made, even if it 
 contains in its principles an infinity of absurdities. Those 
 whose intellect is on a level with their stomach, will adopt 
 results without troubling themselves very much about the 
 premises. "This system - is convenient," they will say, 
 " it is of little importance to us whether it be true or not." 
 Those who pride themselves on reasoning upon morals, will 
 say, " This theory charms the feelings, why does it not agree 
 with reason ? " and the union will take place very quickly ; 
 for reason closes her eyes when she lends an ear to tho 
 appeals of feeling. 
 
 Now nothing is so flexible as the morality of pantheism. 
 To make man a portion of the great whole, without person- 
 ality, is to free him from the responsibility of his actions, to 
 deify all the extravagancies that flit across his mind, and all 
 the desires of his heart, however monstrous they may be. 
 
 What the ignorant man calls a vice, an evil, a crime, an 
 execrable offence, is, in this system always a good ; for in 
 one way or another it turns to the profit of the whole. 
 Thus a transcendental philosopher would be very much 
 embarrassed if he were asked whether Vincent de Paul or 
 Robespierre deserved the most from the human race. 
 
 The Absolute needing action and movement in order to 
 evolve himself, it is for us to second him in the best way 
 we can, and labor with energy to destroy what is, and to 
 produce what is not. 
 
 Are you born with a mind inclined to vast and profound 
 meditations. This is the religious, philosophical, or political 
 idea seeking in you new manifestations. Set at naught the 
 superannuated theories, which hitherto have ruled the minds 
 of men. Let us have the unknown, and let meaner souls 
 cry absurd. 
 
 Are you gifted with a genius for poetry and the fine arts ? 
 This is the idea that demands of you an unknown form.
 
 22 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 Even if this form violates all the rules of beauty, and out- 
 rages modesty beyond measure, it is of little importance : do 
 not refuse the divine inspiration. 
 
 Are you in a situation from your social position to impress 
 a great movement on the political machine ? Do not hesitate 
 to do so, even should the machine break and bury twenty 
 millions of men under its ruins. If its victims curse you ; 
 humanity, which has advanced a step, will bless you. 
 
 You too, whose activity is limited to the narrow circle of 
 the family ; the life of the Great Whole seeks also its mani- 
 festation in you, through the insatiable appetites of the heart. 
 Devote yourself to satisfying them by the energetic devel- 
 opment of your faculties. Answer boldly like the crusaders 
 to him who would array against you the rules of morality. 
 "It is the will of God!" It is true that the penal code still 
 dares to put limits to your independence, but unite your 
 voices to those which arise on every side against this barba- 
 rous act, and the sword will fall from the hand of justice, as 
 soon as public opinion recognizes in crime only the tragic 
 explosion of the idea. 
 
 I defy all the worthless libertines in the universe, united in 
 a general company, under the direction of Satan in person, 
 to form a code of more complete licentiousness. 
 
 Many honest progressive persons, I know, do not wish for 
 these consequences. They are charmed, in the new philo- 
 sophy, by something grand and colossal which it presents 
 at first to the dazzled mind, by the fanciful unity which it 
 promises to science, and above all by the facility it gives to 
 praise everything, and approve everything in matters of reli- 
 gion, without imposing the obligation of practising anything. 
 In fact the different religions which have divided, and still 
 divide the world, being formulas, more or less successful, of 
 the idea, there is none that has not contributed to progress, 
 and which does not claim a share of our homage ; but all
 
 MORAL SIDE OF PANTHEISM. 23 
 
 of them maintaining their ascendency over the idea, none 
 has a right to impose upon us its dogmas, or subject us to 
 its laws and precepts. 
 
 Catholicism, no doubt, has more nearly attained its end ; 
 hence its long and wonderfully prolific existence. Its wor- 
 ship and its monuments still breathe forth something of the 
 infinite ; yet its dogmatic formulas, and moral laws are far 
 from the idea. What soul is so little elevated, that it does 
 not feel the need of a religion, more ideal, more free from 
 terrestrial clogs and more transcendental ! The ministers of 
 the old worship may still preach to us the love of God and 
 man ; respect for the life and even the property of our bre- 
 thren ; this is very well ; but who in our day would submit 
 himself to the law of confession, fasting and abstinence ! 
 Who believes himself guilty if he has not restrained his eye 
 or his heart in the presence of beauty ! In short who would 
 be willing, in the nineteenth century to be a Christian after 
 the manner of the tenth ! 
 
 These, fashionable friends of progress, are the decent 
 limits you intend to prescribe to the practical consequences 
 of your doctrines. But if they are sufficient for you, for 
 you who can satisfy the appetites of the heart without com- 
 mitting robbery or assassination, they are not sufficient for 
 that immense multitude who can only expect in return for 
 their fidelity to social duties, a morsel of bread steeped in 
 sweat. The subtle and inflexible logic of the passions will 
 certainly reveal to them what you vainly attempt to conceal 
 in your principles ; that moral constraint is folly ; criminality 
 a ridiculous fiction, and public prosecution an atrocity ; that 
 our sole duty is to use life generously, and that our liberty 
 has no other rule than the length and power of our arms. 
 
 Make this beautiful morality popular, and your Absolute 
 will soon begin to inscribe himself so illegibly ; will blot his 
 characters so often with our blood, that in less than a cen-
 
 24 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 tury the nine millions of fractions of his divine being, which 
 are disporting themselves now on the surface of the globe, 
 will be re-established in unity the unity of death. 
 
 The pantheistic system then is as execrable in practice as 
 it is stupid in theory. Consequently the solution it gives to 
 this question : " From whence comes man ? " is unworthy 
 of a man, unless reason and moral sense are no longer 
 integral parts of man in the nineteenth century. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 SOLUTION OF ATHEISM. 
 
 IF the atheist is right, the human race is wrong, and 
 nothing but incorrigible folly is to be seen in the infinite 
 number of nations who have covered and still cover our 
 planet ; for all of them from the most civilized to the most 
 savage, have recognized a God. 
 
 To escape so overwhelming an argument, what has 
 atheism not done ? After having in vain ransacked both 
 hemispheres to discover a nation without a God; it con- 
 cluded to organize one. The commencement of this extra- 
 vagance belonged by right to the country of great disco- 
 veries. But if it needed an Englishman to conceive such a 
 project, for the execution of it the New World was necessary. 
 
 Robert Owen then assembled, nearly twenty years since, 
 seven or eight hundred individuals male and female, strong 
 enough in atheism to believe that they would not transmit to 
 their children the idea of God. 
 
 He led them to the United States, chose for them an 
 extensive domain, traced the plan of a little city which he 
 called New-Harmony ; then he made them promise to remain
 
 SOLUTION OF ATHEISM. 25 
 
 faithful to the laws of their mother nature alone, expecting 
 them however to cultivate the arts of industry and to pre- 
 serve the habit of walking on two feet, that no one might 
 doubt their human extraction. He recommended to them 
 particularly to abolish the mine and thine, to banish forever 
 from their lips and hearts the name of a superior being ; by 
 which means he promised them, on the faith of an atheist, 
 that they and their little ones should rise to such a degree of 
 felicity, that the astonished universe would finally renounce 
 religion, marriage, and private property, the most horrible 
 trinity of scourges that can afflict mankind.* 
 
 The event failed of justifying these fair hopes. Whether 
 contagious disease, or some other scourge not comprehended 
 in the horrible trinity, ruined the band at New-Harmony 
 we no longer hear of it, and the man who assembled them, 
 at so great a cost, returned to England. 
 
 This experience was not needed however to prove that 
 atheists multiply by innoculation, and not by generation. The 
 operation is very simple : it is only to blacken the con- 
 science to such an extent, that it cannot behold itself without 
 exclaiming : " Wo is me, if there be a God !" 
 
 The receipt it is true never radically takes effect. There 
 are many circumstances in life, in which an atheist of this 
 kind is carried away by the universal prejudice. Vanini, at 
 the sight of the funeral pile exclaimed; "Oh God!" Vol- 
 ney, in peril of his life, on the coasts of America, seized a 
 rosary, and proved, while the storm lasted, that he knew his 
 Pater and his Ave. Cabanis, who swore by his head, in the 
 presence of the whole academy, that there was no God, and 
 threatened to draw the sword against any one who should 
 
 * These are the words of Robert Owen, in his Declaration of Men- 
 tal Independence, a discourse delivered at New Harmony, July 4th, 
 1S2G, the fifty-first year of American Independence. This singular 
 document is found entire in le Memorial Catholique, vol. 7th, page 149. 
 
 3
 
 26 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 affirm the contrary, Cabanis yet avowed that atheism is con- 
 trary to direct, inevitable, daily impressions, to the constant 
 and universal utterance of all nature.* 
 
 Let it be acknowledged to the credit of the brutes, that 
 natural, calm, imperturbable atheism is only found among 
 them. The man who adopts their mode of living, may ape 
 their irreligion, so long as he leads a joyous life : 
 
 Mais, au moindre revers funeste, 
 Le masque tombe, 1'homme reste, 
 Et la brute s'evancuit.f 
 
 The learned men of the last century gave an undue import 
 ance to atheism by treating it as a serious malady. The num. 
 ber of atheists was increased, by the works destined to refute 
 them ; to reduce these minds puffed up by pride, powerful 
 purgatives should have been employed, such as large doses of 
 contempt and ridicule, and not the cold preparations of science. 
 
 All the blows inflicted by the Herculean club of the Sor- 
 bonne are not so effectual as the box on the ear of a cele- 
 brated unbeliever, given by the hand of beauty. After having 
 in vain preached to a circle of ladies ; he attempted to 
 revenge himself, by saying, " Pardon my error, ladies, I did 
 not imagine that in a house where wit vies with grace, I 
 alone should have the honor of not believing in God." 
 " You are not alone, Sir," answered the mistress of the man- 
 sion ; " my horses, my dog, my cat share this honor with 
 you: only these poor brutes have the good sense not to 
 boast of it." 
 
 * See his Letter on First Causes, published by M. Berard. What 
 do these words signify, if not that the sincere atheist avoids what is 
 inevitable, that he never experiences what other men daily experi- 
 ence, and that, by his insensibility to the universal and constant cry 
 of all nature, he is the most unnatural of all beings ? 
 
 f " But at the least reverse, the mask falls, 
 Man remains, and the brute disappears."
 
 ABSURDITY OF ATHEISM. 27 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 ONE PROOF AMONG A THOUSAND, THAT THE ATHEIST IS 
 THE MOST IMPUDENT OF LIARS. 
 
 IF I were .asked the question : " Are there real atheists?" 
 I should answer boldly, among animals, certainly ; but not 
 among men. There have indeed been, and there still are 
 persons impudent enough to say and even to write that man 
 is the work of chance ; a spontaneous production of nature, 
 &c. ; that there are any stupid enough to believe it is 
 impossible. 
 
 What would be thought of one who in presence of the 
 Apollo Belvidere, or any other master-piece of art, should 
 seriously say ; " This is a singular accident of nature ! 
 What a succession of fortunate accidents must have been 
 required to impress on this marble a form so divinely 
 human!" You would refuse to believe such extraordinary 
 folly possible ; but he who attributes our existence to chance 
 is a thousand times more foolish. 
 
 There is incomparably more intelligence in the formation, 
 I do not say of our body, but of a single hair of our head, 
 than in the Apollo, and the other statues of the Belvidere. 
 W T e have a hundred artists in Europe capable of transform- 
 ing, more or less successfully, a block of marble into an 
 Apollo ; but who can make a hair ! Nature furnishes us in 
 abundance with the nine substances which analysis has dis- 
 covered in this delicate thread ; it only remains to combine 
 them, but that surpasses all human capacity. What does 
 this prove ? that we have as many demonstrations of an 
 intelligence superior to man, as there are hairs upon our 
 heads. 
 
 Where is there a brain diseased enough to imagine that a
 
 28 THE SOLUTION OP GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 piece of cloth is the work of blind force ? that, for example, 
 a blast of wind has blown the bark from the cotton plant, or 
 some tufts of wool from the sheep's back ; that another blast 
 has converted these fragments into thread ; that a third has 
 woven them with so much skill and method, &c. ! Now this 
 man would be much less absurd, than the atheist, who sees 
 only chance in the tissue of our skin ; wonderful covering, 
 closely woven enough to retain the blood, open enough to 
 give passage to the secretions, soft enough to gratify the 
 touch, strong enough to resist perpetual friction, sufficiently 
 transparent to display the most beautiful colors, and suffi- 
 ciently opaque to conceal from the eye the red flesh that it 
 covers. 
 
 Let a skilful scalpel raise this envelope, and unfold to our 
 astonished eye the wonders of the human organization. At 
 the display of this divine miniature, where the innumerable 
 combinations which are so conspicuous in the structure of 
 the universe are reproduced in indescribable perfection, who 
 is so mad as to dare to utter the word chance ! 
 
 The prodigious skill that is perceptible in it even to the 
 naked eye, caused an ancient anatomist to say ; " Give me 
 a dead dog and I will make him bark against Epicurus." 
 What would he have said, if the microscope had enabled 
 him to see in one fibre alone, as much wisdom as in the 
 mechanism of the whole!" "Give me the tongue of an 
 atheist," said a modern religious anatomist, " and I will find 
 in it a thousand undeniable proofs that it is a bold liar." 
 
 From the state of minute dust, in which analysis shows us 
 the elements of our body, to the perfect organization, where 
 the phenomena of life are displayed, what an incalculable 
 succession of profound combinations! 
 
 How many combinations in order to raise inorganic parti- 
 cles of dust, mostly dissimilar, to the fibrous state ! How 
 many combinations to form from fibres the fifteen or sixteen
 
 ABSURDITY OF ATHEISM. 29 
 
 different tissues recognized by anatomists! How many 
 combinations to form from these tissues myriads of organs, 
 each having its own action ! * How many combinations to 
 distribute the organs for the formation of the varied mechan- 
 ism necessary to the vital functions ! How many combina- 
 tions to compose from such a variety of organs, a single one 
 endowed with life ! 
 
 To the mad man who dares to attribute this master-piece 
 of intelligence to the blind forces of nature, I would say ; 
 " Chemistry reveals to us the different elements of the human 
 body ; collect them in as large a quantity as you please, and 
 in the proportions given by analysis; submit them to the 
 successive or simultaneous action of all the natural agents ; 
 and we shall see if blind nature, aided by the lights of human 
 science, will succeed in fusing, crystallising, or forcing to 
 germination, I will not say a human body, I will not say the 
 least complicated of the tissues which enter into its formation 
 (the osseous tissue), I will not say even only a single one of 
 the two hundred and forty-two pieces of which a skeleton is 
 composed, but only one ounce of osseous substance. 
 
 The chemical composition alone of osseous matter, requir- 
 ing at least eighty-seven combinations or proportions, it 
 would be necessary that the agent charged with the under- 
 taking should conform to these combinations, and avoid the 
 innumerable errors which might derange them ; which would 
 really be a miracle in a blind man. 
 
 The osseous substance being given, it must necessarily 
 receive the form of a human bone ; for instance, of a verte- 
 bra. Now, in the construction of a vertebra there are at 
 
 * Yes, myriads of organs ! Follow, lens in hand, the innumerable 
 ramifications of the nervous, arterial, and venous systems, particularly 
 in the mechanism of the brain : consider the blood vessels of so aston- 
 ishing a delicacy, that united they present to the eye only an inorganic 
 mass, and then tell me if I exaggerate. 
 
 4*
 
 30 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 least three hundred and fifteen things necessary, to which 
 your blind man must pay attention.* The vertebra formed, 
 it will be necessary to find its twenty-three sisters ; and they 
 must not be moulded upon the first, for nearly all differ ; and 
 this makes new combinations necessary for each vertebra. 
 
 The vertebral column being established, it will be required 
 to adapt to it the two hundred and eighteen bones, which are 
 yet wanting to form a complete skeleton. I have been 
 moderate enough in the calculation of the combinations which 
 one single piece of the osseous system contains, to be per- 
 mitted to affirm that the composition and configuration of 
 each of the other two hundred and forty-one, demand as 
 many ; which supposes in the formation of the skeleton, 
 ninety-seven thousand, two hundred and eighty-four combina- 
 tions. Let it be observed that among the countless millions 
 of possible combinations, whether in the two hundred and 
 forty-two bones, whether among the different elements of 
 which each is composed, there is but one that is adapted to 
 the human organization ; there are then a million of chances 
 to one that your blind man will miss it. Let us suppose that 
 he finds it, after an infinite number of unsuccessful experi- 
 ments, which will have covered the globe with the fragments 
 of imperfect skeletons. We shall have a skeleton ; but what 
 prodigious labor remains, in order to give to this hideous car- 
 case, externally, the exquisite harmony of the human form ; 
 internally, the infinite variety of organs necessary to perform 
 the functions of life ! Is not this enough ? 
 
 What is the human body ? It is an immeasurable har- 
 mony ; it is a perfect unity, resulting from infinite variety ; it 
 is, then, the consummate work of an unbounded intelligence ; 
 it is the infinite protest against chance. 
 
 Galen taught that " among the two hundred bones which form 
 the human body, there is none which has not more than forty uses."
 
 ABSURDITY OF ATHEISM. 31 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED. 
 
 IF a lifeless body is sufficient to confound an atheist, what 
 may not be done with a living one ? 
 
 What is life ? The greatest philosophers answer con- 
 fusedly, and are incompetent to meet this question. Life 
 considered in its second causes and its effects, consists of in- 
 numerable simultaneous actions, all conspiring towards the 
 support of our organization. 
 
 What is the secret principle that puts in play these innu- 
 merable wheels, and orders so many unequal motions, for the 
 production of a singular phenomenon? The soul? If it is 
 this that works such \vonders, let her explain them. 
 
 Let her teach us, for example, how she transforms food into 
 chyle, chyle into blood ; how she forces the blood to the ex- 
 tremities through the arteries, and brings it back to the heart 
 through the veins ; she who, before the experiments of Har- 
 vey, obstinately denied the circulation of this fluid. All this 
 process is going on with her, without her, and even in spite 
 of her. 
 
 As to the movements which her will commands ; does the 
 soul intervene in them except as a blind instrument, which 
 knows not what it does ? Does she really know what springs 
 must be touched, in order to open the eye or shut it, to raise 
 the arm, protrude the foot, utter a cry, or articulate a word ? 
 
 Who does not see that life is a divine phenomenon. It is 
 not we who live, it is God who lives in us.* To the reflect- 
 ing mind, every pulsation of an artery is an irrefragable proof 
 
 * Cum ipse (Dcus) det omnibus vitam, inspirationem, et omnia. 
 . . In ipso enim vivimus, et movcmur et sumus. (Act. xvii. 25, 28.)
 
 32 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 of a being intelligent enough to comprehend the immense 
 mechanism of life, and powerful enough to keep it in action. 
 
 We have considered man alone, and only the material 
 nature in man. The prodigies of wisdom and of power that 
 we discover in him, zoology could show us in its countless 
 myriads of living beings which animate the globe, from the 
 enormous elephant, to the caterpillar that gnaws the wood of 
 the willow ; and from this caterpillar, in which Lyonnet has 
 counted four thousand divine intentions,* to the infusory 
 animalcule whose existence, organization, habits and instincts, 
 have been revealed to us by the microscope of Spallanzani. 
 We should find these prodigies in the innumerable family of 
 vegetables, from the giant cedar to the mould of the cheese 
 which appears upon our tables. 
 
 What a chain of harmonies bind the animals to each 
 other ; animals to vegetables ; vegetables to minerals ! What 
 tender care for the preservation of the weaker species, through 
 the duration of ages, in the midst of so many causes of de- 
 struction ! Every day witnesses the ruin of the colossal 
 structures of Egypt ; but the grasses which carpet the banks 
 of the Nile are to-day what they were in the time of the 
 Pharaohs ; and the same insects which tormented the builders 
 of the pyramids are still buzzing around those monuments. 
 
 After this will it be necessary to call to our aid the supe- 
 rior worlds, to assail the atheist with what scripture calls the 
 hosts of heaven ? An immense army, whose wonderful evo- 
 lutions through the plains of space, whose fires so steady and 
 so resplendent, publish night and day the genius and power 
 of the Supreme Ruler. 
 
 * See his Anatomical Treatise on this insect. The conchology of 
 fossils offers us wonders still more astonishing in the twenty-six thous- 
 and little bones of the zoephytes moniliform, in the hundred and fifty 
 thousand osseous pieces, and the three hundred librous vessels serving 
 as muscles to the coral briareus. V. Jehan. JVouoeau Traiti des 
 Sciences Geologiques, Etude 5 e , p. 125.
 
 CHRISTIAN SOLUTION. 33 
 
 Shall we raise statues to Kepler, Copernicus, and Newton, 
 and dignify with the epithet of sublime geniuses, these wise 
 men who have detected some secret of the celestial motions ; 
 and can the cause of a system so complicated be only a 
 blind force ? 
 
 In short, can that human intelligence which alone here be- 
 low thinks, reflects, and submits to calculation the laws of 
 nature, and rises above the senses to transport itself into the 
 past, and plunge into the future ; can this be the work of 
 chance ? Is it to blind and inert matter that it owes its in- 
 telligence, its activity ? Is it fatal necessity that has endowed 
 it with liberty ? 
 
 ; ' That which does not think, could it have made thought ?" 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 CHRISTIAN SOLUTION. 
 
 IT is then certainly true, as the Christian affirms it to be, 
 that there is an intelligence governing man and the universe.* 
 But is it creative ? Let us see. In the first place, God is so 
 necessary to arrange matter, that it is very natural to suppose 
 that he created it, rather than to affirm that he has built on 
 the foundation of another, and with materials that did not 
 
 * And an intelligence distinct from human intelligence ; for the 
 pantheist who recognizes no other intelligence than that which is 
 broken up and divided among men, is quite as inconsistent as the 
 atheist, and more supremely ridiculous. He who tells us that the 
 world exists and moves on by its own power, shocks indeed the rea- 
 son ; but he who says to us, " It is human intelligence and power 
 which has produced and governed the universe," so violently outrages 
 human consciousness, that he awakens derision rather than anger Is
 
 84 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 belong to him ; which would truly be a very delicate affair. 
 When in our bodies or in the universe, the workmanship is 
 superior to the material ; to allow the one, and refuse the 
 other, is folly and meanness. 
 
 In short, if God has not created matter, it is eternal and 
 necessary ; and hence, whoever is not a total stranger to the 
 first principles of metaphysics, finds himself exposed to in- 
 evitable absurdities. 
 
 I. If matter is necessary, its fundamental principle implies 
 the idea of existence. It would then be impossible to 
 imagine it as not existing, either in its totality, or in the least 
 of its parts. This proposition the miles that devour the 
 cheese could not exist, would shock good sense as much as 
 this the circle might be square. 
 
 II. If matter necessarily existed, its modifications, without 
 which we cannot conceive of it, would be as necessary and 
 as immutable as its essence, since they would exist in virtue 
 of the same principle. Hence this process of life and death, 
 which is constantly changing the physiognomy of the world, 
 would be a shocking contradiction.* 
 
 it possible that the human mind has established, and still preserves in 
 operation the innumerable laws of the universe, when, after six thous- 
 and years of controversy, observation and reasoning, it has not suc- 
 ceeded in arriving at the comprehension of one of them ! Does this 
 human power give life and motion to everything that breathes, and 
 direct the superior worlds in their immense orbits, when it cannot add 
 a hair to our head, or a minute to our life. This is the lowest degree 
 of human folly, and I imagine that ignorance borne on by pride never 
 surpassed it If the number of members of the order is so great, it is 
 because the statutes of the order are not known. Some skilful pen 
 should reveal them; the accusation of Spinosism, Kantism, or Salva- 
 dorism, would then become so disgraceful, that the most phlegmatic 
 man would %vish to wash it out with his blood. 
 
 * Whoever forms to himself a just idea of the necessary Being, 
 finds in the fall of a leaf, in the formation or death of an insect, an 
 evident demonstration of the contingency of matter.
 
 CHRISTIAN SOLUTION. 35 
 
 III. If matter were eternal the revolutions of matter would 
 e also eternal; and as each of its revolutions can be expressed 
 
 by unity we should be obliged to accept the strange absurdity 
 of an actually infinite series of finite unities. 
 
 IV. The necessary Being is evidently the absolute being, 
 the source even of being, the most perfect of beings ; for as 
 nothing could exist without Him, all the perfections that he 
 did not possess, would be impossible and unattainable. Now 
 who would attribute to matter, I will not say all perfections, 
 but only those which we find in ourselves, life, feeling, intel- 
 ligence, liberty ! There have been philosophers so stupid as 
 to question whether organization could not impart to matter 
 the faculty of thinking (Locke) ; but I do not know that ti r '" 
 have been any stupid enough to say that matter is esf t/Ytially, 
 and sovereignly intelligent, and that there is at least as much 
 intellectual power in a pebble as in the brain of a Newton. 
 
 What do the advocates of the eternity of matter answer 
 to these and a multitude of other absurdities which flow from 
 the materialistic jnnciple ? Let us listen to the most cele- 
 brated FSP-tarialist of the age, Broussais, while making his 
 jrofestilon of faith in presence of this nothing, in which he 
 uelieved himself about to be swallowed up. " I feel, as man3 
 others, that an intelligence has ordered everything ; but can I 
 conclude from this that it has created everything ? I cannot, 
 because experience furnishes me with no representation of 
 an absolute creation .... No matter how frequently it is 
 said to me, " Nature cannot have created itself; then an in- 
 telligent power must have done it." I answer : " yes ; but I 
 can form no idea of this power. I retain then the sentiment 
 of a ruling intelligence, which I dare not call creative, 
 although it should be so." * 
 
 * D&veloppement de mon opinion et expression de ma foi, in the 
 Historical Notice of M. Broussais, published by M. H. de Montegre. 
 The following is not a less remarkable specimen of the logic of M-
 
 30 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 Is not this evidence overwhelming! In the course of his 
 varied experience, Broussais never saw an atom come forth 
 from nothing, he never encountered in his path the creative 
 power ; and consequently could not represent it, nor make 
 an image of it to himself.* How could this power then 
 exist ? 
 
 Yet M. Broussais should have told us how he perceived 
 the ruling intelligence, and what idea he found in it. It can- 
 not be that the creative power is inodorous; and yet with so 
 fine a sense M. Broussais should have scented it ; perhaps ho 
 has not approached sufficiently near! 
 
 We here see to what excess of folly atheists are led. 
 When we would sift their miserable sophisms, they never fail 
 
 Broussais : " I fear nothing, and hope nothing from another life ; for I 
 cannot represent it to myself." (ibid.) This is the reasoning of a con- 
 vict, who, refusing to sign an appeal, the success of which was entirely 
 certain, should answer to the solicitations of his defenders and friends : 
 " Gentlemen, I have never been guillotined ; I have never been pre- 
 sent at an execution ; I have never seen a guillotine, and I cannot 
 imagine one. I therefore have a conviction that it is a chimera. It is 
 impossible for me to share your alarm." It is, in truth, a great honor 
 for religion to count such forcible reasoners among its most learned 
 despisers. 
 
 * When Broussais said that he could not form an idea of the creative 
 power, he no doubt meant a sensible idea (an image) and not an intel- 
 lectual idea; for since he speaks of the creation, he must really have 
 an idea of it, and attach a meaning to this word, under pain of acknowl- 
 edging that he does not know what he says. The idea, or rather the 
 notion of creation, includes the idea of being, of not being, and the 
 passage from one to the other. To say that these three ideas are in- 
 accessible to the human mind, would be to deny the existence of ever,, 
 idea whatever. This notion is so familiar, that it is found everywhere , 
 even in fairy tales. It is true we do not seize it in all its depth ; bu>. 
 " Pour conscvoir a fond la puissance supreme, 
 II n'y a qu'un meyen . . . il faut etre elle-meme." 
 
 To conceive completely the Supreme power, there is but one means 
 we must be it.
 
 METAPHYSICAL PROOFS. 37 
 
 to say to us: " Show us God; tell us what form he has ; let 
 us see paradise and hell, and we will believe."* 
 
 We should answer them ; " Since you are unable to see 
 anything that does not fall under the senses, choose between 
 the forest and the stable, the necessary abodes of creatures 
 without reason. |" 
 
 This is what is called an argument ad cancm. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 CONTINUATION. METAPHYSICAL PROOFS. PROOFS FROM 
 
 FEELING. 
 
 IF there is not an atom in the material Universe which 
 does not proclaim a creative and regulating power, there is 
 not a fact of the intellectual and moral order which does not 
 present the same truth to the meditative mind. 
 
 * Such, in fact, were the assertions of the atheists of the Institute to 
 Bernardin de St. Pierre. Let us quote M. Aime Martin. " At the 
 first words of his solemn declaration of his religious principles, a cry 
 of fury rose from all parts of the hall. Some hissed him, asking where 
 he had seen God, and what figure he had ; others were indignant at his 
 credulity ; the calmest addressed to him contemptuous words. From 
 sport they proceeded to insults : they insulted his old age, they treated 
 him as a weak and superstitious man, they threatened to drive him from 
 an assembly of which he was unworthy, and their madness was carried 
 so far as to challenge him to fight, that they might prove to him, sword 
 in hand, that there was no God. He endeavored in vain, in the midst 
 of the tumult, to utter a word ; they refused to hear him, and the 
 idealist Cabanis, (he is the only one w r e shall name,) beside himself 
 with anger, cried ' I swear that there is no God ! and I beg that his 
 name may never be pronounced in this place.'" Essai sur la vie de 
 Bernardin de Saint Pierre. 
 
 t Reason is really the faculty of seeing what the senses do not see. 
 My dog visits with me the triumphal arch de 1'Etoile, the Tuilleries, 
 4
 
 38 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 But we must not dwell on this subject. The age of pro- 
 gress is too unfriendly to the metaphysical world. As there 
 are no mines of gold, silver, copper, or even coal to be found 
 in it, it is forgotten entirely. Let us address a few words to 
 these solitary travellers who are still winding their way 
 through it, and then resume our humble rout. 
 
 I. The finite, the imperfect, exists ; how can the infinite, 
 the perfect then, not exist ! Could perfection, that is to say 
 being, be a reason for not being ! 
 
 II. We have the idea of infinite perfection : * it exists then ; 
 if it were not, we could have no idea of it. 
 
 III. God is possible, by the avowal even of the atheist : 
 then he exists ; for the idea of him implies the idea of ex- 
 istence ; it is impossible to conceive of him as non-existing. 
 
 IV. What is understood by God ? The Supreme Being, the 
 being of beings, he who alone can say / am He u-ho is. To 
 deny the existence of this being, is to say He who is, is not ! 
 
 V. Man thinks, and did not create himself; he is then the 
 work of an intelligent being. 
 
 VI. Man does not think without speech ; he speaks only 
 as he is spoken to. W r e must then recognize a being who 
 has spoken to man, or created him speaking, &c. &c. &c. 
 
 the Louvre, Notre Dame, St. Genevieve, &c. ; he sees all that I see, 
 except Napoleon and the grand army, Philibert de Lorme, Perrault, 
 Maurice de Sully, and Soufflet. 
 
 * It has been often objected that the idea of the infinite is negative ; 
 it has been as often answered that if this word includes a negative (not 
 finite), it is only in the grammatical form, and that in fact it is pecu- 
 liarly affirmative. What in reality is the finite being, if not the being 
 which has limits, which fails of ulterior perfection ? The idea of the 
 finite, although announced under an affirmative form, is then essen- 
 tially negative. The idea of the infinite, on the contrary, containing 
 the absolute negation of every negation, is the most positive that can 
 be conceived. It is the idea of being, and nothing but being, free from 
 all idea of non-existence. See Fenelon, Demonstration de Pexistence 
 de Dieu, 2e- part, ch. 2. Bossuet, Elevation, Qe. c h.
 
 METAPHYSICAL PROOFS. 39 
 
 These principles, attentively considered, appeared so evi- 
 dent to Descartes, Bossuet, Fenelon, Pascal, Malebranche, 
 La Bruyere, Leibnitz, Gerdil, de Maistre, Bonald, &c., that 
 they could not conceive the extravagance of the atheist. 
 " Oh God," cried the eagle of Meaux, " one is lost in such 
 total blindness !"* 
 
 The heart also makes its demonstrations, unanswerable 
 demonstrations for every man in whom brutal sensation has 
 not extinguished sentiment. 
 
 I shall speak presently of the irresistible tendency of the 
 heart towards the infinite a tendency still more absurd than 
 incontestable, if the infinite did not exist. At present I shall 
 limit myself to a single fact. 
 
 " You cannot deny," I would say to the impious man, "that 
 God has had and still has a multitude of ardent lovers, ready 
 to suffer everything rather than displease him, and whose 
 whole life is one perpetual aspiration towards heaven." 
 
 See the young Catholic missionary, tearing himself from 
 the arms of his family and friends, traversing unknown seas, 
 approaching, cross in hand, the cannibals of the forests of 
 America, or the isles of Oceanica ; braving every day, in 
 Japan, Corea, Tong-King and Cochin China, tortures of 
 which even the thought makes us shudder. What does he 
 desire? To make his God known and loved, to enkindle all 
 hearts with the fire that consumes him. 
 
 See the Sister of Charity at the pillow of the dying ; the 
 brother and the sister of the Christian schools surrounded 
 with half-naked children. 
 
 Let us listen to the Trappist, the Chartreux, the Carmelite, 
 the Capuchin, chanting in the depths of midnight, the hymn 
 of love, and only consoling themselves for the length o"f their 
 exile, by the length of their prayers. 
 
 Let us follow the priest to the hospital of fever and 
 * Eh -nation, Ire.
 
 40 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 cholera. See him by the light of philosophic omnipotence, 
 refusing the word which would save his life, and going to 
 death as if going to his bridal* 
 
 Have you never heard the fervent Christian on his death 
 bed, sigh with more ardor after his God, than the hart fo 
 the water -brooks 1 (Ps. xli. 1.) 
 
 Could a sentiment so profound, so permanent, so hero t; 
 in its effects, exist without a real object? Is non-existence 
 capable of teaching, of moving so powerfully the heart of 
 man ! \ He is too often led to mistake copper for gold, 
 and to be in love with vanities ; but has any one eve/ been 
 known to sacrifice his repose, his pleasures, his dearesi: aflec- 
 tions and his life to the pursuit of an absolute chimera! 
 
 If the spontaneous movement of the needle is only ex- 
 plained by the presence of the loadstone, how will you who 
 deny the celestial magnet, explain the religious att/action of 
 the human heart, of that heart no less subjected to the love 
 of terrestrial beauty, than iron is to the law of gravity ! 
 Show us among your followers, the passionate lover of 
 chance, the devotee of nature, the martyr of nothingness. 
 
 This is not all : God is hated. Thanks to the philosophy 
 of the eighteenth century, we have seen what was never seen 
 before, numerous assemblies convulsed at hearing the name 
 of God pronounced. We have seen fanatics shrink before 
 no crime that would annihilate the idea of the Supremo 
 Being. Can nothingness inspire such hatred ! Does not so 
 furious a reaction in the heart of the impious man prove 
 
 * The following is the expression of the commissary of September, 
 Viollet, who was appointed to preside over the massacre of a hundred 
 and eighty priests, confined at the Carmelite convent: " I am lost, I 
 am overwhelmed with astonishment, I cannot conceive of it : your 
 priests marched to execution with the same joy, the same as they 
 would have gone to their nuptials." Barruel, HLttnirf du clergS pen- 
 dant la Revolution, torn. II, p. 97. 
 
 t Tantus amor nihili ! (.Znti-Lucrct.)
 
 VARIOUS SOLUTIONS. 41 
 
 that he feels himself wounded and crushed by the divine 
 presence ! 
 
 You who wish to see God, behold ! You will see him 
 alike in the sweet tears which the thought of him draws from 
 the eyes of the dying just man, and in the rage that foams 
 at the mention of his name, on the lips that deny him. 
 
 We now see that the Christian alone shows himself a man 
 by the solution he gives to this first question : Whence do I 
 c.ome ? Let us proceed to the two following questions. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 VAKIOUS SOLUTIONS OF THE TWO QUESTIONS : WHAT AM 
 I ? WHERE AM I GOING ? 
 
 THE materialist answers: "I am matter; a more perfect 
 organization giving me over other animals the advantage of 
 speech and thought. Eager for pleasure, an enemy of suf- 
 fering, my only duty is to procure the one and avoid the 
 other, till death comes to annihilate my being in the dust of 
 the tomb." 
 
 The pantheist answers : " I am one of the innumerable 
 manifestations of the universal being. Like the bubble 
 which rises for an instant on the surface of the sea, I shall 
 soon return to the common mass ; to contribute to the life 
 of the Great Whole, by the energetic display of my facul- 
 ties, is my sole destiny and my sole duty, during my ephem- 
 eral existence." 
 
 The Christian answers: "Man is an intelligence, created 
 in the divine likeness and united to a body. Related to God 
 by his superior faculties, and to visible nature by his bodily 
 organs he is the link destined to unite the material creation
 
 42 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 to the Creator. Endowed with prerogatives adapted to his 
 sublime destiny, man was at first happy because he was just 
 and good. His soul, in subjection to God, peaceably ruled 
 his body, and all nature by means of his body. If faithful 
 to the divine law, he had directed the exercise of his facul- 
 ties to the completion of the divine image, his intellect, pro- 
 gressively enlightened by the rays of divine light, would have 
 passed from the twilight of faith to the brightness of intui- 
 tion. The mind then being perfectly in harmony with God, 
 would have brought the body into harmony with itself, and 
 nature, united to its head, would have attained the highest 
 degree of life and perfection." 
 
 Unhappily man violated the divine precept. The rebellion 
 of the spirit against God, led to the rebellion of the body 
 against the spirit, and that of nature against the entire man. 
 Degraded and unhappy, subject to ignorance, suffering and 
 death, man would have fallen into the lowest degree of 
 abjectness and misery, if God had not resolved to save him 
 by a divine effort ! 
 
 The Word, by whom all things were made, was chosen to 
 restore all things. Clothed with our miserable nature, he 
 appeared in the midst of us, full of grace and truth, and 
 opened to us, by his sacrifice, his doctrine and his example, 
 the way of salvation. To submit the intellect and will to 
 God through faith and love ; to subject the flesh to the spirit 
 by the rules of penance ; to reconquer, through love of pov- 
 erty, our superiority over nature by detaching the heart from 
 the unreal good that she offers us, is the object of the 
 evangelical commands, the whole duty of man, the only way 
 which can conduct him to the kingdom that has been pre- 
 pared for him from the foundation of the world. 
 
 Which of these three solutions merits the assent of men ?
 
 SOLUTION OF THE MATERIALIST. 43 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 THE SOLUTION OF THE MATERIALIST. IS MAN WHOLLY 
 
 MATERIAL ? 
 
 I AM surprised that thinking men can be found, sufficiently 
 calm and masters of their feelings, to refute coolly the ex- 
 treme absurdity of materialism. 
 
 I listen with interest to the honest man who, unaccustomed 
 to reflection, tells me of his doubts with regard to the spiritu- 
 ality of the thinking being; but when a writer, who exalts 
 himself into a public teacher, affirms with an arrogant and 
 decided tone, that thought is a physical secretion which differs 
 from other secretions only (for example, ... I dare not 
 finish,) only by its subtilty, my indignation forces me to 
 throw away the book, and I see only one possible refutation, 
 that is, to go scourge in hand, and take some drops of blood 
 from the presumptuous biped. 
 
 What can be said to one who maintains that he is an ani- 
 mal, and whose reasoning ends with this conclusion: "Do 
 you agree with me that I am a brute ?" " Sir," I should 
 answer, "you may be excused from giving proof; since it is 
 a personal affair, I will believe it on your word." 
 
 Let no one, then, expect from me a detailed refutation of 
 materialism. A few principles will be sufficient for the in- 
 telligent reader. 
 
 If there is one indisputable fact of human consciousness, 
 it is, that there exists in us a principle of unity, activity, and 
 liberty. It is a fact no less indisputable, that unity, activity 
 and liberty, are incompatible with matter. 
 
 The indivisible unity of our thinking being, and conse- 
 quently its spirituality, is demonstrated both by the testimony, 
 consciousness, and the unity of our intellectual operations.
 
 44 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 I. Testimony o-f consciousness. I feel that I exist, and 
 that I am distinguished not only from beings external to my- 
 self, but even from my own organization. 1st. In fact, the 
 consciousness of individuality, in the first place, is indivisible 
 and invariable. It is not increased with my strength ; it is 
 not diminished with it ; it is not diminished by the loss of any 
 of my organs, as is evident from the experience of those who 
 have suffered amputation. 2d. This consciousness is not 
 local. It is certain that my personality cannot be referred to 
 the brain, to any special organ, or to the entire organization. 
 3d. By my consciousness I learn not only my existence, but 
 also my operations ; I am conscious that I think, that I re- 
 flect, that I will, &c. No one has taught me that I have 
 intelligence and will, and that it is I who think and will, &c. ; 
 but if I had not been informed that I had a brain, heart, 
 stomach, arteries, veins, &c., and that these are constantly 
 employed for the support of my body, I should always have 
 been ignorant of it ; my consciousness tells me nothing of it. 
 
 Is anything more needed to prove that the being revealed 
 by my consciousness, is absolutely distinct from my body ! 
 For if my consciousness had its seat in my organization, it 
 would inevitably follow, in the first place, that my personal- 
 ity would have been subjected to all the variations of my 
 material existence. Secondly, it would comprehend all the 
 indivisible particles which compose my physical being, or it 
 would only comprehend one : in the first case, I should be- 
 come a thousand persons instead of one ; in the other, this 
 myself, which is so important to me, would be infinitely small, 
 and as imperceptible as the atom which contains it. Thirdly, 
 my personality would give me the consciousness of the cere- 
 bral and digestive functions, &c., and would teach me how 
 to rectify my digestion and clarify my blood, as it teaches 
 me how to modify my judgments and enlighten my ideas. 
 
 II. Unity of our intellectual operations. According to the
 
 SOLUTION OF THE MATERIALIST. 45 
 
 avowal of the materialist, matter is essentially divisible ; it 
 can produce, then, nothing indivisible, for the effect can never 
 be of a different nature from its cause. Now, the operations 
 of the thinking being, such as thought, judgment, and voli- 
 tion, are evidently simple and indivisible. 
 
 Activity of the thinking being. 1st. I have the power of 
 thinking, acting, judging, willing, moving my body, and that 
 spontaneously, without any external impulse. Now, matter 
 is passive, and incapable of spontaneous motion. Can or- 
 ganization bestow this faculty ? Evidently not. Organiza- 
 tion being only a combination of parts among themselves, 
 will never give to the whole what is radically foreign to each 
 part. Every particle of matter being to the faculty of acting 
 as to 1, the combination of a hundred thousand particles 
 will no more give the faculty of acting, than the combination 
 of a hundred thousand zeros will produce unity. 
 
 2d. If the principle which perceives, thinks, and wills in 
 me, were the result of organization, my perceptions, my 
 thoughts, my volitions, would be necessarily circumscribed 
 within the limits of my organs. 
 
 It would be impossible for me to form within myself a rep- 
 resentation so vast as that of the earth and heavens. How 
 could the little image which the luminous rays paint upon the 
 retina, acquire a development disproportioned to its extent ? 
 Let the materialist show us a picture larger than its canvass. 
 
 It would be impossible for me to conceive of those events 
 which have never reached my senses ; for example, to be 
 present at a battle which was fought two thousand years ago. 
 How could the lines which I read, or the sounds which I 
 hear, produce upon my brain and heart the same impression 
 as the sight of the combat. 
 
 It would be impossible for me to exercise my thought upon 
 the things that are not, and to foresee the future ; still more 
 impossible to rise to considerations and sentiments totally
 
 46 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 foreign to my organs ; such as abstract and general truths, 
 the idea of good and evil, of justice and injustice, of the love 
 of virtue, of the infinite, &c. 
 
 3d. The thinking being reacts on itself. It not only thinks, 
 but it is conscious that it thinks, it reflects on its thought. 
 Now, this is impossible in a material being. An atom, put in 
 motion, will react on those contiguous to it ; but that it should 
 react on itself, is an absurdity so revolting, that the least 
 fastidious of materialists will find it difficult to receive it. 
 
 Liberty of the thinking being. Matter is blindly submis- 
 sive to the action of external agents ; it can neither avoid, 
 nor suspend, nor prolong the effects of the impressions that 
 it receives from them. I am not, then, matter ; for next to 
 the consciousness of existence, the most lively sentiment in 
 me is that of liberty. I think, reason, and feel freely. Among 
 different impressions, I can choose one, and attach myself to 
 it in such a manner, that I become insensible to every other, 
 as occurs so often in the phenomenon of abstraction, where 
 my mind, exclusively occupied with one object, hears nothing 
 feels nothing, sees nothing that is passing around me. 
 
 But a much more singular effect of my liberty is, that in 
 certain cases, I can will the destruction of my body. The 
 fact, alas ! too frequent of suicide, will always continue, ac- 
 cording to the principles of materialism, a revolting enigma 
 I shall only give two reasons for it. 
 
 1. The most universal, profound, and indestructible deter- 
 mination, in all living beings, is the desire of preservation, the 
 will to be. Hence, in animals, the extreme energy with which 
 they repel everything that menaces their existence ; hence, in 
 our own bodies, the violent reaction of the stomach against 
 poisons; hence, "in the moment of peril, that extraordinary 
 instinct which enables me to discover powers superior to the 
 habitual strength of my organs, resources superior to the 
 ordinary resources of my mind." How could man evade
 
 SOLUTION OF THE MATERIALIST. 47 
 
 this law of nature, if there were not in him a being which 
 can say to the body : " Thou art my enemy, an obstacle to 
 my well-being ; die then !" 
 
 2. Suicide, in the system of the materialist, would be the 
 reaction of matter against itself; which we have already said 
 implies contradiction.* 
 
 What does materialism oppose to demonstrations so nu- 
 merous and so palpable, of the immateriality of our thinking 
 being. Let us listen to Broussais in the expression of his faith. 
 
 " As soon as I had learned from surgery that matter, ac- 
 cumulated on the surface of the brain, destroyed our faculties, 
 and that the evacuation of this matter permitted them to re- 
 vive, I could no longer consider them otherwise than as the 
 acts of a living brain, although I neither know what the brain 
 is, nor what life is." 
 
 The justice of such an induction can in no way be better 
 understood than by a similar mode of reasoning. At the 
 battle of a brave officer of my acquaintance, travers- 
 ing a marsh to meet the enemy more quickly, sunk in the 
 mire with many others, and arrived like a coward, too late. 
 As soon as I discovered that the mud on his legs destroyed 
 his courage, and that to restore it, it was only necessary to dis- 
 engage them, I could no longer consider valor and intrepidity 
 as anything but the acts of free and unembarrassed legs ! 
 
 * See de Bonald, Recherches philosophiques, torn. 1. ch. 9. Blaud, 
 Trait& climentaire de physiologic torn. 1. ch. 3
 
 48 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 SOLUTION OF THE MATERIALIST AND PANTHEIST. IS THE 
 
 DESTINY OF MAN LIMITED TO THE PRESENT LIFE ? 
 IDEA OF TRUE HAPPINESS. 
 
 LET us at first establish some principles. Although the 
 actual constitution of the world presents some signs of wrath 
 and severity for which we shall by and by give the reasons 
 it is no less evident on that account that the creation is 
 the work of love. 
 
 If God has created every thing for his glory,* does not 
 the glory of an infinitely good Being consist in producing 
 happiness ? God has not created death ; he could not rejoice 
 in the destruction of his creatures.f By calling us into 
 existence, he calls us to share his happiness. If the leaven 
 of death is fermenting in the midst of his work, he has not 
 placed it there.f 
 
 In what consists the happiness of man ? It consists in 
 freedom from all evils, produced by his enjoyment of the 
 blessings which are adapted to his nature. In other words, 
 it is the legitimate, complete and harmonious development of 
 all our essential faculties. We will here enter into some 
 details which cannot but satisfy these who love to satisfy 
 their reason. 
 
 Man considered in his essential existence, presents himself 
 to us as a system of intellectual and physical faculties, 
 
 * Universa propter semetipsum operatus cst Dominus. (Prov. xvi. 1.) 
 f Quoniam Deus mortem non fecit, nee Icetatur in perditione viro- 
 
 rum. (Sap. i. 13.) 
 
 f Creavit enim, ut essent omnia: et sanabiles fecit nationes orbis 
 
 terrarum : et non est in illis medicamentum exterminii, nee inferorum 
 
 regnum in terra. (Sap. i. 1-1.)
 
 IDEA OF HAPPINESS. 49 
 
 subordinate to each other and all employed in unfolding the 
 germ of life which the creator has planted in them. 
 
 Every faculty, having its object, naturally tends to unite 
 with it by an act, which is the remote or immediate applica- 
 tion of the faculty to its object. This tendency is called 
 desire, inclination, want. An ungratified desire produces 
 suffering, or a painful consciousness of the privation of a 
 necessary good Privation too long continued causes the 
 destruction of the faculty, or such an injury that it can no 
 longer enter into relations with its object. This is death.* 
 Thus the visual power perishes for want of light, the digestive 
 organs for want of food, and the mind itself deprived of all 
 truth would be as if it were not. 
 
 Every faculty then lives, is preserved and perfected only 
 by its legitimate exercise, that is to say, by acts that lead it 
 to the possession of its object. Every act which withdraws 
 it from this object is bad, out of order, injurious. Every act 
 which brings it nearer, is on that account good and in the 
 true order, and increases the vitality, perfection and enjoy- 
 ment of the faculty. It reaches, in fact, its highest degree 
 of life and perfection when it is perfectly united to its object. 
 All its power then coming into exercise, causes a complete 
 development and full enjoj-ment of its existence, consequently 
 a cessation of desire, of want; it is in repose. 
 
 What we say of each faculty may be applied to man, as a 
 whole. He can be happy only in the total and harmonious 
 development of his essential faculties, f This development 
 
 * Death is only, as the Greeks have so well named it (papas) a 
 division, that is an absolute and irrevocable divorce between the dead 
 substance and the principle which constituted its life. 
 
 t I say essential ; for our physical faculties, relating to the preser- 
 vation of the individual and the species, are evidently accidental and 
 must disappear in the perfect man. Esca ventri et venter escis. Deus 
 autem et hunc et has destruet. (I. Cor. vi. 13.) In resurrectione enini 
 neque nubent, neque nubentur. (Matt. xxii. 30.) 
 
 5
 
 50 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 must extend to all his faculties ; for if only one were deprived 
 of its object, there would necessarily be derangement and 
 suffering in a part of his being. This development must 
 take place harmoniously, that is, without violating the natural 
 relations of dependence which exist among our faculties, the 
 unity and perfection of our nature would suffer equally from 
 the exclusive development of our physical or moral powers. 
 In the former case, the intellect would be incapable of gov- 
 erning the organization ; in the latter, the organization would 
 be incapable of serving the intellect. 
 
 But is not that supreme felicity, which is alone adequate to 
 fill up the vast measure of our desires, a dream of self-love, 
 an imaginary compensation for the woes which we suffer? 
 If it be a delusion, it is as ancient as man, and I do not 
 believe that he can ever be disabused of it. 
 
 Consider human life, either in the individual or in nations ; 
 is it anything but an unceasing aspiration towards perfect 
 happiness ? To escape all suffering and enjoy every blessing, 
 is the fixed idea of every man who comes into this world. 
 There is no thought which does not flow from this thought, 
 no project, no action which does not tend to realize it. It is 
 for this that the laborer anticipates the sun in the fields, that 
 the artizan wearies himself in his workshop, that the scholar 
 pines away in the midst of his books, that the soldier braves 
 danger, and the prince assumes the crown, or tramples it 
 beneath his feet. 
 
 Take away this powerful motive, and the human race 
 deserts life in a body. Man will consent to exist only on 
 condition of being happ} r . If he is without the hope of 
 becoming so, he throws aside the useless burden of exist- 
 ence ; and suicide is a desperate rush towards happiness. 
 
 I would now ask if man has implanted in himself this irre- 
 sistible tendency to pure and unmingled well-being? Since 
 happiness is the incessant cry of pur nature, the only spring
 
 TRUE HAPPINESS. -51 
 
 which brings our faculties into pl:iy, from whom could \vo 
 have received the idea, if not from the author of our being. 
 
 If it is so, this sentiment cannot deceive us : the error 
 would fall back on God ; his wisdom and his goodness would 
 be visibly at fault. Can any thing be imagined more unwor- 
 thy of the supremely wise and infinitely good Being than to 
 give to the noblest of his creatures a faculty without its 
 object, a tendency without its aim ; and to plant despair in 
 his heart, by kindling in it inextinguishable desires. I have 
 then the conviction that this thirst for the highest happiness, 
 which is consuming me, will be one day quenched ; if, faithful 
 to the laws of the Creator, I offer no obstacle to the designs 
 of his love. To doubt this, would be to fall into the follies 
 of atheism. 
 
 But is the blessed day to shine on this side or the other 
 of the grave ? 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 IS TRUE HAPPINESS COMPATIBLE WITH OUR ACTUAL 
 EXISTENCE? 
 
 CAN man, during his earthly existence, arrive at that com- 
 plete development of his being, which, excluding even the 
 shadow of desire and want, would allow him to enjoy the 
 uninterrupted repose of happiness ? 
 
 Such a question can only be seriously contested by fools. 
 Yet, as I write for every body, it will not be useless to estab- 
 lish some principles suited to facilitate the discussion. 
 
 Whatever may be the disagreement of philosophers with 
 regard to the sovereign good, all agree that it must corres- 
 pond to the fundamental desires of our nature ; the desire of
 
 62 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 knowing, acting, and enjoying. Knowledge without a cloud, 
 power without weakness, enjoyment exempt from all suffer- 
 ing; these are the three elements of that fountain of life, into 
 which our heart longs to plunge. Is the earth rich and large 
 enough to furnish a laver for each of the nine hundred 
 millions which it contains? 
 
 Many persons will refuse to believe that knowledge is the 
 first condition of happiness. Persuaded that thought exists 
 for the advantage of the stomach, they wish for science only 
 in their kitchen, and will willingly join Madame du Defiant in 
 saying, that a good supper is one of the four last ends of man, 
 which makes him forget the three others. There are many 
 circumstances however, in which these poor souls will forget 
 their last end, to gratify a passion still more vehement, the 
 passion for knowledge. 
 
 At the very moment when the most vigorous appetite gathers 
 them around a table regally served, if a great tumult, and 
 throngs of people crowding the streets, announce some ex- 
 traordinary event, no doubt our gastronomers would belie the 
 proverb: A famished stomach has neither eyes nor ears. 
 
 Who has not experienced, many times in his life, that an 
 intense degree of curiosity stifles the cries of want, soothes 
 the keenest sufferings, and thro\vs the soul into a kind of rap- 
 ture. 
 
 Impelled by an instinctive idea, which is secretly ferment- 
 ing in the depth of our thoughts, we are all in quest of an 
 object capable of satisfying our immense desire to sec and 
 know. This mysterious intellectual aliment, the child seeks 
 in his nurse's tales; the youth in the brilliant dreams of 
 romance ; the throng of idle persons in the diversions of the 
 theatre, and the excitements of the political world ; the scholar 
 in the sublime meditations of the closet, or the profound in- 
 vestigations of nature. 
 
 Vain efforts ! The greatest events of earth are too small,
 
 TRUE HAPPINESS. 53 
 
 the most profound truths, accessible to our actual means of 
 knowledge, are too superficial to retain us in their contempla- 
 tion. That spectacle, whose infinite novelty can alone hold 
 the human soul transfixed in an eternal ecstasy, is only offered 
 beyond the tomb. Until death raises the curtain, let us go to 
 the entrance hall of virtue to procure our tickets of admission. 
 
 Not content with knowing, man also wishes to do. Frovn 
 the boxer in the street, to the men of ambition who dispute 
 upon the steps of the throne, we are all eager for power. 
 There is no one who does not more or less aspire to the 
 honor of throwing the world around him into commotion. 
 
 What, however, is more wonderful than our weakness ! 
 What power have we in the physical order ? Dethroned 
 kings of the earth, we can only, sword in hand, wrest from 
 it a little food for our sustenance, and a tomb. The number- 
 less inventions of art do honor to our genius less than they 
 display our impotence. Should we demand wings of wand or 
 flame, if our cumbrous organization could dart into the air, 
 and fly over the surface of the earth at the will of thought ? 
 What would avail iron and saltpetre, if a rock were not a 
 sufficient barrier to the march of the most powerful army ? 
 
 What a truly frightful disproportion between our wishes 
 and our powers ! An instant only was needed by the Pha- 
 raohs of Egypt to plan and order the pyramids, but the exe 
 cution required many centuries, and millions of hands. The 
 material force of the whole globe would be powerless to ac- 
 complish what even the most ordinary mind can conceive im 
 a second. 
 
 Are we much stronger in the political world ? History 
 shows us three or four heroes who did all that man can do ; 
 and yet were not their lives, like every other life, a series of 
 betrayed wishes and abortive projects ? 
 
 The foundations of our political edifice are so weak, that a 
 fly could overthrow them. What is needed to set Europe in 
 
 5*
 
 54 THE SOLUTION OP GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 flames, and to crush kingdoms ? A venemous insect, who 
 plunges his sting into the last shoot of a royal stem. Rome, 
 under the Emperor Arnulf, was conquered by a hare. Not 
 long since, nations who covered the seas with their fleets, have 
 been seen to retire before a worm half an inch in length.* 
 
 There certainly would be reason to amuse ourselves at the 
 expense of great men, if we knew the true cause of their 
 success, and of the great events on account of which honor 
 is paid them. This cause now escapes our observation, on 
 account of its extreme minuteness, but it will be known on 
 the day when all things are made manifest. Perhaps this is 
 the comic episode, designed to temper the terrors of the last 
 scene of the world. 
 
 Would it become us then to wish to rule nature, when the 
 small portion of matter united to our soul incessantly resists 
 our most energetic desires ? and how can we attempt to im- 
 pose our will upon others, when we are incapable of govern- 
 ing ourselves ? 
 
 Our miseries all arise from the disproportion between our 
 feelings and our thoughts, our power and our will. There is 
 no harmony in our being, and no happiness, so long as our 
 heart is unequal to our intellect, and our arms are less exten- 
 sive than our desires. 
 
 Man is consumed, too, by his desire of enjoyment. We 
 only aspire to knowledge that our spirit may intoxicate itself 
 at the delicious sources of truth. We earnestly desire power, 
 only to dethrone suffering, and procure for ourselves durable 
 satisfaction. Yet nothing is more miserable than our enjoy- 
 ments. The noble pleasures of the intellect are purchased 
 only at the price of the pleasures of the body. What is the 
 privilege, then, of the truly wise and learned ? Is it not to 
 know better than any one the extent of our ignorance, and to 
 
 * A boring worm, which in 1731 and 1732 was on the point of destroy- 
 ing Zealand, and making the United Provinces tremble for their navy.
 
 WHY CAN WE NOT BE HAPPY? 55 
 
 be incessantly disgusted by the many follies that are in vogue 
 in the world.* 
 
 Sweeter and more profound, without doubt, are the joys of 
 virtue. But who has -more reason to lament our weakness 
 and vices, than he who elevates himself to study and combat 
 them! Virtue is a tree with a 'gigantic trunk; its flower re- 
 joices the earth with its divine perfume ; but its fruit is gath- 
 ered only in heaven. 
 
 Lastly, does it belong to sensual delights to satisfy the heart 
 completely ? Answer, illustrious voluptuaries, around whom 
 riches and power have collected the most numerous throng 
 of smiles and pleasures. Speak, son of David, thou who so 
 often moistened thy lips with the cup of pleasure, and who with- 
 drew them always in disgust. And thou, Tiberius, inventor of 
 unknown delights ! tell us which has suffered most, thyself, 
 drowned in pleasures, or thy numerous victims expiring in tor- 
 tures ; this is a problem which historians have left unsolved. 
 
 A divine hand has mingled pain and pleasure. Sadness 
 lies beneath our joys,f and according to the expression of 
 Montaigne pleasure consumes us. J 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 WHY CAN WE NOT BE HAPPY IN THIS WORLD ? 
 
 EVERY good that the earth offers us has three defects, which 
 render it radically powerless to bless mankind. It is limited, 
 and can only be possessed by a few. It is empty, and has 
 
 * Eo quod in multa sapientia, multa sit indignatio: et qui addit 
 scientiam, addit et laborem. (Eccle. i. 18. 
 
 t Extrema gaudii luctus occupat. (Prov. xiv. 13.) 
 J Essai, torn. xi. ch. 20.
 
 56 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 never satisfied any one. It is of so short duration, that it is 
 unworthy to excite any attachment. 
 
 I. It is limited. Since God has bestowed in equal measure 
 the desire lor happiness, his will is, that we should all enjoy 
 it equally, and it can only be our own deeds which can abolish 
 or diminish our claims to this divine inheritance. What, how- 
 ever, is more unequal, what more capricious, than the division 
 of the goods of this life ? What is the crime of that infant 
 born in the lowest degree of abjectness and misery ? What 
 is the merit of another, whose cradle is surrounded by riches 
 and honors ? To place happiness in honor, wealth, and plea- 
 sure, is to deprive our Father in Heaven of his divinest attri- 
 bute, impartiality ; it is to leave the inheritance of despair to 
 the immense majority of his children, who are condemned to 
 vegetate in the midst of privations, and descend unnoticed 
 into the tomb. 
 
 Is it said that man, and not God, is the author of this in- 
 equality of conditions. Let us suppose this to be as true, as 
 it really is false ; * will you correct men ? Will you make 
 all, the nimble and the maimed, agree to move on abreast to- 
 wards the altar of fortune ? Will you oblige the blind goddess 
 to cast an equal lot to each of them? Will you induce that 
 skilful speculator to renounce his daily profit of some thous- 
 and francs, because the day-wages of his neighbor the cob- 
 bler do not exceed eighty sous ; or could you persuade him 
 to share his superfluity with all the scissors grinders in the 
 
 * Nothing, in fact, could be more false. The inequality of conditions 
 is the inevitable consequence of the very great inequality of physical 
 and moral power among men. Now this last has all the appearance of 
 a providential fact. Yes, it is God who has made the small and the 
 great (Sap. vi. 8.) the author of Paroles d'un croyant has ventured 
 to affirm the contrary ; " God has made neither small nor great " (ch. vii) : 
 he has also suffered the fate of all those who have dared to lift their 
 foot against eternal truth ; he has plunged into the depths of the mire 
 of folly, and has been groping therein for the last ten years.
 
 WHY CAN WE NOT BE HAPPY? 57 
 
 kingdom. You appeal to force ; but do you believe that the 
 proletary to whom you give arms against the rich, will con- 
 fine himself, in the pillage of the conquered camp, to his 
 rightful share, which is, according to your decision, the thirty- 
 three millionth part of the capital of France ? We leave to 
 Saint Simon, La Mennais, and other hair-brained persons of 
 the same class, these magnificent absurdities. 
 
 II. It is visionary. Let us imagine that a celestial ambas- 
 sador, charged with the government of the world, should 
 come* to fulfil in the midst of us the wishes of St. Simon. 
 By successful industrial reforms, he should diminish half the 
 labor, and double the amount of products. Abundance would 
 prevail throughout the earth. We should have no more poor 
 people ; but should we have happy ones ? Ask every ancient 
 and modern Croesus, on whom fortune has showered more 
 honors, riches and pleasures, than any of us could claim in a 
 less partial distribution of the terrestrial treasure. Look at 
 their countenances, is it there that happiness is wont to diffuse 
 its purest joys, its sweetest serenity ? 
 
 The communists all commence with that noble definition of 
 man that a famous animal has given us : Man is a digestive 
 tube, (Cabanis) ; afterwards calculating the produce of six 
 millions of square leagues, they find alimentary matter enough 
 to fill a thousand millions of digestive tubes. Unfortunately 
 this definition is very incomplete. By the side of the digestive 
 faculty, there is, in the tube, another faculty much more 
 exacting, the heart. If a small morsel of bread is sufficient 
 to impose silence on the most greedy stomach, the whole 
 world does not contain enough to pacify the appetite of its 
 neighbor. 
 
 No, it is not with a few roods of earth that the immense 
 gulf of human desires can be filled. Of all the demons that 
 torment our race, the demon of hunger is incontestibly the 
 least common, and the least cruel. Is the proof needed?
 
 58 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 Among a hundred unhappy persons who commit suicide, 
 hardly one starving person will be found. 
 
 III. It is transitory. If man could establish true happiness 
 here below, would he long enjoy it ? What is this life, then, 
 in which it is proposed that I should find time to be happy? 
 It consists, it can only consist of the present moment ; it is 
 that mathematical, evanescent point of time, that separates 
 the past, which is no longer in our power, from the future, 
 whose enjoyment nothing can guarantee to us. It is less, than 
 a moment, less than a second ; for of the sixty minute por- 
 tions which compose a second, fifty-nine belong to the past 
 or the future. And it is on this needle's point, under the 
 scythe of death, which is always threatening us, in the pre- 
 sence of awful mysteries, which universal belief leads us to 
 see beyond the tomb, that we are commanded to be happy ! 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 IN ONE WAY OR ANOTHER, THERE MUST BE A LIFE TO COME. 
 t 
 
 LET it be acknowledged then, that if, after the existence 
 of the Creator, there is a truth demonstrable to the mind and 
 the heart, it is, that in the divine plan the actual world is only 
 the cradle of man, the place of education and trial, where, 
 during his short appearance, he must prepare for the great 
 part which God has designed for him in a superior world. 
 
 To deprive man of this belief, to limit his destiny to the 
 sixty or eighty years that are allotted him to vegetate on this 
 miserable planet, is to shock all the perceptions of his intel- 
 lect, overlook the most powerful tendencies of his heart, and 
 offer violence to the convictions of the human race, which, in 
 all periods, under all latitudes, in all degrees of civilization
 
 THERE MUST BE A LIFE TO COME. 59 
 
 and barbarism, has never ceased to proclaim the existence of 
 an eternal abode beyond the narrow passage of the tomb. 
 Let us name this abode as we may, Elysian fields, Paradise 
 or Heaven, it is the same. We cannot deny its existence 
 without denying God, without denying man, without showing 
 that we are far sunk in brutality. 
 
 But in what does this happy immortal life consist, which 
 all religious traditions promise to the good man on quitting 
 his terrestrial career. 
 
 Read the interminable descriptions of it which the mythol- 
 ogies of different nations give us, from the Vedas of India to 
 the less foolish and filthy pages of the Koran. Everywhere 
 the child man is seen occupied in constructing for himself a 
 paradise, adapted to his ignorance and corruption, and judg- 
 ing of his future life as a child of three years old, judges of 
 the present. 
 
 The Christian revelation, on the contrary, setting aside 
 these foolish creations of a sensual imagination, warns us at 
 first that the joys of the Celestial City are above all the 
 thoughts of our minds, the feelings of our hearts, and the 
 vain discourse of man.* 
 
 It guards us against the fear that heaven resembles earth in 
 some small degree. Consequently, at the outset, biblical 
 writers decline describing to us in detail the state of the bles- 
 sed. Notwithstanding this very remarkable moderation with 
 regard to a subject, which so often falls under their pen, and 
 which is so tempting to the imagination, they do not omit to 
 give us brilliant hints concerning our future existence ; and 
 these hints harmonize so completely with the demands of our 
 heart, that we are led directly to the following result : If all 
 religions have a presentiment of the future state of man, 
 Christianity alone has truly a knowledge of it, because, it is 
 the only one whose mission is to conduct us thither. 
 * I. Cor. ii. 9.
 
 60 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 THE FUTURE STATE OF MAN, ACCORDING TO CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 WHAT is this future ? It is the possession and enjoyment 
 of God himself.* Can a richer satisfaction be offered to the 
 insatiable desires of the human heart ! 
 
 In fact, what does this heart demand ? We have before 
 answered, three things : perfect knowledge, unlimited power, 
 complete enjoyment. 
 
 I. Knowledge. If, according to the expression of scrip- 
 ture, our intellect should see the light in the divine light, f 
 would it not be sufficiently enlightened ? If we should know 
 God as we are known,J what would remain for us to know ? 
 If God himself is not weary of admiring his infinite perfec- 
 tions, and the magnificence of his works, would not the 
 human mind, admitted to a share in such a spectacle, find a 
 subject of delicious and eternal contemplation ? 
 
 II. Power. Heaven is everywhere described as a throne, 
 as a kingdom which has been prepared for us from the be- 
 ginning.|| What is this throne? that of the Most High.lF 
 What is this kingdom ? that of God himself, that of the Son 
 of man, to whom all power has been given in heaven, earth, 
 and hell ; for, we are the heirs of God and joint heirs of Jesus 
 Christ.** 
 
 To be elevated to the height where God is, to govern with 
 
 * Ego . . . merces tua magna nimis. (Genes, xvi. 1.) ParsmeaDeus 
 in sternum. (Ps. Ixxii. 26.) 
 
 f In lumine tuo videbimus lumen. (Ps. xxxv. 10.) 
 J Tune autem cognoscam sicut et cognitus sum. (I. Cor. xiii. 12.) 
 Lajtabitur Dominus in operibus suit. (Ps. ciii. 51.) 
 || St. Matth. xxv. 34. 
 
 \ Qui dicerit; dabo ei sedere mecum in throne meo. (Apoc. iii. 21.) 
 * Hseredes quidem Dei, cohceredes autem Christo. (Rom. viii. 17.)
 
 THE FUTURE STATE OF MAN. 61 
 
 him the immensity of worlds, to preside over the destiny of 
 nations and decide their fate,* is not this a sufficiently ele- 
 vated part to fill, and is there not enough in it to satisfy the 
 most unbridled ambition ? 
 
 III. Enjoyment. Certainly, if there is anywhere true en- 
 joyment, pleasures made to satisfy the heart without falling 
 upon it, they are the pleasures, the delights that God enjoys. 
 But he wishes to share these ineffable delights with the chil- 
 dren of men, he wishes them to intoxicate themselves at that 
 fountain of joy where he himself drinks. 
 
 I would ask the most fastidious of voluptuaries, is it to be 
 apprehended that there can be weariness at the banquets 
 which the divine architect of worlds arranges, and which 
 have been preparing from the beginning of time ! 
 
 Notwithstanding the great pretentions of our pride, we 
 have a much too low idea of ourselves. Accustomed to 
 judge of the excellence of our nature only by the gross 
 envelope that incloses it, we scarcely suspect the infinite 
 distance that separates us from merely physical beings. If 
 we were more attentive to the operations of the spirit, if we 
 measured the steps which this internal giant makes even in 
 this life, we should comprehend that the lowest intellect is 
 incomparably greater than the material universe ; J perhaps 
 also we should form an idea of the prodigious development 
 which the presence of the Infinite will produce throughout 
 our being. Let us endeavor to give a sketch of it. 
 
 * Fulgebunt justi, et tanquam scintilla; in arundineto discurrent. 
 Judicabunt nationes, et dominabuntur populis. (Sap. iii. 7, 8.) 
 
 f Inebriabuntur ab ubertate domus tua?, et torrente voluptatis tuae 
 potabis eos. (Ps. xxxv. 9. 
 
 \ There is no mind so ordinary but it has the knowledge to some ex- 
 tent of material existences and can judge of them ; but it never can be 
 known nor judged by them. This, I believe is the reflection of St 
 Augustine. 
 
 6
 
 62 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 Let us recall the state of our intellect at the period when 
 thought was beginning to dawn through the cloud of sensa- 
 tions. What idea had we then of our globe and of the innu- 
 merable worlds in the midst of which it appears as a point ? 
 Is it not true that the sphere of our thoughts was limited to 
 a few hundred feet. Now that liberal and varied instruction, 
 seconded by reflection, has given us access to the repositories 
 of human knowledge, the range of our thoughts has increased 
 by some thousands of leagues, and a second is sufficient for us 
 to traverse in spirit, distances which escape all calculation. In 
 metaphysical and moral studies the introduction of one new 
 and fruitful idea alone is sufficient to extend suddenly the 
 circle of our thoughts, and make us blush at the weakness 
 of our preceding conceptions. 
 
 Now if the feeble rays of truth diffused through this world 
 of darkness expand so astonishingly the mind which is occu- 
 pied in collecting them, who is able to conceive the expansion 
 of that mind, when infinite, unbounded truth shall be mani- 
 fested to it, without a veil; without a cloud! 
 
 But how will the heart be affected ? 
 
 If there is anything in the world which the heart craves it 
 is beauty. History is full of the extravagances and crimes 
 caused by this most violent of passions. 
 
 Let us imagine a creature uniting in its physical form all 
 the graces which the chisel of Phidias and Praxiteles, or the 
 pencil of Raphael could have embodied. Let us bestow on 
 this body the most expanded and superior intellect, the most 
 generous and tender heart. Let us add to the charms of 
 physical and moral beauty those of birth and rank ; in fact 
 we give a sovereign to the world. Let her command prodi- 
 gies, she will be obeyed. Let her promise her hand to the 
 bravest, millions of men would sacrifice themselves at her 
 feet. 
 
 If the heart then is so violently agitated by an earthly
 
 THE FUTURE STATE OF MAN. 63 
 
 form, what will it experience when it is admitted into the 
 presence of the Creator, of innumerable forms of beauty 
 lavished with divine prodigality throughout the vast extent of 
 the earth and heavens ! If an idol of animated clay, coming 
 forth but yesterday in its ugliness from the womb of its 
 mother, and which death to-morrow will sweep into the filth 
 of the tomb, excites such love, how will it be with that rav- 
 ishing beauty, engendered in the splendors of glory, before 
 the morning star,* and whose eternally blooming youth is 
 protected from the injuries of time ! Beauty which unites to 
 the inexhaustible treasures of genius and science, the majesty 
 of an unlimited power ; a beauty whose tenderness for man 
 surpasses all thought !f Who can describe the glow of 
 the human heart in contact with this burning concentrated 
 fire of love ! Who can measure its wonderful expansion, 
 when folded in the arms of infinite tenderness it hears the 
 words ; " Come my well-beloved, I am thine forever ! " 
 
 Let us finish in the profound language of the apostle of 
 charity ; " My well-beloved, we are already the sons of God ; 
 but our future 'glory is yet a mystery ; but we know that 
 when God shall appear, we shall be like him ; for we shall 
 
 see hi?n as he is."$ 
 
 * Ps. cix. 3. 
 
 f This is a very simple reflection made by the wisest of men nearly 
 three thousand years ago. Quorum si specie delectati, deos putave- 
 runt : sciant quanto his dominator eorum speciosior est. Speciei enim 
 generator haec omnia constituit. (Sap. xiu. 3.) Blind worshippers of 
 the idols of this world, is it then so difficult to comprehend that the 
 charms which attract you in the creature must be found in a far higher 
 degree in him who has given it being ! Do you prefer the evanescent 
 and degrading pleasures that a dying body affords you, to the imperish- 
 able joys which await you in the bosom of the Divinity ? Is not this 
 madness ? What would you think of the youth, who, invited by the 
 most consummate of beauties to sit with her on the first of thrones, 
 should go to solicit, in a vile dwelling the horny hand of an octogen- 
 arian ? His folly, however, would be wisdom, compared to yours. 
 
 J I. John. iii. 2.
 
 64 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 PARALLEL OF CHRISTIAN PROGRESS WITH PHILOSOPHIC 
 PROGRESS. 
 
 FRIENDS of progress, advocates of indefinite perfectibility, 
 what think you ? Is not the aim which Christianity assigns 
 to our species sufficiently noble? Does not that progress 
 appear to you sufficiently great and rapid, which in a few 
 years raises a being from the depths of nothingness, to the 
 heights of divine perfection. 
 
 Compare with this progress that which you propose to 
 substitute for it, and whose definition you vainly attempt. 
 Show us its direction, its aim. What would you substitute 
 for heaven ? 
 
 You require centuries to put the humanitary movement in 
 operation ! But to demand ages for human beings whose 
 ordinary life does not exceed thirty-five years, is folly or 
 mockery. Explain yourselves frankly, do you believe that 
 our personality, our individual self, escapes the shipwreck of 
 death ? If it is so, tell us how, having once left this globe, 
 we shall enjoy the fruits of this social perfection, for which 
 you would have us sacrifice our existence. My question 
 calls forth your compassion, I perceive. In your sublime 
 theories humanity is everything, the individual nothing ; our 
 personality is only a temporary form which will soon vanish 
 in the ocean of being. But tell me then, when you and I 
 and all mortals have lost our existence by losing our individu- 
 ality, what will become of humanity ? 
 
 You who build even-thing out of nothing, take the pen, 
 increase ciphers at your pleasure, then add them and see if 
 you can give us a million.* At least acknowledge that Christi- 
 
 * Moreover, these progressive gentlemen inust not be too much dis-
 
 CHRISTIAN AND PHILOSOPHIC PROGRESS. G5 
 
 anity shows itself less stern, less discouraging to the individ- 
 ual, and that by laboring to save men one by one, it under- 
 stands a little better than you the happiness of humanity. 
 
 To develope a great energy of action, to hasten the pro- 
 gress of society, as much as possible, to leave an imperish- 
 able name in the memory of his fellow men, is, according to 
 your ideas, the destiny of man, and his whole future. But 
 what would become of society if, to escape the punishment 
 of oblivion, every one took it into his head to enact the great 
 man ! Who will make our bread, shoes, garments, hats, and 
 all those trifling articles without which heroes themselves 
 would make but a sorry figure ! 
 
 Another inconvenience: human glory is so much diminished 
 by division, that by giving each man a share, it would be 
 reduced to nothing. Great names like great mountains, rise 
 only by the depression of every thing that is around them. 
 The elect of the first class, as Cyrus, Alexander, Caesar and 
 Napoleon, appear only at the distances of several ages from 
 each other. Put two or three of them abreast, and the world 
 would be reduced to powder. 
 
 Do you in truth offer to our heart, so eager for real joys, 
 the prospect of the idle babbling of posterity around the dust 
 of our tombs ! Napoleon, who had employed the arms of 
 Europe for nearly twenty years, in erecting for him a temple 
 of terrestrial immortality, had no sooner cast his eagle glance 
 upon it, during the leisure of his captivity, than he withdrew 
 it in disgust, and summoned a priest to point out to him the 
 path to the Christian heaven. 
 
 Let it be acknowledged, Christianity is more successful than 
 you, in reconciling the interests of human society with the 
 eternal interests of the individual. It shocks the ardor of 
 
 trusted. Since they have found humanity without men, they may be 
 able to find a million, without a thousand times a thousand times one. 
 To such very dexterous persons we have nothing to answer. 
 
 6*
 
 66 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 ambition by promising the first honors of the celestial city, 
 not to brilliant achievements, but to the accomplishment of the 
 will of our heavenly Father in the post assigned to each, and 
 it does not permit any one to abandon it.* Thus sovereigns 
 and subjects, great and small, rich and poor, masters and ser- 
 vants, are all admitted to the competition for future honors, 
 and if any chances are more favorable than others, they are 
 for those among us who shall have shown themselves here 
 below most modest, most beneficent, most disinterested. 
 
 In a word, the assembly to which Christianity invites us, is 
 large enough to permit every one to be at his ease, and in the 
 bosom of the Divinity, envy will never utter these words 
 " Begone, that I may take your place." f 
 
 We may say then, without fearing contradiction, that Chris- 
 tianity alone has pointed out to man his true end. 
 
 Let us see now if it has shown itself as successful, consis- 
 tent, and rational in the choice of means, by which it directs 
 him to attain it. 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 HARMONY OF EVANGELICAL MORALITY WITH MAN'S FUTURE 
 CONDITION. 
 
 " IF thou wilt enter into life," said Jesus Christ, " keep the 
 commandments." 
 
 What commandments? "Thou shalt love the Lord thy 
 
 * Unusquisque in qua vocatione vocatus est, in ea permaneat. ( I. 
 Cor: vii. 20.) 
 
 t The following is the beautiful and profound reflection of St. Agus- 
 tine: Habemus igitur qua (Veritas summa) fruamur omnes aequaliter 
 atque communiter : nullae sunt angustiae, nullus in ea defectus. Omnes 
 amatores suos nullo modo sibi invitos recipit, et omnibus communis est,
 
 MAN'S FUTURE CONDITION. G7 
 
 God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with 
 thy whole mind. This is the greatest and the first command- 
 ment." And the second is like to this : " Thou shalt love thy 
 neighbor as thyself."* 
 
 What more just ! Since we are destined to live eternally 
 in the society of the Lord our God, how should we employ 
 the present life, which is the novitiate of eternity, if not in 
 making progress in the knowledge and love of him ? Since 
 the will of our heavenly Father is, that the children of men 
 should all taste in his bosom the joys of a perfect fraternity ,-j- 
 is it not natural that they should habituate themselves here 
 below to have but one heart and one soul ? | 
 
 " On these two commandments hang the whole law and 
 the prophets." 
 
 In fact, it is the love of God which commands us to honor 
 his holy name, and avoid in our thoughts, words, and actions, 
 everything which might wound the respect which is due to 
 him. (Second commandment : Thou shalt not take the name 
 of the Lord thy God in vain, &c.) 
 
 It is the love of God that leads us to sanctify the day which 
 he has reserved to himself from the seven days of the week, 
 by employing it in worshipping him, laying before him our 
 wants, recalling to our minds the blessings we have received 
 from him, blessings greater than we had looked for. (Third 
 commandment : Remember the Sabbath day and keep it 
 holy, &c.) 
 
 It is the love of God and of our neighbor which demands 
 
 et singulis casta est. Nemo alicui dicit : Recede, ut etiam ego acce- 
 dam : remove manus, ut etiam ego amplectar. Omnes inhaerent, ipsam 
 omnes tangunt. Cibus ejus nulla ex parte discerpitur : nihil de ipsa. 
 bibis quod ego non possim. (De Lib. arbit. lib. 11, cap. 14.) 
 
 * Matth. xix. 17. xxii. 34, seqq. 
 
 t Egoineis, ettuin me, utsintconsummatiinunum. (John xvii. 23.) 
 
 J Act. iv. 32. 
 
 Matth. xxii. 46.
 
 68 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 that, of all the race, we should love and honor most those 
 whom our common Father has made use of, to bring us into 
 being, and enable us to enjoy the privileges of social life. 
 (Fourth commandment: Honor thy father and thy mother, 
 dec.) 
 
 It is the love of God and of our neighbor that obliges us to 
 regard all men as children of God, as our brothers, and to 
 abstain from everything which could injure their soul or body. 
 (Fifth commandment : Thou shalt not kill, &c.) 
 
 It is the love of God and of ourselves, that requires us to 
 respect our soul, created in the divine likeness, and destined 
 to the enjoyment of a superior order, so highly, that we must 
 deny it, with the divinely established exception, the pleasures 
 which would degrade it to a level with the brute. (Sixth and 
 ninth commandments.) 
 
 It is the love of God and of our neighbor which requires 
 us to aspire exclusively after the treasures of heaven, and 
 keep our hearts and hands from the temporal goods which 
 Providence has allotted to our brethren. (Seventh and tenth 
 commandments : Thou shalt not steal, &c. Thou shalt not 
 covet, &c.) 
 
 Finally, it is the love of God and of our neighbor which 
 forbids us to violate the truth, or wound our brethren, in our 
 thoughts, words or actions. (Eighth commandment: Thou 
 shalt not bear false witness, &c.) 
 
 But it was not enough to show man the way of life, it Avas 
 necessary to reveal to him also the germ of death which he 
 bears within him, and apply the remedy to it
 
 CORRUPTION OF MAN. 69 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 DOCTRINE OF CHRISTIANITY CONCERNING THE ORIGINAL 
 CORRUPTION OF MAN, EASILY JUSTIFIED. 
 
 THAT man is vicious, corrupt and misguided, that he finds 
 every day in the base inclinations of his heart, the traces of 
 deep degradation, is a fact established by our own conscious- 
 ness and by universal belief. " The fall of degenerate man," 
 as the greatest enemy of Christianity has said, " is the foun- 
 dation of the theology of all the ancient nations." * 
 
 The most celebrated philosophers of antiquity have recog- 
 nized it. Some, to explain the punishment of our birth,f have 
 had recourse to crime committed by our souls in a pre-existent 
 state. | Others, accepting the universal tradition, have de- 
 clared that the human race became corrupt in its head. 
 
 Now this extremely important fact, concerning which pagan 
 traditions and philosophy have only given us fables or opinions, 
 Christianity alone presents in a light more satisfying to reason, 
 when, on the third page of the history of the primitive times, 
 it shows us the representatives of humanity violating the law 
 of the creator, and corrupting in themselves that nature which 
 they were to transmit to us. 
 
 I shall not attempt to justify here the history of the fall of 
 the first man, recorded by Moses in the third chapter of Gene- 
 sis. This narration justifies itself sufficiently, in the eyes of 
 every judicious critic, by its great simplicity and by the cor- 
 
 * Voltaire, Questions sur V Encyclopedic. 
 
 t Animal cseteris imperaturum a suppliciis vitam auspicatur, unam 
 tantum ob culpam quia natum est. (Plin. Hist, natur. lib. vn.) 
 
 f Ob aliqua scelera suscepta in vita superiore psenarum luendarum 
 causa nos esse natos (Cicero, in Hortensio, apud August, cont. Julian. 
 lib. iv.) 
 
 Plato, in Timeo, in Politic, &c.
 
 70 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 responding testimony of till nations; for ;ill have related this 
 fatal event in their own way, and almost always with its most 
 extraordinary circumstance, the intervention of the serpent.* 
 I would only observe that this page of the sacred writer 
 contains evidently, in germ, the whole Bible. It cannot be 
 rejected without entirely overthrowing the theoretical and 
 historical system of Christianity. Now we will examine if it 
 is possible, for reason to dispute the historical truth of Christi- 
 anity. 
 
 I shall not undertake to refute in detail the objections of 
 the skeptic against original sin. A few words will suffice to 
 dispel those sophisms, which have their rise in ignorance of 
 the true doctrine of the Church, on this leading article of its 
 faith. 
 
 In the first place, it is asked, how man can sin before he 
 comes into being ; how can an infinitely just God impute to a 
 child born yesterday, a crime committed six thousand years 
 ago, and in which his will has necessarily no part. 
 
 It has been constantly answered to this, that original sin 
 must not be confounded with actual sin ; that the former does 
 not exist in us, as the latter, by a free and personal violation 
 of the divine law, but being inherent in human nature, as it 
 was included in the first man, it has been transmitted to us 
 with that, by the fact of our descent from Adam. 
 
 To reconcile this mystery with our reason, so far as is per- 
 mitted to our ignorance, it is sufficient to establish thoroughly 
 the two following principles. 
 
 I. The first man by sin is placed in a state of death. As 
 he had life only by his union with God, he could not rebel 
 
 * Nothjng is better known than the malignant character of the ser- 
 pent in the mythologies of almost all nations. Humboldt, in his Vue 
 des Cordilieres, shows us the ancient Mexicans representing the evil 
 genius under the figure of the serpent, conversing with the mother of 
 mankind, &c. torn. i. p. 235.
 
 CORRUPTION OF MAN. 71 
 
 against him without inflicting death upon himself, which is the 
 wages of siii.* 
 
 His intellect separated from the primal truth, was covered 
 with darkness ; his will, opposed to the love of supreme 
 beauty, became the sport of the vilest appetites ; his superior 
 faculties, struck powerless, lost in part at least, their empire 
 over his organization ; and material nature, to revenge the 
 outrage committed against its sovereign, refused to obey the 
 felon. In a word, spiritual death, by the fatal divorce of the 
 soul from God; corporal death, by the tendency of the body 
 to separate itself from the soul ; external sufferings from the 
 insubordination of nature ; such must be the consequence of 
 sin, and the realization of the threat of the Creator : " The 
 day on which tho.u eatest this fruit thou shalt surely die."f 
 
 II. The child is like its parent. Let us suppose that in this 
 deplorable state Adam had reproduced himself; is it not 
 natural to believe that he would have communicated to his 
 children what he possessed himself, that is to say a nature 
 subverted^ corrupted, struck with death? How could it be 
 otherwise ? Could death engender life ? 
 
 It is then false that we have sinnecf before coming into 
 being ; for we were in Adam by our nature, and it is by our 
 nature, and not by an act of our own will, that we are at 
 birth "children of wrath." J It is then without injustice that 
 God detests in us what he finds in us, a soul brutalized by 
 ignoble inclinations, in which he can recognize neither his 
 workmanship nor his likeness. Is it not true that we are all 
 born with a certain aversion to God, that is to say, disposed 
 to love everytliing except the infinitely good Being ? How 
 could God, who necessarily loves himself with an unbounded 
 love, sympathize with us, until the remedy which he has him- 
 
 * Stipendia enim peccati mors. (Rom. vii. 23.) 
 
 - .. .. 
 f Genes, xi. 17. J Natura nlii irae, (Ephes. ii. 3.)
 
 72 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 bill' prepared in his mercy, the necessity of which all people 
 have discovered, has banished from our souls that horrible de- 
 formity ! * 
 
 But, can it be explained how a supremely good Being con- 
 demns to eternal flames, infants who have died with a stain 
 which they could neither avoid nor efface ? 
 
 * Two objections might be opposed to this theory of original sin . 
 1st. That, according to our principles, every sin would be capable of 
 transmission from parents to children, which is contrary to Christian 
 belief. 2d. That the corruption of nature, or concupiscence, remain- 
 ing after baptism, cannot be considered as belonging to original sin. 
 
 I answer to the first difficulty, that the sin of the first mar. having 
 struck the human race with death, the sin of his descendants cannot 
 produce the same effect, because a dead body cannot inflict death. 
 Yet as this death is not total, every man can aggravate it in himself, 
 and bequeath to his children more corruption than he has received 
 from his fathers. Experience only confirms too well these words of 
 the wise man : " For children begotten of unlawful beds are witnesses 
 of wickedness against their parents in their trial." (Sap. iv. C.) 
 
 I answer to the second difficulty, that I do not make the essence of 
 original sin to consist in concupiscence, but in the consent which the 
 will gives to it. This consent exists in the child before baptism, but it 
 is involuntary ; and hence the child, without being personally guilty, 
 is in a state of impurity which is revolting to the divine nature. In 
 baptism, the Holy Spirit guides back the will of the child to God, by 
 the infusion of charity, and by that banishes from the soul every thing 
 that is displeasing to divine holiness. If the baptised adult is obedient 
 to the impulses of grace, and resists concupiscence, this last so far from 
 degrading him, only ennobles him in the eyes of God by the victories 
 which it gives him an opportunity of gaining. Does he on the con- 
 trary yield to the corruption of his inclinations, sin revives in him, but 
 it is no longer the sin of nature, it is personal sin, it is actual, free, 
 voluntary sin, and consequently, far more criminal and far more deserv- 
 ing of punishment. It may be answered ; " According to this hypothe- 
 sis, the infidel who conquers concupiscence is justified, independently 
 of baptism." I answer: " Yes, without doubt ; if that infidel reinstated 
 his will by an act of perfect charity, he would be sanctified in that case 
 by the baptism of desire, which above all things is included implicitly 
 in the love of God."
 
 CORRUPTION OF MAN. 73 
 
 We shall refer this question to those dissatisfied theologians 
 who have taken it upon themselves to add to the gospel. As 
 to ourselves, who have no other rule of faith than the Divine 
 word, as catholic tradition has always understood it, we can- 
 not imagine how that terrible sentence of the Judge of the 
 living and the dead : Go, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, &c. 
 For I was hungry and ye gave me no meat, &c., can be ap- 
 plied to children who have died without baptism.* 
 
 All that the gospel teaches us with regard to their fate, is, 
 that the entrance of the celestial kingdom is forever prohibited 
 to them.-j- But between the floods of joy which God pours 
 forth over his elect, and the torrents of inextinguishable flames 
 destined for the obstinate despisers of his laws, there are in- 
 numerable degrees of happiness and suffering. Would you 
 choose a place for the unfortunate creatures of whom we are 
 speaking, and grant them happiness enough to permit them to 
 regard existence as a blessing, and give thanks to the God 
 of all consolation 1 Religion permits us this, the ideas that it 
 gives us of the divine benevolence invite us to it, and its 
 greatest teachers authorize us in it.| 
 
 Will it be asked again, Why God has chosen to place the 
 destinies of all, in the hands of one man alone ? This is an 
 impertinent question, which would bring a rash censure to 
 bear upon all the principles of divine government. Why this 
 law of the social world, which places the existence of a vast 
 empire in the hands of its chief? Why the enormous influ- 
 ence of parents upon the fortunes, morality, and health of 
 their children ? Why that law of the physical order, which 
 
 * Matth. xxv. 41, 42. 
 
 f Nisi quis renatus fuerit, &c. (John iii. 5.) 
 
 \ See St. Jlugustin, lib. v. cont. Julian, cap. 2. De lib. arbit. lib. 
 iii. cap. 23. St. Gregor. J\ r az. oral. xl. St. Gregor. JVyssen. orat. 
 de Infant. St. Thomas, in 2, dist. 33, qe. 2, art. 2. Innocent, iii. 
 cap. Majores, de baptismo, &c. 
 
 7
 
 74 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 permits the whole ship's company to perish through the fault 
 of the pilot? 
 
 If, as we have said, it is the design of God to bind all men, 
 at some future time, by the ties of the most perfect union. 
 was it not worthy of his wisdom to rescue them in this life 
 from the isolation of selfishness, by establishing among them, 
 with community of blood, the community of joys and sorrows ? 
 
 Besides, at the same time that divine justice left us all to 
 die in Adam, infinite love prepared for us in a second father, a 
 life far superior to that we had lost. Certainly it is not per- 
 mitted us to murmur, since we have seen this humanity, sunk 
 so low by the crime of Eden, rising so high by the redemption 
 of Calvary, that it has been seated for eighteen hundred years 
 at the right hand of our heavenly Father, and will be seated 
 there forever. 
 
 Let us agree then, that Christianity alone has truly known 
 the origin of our woes ; has alone revealed to us the nature 
 of them and sounded their depths. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 NATURE OF THE SIN OF THE FIRST MAN. ITS PERMANENT 
 
 INFLUENCE ON THE LIFE, BOTH OF NATIONS AND 
 
 INDIVIDUALS. 
 
 SACRED history shows us, in the crime of our first parents, 
 three very distinct crimes. 
 
 I. An insane desire to equal God in knowledge, which was 
 punished immediately by the discovery that they had become 
 brutes.* 
 
 * Eritis sicut dii, scientes bonum et malum. Et aperti sunt oculi 
 amborum ; cumque cognovissent se esse nudos, &c. (Gen. iii. 5, 7.)
 
 SIN OF THE FIRST MAN. 75 
 
 II. An unbounded cupidity which, leading them to seize 
 upon the only good that God had reserved to himself, caused 
 the loss of the enjoyment of all others, and compelled them 
 to lead the meanest life.* 
 
 III. An unworthy indulgence of the senses which, attracted 
 by the beauty of the fruit, demanded their gratification in 
 contempt of the prohibitions of the Creator; and the senses 
 were no sooner satisfied, than the offenders were filled with 
 confusion, and obliged to hide themselves. f 
 
 Pride, avarice, sensuality, are the three deep wounds which 
 the infernal serpent inflicted upon humanity ; wounds always 
 bleeding in the heart, and which always produce in it the 
 same fruits of death, until the efficacious balm of Christ heals 
 them. 
 
 What is in truth the history of the human race, except the 
 continual and faithful reproduction of the terrible drama of 
 Eden? 
 
 Their tastes, as simple and pure as their thoughts, make the 
 burden of life sweet and light for them. They go on their 
 way singing, and what do they sing? The Divinity, whose 
 powerful and paternal action is revealed to their intelligence, 
 in the least phenomena of nature, as well as in the magnifi- 
 cent spectacle of the heavens. 
 
 To the sublime and simple accents of a poetry entirely re- 
 ligious, insensibly succeed the cold and sterile speculations of 
 a proud philosophy. The accidental discovery of some half- 
 'truths violently excites the human mind. Pre-occupied by 
 
 * Ex omni ligno paradisi comede ; de ligno autem scientiae boni et 
 mali ne comedas. (Gen. ii. 16, 17.) Comedes herbam terrse. In sudore 
 vultus tui vesceris pane, &c. (iii. 18, 19.) 
 
 t Vidit igitur mulier quod bonum esset lignum ad vescendum, et 
 pulchrum oculis, aspectuque delectabile. Consuerunt folia ficus et 
 fecerunt sibi perizomata. Et cum audissent vocem Domini abscondit 
 se Adam, &c. (iii. 7, 8.)
 
 76 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 second causes which strike its imagination, it loses sight of 
 the first cause, and finishes by doubting its existence. Thug, 
 after a few experiments in electricity, it believes that it com- 
 prehends the manner in which thunder and lightning are 
 formed. Henceforth that majestic sound, those terrific flashes, 
 which filled it with religious awe, are only a natural pheno- 
 menon in its eyes, and it feels compassion for those who still 
 imagine that it is God who thunders. 
 
 Elated by this success, it begins to measure the truths of 
 intellectual and moral order, and as it cannot comprehend any 
 of them, it rejects them all in succession. At last, weary of 
 passing from one error to another, it falls from skepticism, 
 into materialism, and the same philosophy which said to it ; 
 " Give a free course to your thought, and the knowledge of 
 good and evil will make of you a God," forces it to this 
 humiliating avowal : " I am only an animal ; to think is to 
 degrade myself."* 
 
 Pride passing from the mind into the will, enkindles in it 
 the fires of ambition, and introduces into the heart of man a 
 second fury, avarice. 
 
 In a world where gold regulates everything,]- man is nothing 
 and can be nothing without wealth. Hence a grasping avarice, 
 which would swallow up the universe, if it did not meet with 
 ^rival cupidity to dispute the command with it. But as the 
 desires of ambition and avarice extend in a much larger pro- 
 portion than their domain or their treasure, they mourn over 
 their own insignificance at the height of grandeur, and over 
 their misery in the bosom of opulence. Alexander, master 
 of half the world, was inconsolable that it was no larger. 
 
 Then comes the ill success of ambition. How many as- 
 cend the Capitol only to fall from the Tarpeian rock ! How 
 
 * " L'homme qui pense est un animal deprave." (/. J. Rousseau.) 
 t Pecunite obed'unt omnia. (Eccles. x. 19.)
 
 SIN OF THE FIRST MAN. 77 
 
 many who have reached the Kremlin, find there the road to 
 St. Helena ! How many eager speculators are thrown from 
 the royal exchange into a prison or a hospital ! 
 
 Wretched himself, the avaricious and ambitious man is also 
 a scourge to others. Wishing to satisfy his fictitious wants, 
 he creates around him real necessities. As we have already 
 said, the goods of this earth are limited ; they cannot accumu- 
 late in certain hands without leaving others empty ; and, ac- 
 cording to the words of Seneca, thousands of poor are required 
 to make one man rich.* Indigence is also extreme wherever 
 colossal fortunes are building up. Among nations still more 
 than among individuals, it is the love of riches which engen- 
 ders poverty. 
 
 Man wishes to possess, only to enjoy. Having become 
 wholly flesh,] and seeing nothing beyond the' narrow sphere 
 of the senses, he plunges into animal delights, and quenches 
 his burning thirst for pleasure in vile enjoyments. But what 
 are the pleasures of earth for a heart which God alone can 
 satisfy ! J Degrading and severe maladies, gnawing enr.ui, 
 dullness, weariness of life, which are always in the train of 
 pleasure, prove that sensuality is its own executioner. 
 
 Mental degradation, poverty, disgust of life, carried even 
 to suicide, these are the end of man, when relinquishing the 
 hope of heaven, he attempts to satisfy here below his immense 
 desire of knowledge, wealth and pleasure. 
 
 But if these three passions, which a sacred writer calls the 
 essence of the world, diffuse such bitterness throughout our 
 actual existence, how will it be in the life to come ? 
 
 * Ex multis paupcrtalibus divitice fiunt. (Ep. Ixxxviii.) 
 f Gen. vi. 3. 
 
 J Satiabor, cum apparuerit gloria tua. (Ps. xvi. 15.) 
 Omne quod est in mundo eoncupiscentia carnis est, et concupis- 
 centia oculorum, et superbia vitae. (I. John ii. 16.) 
 
 7*
 
 78 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 DOCTRINE OF CHRISTIANITY CONCERNING HELL, EMINENTLY 
 RATIONAL. IS GOD THE CREATOR OF HELL? 
 
 CHRISTIANITY has been reproached for its doctrine con- 
 cerning hell. On this point, however, as on many others, it 
 has only confirmed and purified the universal faith, as one of 
 its great enemies avowed more than fifteen centuries ago. 
 
 The Christians, said Celsus, are right in thinking that those 
 who lead holy lives will be rewarded after death, and that the 
 wicked will suffer eternal punishment. This sentiment, how- 
 ever, is common to them with all the world.* 
 
 Let any one read what the Egyptians have said of their 
 Amenthes ; the Greeks and Romans, of Hades and Tartarus ; 
 the Persians, of their Douzakh ; the Hindoos, of their Pata- 
 lam ; the Scandinavians of their Nastroud, &c., and it will be 
 seen that the dogma of an hell, of an eternal hell, is always 
 in harmony with the common sense of the people. This be- 
 lief must necessarily have had very deep root in the human 
 mind, to resist the shock of violent passions in the religions 
 of Paganism, and oblige the majority of philosophers to be of 
 the same mind concerning it as the common people, f 
 
 Besides, nothing is more natural, or more logically neces- 
 sary, than the existence of hell. Could the eternal legislator 
 be blind to what the most unenlightened person amongst us 
 
 * Celsus, apud Origen. lib. viii. 
 
 t Among others, Plato, in various parts of his works ; Cicero, in the 
 book of Consolation (Lactant Instit. iii. 19.) : and Plutarch, Delay of 
 Divine justice. The first, after having spoken in his Gorgias of the 
 frightful punishments which entirely incorrigible criminals would suf- 
 fer eternally, adds : " What I say may be despised, I know ; but after 
 mature reflection and thorough examination, I find nothing which 
 w more consonant with wisdom, reason and truth."
 
 IS GOD THE CREATOR OF HELL? 79 
 
 detects in the heart of man ; a mass of corruption, which can 
 be overthrown only by the fear of punishment? 
 
 Not a political society, nor even the smallest corporation, 
 can be found on the earth, that has not its purgatory and hell, 
 that is to say, a series of penalties graduated according to the 
 nature of the offences committed, and extending from the 
 slightest censure to death itself.* 
 
 What a truly contemptible contradiction! We consent 
 that earthly rulers should inflict penalties as terrible as that of 
 death, to inspire respect for laws whose scope is low and tem- 
 porary ; and we are not willing that God should lift the arm 
 of his justice, when the laws of an eternal society are to be 
 protected, and man elevated to the sublime height of his 
 destiny ! 
 
 It may be said, what proportion is there between temporal 
 faults and eternal punishments ? I will ask in my turn ; what 
 proportion is there between an assassination, often the act of 
 less than a minute, and the penalty of death, eternal in its 
 consequences ? 
 
 I know that in an age of folly like ours, there are many 
 foolish persons who would move heaven and earth, to efface 
 from our codes this pretended relic of barbarism. But I know 
 also, that all men of sense would unite in saying to them : 
 " Gentlemen, before abolishing capital punishment, abolish the 
 crimes which render it indispensable. We too have feeling 
 hearts, and the day of a public execution always seems to us 
 a dark day ; but we can imagine one still darker, when the 
 legislator, conforming to your wishes, should venture to re- 
 move the only check which restrains criminals, and deliver us 
 up to their mercy. 
 
 " We do indeed love all men ; but our liveliest sympathy is 
 
 * We have no college nor school so poorly organized, that it has not 
 the power to strike with death, that is, exclude forever from its mem- 
 bership the dunce, who is considered incorrigible.
 
 80 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 for these good people who, thanks to God, form a large 
 majority. So long as you fail to offer them guarantees equal 
 to those which the existing laws supply against the ferocity 
 of your clients, they will see in your pretended philanthropic 
 machinations only a treasonable attempt, which would merit 
 condign punishment, if there \\ us not in your favor the very 
 extenuating circumstance of extreme stupidity." 
 
 I would say to those who wish for a God, a religion and a 
 heaven, without a hell, change the moral constitution of man. 
 Induce him, freed from vicious inclinations, (the unhappy 
 fruit of the abuse of his liberty), to consent to approach 
 God invariably from motives of hope and love, without need- 
 ing the influence of fear, and God will at once extinguish 
 hell ; for he tenderly loves his creatures, and is deeply afflicted 
 at their ruin.* But until you have done what God himself 
 has not thought it possible to do, f leave Christianity the only 
 lever it holds with which to raise our earth-bound will to 
 heaven. 
 
 The inductions which result from the uniformly acknowl- 
 edged principles of faith, reason, and experience, are these. 
 Man will never enjoy God, if he does not love him above all 
 things ; he never will love him above all things, if he does not 
 know him ; he will never know him, if he does not enter into 
 himself, and rise by reflection above the delusive impressions 
 of the senses ; man will never make the necessary effort to 
 reflect seriously on his future destiny, and labor for his own 
 reformation, if he is not moved to do so at first by fear ; a 
 
 * Sap. i, 13. xi. 25. 
 
 f Without doubt, God could have made man impeccable, but de- 
 prived of the peculiar honor of co-operating freely with the Creator in 
 his own perfection, man, according to this hypothesis would no longer 
 be that wonderful creature whom God can call his likeness, bis friend, 
 his child; but a brilliant automaton, placed in heaven as the sun ii 
 placed in the firmament.
 
 IS GOD THE CREATOR OF HELL ? 81 
 
 limited and temporary punishment, such as it has been at- 
 tempted to substitute for an eternal hell, will not produce in 
 a heart where passion reigns, thaty*ear of the Lord, which is 
 the beginning of wisdom.* 
 
 Let us listen to the words of a philosopher who is beyond 
 the reach of suspicion. " A fatal experience proves to us 
 that an eternity of suffering, however terrible it may be, is no 
 more severe than is needed to restrain us from crime. This 
 punishment is then proportioned to the end which the supreme 
 legislator proposes to himself, to prevent, as far as possible, 
 the violation of his laws. If it is in proportion to this object, 
 it is not then unjust. Experience, in proving its necessity, 
 shows its justice."f 
 
 Yes, alas ! nothing less than Gehenna with all its train of 
 eternal torments is required, to elevate the soul to God ; the 
 soul sunk in low enjoyments and ruled by brutal appetites. 
 It is indeed hell that peoples heaven ; and if this consuming 
 furnace is the work of God, he has kindled it with the fire of 
 his love. 
 
 But is God truly the creator of hell ? Does nothing oblige 
 us to believe it ? If it is written that, God has kindled afire 
 in his wrath, it is also written that he will draw this fire out 
 of the heart of man. J If it is said that the condemned shall 
 be the eternal food of death, it is also said, that it is the sin- 
 ner, not God, who has created death. To some passages of 
 scripture which give to God an active part in the punishment 
 of the condemned, it would be easy to oppose a hundred 
 
 * Initium sapiential, timor Domini. (Ps. ex. 10.) 
 
 f Thomas, Reflexions philosophiques et litttraires sur le Poeme de 
 la Religion naturelle. 
 
 * Ignis succensus est in furore meo, &c. (Deuter. xxxii, 22.) Pro- 
 ducam ergo ignem de medio tui, qui comedat te. (Ezech. xxviii. 18. 
 
 t Mors depascet eos. (Ps. xlviii. 15.) Deus mortem non fecit . . 
 Impii autem manibus et verbis accersierunt illam. (Sap. i. 13, 16.)
 
 82 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 others which affirm that it is the sinner himself who has dug 
 his own pit, and that he will only reap in eternity what he has 
 soicn in time.* 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 HELL, AS WELL AS HEAVEN, IS THE DAILY CKEATION OF 
 MAN IN THIS LIFE. 
 
 WHAT is hell ? It is the work of pride, cupidity, and sen- 
 suality ; a work still latent in the heart of the living man, but 
 which must necessarily be developed with terrific force at the 
 moment when death places the sinner in the presence of God. 
 
 Let us review some of the principles already established. 
 
 Happiness consists in the possession of an object capable 
 of entirely satisfying our desires; unhappiness, in the priva- 
 tion of this object.^ The degree of happiness or misery 
 depends on the intensity of desire. The intensity of desire 
 is in proportion to the capacity of the affections. The de- 
 velopement of this capacity is in proportion to the number 
 and intensity of acts, that is, of efforts made to reach the 
 object desired. 
 
 Two objects solicit the love of every man at his birth ; 
 God and the creature. On one side, God, an unfathomable 
 and shoreless ocean of goodness, power, and beauty, alone 
 capable of quenching our thirst of knowledge, wealth and 
 pleasure ; he would, of course, take captive our love, if we 
 were permitted to contemplate his essence ; but, through re- 
 
 * Lacum aperiut, et effodit eum : et incidit in foveam quam fecit. 
 (Ps. vii. 1C.) In operibus manuum suarum comprebensus est peccator. 
 (Ps. ix. 17.) Quae enim seminaverit homo, hsec et metet. (Gal. vi. 8.) 
 
 f See as above, ch. xv
 
 HELL THE DAILY CREATION OF MAN. 83 
 
 spect for the liberty which he has given us, he veils from our 
 eye, during the short course of human life, his ineffably bene- 
 ficent qualities, and influences our hearts only by the spectacle 
 of his sensible works, by the interior voice of conscience and 
 of grace, and by the teachings of religion. On the other 
 side, the creature is merely a nullity when considered in itself; 
 it displays before us the perfections with which God has en- 
 riched it, perfections doubly deceitful, both on account of their 
 enormous disproportion to our desires, and their short dura- 
 tion. 
 
 Man is called to choose between these two extremes, be- 
 tween the whole and nothing. He cannot attach himself to 
 God without detaching himself from the creature ; nor attach 
 himself to the creature without despising God.* If he seeks 
 God, if he applies his understanding to the knowledge of him, 
 if he bends his will to his laws, in contempt of his own in- 
 clinations, each thought, each sigh is a step towards happi- 
 ness ; it is one degree more of the opening of his soul to 
 God ; it is a germ of life deposited in his heart, which is only 
 awaiting the sun of eternity to unfold it. The more he mul- 
 tiplies these acts during his life, the more intense they become, 
 and the more also, in the day of recompense, his heart will 
 dilate and become capable of a more perfect communication 
 with the divine being. j- 
 
 If, on the contrary, man following only the impulse of his 
 senses falls into the coarse net which creatures extend for 
 him ; | if he abandons his heart to the love of the honors, 
 
 * Nemo potest duobus dominis servire ; aut cnim unum odio habebit 
 et alterum diliget ; aut unum sustinebit, et alterum contemnet. Non 
 potestis Deo servire et mammonae. (Matth. vi. 24.) 
 
 f Ego sum Dominus Deus tuus . . . Dilata os tuum, et implebo illud. 
 (Ps. Ixxx. 11.) 
 
 J Creaturae Dei in odium facte sunt, et in tentationem animabus 
 hominum, et in muscipulam pedibus insipientium. (Sap. xiv. 11.)
 
 84 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 riches and pleasures, which the fleeting vision of this world 
 offers him, every effort he makes to procure them, in contempt 
 of the Divine love, is a sin, that is, according to the deep sig- 
 nification of this word, it is an error, a fall, a false step, which 
 separates him from the true good ;* it is an approach towards 
 death. Eager for vanity, exciting in his heart wild desires 
 which can never be satisfied, f he prepares for himself eternal 
 regrets, and the liveliness of his regrets will be in proportion 
 to the intensity of his desires. 
 
 Let us imagine now two men who have given to their facul- 
 ties an equal development, one towards God, the other towards 
 the creature. In both the same love of honor, wealth and 
 pleasure, (for the love of these things is innate in man ; with 
 this difference only, that the one seeks them where they are, 
 the other where they are not). What a prodigious distance, 
 however, separates these two beings ! one carries heaven in 
 his heart, the other hell ; and yet they little suspect this, so 
 deeply are they involved in the obscurity of this life, while 
 they are passing through it. If a foretaste of celestial joy is 
 sometimes permitted to the one, he only deplores more deeply 
 the continuance of his exile, and with sighs he fills up the 
 measure of those good works, which are every instant adding 
 new rubies to his eternal crown. 
 
 If remorse and disgust exercise the other, he finds in a 
 whirlpool of pleasures and business a means of distraction, 
 and he swallows like water those iniquities which will soon be 
 changed into eternal flames. 
 
 * In most languages, sin is synonymous with fall, vjandering, going 
 astray, rebellion, falling away, &.c. See in Hebrew, the roots Chata, 
 Paschah, &c., in Greek, A'/japracej. 
 
 f And how could they be satisfied ! since the sinner desires two 
 things evidently impossible ; 1st, to find perfect happiness in imper- 
 fect objects; 2d, to enjoy infinitely, creatures whose end everything 
 proclaims. It is also written, the desire of the sinner shall perish. 
 (Ps. cxi. 10.)
 
 HELL THE CREATION OF MAN. 85 
 
 To reveal the fund of life and of death accumulated in 
 these two hearts, what is required ? A ray from the face of 
 the Godhead, a spark of that divine fire which purifies and 
 brings out in incomparable lustre, the gold of virtue, and burns 
 without consuming the withered stalk of vice.* Let death 
 tear away the veil which conceals from them the presence of 
 the Infinite Being ; both will equally experience in their 
 faculty of knowledge, that expansion which the intuition of 
 supreme truth produces in every intelligence ; both will feel 
 equally in their heart, that indescribable burst of desire and love 
 which the presence of infinite beauty necessarily calls forth.-}- 
 
 But the one, following the direction which he has impressed 
 upon his will, in the bosom of infinite love, will satisfy, but 
 never extinguish, the ardor of his desires. There he will 
 reap, in the ecstacy of eternal joy, all that he has sown in 
 the brief afflictions of life. Not a holy thought, not a mo- 
 ment of prayer and communion with God, that has not pro- 
 duced a more profound knowledge of the overwhelming glo- 
 ries of the Divine Being ; not a mortification suffered for God, 
 not an act of humility or modesty, but has added a step to 
 his throne, a ray to his diadem ; not a sacrifice made for the 
 love of poverty, that has not increased his dominion by one 
 province ; not a fast, not an abstinence, which has not merited 
 an increase of enjoyment; not a cup of water given to a 
 neighbor that is not changed into a river of joy.| In one 
 word, not an act done for God which has not disposed the 
 heart by enlarging it, for a greater effusion of divine life. 
 
 * Si quis autem supersedificat . . . aurum, argentum, lapides preti- 
 osos, ligna, foenum, stipulam . . . uniuscujusque opus quale sit, ignis 
 probabit. (I. Cor. iii. 12, 13.) 
 
 f See above, ch. xix. 
 
 J Qui seminant in lacrymis, in exultationc metcnt. Euntes ibant et 
 flebant, mittentes semina sua. Venientes autem venient cum exult- 
 atione, portantes manipulos suos. (Ps. cxxv. 5, 6.) 
 
 8
 
 86 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 What will take place, on the contrary, to the confirmed 
 devotee of this world? Irrevocably placed by death in a 
 declared opposition to the divine will, he finds himself sepa- 
 rated from the great river of life by a gulf forever impassa- 
 ble.* There alone with his works, he gathers also in the 
 paroxysms of an eternal despair the fruits of death which he 
 has sown in the vain joys of earth. For every effort of his 
 pride to glorify itself, before men, there is a corresponding 
 degree of abjectness ; for every guilty project to increase his 
 riches, an increase of misery ; for every criminal pleasure, a 
 proportionate share of suffering. How could it be other- 
 wise ? If it is an obvious principle even of reason, that all 
 good resides essentially in God, and that sin separates from 
 God, is it not plain that the sinner plunges into darkness, 
 humiliation, misery and suffering, just in proportion as he 
 withdraws from Him who is light, greatness, wealth and 
 pleasure itself.f 
 
 Of whom could this wretched being complain except of 
 of himself? Are not the pains he suffers the work of his 
 own hands?J Is it God who has repelled him, is it not 
 rather he who has repelled God, who has said to him : " De- 
 part from me, I do not desire thy love?" What has God 
 done ? After many years of patience, he has taken the inso- 
 lent man at his word ; " Thy will be done, he has said to 
 
 * Inter nos et vos chaos magnum firmatum est: ut hi, qui volunt 
 hinc transire ad vos, non possint, neque inde hue transmeare. (Luc. 
 xvi. 26.) 
 
 f Qui elongant se a te, peribunt. (Ps. Ixxii. 27.) Omnes, qui te 
 derelinquunt, confundentur : recedentes a te, in terra scribentur : quo- 
 niam dereliquerunt venam aquarum viventium Dominum. (Jerem. 
 xvii. 13.) 
 
 J Luet quse fecit omnia, nee tamen consumetur : juxta multitudinem 
 adinventionum suarum, sic et sustinebiL (Job xxi. 18.) 
 
 Recede a nobis, etscientiam viarum tuarum nolumus. (Job xxi. 14.)
 
 LOSS OF THE REPROBATE. 87 
 
 him ; thy life has ever been forgetfulness of thy God ; I 
 might punish thee, I am satisfied with forgetting thee." * 
 
 Hitherto we have seen hell only as the work of the sinner. 
 But is this the whole ? 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 PAIN OF LOSS OF THE REPROBATE. CONJECTURE CONCERN- 
 ING THE PAIN OF FIRE. 
 
 IN the pictures which the scriptures have drawn of hell, 
 we see two sorts of punishment, that which theologians call 
 the pain of loss, represented by the worm that never dies, that 
 is, the remorse, regret and despair resulting from losing God, 
 and the punishment of the fire which is never quenched, ( 
 on which Scripture most insists, as being most effectual in 
 making a lively impression upon men. 
 
 It is easy to conceive of the frightful despair which the 
 sight of what he has lost in losing his God, would awaken 
 in the heart of the reprobate. We have every day under our 
 eye the strange effects of an unhappy passion. We see 
 wretched persons falling into violent rage, hating life and 
 rushing madly to death, one because he has lost a place or a 
 fortune ardently desired, the other an idol of flesh. Now if 
 the human heart, small as it is, is capable of such tremen- 
 dous passions, what will it become when it is immeasurably 
 expanded from its contact with the Divine Being ! If the 
 loss of an office or a fortune wound it so deeply, how horri- 
 ble will be its sufferings when it finds itself deprived of the 
 
 * Si quis autem ignorat, ignorabitur. (I. Cor. xiv. 38.) Nunquam 
 novi vos. Nescio vos. (Matth. vii. 23, xxv. 12.) 
 
 * Vermis eorum non moritur, et ignis non extinguitur. (Mark ix. 45.)
 
 88 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 immense inheritance of glory, power and wealth, which God 
 shares with those who love him ! If it cannot support the 
 loss of one of those fragile beauties, which are born and die 
 by thousands every day, how will it support the loss of the 
 one eternal beauty, of which all created perfections were they 
 united in the same person, are but a vain shadow ! 
 
 For the reflecting man there are many consolations in tlie 
 misfortunes of this life. 
 
 There is no creature so perfect as to be faultless, and the 
 despised lover can revenge himself by contempt. But who 
 can despise God, that ha's once seen him ! 
 
 There are no creatures who have not many resembling 
 them. But there is but one God, and apart from God there 
 is nothing. 
 
 There is no lasting enjoyment in this life, and infidelity 
 only anticipates death. But God once possessed is never lost. 
 
 Misfortunes here below are, for the most part, involuntary, 
 and rarely can the victim say ; " I could have prevented "... 
 But the reprobate can only accuse himself; "I have what I 
 deserve ; if my suffering is endless, it is because my folly 
 was boundless." 
 
 Finally, Death is always present, saying to the afflicted ; 
 " Your sorrows will have an end." But the lost soul reads 
 everywhere; "Eternity!" and his eye is forced to measure 
 the frightful depths of that word which he never before 
 would consider. 
 
 Let us now imagine this wretched being, consumed by 
 boundless desires without the least hope of satisfying them, 
 a prey to remorse that nothing can appease, and we shall 
 comprehend without difficulty his gnashing of teeth, his 
 weeping, and his calling in vain for death.* 
 
 * Ibi crit fletus, et stridor dentium. (Matth. viti. 12.) Quaerent 
 homines mortem, etnon invenient earn ; ct desiderabunt mori, ct fugiet 
 mors ab eis. (Apoc. ix. C.)
 
 LOSS OF THE REPROBATE. 89 
 
 This is indeed the never-dying worm which sin deposits in 
 the heart of the sinner; this is the inextinguishable fire 
 which will consume his soul. 
 
 But will the fire which, according to Scripture and univer- 
 sal belief, must torment the body of the condemned, be found 
 there also, or is it only the irruption of the fires of the soul 
 into the physical organization ? This conjecture, I think 
 may be permitted, without violating Scripture or tradition. 
 Both suppose a real fire which will inflict a suffering upon 
 the condemned, distinct from the pain of loss, and it would 
 be presumptuous to admit only a metaphorical fire, and one 
 identical with moral suffering alone ; * but both preserve 
 silence on the origin and secret nature of this fire. Many 
 passages of Scripture even imply that this terrible agent of 
 Divine vengeance, is to be the work of the sinner,-]- and 
 distinguished Christian philosophers have concurred in this 
 belief. 
 
 " Do not believe," said St. Augustine, " that this serenity 
 and ineffable divine light, can draw from itself wherewith to 
 
 * This was the opinion of Origen and Lactantius, which was not for- 
 mally condemned but visibly contradicted by the unanimous teaching 
 of the Fathers, and irreconcileable with the principles of sacred criti- 
 cism, the Bible speaking in various places of the fire of hell, without 
 any indication of metaphor. We must not however, confound the 
 reality of hell fire with its materiality ; the latter is at least very 
 doubtful, when natural philosophers call in question, and not without 
 some reason, the materiality of terrestial fire. (See Thenard, Element 
 de chimie, torn. i. page 35.) Admitting, as we do, the reality of the 
 effects of infernal fire, the claims of the doctrine are equally satisfied. 
 
 t To the passages cited in the text or the notes of the two preceding 
 chapters, the number of which could be easily increased, I shall only 
 add these words of the Psalmist, very remarkable for the identity of 
 the cause which they assign, both for the happiness of the just, and the 
 sufferings of the condemned: Lcctificabis eum in gaudio cum vultu 
 tuo . . . Pones eos ut clibanum ignis in tempore vultus tui . . . Pone* 
 eos dorsum, &c. (Ps. xx. 7, 10, 13.) 
 
 8*
 
 90 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 punish sin, but rather that it has so ordered our sins, that 
 what constituted the pleasure of the sinner will serve as an 
 instrument of divine vengeance."* 
 
 Bossuet, developing the thought of the eagle of Hippo, 
 speaks thus. " Let us not imagine that hell consists in fear- 
 ful torments, in pools of fire and sulphur, in eternally devour- 
 ing flames, in rage, despair and horrible gnashing of teeth. 
 Hell, if we understand it, is sin itself; hell is to be deprived 
 of God, and the proof of it is evident from the Scriptures."^ 
 Elsewhere, commenting upon these words of the Lord in 
 Ezekiel : / will make to come forth from the midst of thec, 
 the fire which shall devour thee ; he adds ; " I shall not send 
 it from afar against thee ; it shall be kindled in thy con- 
 science, and the flames shall burst forth from the midst of 
 thee, and it shall be thy sins that shall produce it. Dost thou 
 remember, Christian, that while sinning, thou art forging the 
 instrument of thy own eternal punishment? Thou art 
 doing so. Thou swallowest iniquity like water; and art 
 swallowing torrents of flames." f 
 
 Experience itself favors this sentiment. 
 
 What more incontrovertible, than the influence of the 
 moral affections over the body ! No violent passion is ever 
 enkindled in the soul, that the flames of it do not communi- 
 cate without. Despair, above all others, presents the symp- 
 toms of a true conflagration. The eyes flash ; the blood, 
 boiling in the veins, spreads fire to the extremities, and if it 
 
 * Ne putemus illam tranquillitatem et ineffabile lumen, Dei de se pro- 
 ferre unde peccata puniantur: sed ipsa peccata sic ordinare, ut quae 
 fuerunt delectamenta homini peccanti sunt instrumenta Domino puni- 
 enti. (Enar. Ps. vii. n. 16.) 
 
 t Sermon sur la gfoire de Dieu, dans la conversion des picheurs. 
 ler. point. 
 
 J Sermon sur la necessite de la ptnitcnce, pour le 3e. dimanche de 
 FAvent, ler. point. See also Sermon 2e. pour le dimanche des Rameaux, 
 sur la necessit^ des souffrances, 3e- point, et alibi.
 
 LOSS OF THE REPROBATE. 91 
 
 is not carried off, the organization is dissolved in the midst 
 of a devouring fever. 
 
 Let us imagine now in the superior faculties of man the 
 fire of despair, as intense as it will be in the condemned, 
 when he contemplates, by necessity, the immensity of his 
 misfortune in the greatness and beauty of the God whom 
 he has lost.* 
 
 Let us suppose also in his material organization, that tena- 
 city which divine power will give to the resuscitated bodj', 
 and which will enable it to suffer all the anguish of death 
 without dying,f an( ^ we can imagine without difficulty that 
 the condemned soul, united to the body, will carry into it all 
 the elements of an eternal conflagration.;}; 
 
 To this fire bursting forth from the interior depths of man, 
 let us add that which will be kindled from the eternal assault 
 of all creatures in arms against the enemies of God. The 
 sinner having turned them against the Creator, by making 
 
 * Will not the condemned see the divine essence throughout eter- 
 nity, and will not their punishment consist above all in this sight ? 
 Certain words of scripture would authorize this conjecture; among 
 others, the following : Pcenas dabunt in interitu aeternas a. facie Domini, 
 et a gloria virtutis ejus, (II. Thessal. i. 9.) See the commentators on 
 this passage. As for the rest, we have no need of this hypothesis to 
 support our conjectures concerning the fires of hell. All agree that 
 the condemned will see God at least at the day of judgment : now, God 
 once seen, how can he be forgotten ! 
 
 f Mors depascet eos. (Ps. xlviii. 13.) Fugiet mors ab eis. (Apoc. 
 ix. 6.) 
 
 { It may be easily conceived, after what we have said above, (ch. 
 xxv.) that the intensity of this fire will necessarily be proportioned to 
 the degree of culpability in each individual, and that in the same indi- 
 vidual it will torment more violently the most offending organs, accom- 
 plishing thus the divine law: per qua? peccat quis, per heec et torque- 
 tur. (Sap. v. IS, 21.) 
 
 Armabit creaturam ad ultionem inimicorum . . . et pugnabit euro, 
 illo orbis terrarum contra insensatos. (Sap. v. 18, 21.)
 
 92 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 them serve his iniquities, is it not just that they should avenge 
 this violence by turning against the traitor? It is very natural 
 to believe, that in this transformation after which they have 
 sighed,* creatures will become, according to the different dis- 
 positions of the elect and condemned, a subject of joy for 
 the former, and torment for the latter, f 
 
 T will not stop to speak of another punishment of the 
 guilty, that of the society of hell. Satan being the first of 
 sinners, and the instigator of all sin, it is just that the man 
 who yields to his inspirations in contempt of the divine law, 
 should fall under the power of this master.J And what a 
 master is this most perverse of beings ! what society is that 
 of desperadoes, furies and demons! 
 
 But enough. If this philosophical view of hell has power 
 to cause him who would measure its extent, to shudder, it is 
 wonderfully adapted to justify the God of Christians from the 
 reproach of cruelty raised by the skeptic. Hell thus com- 
 prehended is exclusively the creation of the sinner. If the 
 wretched man finds all evil pouring over him as ajlood, it 
 is because he persists in living far from Him who contains 
 within himself all good. It is not a strange hand that kin- 
 dles the devouring fire : all his torment consists in being 
 delivered up to himself, || and it is that which he has always 
 desired. 
 
 There is only one more possible objection ; it is that God, 
 
 * Exspectatio creatures, revelationem filiorum Dei exspectat. (Rom. 
 viii. 19.) 
 
 t We may cite for example the sun, whose light rejoices or scorches 
 the eye, according as the latter is well or ill-conditioned. 
 
 f Qui facit peccatum, ex diabolo est; quoniam ab initio diabolus 
 peccat. (I. John iii. 8.) 
 
 Omnis dolor irruet super eum. (Job xx, 22.) 
 
 || Devorabit eum ignis, qui non succenditur, affligetur relictus in 
 tabernaculo suo. (Job xx. 26.)
 
 NECESSITY OF THE INCARNATION. 93 
 
 knowing the weakness and stupidity of man, owed it to his 
 benevolence either to leave this being in non-existence, or 
 enlighten him fully with regard to the eternal consequences of 
 sin. The following chapters will show, if on this last point 
 God has withheld from us the light. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 NECESSITY OF THE INCARNATION. PREPARATION OF THE 
 
 HUMAN RACE FOR THIS EVENT. ITS REALISATION. 
 
 WHEN by meditation upon the principles, which I have now 
 established, we are entirely convinced of the astonishing 
 destinies of man ; when we see him placed in the terrible 
 alternative of rising to infinite happiness, or sinking into 
 eternal torments ; when, on the other hand, we consider the 
 extreme weakness and corruption of this being, the frightful 
 carelessness with which he journies through life, without ever 
 asking where he is going ; when we think of the insurmount- 
 able obstacles which he opposes to the divine offers of affec- 
 tion, by his brutal habits, we ask ourselves in alarm : " Who 
 will transform this worm of the dust into an angel ! * Who 
 will have power to bring forth from this mire, a being pure 
 and noble enough for the thrice holy God to rest his eye upon 
 him with complacency!" 
 
 Who The All-Powerful alone. But if, in order to pre- 
 serve to man his liberty, God chooses to employ only the 
 moral influence of word and example, how can man be made 
 to understand it, since he has lost the sense by which God is 
 
 * Noi siam vermi. 
 Nati a formar 1'angelica farfalla. (Dante.)
 
 94 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 perceived?* Will God assume a body? "Yes," answers 
 Christianity. 
 
 Since, then, the children of God have become flesh and blood, 
 the Word, which has created them and can alone regenerate 
 them, (God acting only through his Word) has become flesh 
 and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.f 
 
 To prepare the human race for an event which, by its 
 enormous disproportion to our intellectual weakness, would 
 have shocked our ignorance, required no less than forty cen- 
 turies. 
 
 God first announced it under a veil of mystery, to our 
 guilty ancestors, on the very scene of their crime.J The 
 promise of a Redeemer, frequently renewed to the patriarchs, 
 was spread abroad throughout all nations coming forth from 
 their loins, with the profoundly mysterious rite of the bloody 
 sacrifice. The expectation of a victim who should descend 
 from heaven to purify humanity, became the religion of all 
 the children of Adam. 
 
 The Jewish nation was chosen to preserve the promise in 
 all its purity, and in the fullness of time to proclaim the ac- 
 complishment of it to the world. Hence the isolated exist- 
 ence of this wonderful people ; hence its symbolical religion, 
 its legislation truly incomprehensible, until the completion of 
 it by Christ. 
 
 Hence among this people the mysterious office of the Pro- 
 phets, who, as ambassadors despatched from heaven, came in 
 succession during eleven centuries to announce the arrival of 
 
 * Animalis autem homo non percipit ea quae sunt Spiritus Dei. (I. 
 Cor. ii. 14.) 
 
 t Quia ergo pueri communicaverunt carni et sanguini, et ipse simili- 
 ter participavit eisdem. (Heb. ii. 14.) Verbum caro factum cst et ha- 
 bitavit in nobis . . . plenum gratise et veritatis. (John i. 14.) 
 
 \ Inimicitias ponam inter te et mulierem, et semen tuum et semen 
 illius: ipsa conteret caput tuum. (Gen. iii. 15.) 
 
 Finis enim legis, Christus. (Rom. x. 4.)
 
 NECESSITY OF THE INCARNATION. 95 
 
 the great king, and each writes in anticipation a page of his 
 history ; for this history, in order to be believed, has need of 
 the testimony of all ages. 
 
 At the same time that God multiplied prodigies to prepare 
 the world for faith in the greatest of prodigies, the human race 
 multiplied and infinitely increased their disgraceful sufferings, 
 to justify the intervention of the supreme physician to the 
 blindest eye. The history of pagan nations, as well as that 
 of the Jewish nation, is the prelude to the Gospel. 
 
 Four thousand years had past after the fatal conversation 
 of Eve with the angel of darkness, when, in a poor dwelling 
 of the little city of Nazareth, an angel leaving the abode of 
 light, came to treat of our salvation with a young daughter 
 of Judah. By a woman our ruin began ; and to a woman 
 God reserved the beginning of our redemption. 
 
 Mary opposed to the pride, cupidity, and sensuality of the 
 first woman, the three contrary virtues. Her words impressed 
 with a profound love of humility, disinterestedness and pu- 
 rity,* announced the true mother of the living, a glorious title, 
 which was bestowed on Eve only in trust, even if it were not 
 cast at her in severest f derision. 
 
 Mary submitted, and immediately, by the power of the arm 
 of the Most High, which threw the celestial intelligences into 
 
 * Humility : at the very flattering salutation of the angel, Mary is 
 troubled. (Turbata est, &.C., Luke i. 29.) She was told that she \vasfull 
 of grace, and was to become the Mother of the Most High ; she an- 
 swered that she was only his servant, and sought in her lowliness alone, 
 the reason for the choice of the Lord. (Luke i. 38, 48.) She con- 
 cealed from her spouse her infinite dignity, at the risk of suffering the 
 most cruel indignity. (Matt. i. 19.) What heroic disinterestedness, 
 what love of purity, in the resolution to renounce the most glorious 
 throne of heaven next to that of God, rather than to expose her vir- 
 ginity ! (Quomodo fiet istud, &c.) (Luke i. 34.) 
 
 t Et vocavit Adam nomeri uxoris suse, Heva eo quod mater esset 
 cunctorum viventium. (Gen. iii. 20.)
 
 90 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 an eternal rapture, He whose majesty surpasses the immen- 
 sity of the heavens, He who holds in his hand the universe as 
 a grain of sand, enclosed himself in the womb of a virgin.* 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 OFFICE OF THE GOD-MAN. 
 
 As mediator between God and man, descending upon the 
 earth to overthrow the wall of division which excluded us 
 forever from the celestial country, the God-Man has a double 
 office to fill, one towards God, the other towards man. 
 
 To God, whose majesty has been grossly violated by the 
 contempt of man, a satisfaction must be made. What satis- 
 faction ? No other than the death of the guilty. 
 
 As we have already seen, death is the wages of sin, and it 
 is a law of unchangeable order, that the creature cannot 
 rebel against the Creator without introducing throughout his 
 being the elements of eternal death.f 
 
 The divine representative of humanity must then die ; and 
 this sacrifice, immeasurably increased by the innocence and 
 infinite dignity of the victim, forced from the Divine justice 
 these words which the eternal sufferings of the immense pos- 
 terity of Adam could never have obtained ; " Behold enough, 
 behold more than was needed." J The Word also, while 
 assuming the body that a divine hand had formed for him in 
 
 * Beata mater munere, 
 Cujus supernus artifex, 
 Mundum pugillo continens, 
 Ventris sub area clausus est. 
 
 (Hymn of the Office of the B. V. M.) 
 f See as above, ch. xxii. xxv. and xxvi. 
 J Ubiautemabundavitdeiictum.iuperabundavit gratia. (Rom. v. 20 )
 
 OFFICE OF THE GOD-MAN. 97 
 
 tTie bosom of Mary, said to the Father ; " The victims and 
 the offerings of men have nothing worthy of thy justice ; 
 but it will not be so with the body thou hast prepared for me.* 
 What was needed to prepare man for the divine alliance ? 
 Three things : 
 
 I. To establish in his mind and heart, with the living faith 
 of a God dying for us, the principle of all justice.f To in- 
 spire him at the same time with a great fear and a great love 
 of God, by manifesting to him in the depths of this mystery, 
 the whole of God's hatred of sin, and charity for man. To 
 bring before him an idea of the joys of heaven and the 
 terors of hell, by the extraordinary effort God has vouch- 
 safed to make, to put him in possession of the one, and pre- 
 serve him from the other. 
 
 II. It was necessary to confound his meanness, and teach 
 him by the most powerful examples of humility, poverty and 
 mortification, to destroy in himself the life of pride, cupidity 
 and sensuality, which he had received from Adam, a life 
 which would necessarily exclude him from the celestial 
 inheritance.! 
 
 III. It was necessary to remedy his extreme weakness by the 
 infusion of a new life, and rescue him from the curse which 
 oppresses the children of the old man, by incorporating him 
 with the new man, born on Calvary in holiness and justice. 
 
 Immense task, which would have overwhelmed all the 
 
 * Ideo ingrediens mundum dicit: Hostiam et oblationetn noluisti : 
 orpus autem aptasti mihi, &c. (Heb. x. 5.) 
 
 t The whole Christian doctrine, in fact, is contained in the know- 
 ledge of Jesus crucified; and St. Paul, commissioned to announce all 
 truth to the nations, rejoiced in knowing nothing else: JVon enim 
 judicavi me scire aliquid inter vos, nisi Jesum Christum, et hunc cru- 
 cifixum. (I. Cor. ii. 2.) 
 
 I Caro etsanguis regnum Dei possidere non possunt. (I. Cor. xv. 50.) 
 
 Induite novum hominem, qui secundum Deum creatus est in j'is- 
 titia et sanctitate veritatis. (Ephes. iv. 24.) 
 
 9
 
 98 T\'HE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 powers of heaven and earth, and which made the Man-God 
 himself tremble.* How should it commence? With sen- 
 sual men, it was necessary first to speak to the eye. We 
 shall therefore see the Saviour acting thirty years before 
 speaking,f and even then the word will always be subor- 
 dinate to speech. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 BIRTH OF THE COD-MAN. HIS PRIVATE AND PUBLIC LIFE. 
 
 THE son of Mary had he been born on a throne formed 
 of all the thrones of the universe, would have been none the 
 less a God annihilated.]; But man had too exalted an idea 
 of himself, too low a one of God, to be impressed by such 
 abasement. It is only reserved for the eye spiritualized by 
 faith, to perceive the greatest of distance between God and 
 men, between the all and nothingness. 
 
 To speak to the gross senses of man, to destroy at one 
 stroke pride and its two attendant vices, the Creator of the 
 universe was born in a stable, the only habitation open to the 
 poverty of his parents.^ There was no other cradle than a 
 manger for him who came to elevate man sunk to the level 
 of the brute. I It was in this depth of poverty and misery that 
 the shepherds, warned by heaven recognized God the Saviour. U 
 
 * Csepit pavere, et taedere. Mark xiv. 39.) 
 
 f Csepit Jesus facere, et docere. (Acts i. 1.) 
 
 J Semetipsum exinanivit. (Philipp. ii. 7.) 
 
 Non erat eis locus in diversorio. (Luke ii. 7.) 
 
 || Homo, cum in honore esset, non intellcxit : comparatus est jumen- 
 tis insipientibus, et similis factus est illis. (Ps. xlviii. 13.) 
 
 V Et hec vobis signuin : Invenietis infantem pannis involutum, et 
 positum in prsesepio. (Luke ii. 12.)
 
 HIS PRIVATE AND PUBLIC LIFE. 99 
 
 There is one thing above all others, revolting to pride and 
 which is yet at the foundation of the social order, it is the 
 sacrifice of self-will, is submission to God, and to all powei 
 which emanates from him. Jesus obeyed. In the womb of 
 his mother he obeyed the decree which summoned him to 
 Bethlehem to take his place on the registers of the Roman 
 magistrate, among the five hundred millions of the slaves of 
 Augustus. Scarcely born, he obeyed the law which demanded 
 his blood to flow.* He endured the hardships of a long 
 exile. Returning to Nazareth, he obeyed Mary in the offices 
 of a narrow household ; afterwards he followed Joseph to 
 his labor, and learned from him, whom men regarded as his 
 father, the art of making yokes and ploughs.f He even 
 submitted (wonderful effort of resignation !) to the powei 
 which Satan has received to tempt the children of men.| 
 
 After thirty years of a life which is contained in these four 
 words: He was subject to them,\\ he assembled around him 
 twelve poor artizans like himself to publish the good news. 
 What news? The time is accomplished; the kingdom of 
 God is al hand : renounce then, all earthly affections, through 
 penance; all received opinions, through failh.^ 
 
 To prevent an illusion concerning the nature of this king- 
 dom, he unveiled its awful legislation in the Sermon on the 
 Mount, 11! in which, exalting all that man prizes, overthrowing 
 all that he adores, he crushed to dust the three pillars of the 
 throne of Satan, pride, cupidity and sensuality. 
 
 Such a doctrine required the sanction of heaven, and the 
 teaching of example ; hence, during the three years which 
 
 * Circumcision, f St. Justin. 
 J St. Matthew, iv. 1. 
 Et erat subditus illis. (Luke ii. 51.) 
 
 || Quoniam implctum est tempus, ct appropinquavit regnum Dei: 
 paenitemini igitur, et credite Evangelio. (Mark i. 15.) 
 H St. Matthew, v.
 
 100 THE SOLUTION OF GUEAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 he employed in propagating it, he healed all manner of siclc- 
 ness and every infirmity among the people,* he called the dead 
 themselves to testify to it ; he led the poorest, humblest and 
 most dependent life, and gave his followers reason sometimes 
 to envy the foxes their holes, f 
 
 By means of his miracles and virtues, he induced a few dis- 
 ciples to listen to him, and occasionally arrested the attention 
 and admiration of the inconstant multitude ; but to make 
 men believe and follow him in the path which he opened, 
 another pulpit was required than the bare earth on the moun- 
 tain-side, or the turf of the wilderness. Besides, as he him- 
 self said, no person can come to him unless the father draw 
 him : J but before the father could diffuse over the barren 
 heart of man the abundant influences of his grace, the son 
 of man must shed the last drop of his blood. 
 
 Jesus was anointed king of heaven and earth, only on 
 condition of taking the cross for a throne ; and to bring the 
 universe to his feet, he must ascend it. 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 NECESSITY FOR THE SUFFERINGS OF THE GOD-MAN. 
 
 UNTIL the eve of his death, it was the sole mission of the 
 God-man to bear and sanctify the hard and painful yoke 
 which sin had cast upon the children of Adam, from the day 
 
 * Sanans omnem languorem, et omnem infirmitatem in populo' 
 (Matth. iv. 23.) 
 
 t St. Matthew, viii. 20. 
 
 J Nemo potest venire ad me, nisi Pater . . . traxerit eum. (John vi. 44.) 
 
 Et ego si exaltatus fuero a. terra, omnia traham ad me ipsum 
 (John xii. 32.)
 
 SUFFERINGS OF THE GOD-MAN. 101 
 
 of their coming out of their mother's womb, until the day of 
 their burial.* But here the scene is changed : we are no longer 
 to suffer the temporal punishment due to our crimes, but the 
 eternal penalty attached to them; it is hell with all its 
 horrors, for which the representative of humanity is to offer 
 an equivalent, and more than an equivalent to divine jus- 
 tice. 
 
 As we have said, hell is sin in all its blackness, experienced 
 in all its bitterness ; hell, is to be torn asunder in soul and 
 body ; it is to be cursed of God, cursed of all creatures ; it 
 is to become the sport of the most cruel of masters, Satan. 
 
 But is the son of God, the object of the eternal compla- 
 cency to be cursed of his Father! The Most-High trodden 
 under foot of Satan ! " Who could believe it ! " exclaimed, 
 three thousand years ago, a prophet describing this fearful 
 scene.j- 
 
 The hour came, when earth and hell, executing the decree 
 of heaven, exhibited to all ages what must be the punishment 
 of sin, even when protected by the majesty of a God. 
 
 Jesus, after having given the last pledge of his super- 
 abundant love\ to his disciples, one of whom betrayed and 
 the others abandoned him, went to the garden of Gethsemane. 
 There, the cup of sorrow, which until then he had not tasted, 
 offered him the depths of its suffocating dregs. Nature re- 
 belled, holiness turned aside with horror; but love, more 
 powerful than death, triumphed over all repugnance. Then 
 the iniquities of all men, from him who desecrated Eden, to 
 those who shall darken with crime the last hour of human 
 existence, came sweeping like a flood over the great soul of 
 Christ, and bore with it all the anguish of death, all the tor- 
 
 * Eccle. xl. 1. 
 
 t Quis credidit auditui nostro, &c. (Is. liii. 1, seq.) 
 J Cum dilexisset sues, qui erant in mundo, in finem dilexit eos 
 (John xiii. 1.) 
 
 9*
 
 102 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 nicnts of hell, except despair.* In agony, he prayed morn 
 fervently ; -j- but heaven, which only beheld in him our sins, 
 the object of its malediction,! was deaf. The tortures of the 
 mind, reacting upon the body, forced from it a bloody sweat. 
 If an angel came to sustain the victim, it was only because 
 the sacrifice was commencing. 
 
 Behold Judas with the satellites of the Pontiff; or rather, 
 according to the significant words of Pilate, concerning Jesus : 
 " Behold, in Jesus, man :" || man with his duplicity and his 
 hypocrisy. Let him receive the kiss of Judas, cries with 
 united voice heaven, earth and hell. 
 
 Here is man with his rebellion, his insane love of indepen- 
 dence, his hatred of the yoke of duty. Bind him, and drag 
 him through the streets of Jerusalem. 
 
 Here is man who, from the height of his pride, arrogates to 
 himself the right to judge and criticise everything, and who 
 presumptuously censures even heaven itself.TF Bring him be- 
 fore the tribunal ; subject him to the most humiliating and 
 absurd interrogations, and to the most iniquitous sentence. 
 
 Here is man who shrinks from the infliction, even the most 
 deserved, his heart boiling over with vengeance at the least 
 slight affront. Let the most unmerited scourging, by the 
 vilest hand, be inflicted on him. 
 
 Here is man with his exalted opinion of his own knowledge 
 and wisdom, with his excessive love of approbation and praise, 
 
 * Posuit Dominus in eo iniquitatem omnium nostrum. (Is. liii. 6.) 
 Circumdederunt me dolores mortis ; et torrentes iniquitatis oonturbave- 
 runt me. Dolores inferni circumdederunt me. (Ps. xvii. 5, 6.) 
 
 J Factus in agonia, prolixius orabat. (Luke xxii. 43.) 
 
 Factus pro nobis maledictum. (Gal. iii. 13.) 
 
 || Luke xxii. 44. 
 
 U Ecce homo. (John xix. 5.) 
 
 * Posuerunt in ccelum os suum ; et lingua eorum transivit in terra. 
 (Ps. Ixxii. 9.)
 
 SUFFERINGS OF THE GOD-MAN. 103 
 
 flattering himself that he knows everything, and is ignorant 
 of nothing. Cover his eyes, strike him, and ask him who has 
 done it. Adorn him afterwards with the badges of folly, and 
 let Herod with his court unite his jeers to the shouts of the 
 multitude.* 
 
 Here is man extremely jealous of the first rank, and re- 
 volving in his head various plans of self-aggrandizement; on 
 the throne or in the galleys, he must command, and see his 
 fellow-men at his feet. Search your prisons for the most in- 
 famous criminal, and let the public voice elevate him above 
 the Man. Encircle his head with a crown of thorns ; arm 
 his hands with a reed, wrap his shoulders in a purple rag, then 
 striking his head, and spitting on his face, bend the knee and 
 hail him king. 
 
 Here is man with this body, the consummate work of God's 
 hand, which he has polluted from head to foot by innumer- 
 able infamies, most of them in secret. Expose this naked 
 body in your public place, bind it to a pillar, and let the 
 scourge tear it till its bones are bare.f 
 
 Here is man, with his feet and hands still entire, and yet 
 full of abominations ; his mouth greedy of delicacies, his 
 tongue sailed with the venom of slander, his attachment to 
 earthly goods extreme, his aversion to suffering and death 
 strong, even when they are softened by the devotion of those 
 around him. Prepare a cross, nail to it his feet and hands, 
 give him gall and vinegar to drink, and before he expires by 
 the most cruel and ignominious death, between two criminals, 
 let him see his executioners dividing his garments, and the 
 assembled people insulting his sorrows. 
 
 * Et velaverunt eum, &c. (Luke xxii. G4.) Sprevit autem ilium 
 Herodes cum exercitu suo ; et illusit indutum veste alba. (Luke xxiii. 
 11.) 
 . f Dinumeraverunt omnia ossa mea. (Ps. xxi. IS.)
 
 104 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 DEATH OF THE SOD-MAX. MORAL EFFECT OF THIS EVENT. 
 
 IS CHRISTIANITY THE WORK OF MAN OR OF GOD ? 
 
 THE great sacrifice was drawing near its close, and the 
 old man expiring under the blows of divine wrath, gave place 
 to the new man. 
 
 In the great act which was to give birth to the children of 
 God, no man must take part. Hence Mary stood by the 
 cross, the nuptial couch of the new Adam, connecting him- 
 self by agonizing sufferings with the generation of the new 
 family. " Woman," said Jesus to her, showing her all Chris- 
 tians in the beloved disciple, " behold thy son ;" then he said 
 to the disciple : " Behold thy mother."* 
 
 " All is finished" then exclaimed the Redeemer, and utter- 
 ing a loud cry, he expired.-}- 
 
 All is finished: the effort which God made to unseal the 
 eyes of men, exhausted all the resources of eternal wisdom 
 and infinite love. If the sinner does not shudder at this ter- 
 rible blow of the right hand of the Lord, if he dares yet to 
 sport with crime, he can no longer allege his ignorance and 
 say : " I did not know that sin was so great an evil." 
 
 " If it has been thus with the green tree," according to the 
 simple and profound language of Jesus to the women of Je- 
 rusalem, " what will it be with the dry !"J That is, if the 
 innocence of the son of Mary, and the supreme majesty 
 which renders him equal to his Father, could not save him 
 from the united wrath of heaven, earth and hell, because in 
 
 * Stabant autem juxta crucem Jesu Mater ejus, &c. (John xix. 23.) 
 f John xix. 30. 
 
 % Si in virido ligno haec faciunt, in arido quid (let ? (Luke xxiii. 31.) 
 {5 Non rapinam arbitratus est esse se sequalein Deo. (Philipp. ii. C.)
 
 IS CHRISTIANITY OF MAN OR OF GOD ? 105 
 
 his ineffable tenderness he has condescended to put himself in 
 our place, what will then be our fate, unworthy creatures as 
 we are, corrupt from our birth, and our lives only a tissue of 
 iniquities ! What compassion can we then expect if, after 
 such a lesson, we still continue to sin ! Inexorable judgment 
 and devouring fire will be the inevitable portion of those who, 
 crushing under foot the Son of God and profaning the blood 
 of the new covenant, add to contempt of the law of God, 
 contempt of his unspeakable compassion for sinners.* 
 
 Such enormities surpass the limits of human folly. Let the 
 good news be published throughout the universe, that God 
 so loved the world, as to give his only begotten Son, and that 
 he hates sin so much that he has punished it without mercy in 
 his own Son, by whom it was only assumed ,-j- and henceforth 
 there will be seen in the universe none but unbelievers and 
 saints ; for how could one believe this and sin ! 
 
 To complete his work, the Saviour had then only to choose 
 the means best adapted to diffuse and confirm the great 
 tidings. Coming forth victorious from the tomb, he assem- 
 bled his disciples, who were dispersed by fear, and commanded 
 them to go and preach the gospel to all nations under the sun, 
 promising to be with them all days, even to the consumma- 
 tion of the world. 
 
 He clothed them with such authority, that incredulity would 
 be a folly and a crime.J To the power of enlightening and 
 convincing the mind of man, he added that of healing the 
 
 * Voluntarie enim peccantibus nobis post acceptam notitiam veritatis, 
 jam non relinquitur pro peccatis hostia, terribilis autem quaedam ex- 
 spectatio judicii, et ignis aemulatio . . . Qui filium Dei conculcaverit 
 et sanguinem Testament! pollutum duxerit, &c. (Heb. x. 26, seq.) 
 
 f Sic enim Deus dilexit mundum, ut Filium suum unigenitum daret. 
 (John iii. 16.) Qui etiam proprio Filio suo non pepercit. (Rom. viii. 32.) 
 
 J Matth. xxviii. 19, 20.) 
 
 Q.'ii vero non crediderit, condemnabitur. (Mark xvi. 16.)
 
 106 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 wounds and strengthening the weakness of the heart, by 
 giving him a new life. 
 
 We shall examine elsewhere,* the admirable constitution 
 of the evangelical ministry, and the wonderful efficacy of the 
 remedies that its founder bestowed upon it for the salvation 
 of the human race. 
 
 Let us now stop at these general facts with regard to 
 Christianity, facts common to all Christian societies, and let 
 us put this question : 
 
 Is Christianity an invention of man or of God ? 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII. 
 
 UNIFORM CHARACTER OF THE WORKS OF MAN. 
 
 MAN has been at work three thousand years. What has 
 he accomplished ? Nothing that satisfies him, nothing that 
 he has not himself undone. His creations are always want- 
 ing in truth, goodness, and beauty, and consequently are in- 
 capable of satisfying his three great desires of knowledge, 
 power, and pleasure. 
 
 I. They are not true. Man has vainly boasted of discov- 
 ering that fruitful, universal, fundamental truth, which, shed- 
 ding great light on the moral and physical world, explains 
 without difficulty our relations with God, our fellow-men and 
 nature, gives the fundamental reason for the divine, human 
 and material phenomena, and concentrates in its luminous 
 unity, religious, social and natural science. What has he 
 discovered ? Some few glimpses of truth, so feeble and so 
 uncertain, that they are soon extinguished in the thick dark- 
 ness of skepticism. 
 
 * In the Second Problem.
 
 UNIFORM WORKS OF MAN. 107 
 
 Review all the schools of philosophy, not Christian, from 
 the earlier Grecian to those which we see in our age spring- 
 ing up and dying out by hundreds ; may we not ask of them, 
 if there is any one truth whatever to be recognized among 
 them all ? How many contradictions concerning the Divine 
 Being ! What profound ignorance of man ! What pitiable 
 weakness concerning the highest questions of physical sci- 
 ence. Let those who have read with intelligent eyes the in- 
 numerable geological and physical systems of all ages, tell us 
 if they have not believed themselves listening to a circle of 
 Hottentots, reasoning on the construction and motion of a 
 watch or a musical box. 
 
 II. They are not good. How can those, who are ignorant 
 of the origin and destiny of man, conduct him to happiness ! 
 Aside from some beautiful maxims of morality taken from 
 ancient tradition, how much that is vile is to be found even 
 in the divine Plato. How much disgraceful groping in the 
 judicious author of the Tusculan questions! What stoical 
 pedantry in the would-be Christian Seneca! We do not 
 speak of the moralists of the eighteenth century, who saw 
 no other difference than that of habit between man and his dog. 
 
 Domestic and public social life being necessarily only the 
 realization of religious and moral doctrines, we can form an 
 idea of what this was, and what it still is among nations of 
 human training. Wo to the weak ! Is the cry which rises 
 from all families and all classes of society. 
 
 III. They are not beautiful. We will not dispute with the 
 human mind its progress in the useful and agreeable arts, 
 although it has been historically demonstrated that the great 
 achievements and inventions in the department of the beauti- 
 ful, must be referred back to the religious ages; but disgust 
 to life has always been in proportion to the efforts man has 
 made to embellish his terrestrial existence and multiply its 
 enjoyments. Suicide proves the truth of this assertion.
 
 103 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 Finally, falseness and incoherence, poverty and misery, 
 weariness and disgust, are the invariable results of the works 
 of man. To say that such an artizan has constructed Chris- 
 tianity, is like asserting that five or six Hurons, taken to Rome 
 as a spectacle, built the Basilica of St. Peter, sculptured the 
 Apollo Belvidere, painted the Transfiguration of Raphael 
 and the galleries of the Vatican. 
 
 What in fact is Christianity ? It is truth without error, 
 goodness, without a mixture of evil, and beauty without 
 defect ; all three however temporarily concealed by the veil 
 of faith. It has enlightened the world, and procured for it 
 all the blessings and enjoyments compatible with our state 
 of trial. Is it not obvious from this, that it is the creation or 
 rather the reflection of Him who is the All-True, the All- 
 Good, the All- Beautiful ! 
 
 But this must be proved, for ignorance will not credit it, 
 and ignorance in matters of religion is more common than is 
 generally believed. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 
 SUMMARY PROOF OF THE TRUTH AND DIVINITY OF 
 CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 FOR eighteen centuries Christianity has shown itself to 
 man in every aspect, fearing nothing so much as not to be 
 known.* Declaring deadly war as it has done upon all the 
 bad passions, it could not fail powerfully to excite human cu- 
 riosity. No doctrine has ever been examined with more care, 
 or been combatted with more power and variety of means. 
 
 Pagan Rome armed against it, during three centuries, her 
 
 * Unumgestitinterdum.neignoratadamnetur. (Tertull. Jlpologet. I.)
 
 SUMMARY PROOF OF CHRISTIANITY. 109 
 
 sophists, magistrates and executioners. Rome having pros- 
 trated herself with her emperors at the foot of the cross, heresy 
 at first insolently raised its head, and successively attacked 
 every dogma. Supported by sovereign power, she also united 
 the sword to sophistry. Yet heresy slept during the middle 
 ages ? The Rationalism of the university succeeded to it and 
 submitted all truths to the hammer of logic. In the sixteenth 
 century the battle was fought at the very foundations of 
 Christian society, and Protestantism made the strongest effort 
 to uproot this mighty tree. 
 
 Finally, the philosophy of the last century, concentrating 
 in the heart of its leader, all its hatred against the religion of 
 Christ, commenced the most skilful, general, long and furious 
 attack that it is possible to conceive. Theology, philosophy, 
 jurisprudence, history, chronology, archeology, geography, 
 philology, literature, natural philosophy, mathematics, astro- 
 nomy, geology, chemistry, and even the fine arts, were all 
 arrayed against the so-called work of fanaticism and super- 
 stition. Reasoning, discussion, ridicule, calumny, raillery 
 and insult were employed. Whatever was most specious in 
 science and erudition, most seducing in elegance, most wither- 
 ing in satire, most low and obscene in the imagination of the 
 novelist, everything was simultaneously put in use to sever 
 with eternal contempt and ridicule the faith, morality, prac- 
 tices, government, institutions and history of Christianity. 
 
 A great advantage was given to the assailants, by the fact 
 that the Christian camp defended by many brave spirits, num- 
 bered very few heroes. Her Sampson had disappeared with 
 the seventeenth century, and those who were to raise their 
 clubs, were waiting for the dawn of the nineteenth. Here 
 and there were seen, respectable writers and learned apo- 
 logists, very skilful in unveiling a sophism, and capable of 
 illustrating truth ; but none were found who could hurl the 
 thunderbolt. 
 
 10
 
 110 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 Material force lent its aid to philosophy. The persecuting 
 decrees of rebellious Parliaments were succeeded by the spo- 
 liating and schismatic decrees of the Constituent Assembly. 
 The Legislative Assembly inflicted banishment, then aided by 
 an army of executioners, they murdered, tortured and dis- 
 embowelled the priests, and bore their hearts through the 
 streets singing ; " There is no festival where hearts are want- 
 ing"* The Convention came with the guillotine, the bullet, 
 the drowning and hammer of the destroyers. The Directory 
 caused the Pope to die in chains, sent the priests to perish in 
 Guiana, and pensioned Parry for his infernal rhymes. 
 
 What do we see now? Paganism has disappeared witL 
 her sophists and her executioners. Heresies one after another 
 have been buried in the dust with their doctrines of a day, 
 and the violent edicts of their propagators. The Rationalism 
 of the schools has disappeared in the void of its thoughts 
 and the clouds of its logic. Protestantism is dying of imbe- 
 cility, and sees those of her children who are strong enough 
 to resist the torrent of Naturalism, delicate enough to retreat 
 before the mire of Methodism, returning back to Rome. 
 The philosophy of Voltaire is no longer in fashion. Entirely 
 stupified since the Jacobins have gorged it with blood, it has 
 retired with them into the dens of masonry. Its present 
 occupation is to exhume from the literary rubbish of the last 
 century, some vile fragments of irreligion and obscenitj 1 , to 
 rave in low journals against the party of the priesthood, and 
 to lie in wait in the street for an opportunity to break a cross, 
 or plunder a church. 
 
 Christianity stands erect in the midst of the tombs of its 
 enemies, with its doctrines, its annals, its worship, its inde- 
 structible constitution. It is seated in the high places of our 
 capitals, and displaying boldly its sacred books over which 
 the ink of heresy and phlosophy has flowed in torrents with- 
 
 * See Chateaubriand, Genie du Christianisme, liv. iv. ch. 8.
 
 CHARACTER OF TRUTH. Ill 
 
 out effacing a syllable, it always asks with its divine founder; 
 " Which of you shall convict me of sin?"* and in the 
 immense and learned audience which throngs Notre Dame 
 and Saint Sulpice, not a man dares to accept the challenge. 
 
 We must then agree that Christianity is faultless ; for if it 
 contained an error, it has excited the human mind too much 
 to allow it to escape detection, it has dealt too hardly with 
 the passions to be pardoned. 
 
 It is in vain that man and time are leagued together to 
 destroy it : it is then neither the work of man nor of time. 
 
 But let us enter into some details. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV. 
 
 CHARACTER OF TRUTH. 
 
 THE characteristic of truth is its harmony with itself and 
 with all that is, for a very simple reason, but one that is little 
 comprehended, that truth is that which is. 
 
 Now Christianity possesses, in an eminent degree this cha- 
 racteristic of truth. Harmonious in itself, it harmonizes with 
 everything else. Nothing is foreign to it. It is the central 
 truth around which other truths must revolve under penalty 
 of becoming false ; { it is the universal phenomenon which 
 alone explains other phenomena. Let us proceed to show 
 the intrinsic harmony of the Christian system. 
 
 * Quis ex vobis arguet me de peccato ? (John viii. 46.) 
 ( Error is nothing and can be nothing but a truth displaced, detach- 
 ed from its principle, erratic.
 
 112 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXV. 
 
 DIVINITY OF THE BIBLE, PROVED BY ITS UNITY. 
 
 THE Bible, as every one knows, is the great depository o) 
 the Christian doctrines. The most eloquent pens, even among 
 skeptics, have celebrated the divine power which shines forth 
 from this wonderful book, that has conquered the world by 
 condemning the world.* 
 
 One man, overwhelmed by the majesty of the Scriptures, 
 concludes that the inventor of the Gospel would be more re- 
 markable than its hero.]- 
 
 Another asks, from whence does the Bible receive that in- 
 exhaustible wealth of knowledge and feeling which prevents 
 us from ever being weary of reading it ; and the charm which 
 increases as we read it again, while the most beautiful books 
 that come forth from the hand of man, lose their interest in 
 proportion as we study them. J 
 
 The latter asks how the sacred writers have freed them- 
 selves from all narrow egotism, and are only animated with 
 the desire of glorifying God and instructing men ; how they 
 have chosen expressions so simple and popular, when an- 
 nouncing such sublime and magnificent facts concerning the 
 Divine Being. " Certainly," adds he, " if these learned men 
 were like others, they would express themselves more nobly, 
 having minds adequate to the comprehension of things so great, 
 or their thoughts would be more common, not having minds 
 capable of expressing themselves in a more elevated manner." 
 
 * La Harpe, Discours sur FEsprit dfs Livres Saints. 
 \ J. J. Rousseau. 
 
 { Bogue, Essai sur la divine autoriti du JVouveau Testament, 
 ch. ii. sect. v. 
 Abbadie, Traiti de la veril&de la Religion chrttienne, sec. iii. ch. 2
 
 DIVINITY OF THE BIBLE. 113 
 
 The former is astonished that in the same books, where the 
 highest and purest ideas of the Divinity are found without any 
 alloy, in books filled with the most profound reverence for 
 God, and the most religious fear of God, the Most High is 
 represented as treating man like a friend, entering into dis- 
 cussion with him as with an equal, and yet the veneration and 
 submission of man are never weakened by so extraordinary an 
 intercourse; " This is for me," he says, "a moral demonstra- 
 tion of the Divine inspiration, and should be, for every man 
 of sense and sincerity, at least a subject of examination and 
 reflection." * 
 
 Another is justly struck with the astonishing difference of 
 style which prevails in the two Testaments, and discovers in 
 them a naturally divine harmony between the language and 
 the facts.f But among all the characteristics of a super- 
 human origin which the Bible presents, there is none more 
 manifest than its unity. 
 
 The Bible is composed of seventy-two books, by nearly 
 forty different authors, the first of whom preceded the last by 
 at least fifteen centuries. These writers widely separated 
 from each other by time, place, and condition ; some reared 
 
 * La Harpe, Discourse quoted above. 
 
 \ In the prophets there is something ardent and impassioned, as it 
 were a laboring with desire to attain a good which they do not possess, 
 and after which all their soul aspires : they invoke it in the accents of 
 love and hope ; they demand of the future what is to save the world ; 
 they soar above to seek it; they ascend to the highest heaven where 
 the Most High dwells ... In the gospel, there is the calmness of pos- 
 session, the rapturous peace which follows a vast desire satisfied, the 
 tranquil serenity of heaven itself . . . Take any man whatever : let 
 him relate that event, so long the object of all desires, the impenetrable 
 mystery of mercy and justice; his language will be imposing, sublime, 
 and affecting. Read the gospel: " At this time there went forth a de- 
 cree from Cesar Augustus, &c." (Luke ii. 1 ) Lamennais ; Essai sur 
 ^Indifference, ch. xxxii. 
 
 10*
 
 114 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 in the palaces of kings, others in the courts of a temple, 
 others in the cabin of a shepherd or a fisherman, have chosen 
 the most vast and elevated subjects that can be presented to 
 human thought, God, man, the universe ; but each has treated 
 it under a different point of view, and in a manner peculiar to 
 himself. 
 
 Some, occupying themselves with the past and the present, 
 have related in general or particular narratives, Divine and 
 human actions ; others, penetrating into the future, have an- 
 nounced the designs of God concerning the children of men, 
 and foretold the destinies of nations and individuals. The 
 latter have sung in poetry of consummate beauty,* the great- 
 ness of God and the misery of man. The former have given 
 rules of conduct, for all conditions, ages, and circumstances 
 of life. The same author often appears as historian, poet, 
 prophet and moralist. 
 
 And yet in this immense body of facts collected by so 
 many pens, in this world of thought and feeling proceeding 
 from such a variety of minds, criticism the most minute, and 
 often the most malevolent, has been seeking, for eighteen 
 hundred years in vain, for a single contradiction. More than 
 once the skeptic has flattered himself that he could convict 
 our sacred Books of discrepancies and falsehood ; more than 
 once the learned and pious interpreter has been alarmed by 
 certain apparent incongruities : but a more extensive and pro- 
 found examination of the sacred text has destroyed the triumph 
 of the one and the terror of the other, and nothing has as 
 yet been demonstrated but the ignorance of the censors of 
 the Bible. 
 
 * The most distinguished scholar of modern times has said that " true 
 poets will certainly never dispute with the Holy Spirit, the palm of 
 poetic genius," and he has sufficiently proved it, (La Harpc, Discours 
 sur VEsprit des Livrcs saints, 2e. part. Dr. South has demonstrated 
 the same proposition in his beautiful book, DC Sacra pocsi Hcbrccorum.
 
 DIVINITY OF THE BIBLE. 115 
 
 This perfect harmony of the sacred writers is a phenomenon 
 humanly inexplicable. Would you, in order to explain it, 
 diminish the number of sacred authors ? Will you say with 
 Voltaire, that three quarters at least of the Old Testament 
 are the work of Edras, and does not go back farther than the 
 captivity of Babylon. Besides the absurdities you will be 
 obliged to accept by contradicting, on so fundamental a point 
 the common fault of the Jews and Samaritans ; * besides the 
 manifest violence done to the first laws of criticism, by at- 
 tributing to the same author several productions so very unlike, 
 whom could you persuade that, of all known writers, Esdras 
 alone has escaped the anathema which falls upon every pro- 
 lific pen : Errors are proportioned to the number of writings 1 \ 
 
 Will it be said that there was concert among these writers, 
 and that the last in the order of time have blindly followed 
 the first? Their number, their distance in the scale of time 
 and society, their evident character of originality, and the 
 diversity of matters they treat, preclude necessarily all idea 
 of collusion. Besides how are we to explain in these men a 
 self renunciation so entire, as to allow them to place them- 
 selves in the train of each other. How could they have suf- 
 ficiently understood each other not to clash in anything, when 
 among the innumerable commentators they have had, we do 
 not find two who agree in every thing, and not one who does 
 not contradict himself. 
 
 * The powerful antagonism which always prevailed between the Jews 
 properly so called, and the tribes which, under Roboam, formed the 
 kingdom of Samaria, evidently proves that the five books of Moses, the 
 only ones which the Samaritans receive, are anterior to the schism of 
 the ten tribes, and go back consequently to more than ten centuries be- 
 fore the captivity of Babylon. We find, in the 19th volume of the 
 Annales des Voyages, a curious dissertation of M. Sylvestre de Sacy, 
 upon the Pentateuqued.es Samaritains, and the remains of that pecu- 
 liar nation. (See Annales de Philosophic Chretienne, &c. t. iv. p. 241.) 
 
 t In multiloquio non deerit peccatum. (Prov. x. 19.)
 
 116 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 Whatever attempt may be made to explain away this nv 
 racle, it will return as soon as it is rejected. There is bu 
 one possible explanation : The Bible is the work of one arm 
 the same Spirit, employing in succession forty different scribes, 
 and dictating to each whatever it sees jit.* 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI. 
 
 DIVIXE HARMONY OF THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM COXSIDERD 
 IX ITSELF. 
 
 THE attentive reader must have already observed that all 
 the Christian doctrines which have hitherto been explained 
 are naturally linked together. A single article cannot be 
 taken away without disturbing the others. 
 
 The Bible shows us, in the first place, God drawing the 
 universe from nothing. To give a head to the material uni- 
 verse, he created man in his own image and likeness. These 
 expressions and the complacency with which he fashions this 
 work, announce to us the nobility of the youngest of created 
 beings, and the high destiny which awaits him. 
 
 Man must be tested, before God can say to him : " I recog- 
 nize thee for my son, come, share my throne." The leader 
 of the rebellion which had before taken place among the elder 
 members of the family, creeps into Eden. Woman seduced, 
 leads man astray. Sin begins its work of ignominy and 
 death.f God intervenes, and in the twenty-four verses of the 
 third chapter of Genesis, is found the reason for all the divine 
 and human facts which will succeed each other until the " It 
 
 * Haec autem omnia operatur unus atque idem Spiritus, dividens sin 
 gulis prout vult (I. Cor. xii. 11.) 
 
 t Et aperti sunt oculi amborum, &c. (Gen. iii. 9.)
 
 DIVINE HARMONY. 117 
 
 is finished" of Calvary, and from thence onward, until these 
 words which will close the series of ages : " Come ye blessed 
 of my Father, &c. ; go ye cursed into everlasting fire," &c. 
 
 In this we see the extreme perversity of Satan, and the 
 fatal, though divinely restrained influence which he has 
 acquired over the inhabitants of the earth.* We see in it 
 the incredible weakness of man and the ruinous action of sin. 
 We see the flaming sword of God's justice^ shining, and the 
 light of his infinite compassion dawriing.j 
 
 Man being far from God, and God being occupied with 
 bringing him back to himself, everything in the progress of hu- 
 manity and in the divine government, is co-ordinate with these 
 two principles of degradation and restoration. On one side 
 the progress of error and crime ; on the other an always 
 increasing manifestation of light and holiness, until the 
 uncreated light and the Holiest of the Holy, assumed hu- 
 manity and ushered in the great day. 
 
 Then God becomes better known ; at first in his essence, 
 The divine personalities hardly seen in the act of creation, 
 which was common to all three are clearly revealed in the 
 work of the redemption, by a distinct action. God is better 
 known in his works and his designs concerning the children 
 of men. His partiality towards the Jews in the government 
 of the world, the singularity of the laws and destinies of this 
 people is explained. The implacable enmity of God againsf 
 sin, his unspeakable compassion for the sinner, before mani- 
 fested by so many chastisements and so many favors, were 
 exhibited with amazing power on Calvary. 
 
 Man also must know himself. He has often asked this 
 question without being able to resolve it ; " WHAT AM 1 ? ' 
 
 * Et tu insidiaberis calcaneo ejus. (Gen. iii. ]5.) 
 f Flammeum gladium. (Gen. iii. 24.) 
 \ Inimicitias ponain. (Gen. iii. 15.) 
 Faciamus honinem, &c. (Gen. i. 26.)
 
 118 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 Pilate when he presented Jesus to him, in the lowest degree 
 of degradation and about to suffer the most cruel death, 
 answered him ; " Behold what thou art and what thou merit- 
 est." The crucified One, having come forth from the tomb, 
 and seated at the right hand of the Father in the midst of 
 his glory, said to him also : " Behold what thou canst become, 
 if thou consentest to follow me." Can he still say that he 
 has seen neither heaven which is promised to him, nor hell 
 with which he is threatened ? The cross is before him to aid 
 him in measuring with perfect exactness the infinite height of 
 the throne promised to his obedience, and the no less deep 
 dungeons destined for the punishment of his rebellion. 
 
 The admirable harmony which exists between the dogmas 
 and facts of Christianity, (for Christianity is entirely historical) 
 exists also between its dogmas and its morality, and leads 
 back all parts of the latter to unity. The moral precepts 
 come forth from the doctrine, as branches from their trunk, 
 and among all its shoots not one parasite is found. 
 
 Since union with God is our final end, it is natural that our 
 intellect should be united to the thoughts of the divine intel- 
 lect by faith, and that our heart should be drawn towards the 
 superior good, by hope and love. Charity, who when the 
 clear view and possession of God shall have taken the place 
 of Faith and Hope must be the foundation of the Christian 
 Decalogue, will alone survive her two elder sisters : hence all 
 the prescriptions of the latter turn upon the love of God and 
 our neighbor, and in the infinity of moral sentences which the 
 Bible contains, there is not one which does not tend to 
 detach man from the earth, and make him walk in peace 
 towards God.* 
 
 Morality in the new law, follows in exact proportion the 
 developments of the doctrine. The evangelical counsels 
 
 * Plenitude ergo legis est dilectio. (Rom. xiii. 10.)
 
 DIVINE HARMONY. 119 
 
 themselves are not an innovation, but the perfection of the 
 ancient precepts : " Think not," said Jesus Christ, " that 1 
 come to do away with the law or the prophets : far from that, 
 I come to fulfil them" * 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVII. 
 
 CONTINUATION. OTHER INTERNAL PROOFS OF THE DIVINE 
 
 ORIGIN OF THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM. 
 
 I WOULD ask again of every man of sense, if such a har- 
 mony in the combination of the most vast and profound sys- 
 tem, among writers pursuing their labors at so great a dis- 
 tance from each other, is not the greatest prodigy of the 
 moral order? 
 
 The world has never yet seen two philosophers coming 
 forth from the same school, laboring side by side upon the 
 same subject who have written two pages which do not con- 
 tradict each other. Still farther, among the number of great 
 writers, there are few who are constantly faithful to their 
 principles, and he is always the most logical who has the 
 fewest contradictions. And here are forty, who, without the 
 intervention of God, have had marvellous skill in composing 
 an immense collection of histories and poetry, and of moral 
 and dogmatic philosophy, in which the human mind for nearly 
 two thousand years has vainly been seeking to detect an 
 error ! But this is the Basilica of the Vatican, this is Rome 
 with its master-pieces of art, built by some Hurons equipped 
 with their modern hatchets and their knives of stone, and 
 each working apart. 
 
 Among a thousand proofs of the divine assistance, see how 
 
 * Matth v. 17.
 
 120 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 successfully the sacred writers have constantly avoided the 
 numerous rocks, against which all human logic lias been 
 wrecked. They everywhere show us God as the Universal 
 Being, He who alone is, without falling in a single instance into 
 pantheism. It is God who effects all things in us, who gives 
 life and motion both to our organs and to our superior facul- 
 ties : there is no good thought, no right intention that does not 
 come from Him ; * and yet human liberty is entirely preserved. 
 
 Philosophy has never been able to address man in language 
 adapted to his wants. Sometimes it swells his pride, and leads 
 him into presumption by the exaggerated praises and the too 
 good opinion that it gives him of himself, sometimes it debases 
 and disgusts him by the sternness and bitterness of its cen- 
 sures. The Bible, on the contrary, shows man his excessive 
 weakness, and his extreme corruption, but always without 
 despising, degrading or crushing him. If it humbles him 
 so far as to recognize that of himself he is nothing, it is in 
 order to raise him to God. In fact it describes us as we are, 
 escaped from nonentity and destined to reign in heaven. 
 
 In its morality there is no exaggeration. If in some places 
 counsels seem confounded with precepts, in others they are 
 carefully distinguished. 
 
 In the deadly war which the Gospel wages against pride, 
 it would have been natural that it should seek to crush hu- 
 man personality as the sophists of India and the Christian 
 Quietists have done. "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God 
 with thy whole heart, with thy whole soul, and with thy 
 whole mind : " f does this first precept leave room for the love 
 
 In ipso enim vivimus, et movemur, etsumus. (Acts xvii. 28.) Non 
 quod sufficientes simus cogitare aliquid a nobis, &c. (II. Cor. iii. 5.) 
 Deus est enim, qui operatur in vobis et vclle, et perficire, pro bona 
 voluntate. (Philipp. ii. 13.) 
 
 t This precept which includes all Christian morality, is in itself a 
 true miracle. It commands in truth, the most just and legitimate sen-
 
 HARMONY OF CHRISTIANITY WITH MAN. 121 
 
 of self? docs it not annihilate all self-seeking? Besides it 
 contains the dogma which teaches that man, having received 
 everything from God, and possessing in his own right only 
 nonentity, must forget himself totally in order to love God 
 alone. Yet the Evangelists avoid this logically inevitable 
 sophism, and they sanctify that legitimate source of self-love 
 which the Creator has placed within us by subjecting it to 
 divine love. While they exhort us to love God on account 
 of his unspeakable goodness, they still more frequently invite 
 us to it by the allurement of the celestial rewards. 
 
 Tell me who has prevented the fishermen of Nazareth from 
 falling upon that keen edged blade, against which the swan 
 of Cambray stumbled and the eagle of Meaux wavered! 
 Where shall we find God if not here. 
 
 Let us pass on to the external harmony of Christianity. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVIII. 
 
 PROFOUND HARMONY OF CHRISTIANITY WITH MAX. THE 
 
 ONLY SOURCE OF INCREDULITY. 
 
 WE have already shown that Christianity is in wonderful 
 harmony with man. What we have laid down in regard to 
 its doctrine concerning the origin and destiny of man, has 
 been drawn less from the Bible than from the depths of our 
 nature. 
 
 There is not a principle of reason which is not allied to a 
 
 thnents for (what is more worthy of love than God !) but this sentiment 
 is at the same time the most extraordinary, the most foreign to the 
 heart of man, (what is less loved than God !) It is not man who pro- 
 cribed this. 
 
 * I. Peter ii. 11. 
 
 11
 
 122 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 religious truth ; there is not a fibre in our heart, which doc? 
 not send forth a Christian sound, when touched by a skilful 
 hand. 
 
 The most profound mysteries of religion find their impress 
 in us. We cannot reject them without denying ourselves. 
 
 The sin of Adam lives yet in the human heart, and inces- 
 santly foments in it the conspiracy of the flesh against the spirit. 
 
 The divine Trinity is faithfully reproduced in the three 
 faculties, really distinct from each other, which compose the 
 indivisible unity of the Soul ! * 
 
 The existence of the God-man, that is to say, the union of 
 a divine person with our nature, finds its analegy in the no 
 less mysterious union of the soul with the body, which pro- 
 duces also the intelligent animal. 
 
 We may well say to unbelievers, with the prophet : " Oh 
 Fools, who cannot believe, retnrn to your own hearts." 
 
 Man is naturally a Christian. It is also a very remarkable 
 fact, but established by innumerable experiments that unbe- 
 lievers to whom the Christian creed is proposed for the first 
 time, admit it with extreme facility. Those mysteries which 
 our triflers esteem so revolting to their reason appear to them 
 so natural, that they do not even demand the proof of them. 
 It is only when the painful and austere theory of duty is pre- 
 sented to them, that they recoil, and even then they will render 
 homage to the evangelical doctrine. Your religion is beauti- 
 ful, and good, and of more value than ours ; but " the stomach 
 
 * For the phychologically human trinity, composed hitherto of 
 thoughts or of being, of knoicledge and of love, a contemporaneous 
 thinker has judged it advisable to substitute sentiment, imagination, 
 and reason, (La Thiorle de l\/lme, &c., by J. C. Docteur, published at 
 first at Nancy, and re-printed at Moutiers, 1841.) The arrogant tone 
 of the author and certain extravagant assertions might give offence ; but 
 it cannot be denied that his sentiment presents, with all tlje treasures 
 of a brilliant imagination, a great fund of reason, 
 
 f Rcdite, praevaricatores., ad cor. (Is. xlyi. 8.)
 
 REALITY OF CHRISTIANITY. 123 
 
 must be filled," answers the gluttonous Brahmin to the mis- 
 sionary.* " How can you require of me to keep to otu 
 wife?" answered the voluptuous Asiatic. "How can yo 
 command me to forgive my enemies and those of my tribe ? * 
 says the ferocious savage. 
 
 The great and sole enemies of Christianity are the bad 
 passions, " Rid yourself of your passions, and you will 
 believe," Paschal has said. 
 
 Is this doubted ? When does faith desert the heart ? 
 When the passions begin their tumult in it When does it 
 return ? When old age or the presence of death restores its 
 calmness. A man never attacks the Creed until he has made 
 a breach in the Decalogue. 
 
 Finally, and this is decisive, I could show you a multitude 
 of unbelievers, of sound mind, who became Christians at the 
 hour of death, and others more obstinate who at least hesi- 
 tated. Show me one Christian who became an infidel at this 
 formidable moment, or who has thought of putting to himself 
 the question : "Have I done well to believe." 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIX. 
 
 HISTORICAL REALITY OF CHRISTIANITY. GERMAN COMMEN- 
 TATORS. NATURALISTS. MYTHOLOGUES. STRAUSS. 
 
 BUT may not Christianity be a wisely constructed Utopia, 
 a romance well invented to captivate the mind and heart, and 
 which has no better pretention to be true than that it is not 
 wholly false. Are the marvellous events upon which it is 
 
 * This is the favorite expression of the Brahmins, a cast whose ver- 
 acity equals their duplicity, (See Mceurs, Institutions et Cirlmonies des 
 peuples de Flndr, by M. Dubois, vol. I. p. 334.)
 
 124 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 founded, ingenious dreams, bold transformations of natura* 
 facts, which we owe to an enthusiastic credulity or to the 
 warmth of oriental brains ; or are they historical realities ? 
 In a word, is Christianity an Arabian tale, a myth or a 
 history ? 
 
 Senseless question! You who ask it, endeavor to shake 
 this historical Colossus which begins with the words : " In the 
 beginning God created the heaven and the earth," and finishes 
 with the Acts of the Apostles ; a Colossus whose foundation 
 underlies everywhere at different depths, the historico fabu- 
 lous structures of antiquity, and around which all modern 
 history gravitates ! 
 
 There are, however, men to be met with, or beings at least 
 who call themselves such, who have not shrunk from this 
 more than Titanic enterprize. I will say nothing of the de- 
 ceased M. Dupuis and his entirely deceased extravagances. 
 Peace to buried absurdities so long as we have living ones ! 
 
 I wish to speak of the German Commentators, some of 
 them naturalists, and others mythologues, who see nothing in 
 the Bible but natural facts in oriental clothing, or learned myths. 
 
 According to the former, nothing is more simple than the 
 recital of the sacred writers, even in the most extraordinary 
 particulars, when they are reduced to their just value. For 
 example. The tree of good and evil, about which so much 
 noise has been made, was only a poisonous plant, a tree bear- 
 ing hurtful fruits, probably a poisonous apple-tree, under the 
 shade of which the first man and woman were so unfortunate 
 as to fall asleep. The voice which sounded on Sinai, in the 
 midst of thunders and lightnings and terrified the Hebrews, 
 was the voice of Moses, who by an instrument availed him- 
 self of a great storm to harangue his followers. The fire 
 which surrounded the summit of the mountain for forty days, 
 was either a volcanic eruption, or the brazier at which the 
 skilful legislator warmed his benumbed fingers, while he was
 
 REALITY OF CHRISTIANITY. 125 
 
 writing his code of laws. If his countenance appeared 
 radiant to the people, it was because he came out of a cloud 
 charged with electricity. 
 
 Let us pass on to the New Testament. The royal magi 
 with their offerings were simply travelling merchants, who 
 brought some small copper coins to the child at Bethlehem. 
 The star was the lantern of the domestic who conducted 
 them. The angels who ministered to our Lord after the 
 temptation in the wilderness, were Arabs who were passing 
 by, supplied with provisions. When it is said that Jesus 
 walked upon the sea and calmed the tempest, it is to be 
 understood that he swam and managed a rudder skilfully. 
 When he fed the five hundred in the wilderness, it must be 
 supposed that he had prepared there, magazines of provisions, 
 or that he politely invited his audience to eat the bread which 
 each one had in his pocket. Would you know how he per- 
 suaded his disciples that he ascended into heaven ? He led 
 them to a mountain covered with thick fog, where, after some 
 parting words, he left these good people, and escaped by 
 another way. How did these imagine that they had received 
 the Holy Spirit? A violent gale of wind having rent the 
 house where they were assembled, fear made them see the 
 stars, and disturbed their brain. 
 
 This is a slight specimen of the ingenious subtleties, by 
 which the naturalistic theologians of Germany have succeeded 
 in giving us a sacred history, a Bible, without God, without 
 angels, without devils, and without miracles.* 
 
 * He who wishes to form an idea of the principles of the Naturalistic 
 interpretation, without being condemned to read the long and weari- 
 some productions of Gabler, Bauer, Daub, Semler, Griesbach, Weg- 
 scheider, &c., may satisfy himself by reading the Preface and the 
 Observations, with which Christopher Frederic Ammon has enriched 
 the fifth edition, of the already very naturalistic work of the celebrated 
 Ernest! : Institutio Interpretis. JVovi Testamenti, Leipsic, 1809. 
 
 11*
 
 . 20 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 Their comrades, the mythologues, ridicule this mode of dis- 
 secting the Bible, and think it more expedient to see in the 
 two Testaments only a crude collection of allegorical rhapso- 
 dies, tacked together in succession, and in which it is as im- 
 possible to discover historical truth as in the Iliad and Odyssey 
 of Homer, or the metamorphoses of Ovid. 
 
 Dr. David Frederick Strauss who had seen all the historical 
 personages of the Old Testament, from Jehovah to the last 
 of the prophets, fall successively under the blows of his pre- 
 decessors in biblical mythology, wished to complete so fine 
 an undertaking, by giving to the world the whole mythology 
 of the Gospel in his Life of Jesus.* The evangelical history 
 according to him, contains nothing really true but certain 
 particulars of the life and doctrine of a pretender to the title 
 of Messiah, particulars to which the disciples of this impostor 
 added all the Scriptures and Jewish traditions afforded them 
 relative to the personage he wished to represent. 
 
 Finally, the naturalistic commentators consider the first 
 disciples of Moses and Jesus as imbecile persons, sunk in the 
 lowest degree of idiocy ; the mythologues make them to be 
 both fools and knaves. 
 
 The two systems, as it will be seen, have this advantage, 
 that they destroy with one blow, the disagreeable morality 
 of the Gospel. It remains now to be explained how fools 
 and knaves have been heroic enough to allow themselves to be 
 stoned, burned, crucified and beheaded ; how they have been 
 dexterous enough to entrap the most reasonable and enlight- 
 ened classes of the world, and in fact all classes ; how they 
 have been enabled to indoctrinate their first disciples so tho- 
 roughly, that Ignatius sighed after the lions, Polycarp went 
 
 * Printed at first in 1833, and re-printed for the third time in 1S3S. 
 See a very remarkable article of M. Edgard Quinet, (Revue dfs Dciu: 
 J\fondcs, Dec. 1st, 1838,) on that infamous production, and on the causes 
 which have prepared its introduction upon the theatre of German 
 Theology.
 
 REALITY OF CHRISTIANITY. 127 
 
 cheerfully to the funeral pile, Justin, Irenaeus and Cyprian 
 sealed their learned pages with their blood, and Tertullian 
 wrote tranquilly his immortal Apology under the axe of the 
 executioner ; how among the innumerable Christians who 
 from the second century filled all parts of the empire except 
 the temples of the false gods,* there were found many mil- 
 lions who gave themselves up to death in order to sustain the 
 labors of these fools and liars ; in short, how this gross 
 imposture could have met with so many sublime defenders, 
 from the first of the Holy Fathers to the present time. 
 
 " I see you are much embarrassed," replied Strauss ; " do 
 you not know that the true interpretation goes no farther back 
 than to Gabler in 1792, f and that without the labors of 
 Eichorn, Bauer, Daub, Herder, Neander, Hegel, Schleier- 
 macher, De Wette, Vatke, Bohlen, Lengerke, &c., reason and 
 good sense would never have penetrated into Christian 
 creeds!" But we answer, whoever values his title of reason- 
 able would reply : " Strauss evidently takes advantage of the 
 permission to rave which the schools beyond the Rhine that 
 have sprung from the pure reason of Kant arrogate to them- 
 selves:" this is in truth pride carried to the transcendental 
 degree of folly. Among a people not wholly brutalized, the 
 author of so violent an outrage upon the two hundred and 
 sixty millions of Christians who cover the globe, and the nine 
 thousand millions at least who have preceded us, instead of 
 finding a chain of theology,| would have been attached by 
 the hand of the executioner to the manger of the first stable, 
 with the leaves of his book for a litter, or put into a straight 
 jacket in an insane hospital. 
 
 * Tertullian, Jlpologet. 
 
 t It is to Gabler, in fact, that Strauss traces the origin of the myth- 
 ical interpretation. (See Introduction, p. 59.) 
 
 I Zurich at first nominated Strauss, by a majority, as professor ol 
 dogmatic theology. At the earnest protest of the Canton, the election 
 was annulled. Honor to the protestors ! Eternal shame to the electors !
 
 128 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 CHAPTER XL. 
 
 A WORD CONCERNING THE AUTHENTICITY AND VERACITY 
 OF THE MOSAIC BOOKS. 
 
 THE plan of a work like this, does not permit me to deve- 
 lope, or even to allude to the innumerable proofs which carry 
 the authenticity and veracity of the biblical history to the 
 highest imaginable degree of certainty, 'proofs contained in 
 works translated into all languages, and which still await a 
 refutation. Would those read me, who have not read the 
 master-pieces of criticism and reasoning of Huet, Leland, 
 Abbadie, Sherlock, Stateer, Hooke, Jenyns, Lyttleton, Ers- 
 kine, West, Bogue, Houtteville, Bergier, Valsecchi, Duvoisin, 
 Frayssinous, Lamennais, and an infinity of others ? and what 
 importance would those who have read them attach to my 
 repetition of them ! I will limit myself to a few reflections. 
 
 One word, in the first place, concerning the Jewish history, 
 the mother of the evangelical history. 
 
 Before thinking of casting doubts upon the existence of the 
 greatest personage of this history, Moses, and upon the 
 authenticity and veracity of the five first books of the Bible, 
 common sense would dictate two things to be done : 1st, to 
 burn, even to the last copy, all the authors of profane anti- 
 quity who have spoken of Moses as the legislator and first 
 historian of the Jews ;* 2d, to destroy all the Jews themselves. 
 
 In fact, so long as we have any families of this nation to 
 prove that the Jews are men made like others, that they have 
 eyes to see, ears to hear, minds to judge, and hearts to feel ; 
 
 * The historian Josephus, in his books against Appion ; and the first 
 Christian Apologists, Justin, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Eusebius, 
 &,c., cite a great number of them. We have even in our own libraries 
 Strabo, Diodorus Siculus, Longinus, Justin, Juvenal.Tacitus, Pliny, Sic.
 
 THE MOSAIC BOOKS. 129 
 
 that they have like ourselves a self-love which ill brooks 
 humiliations and unjust preferences ; that they have passions 
 hostile to constraint, it would be impossible to believe that an 
 impostor could have been able to attach them so closely to a 
 law at all times insupportable,* and which for eighteen cen- 
 turies has covered them with ignominy. 
 
 Would this impostor then, whose superior talents cannot 
 be disputed by one who reads his works, have been so clumsy 
 as to disturb the self-love of those whom he wished to de- 
 ceive, by innumerable recitals dishonorable to the nation in 
 general, and to individuals in particular, and would he have 
 based upon these narrations the division of functions and ter- 
 ritories in his republic ! Could he have been so foolish as to 
 found the supreme power, which he arrogated to himself, upon 
 miracles of the first order, miracles which he professes to 
 have performed before the eyes of the whole people ! 
 
 Would that impostor have dared to say to the Jews, that 
 with his rod he had struck Egypt with ten unheard of plagues ; 
 that he had given them power to cross the Red Sea dry shod ; 
 that he had given them to drink, water miraculously flowing 
 from a rock ; that he fed them for forty years with manna 
 which had fallen from heaven ; that they had seen Sinai 
 tremble and burst forth in flames under the footsteps of the 
 Lord, and that they had not been able to endure the sound of, 
 the voice which descended from it ; that at the foot of this same 
 mountain they had the folly to prostrate themselves before a 
 golden calf; that they had seen the envious rivals of his broth- 
 er, Core, Dathan, and Abiram, swallowed up alive in the 
 earth, and their accomplices consumed by fire from heaven ; 
 that God had punished them for their frequent rebellion, some- 
 times by a sudden mortality, sometimes by the bite of fiery 
 serpents, and sometimes by the sword of their enemies, &c. ? 
 
 * Jugum . . . neque patres nostri, neque nos portare potuimus, 
 (Acts xv. 16.)
 
 130 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 This is not all : would he have taken these events as a 
 basis for his religious institutions, and would most of the 
 feasts and ceremonies which he imposed upon his subjects 
 have been a solemn commemoration of these enormous im- 
 postures ? In short, would he have concluded this work of 
 the most consummate folly by these words : " Your eyes have 
 seen all the great works of the Lord that he hath done." * 
 
 This is what Moses, or any other conjurer must have said, 
 written and done, in the presence of two millions of men ; f 
 and yet among so many families wounded in their pretensions 
 and their pride, among so many men whose common sense 
 had received so violent an insult, no one raised his voice, no 
 one uttered that cry, then so legitimate, but afterwards so 
 criminal: " We will not have this man to reign over us." All 
 submitted with the docility of children, blessed the name of 
 the imposter, and preserved with indescribable veneration hia 
 work. Every year, during fifteen centuries, we see them all, 
 men, women, and children, thronging from the different parts 
 of Palestine, and even from the most distant regions, to cele- 
 brate the feasts of the Passover, of Tabernacles and of 
 Trumpets, which could only recal to them the arts of impos- 
 ture. In short, after eighteen hundred years, this nation, 
 which has seen all other nations pass awaj r , and still itself 
 remain, sacrificed to its religion all that man holds most 
 dear, honor and interest. 
 
 I ask of every man capable of reflecting, would not so 
 
 * Oculi vestri viderunt omnia opera Domini magna quse fecit. (Deut. 
 xi. 7.) 
 
 f The six hundred thousand combatants who are spoken of in the 
 Pentateuch, require at least this proportion of the general population. 
 As for the rest, to whatever epoch we may wish to refer the int-oduction 
 of the law among the Jews, we shall be obliged to confess that this law 
 presupposes a numerous people. 
 
 } Luke xix. 14.
 
 PROPHETIC BOOKS. 131 
 
 much effrontery on one side, and so much stupidity on the 
 other, be a prodigy a thousand times more incredible than all 
 the prodigies of the old and new Testament! Skeptics, who 
 are forced to admit the first, at least acknowledge that if you 
 do not believe the others, it is not because you are wanting 
 in credulity. 
 
 CHAPTER XLI. 
 
 PROPHETIC BOOKS. THEIR AUTHENTICITY. ANSWER TO AN 
 
 OBJECTION. 
 
 THE evangelical history, among other peculiarities, has 
 this remarkable one, that it was written many years before 
 the birth of its hero. The person and the office of the Mes- 
 siah, so vague in the revelations made to the patriarchs, is 
 sketched and developed with a continually increasing pre- 
 cision under the pen of David and the sixteen prophets, the 
 last of whom, Malachi, wrote more than three hundred years 
 before the Christian era. 
 
 This son of the woman, promised to Adam,* is the son of 
 God himself, uniting the greatness of Jehovah with the weak- 
 ness of humanity,f seated on high at the right hand of the 
 Father, and trampled under foot by the populace of Jerusa- 
 lem as a worm of the dust.| Not only we find in this his- 
 tory the principal circumstances of his life and death, and the 
 immense revolution which they produced, but even the least 
 particulars concerning them, as the year and place of his 
 birth, his entrance into Jerusalem on an ass, the treachery of 
 his disciple, the reward which he obtained from it, the em- 
 ployment of this sum, the gall and vinegar he drank, the 
 
 * Gen. iii. 15. f J er - xxiii. 5, 6. xxxiii. 15, 16. { Ps. xxi. cix.
 
 132 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 piercing of his feet and hands, the dividing his garments, the 
 lot cast for his coat, &c. 
 
 What is really very annoying to the Naturalistic theolo- 
 gians, and to the opponents of the Divine intervention, is, that 
 this wholly miraculous part of the evangelical history is ab- 
 solutely unassailable. It is impossible to say that it was 
 invented after the time, so long as the Jews are extant with 
 the book of the prophets. 
 
 To suppose that the first disciples of Jesus, after having 
 invented the prophecies, paid some Rabbi for translating them 
 into Hebrew, that traversing afterwards all the regions of the 
 globe, where the Jews had been dispersed from before the 
 ruin of Jerusalem, they had engaged the irreconcileable 
 enemies of the Christian name, to insert in their sacred books, 
 those dreams which were to cover them with an eternal 
 ignominy, would be too much for the belief even of the Ger- 
 man commentators.* This then is the alternative, and there 
 is nothing between exterminating the Jews or recognizing the 
 authenticity of the prophetic books. 
 
 There remains the objection already a thousand times 
 overthrown, that the prophecies are full of obscurity, that the 
 picture which Christian apologists here and there make of 
 them, are composed only of traits collected at random, and 
 violently detached from the context ; that, if the prophecies 
 were so clear, the Jews would have yielded to their evidence ; 
 in short, that the coincidence, occasionally very remarkable, 
 of many passages of the prophets with the life of Jesus 
 Christ, is nothing more than the accident of chance. 
 
 The reproach of obscurity in the prophecies, and want of 
 faithfulness in the compilation, which the defenders of Chris- 
 
 * " This book, (the Prophecies,) which in so many ways dishonors 
 the Jews, they preserve at the expense of their life; this is a sincerity 
 which has no example in the world nor root in nature." (Pascal, Pen~ 
 sics, ch. viii.)
 
 PROPHETIC BOOKS. 133 
 
 tianity have made of them, falls of itself before the reading 
 of the prophets and the apologists ; above all of the learned 
 Bishop of Avranches, whose Demonstration evangelique ex- 
 cited the enthusiasm of Leibnitz and the learned men of 
 Europe.* It falls, too, before the fact of the belief univer- 
 sally diffused both among the Jews and Gentiles, at the 
 moment when Jesus Christ came into the world, that Judea 
 was about to give to the universe a master who would bring 
 back the golden age, a belief celebrated by Virgil in his 
 Pollio, and by Tacitus in his Histories.^ 
 
 If the majority of the Jews have closed and still close 
 their eyes on the Divine light of the torch which they 
 hold in their hands, this blindness was predicted and must 
 be, in the Divine plan, an invincible demonstration of Chris- 
 tian truth. 
 
 "The Jews," said Pascal, "by killing Jesus Christ, in 
 order not to receive him as Messiah, have given him the last 
 mark of Messiahship. By continuing to despise him, they 
 have rendered themselves irreproachable witnesses; and in 
 killing him, and continuing to deny it, they have accom- 
 plished the prophecies."| 
 
 Who does not see that this indestructible people, whose 
 existence is a miracle visible to all eyes, is divinely con- 
 demned to expiate the greatest of crimes, and to render the 
 most irrefragable testimony to a religion which it abhors ! 
 When the Christian cause, on the eve of being judged by a 
 final decision, shall have no further need of witnesses, the 
 remnant of Jacob will open their eyes to the light, and shed 
 
 * See in the (Euvres de Leibnitz, his letters to Hunt, particularly 
 the 3d, 4th and 5th. 
 
 t Pluribus persuasio inerat, antiquis sacerdotum litteris conteneri, ec 
 ipso tempore fore ut valescevet Orieus, profectique Judsea rerurn poti 
 rentur. (Histor. v. cap. 13.) 
 
 J Pensees, ch. viii. 
 
 12
 
 134 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 tears of repentance and love, at the feet of kirn whom they 
 have pierced* 
 
 As to this chance upon which the skeptic so easily casts 
 everything that does not please him, I would make one ob- 
 servation. 
 
 Hitherto men of discretion have seen in chance only non- 
 sense, the divine agent of fools ; but by referring to it every- 
 thing great and extraordinary in the government of the world, 
 it has been transmuted into an infinitely wise and powerful 
 being, who differs from Jehovah only in name. What then, 
 oh skeptics! have you gained? Of what importance is it 
 whether the Supreme Being, who at some future time is to 
 demand of you an account of the reason you have received 
 from him, be called Jehovah or chance ? 
 
 CHAPTER XLII. 
 
 REALITY OF EVANGELICAL FACTS. CHARACTER AND 
 
 NUMBER OF WITNESSES. 
 
 IF, under pain of extreme folly, we are obliged to admit 
 the authenticity of the prophetic books upon the indisputable 
 testimony of the Jews, how can we doubt the authenticity 
 and veracity of the evangelical books, when they are attested 
 by witnesses quite as disinterested and incorruptible, and far 
 more numerous ! What witnesses ? I will neither cite the 
 Jews nor pagans, who, in the monuments which remain to us 
 of their furious controversy with the disciples of Christ, have 
 never raised the least doubt concerning the authenticity of the 
 evangelical books, f I am about to speak of Christians. 
 
 * Is. x. 21 ; xi. 11. Zach. xii. 10. 
 
 t We refer the reader to what remains to us of the books of Celsus,
 
 REALITY OF EVANGELICAL FACTS. 135 
 
 One must be blind not to see that of all men in the world, 
 the first Christians were the most interested to destroy the 
 impostor, who should have presented to them a false history 
 of Jesus Christ. 
 
 In fact, the greater number of Christians of the first cen- 
 tury, and many in the ages which followed, had been at first 
 Jews or pagans, and were consequently obliged to conquer 
 very great and legitimate prejudices against a new religion, 
 which accused the former of deicide and the latter of igno- 
 rance and folly. 
 
 All, even those who were born of parents already Chris- 
 tian, were men, and consequently cordially opposed to the 
 terrible restraints which the Gospel puts upon the passions. 
 All were strongly attached to honor, to the esteem of their 
 fellow-men, to their liberty, their life, their property, and their 
 kindred, as all men generally are, and must therefore natu- 
 rally have abhorred a religion which, according to Tertullian, 
 placed mortification at the head of its teachings ; a religion 
 filled with hatred and contempt of the human race, accord- 
 ing to Tacitus;* a religion which its apostles regarded as a 
 scandal for the Jews and a folly for Gentiles ;f a religion, in 
 short, which no man could profess without daily running the 
 risk of seeing himself stripped of his wealth, dragged to 
 
 Porphyry and of Julian the Apostate : it will be seen that the two first 
 constantly assume the authenticity of the Gospels, and that the third, 
 perfectly instructed in Christianity, since he had filled the office of 
 lector in the ranks of the clergy, formally recognized these books as 
 the works of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. It will be seen more- 
 over in his books, as well as in the talmud of the Jews, that these fran- 
 tic enemies of Christianity, attempted to explain the miracles of Jesus 
 Christ by the power of magic, so impossible did they consider it to 
 deny their existence. This fact alone would close the mouth of our 
 commentators if any facts had power against ignorance and dishonesty. 
 * Odio huraani generis convicti sunt. (AnnaJ. xv. ch. 44.) 
 f Judaeis quidem scandalum, gentibus autem stultitiam. (I. Cor. i. 23.)
 
 136 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 prison, laid upon hot irons, stretched upon the rack to be 
 burned, disembowelled, nailed to the cross, and smeared with 
 pitch to light during the night the gardens of Nero, or thrown 
 to the wild beasts of the amphitheatre.* 
 
 To suppose that these men, from whatever class of society 
 they might proceed/]- could have surmounted obstacles, in 
 their nature insurmountable, to become Christians, without 
 being overwhelmed by the evidence of the divinity of Chris- 
 tianity, is an enormous insult to common sense. 
 
 Fanatics have now and then been found, sufficiently in- 
 fatuated with their religious reveries, to maintain them even 
 on the scaffold ; yet these examples have been extremely 
 rare, and have never been contagious; but that a large num- 
 ber of men should have braved hatred and public contempt, 
 and have expired in horrible torture to attest sensible, pal- 
 pable facts, in which the truth is so easily detected, and whose 
 falseness would have been manifest to them, is what has never 
 been seen, and never will be seen whilst the laws of the 
 moral world subsist. 
 
 This however, is the strange and monstrous phenomenon 
 which the infidel is forced to admit In short, what reason 
 did the Apostles and their first disciples give for their faith in 
 Jesus ? The innumerable miracles they had seen him per- 
 form, miracles of such publicity that they did not fear to call 
 the Jews themselves to witness them, above all the miracle 
 of his resurrection, of which they could not doubt, because, 
 as they affirm, they conversed, eat and drank with him, dur- 
 ing more than forty days after he came forth from the tomb. 
 How did the Christians justify their faith in the testimony of 
 
 * Et pereuntibus addita ludibria, ut ferarum tergis contccti laniatu 
 canum interirent, aut curcibus affix!, aut flammandi, atque ubi defecia 
 set dies, in usum nocturni luminis uve rentur. (Tacit, lococil.) 
 
 t They were from all classes, even from the court of Nero. Max 
 ime autem qui de Coesaris domo smit. (Philipp. iv. 22.)
 
 REALITY OF EVANGELICAL FACTS. 137 
 
 the Apostles ? By the miracles also, which the latter and 
 their disciples incessantly worked, by the dead whom they 
 saw raised to life, by the lame whom they saw walking, by 
 the blind, the deaf, and the paralytic, whom they had seen 
 instantly cured by the invocation of the name of Jesus. All 
 spoke only of what they had heard with their ears, seen with 
 their eyes, and touched with their hands.* 
 
 I would say to the boldest enemy of miracles : If you met 
 with eleven witnesses as little suspected of fanaticism as the 
 Apostles and the early Christians appear to have been, when 
 we read their writings, and hear them reason with their 
 judges in the midst of tortures ; if you saw eleven witnesses 
 of this character enduring the most horrible death to attest 
 the resurrection of a dead man, you would without doubt 
 waver, and at least ask if the fact might not be possible. 
 Instead of eleven witnesses, we may place eleven hundred, or 
 eleven thousand. You must mow either acknowledge the 
 miracle, or be convicted of madness. Could you doubt the 
 miracles of Jesus Christ and the Apostles of his religion, 
 miracles established by the testimony of nearly eleven millions 
 of Christians of every age, sex and condition, slain from the 
 time of Nero, in the middle of the first century, to Constan- 
 tine, in the commencement of the fourth,-]- and expect to save 
 your reputation as a reasonable being ! 
 
 But it will be soon seen that we are yet far from the true 
 number of the witnesses of the miracles. 
 
 * Quod andivimus, quod vidimus oculis nostris, quod perspeximus, et 
 manus nostrae contrectaverunf. (I. John. i. 4.) 
 
 j- The Acta primorum Martyrum sincera of Dom Ruinart, and the 
 learned Preface which precedes them, prove that this number is not 
 exasperated.
 
 138 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 CHAPTER XL II I. 
 
 CONVERSION OF THE WORLD, MANIFEST PROOF OF THE DIVINE 
 
 INTERPOSITION ABSURDITY OF NATURAL REASONS WHICH 
 
 ARE GIVEN FOR THIS EVENT. 
 
 A FEW days before his death, Jesus Christ said to his disci- 
 ples : " And I, if I be lifted up on the cross, will draw all 
 things to myself." * 
 
 Two months after this incomprehensible prediction, twelve 
 poor fishermen of the lake of Genesareth, undertook to realize 
 it. 
 
 Instead of the Gods whom the world had adored for so 
 many ages, they preached a God made man, born in a stable, 
 reared in a carpenter's shop, put to death on the cross be- 
 tween two malefactors. 
 
 For the brilliant and licentious fictions of pagan mytho- 
 logy, for the eloquent discussions of philosophers, they sub- 
 stituted a doctrine full of mystery and a morality revolting to 
 the passions. They said to all : " Renounce the vain light of 
 your reason, and submit your mind to the yoke of faith ; sac- 
 rifice your most natural inclinations by despising yourselves 
 by despising wealth, honor, and pleasure, by forgiving injuries, 
 and loving your enemies. Sacrifice the body to the severe 
 laws of penitence. Poverty, humility and mortification are the 
 inheritance of the disciples of a crucified God." 
 
 What temporal rewards did they promise to those who 
 consented to follow them ? Contempt, persecution, loss of 
 possession and of liberty, the dungeon, the stake and every 
 variety of torture. 
 
 If such an enterprise had not been decreed in the councils 
 of the Most High, who converts obstacles to means, and is 
 
 * St John xii. 32.
 
 CONVERSION OF THE WORLD. 139 
 
 pleased to make all tilings of nothing, we must acknowledge 
 that all these who engaged in it were extravagant and mad. 
 
 Yet the crucified one draws everything to himself. Twen- 
 ty years after the death of Jesus Christ, St. Paul, whose con- 
 version and apostleship, have furnished a profound English 
 thinker with a beautiful demonstration of the truth of Christi- 
 anity,* wrote to the Christians of Rome that their faith is spoken 
 of throughout all the world.-j- The fishermen took in their nets 
 not only the common people, but the learned, philosophers, 
 senators, proconsuls, officers and courtiers. In vain did the 
 emperors, the priests of the idols, and all human powers arm 
 themselves against what they called an infamous and odious 
 superstition. In vain the people cried " Give the Christians 
 to the lions." The Christians multiplied under the axe of the 
 executioner. In short, after three centuries of carnage, the 
 cross was planted upon the capitol, and before the middle of 
 the seventh century, Christianity was the religion of the Roman 
 empire, that is, of the then known world. 
 
 No one I think, will dream of denying the fact. Deny the 
 divine interposition, reduce the agents of this immense revo- 
 lution to the rank of impostors or fanatics, the phenomenon 
 is more absurd than incontestable. It is the mouse which 
 brought forth the Alps.J 
 
 * See the work of Lord George Lyttleton, published in English un- 
 der the title of, Observations on the Conversion and Apostleship of 
 St. Paul, and translated into French by the Abbe Guenee, under the 
 following title : La Religion Chretienne demontrce par la Conversion 
 ct VApostolat de Saint Paul. Lyttleton was, like the celebrated Gil- 
 bert AVest, his friend, one of those conscientious thinkers whom a pro- 
 found study of the Christian Religion led from the ranks of skepticism 
 into those of the most illustrious defenders of Christianity, 
 f Fides vestra annuntiatur in universo mundo. (Rom. i. 8.) 
 { " A man who can believe that these facts, so contrary to all that 
 \ve know, took place in virtue of the disposition of the human heart, 
 and have occurcd without supernatural intervention, such a man has
 
 140 THE SOLUTION CF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 I am not ignorant of the efforts of certain modern profes- 
 sors of the philosophy oi history, to take from this event the 
 evidence of its supernatural character. Christianity accord- 
 ing to them would be only a magnificent burst of human 
 thought, which, after having for a long time lingered among 
 the sensual fictions of mythology, progressively rose to spirit- 
 ualism and renewed in the Christian creed, the fruit of its the- 
 ologico-philosophical labors in Egypt, Persia, India, and 
 Greece. 
 
 But I also know, that these sublime professors have not 
 been able to disfigure history sufficiently to give to their 
 strange paradoxes even the shadow of probability. Let them 
 show us then, history in hand, that constant progression of 
 ideas, and those steps of the human mind towards the height 
 of Christian faith. Let them show us in the progressive amelio- 
 ration of public and private morals among the Pagans, any 
 tendency whatever towards the regeneration effected by the 
 Christian decalogue in the individual, the family and society. 
 In a word, let them represent the world to us as almost Chris- 
 tian before the coming of Christ 
 
 Do these persons regard us then as barbarians, as such 
 strangers to all historical knowledge, as not to know that at 
 the moment when Christianity appeared, the mind and heart 
 of man were every where at the antipodes of its doctrine and 
 morality ! 
 
 Was it the universal prevalence of the philosophy of Epi- 
 curus embellished by the poetry of Lucretius, which could 
 have prepared the Romans and the Greeks for the introduc- 
 tion of the Christian dogma ! 
 
 Was it when the terrible corruption of morals justified by 
 
 much more faith than is necessary for a belief in the Christian Religion, 
 and he remains incredulous through pure credulity." (Soame Jenyns, 
 Examination of the Internal Evidence of Christianity, p. 160, trans- 
 lation of Feller.
 
 PECULIAR MIRACLE OF CHRISTIANITY. 141 
 
 religion and by the example and authority of the sages of 
 philosophy, contaminated with unspeakable abominations the 
 temples, the palaces of the emperors, private dwellings and 
 public theatres ; was it when love had but one form which 
 cannot be named ;* was it in the ages of Tiberius, Nero, Ca- 
 ligula, Vitellius and Heliogabulus, ages so well described by 
 Lucian, Tacitus, Juvenal, Suetonius, Atheneus, Dion-Cassius, 
 Lampridius, Ammianus Marcellus, &c., was it then, that 
 evangelical morality could have been welcomed! Was it 
 when the Patricians of Rome fed the fishes of their ponds 
 with the flesh of the slaves, was it when the public found no 
 remedy for ennui, except in the massacre of gladiators,-}- that 
 Christian charity was to take possession of all hearts ! 
 
 If then it is the world which has given birth to Christianity, 
 let the cries of fury be explained to us, which welcomed the 
 newly born on his entrance into it. 
 
 Finally, how have these professors of the philosophy of 
 history, fallen into so profound an ignorance of history and 
 philosophy. 
 
 CHAPTER XLIV. 
 
 DISTINGUISHING MIRACLE OP CHRISTIANITY. NUMBER OF 
 
 WITNESSES OF THE DIVINITY OF RELIGION. EXTRAVA- 
 GANCE OF THE UNBELIEVER. 
 
 It was without doubt a superhuman act, which destroyed 
 the immemorial worship of idols, and cast down from the al- 
 tar-height to the obscurity of a museum, the venerated images 
 of the gods of Olympus. 
 
 * Montesquieu, Esprit des Lois, liv. vii. ch. 9. 
 
 t Jugulantur homines, ne nihil agatur. (Senec. ep. vii.)
 
 142 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 But the miracle of Christian miracles, was the triumph over 
 an idolatry, far more ancient, far more universal, far more 
 profound, the idolatry of self. 
 
 Fenelon has somewhere said that nothing is easier than to 
 prove to a man of sense that Jupiter is not ; but to prove to 
 a man that he himself is nothing and to oblige him to treat 
 himself accordingly ! this however Christianity has done. 
 It requires that, recognizing all our thought to be ignorance, 
 and all our desires corruption, we wholly lay aside ourself ; 
 it requires us to renounce our own knowledge by, faith crucify 
 our appetites by penitence, and follow after the humiliated 
 God.* 
 
 Here we see, are as many gods to dethrone as there are 
 individuals, as many idols to overthrow as there are passions 
 in the human heart. 
 
 We have said above that all men are naturally Christians : 
 which is true ; for there is in us a natural fund of love for 
 truth and virtue. But our passions often make us infidels, 
 and there are very few Christians who are not occasionally 
 inclined to wish that religion was false. 
 
 Christianity is then professed only by its enemies, and every 
 Christian is a martyr ; that is to say, he attests the truth of 
 religion at his own expense. If he brings his conduct into 
 conformity with the gospel, he sacrifices his passions to this 
 faith, and this sacrifice is little less than that of life. If he 
 violates the duties which faith imposes upon him, he enters 
 into warfare with his conscience and loses the first of bless- 
 ings, peace with himself. 
 
 Thus the testimony of one believer alone, proves more in 
 
 * Si quis vult post me venire, abneget semetipsum, et tollat crucem 
 suam, et seqnatur me. (Matth. xvi. 24.) Exspoliantes vos veterem 
 hnminem cum actibus suis, et induentes novum, &c. (Coloss. iii. 9, 10.) 
 Qui autem sunt Christi, carnem suam crucifixerunt cum vitiis et con- 
 cupiscentiis. (Galat. v. 24.)
 
 PECULIAR MIRACLE OF CHRISTIANITY. 143 
 
 favor of Christianity, than the opposition of a hundred infidels 
 proves against it. The reason is clear why there are men 
 who refuse to believe ; it is because they wish to be dispensed 
 from doing well : * to be an unbeliever, it is sufficient to leave 
 ourselves at liberty ; but to believe, is a different affair, and 
 the violence which a Christian does to his heart or his con- 
 science, finds its motive only in the irresistible truth of his 
 religion. 
 
 All Christians are martyrs to their religion. Let us now 
 enumerate them. 
 
 The actual number of Christians is at least two hundred and 
 forty millions. Reducing it to a hundred and eighty millions 
 for each generation, and giving thirty-five years to each, we 
 shall have more than nine hundred millions of Christians. 
 
 And it is in presence of this host of witnesses, some bleed- 
 ing under the iron of the executioners, others radiant with the 
 light of genius, and most of them respected for their virtues ; 
 it is, I repeat, in the presence of this throng of witnesses, that 
 the unbeliever, always alone in his opinion,f says to us : 
 " You are all simpletons ; why do you not see that your 
 religion is nonsense ! " 
 
 I would ask if the human heart has pity and contempt 
 enough for such extravagance ! 
 
 Finally: to take from the Gospel its historical reality, is to 
 abjure reason entirely. 
 
 * Noluit intelligere ut bene ageret. (Ps. xxxv. 4.) 
 
 ( Infidels, in fact, never agree except in attacking religon ; and in 
 that, even what differences ! what one approves in Christianity, the other 
 rejects, what one admires, another despises. " I find them all," says J. 
 J. Rousseau, " proud, arrogant, and even dogmatic in their pretended un- 
 belief, proving nothing, and making sport of each other ; and this point 
 common to all, appears to me the only one in which they are all right. 
 If the votes are counted, each one is reduced to his own." Hence the 
 skeptic always says : " I alone know more than nine millions like my- 
 9 elf."
 
 144 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 CHAPTER XLV. 
 
 HARMONY OF CHRISTIANITY WITH THE GENERAL HISTORY 
 
 OF THE WORLD, WITH NATURE AND WITH ALL THE 
 
 SCIENCES. 
 
 OF all books extant, the Bible is the only one which makes 
 known to us the origin of things, the creation of the world, 
 the formation of man, the cradle of society, and the different 
 physical, political and moral revolutions through which the 
 human race has arrived at the epoch in which profane history 
 comes forth from the shades of fable. This portion of our 
 Holy Books is sufficiently justified by its great simplicity, 
 the extreme sobriety of its details, the admirable connection 
 of its facts, and even by the naturalness of the miraculous 
 events which it must necessarily contain.* 
 
 The annals of ancient nations, separated from what is evi- 
 dently fabulous in them, agree with the Mosaic chronology. 
 The intellectual,' political and moral condition of society at 
 its appearance in history, proves the youth of the nations, 
 and that of the world is demonstrated by the general aspect 
 of the globe and by the numerous chronometers scattered 
 over its surface.f 
 
 * The marvellous is always natural and reasonable when it is neces- 
 sary, that is, when the nature of facts demands the intervention of a 
 super-human agent. This is the judicious observation of the legislator 
 of the latin Parnassus : 
 
 Nee Deus inlersit, nisi dignus vindicc nodus 
 Incident . . . 
 
 On the contrary, it is doing violence to reason, to attribute to nature 
 what evidently surpasses her powers : this is the marvellous stupidity 
 which so abounds in these modern theories, (that pretend) to explain 
 naturally, the formation of the world and its inhabitants. 
 
 M. Cuvier counts four principal ones, the alluvial accretions, the 
 downs, the peat-grounds and the rolling downs. " Nature," said this
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND HISTORY. 145 
 
 We cannot now speak of the astronomical monuments of 
 Egypt, known under the name of zodiacs, without smiling at 
 the calculations of Dupuis, and the triumph of his foolish 
 admirers,* " since finishing where one would naturally have 
 commenced, if prejudice had not blinded the first observers, 
 pains have been taken to copy and restore the Greek 
 inscriptions engraved on monuments, and especially since M. 
 Champollion has succeeded in decyphering those which are 
 expressed in hieroglyphics." f 
 
 The terrible event which Moses relates in the seventh chap- 
 ter of Genesis, an event so obstinately denied by the natural- 
 ists of the Encyclopaedia, is now beyond the reach of all 
 opposition. The denudaled valleys, the boulders, the caves of 
 fossil, remains, and that mammoth, which has left, in the dilu- 
 vial beds, thousands of its skeletons from Spain to the shores 
 of Siberia,^ that mammoth whose still bleeding flesh nour- 
 ishes the dogs of the Tunguse fishermen,^ such is the incon- 
 
 " learned man," everywhere holds the same language ; she everywhere 
 proclaims that the actual order of things does not go back to a great 
 antiquity ; and what is very remarkable, man every where tells us the 
 same thing as nature, whether we consult the true traditions of nations, 
 or examine the moral and political state, and the intellectual develope- 
 inent which they had attained at the commencement of their authentic 
 monuments." Discours sur les Revolutions de la Surface du Globe, 
 &c. p. 164. " None of the ancient monuments of profane history still 
 subsisting, and dating from a certain historical epoch, contradicts the 
 period assigned to the deluge, according to the Greek text of the Sep- 
 tuagint." Champollion, R6sum6 complet de Chronologic, &c. No. GO. 
 
 * Dupuis, in the Memoire sur VOrigine des Constellations, inserted 
 in the 3d vol. of his very absurd Origine des Cultes, traces back the 
 astronomical studies of the Egyptians, to the modest epoch of fifteen 
 thousand years. 
 
 t Cuvier, Discours, &.c. p. 269 
 
 \ Cuvier, Discours, &.c. p. 334. 
 
 Every one has heard of the famous elephant dicovered in 1799, at 
 the mouth of the Lena by a Tunguse chief, and the skeleton of which 
 is still seen in the Imperial Museum of St. Petersburg. 
 
 13
 
 146 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 trovertible testimony given by geology, and which, diffused 
 over all points of the globe, attests the universality of the 
 catastrophy. On the other hand the date which the sacred 
 writer assigns to it, is confirmed by the progress of deltas, 
 downs, accumulation of sand around tlie glaciers, pent- grounds, 
 Sfc. " If there is anything established in geology," says the 
 first naturalist of the age, " it is that the surface of our globe 
 has been the subject of a great and sudden revolution, the 
 date of which cannot extend much farther back than five or 
 six thousand years."* 
 
 One fact, however, which this great man regarded as esta- 
 blished, I mean the absence of human fossil remains,! gave 
 a handle to the enemies of the Bible. Obliged to recognize 
 the existence of the deluge, they hastened to publish that it 
 was anterior to the human race. But their learned disserta- 
 tions were still moist from the press, when from many parts 
 of France and Belgium, the discovery of human fossil remains 
 was announced, and M. Cuvier himself made the communi- 
 cation of this very important fact to the Academy of Sci- 
 ence.J It is true that there yet remains some doubt among 
 
 * Cuvier, Discours, &c. p. 282. 
 
 t Cuvier, Ibid. p. 131. " But I would not conclude, said this learned 
 man, that our race did not exist at all before this epoch. It might have 
 inhabited some countries of small extent, from whence it re-peopled 
 the earth after these terrible events ; perhaps also the places where man 
 was preserved, have been entirely swallowed up, and his bones buried 
 in the depths of the present seas, &c." p. 138. 
 
 } Session of January llth, 1830. Already in the session of the 23d 
 of November preceding, the simultaneous discoveries of M. M. Chrys- 
 tolles and Marcel de Serves, in the department of Card, and in the 
 neighborhood of Montpelier of human bones, presenting all the cha- 
 racteristics of fossils had been announced. M- Tournal also discovered 
 in the grotto of Bize, near Narbonne, human bones, mingled with the 
 remains of pottery and the bones of animals now lost, and the materials 
 under which they are buried are regarded by all geologists as belong- 
 ing to the deluge. See Bulletin de la Socie'te' Gtologique de France,
 
 UNITY OF THE HUMAN RACE. 147 
 
 geologists of the diluvian character of these bones ; but all 
 agree that the investigation of the diluvian depositories, has 
 not yet been made on a scale sufficiently extensive to enable 
 the inference to be drawn from it, of the non-existence of 
 human fossils. 
 
 CHAPTER XLVI. 
 
 CONTINUATION. WORK OF SIX DAYS. UNITY OF THE HUMAN 
 
 KACE. UNIVERSAL TRADITIONS. 
 
 THE Mosaic cosmogony appeared to the philosophers of 
 the eighteenth century as an imaginary tale, unworthy of the 
 attention of the learned. Among other circumstances, the 
 creation of light before the sun was very amusing to the 
 naturalists of that period. 
 
 At the present day there is no one " who does not smile 
 with pity at the scientific reasonings of Voltaire," and of his 
 school, " against the book of Genesis." * 
 
 The theory of undulations, which recognizes in the lumin- 
 ous fluid, an existence independent of the sun a theory 
 which must naturally enter the thoughts of philosophers 
 
 1S30. M. Schomerling has found in the caverns of Maestrich, heads 
 which recal, according to him, African forms. These skulls are mixed 
 with the remains of pottery, bone bodkins, &c. See Jehan, JVouveau 
 Traitt des Sciences Gtologiques, itude, x. 
 
 * Words of M. the Baron of Firussac, Bulletin Universal des Sciences, 
 vol. x. " The authors of the XVIIIth Century who have treated the 
 sacred books of the Hebrews with contempt mingled with anger, judged 
 antiquity in a wretchedly superficial manner . . In order to amuse them- 
 selves with Voltaire at the expense of Ezekiel or of Genesis, two things 
 were necessary, which make this gaiety very sad: the most profound 
 ignorance and the most deplorable frivolity." Benjamin Constant, De 
 la Religio i consid6re, &c. vol. iv. ch. 11.
 
 148 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 every time they write by the light of a wax-candle or see the 
 flint sparkling under the stroke of the steel, acquires by 
 experience the value of a demonstrated fact. 
 
 As to the recital of the work of six days, all men of sci- 
 ence agree that there is nothing in it incompatible with 
 modern discoveries. 
 
 Some persons, believing that they find a perfect corres- 
 pondence between the geological constitution of the globe, 
 and the order of terrestrial productions stated by Moses in 
 the first chapter of Genesis, contemplate with religious respect 
 this astonishing page, and ask who has revealed to its author 
 truths so profoundly concealed from his cotemporaries.* 
 
 Others disputing, not without some reason, this coincidence, 
 see nothing in the recital of Genesis but the history of the 
 formation of the Adamic world, and date the existence of 
 anterior worlds, whose antidiluvian beds conceal immense 
 ruins, from the vast period of time which intervened between 
 the act of creation and the actual organization of the globe.f 
 
 The unity of the human race which, according to Voltaire, 
 could only be admitted by blind persons,! * s no l n g er called 
 in question, except by some blind admirers of that man whose 
 ignorance equalled his impiety. Strong in the testimony of 
 
 * See M. Demerson. La Geologic enseignle en vingt deux lemons, 
 Paris, 1829, p. 408, 471. M. Boubee, Geologic populaire, Paris, 
 1S33, p. 66. 
 
 \ This hypothesis, which seems now to prevail concerning the 
 theory of the day-periods of the learned De Luc, would have the 
 double advantage of doing no violence to the words of scripture, and 
 of agreeing with a certain number of geological facts. It would find 
 also a respectable support in the monuments of antiquity, whether 
 Christian or profane. See Wiseman, Discourse on the relation be- 
 tween science and revealed Religion, discourse 5th. Desdouits, 
 Soirees de Monthllry. Jehan, Nouveau Traiti des sciences geolo- 
 giques, etude xii. 
 
 f Histoire de Russe, sous Pierre le Grand, ch. i.
 
 UNITY OF THE HUMAN RACE. 149 
 
 the greatest modern naturalists,* it finds a new demonstration 
 in ethnography. 
 
 What Moses tells us in the eleventh chapter of Genesis, that 
 before the separation of the children of Noah, the earth had 
 one tongue and the same speech, and that this unity of lan- 
 guage was suddenly destroyed by an act of Divine power, j- is 
 confirmed by the comparative study of languages. Closely 
 examined, all known tongues are grouped around three primi- 
 tive languages; and the latter, in their turn show, by their 
 numerous connections, both a common origin and a separa- 
 tion, which could not be the slow and gradual work of ages.J 
 If we afterwards retrace the line which different idioms and 
 different nations have followed in their diverging movement, 
 we shall arrive precisely at that part of the ancient world 
 where the sacred writer places the common stock of human 
 families. A comparison of the different writings and cyphers 
 in use among ancient and modern nations leads to the same 
 result. || 
 
 But while consulting the historical and literary monuments 
 of nations, if we look into their creeds, we shall find that their 
 religious traditions always unite in one primitive tradition, of 
 which they are only a more or less gross corruption. The 
 unity of God, the creation of heaven and earth, the existence 
 of good and bad spirits, the felicity enjoyed by our first 
 parents, the crime by which they fell, their longevity, the ex- 
 pectation of a deliverer, faith in future rewards and punish- 
 
 * Buffon, Cuvier, Lacepede, Blumenbach, &c. 
 
 t Erat antem terra labii unius, et sermonum eorumdem. Venite 
 igitur descendamus, et confundamus linguam eorum. (Gen. xi. 1,7.) 
 
 J See Wiseman, Discourse, &c. 2d discourse. 
 
 See Adrien Balbi, Jltlas Ethnographique du Globe, au Classifi- 
 cation des Peuples anciens et modernes, depuis leurs langues, &,c. 
 
 || Essais sur I'Origine unique et hieroglyphique des chiffres et des 
 Icttres de tony les peuples, &c., by M. de Paravey, Paris, 182G. 
 
 13*
 
 150 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 ments, prayer, sacrifice, the remembrance of a universal 
 deluge, &c., are found, more or less encumbered with fabu- 
 lous details, in the creeds of all nations. The human race, 
 like nature, has but one voice, and that voice is Christian. 
 
 We have now seen that Christianity is essentially true, and 
 pure from all error. Is it also good, and capable of procur- 
 ing for man the degree of happiness compatible with his state 
 of trial ? 
 
 CHAPTER XLVII. 
 
 EXCELLENCE OF THE EVANGELICAL MORALITY. ITS ADMIR- 
 ABLE INFLUENCE ON SOCIETY AND THE INDIVIDUAL. 
 
 THAT the Christian Decalogue has not a single command- 
 ment which does not tend to render man good and perfect, is 
 a fact which needs no proof, acknowledged as it is by the 
 enemies of our faith. A volume might be composed of the 
 praises which Voltaire, Rousseau, d'Alembert, Diderot, and 
 their followers have rendered to the perfection of the Gospel 
 morality. 
 
 But is not man made happy when he is made virtuous ? 
 Take from the human heart the bad passions which the Gos- 
 pel condemns, establish in it that tender charity of which 
 Jesus has given us the precept and the example, a charity 
 which obliges every one to labor for the happiness of others, 
 with as much interest as for his own, the earth would become 
 a paradise, and the innumerable woes which now make it 
 desolate would be banished. 
 
 What, in truth, are the greater part of our miseries, but the 
 effect of our vices. With ambition, avarice, libertinism, would
 
 EVANGELICAL MORALITY. 151 
 
 disappear war, fraud, lawsuits, pauperism, hatred, vengeance, 
 homicide, and three-fourths of the maladies ; in short, all the 
 scourges of human origin. As to natural afflictions, which 
 the universal conscience, religion and reason, lead us to view 
 as Divine chastisements, it is plain that they would be in a 
 great measure done away, with the crimes which provoked 
 them. 
 
 Charity would neutralize the effect of those which God 
 still allowed to remain, to try the submission of his children, 
 and give them an opportunity to aid each other. Would not 
 the love of God and our neighbor accomplish more than a 
 wise love of gain could effect by the institution of Insurance 
 Companies 1 By dividing their woes and afflictions among a 
 large number, we should take from misfortune its power. 
 
 Death would remain with the physical infirmities attached 
 to our state of expiation and trial ; but, for the disciple of 
 Jesus Christ, is not death gain, and does not the cross trans- 
 mute sufferings into the coin with which the crowns and joys 
 of heaven are purchased?* 
 
 It may be said that this is Utopian : but if the absolute 
 reign of the Gospel over all hearts has never been seen, and 
 probably never will be seen, who is to be blamed for it ? the 
 Gospel or man ? Must Christianity, then, be made responsi- 
 ble for our perversity ? 
 
 We shall show elsewhere that Utopia is more or less 
 realized among Christian nations, and that their general well- 
 being has always been proportioned to the degree of influence 
 which their customs and laws have permitted to the Gospel.f 
 
 Moreover, as everything in us excites us to consecrate our 
 existence to the glory of God and the welfare of our fellow- 
 
 * Mihi enim . . . mori lucrum, (Philipp. i. 21.) Momentaneum et 
 leve tribulationis nostrae supra modum in sublimitate seternum gloria 
 pcndus operatur in nobis. (II. Cor. iv. 17.) 
 
 t See Second Problem.
 
 152 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 men, Christianity does not make our own happiness depend 
 upon our success ; very different in that from philosophy 
 which shows us felicity only in that unattainable future where 
 all men shall agree to act in obedience to its laws. 
 
 The true Christian, if he were alone in the world, if all the 
 world were against him, would yet be happy, and would say 
 with the Apostle of the Gentiles : " I am filled with comfort, 
 I exceedingly abound with joy in all our tribulation."* He 
 finds in the testimony of a good conscience a continual feast ,^ 
 an inexhaustible source of delight, in which the fire of tribu- 
 lation is extinguished as a spark in the sea. 
 
 Almost all our moral sufferings arise from the continual 
 opposition which our capricious and often unjust wills meet 
 with ; we desire what we have not and cannot have.J 
 
 The Christian avoids these contradictions by suffering in 
 himself no other will but that of God, which nothing resists. 
 Convinced that this father, whose infinite benevolence every- 
 thing guarantees to him, will make the most painful events 
 serve for the benefit of his children, || he abandons himself 
 with joy to his loving providence, and always finds things 
 working together for the best Let him vegetate in obscur- 
 ity and indigence, let him sit on a dunghill devoured by 
 worms like Job ; let him be thrown, loaded with irons, into 
 the depths of a dungeon ; or be condemned to bear a still 
 heavier burden of calumny and public hatred, this thought : 
 
 * Repletus sum consolatione, superabundo gaudio in omni tribulati- 
 
 one nostra. (II. Cor. vii. 4.) 
 
 f Secura mens quasi juge convivium. (Prov. xv. 15.) 
 
 J Unde bella et lites in vobis ? Nonne hinc ? ex concupiscentiis 
 
 vestris, quac militant in membris vestris ? Concupiscitis, et non hab- 
 
 etis . . . Zelatis, et non potestis adipisci. (Jas. iv. 2..) 
 Voluntati enim ejus quis resistit? (Rom. ix. 19.) 
 || Scimus autem quoniam diligentibus Deum omnia co-operat tur in 
 
 bonum. (Rom. viii. 28.)
 
 EVANGELICAL MORALITY. 163 
 
 God sees it, God wills it, God will reward it; he must indeed 
 love me, since he treats me as his well-beloved Son, will 
 charm away his pain, and he will exclaim with the Apostle 
 of the Indies : " Still more, Lord, still more !" 
 
 Hence that calmness, that serenity, that joy of the martyrs 
 in the midst of tortures, which the astonished persecutors 
 could only explain by magic, and which often led the execu- 
 tioners to throw aside the axe and hasten to baptism. Hence, 
 in all the saints, that taste, that passion for suffering, which 
 caused them to say : " Let me die or suffer." 
 
 What an unspeakable charm does the Christian, who 
 nourishes himself with thoughts of faith, find in the prospect 
 of that eternity of glory and of joy from which he is sepa- 
 rated only by the short passage of life ! The uncertainty 
 concerning the moment of death, which poisons the life of 
 the worldling, supports him and consoles him, and it is with 
 joy that he sees falling, piece by piece, the prison of clay 
 which retains his soul in the land of exile. Does the ambi- 
 tious hero who discerns, through the smoke of the battle- 
 field, the walls of the capitol where to-morrow his head is to 
 be encircled with the diadem, in the midst of a people intoxi- 
 cated with joy, complain of his fatigues, does he even feel 
 the blood flowing from his wounds ? Does the lover, who is 
 going to receive before the altar the vows of her whom he 
 passionately adores, perceive the inconveniences of the road 
 or the inclemency of the air? How, then, can the soldier 
 of Christ complain of the difficulties of the way, he who is 
 always on the eve of being crowned king of heaven and of 
 the universe ! he whom the chaste embrace of infinite beauty 
 may at any moment plunge into an eternal ecstasy ! 
 
 Let us say, then, with Montesquieu : " Wonderful, that the 
 Religion which seems to have no other object than the feli- 
 city of the other life, should yet constitute our happiness in 
 this!"
 
 154 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 CHAPTER XLVIII. 
 
 BEAUTY OF CHRISTIANITY. IDEA OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 
 
 ESSENTIAL DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ANCIENT AND 
 CHRISTIAN ART. PAGAN ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 THE beautiful, that divine reflection of the true, that flower 
 of which goodness is the fruit, that charm so powerful over 
 the heart of man, is it found in Christianity? 
 
 A volume would be required to answer this question ; this 
 volume exists, and I would not be the one to enter into com- 
 petition with the author of the Genie du Chrislianisme. I 
 will limit myself to one idea concerning the nature of the 
 beautiful and the distance which separates Christian from 
 Pagan art. 
 
 As man is so constituted that he can find his happiness 
 only in the presence and enjoyment of supreme perfection, it 
 follows that the infinite is alone capable of permanently com- 
 manding his love, and that an object can only please him, in 
 proportion as it is real),y or apparently related to the arche- 
 type of all beauty. This exclusive predilection for the infi- 
 nite Being is revealed in a thousand ways. It is this which 
 changes the most lively passion into indifference as soon as 
 the object is too well known. It is this which causes veiled 
 beauty to be preferred to beauty made manifest* It is this 
 
 * " Who does not know that beauty divined is more attractive than 
 beauty visible ? What man has not frequently remarked, that the 
 woman who is determined to satisfy the eye more than the imagination, 
 is wanting in taste as well as wisdom. Vice even rewards modesty, by 
 exaggerating the charms which she veils." De Maistre, Examen de 
 la Philosophic de Bacon, vol. 2d, ch. 7. "The imagination which 
 embellishes what it desires, abandons it in possession. Except the 
 self-existing Being, there is nothing beautiful but that which is not. 
 The existence of finite beings is so meager and limited, that when we
 
 BEAUTY OF CHRISTIANITY. 155 
 
 which leads us, in the arrangement of our buildings and gar- 
 dens, to adopt the distribution which best conceals their nar- 
 rowness. " The most delightful park," Addison has some- 
 where said, " wearies us as soon as we perceive the walls 
 which limit its inclosure, we can only breathe freely in infinite 
 space ! " 
 
 Such being the disposition of the human heart, the highest 
 aim of art is to avoid too definite and limited forms, and to 
 diffuse over the finite a tinge of the infinite, without falling 
 into the vagueness which offends our love of the real. 
 
 Christian genius has realized this in the fine arts, above all 
 in architecture and music, which have especially lent them- 
 selves to it. Hence its superiority in the first of these depart- 
 ments, and also in the last, as far as we can judge of it. 
 
 The Religious idea, among pagans, being the invention of 
 man, the artist could not go beyond the human sphere ; for 
 the imagination is only kindled at the fire of intelligence, and 
 the form cannot transcend the idea. Thus their most cele- 
 brated religious works have a great defect, that of having 
 nothing divine in them. Their temples are palaces or thea- 
 tres ; and their gods, heroes. 
 
 Go to the Belvedere and contemplate the most divine statue 
 which ancient sculpture has bequeathed to us. At the sight 
 of this solitary prodigy, you will perhaps forget the universe, for 
 the universe has nothing so beautiful ; you will be transported 
 to Delos, to the sacred woods of Lycia,* everywhere, except 
 
 only see what is, we are never moved. Chimeras adorn real objects, 
 and if the imagination does not add a charm to what strikes us, the 
 sterile pleasure that we take in it, is limited to the organ, and always 
 leaves the heart cold." Rousseau, Pensies, Imagination. 
 
 * " At the aspect of this prodigy of art, I forgot the whole universe. 
 . . . From admiration I passed into ecstasy; I felt my breast expand 
 and heave ; I was transported to Delos and the sacred woods of Lycia, 
 those places which Apollo had honored with his presence." (Winkel- 
 mann, Histoire de VArt, livre 6e, ch. 6.)
 
 156 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 to heaven. The thought of the serpent Python will drive 
 from your recollection the archer with the inevitable arrow, 
 that you may think only of the incomparable artist, and 
 exclaim : " Sublime genius, why have you not known the true 
 Son of the true Father of gods and men, who descended 
 upon the earth to overthrow the great dragon wJio was draw- 
 ing the whole universe into tJie infernal abysses ! " * Let us 
 return to architecture. 
 
 Durability and the desire to astonish, is all that the struc- 
 tures of Egypt, as gigantic and as heavy as their gods, express. 
 
 Graceful, smiling, voluptuous as their mythology, the archi- 
 tecture of the Greeks has aimed at nothing but to please the 
 eye. Their temples, of an admirable regularity of outline, 
 of exquisite delicacy of detail, are, like the gods who inhabit 
 them, nothing but the creation of human thought. A glance 
 of the eye is sufficient to comprehend them, they only speak 
 to the senses ; they recall nothing but the artist. The grace- 
 ful deities whom sculpture has introduced into them did not 
 descend from the empyrean, or if they originated there, they 
 have so far forgotten their origin, and are so well acclimated 
 among men, that we should vainly seek in them an aspiration 
 towards heaven. 
 
 Properly speaking, the Greeks have had but one religious 
 monument, that is, one which excites the thought of God, 
 it is the altar erected to the unknown God.\ 
 
 The fantastic wandering Arab, a passionate lover of the 
 marvellous, has impressed himself completely on his aerial 
 structures. The mosques and palaces with which he has 
 covered the south of Spain, are only a version of the Thou- 
 sand and one Nights. 
 
 Finally, Egyptian architecture aspires to immortality, but 
 
 Et projectus est draco ille magnus . . . qui seducit universum 
 orbem. (Apoc. xii. 9.) 
 
 t Ignoto Deo. (Act. xvii. 23.)
 
 CHRISTIAN ARCHITECTURE. 157 
 
 to earthly immortality. The architecture of Greece only 
 aims to embellish our terrestrial dwelling place. The Ara- 
 bian soothes the imagination, it loves to surprise, and allures 
 to reverie. Christian architecture alone recalls to man his 
 destiny and makes him aspire to heaven. 
 But what is this Christian Architecture ? 
 
 CHAPTER XLIX. 
 
 CHRISTIAN ARCHITECTURE. ITS CHARACTER. 
 
 THE first Christian Churches in the West, says the author 
 of Etudes Historiques, were only remodelled temples : the 
 pagan worship was external, the decoration of the temple 
 was superficial ; the Christian worship was interior. The 
 columns were transferred from the exterior to the interior of 
 the edifice.* 
 
 For several centuries these alterations were sufficient. 
 Edifices could not be erected on a soil constantly trembling 
 under foot of the barbarians. To the tumult of wars let us 
 add the terrible tradition which announced, in the tenth cen- 
 tury, the end of the world, and there will be less reason for 
 astonishment at the slow progress of Christian architecture. 
 
 When once the world was settled, and believed in its own 
 continuance, that architecture appeared, the wonderful blend- 
 ing of all architecture, original, fruitful, inexhaustible, myste- 
 rious, infinite as the religion which inspired it, and which 
 sought to manifest herself in it. 
 
 Timid and embarrassed as a novice, in the dome of Pisa, 
 (eleventh century,) she appeared to reach her climax in the 
 
 * Etude vi. 2d part, torn. 3. 
 14
 
 158 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 Cathedral of Cologne and the Spire of Strasbourg (thirteenth 
 century). I say she appeared ; for, in truth, no human eye 
 could determine her climax. Greek architecture choosing 
 man for its type, could not rise above man.* Christian art, 
 had God for its object, and by this extraordinary boldness 
 was forced always to ascend. If a foolish admiration of 
 pagan monuments had not checked this impulse, if, instead 
 of imitating the achievements of Greece, the Christian inten- 
 tion had been carried out, we should have perhaps religious 
 edifices which would be to the Cathedral of Cologne, what 
 the funeral orations of Bossuet are to the legends of the 
 thirteenth century. 
 
 The historians of art, during the two last centuries, agree 
 in asserting that architecture disappeared with the empire of 
 the West, to appear only with the sixteenth century. The 
 gothic, according to them, is less an art than the absence of 
 all art: having no regularity, no proportion, no symmetry. 
 Profound writers ! what would you think of him who should 
 find no trace of good sense in a book, because every word 
 or every line did not commence with the same letter ? Gothic 
 structures are a writing, a book : learn to read before blaming 
 the author. 
 
 For example, it is asked why in our most beautiful gothic 
 churches the longitudinal line is broken at its upper extremity, 
 and why the choir and sometimes the aisles are oblique to the 
 nave. As if those who raised these prodigious pyramids 
 
 * It is from the noble proportions of human nature that those of 
 architecture were taken. Man furnished the proportions of the Doric 
 order : as being more majestic it was consecrated to gods and heroes. 
 Woman, more slight and delicate, gave those of the Ionic order : the 
 latter has been more frequently employed in the temples of the god- 
 desses. The Corinthian, invented by Callimachus, like a young girl, 
 fresh, pure and beautiful, is only composed of the others, but more 
 delicate and ornate." (Lettres d'ltalie, torn. v. 17SO.)
 
 CHRISTIAN ARCHITECTURE. 159 
 
 which have not lost their perpendicular for six centuries, were 
 not acquainted with the straight line. 
 
 The architect has seen and intended this pretended irregu- 
 larity. Instead of a cross traced as a square, he represents 
 to us a Man-God expiring on the wood to which his love 
 and our crimes affixed him. The aisles are the arms open 
 to receive the world and bear it up to God ; the choir is the 
 head inclined towards the right ; the purple- stained panes 
 are dropping yet with his blood ; and those statues, mute with 
 grief and astonishment, or cast into the depth of their niches in 
 the attitude of profound meditation, plainly announce to us, 
 that a great mystery is being accomplished there, where we 
 are only looking for stones artistically arranged. 
 
 Until a Champollion comes to reveal to us the mysterious 
 sense concealed under these hieroglyphics, let us content our- 
 selves with the prevailing thought. What do these colonnades 
 upon colonnades signify, these galleries upon galleries ? They 
 would scale heaven. What is the signification of that multi- 
 tude of statues of men and animals, rising above each other 
 in the midst of a forest of foliage and productions of every 
 kind ? It is humanity, it is all nature, pressing with immense 
 force towards its author. 
 
 What is the ogive which the gothic has preferred to the 
 circular arch, an unbending line, which turns its back to 
 heaven and stretches its two extremities towards the earth ? 
 It consists of two lines, which indefinitely approaching the 
 vertical only bend to meet, to support, and uplift each other to 
 the greatest possible height. 
 
 But, it will be said, what harmony in that multitude of tri- 
 fling ornaments, no one of which is in keeping with another ? 
 The harmony of creation, a harmony as vast as the invi- 
 sible world of which it is the material symbol : it presents 
 only irregularity and disorder to the human eye incapable of 
 seizing its magnificent outline. Our most vast Gothic structures
 
 160 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 are only, if I may so express myself, the first story of the edifice 
 sketched by Christian genius, the rest is lost in the depth of 
 heaven. 
 
 Vast breadth of outline and variety and perfection of detail 
 are the two distinctive traits of the Gothic, and such are also 
 the characteristics of the great work of creation. 
 
 It may perhaps be said that in speaking thus, we censure 
 the application of the Greek style to Christian edifices, a style 
 adopted in Italy and which has produced so many master 
 pieces. This is not our idea. 
 
 Italy filled with the most beautiful monuments of ancient 
 art ; Rome especially, enriched by its emperors with all that 
 was greatest in the conception and execution of Greek and 
 Roman genius, could not abandon that style, without repudiat- 
 ing her inestimable inheritance of models and materials. 
 
 Moreover it was part of the plan of Providence that the 
 monuments of Paganism should serve as trophies for its con- 
 queror. It must needs be that the Egyptian obelisk of Cali- 
 gula should adorn the square of the church of St Peter, that 
 the columns of the tomb of Adrian should go to ornament the 
 grand nave of the Basilica of St. Paul, at the same time, that 
 the columns erected to Marcus Aurelius and Trajan, should 
 serve as pedestals to the statues of the two apostles. 
 
 But while adopting Pagan architecture, the Italian genius 
 has christianized it by giving it that wonderful grandeur, and 
 that character of infinity, which was unknown to the ancients. 
 The Pantheon was too low, it was raised several hundred feet 
 higher ; the great circular eye which terminated it so coldly, 
 was replaced by a magnificent dome, and the cross ascending 
 from it into the air to the height of four hundred feet, an- 
 nounces to the world, that it has surpassed the Pantheon by 
 twice its height. 
 
 Yes, Christian genius, original even when it imitates, expands, 
 and sanctifies whatever it touches ; its doctrine uniting the
 
 LITURGIC LITERATURE. 16] 
 
 truths which were scattered up and down through human 
 creeds, presented them as a whole unknown to the human 
 mind, in the same manner as its architecture embracing all 
 the great achievements of antiquity, constructs from them 
 a whole which overwhelms with admiration its most fanati- 
 cal detractors.* 
 
 CHAPTER L. 
 
 CHRISTIAN MUSIC. LITURGIC LITERATURE. 
 
 MANY of our readers will be tempted to smile when they 
 hear us speak of the beauties of the plain chant of our 
 churches. Let us quote, then, a man above suspicion, since, 
 from his own confessions, he is at present very far from the 
 Christian faith. 
 
 " It is especially in the plain chant," says M. Adolphe Gue- 
 raut, " that we must look for the pure musical inspiration of 
 Christianity, an inspiration simple and sublime, which only de- 
 lights in the bare arches of the old cathedrals, which blends and 
 harmonizes with the grave and slow movement of the priests, 
 
 * The most violent enemy of Christian Rome, Dupaty, acknowledges, 
 in this point the superiority of Christian genius. " Here is the Pan- 
 theon," said he, " which astonished the Roman imagination and did not 
 astonish that of Michael Angelo ! That Pantheon, which was the 
 thought of the age of Augustus and was afterwards only one of the 
 thoughts of Michael Angelo, the dome of his Church of St. Peter. 
 ' You wonder at the magnitude of the Pantheon,' said he to the nations, 
 ' You are astonished that the earth can support it : I will place it in 
 the air.' The genius of Michael Angelo said this, and his hand ex- 
 ecuted it." Lettres sur Italic, lettre 87. But to say and do these things, 
 as to paint the Universal Judgment, it was necessary that Michael 
 Angelo should be a Christian. 
 
 14*
 
 162 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 the holy obscurity of the place, the colored glass, the sculp- 
 tured saints, and even the stone which is alone capable of 
 answering to the full and resounding tones of the organ the 
 organ, a truly religious instrument, whose manly voice and 
 majestic charm is far from being replaced by the flexibility 
 and brilliant vivacity of our orchestras."* 
 
 The same writer answers, in a manner as novel as solid, to 
 the reproach often cast upon the ecclesiastical chant, of having, 
 by adapting itself to prose, deprived the music of that rhythmi- 
 cal and measured movement, which constitutes its charm and 
 to which the ancients attached so much importance. Accord- 
 ing to him, rhythm, giving to music a movement, a form, a 
 sensible and definite attraction, characterizes essentially the 
 music of action : it is through this that it has the power to 
 strike, to seize, to move. But for the very reason that it is 
 dramatic, it tends to settle, limit, and repress activity of 
 thought, it subjects the soul to the senses by exciting the lat- 
 ter too much, and thus counteracts the aim of religion, which 
 addresses itself to the senses only, that it ma} 7 , through them, 
 attract the soul. Let this intelligent author speak for himself. 
 
 " It is remarkable that, in the ancient chants of the church, 
 rhythm is almost entirely wanting, or at least it is so vague, 
 indistinct and confused, that the ear can scarcely recognize it. 
 Hence it is, doubtless, that these melodies predispose so power- 
 fully to meditation, prayer and ecstasy, nearly all are written 
 in the minor key and in an undecided and undulating intona- 
 tion, they bring to the soul only plaintive and sad inflections, 
 following each other in a capricious succession like sighs, 
 sobs, or emotions of the heart ; they have something intense 
 without either form or outline, and which far from abandon- 
 ing the senses to the reiterated attacks of rhythm, which con- 
 tantly agitate them, pass over the organs, if I may thus express 
 
 * De la Musique. sacrie et de Ja Musique profane, by M. Adolphe 
 Guraut. (Revue EncyclopSdigue, 1832.)
 
 LTTURGIC LITERATURE. 163 
 
 myself, without touching them, absorb them and blunt them, 
 for the advantage of the soul, which disengaged from their 
 power, forgetful of time and place, plunges into endless contem- 
 plation. They have something fluent, ethereal, dreamy and 
 transparent as the smoke of incense which ascends towards 
 heaven while diffusing itself around."* 
 
 Let us leave, then, to the music of our theatres, its dramatic 
 beauties, its beautiful orchestral effect. As it only sings of man 
 with his passions and his caprices, it has need of mechanical 
 resources to fascinate the pubic mind and veil the nudity of 
 its hero. Religion sings of God : the boundless richness of 
 the subject forbids the vain affectations of art. To detach 
 the mind and heart from the earth, to transport them to the 
 footstool of the Eternal, and to make us forget ourselves 
 in presence of the Supreme Majesty, which is alone wor- 
 thy of commanding our thoughts and feelings, is the aim 
 of religious music. Catholic and universal as the Christian 
 doctrines, it belongs to the ignorant as well as the culti- 
 vated, to the savage of the desert as well as to the inhabi- 
 tant of the city. It must then free itself from the elaborate 
 combinations and capricious variations of art, to attach itself 
 to excellences universally and constantly felt. 
 
 What we say of the music applies also to the words. Cer- 
 tainly we should not go to our missals, nor to the hymns 
 of our anthem-books to study the richness and elegance of 
 diction belonging to Virgil and Horace ; but under a prosaic 
 and negligent form, what glow of inspiration ! what burn- 
 ing waves of poetry ! what depth of thought ! what lively 
 imagery ! and more than all what pathos ! f 
 
 * De la Musique Sacree, &c. 
 
 f Those who consider this eulogium on the literary wealth of our 
 ancient liturgies as exaggerated, should read, beside the remarks of M. 
 Adolphe Gueraut, cited above, the book entitled : De la Literature des 
 Offices divins. (Paris, 1829.)
 
 164 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 The expression is, like that of our holy books, so appropriate 
 to the subject, that notwithstanding its inelegance, it could only 
 be replaced by itself. If there is anything to be reformed 
 in the style of our old liturgies, it is the reformation which 
 talent purely human has seen fit to introduce into them. 
 
 Finally, in poetry, as in music and architecture, Christianity 
 has neglected the elegances of detail, and forms too definite, 
 too earthly, which are only adapted to charm the senses and 
 distract the mind. Aspiring uninterruptedly towards heaven, 
 from whence it descended, burning with the desire to uplift 
 entire humanity to the same elevation, it has drawn from the 
 sentiment of its mission, from the nature of the human heart, 
 whose depths it has so well measured, and from the grandeur 
 of God whom it proclaims, those divine traits, those immor- 
 tal beauties, which, soaring above time and place, belong to 
 all ages and all countries, and like true sublimity, make them- 
 selves felt by the lowest intellect, while they enrapture the 
 most exalted souls. 
 
 CHAPTER LI. 
 
 RECAPITULATION. WHAT IS WANTING TO CHRISTIANITY IN 
 
 ORDER TO BE BELIEVED. OBJECTIONS OF UNBELIEVERS. 
 
 CHRISTIANITY then satisfies all the legitimate demands of 
 the human heart 
 
 Its doctrine, so luminous as to lead us to the abodes of 
 eternal light, which it points out to us beyond the darkness 
 of the tomb, subdues every intellect which will examine it in 
 the silence of the passions; and for the eighteen centuries 
 that it has challenged human investigation, it has as yet only 
 suffered the opposition of ignorance and infidelity.
 
 OBJECTIONS OF UNBELIEVERS. 165 
 
 Its morality, which is only opposed to our vices, leads us 
 to happiness by the path of virtue. The blessings which it 
 has diffused throughout the world, and the pure joys which 
 it bestows on hearts obedient to its voice, are sufficient to 
 render credible the sovereign felicity which it promises us in 
 a better world. 
 
 It increases the value of our earthly abode, by leading us 
 to regard it as the entrance to eternity, and the divine beauty 
 of its worship, reflecting here below the harmonies of the 
 celestial city, effectually dispels the fatigues of the pilgrimage. 
 
 Why then does it fail to captivate all hearts ? " It needs 
 only to be known," said the most eloquent of its defenders, 
 sixteen centuries ago. 
 
 The challenge which Tertullian gave to the Roman em- 
 perors, to produce an idolater who had studied Christianity 
 thoroughly without becoming a Christian,* we can still offer 
 to the unbelievers of our day. Show us one man converted 
 from faith to unbelief by a conscientious study of religion ! 
 On the other hand, to pass from the idolater of Tertullian to 
 the philosopher La Harpe, we could show thousands of un- 
 believers whom study has conquered to the faith, and who 
 will say with the latter : " Examine as I have done, and like 
 me you will believe." 
 
 To the objections with which the skepticism of Voltaire has 
 filled thousands of volumes, that are now read only among 
 the lowest persons, Voltaire himself furnishes the only answer 
 they deserve. " Take from these numerous volumes," said 
 he, "an enormous mass of abominations, what would re- 
 main ? and take moreover from what remains the objections 
 of ignorance and infidelity, there will remain nothing." j- 
 
 Among those objections however, some are too current to 
 allow even the brevity of this work to pass them over in silence. 
 Some attack the doctrine of Christianity, others its morality. 
 * Jlpologet, I. f (Euv. torn, xxxii. p. 47.
 
 166 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 1st. The doctrine is accused, in the first place, of doing 
 violence to reason, by subjecting it to the belief of incompre- 
 hensible mysteries, of checking the progress of knowledge, 
 by preventing thought from overstepping the inflexible limit 
 within which faith imprisons it ; 2dly, of disfiguring the 
 Divine character, by making of the Creator a partial and 
 cruel being who, after having given a religion to one small 
 nation concealed in the mountains of Palestine, condemns 
 without pity all other nations, and who, for eighteen hundred 
 years, has condemned to eternal fire millions of idolaters 
 guilty of being ignorant of the doctrine of Christ ; 3dly, of 
 fomenting fanaticism and intolerance, by representing those 
 who have the misfortune not to believe, as so many enemies 
 of God, slaves of Satan, and firebrands of hell. And in this 
 connection a long enumeration is made of wars, massacres, 
 and crimes, for which religion has served as a pretext. 
 
 2d. Christian morality is reproached: 1st, with favoring 
 despotism, by condemning all rebellion, and not permitting 
 the worst princes to be viewed in any other light than the 
 inviolable ministers of Divine justice; 2dly, of depriving 
 society of all life and progress, by the profound contempt 
 required of a Christian for everything which belongs to the 
 affairs of this lower world, in which he is permitted to see 
 only a prison, and a place of exile. 
 
 CHAPTER LII. 
 
 IS FAITH IN MYSTERIES AN OUTRAGE UPON REASON? 
 
 I WOULD ask of those who complain of the incomprehen- 
 sibleness of certain Christian truths, if there is any truth in 
 the natural order which they entirely comprehend.
 
 FAITH IN MYSTERIES. 1G7 
 
 Would human intelligence, which sees the whole of nothing, 
 which is unable to comprehend itself, pretend to comprehend 
 God ! Everything in us and about us offers to it only im- 
 penetrable mysteries ; it is bewildered by a drop of water, or 
 a grain of sand ; and should there be nothing in heaven con- 
 cealed from it !* 
 
 Let a mathematician of the first rank undertake to reveal 
 to us the deepest secrets of the science of the Newtons and 
 Keplers, we should not be at all surprised to see mysteries 
 fall fast from his lips. However startling some of his asser- 
 tions might appear, we still should compassionate the pre- 
 sumptuousness of one who, having scarcely read the arith- 
 metic of Bezout, should dare to dispute with the sublime lec- 
 turer the truth of his theorems. But when the Supreme 
 Intelligence, before which all the Newtons are as moles, 
 deigns to reveal to us some of the secrets of his Divine being, 
 we yield nothing to the authority of the master ; and if his 
 words jar upon our ignorance, even in the slightest degree, 
 they will meet only the smile of incredulity ! Could the ex- 
 travagance of pride go farther than this! Do we pretend to 
 know as much as God ! 
 
 No, the skeptic will answer : but when God speaks to man 
 it is the duty of his wisdom to place itself within our reach ; 
 to propose only useful truths, adapted to enlighten and im- 
 prove us ; to speak to us a supernatural language, and tell us 
 unintelligible things, is an ostentation of science unworthy of 
 an infinitely wise Being. If God in his revelations, had pro- 
 posed to himself only to crush our great enemy, pride, and 
 oblige us to recognize humbly our ignorance in the presence 
 of his infinite wisdom, would it not be a useful object? Is 
 not faith, the worship of intelligence, the immolation we make 
 
 * Difficile jEstimamus quae in terra sunt: et quae in prospectu sunt, 
 invenimus cum labore. Quse autem in coelis sunt, quis investigabit ? 
 (Sap. ix. 16.)
 
 163 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 of our feeble light to the light of eternal reason ?* Now 
 what merit would there be in submitting to the Divine word, 
 if it offered to the mind the irresistible force of evidence ?f 
 
 But Christian revelation has not this character of unintel- 
 ligibility attributed to it by the unbeliever. What are a few 
 mysteries in the midst of this abundance of historical, moral, 
 and philosophical knowledge, which the holy scripture con- 
 tains, that inexhaustible source of light, from which philoso- 
 phers themselves have borrowed everything except their errors! 
 
 Are these mysteries at all more unintelligible than many 
 others in the natural order, which no one thinks of calling in 
 question ?| 
 
 Nay, more, it is to the knowledge of these mysteries that 
 we are indebted for the immense light which Christianity, 
 even according to its enemies, has shed over the past, present, 
 and future condition of man. " Certainly nothing more 
 rudely jars us than original sin," said Pascal ; " and yet with- 
 out this mystery, the most incomprehensible of all, we are 
 incomprehensible to ourselves. The labyrinthine thread of 
 our condition turns and winds among the folds of this mys- 
 tery ; hence man is more incomprehensible without this 
 mystery, than this mystery is incomprehensible to man." 
 
 Take from Christianity the fundamental fact of the trinity 
 of divine persons in the unity of nature, and of the hypo- 
 static union of one of these persons with the human nature, 
 the Gospel becomes an insolvable enigma. 
 
 * Rousseau, in other respects so great an enemy to mysteries, con- 
 fessed the necessity and the merit of this sacrifice, when he exclaimed : 
 " Being of beings, . . . the most worthy use of my reason is to anni- 
 hilate myself before thee : it is the delight of my weakness to find 
 myself overwhelmed with thy grandeur." (Emile, tome iii. p. ISO.) 
 
 f Haec est laus fidei, si quid creditur non videtur: nam quid mag- 
 num est, si id creditur quod videtur. (S. Augustin, Tract. 78, in John.) 
 
 J As above, ch. 38. 
 
 Pensees, tit. 3d. 8.
 
 IS FAITH AN OBSTACLE TO KNOWLEDGE ? 1G9 
 
 Long since it was said, that the highest dogmas of Chria 
 tianity are like the sun : impenetrable in their essence, they 
 enlighten and vivify those who walk with simplicity in their 
 light, and are dark only for the bold eye which would pene- 
 trate them. If we reject them, we must reject Christianity, 
 and reject God; for ,can we better comprehend an eternal 
 infinite creative being, &c. ? Universal absurdity, intellectual 
 imbecility, and idioc} r , are the lowest terms of unbelief. 
 
 I shall not waste time in refuting the sophisms so often re 
 futed, by which Bayle in his Dictionnaire, and Rousseau in 
 his Lctlre a I'Archeveque de Paris, attempted to demonstrate 
 the flagrant opposition of our mysteries to the first principles 
 of reason. To him who dares yet to accuse us of believing 
 that three make but one, and that the part is greater than the 
 whole, I should say : " My friend, go to your parish catechism, 
 or rather apply to those simple persons who have just finished 
 it, and they will teach you that you are only a simpleton." 
 
 CHAPTER LIII. 
 
 IS FAITH AN OBSTACLE TO THE PROGRESS OF KNOWLEDGE ? 
 GALILEO. 
 
 As to the reproach which is often cast on Christian faith, 
 that it checks freedom of thought and impedes the progress 
 of knowledge, it must be avowed that it is ill supported by 
 facts. 
 
 If faith is an incubus upon the intellect, whence comes the 
 immense intellectual superiority of Christian over infidel na- 
 tions? Whence comes it that one Christian catechist is 
 sufficient to reduce to silence the most skilful philosophers of 
 India and China, as one English corporal is sufficient to set 
 
 15
 
 170 THE SOLUTION OP GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 at naught all their military science. Whence comes it that 
 among Christian nations it is precisely those whose faith is 
 the least flexible, who find themselves placed. highest on the 
 intellectual scale ?* Whence comes it that in the same nation 
 the greatest names in science, those most universally honored, 
 are Christian names? 
 
 Who would dare, in scientific and literary departments, to 
 put on the same level the freethinkers of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury, and the believers of the seventeenth! W r e could not 
 without injustice despise the remarkable talents of Voltaire 
 and Rousseau ; but what have they gained, or rather what 
 have they not lost, in their ferocious contest against Chris- 
 tianity ? For what metaphysical, political, or moral truth are 
 we indebted to their incredulity ? What was the fate of 
 science and literature under their direction ? a river of mud 
 which rolled over diamonds.^ 
 
 From this enormous mass of " complete works," the man 
 of sense and taste will choose the diamonds, that is, a few 
 dramas, which he will rank after those of Corneille and Ra- 
 cine ; a few histories, which he will class among his agreeable 
 stories; some eloquent pages almost always Christian, and 
 the rest will serve as food for worms. 
 
 Nothing can be imagined more fatal to the mind, than 
 liberty of thought as the unbeliever understands it ; that is, 
 the absence of fixed principles upon the important point of 
 religion. Genius without convictions is a fire without fuel, 
 
 O 
 
 an architect without materials. Give it great truths, it will 
 send forth floods of light ; leave it in doubt, it will be extin- 
 guished or only give out smoke. 
 
 "Everything is floating at the sport of chance," Seneca 
 has well said, "in a mind deprived of principles; hence 
 
 * This is demonstrated, history in hand, by the Protestant Cobbett. 
 (Letters on the History of the Reformation, letter 1st.) 
 
 * De Maistre, Exan\en de la philosophic de Bpcon* torn, ii, ch- v
 
 IS FAITH AN OBSTACLE TO KNOWLEDGE? 171 
 
 dogmas are indispensable to give to genius a firm and vigor- 
 ous action."* 
 
 I would ask any man of good sense if the child who knows 
 his catechism, has not ideas infinitely more rational and more 
 elevated concerning God, man, and the universe, than the 
 pretended freethinker, who can neither tell you why nor how 
 he exists, whether he is a spiritual being or an animal, whe- 
 ther he is to die like a brute or live after death ? We see him 
 occupying himself with these very interesting questions, but 
 the time employed in the examination is lost to science. Is 
 it said, that in sounding the depths of metaphysics and morals 
 he will make useful discoveries? But what metaphysical or 
 moral truth have philosophers discovered ? Have they estab- 
 lished anything but doubts during the ages in which they have 
 been promising us a complete system of doctrine. 
 
 If instead of fixing his attention on such very grave ques- 
 tions, the freethinker boasts of forgetting them, as is very 
 often the case ; if he has only a stupid what is it to me for a 
 resolution of the important problem of his destiny, what can 
 we expect great from such an animal. 
 
 We are told of atheists distinguished in the sciences. But 
 is a man a genius because he has discovered a new planet, 
 calculated the motion of the stars, increased the list of ele- 
 mentary substances, or invented a new formula or a machine ? 
 The man who finds nothing but matter in the universe, will 
 see only facts in it, and will only think of particulars ; 
 he will possess nothing of science but its tactics. 
 
 Where are to be found names like those of Roger Bacon, 
 Kepler, Copernicus, Galileo, Kircher, Linneus, Newton, 
 Descartes, Boyle, Pascal, Leibnitz, Gregory of St. Vincent, 
 Ealer, Bernouilli, Boscowich, all creators or promoters of 
 science, and all thoroughly Christian ? 
 
 * Quae res communem sensum facit, eadem perfectum, certarum 
 rerun) persuasio, sine qua omnia in animo mutant. Necessaria ergo 
 sunt decrela, quae dant aniir.is inflexible judicium. (F.p. xcv.)
 
 172 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 Would any one dare to speak of Galileo as crushed by the 
 anathemas of Rome, for maintaining the system of Coperni- 
 cus, after it has more than once been demonstrated from 
 positive testimony that "The sovereign Pontiffs far from 
 retarding the knowledge of the true system of the world, 
 have on the contrary greatly advanced it, and that during 
 two whole centuries, three Popes and three Cardinals have 
 successively sustained, encouraged and recompensed both 
 Copernicus himself and the different astronomers who were 
 more or less successful precursors of this great man ; so that 
 it is in a great measure to the Roman Catholic Church that 
 we are indebted for our knowledge of the system of the 
 world?"* 
 
 As to Galileo, if he were condemned by the Inquisition, a 
 special tribunal in which no Catholic recognizes the right to 
 fulminate anathemas in matters of doctrine, it is satisfactorily 
 proved that it was not for having adopted the Copernican 
 system, but for wishing to form from it a sort of dogma 
 demonstrable by Scripture ; so that in this discussion, it was 
 the Inquisition itself which defended liberty of opinion.-} 1 
 
 CHAPTER LIV. 
 
 IS THE GOD OF CHRISTIANS A PARTIAL OR CRUEL GOD ? 
 
 To say that before Jesus Christ, God was solely occupied 
 with the salvation of the Jews, and that he has punished and 
 still punishes in infidels the involuntary ignorance of a revel- 
 
 * De Maistre, Examen, &c. 
 
 t Beside De Maistre, the Protestant Mallet Dupan has written on 
 this subject. (Mercure de France, No. 29, 17 April, 1784.) Tira- 
 boschi, (Storia delta Letteratura Ital. torn. Sth.) But especially the 
 Letters of Galileo himself.
 
 IS GOD PARTIAL OR CRUEL ? 173 
 
 ation made whether to Jews or Christians, shows total igno- 
 rance both of Bible history and the first principles of Christian 
 doctrine. 
 
 I will not cite the innumerable passages of Scripture which 
 represent to us Jehovah as the common Father of the nations, 
 desirous of the salvation of all his children, and who, with- 
 out distinction of Jew and Gentile shows himself rich in com- 
 passion towards all those who invoke him, and makes every 
 effort that nations, as well as individuals shall not have cause 
 to impute to him their ruin.* Let facts speak for themselves. 
 
 From Adam till the call of Abraham, that is, more than 
 two thousand years, we do not see that God had made any 
 other distinction among human families than that which merit 
 and virtue demands. It was when the numerous generations 
 descended from Noah, deaf to the voice of reason and patri- 
 archal traditions, sullied by monstrous rites the earth, still 
 bleeding from the blows of Divine justice, that God chose 
 a man who lived pure in the midst of universal corruption, to 
 preserve in his family, along with the primitive history of the 
 world, the knowledge of the true God, and the fundamental 
 doctrine of the promise of a Redeemer. 
 
 The immense posterity of Adam, which was the depository 
 of life and blessedness one day to be diffused over all na- 
 tions,f was not, as has been supposed, a small nation, buried 
 in an obscure country. Placed on the confines of Europe, 
 Asia and Africa, in constant relations with the Egyptians, 
 
 * Qui omnes homines vult salvos fieri, et ad agnitioncm veritatis 
 venire. (I. Tim. ii. 4.) Non enim est distinctio Judoei et Grseci : nam 
 idem Dominus omnium, dives in omnes qui invocant ilium. (Rom. x. 
 12.) Quis tibi imputabit, si perierint nationes, quas tu fecisti ? Non 
 enim est alius Deus quam tu, cui cura est de omnibus, &,c. (Sap. xii. 
 12 ) Whoever reads the book of Wisdom, will see what God did in 
 ancient times to open the eyes of the Gentiles, and render their blind- 
 ness inexcusable. 
 
 f In te benedicentur universal cognationes terrae. (Gen. xii. 3.) 
 15*
 
 174 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 who were famous for their power and wisdom, with the Phe- 
 nicians whose vessels covered the seas, with the Assyrians 
 and Persians, who were successively masters of Asia, the 
 Jewish nation was still by the remarkable vicissitudes of its 
 existence like a Pharos elevated in the midst of the world to 
 dispel the darkness of idolatry. 
 
 We learn from profane historians that the name of Abra- 
 ham was celebrated throughout all the East; and the first 
 apologists of Christianity proved to the pagans that their 
 wise men had culled the flower of their doctrine from the 
 books of the Jews.* 
 
 At the moment when the constantly increasing progress 
 of error had nearly quenched the last light of ancient tradi- 
 tion, the ten tribes who formed the kingdom of Israel were 
 scattered throughout the vast countries of Asia.f A century 
 later the nation of Judah suffered the same fate. Finally, 
 under the Grecian empire, the Bible was translated into the 
 language then universal, and among all the nations Jewish 
 colonies were found to confirm the wonderful narratives of 
 this extraordinary book.J 
 
 So many means of salvation were not offered to the unbe- 
 lieving in vain. We see in the sacred writings, that a great 
 number of Gentiles adored the true God, some by following 
 the practices of the Jewish law, others by confining them- 
 selves to the natural law joined to a faith in the Messiah who 
 was to come. It is a principle acknowledged by all the 
 
 * St. Justin, Cohortat, ad Graec. cap. 14. St. Clement, Alex. 
 Stromat. lib. 1 and 5. Eusebius, Praeparat. Evang. lib. 15. Origen, 
 contra Cels. lib. 4. Theoderet, lib. 1. 
 
 t Under king Ozias, A.M. 32S5, according to the Hebrew. 
 
 } It is apparently demonstrated that, before the Christian era, the 
 Jews were established in China and India. See Annales de la Philo- 
 tophie chretienne, vol. 4. p. 120. 
 
 Esther, viii. 17. Act. ii. 11.
 
 IS GOD PARTIAL OR CRUEL ? 175 
 
 Fathers and theologians, and even avowed by the Jews, that 
 the Mosaic law was not binding upon other nations, and the 
 examples of Melchisedec, of Job, and of the centurion Cornelius, 
 prove sufficiently that God numbered his elect from the heart 
 of the gentile nation, and even in the camp of the Romans. 
 
 It is evident that the election of the Jews was a benefit 
 common to all nations. Preserving the records of the human 
 race, this peculiar people was only what it still is, the 
 guardian of the word which was to save the world.* 
 
 As to the Christian religion, carried by the Apostles and 
 their first disciples to the extremities of the globe, it has 
 raised everywhere against its followers tempests enough to 
 excite human curiosity and to leave lasting memorials even 
 in the regions from which it has been driven. What nations 
 were more unkown to the ancient world than those of Ame- 
 rica before its discovery ? and yet a hundred years before the 
 arrival of the Spaniards, Christianity had been preached in 
 Mexico.f 
 
 If, as we affirm, there are still to be found distant nations 
 who are invincibly ignorant of the name of Christ, religion 
 tells us that they will only be 'accountable before God for the 
 light which they have received.^ If infidels recognize that 
 Supreme Being whose existence the spectacle of nature 
 reveals to the grossest minds, and the idea of whom is pre- 
 served amidst the thick darkness of idolatry ; if they con- 
 form their conduct to the first principles of morality engraved 
 on all hearts and promulgated by the universal conscience ; 
 
 * Quid ergo amplius Juda?o est? . . credita sunt illis eloquia Dei. 
 (Rom. iii. 1, 2.) 
 
 t See Annales de la Philosophic chretienne, vol. 14, p. 82. 
 
 t Rom. ii. 
 
 This is a fact proved by the practice and confession of idolaters of 
 every age. See Tertullian, lib. of Testimonio e.nim, &c. Lactance, 
 Divin. Instit. lib. ii. cap. 1. Minut Felix, in Bctavio. St. Cyprian. 
 De Idohmm vanitate, &c.
 
 176 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 God according to the common opinion of theologians, will 
 not leave them in ignorance of the truths of salvation, even 
 if he must send them one of those celestial intelligences, 
 whose employment it is to increase the number of the heirs 
 of heaven;* and this would not be without example in the 
 annals of Christianity.f But if this absolutely gratuitous 
 favor were refused to them, these infidels would not be in a 
 worse condition than children who have died without baptism. J 
 
 If on the contrary, being guilty in matters of religion, of 
 imprudence which he would avoid in the most trifling affairs 
 of life, the infidel worships Gods whom his reason repudiates, 
 if he does the wrong which his conscience disapproves he 
 carries in himself his own condemnation. 
 
 But enough. Instead of occupying ourselves with the fate 
 of infidels, let us rather contemplate the terrible account which 
 we are soon to carry to the tribunal of God, we to whom his 
 Providence has given life in the midst of light. At that fear- 
 ful moment, how many Christians who have been faithless to 
 their belief will envy the fate of pagans who are more ignorant 
 than guilty ! 
 
 CHAPTER LV. 
 
 CAN CHRISTIANITY BE ACCUSED OF FANATICISM AND 
 INTOLERANCE ? 
 
 NOTHING is more unjust than the accusation of fanaticism 
 and intolerance, directed against a religion which commands 
 us to love all men as ourselves, and which permits us to re- 
 
 * Administrator!! spiritus, in ministerimn miss! proptcr eos, qui 
 haereditatem capient salutis. (Heb. i. 14.) 
 
 f Acts x. 3. { See as above, ch. 22. St. Matth. xi. 22, 24.
 
 FANATICISM AND INTOLERANCE. 177 
 
 venge ourselves upon our most cruel enemies only by benedic- 
 tions, prayers and acts of kindness.* 
 
 The same gospel which shows us in the infidel and sinner 
 the slaves of the devil, also teaches us that God loved them 
 so much as to purchase their redemption by the blood of his 
 only Son,-}- and that in one instant they may become the elect. 
 It then commands us to bear with them in patience and kind- 
 ness, after the example of our heavenly Father wJio maketh his 
 sun to rise upon the good and bad, and raineth upon the just 
 and unjust.^. There is not a word in the teaching of Jesus 
 Christ, not a circumstance of his life which authorises the spirit 
 of fanaticism and persecution. The gentleness of the lamb, 
 the simplicity of the dove and the wisdom of the serpent, 
 are the only arms He gives to his disciples for the conquest 
 of the world. Let us review the lives of the heroes of 
 Christianity ; if we find blood flowing there, it is always their 
 own. Where is blind fanaticism found ? in the martyr dying 
 nobly for the defence of an eminently rational and beneficent 
 religion, or in the persecutor murdering men who could be 
 reproached only with their contempt of an absurd and im- 
 moral worship ? Among the vast, innumerable records of 
 councils and pontifical decrees, to whatever age they belong, 
 not one can be found which sanctions the employment of 
 force in the propagation of the gospel : many, on the other 
 hand, might be cited, which remind princes too blindly zeal- 
 ous, of the principles of Christian gentleness. 
 
 If in the middle age, certain Popes, making use of that tem- 
 poral sovereignty, with which universal opinion had invested 
 them, induced Christian princes to take up arms against tur- 
 bulent sectarians, who were enemies of the state as well as 
 the church, and who, by the terrible corruption of their doc- 
 trines and habits, were effacing even the last vestiges of chris- 
 
 * Matth. v. 44. xxii. 39. t John iii. 17. 
 
 } Matth. v. 45. Matth. v. 45.
 
 178 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 tian civilization, this is rather a subject for praise, and we 
 have seen recently Protestant pens avenging the memory of 
 these great men, and showing us in them the saviors of 
 Europe.* 
 
 I shall not speak of the twelve millions of Americans sac- 
 rificed by religion, nor the massacre of St. Bartholomew 
 directed by priests ; those infamous calumnies, fabricated by 
 the philosophical fanaticism of the last century, and contra- 
 dicted by the evidence of facts, and which are only repeated 
 by stupid ignorance. If religion took part in the massacre 
 of the Indians of the New World, it was to throw itself be- 
 tween the executioners and the victims, as the Presbyterian 
 Robertson avers. As to St. Bartholomew, it is well authen- 
 ticated, that this horrible butchery was the act of a cruel 
 policy, to which religion only served as a pretext 
 
 To close the eye upon the vast benefit of Christianity, 
 upon the numberless misfortunes which it has consoled and 
 alleviated, upon the millions of lives it has saved and still 
 saves every day by its heroic institutions, and to disinter 
 from history some obscene crimes, in connection with which 
 we find the name of a monk or a priest, this was the mania 
 of the writers of the school of Ferney, a species of vultures 
 who passed in swift flight over fields covered with delicious 
 fruits to seize on carrion. 
 
 Does it belong, then, to an incredulous philosophy to re- 
 proach us with fanaticism and intolerance, when she exhibited 
 to us not long ago, in a most humane nation, scenes of bar- 
 barity unknown to cannibals, and whose reign of eight years 
 was a perpetual St. Batholomew ! She would in vain disclaim 
 the responsibility of it. The correspondence of Voltaire and 
 his followers, a monument of unprecedent fanaticism, proves 
 that if they saw not all they did, they did all that we .vazr.f 
 
 * See, among others La Vie (flnnocent III. by Hurter. 
 f Words of Condorcet, in La Vie de. Voltaire.
 
 DOES CHRISTIANITY FAVOR DESPOTISM ? 179 
 
 CHAPTER LVI. 
 
 DOES CHRISTIANITY FAVOR DESPOTISM ? 
 
 THAT Christianity promotes despotism, is a false reproach, 
 cast upon the history of Christian ages ! 
 
 Who then has revealed to the world and promulgated that 
 truth, the source of public and private liberty, that men in 
 whatever rank of the social scale they are placed, are all equal 
 before God, their only true Father and Master, all equally 
 dear to his heart and all destined to reign with him in the 
 splendor of his glory ! * 
 
 Who has covered with eternal ridicule the mad desire com- 
 mon to infidel princes, of taking their place among the Gods ? 
 who has imposed silence on the sophistical rhetoricians of 
 Greece and Rome, always ready to banish Jupiter from his 
 temples in order to instal in them indifferently either a Nero 
 or a Titus ? Who has forced the Caesars to recognise under 
 the tatters of the lowest of slaves, their brother and even their 
 protector near him who crushes as glass empires and empe- 
 rors. 
 
 Let us consider the ancient world, and modern nations not 
 yet Christianized. Pride has every where destroyed the unity 
 of the human family, and raised an impassable barrier between 
 prince and subject, high and low, man and woman ; religion 
 every where consecrates the distinction of castes, and sets its 
 seal on the chains of slaves ; philosophy every where pre- 
 serves a profound silence concerning these cruel aberrations, 
 or only opens her mouth to justify them, f 
 
 * Matth. xxiii. 9, 10. Sap. xn. 13. 
 
 t The most humane and profound of ancient philosophers, Aristotle, 
 endeavors to prove that nature condemns most men to servitude, and 
 while refuting the philosophers of his age who denied to slaves the
 
 180 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 But Christianity does not confine herself to establishing the 
 principle of equality in the human mind : she has carried it 
 into the life ; she has realised it in the institutions, which 
 would have overwhelmed the ancient sages with astonishment, 
 but which we hardly notice. 
 
 She has ordained that princes and nobles should meekly pros- 
 trate themselves with the people at the feet of Supreme Ma- 
 jesty and recognize that God alone is great. She has ordained 
 that in our Heavenly Father's mansions, indiscriminately 
 opened to beggars and kings, a man taken like David from 
 the midst of his flocks,* should often summon sovereigns be- 
 fore the Christian tribunal to be judged by the King of kings, 
 to teach them that their authority is only a stream which flows 
 from the celestial paternity, a divinely delegated power to pro- 
 cure the welfare of their subjects, and that, if God has distin- 
 guished them from the rest of men, it is only by the extent 
 of duties he imposes upon them, and by the terrible account 
 that he will soon demand of them for its performance, f She 
 has ordained under pain of anathema, that sovereign and 
 subjects should seat themselves at least once a year, at the 
 same table and eat the same bread. 
 
 Finally, by her divinely philanthropic doctrines, she has so 
 ennobled the lowest in society, that we see every year great 
 
 title of reasonable beings, he does not hesitate to say that they are 
 like the brute, excluded from happiness. (Politic, lib. i. cap. iii ; lib. iii. 
 cap. vi.) Cato, the most just, the most virtuous, the most holy teacher 
 that the Divinity had given to men, according to Seneca the rhetorician, 
 (Controv. lib. i. proaem.) offered his old and infirm slaves for sale, and 
 advised all masters to do the same, in order, as he said, not to support 
 useless beings. See his life by Plutarch, and his Treatise de Re rustica. 
 
 * De post fcetantes accepit eum. (Ps. Ixxxvii. 70.) 
 . t The judgment to which the Egyptians subjected their kings who 
 had been dethroned by death, has been much celebrated ; and yet no 
 one commends the public judgment and perpetual control to which 
 Christianity subjects her reigning sovereigns !
 
 DOES CHRISTIANITY FAVOR DESPOTISM ? 181 
 
 I'; incus stooping even to wash the feet of the indigent, and 
 lionoiing in the lowest of their subjects, the representative 
 of God made poor for the love of us. And is the religion, 
 which works such miracles, accused of favoring despotism ! 
 what short sightedncss, great God ! or rather what blindness ! 
 
 Is it said, that if Christianity forbids insurrections from 
 any cause, one monster would suffice to chain and slay twenty 
 millions of men : an absurd supposition, which could only oc- 
 cur to the mind of the author of the Social Contract !* Among 
 nations who have been constantly faithful to Christianity there 
 cannot be found one of those crowned ogres, so common 
 among infidel nations. 
 
 Place a Nero over a firmly Christian people; public opinion, 
 thai great mistress of affairs, would forbid him even the 
 thought of evil. Would he order crimes, if he were certain 
 that he should be disobeyed ! when all, men, women, youths 
 and children would say to him : " God forbids you to require 
 that and us to permit it to you." Witness those thousands of 
 young virgins and Christian children whom history shows us, 
 reproving emperors and their ministers, before the funeral 
 pile ! Will the tyrant slay, when the soldiers answer him, 
 with one voice as the heroes of the Theban legion ! " Sire, we 
 have taken up arms against your enemies and those of the 
 empire, not against your faithful subjects and our brothers." 
 
 Will the prince become the executioner and after the 
 example of Cornmodus, arm himself with club or steel to kill 
 or mutilate the man who first approaches him ? The day that 
 this fancy seized him, he would fall into the hands of physi- 
 cians ; the next day the churches would re-echo with prayers 
 for the recovery of his Majesty, and if it was too long delayed 
 the government would be confided to a regency. 
 
 To enthrone the bloodthirsty over a nation, Religion must 
 have been banished from it, which only repeats : 
 * Livre iv. ch. 
 
 VOL. I. 10
 
 182 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 " Je crains Dieu, cher Abner, et n'ai pas d'autre crainle."* 
 
 It is when the Christian tribunal is silent, that the 
 Robespierres come with lists of proscription and armies of 
 executioners. 
 
 In this case, what is the part of Christians? If they 
 believe themselves strong enough to overthrow the oppressors 
 of the country and establish a government in harmony with 
 the wishes of a sound majority, Religion permits them to 
 arm themselves, and she will make them heroes by the senti- 
 ments she inspires. We should then see as in 1793, bands 
 of peasants, with the rosary around their neck, a musket or 
 a scythe in hand, destroying in a few months numerous and 
 warlike armies, and driving to within a hair's breadth of ruin 
 a power which made Europe tremble, and obtaining from 
 Napoleon the title of " People of giants." 
 
 If, on the contrary, the Christians are too feeble, above all, 
 if they are in the presence of an established authority, recog- 
 nized by a large number, and whose destruction would plunge 
 the state in anarchy, what should be done ? Religion, coin- 
 ciding with good sense, answers as the father of the Horatii : 
 " Let them die !" Let them die rather than aggravate, by an 
 inconsiderate resistance, the fate of the country, in giving it 
 a hundred tyrants in the place of one.f Let them die rather 
 than perpetuate tyranny by yielding basely to its demands. 
 Their death will be of more advantage to liberty than that 
 of their persecutors. The blood of martyrs is fatal to tyranny. 
 The first Christians reasoned thus, St. Maurice and his six 
 thousand heroes ; thus reason still the Christians of Tonquin 
 and Cochin-China. 
 
 You who would prefer that they should act the Brutus, cal- 
 culate the consequences. Brutus, when he shed the blood 
 
 * I fear God, dear Abner, and have no other fear, 
 t Fremere deinde inultiplicatam servitutem : centum pro uno dom- 
 inos factos. (Tit. Liv. Decad. 1, lib. 1, cap. xvii.)
 
 DOES CHRISTIANITY RENDER MEN IMBECILE? 183 
 
 of Caesar, delivered his country over to the fury of the Tri- 
 umvirate, and the Triumvirate commenced the most protracted 
 and disgraceful tyranny which has ever bowed down the 
 human head. Christians, on the contrary, by dying nobly 
 in defence of liberty of conscience, teach their fellow-citizens 
 that the power of the prince has other limits than his will ; 
 and thirty years had scarcely passed after the massacre of 
 Agaune (A. D. 286) than the Caesars were forced to acknow- 
 ledge in the face of the empire, that they had a Master and 
 a Judge in Heaven. 
 
 Religion is certainly far from favoring despotism, she who 
 first teaches sovereigns, that they are the ministers of Divine 
 benevolence, and that they must reign according to the laws,* 
 and subjects that there are circumstances in which they must 
 answer "No" even till death.f 
 
 CHAPTER LVII. 
 
 DOES CHRISTIANITY RENDER HEX IMBECILE? IS IT THE 
 
 ENEMY OF GREAT ENTERPRISES? 
 
 IT shows great ignorance of Christianity and its history to 
 charge it with checking social progress, being opposed to 
 great enterprises, and forming lifeless, indifferent characters, 
 strangers to the interests of this world. 
 
 * Dei enim minister est tibi in bonum. (Rom. xiii. 4.) It is very 
 remarkable that in the minds of the most enlightened pagans, legality 
 and monarchy were incompatible. Quidain (populi) says Tacitus, 
 lie gum pertccsi leges maluerunt. (Annal. iii. 26.) 
 
 t The extreme severity of the Eastern nations is well known. It 
 would be difficult to find in all Asia a subject courageous enough to say 
 no to his sovereign. But among the Siamese such a man would be a 
 true prodigy. Baptism is every day multiplying these prodigies. " Of
 
 184 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 The true Christian is in fact he who lives the most in the 
 least time.* Subtract from a year the idle hours of which 
 half the life of most men is composed, take away the time 
 given to pride, vanity, the desire to please, to curiosity, the 
 trifling of love, the table and pastime ; how many hours are 
 gained in a day! how many days in a month or a year! 
 
 Would the miser to whom Croesus should open his trea- 
 sures and say, " Come and take what pleases you, for soon 
 my coffers will be closed," find that he had time to lose ? 
 Such is the Christian. He knows that the fleeting moments 
 of life have been given him only to seize the treasures of 
 Divine munificence. | He knows that at the end of the day 
 the Father of the family, will come with that justice which 
 does not pardon even an idle word,t with that liberality which 
 does not leave without its reAvard even a glass of cold water 
 given in his name. He knows that true piety consists not 
 in the length of his prayers, but in a constant application to 
 the duties of his station, and that the prayers which ascend 
 highest towards heaven are those of the unhappy whom he 
 has consoled, and the orphans to whom he has been a father. 
 
 Hence his continual care not to lose a moment ; time is 
 worth as much to him as heaven, which is its recompense. 
 Hence the attention he pays to every act : like Apelles and 
 even more than Apelles, he labors for eternity. Hence his 
 passion for works useful to his neighbor : he knows that God 
 receives as if done for himself what we do for our brethren. j| 
 
 Is not this what we see in the life of the Christian models ! 
 What days are theirs! And here I will not speak of the 
 
 all my subjects, said recently the present king of Siam, the Christians 
 are the only persons who know how to say JVb." Annalcs de la Propa- 
 gation de la Foi, 1, t. v. p. 131. 
 
 * Consummatus in brevi explevit tempora multa. (Sap. iv. 13.) 
 t Ergo dum tempus habemus, operemur bonum. (Galat. vi. 10 ) 
 \ Matth. xii. 36. Matth. x. 42. || Matth. xxv. 40.
 
 DOES CHRISTIANITY RENDER MEN IMBECILE? 18"> 
 
 poor priest Vincent de Paul, whose works of public utility 
 surpass all that human philanthropy, disposing of the trea- 
 sures of kings, could ever have conceived; but I will say: 
 " See these hosts of girls whom his charity has given for 
 mothers and servants to those who have none. See that 
 throng of fathers of families, ladies and young persons whom 
 their energy unites every week in committees to go forth from 
 them into the abodes of indigence, to be certain that no 
 unfortunate person escapes their beneficence. Is it these 
 who are reproached with apathy and indifference ! 
 
 I will not speak of a Francis Xavier, the Christian Alex- 
 ander, who in ten years, conquered fifty-two kingdoms, 
 planted the standard of faith over an extent of three thousand 
 leagues, and proved that charily goes farther than pride.* 
 
 But see those priests with heroic hearts who tear themselves 
 away from the charms of country to carry to nations who have 
 scarcely the semblance of man, the knowledge which guides 
 to heaven and the arts which soften the rigor of the terrestrial 
 journey. Is it they who are reproached with saintly idleness, 
 and repugnance to great enterprises ? Are they wanting in 
 patriotism? Ask our navigators, ask the neophytes of the 
 South Seas, and you will find that next to the name of God, 
 the French name is the first which their mouth blesses. 
 
 I will not speak of Charlemagne, Alfred the Great and 
 Louis the Ninth, whom the gratitude and admiration of the 
 nations, as well as their virtues have transferred from the 
 throne to the altar. But read the Life of Stanislas the Bene- 
 ficent, or rather traverse Lorraine and you will see the great 
 and marvellous things that a truly Christian prince can 
 accomplish with a very small revenue. 
 
 If from individuals we pass to nations, we shall find that 
 they have never developed so great a power of action as 
 
 * Pension, Sermon pour I'Epiphanie, (Euv. t. xvii. p. 152. 
 16*
 
 186 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 when they have been guided by Christian inspiration. Cer- 
 tainly it is not the age of the crusades which has failed in 
 enthusiasm for great deeds. We cannot reproach the twelfth, 
 thirteenth or fourteenth centuries with imbecility, Cyclopean 
 ages which have covered the soil of Europe with innumera- 
 ble monuments whose beauty, solidity and grandeur astonish 
 and confound our weakness.* It was the same in the fifteenth 
 century, which was " that of the greatest external activity 
 of men, an age of voyages, enterprises, discoveries and 
 inventions of all sorts."f 
 
 " Will our age leave as many memorials of its course, as 
 the time of our fathers? .... The exercise of reason and 
 of industry can do nothing but build exchanges, warehouses, 
 manufactures, bazaars, cafes and pleasure-houses ; in the 
 cities economical establishments ; in the country, cottages, 
 and in every direction small tombs. In five or six centuries, 
 when Religion and philosophy discharge their accounts, 
 when they reckon the days which were theirs, and each 
 makes out the register of their ruins, on which side will the 
 largest portion of life have passed away, on which side will 
 be the largest sum of recollections ? J 
 
 * If we wish to ascertain to what extent France has been covered 
 with these monuments, Jacques Coeur has counted seventeen hundred 
 thousand steeples . . . sum total of monuments (churches, chapels, 
 villas, chateauxs, &c.,) one million eight hundred and seventy-two 
 thousand, nine nundred and twenty-six. Chateaubriand, Etudes His- 
 toriques, torn. iii. 
 
 t Guizot, Cours d'Histoire Moderne, xi. lecon. 
 
 f Chateaubriand, Etudes Historiques, torn. iii.
 
 CONCLUSION. 187 
 
 CHAPTER LVIII. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 I WOULD ask of all those for whom this book is intended, 
 readers wavering in faith or borne far away on the waves of 
 doubt or the currents of opinion, but whose heart has not yet 
 made an indissoluble compact with incredulity, how does it 
 seem to you that I have fulfilled my task ? Can man be a 
 man without being a Christian 1 
 
 I have brought before your eyes a feeble portion of the 
 rays of the sun of truth, at a distance from which there is 
 thick darkness in the intellect, and an icy chill in the heart. 
 Will not those among you who do not yet feel the need of 
 believing, at least feel the obligation to examine. Indeed it 
 is worth the trouble. 
 
 Would you remain idle if, in order to take rank among the 
 princes of this world, you had in your portfolio one only of 
 the numerous titles which establish the claims of Christianity 
 to your faith ? Would you say, " Of what importance is it 
 to me ?" But could the eternal crown which Religion offers 
 you be less in your eyes than one of those terrestrial crowns 
 which death dashes in pieces against our grave stone, when 
 revolutions do not cast them into the mire ! What is de- 
 manded of you by him who exhorts you to study Religion ? 
 He wishes you to examine if it is true that the day when 
 Christianity impressed its seal upon your brow, at the entrance 
 of our temples, you became the adopted son of the great 
 sovereign of time and eternity ; if it is true that in the abode 
 of glory, near the throne surrounded by hosts of celestial in- 
 telligences, there is a seat destined for you, which you cannot 
 renounce without falling into a fathomless abyss of abjectness
 
 188 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 and misery ; if it is true thaf the fleeting moments of life are 
 granted you only to prepare for this sublime destiny. 
 
 At least acknowledge that Christianity wonderfully en- 
 nobles man, and if it is a very dull intellect which resists the 
 evidence of its proofs, it must be a very base heart which is 
 insensible to the grandeur of its promises. 
 
 Abandon its doctrines, what have you left ? 
 
 What is man ? a mere digestive tube. 
 
 What distinguishes him from his dog ? He has speech, but 
 two feet less. 
 
 What does he do upon the earth ? . . He digests. 
 
 KM> OF VCl.
 
 CONTENTS OF VOLUME I. 
 
 CHAPTER. PAGE, 
 
 INTRODUCTION by the Rt. Rev. Bishop Hughes * 
 
 I. What it is to be a man - - 9 
 
 II. In what consists the use of the intellect ? - 10 
 
 III. Various solutions - - 12 
 
 IV Solution of the indifferent ... 12 
 
 V. Solution of the Pantheist. What is Pantheism ? 15 
 
 VI. The same subject continued - - 17 
 
 VII. Moral side of Pantheism - 20 
 
 VIII. Solution of Atheism - - 24 
 
 IX. One proof among a thousand, that the Atheist is the 
 
 most impudent of liars - - 27 
 
 X. The same subject continued 31 
 
 XL Christian Solution - - - 33 
 XII. Continuation. Metaphysical proofs. Proofs from 
 
 feeling ... - - 37 
 XIII. Various solutions of the two questions : What am I ? 
 
 Where am I going ? ... 41 
 XIV. The solution of the Materialist. Is man wholly 
 
 material ? - - - - - 43 
 XV. Solution of the Materialist and Pantheist. Is the 
 destiny of man limited to the present life ? 
 Idea of true happiness. - - 43 
 XVI. Is true happiness compatible with our actual ex- 
 istence ? - - - - 51 
 XVII. Why can we not be happy in this world ? - 55 
 XVIII. In one way or another, there must be a life to come. 53 
 XIX. The future state of man according to Christianity. 60 
 XX. Parallel of Christian progress with philosophic pro- 
 gress ... 64
 
 190 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER. PAGE. 
 
 XXI. Harmony of evangelical morality with man's actual 
 
 condition - - - - 66 
 
 XXII. Doctrine of Christianity, concerning the original 
 
 corruption of man, easily justified 69 
 
 XXIII. Nature of the sin of the first man. Its permanent 
 influence on the life, both of nations and in- 
 dividuals ... 74 
 XXIV. Doctrine of Christianity concerning Hell, eminently 
 
 rational. Is God the creator of Hell? - 78 
 
 XXV. Hell, as well as heaven, is the daily creation of man 
 
 in this life - - 83 
 
 XXVI. Pain of loss of the reprobate. Conjecture concern- 
 ing the pain of fire. - S7 
 XXVII. Necessity of the incarnation. Preparation of the 
 
 human race for this event. Its realisation. - 93 
 
 XXVIII. Office of the God-Man 96 
 
 XXIX. Birth of the God-Man. His private and public life. 93 
 
 XXX. Necessity for the sufferings of the God-Man - 100 
 
 XXXI. Death of the God-Man. Moral effect of this event. 
 
 Is Christianity the work of Man or of God ? 104 
 XXXII. Uniform character of the works of man - 106 
 
 XXXIII. Summary proof of the truth and divinity of Chris- 
 tianity - - 108 
 XXXIV. Character of truth - 111 
 XXXV. Divinity of the bible, proved by its unity - - 112 
 XXXVI. Divine harmony of the Christian system considered 
 
 in itself - - 116 
 
 XXXVII. Continuation. Other internal proofs of the divine 
 
 origin of the Christian system - - 119 
 
 XXXVIII. Profound harmony of Christianity with man. The 
 
 only source of incredulity - - 121 
 
 XXXIX. Historical reality of Christianity. German Commen- 
 tators. Naturalists. Mythologues. Strauss. 123 
 XL. A word concerning the authenticity and veracity of 
 
 the Mosaic Books - - 128 
 
 XLI. Prophetic books. Their authenticity. Answer to 
 
 an objection - - 131 
 
 XLII. Reality of evangelical facts. Character and number 
 
 of witnesses - - - - 134
 
 CONTENTS. 191 
 
 CHAPTER. , PAGE 
 
 XLIII. Conversion of the world, manifest proof of the divine 
 interposition. Absurdity of natural reasons 
 which are given for this event - - 138 
 
 XLIV. Distinguishing miracle of Christianity. Number of 
 witnesses of the divinity of religion. Extrava- 
 gance of the unbeliever. ... 141 
 XLV. Harmony of Christianity with the general history of 
 
 the world, with nature and with all the sciences 144 
 XLVI. Continuation. Work of six days. Unity of the 
 
 human race. Universal traditions - 147 
 
 XLVII. Excellence of the evangelical morality. Its admir- 
 able influence on society and the individual 150 
 XLVIII. Beauty of Christianity. Idea of the beautiful. 
 Essential difference between ancient and Chris- 
 tian art. Pagan architecture - - 154 
 XLTX, Christian architecture. Its character - 157 
 L. Christian music. Liturgic literature - - 161 
 LI. Recapitulation. What is wanting to Christianity in 
 
 order to be believed. Objections of unbelievers 164 
 LI I. Is faith in mysteries an outrage upon reason ? - 166 
 LIII. Is faith an obstacle to the progress of knowledge - 169 
 LIV. Is the God of Christians a partial or cruel God - 172 
 LV. Can Christianity be accused of fanaticism and intol- 
 erance ? - - - - 176 
 LVI. Does Christianity favor despotism . 179 
 LVII. Does Christianity render men imbecile ? Is it the 
 
 enemy of great enterprises ? - - 183 
 
 LVIII. Conclusion. - - - - - ie/
 
 RELIGION IN SOCIETY, 
 
 OR THE 
 
 SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS, 
 
 PLACED WITHIN 
 
 THE REACH OF EVERY MIND. 
 
 TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH OF THE ABBE MARTINET. 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION 
 
 MOST REV. JOHN HUGHES, D.D. 
 
 ARCHBISHOP OF NEW YORK. 
 FOURTH EDITION. 
 
 VOL. II. 
 
 N E W-YORK : 
 
 D. & J. SADLIER, & CO., 164 WILLIAM STREET. 
 
 BOSTON: 128 FBDERAL-STREKT. 
 
 MONTREAL, C. E: 
 CORXER OF NOTRE-DAME AND ST. FRANCIS XAVIER STREETS.
 
 Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1850, 
 
 By D. & J. SADLIER, 
 
 In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, for th* 
 Southern District of New- York. 
 
 VINOBNT L. DILL, Stereotype*. 
 128 Fulton-street, F. Y.
 
 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 WHAT IT IS TO UK A CHRISTIAN. 
 
 To admire the wonderful poetry of Christian worship, to 
 fall into ecstacies before the architectural enchantments of the 
 middle ages, and to cast the reproach of ignorance and bar- 
 barism upon the despisers of those heroic times, is not to be 
 a Christian ; it is to show oneself an artist. 
 
 To ridicule the sarcasms and anti-biblical reasonings of 
 Voltaire, to purify the pages of history from the foul stains 
 with which this impure spirit has sullied them, and to recog- 
 nize that the appearance of Christ in the world was a vast 
 benefit, is not to be a Christian ; it is to prove one's know- 
 ledge and skill in criticism, and carry candid judgment into 
 history. 
 
 To extol the excellence of evangelical morality, and show 
 its profound harmony with the deep wants of man, and its 
 happy influence over the individual, the family, and society ; 
 to celebrate the divine character of Jesus, and show that he 
 is infinitely superior to the wise men of the earth, whose con- 
 duct contradicts their words, when their words do not contra- 
 dict the truth, is not being a Christian ; there is nothing in all 
 this which the most violent enemies of Christianity do not
 
 6 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 avow in their lucid moments. The author of the Koran has 
 recognized the organ of the Divinity in the son of Mary. 
 
 What, then, is the characteristic of the Christian ? It is to 
 recognize in Christ the three prerogatives inherent in the title 
 of Saviour of the world, and which he assumes when he 
 says : " I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man com- 
 eth to the Father but through me."* 
 
 To be a Christian is then, in the first place, to walk in the 
 footsteps of Jesus Christ, and reproduce in our conduct the 
 image of this perfect model of the children of God. 
 
 To be a Christian is, in the second place, to conform our 
 thought to that of Jesus Christ, by an unwavering faith in all 
 his teachings. 
 
 To be a Christian is, in the third place, to incorporate our- 
 selves with Jesus Christ and maintain ourselves in those inti- 
 mate relations by which this Divine Head of the elect sends 
 his life circulating through all his members. 
 
 A certain knowledge and public profession of the doctrine 
 of Christ ; the use of the means established by him to heal 
 the infirmities of man and guide him towards God; a life 
 in harmony with the precepts of the Gospel, and the exam- 
 ples of the Divine Master, such are the three conditions the 
 union of which forms the true Christian. 
 
 The religious society which can alone realize these condi- 
 tions in all its members, and which does in fact realize them 
 in a great number, is without doubt, the only true society of 
 the disciples of Christ. 
 
 To obtain light in our search for this society, let us com- 
 mence by forming a just idea of faith, that first foundation 
 of the Christian life. 
 
 * John xiv. 6.
 
 IDEA OF FAITH. 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 IDEA OF FAITH. ITS NECESSITY. 
 
 WHAT is this Faith which is placed by Christianity at the 
 head of the virtues, and without which, we are told, it is 
 impossible to please God. 
 
 It is a disposition of the mind and heart to believe God 
 upon his word, even when the truths which he is pleased to 
 reveal to us surpass our understanding. 
 
 What can be more just than such a disposition ? Has not 
 God a right to the honor which we every day pay our fellow 
 men, when we admit so many important facts on their testi- 
 mony alone ? 
 
 Let the man who boasts the most of his reason cast a 
 glance upon the treasure of his knowledge, let him separate 
 that which he owes to the light of evidence, to the labor of 
 reflection, to his own researches, from what he has received 
 on the authority of others, and he will agree, with Seneca, 
 that the portion obtained by faith is incontestably the richest.* 
 
 It is faith, that is, confidence in the knowledge and probity 
 of men, which determines us in the more important affairs of 
 life, most of which besides are not within the range of our 
 investigations. It is to our parents, to an agent, a lawyer, a 
 financier, a merchant, a physician, our servants, that we refer 
 what belongs to our civil condition, our alliances, our fortune, 
 our health, our life. 
 
 Now, could we refuse this credit which we give so freely 
 to mistaken and often deceitful men, to the divine testimony, 
 which is essentially pure from error and deceit ?f The 
 skeptic, however, does this. 
 
 " I have my reason," says he ; " to judge it incompetent to 
 * Ep. xciv. t John i. Ep. v. 9.
 
 8 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 guide me, would be an outrage against God from whom I 
 have received it." 
 
 You have your reason, but God also has his, richer no 
 doubt in knowledge than yours; for he is the eldest and 
 the first of thinkers. If then it pleases him to make known 
 to you some of the truths which escape your very short- 
 sighted and uncertain reason, is it not right that you should 
 accept this communication with submission and gratitude ? 
 Would not the refusal of it be an outrage upon your reason 
 and upon him who has bestowed it on you ? 
 
 You have your reason, but it is precisely because he has 
 imparted to you this ray of his intelligence that God speaks 
 to you. He does not speak to the brute. "It is by the 
 sublime gift of reason," said a pagan sage, " that man is 
 distinguished from the animals, and is united to God."* 
 
 What is reason, then, when we look at it more closely ? 
 The faculty of knowing and learning ; a faculty which is 
 only developed by external teaching. If God takes upon 
 himself this instruction, if he assumes the title of teacJier of 
 man,\ does it become man to be displeased at it! Twith is 
 to reason what light is to the eye : to say : We have reason, 
 what need of revelation ? is to say in the darkness of mid- 
 night : we have eyes, what need of light ? 
 
 Let us admit that reason can guide us to the knowledge 
 of all necessary truth, it certainly would be by long and 
 laborious researches which surpass the power of the gene- 
 rality of men. It is indeed then worthy of the benevolence 
 of Our Heavenly Father to furnish all his children, by exter- 
 nal instruction, with a prompt and sure method of attaining 
 truth and virtue, without exposing them to grope in the dim 
 paths of ontology and psychology. According to this hypo- 
 thesis, which all rational and historical facts render very 
 
 * Cicero, DC Legibus, lib. i. 
 
 t Qui docet hominem scientiam. (Ps xciii. 10.)
 
 POWERLESSNESS OF REASON. 
 
 plausible, to prefer the tedious and fruitless labors of human 
 thought to divine teaching, would be a manifest abuse of 
 reason and an affected contempt of God. 
 
 But is it true that reason alone can teach man so much as 
 to render the Divine Word superfluous ? 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 POWERLESSNESS OP REASON. PRETENSIONS OP THE PHIL- 
 OSOPHY OF THE PRESENT DAY. NECESSITY OF 
 
 REVELATION. 
 
 As I have before said, man remains necessarily beneath 
 himself, and cannot come out of the animal sphere of brutal- 
 ity, until he has penetrated the mystery of his existence, 
 knows, beyond a doubt, what he is, whence he comes, whither 
 he is going, what he must do and avoid here below, and 
 what he may hope and fear at the end of his course.* 
 
 Now, upon these capital questions, what are, what can be 
 the instructions of reason ? What hand can raise the thick 
 veil of generation and show us the starting point of man, 
 at his stolen entrance into life. What eye can follow him 
 beyond the tomb ? The witnesses of his sorrows and his 
 misery during his short passage from the cradle to the grave, 
 we are equally ignorant of their origin and remedy. 
 
 For three thousand years during which the most powerful 
 minds have been exercising themselves on these problems, 
 many solutions have been given. Most of them have only 
 increased the sum of human extravagance. Those which 
 good sense can accept without blushing, do not go beyond 
 the limits of conjecture and it is not with conjectures that 
 * First Problem, ch. ii.
 
 10 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 man can be reformed. Would his passions, which too often 
 brave the strongest convictions, willingly yield to a timid 
 perhaps ? 
 
 Is the philosophy of the nineteenth century more success- 
 ful ? Its disciples do not doubt it. " Philosophy is always 
 for them the light of lights, the authority of authorities, the 
 only authority."* They refer philosophically in all things 
 to the auJJiority of the human mind.^ 
 
 " Struck with the imperfections of a solution, which has 
 governed the world for eighteen hundred years, and convinced 
 that at the present day none can be proposed for the accept- 
 ance of the masses, on the claim that it has been revealed, 
 . . . there remains but one way, one means according to 
 them, to come to the assistance of society in peril ; that is to 
 agitate philosophically those formidable problems, for which 
 a solution is absolutely needed ; it is to seek in sincerity by 
 the rigorous processes of science a solution as rigorous, which 
 "can endure the severe examination of that reason into whose 
 hands civilization has transferred the sceptre of authority."! 
 
 But while it pleases these gentlemen to open the eyes of 
 the human race by a solution every way indisputable, death 
 pursues its course. Every second, one man dies; every 
 minute, sixty ; every hour, three thousand six hundred ; every 
 day, eighty-six thousand, four hundred; every year, thirty- 
 one million, five hundred and thirty-six thousand ; and every 
 century, about three thousand millions. 
 
 Where are these poor blind men going ? Where have these 
 innumerable generations gone who have preceded us, if 
 hitherto no one has been found who could point out to them 
 the path of truth which leads to life, the path of error which 
 leads to death ? An idle question, it is true, in the eyes of our 
 
 * M. Cousin, Cours de rHwtoire de la Philo.tophie. Introd. 
 t M. Lerminier, Revue dcs Deux Mondes. torn. vii. p. 733. 
 J M. Jouffroy, Du Problems de la Destinle Humaine.
 
 POWLERLESSNESS OF REASCN. 11 
 
 professors of philosophy. Of what importance is the salva- 
 tion or destruction of two hundred thousand millions of men 
 to them, provided that some fine morning they can have the 
 satisfaction of saying to their followers: "Rejoice, my 
 friends ; of all the great days of humanity this day is the 
 greatest, for it opens a new era, the era of eras, the era of 
 truth ! If this supreme monarch of the intellect has chosen 
 me for her first organ, she destines you to become her first 
 apostles. Give me your attention ! I am going to show you 
 at the very centre of objective evidence the three terms of 
 universal science. God, man and the universe!" 
 
 Yet, if in order to obtain for themselves the sublime office 
 of inventors of truth, the eaglets of our universities, dispose 
 so comfortably of three hundred generations of men who 
 have had the misfortune to die before the opening of our 
 courses of transcendental philosophy, our God does not move 
 so rapidly. He tenderly cherishes our souls, he who has 
 created them in his likeness and animated them with the 
 breath of his love.* He who will have all men to be saved 
 by leading them to a knowledge of the truih,\ must he not 
 show them the way from the beginning ? Witnesses of the 
 great liberality with which he provides for the support of the 
 body, could we doubt that he has furnished to our spirits 
 their celestial food ! 
 
 Who, then, but the Creator can tell us how, and why, he 
 has called the universe and man into existence ? You who, 
 for the solution of these problems appeal exclusively to the 
 intellect of man, if pride had not blinded your eyes a thou- 
 sand fold more thickly than the veil of faith, you would with- 
 out doubt comprehend that your pretension is absurd. Can 
 this mind of man which scarcely sees the depth of its 
 own thought, read the thought of God and wrest from eternal 
 wisdom its secrets? 
 
 * Sap. xi. ult. f I- Tim. ii. 4.
 
 12 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 He must be very blind who does not see that the final 
 cause of being, lies in the bosom of its author. No human 
 eye can reach that ; but the only-begotten Son who is in the 
 bosom of the Father lialh declared to us himself what it 
 imports us to know.* 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 EXISTENCE OF KEVELATION. EXTRAVAGANCE OF 
 
 RATIONALISM. 
 
 GOD has spoken to men, and has not left to their feeble 
 reason the solution of the obscure enigma of their destiny : 
 such has always been, such is still the universal belief. 
 There is no nation without religion, no religion which has 
 not been, in the eyes of its believers, the child of Heaven. 
 
 Ancient philosophy, after long and useless efforts to raise 
 the thick cloud which conceals from man the view of his 
 past and his future, recognizes its powerlessness, and its most 
 illustrious organs have avowed "that men could never be 
 reformed in their life, nor instructed in their true duties 
 towards the Divinity and their fellow men, until a messenger 
 from Heaven should undertake it"f 
 
 God spoke to the human race in its head, and after forty 
 centuries of more or less active communication with the 
 children of men, he vouchsafed to speak to us by his Son 
 who descended on i\\e earth full of grace and lruih,\ such 
 has been for eighteen hundred years the unanimous faith of 
 the Christian world. 
 
 * Deum nemo vidit unquaro : Unigenitus Filius, qui est in sinu 
 Patris, ipse enarravit. (John i. IS.) 
 f Plato, in Aleib. 11. Apol. Socrat. f John i. 14.
 
 EXISTENCE OF REVELATION. 13 
 
 This faith, very different from the vain opinions which 
 plant themselves so easily in the popular mind, because they 
 derange nothing there, and leave to man independence of 
 thought and action, has transformed everything, absorbed 
 everything, impregnated everything with her spirit, public and 
 private life, political and civil institutions, the sciences, fine 
 arts, &c. Furiously resisted by the passions, which she came 
 to dethrone, she has obtained, and still obtains from her dis- 
 ciples, what never has been granted to an opinion, the volun- 
 tary sacrifice of life. Violently assailed by the false philoso- 
 phers whom she accuses of ignorance and folly, she must 
 necessarily make good her position in the sphere of intelli- 
 gence, and our libraries are crowded with master-pieces of 
 eloquence, controversy, erudition and criticism which she has 
 opposed to the sophisms of unbelief. 
 
 Victorious over sophists and executioners, the Christian 
 faith has made itself felt even by matter. Metals, stone, 
 marble, canvass, under the hand of the artist, have declared 
 in a thousand forms the incarnation of the author of all 
 things. 
 
 Mad men who see nothing but a myth in this stupendous 
 event, enumerate, I will not say, the worshippers of Christ, 
 the lips which invoke his name at the moment of danger, the 
 hands w r hich grasp his cross when passing over the gulf of 
 death ; but only those numerous temples reared at so great 
 a cost by the faith of nations, those religious monuments of 
 every kind, those crosses which cover the soil of our cities 
 and our countries, and crown the loftiest summits ; number 
 our universities, our schools, our asylums, our hospitals, our 
 houses of refuge, our monasteries ; listen to the religious 
 sounds which descend many times a day from innumerable 
 aerial towers to remind the people of the God made flesh ; 
 and then say if all this is the work of folly ! 
 
 Read the inscription engraved everywhere upon the monu- 
 VOL. ii. 2
 
 14 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 ments of cities as well as on the thatched cabins of the 
 country, that date which determines the birth-time of indivi- 
 duals and empires, classifies all events, presides over public 
 and private acts, and shines forth from the frontispiece of 
 your infamous productions for it is always in the year of 
 Christ., the year of grace and truth, eighteen hundred, <Sfc., 
 that you undertake to teach the world that there is neither 
 Christ, nor grace, nor truth ; and then say : Does not all this 
 manifest a great absurdity ? 
 
 Who are you, then, that accuse the human race of bigotry ? 
 By assailing the universal conviction, do you not place 
 yourselves without the pale of human reason? 
 
 What is that human mind to which you would appeal with 
 regard to all things 1 It is your individual mind with which 
 you would wish to control thousands of opposing minds. 
 W r hat is that philosophy which you would oppose without 
 ceasing to Christianity as the authority of authorities, the only 
 authority 1 It is not a doctrine (show us its creed) ; it is not 
 a society (find two philosophers who think alike) ; it is always 
 an individual, that is, a two hundred and sixty millionth part 
 of the Christian population, who seating himself in a chair, 
 or seizing the pen in his closet, charges with imbecility all 
 present and past generations, and announces that truth, that 
 great unknown of the ages, is about to manifest itself in him ! 
 
 Among men of sense I find none but physicians whose 
 attention is demanded by such extravagance. Let us then 
 abandon the rationalist to their charitable cares and address- 
 ing ourselves to the two hundred and sixty millions of Chris- 
 tians who are so unanimous when they are called upon to 
 affirm that God has spoken to us through Christ, and let us 
 ask of them what Christ has said and what religion he has 
 given to men. 
 
 At this question a multitude of discordant voices rise on 
 every side, and prove to us by their antagonism that the
 
 SKETCH OF CHRISTIAN COMMUNIONS. 15 
 
 Christian family has not escaped the scandals and ruptures 
 predicted by 'its head and his first disciples.* 
 
 Let us cast a glance over these rival societies, each of 
 which boasts of having alone rightly comprehended the 
 doctrine of Christ. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 SKETCH OF CHRISTIAN 1 COMMUNIONS. COULD THEY ALL BE 
 
 THE WORK OF CHRIST ? LATITUDINARIAN SYSTEM. 
 
 ITS PRINCIPLES. 
 
 AT the head of Christian communities, stands the Catholic 
 Church, which surpasses them all by its antiquity, the number 
 of its members and the perfect unity of its doctrine. Ask 
 that young peasant just coming from catechism what his 
 church believes, he will teach you ; and all the Catholics in 
 the world, from the Roman Pontiff to the neophyte of the 
 South Sea Islands will confirm with a solemn amen the words 
 of the child. 
 
 Then come the Churches of the East, detached at different 
 periods from the catholic stem. Some, which separated in 
 the fifth and sixth century, small in numbers, vegetate in iso- 
 lation in Persia, India, Syria, Abyssinia and Egypt ; such are 
 the Nestorians, who deny the unity of person in Jesus 
 Christ; the Jacobites or Monophysites, who deny the dis- 
 tinction of natures. Others, more numerous, were drawn into 
 the schism which took place between the ninth and eleventh 
 century, through the ambition of the two patriarchs of Con- 
 stantinople, Photius and Michael Cerulareus. With the ex- 
 
 * Necesse est enim ut veniant scandala. (Matth. xviii. 7.) Narr 
 oportet haereses esse. (I. Cor. xix. 19.)
 
 16 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 ception of the supremacy of the Roman Pontiff, which they 
 agree in denying, their faith would not differ from that of 
 Catholics, as well as we can judge by their symbolic books, 
 condemned as they are to a profound silence, some under 
 the Mussulman scimitar, others under the despotic adminis- 
 tration of the Russian Autocrat. 
 
 The last in date of the Christian societies, but also the 
 most abundant in professions of faith, is Protestantism. 
 Springing into life in the 16th century, at the voice of a 
 Saxon monk, who taught the world that, for ten centuries, the 
 universal church passing from one abomination into another, 
 had at last fallen into the power of Satan, it undertook to re- 
 form the work of Christ. A stupendous labor, which three 
 centuries have not been able to accomplish ! for Protestantism 
 is alwa}'S reforming. Divided from the commencement into 
 Lutheranism, Calvinism, and Anglicanism, it has seen each 
 of its branches subdivided into a multitude of opposing sects. 
 Their names alone would fill a volume ; the exposition of 
 their doctrines and their worship would form a library. 
 
 Could Christ be divided ?* Could He who has ordained 
 that the most perfect union should be the distinctive sign of 
 His disciples, He who has formed of His sheep one flock 
 guided by one Shepherdf could He be the head of these in- 
 numerable societies, as different in faith as in practice, and 
 armed with anathemas against each other? Would He 
 equally ratify in Heaven all religious decrees, under whatever 
 authority they appear here below whether that of the Pope, 
 of the Czar, the King of Prussia, or the Queen of England, 
 of a Lutheran consistory, or a Calvinistic synod? 
 
 Could Christ speak indifferently through the mouth of the 
 minister who preaches his divinity, and the minister who 
 denies it? Would he teach among Catholics and Oriental 
 
 * Divisus est Christus ? (I. Cor. i. 13.) 
 t Luke x. 15. John xvii. 21, 22, 23.
 
 SKETCH OF CHRISTIAN COMMUNIONS. 17 
 
 nations the real presence and transubstantiation, among Luth- 
 erans the presence without transubstantiation, and would he 
 teach Calvinists and Anglicans to ridicule both ? Would 
 he be satisfied that some should attribute to him seven sac- 
 raments, others two, others none ? Would he regard with 
 the same eye the temples where he is adored as the victim 
 of propitiation on the altar, and the temples where the euchar- 
 istic sacrifice is treated as an invention of hell? Would he 
 require us to recognize the divine influence of his grace in 
 the silent meetings where the Quakers wait for the Holy 
 Spirit to reveal to one of them the truths of salvation, which 
 are concealed from the rest of mankind, and in the tumultuous 
 meetings of the Methodists, where justification is only ob- 
 tained by cries, howling, jumping, and gambols ? 
 
 Could Christ graciously associate himself with all the im- 
 piety, all the absurdities, and all the extravagances which 
 man is pleased to attribute to him ? Would the equality of 
 worships, consecrated by certain legislations of the earth, be 
 also an article of the divine charter? 
 
 "And why not?" answer the latitudinarians ; that is, those 
 among the Protestants, who, wishing to enlarge the way to 
 Heaven, which Christ declares so narrow,* have judged it 
 best to remove from it everything which could prevent men 
 from crowding into it. Christianity, revised and corrected 
 by them, would indeed be reduced to a very trifling affair. 
 All that is essential, according to them, in evangelical doc- 
 trine and morality, is to believe that God spoke to us, by 
 Christ, without inquiring too closely what he has said, and to 
 regard and treat all men as our brothers. The rest would be 
 only harmless materials for human disputes. As to that 
 grotesque assemblage of contradictory worship and faith, 
 ivhich shocks our feeble reason, latitudinarians only see in it 
 
 * Matth. vii. 14 
 2*
 
 18 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 a spectacle adapted to please the divine eye, which is un 
 friendly to monotony. 
 
 This system, which, since the time of the minister Jurieu, 
 its inventor, has made immense progress in the ranks of Pro- 
 testantism, has the misfortune, it is true, of indeed coming a 
 little too late. Why, in fact, should Europe be set on fire for 
 two centuries? Why that ferocious assault upon the Catho- 
 lic Church, if its pretended superstitions allowed the funda- 
 mental doctrine of Christ to remain intact ? 
 
 But, although invented too late, latitudinarianism or indif- 
 ferentism (it is the same thing) is a no less precious discovery 
 for those sectarians, who, seeing one doctrine after another 
 melt away in their hands, have believed that Christian charity 
 would succeed in covering with its mantle this vast sepulchre 
 of creeds. 
 
 Yet, to escape the reproach of impiety and folly, the lati- 
 tudinarian must necessarily establish as a principle, and con- 
 vert into a demonstrable fact, one of the three following 
 hypotheses : 
 
 1st Christ has taught but one thing ; that is, that he is 
 the messenger from God. He has imposed only one duty 
 upon men ; that of loving each other. 
 
 2d. If to these two dogmas the author of Christianity has 
 added others, it is evidently in the form of conversation, and 
 leaving his disciples full liberty to accept or reject them. 
 
 3d. Even if Christ had wished to impose on his disciples 
 a complete system of faith, and a minute law of duty, it is 
 evident that he has taken no sure means to perpetuate the 
 knowledge of it ; and the state of inability in which he has 
 left us to discover the true doctrine, must extenuate, at the 
 tribunal of divine justice, the difference of religious opinions. 
 
 Let us examine briefly these three hypotheses, under both 
 the evangelical and rational point of view.
 
 MYSTERIES. 19 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 ABSURDITY OF THE FIRST HYPOTHESIS. NATURE AND 
 
 NECESSITY OF MYSTERIES. 
 
 IF Christ descended from heaven only to say to us, " Know 
 that I am the messenger from God, and that you should all 
 regard yourselves as His children," good sense perceives but 
 one thing in this prodigious phenomenon, the total eclipse 
 of that sovereign sagacity which always proportions the 
 strength of means to the greatness of the end. 
 
 What could be indeed more futile or more supremely ab- 
 surd than the office of the Christ, who, after having kept the 
 world in expectation for forty centuries, at length appears, 
 justifies His divine mandate by various miracles, then, at the 
 moment when the world, convinced, is waiting for great reve- 
 lations, ascends suddenly to Heaven, to enjoy there, doubt- 
 less, the strange embarrassment in which He leaves mortals ! 
 This would be an undertaking worthy of those juggling gods 
 of India, who -came every five or six thousand years to dis- 
 port upon the earth, and provoke the merriment even of their 
 worshippers. 
 
 The divine character of Christ, and the brotherhood of 
 men, are certainly two admirable features ; but, separated 
 from the truths which form their indispensable accompani- 
 ment, what can be their intellectual and moral bearing ? By 
 the numerous unanswerable questions which they raise, they 
 would be a new enigma added to other enigmas, an increase 
 of the thick darkness which enveloped the human mind before 
 the coining of Christ. 
 
 Such is the fate of this great achievement of divine favor 
 and wisdom, in the hands of those reformers who wish for a 
 religion without mystery a would-be reasonable Christianity
 
 20 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 To those profound doctrines, eminently consoling and rich in 
 moral results, which are connected with the idea of the Word 
 made flesh, succeed nonentities and absurdities; and the God 
 of the latitudinarians, fashioned after their likeness, by reason 
 of his simplicity, becomes a fool. 
 
 Whatever idea we form of the founder of Christianity, as 
 soon as the quality of ambassador of the Most High and Re- 
 deemer of humanity is granted him, we must necessarily 
 allow him also the mission of teaching to the world, not a 
 few truths only, but all truth, which alone is capable of lib- 
 erating the human mind that had become the sport of all 
 errors.* No moral regeneration was possible without a 
 luminous and complete body of doctrine which should restore 
 the almost extinguished idea of divine sovereignty, and oblige 
 man, by the double motive of fear and love, to quit his pride 
 and his egotism, and to re-establish himself in true relations 
 with God and his fellow-men. 
 
 Man must, indeed, expect mysteries in instruction emanat- 
 ing from so high a source, and embracing universal science. 
 Among many reasons which might be given for this, I shall 
 only allude to a few. 
 
 1. The Divine Revealer could not limit himself to the 
 sphere of reason, according to the example of philosophers, 
 who convince only by the authority of evidence, and inspire 
 faith by the aid of demonstrations alone. Strong in the tes- 
 timony of his works,f he had a right to demand belief, and 
 his words, in order to be comprehended by all, must neces- 
 sarily abandon a scientific form. Can we refuse to the Divine 
 Lawgiver that right which is granted to the fallible legisla- 
 tors of this world, to prescribe what they deem conformable 
 to good order, without giving a reason for their laws? 
 
 * Veritas liberabit vos . . . Docebit vos omnem veritatem. (John 
 viii. 32. xvi. 13.) 
 t John v. 36.
 
 MYSTERIES. 21 
 
 Can he demand nothing from us until he has first initiated 
 us into the secrets of the eternal order ? What would become 
 of society in those places where the letter of the laws are 
 binding on those only who comprehend the spirit of them ? 
 
 2d. Religious truth, rightly understood, is only God reveal- 
 ing himself to our intelligence. It is then essentially un- 
 limited and infinite, and could not fall entire within the limits 
 of human comprehension, even if it were uttered by a divine 
 mouth. A true religion, without mysteries, would be the finite 
 containing the Infinite, which is a glaring absurdity. 
 
 3dly. Mystery is a desire of the heart of man a merciless 
 destroyer of the truths which his thought comprehends.* He 
 only yields respect and obedience to those which command 
 him and connect him with that Infinite Being towards whom 
 an irresistible instinct attracts him. 
 
 4thly. Finally, the perfectibility of the human mind evi- 
 dently implies mystery. There is no progress without the 
 transition from ignorance to simple knowledge, and from this 
 to perfect intelligence. Truths are always known before 
 being comprehended.f They present themselves as facts, 
 
 * Diminutise sunt veritates a filiis hominum. (Ps. xi. 2.) These 
 words express well the fatal art which man possesses of destroying 
 truths by analyzing them. Truth is being ; as there is only one self- 
 subsisting Being, through whom everything subsists, there is also only 
 one necessary, immutable truth, which carries in itself its own reason, 
 and the reason for all that is. Every truth which is separated from this 
 truth leads astray, rests on nothing, is changed to error. It is a son 
 without a father, an effect without a cause, a ray which grows pale and 
 is extinguished when it withdraws from its luminous center. Error is 
 only truth out of place. Hence, it follows, that all truth is a mystery, 
 since its final reason is concealed from our eyes in the bosom of the 
 infinite essence. We have seen nothing to its depth until we compre- 
 hend that we cannot see the depth of anything. Repugnance to mys- 
 teries is an infallible symptom of short-sightedness. 
 
 f Mystery is a truth known and not comprehended : known in its 
 existence, unknown in its essence.
 
 22 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 supported by testimony. In proportion as facts multiply, 
 their connection is developed under the influence of reflection ; 
 they explain each other; the luminous chain of truths is 
 found, and intelligence succeeds to faith. Then we no longer 
 say, I believe that is ; but we say, I see that must be. 
 
 See the young man as he enters upon the study of science 
 Everything is a mystery to him. He advances into that ob- 
 scure country, guided by the words of his master. He hears 
 more than he sees. He registers in good faith the data that 
 are furnished him. Insensibly the light appears ; isolated, 
 floating fragments of knowledge approach each other, unite 
 and consolidate, and throw light upon each other. Reason 
 supplants authority, and the shades of faith vanish before the 
 light of intelligence. 
 
 Put an arrogant spirit in place of the docile scholar, who 
 will only consent to walk in the full sunshine of evidence, 
 and attempts to comprehend everything before knowing any- 
 thing, he will never know or comprehend anything. To enter 
 into the kingdom of truth, as to enter into the kingdom of 
 Heaven (and both mean the same thing), we must become as 
 little children.* Boasters cannot pass. 
 
 Such being the law of our intellectual development, is it 
 not natural that God should conform Himself to it, in the 
 plans which he proposes we should follow here below ? 
 While our mind is clogged by the weight of its organs, it 
 cannot rise to the intuition of the sublime realities of the 
 superior world, and the Divine Preceptor must needs initiate 
 it by degrees into an order of knowledge whose immeasurable 
 height the eye of an archangel itself could not reach. 
 
 The supernatural facts which the divine Word proposes to 
 our belief, such as the existence of three divine persons, the 
 union of the second among them with humanity, the death of 
 the God-man for the salvation of all, the prodigious love ha 
 
 * Matt, xviii. 3.
 
 MYSTERIES. 23 
 
 shows us in the Eucharist, &c. ; these facts, incomprehensible 
 as they are in themselves, are none the less magnificent 
 glimpses of the Divine Being, an inexhaustible mine of know- 
 ledge and feeling. Penetrated by meditation, they offer to 
 the mind an enrapturing image of the divine goodness, and 
 excite in the heart the flames of love. God is no longer .a 
 terrible and mysterious sovereign, surrounded with thunder 
 and lightning, whose greatness crushes our lowliness, whose 
 justice terrifies our corruption. He is charity,* who, in the 
 excess of his love, gave himself up to death for us. He is 
 the ardent lover of our souls, who, in order to conduct us into 
 the bosom of eternal joy, takes upon himself, with delight, the 
 weight of our misery, and would share the sorrows of our 
 pilgrimage.-}- 
 
 Penetrated by these burning truths, the human heart dilates, 
 expands, rushes with ardor into the elevated path of evan- 
 gelical precepts, and, going from virtue to virtue, she sighs for 
 the moment, when, seeing God without a cloud, she can love 
 him without restraint. 
 
 Deprive Christianity of this ardent faith, and reduce it to 
 the beggarly elements of a philosophical religion, the divine 
 alliance disappears, God retires into the depths of eternity, 
 man remains groveling in the earth, given over to the nar- 
 rowness of selfishness, to the brutality of his appetites, and to 
 the sleep of indifference. 
 
 This is sufficient to explain that mystery lies in the condi- 
 tions of our actual existence, and that in religion, even more 
 than in science, comprehension is attained only through faith. 
 
 Let us now return to the profession of faith of the latitudi- 
 narians, and show that the extreme scantiness of its doctrines 
 and morality are as contrary to the evangelical revelations 
 as to the dictates of reason. 
 
 A glance at the New Testament is sufficient to convince 
 1 John iv. 8. t Prov. viii. 31.
 
 24 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 us that Christ and his apostles embraced in their teaching the 
 most profound and varied questions. The first words of the 
 Son of Man, at his entrance upon his earthly career, the first 
 which his precursor John uttered upon the banks of the Jor- 
 dan, the first also which came forth from the mouth of the 
 apostles, is, Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand;* 
 a mysterious doctrine, which is necessarily allied to a vast 
 dogmatic and moral theory. That this theory exists in the 
 gospels and writings of the apostles, is as clear as the sun- 
 light ; it is also a fact demonstrated both by the harmony of 
 all Christian societies concerning certain articles of faith, 
 such as those set forth in the Apostles' Creed, and by their 
 fierce contests in regard to other points. 
 
 What, indeed, was the object of all the great controversies 
 which fill the annals of Christianity ? Simply to know if 
 such a dogma, maintained by some, and denied by others, 
 makes a part or not of the deposit of Christian doctrines. 
 
 Constrained to abandon the untenable hypothesis of one 
 single dogma taught by Christ, the latitudinarians retrench 
 themselves in their old distinction of fundamental doctrines, 
 which cannot be denied without denying Christianity, and 
 doctrines not fundamental, which every one is free to believe 
 or reject without ceasing to be a Christian ; and they place 
 in this last class all religious creeds, except the divine mission 
 of Christ. 
 
 There is, as we seen, a second hypothesis, serving as a 
 basis for latitudinarianism. Let us examine it, and see if the 
 faith of the Christian must be reduced to this singular for- 
 mula : I believe that God has sent his Son to men to teach 
 them nothing. 
 
 * Matth. iii. 2. iv. 17. Act. Ap. ii. 38.
 
 DOCTRINAL INTOLERANCE OF CHRIST. 25 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 FALSENESS OF THE SECOND HYPOTHESIS. DOCTRINAL IN- 
 TOLERANCE OF CHRIST AND HIS APOSTLES. 
 
 To change the Gospel into a collection of indifferent doc- 
 trines, of opinions accidentally expressed by the Divine Tea- 
 cher, and without any intention of imposing them upon the 
 belief of his disciples, is boldly to contradict Christ, the Apos- 
 tles, and all Christian ages; it is to offend reason. 
 
 The most striking trait of the character of Jesus Christ 
 that which most impressed the Jews, and which still shines 
 forth on every page of the Gospel, is the tone of authority 
 with which he teaches, and the obligation which he imposes 
 on all to believe his doctrine.* Wonderfully condescending 
 in everything else, he shows himself constantly inflexible on 
 this point. 
 
 Convinced that his words will survive heaven and earth, he 
 does not permit an iota to be taken from them ; he excludes 
 from the kingdom of heaven him who, by his words and his 
 example, would dare to violate the least of his precepts, f 
 
 A vast multitude followed him, for several days, in the wil- 
 derness, eager for the words of grace and truth which fell 
 from his mouth. Among these words there is one which as- 
 tonishes and repels his auditors. What will the good shepherd 
 do, who shrinks from nothing when a wandering sheep is to 
 be brought back to the fold? Will he attempt an accomo- 
 dation, will he soften by explanations what is judged hard 
 lind insupportable ?\ w Far from it ; he repeats five times the 
 objectionable proposition, and always with an increasing 
 energy of expression. The scandal infected his disciples. 
 Jesus, without being moved by so general a defection, af- 
 
 * Matth. vii. 23. f Matth. v. 18. xxiv. 35. f John vi. 53, 01 
 VOL. II. 3
 
 26 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 firms anew what he has said. Remaining alone with the 
 twelve Apostles, he wishes them to declare themselves, and, 
 by the question which he addresses to them, he places them 
 under the necessity of believing in the most incomprehensible 
 of mysteries, or retiring.* 
 
 He demands of his disciples faith ; but a faith which em- 
 braces all his teachings, which he commends and extols with 
 complacency whenever he finds the opportunity, and which 
 he prescribes as an indispensable condition of salvation. 
 " Go," said he to his Apostles, at the moment of quitting them, 
 " teach ye all nations, instructing them to observe all things 
 whatsoever I have commanded you! He that believeth shall 
 be saved, and he that believeth not shall be condemned." f 
 
 This absolute authority of Christ in matters of doctrine, 
 we find again in the Apostles. Depositaries of the thought 
 of their Master, and commissioned to establish it throughout 
 the world, they also require that every contrary thought 
 should be brought low, that every intellect should bend undei 
 the yoke of faith. J If they are publicly scourged, or led 
 from prison to prison, nothing is heard from their lips but 
 prayers and benedictions for their persecutors ; but if then 
 doctrine is assailed, if presumptuous spirits venture to mingle 
 their own conceptions with it, their zeal is kindled; they 
 brand the innovators as ministers of the evil one, and strike 
 with anathema whoever dares to pervert their teaching, be it 
 an angel from Heaven. 
 
 And what are the errors which tljey resist with so much 
 force ? they are often opinions in appearance inoffensive, but 
 which by the leaven of novelty that they introduce into the 
 human mind, would soon corrupt the purity of its faith. ]| 
 
 The Apostles inculcate on every occasion, upon the faith- 
 ful and their teachers, a sacred respect for all truths uttered 
 
 * John vi. GS. t Matth. xxviii. 19, 20. Mark xyi. 15, IQ. 
 J II. Cpr. *. 5. Ga}at. i. 8. || Ibid. 9.
 
 NECESSITY OF DOCTRINAL INTOLERANCE. 27 
 
 by the lips of Christ, whatever is their relative importance. 
 " Keep that which is committed to thy trust," said they to the 
 intter, " avoiding the profane novelties of words."* " Avoid 
 them who corrupt the doctrine which you have learnt from 
 Jesus Christ by our mouth . . . Do not say to him even, 
 God speed you."f 
 
 Faithful to these principles, the Christians never imagined 
 before the time of Jurieu, that among the doctrines confided 
 by Christ to his Church, there could be any unimportant to 
 salvation, and the obstinate denial of which would not imply 
 the crime of infidelity. Whenever a new heresy arose, they 
 did not examine whether the doctrine denied was or was not 
 fundamental, but it was sufficient that it made part of the 
 treasure of faith, and the innovators were separated from the 
 society of the faithful. 
 
 " There is but one Lord, one faith." " Whoever refuses to 
 hear the Church let him become a stranger like the infidel," 
 such was the cry of all antiquity. 
 
 Nothing can be imagined then more opposed to Scripture 
 and the general conscience of Christians, than that pretended 
 liberty of admitting or rejecting a part of the doctrines and 
 precepts of Christ. We will also show that nothing is more 
 opposed to the principles of sound philosophy. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 NECESSITY OF DOCTRINAL INTOLERANCE. - ABSURDITY OF 
 THE THIRD HYPOTHESIS. 
 
 As soon as reason, yielding to the torrent of light which 
 drew the world to the foot of the cross, once said to the 
 
 * Tim. vi. 20. f R- . 17. II. John, 10.
 
 28 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 author of Christianity with Simon, son of Jonas : " Thou art 
 truly the Christ, the Son of the living God; . . . thou hast 
 the words of eternal life," there is an obligation for her to 
 accept indiscriminately all the dogmas and all the precepts 
 which emanated from that divine mouth. She cannot reject 
 one of them under pretext of uncertainty or inutility, without 
 assuming a superiority to God, without pretending to under- 
 stand better than he the divine system, without casting on 
 him the reproach no less absurd than impious, of ignorance, 
 deception and trifling. 
 
 To wish that Christ had allowed man so monstrous a 
 liberty, is to degrade immeasurably the divine character 
 which we recognise in him, and assign to him so mean a part 
 in the religious society that no man of sense and spirit would 
 accept it in his own family. What latitudinarian would toler- 
 ate in his children the pretension of controlling his orders, and 
 receiving or rejecting them according to their good pleasure ! 
 
 Nothing then is more rational, or more logical than the 
 doctrinal intolerance of Christ and the Apostles. It w r as 
 inherent in their office as organs of the thought of the Most 
 High. It was imposed upon them by the obligation to pre- 
 serve that thought intact, and to transmit it pure from all 
 human alloy to the farthest generations. 
 
 If these are unimportant doctrines, they are only so in the 
 eyes of ignorance incapable of comprehending the scope of 
 them. In fact there are none, and there can be none. There 
 is such a relation among truths as well as among errors, that 
 they permit no separation. Their intimate connexion renders 
 them all fundamental. We must admit or reject them all, 
 under pain of inconsistency. 
 
 Follow in its development one truth of the moral order, it 
 will lead you, from deduction to deduction, to full and perfect 
 truth, to Christianity.* For the same reason, every error, or 
 
 * Rom. X. 12. I. Cor. xii. 13. Galat. iii. 23. Eccless. iii. 11.
 
 NECESSITY OF DOCTRINAL INTOLERANCE. 29 
 
 the denial of any truth whatever, in the same order, leads 
 inevitably, sooner or later to the last negation, atheism. We 
 have the history of the human mind to prove that every 
 heresy, except in case of a return to orthodoxy or a violent 
 death, becomes extinguished in deism, and that pantheism is 
 the end of every philosophic system, which has a flaw. 
 
 What is the consequence ? that truth is safe and perma- 
 nent only through its intolerance, and that it comes to an end 
 the moment it capitulates with error. It follows that the 
 religion of Christ, which is to survive the world, could not 
 have survived its founder a century, if the Christian commu- 
 nity had not maintained between its innovator and itself the 
 formidable barrier of anathema. 
 
 To these two motives for doctrinal intolerance let us add a 
 third, not less decisive, the manifest aim of the Gospel revela- 
 tion. What is this aim ? it is visibly to re-unite the human 
 family, separated from its beginning by error and deceit ; it 
 is to banish the human distinction of Jew and Roman, Greek 
 and Barbarian, master and slave, great and small, and to 
 convert all the children of men into children of God, mem- 
 bers of the same body, animated by the same spirit, under 
 one head, Christ ; in one word to offer everywhere to the 
 love of heaven and the admiration of the world, the wonder- 
 ful spectacle of those first believers, who had but one heart 
 and one soul.* 
 
 How can this blending of individuals and nations, this per- 
 fect harmony of mind and will,. be effected without the influ- 
 ence of a uniform invariable belief, and without the abolition 
 of thine and mine in matters of faith. He is ignorant of 
 man and of history, who does not know that religious differ- 
 ences are of all others, the deepest and most irremediable, 
 and are the most fruitful causes of animosity and disastrous 
 outbreaks. It is without doubt the duty of Christian charity 
 * Act. Ap. iv. 32. 
 3*
 
 30 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 to cherish tenderly the person of him whose errors we detest; 
 but does not this virtue, the fruit of the glowing inspiration 
 of faith always wither under the icy breath of doubt, and in 
 the blasting wind of controversy. 
 
 The union of all men in submission to the same truths, in 
 the practice of the same duties, in the expectation of the 
 same future is evidently the design of our Heavenly Father 
 in the choice he has made of Christ to re-establish in unity 
 all things that are in Heaven and in earth.* 
 
 Unity of thought and feeling, elevating itself in Christians 
 to the perfection of Divine unity, is the most ardent desire of 
 Christ, the object of his toils and death, the fruit which he 
 promised himself from the institutions which he bequeathed 
 to the world.f 
 
 Unity of faith and worship was the constant motto of the 
 Apostles, and teachers, and of the faithful in all ages ; this is 
 the first want of society, so frequently uptorn by religious 
 dissensions ; this is the universal wish ; and yet there is not a 
 single latitudinarian who would permit among his followers 
 the divisions which he judges innocent in the Church of Christ. 
 
 What remains then to the advocates of toleration in 
 defence of a system which offends reason as well as faith ? 
 Will they say that liberty of thought on religious subjects is 
 the necessary result of an inability to know what is the pure 
 scriptural Christian doctrine ? But if this inability existed, 
 would it not imply in Christ a total want of wisdom and even 
 of justice ? How can it be reconciled with the obligation 
 imposed upon all men to believe the Gospel and observe ah 1 
 the precepts of it, under penalty of being eternally cast off 
 by God? 
 
 Could Christ, the founder of a religion which can have no 
 other limits than those of the universe and of time, have 
 neglected the very means of perpetuating the knowledge of 
 * Ephes. i. 10. f J hn xv - 21 et seq. II. Cor. x. 17.
 
 RULE OF FAITH. 31 
 
 it. A mediator of the eternal covenant which was to put 
 man in possession of the celestial inheritance, could he leave 
 him in ignorance of the conditions annexed to his salvation ? 
 Can it be true, indeed, that the author of the New Testa- 
 ment died intestate ? 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 RULE OF FAITH. PROTESTANT RULE. CATHOLIC RULE. 
 
 HAS Christ established a rule of faith, that is to say, an 
 easy and sure means of perpetuating his doctrine and extend- 
 ing the certain knowledge of it to every well-disposed man ? 
 Yes, answer all Christians who are exempt from the evil of 
 indifference. 
 
 What is this rule ? It is the Bible and the Bible only, Pro- 
 testants answer, with one voice. There alone is found the 
 divine word pure from all profane alloy. Read the Bible in 
 sincerity, and God himself will speak to you, according to 
 the promise of the prophet : " They shall be all taught of 
 God."* To listen to any other master is to rush into error ; 
 for it is written : " Every man is a liar." f 
 
 The Bible, answer the Catholics, and with them the Eastern 
 schismatics, is certainly the principal source of Christian faith ; 
 but it cannot be the only rule : for it does not contain all the 
 teachings of Christ ; and those which it does contain are not 
 within the reach of all understandings. To be assured of 
 possessing the Christian doctrine in its completeness, it is 
 necessarj', first, to know the divine word orally committed to 
 the disciples ; secondly, to understand the Scripture in its true 
 sense. Now Christ has provided for this double want, by the 
 * John vi. 45. t Ps. cxv. 2.
 
 32 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 establishment of a body of teachers, commanded to preach 
 his religion throughout all the world, and protected from error 
 by the promise which he has made to be with them all days, 
 even to the end of time. To listen to them, is to listen to 
 Christ himself; in one word, to read the Bible attentively, 
 and to hold as indisputable the sense which each one believes 
 he finds in it, without regard to the manner in which others 
 understand it, is, according to Protestants, the only means we 
 have of knowing the true doctrine of Christ. 
 
 To regard this body of teachers as the guardian and infal- 
 lible interpreter of the divine word, whether written or tradi- 
 tional, and to submit our minds to their teaching as to that 
 of Jesus Christ himself such is the rule of faith admitted at 
 all times by the Catholics, and also by the schismatic churches 
 of the East. 
 
 These are, as every one knows, the two fundamental prin- 
 ciples, the one of Protestantism, the other of Catholicism. 
 These principles, inasmuch as they are constituent and fun- 
 damental, necessarily lead to the triumph or the ruin of the 
 doctrines which are attached to them, according as they are 
 recognized to be true or false. If it is true that every one, 
 by divine right, may be his own sole master in the interpre- 
 tation of Scripture, it is evident that all the biblical interpre- 
 tations hitherto made are irreproachable, however absurd and 
 impious they may appear; for, to have a right to condemn 
 them, it would be necessary to prove that their authors did 
 not find in Scripture what they pretended to find there ; but 
 this is an interior, individual fact, for which they are respon- 
 sible only to God and their own consciences. 
 
 If it is shown, on the contrary, that Christ has established 
 a teaching church, and that he has invested it with an infal- 
 lible authority, it is clear that all the doctrines of this church 
 find-in its infallibility a complete justification. "It is time 
 entirely thrown away," said an able Protestant minister, " to
 
 APOSTOLIC TIMES. 33 
 
 discuss with this church its dogmas and its worship, since its 
 dogmas and its worship are justified from the moment its au- 
 thority is admitted." * " Let it be proved to me to-day," said 
 Rousseau, " that, in matters of faith, I am obliged to submit 
 to the decisions of some one, to-morrow I would become a 
 Catholic, and every consistent and true man would follow my 
 example." f 
 
 But these two principles are contradictory, and the truth of 
 the one necessarily implies the falseness of the other. If 
 Christ has not established any medium of communication be- 
 tween himself and man but the Bible, the authority which the 
 Catholic Church assumes is manifestly a usurpation ; but, if 
 we recognize in this authority a divine establishment, Protes- 
 tantism is indisputably rebellion against Christ. 
 
 It is sufficient to point out the high importance of this dis- 
 cussion, and to call the attention of the reader to the com- 
 parison we are about to make of these two principles, in the 
 scriptural, moral, and historical point of view. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE PROTESTANT PRINCIPLE FINDS NOTHING WHICH DOES 
 
 NOT CONDEMN IT IN THE BIBLE, AND IN THE HISTORY 
 
 OF THE APOSTOLIC TIMES. 
 
 ARE the reading and individual interpretation of the Bible 
 the means chosen by Christ to conduct men to the knowledge 
 and practice of his religion ? 
 
 This is a question of fact, to be resolved by the testimony 
 of the sacred writers, since Protestants repel every other tes- 
 
 * Theses deM. J. E ; Naville. Dissert. Prelim, eh. iv. Geneva, 1839 
 -f Lettres ecrites tie la Montague, let. 2d.
 
 34 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 tirnony in matters of religion. Let them show us, then, the 
 page of the New Testament, where Jesus Christ obliges or 
 even invites men to read the Holy Scriptures, and to receive 
 as divine the doctrine which each believes he finds there. For 
 three centuries Protestantism has examined and ransacked 
 the Bible, and this decisive page is yet to be found. 
 
 Containing no special or formal command, does the Gospel 
 furnish us with any hints which betray in Christ and his Apos- 
 tles the intention of writing and entrusting to a book the 
 mission of converting the world ? By no means. Always 
 and everywhere Jesus teaches his doctrines orally ; once only 
 he is seen writing, and it is with his finger on the ground.* 
 He orders his Apostles to preach his religion throughout the 
 world a ministry which is to finish with the world j- he no 
 where orders them to write. 
 
 The Apostles commence their labors ; their voice is heard 
 from Judea to Spain and the Indies ; everywhere they found 
 churches, confiding their doctrine to faithful men, who shall in 
 their turn teach olliers.^ 
 
 Only six of them wrote anything. St. Matthew, the first 
 in time, did not take pen in hand, according to all appearance, 
 untH six years after the ascension of Jesus Christ St. John, 
 who closes the series of sacred writings, did not publish the 
 Apocalypse, his gospel and letters, till the ten last years of 
 the first century ; that is, about forty years after the period 
 when St. Paul wrote to the Romans: Your faith is spoken of 
 in the whole world. 
 
 If we examine these writings, we shall find nothing in their 
 form or contents which indicates in the authors the design of 
 changing the method of instruction previously pursued, and 
 giving to the nations a popular and complete course of Chris- 
 tian doctrine. 
 
 The manifest aim of the four Evangelists, in their abridged 
 
 * John viii. 6. f Matth. xxviii. 19. J 2 Tim. ii. 2. Rom. i. 8.
 
 APOSTOLIC TIMES. 35 
 
 recital of the life of the Savior, is not only to give a precise 
 form to his teachings, but to show, by the irresistible splendor 
 of his miracles and the accomplishment of the ancient oracles, 
 that the Son of Mary was the Messiah promised to the world, 
 the eternal Son of the Most High. In what they relate of 
 his doctrine, they are still historians. It is always Jesus who 
 speaks ; and these quotations, in general very short, are evi- 
 dently detached fragments of much longer instructions. 
 
 The Epistles of the Apostles, addressed, some to particular 
 churches, others to individuals, are evidently designed to ad- 
 just differences, to guard the faithful against rising heresies, 
 to confirm them in the doctrine received from the mouth of 
 the Apostles or from ministers ordained by them. They recall 
 the oral teaching, and do not attribute to it less authority than 
 to the written word.* They contain, indeed, magnificent dog- 
 matical developments, but always relating to points of doctrine 
 endangered by heresy. They nowhere give a regular and 
 complete summary of what is necessary to be believed. 
 
 The moral part is more completely carried out ; but it must 
 be surprising to a Protestant, that, in their very frequent de- 
 tails of duties, the Apostles constantly omit the fundamental 
 duty of reading and meditating on the Bible, the obligation so 
 binding on fathers and mothers to put into the hands of their 
 children this only rule of faith and practice. 
 
 The Greek language, employed by the writers of the New 
 Testament, f was at that time, no doubt, very generally 
 diffused ; but it was not the language of the people. The 
 Acts of the Apostles show us, among the first hearers of the 
 Gospel, men of sixteen nations differing in language. J To 
 
 * 2 Thessal. ii. 15. 
 
 t Excepting, however, St. Matthew, who, according to the testimony 
 if antiquity, must have written in the Hebrew or Syro-Chaldaic, but 
 whose work was soon translated into Greek. 
 
 } Act. Ap. ii. 9, et seq.
 
 36 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 make the first Christians assiduous readers of Scripture, it 
 would have been necessary that the evangelical authors should 
 have used the gift of tongues in writing as well as in preach- 
 ing ; or at least should have confided to skilful men the care 
 of translating their writings into an endless variety of idioms. 
 Unfortunately, history seems forward to show that the versions 
 of the New Testament, in vulgar and barbarous tongues, 
 were very rare, and appeared long after the apostolic times.* 
 Hence, nothing is more probable than what St. Irenseus says, 
 of a multitude of barbarous nations of his time, " who, de- 
 prived of the Scriptures, believed in Jesus Christ, preserving 
 written, not on paper, but in their hearts, what concerns 
 salvation, and guarding carefully the ancient tradition." } 
 
 In the absence of translations of the Bible accessible to tho 
 common comprehension, let us add the extreme difficulty, not 
 to say impossibility, of multiplying sufficiently copies of the 
 sacred books, to render the reading of them common. I will 
 not ask how every individual, but how every Christian village 
 could procure a Bible, at a time when the transcribing of a 
 book so voluminous, demanded the greater part of a man's 
 life, and cost enormous sums of money ! 
 
 According to the Protestant system, the art of printing 
 would have been much more necessary to the Apostles than 
 the gift of tongues. It was well for Luther that he did not 
 come into the world until a century after the immortal dis- 
 covery of Guttenberg. A hundred years earlier, his idea of 
 directing two hundred and fifty millions of men to read the 
 Bible would have been received by shouts of laughter, and 
 would inevitably have caused his removal from the pulpit of 
 Wittemberg to an hospital for the insane. 
 
 * The first translation, the existence of which is incontestable, is 
 the Gothic one of Ulphilas, towards the middle of the 4th century, 
 t Cont. Hares., book iii. chap. iv.
 
 SCRIPTURAL PROOFS. 37 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 WORTHLESSNESS OF PASSAGES OF SCRIPTURE CITED IN SUP- 
 PORT OF PKOTESTANT PRINCIPLES. ITS TRUE ORIGIN. 
 
 How are the Protestants to destroy the unhappy effect 
 which must be produced on every judicious mind by the sil- 
 ence of Christ concerning the obligation to read the Scrip- 
 tures, and the negligence of the Apostles and of the first 
 evangelical ministers to facilitate this reading among the 
 faithful? They accumulate biblical passages, thinking that 
 number will compensate for value. 
 
 They quote at first those words of Jesus Christ : " Search 
 the Scriptures, for ye think ye have life everlasting in them ; 
 and the same are they that give testimony to me." * Search 
 the Scriptures ! Is not this a formal command ? Let us allow 
 that it is a command.f To whom was it addressed ? To the 
 Apostles, to the disciples of Jesus Christ ? Evidently not ; 
 but to the Scribes and Pharisees, to the Jews and enemies of 
 the Savior. 
 
 Search the Scriptures ! What Scriptures ? The New Tes- 
 tament, which did not exist, and which, had it existed, could 
 prove nothing against men who were contesting the divine 
 mission of Jesus ? Certainly not. It applied only to the Old 
 Testament. 
 
 Search the Scriptures, for ye think ye have life everlasting 
 in them. . . . Do not these words contain a censure of the 
 exaggerated and exclusive confidence which the doctors of 
 
 * John v. 39. 
 
 t Indeed nothing can be more uncertain. The Greek word render- 
 ed by scrutamini, stands for the indicative as well as the imperative, 
 according to the acknowledgment of interpreters, and many of them 
 translate it : Ye search, SfC. (See the Commentaries on this passage.) 
 VOL. II. 4
 
 38 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 the law placed in their knowledge of the Scriptures, in which 
 Protestants imitate, if they do not surpass them ? And can 
 this explanation be denied, when we find the Saviour adding 
 immediately : " And ye will not come to Me, that ye may 
 have life." * 
 
 What is in dispute between Jesus and his opposers, and 
 why does he refer them to the testimony of Scripture ? Is it 
 for them to find a certain and complete knowledge of the 
 divine law? Certainly not; but it concerns them to know if 
 he is the liberator promised by Moses and the Prophets, and 
 if the latter confirm his mission, which has already been au- 
 thenticated by various miracles, and by the testimony of John 
 the Baptistf Indeed, there must be a strange confusion of 
 mind to see in this a command for each individual to hear and 
 read the Bible according to his own manner. 
 
 Let us imagine, contrary to the evidence of facts, that Jesus 
 Christ did address these words to his disciples ; they would 
 still prove nothing in favor of the Protestant rule of faith. 
 One illustration will make this plain to the least intelligent. 
 Let a sovereign consulted by lawyers or others concerning 
 legal questions provided for by the code, answer, " Search the 
 code ; you will find there the decision," would he intend b}' 
 that to say : " I intend that each one should follow only. these 
 principles in matters of law and justice, which he shall adopt 
 for himself, after reading the code, and from this time I over- 
 throw all the tribunals, and deprive of authority the magis- 
 trates commissioned for the interpretation and application 
 of the laws!!!" 
 
 But two of the apostles, Paul and Silas, arriving at Berea, 
 find that the Christians of that city, eager for the word of the 
 gospel, read the Scriptures every day, in order to assure 
 themselves of their conformity to the doctrine of the apostles ; 
 and the latter, far from being offended by this pretention, re- 
 
 * John v. 40. t Ibid. 33, 36, 45, 46.
 
 SCRIPTURAL PROOFS. 39 
 
 joice at it.* This is the right of free examination granted to 
 the faithful ! 
 
 Let us admit the fact, except the two circumstances of the 
 approbation of the apostles and of the Christianity of the 
 Bereans. On reading the passage, it will be clearly seen, 
 1st, that neither Paul, nor Silas, nor Luke, who reports the 
 fact, approves or condemns the conduct of the Bereans ; 2dly, 
 that the latter welcomed with interest what had been told 
 them of the Christian religion ; but that they were not yet 
 Christians. The proof of this is in the following verse: and 
 many among them believed.] Then what could be the object 
 of the investigations of the Bereans ? Did they attempt to 
 compare all the points of apostolic doctrine with the text of 
 the Gospels which were not yet written, or with the Old Tes- 
 tament, where this doctrine is not found, at least explicitly ? 
 It is evident that this examination related to the mission of 
 Jesus Christ, and the realization in Him of the promises and 
 oracles of the ancient law. 
 
 Let us grant to Protestants that the inhabitants of Berea 
 were true Christians; what will they conclude from that? 
 Could those who acknowledge the inspiration of the apostles 
 and their doctrinal infallibility, be satisfied that the Bereans 
 should doubt of the apostolic word, and that they should 
 flatter themselves that they understood the Bible better than 
 their masters in the faith ? Would they pretend that Christ 
 had permitted these simple believers the right to contradict 
 those to whom he said : Ye are the Jight of the world. . . . 
 Go, teach. . . . He who hears you, hears me, &c. ! 
 
 If it is pretended that the Bereans only read the Scriptures 
 to confirm themselves in the received faith, and to find arms 
 against the opposers of the Gospel, there is nothing in it which 
 establishes the right of free inquiry, and which the Catholic 
 Church would disapprove. 
 
 * Act. Ap. xvii. 11. f Act. Ap. v. 12.
 
 40 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 Protestants are still less fortunate in the passage which they 
 very frequently and very incompletely recite from the 3d 
 Epistle to Timothy, chap. iii. verses 14, 15, 16, 17. 1st, The 
 apostle there addresses, not the faithful, but Timothy ordained 
 by him as bishop, and, consequently, obliged to study the 
 sacred books; and what did he say to him? "But continue 
 thou in those things which thou hast learned, and which have 
 been committed to thee, knowing of whom thou hast learned 
 them ; and because from thy infancy thou hast known the 
 Holy Scriptures, which can instruct thee to salvation, by the 
 faith which is in Jesus Christ. All Scripture inspired by God 
 is profitable to teach," &c. Here faith in the oral teaching 
 of the apostles is evidently placed before the study of the 
 Apostles, and recommended as necessary, while the last is 
 commended as profitable. These Holy Scriptures, in which 
 Timothy was instructed from infancy, are not certainly the 
 Gospels, the last of which had not been written, and the first 
 had been known only a short time. Hence these words of 
 St. Paul are very far from the Protestant rule of faith. 
 
 A multitude of other texts are afterwards cited, most of 
 them from the Old Testament, which were only praises of the 
 law of the Lord, and an invitation to meditate upon it. We 
 shall answer these things in detail as soon as Protestant com- 
 mentators have demonstrated that they must be understood of 
 the evangelical law written, read, and interpreted by each indi- 
 vidual. Until they have done so, we may be permitted to say 
 to our dear separated brethren : Do you know what you are 
 doing, by saying incessantly, In religion, the Bible, nothing 
 but the Bible? You pronounce your own condemnation ; for 
 this principle, the only one upon which you agree, is it not en- 
 tirely unscriptural. From whence have you received it? 
 Evidently from Dr. Martin Luther, who, seeing the Church 
 universal rise and menace his propositions, saw that there 
 was but one alternative, either to retract his theses and allow
 
 FIRST DIFFICULTY. 41 
 
 th.it he was deceived, or arm himself with a Bible, and cry 
 with all his might, as he did, "I have the Bible for myself; 
 whoever reads the Bible may laugh at the Pope, at bishops, 
 at councils, at universities, and all the dunces in their train." 
 
 CHAPTER XII . 
 
 DIFFICULTIES OF THE PROTESTANT PRINCIPLE IN PRACTICE ; 
 
 FIRST DIFFICULTY : EVERY PROTESTANT MUST MAKE 
 
 A BIBLE FOU HIMSELF. 
 
 AFTER having resolved the question of fact, let us examine 
 the question of right. 
 
 Can the individual study of the Bible, with the difficulties 
 it presents, ever guide a person to the certain knowledge of 
 the doctrine of Christ ? 
 
 The first difficulty which presents itself to the advocate of 
 Bible-religion, is to know if there is a Bible, and the difficulty 
 certainly is not a small one. Archimedes, who only required 
 a lever and fulcrum to raise the world, finished by leaving it 
 in its place, for want of a fulcrum and lever. It might happen, 
 also, that the Lutheran or Calvinistic youth, who only needs 
 a Bible to rise from natural to revealed religion, would remain 
 all his life in the former, because he could not say from con- 
 viction : Here is indubitably the Bible ! 
 
 How can the Protestant convince himself of the existence 
 of a book divinely inspired, if, faithful to his principles, he 
 isolates himself from present and past generations, and, casting 
 on them a look of defiance and contempt, says: Men are all 
 subject to error or deceit; in religion I must trust only 
 myself! 
 
 Is it said that the Holy Spirit, promised to all the faithful, 
 4*
 
 42 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 reveals to men of sincerity the ineffable beauties of Scripture, 
 and shows them that this book differs as much from the works 
 of man as honey from vinegar, and light from darkness ? The 
 Protestant ministers have, in fact, formerly said this, but 
 whether from respect for the third divine person, or for them- 
 selves and the public, I believe they have ceased to repeat it. 
 By seeing and hearing the pretty trifles in which their in- 
 spired men indulged themselves, they have learned that the 
 gift of inspiration would only people Bicetre and Bedlam, and 
 they have wisely abandoned that powerful machine to the 
 descendants of Muncer, Fox, Wesley, and Svvedenborg.* 
 
 * Thomas Muncer was one of the principal leaders of the Anabap- 
 tists, those elder children of the evangelical liberty preached by Luther, 
 and who filled with ruin and blood a part of Germany. George Fox, 
 an English shoemaker, who died in 1600, was the founder of the 
 Quakers. John Wesley, an English preacher, founded the Methodist 
 sect, in 1729. A few years after, the Swedish Swedenborg introduced 
 into the world the Swedenborgians, or JVew-Jerusalemites. These sects 
 although so different in worship and faith, have yet this in common, 
 that they take the inspirations of the spirit of God for the rule of faith 
 and conduct. Let us look at some of the results of their intimate com- 
 munication with the divinity. The Holy Spirit inspired the Anabap- 
 tists to put to death the wicked and only preserve the good; John of 
 Leydon to marry eleven wives at once, and then put them to death ; 
 Hermann, to announce himself as the Messiah, and to massacre all the 
 priests and magistrates ; David Georges, to call himself the true Son 
 of God, and preach a doctrine more perfect than that of the Bible; 
 Nicolas, a disciple of Georges, to despise all faith, and to remain in sin 
 that grace might abound; Venner, to recognize no other sovereign on 
 earth than Jesus Christ ; William Simpson, to go naked for three years ; 
 a Quakeress, to present herself naked in the public service at White- 
 hall ; a third, to enter the hall of the English Parliament sword in hand, 
 and kill all those whom he could reach ; in short, the Holy Spirit in- 
 formed Joanna Southcote, mother of the Joannites, not long since, that 
 she was to give birth to the Messiah, and that she had the power of 
 delivering passports to heaven to the number of one hundred and forty- 
 four thousand ; it taught, and still teaches, Richard Hill and other fol- 
 lowers of Wesley, that adultery, homicide and incest, render men more
 
 FIRST DIFFICULTY. 43 
 
 The neutrality of the Hoty Spirit once admitted by a sin- 
 cere Protestant, how can he be convinced of the authenticity, 
 veracity, and divinity of the Scriptures, except by long and 
 rigorous investigations? 
 
 The uniform and constant testimony of Christians of all 
 ages, it is said, is sufficient to prevent doubt, and the authen- 
 ticity of the Bible is no less incontestable than that of the 
 works of Virgil and Cicero. 
 
 Uniform and constant testimony! but can the Protestant 
 admit the infallibility of this testimony before having per- 
 sonally examined its value ? If he does so, he recognizes 
 the existence of an infallible Christian tradition, serving as a 
 basis to the edifice of his faith; and, after having received 
 from it with confidence the divine book, how can he, without 
 inconsistency, refuse to take it on trust from that book, and 
 pretend to interpret it better for himself? 
 
 If, on the contrary, consistent with his principles, he sees 
 in Christians of present and past times only men subject to 
 the grossest errors, most of them accomplices of the long- 
 continued abominations of the Church of Rome, suspected 
 witnesses, who have no other claim upon his belief than their 
 incapacity to deceive him, he cannot excuse himself from 
 verifying for himself the uniformity and consistency of their 
 testimony through all ages; he must prove to himself the 
 worthlessness of the opposing testimony of the earlier inno- 
 vators, who rejected, as a whole*, or in part, the Old and New 
 Testament, and introduced apocryphal Gospels. Moreover, 
 as it is evident that the Bible is not a compact and homo- 
 geneous whole, but that it contains more than sixty distinct 
 
 holy on earth, and more happy in heaven ; that the liberty which the 
 Redeemer has acquired for us at the price of his blood, consists in boldly 
 transgressing the commandments of God,&c. (See Le Guide du Catt- 
 chumenc Vaudois, liv. iv. 3d entret, torn. ii. p. 92, &c. Milnei 
 Excellence of the Catholic Religion, vol. i. p. 38, &c.)
 
 44 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 works, coming from the pen of nearly forty authors, distant 
 from each other; as it is certain that there is not, in this col- 
 lection, a single book, a single chapter or a verse, whose au- 
 thenticity has not been, and may not be denied or called in 
 question, by some of the learned biblists of the Reformation, 
 the commentator must necessarily carry the torch of criticism 
 through each of the thirteen hundred chapters and the thirty- 
 four thousand verses of the Bible. He must then take up his 
 abode for twenty-five or thirty years, at least, in our libraries ; 
 for, if he is permitted the privilege of availing himself of the 
 labor of scholars on this subject, it is indispensable that he 
 should read attentively all that has been hitherto written for 
 and against the authenticity and integrity of the Sacred Books. 
 
 It is evident that it is no easy matter to obtain for onesself 
 in religion the reputation of distinguished learning. We have 
 as yet only mentioned the two least difficult questions, those 
 of authenticity and veracity. That a book is by such an au- 
 thor, of such a time ; that it is generally faithful in its state- 
 ment of facts, are things easily established by testimony. 
 But, how can the interior, impalpable fact of inspiration be 
 verified ? No one can prove it but the Holy Spirit, or the 
 inspired person himself. As no one among Protestants, ex- 
 empt from fanaticism, relies on the immediate and personal 
 revelation of the Holy Scripture, there remains the testimony 
 of the writers of the New Testament ; but what testimony ? 
 If it is their written word, let them show us the passage in 
 which the inspiration of every part of the New Testament is 
 clearly affirmed. If this passage existed, and it does not, 
 would it be any advantage ? 
 
 " How can the Scriptures," asked an able controversialist, 
 " prove their own inspiration ? All their doctrinal authority 
 depends on their inspiration. You must show that they are 
 inspired, before you have a right to deduce from their testi- 
 mony any point of doctrine whatever. If wishing to demon-
 
 SECOND DIFFICULTY. 45 
 
 strate the inspiration of a book, you begin by assuming it, 
 you fall into a begging of the question," &c.* 
 
 If the oral testimony of the apostles, received and trans- 
 mitted by the Christian community, is appealed to, then tra- 
 dition comes up again with its claim of infallibility. 
 
 But we must stop. It is evident, that, before creating for 
 himself a religion by the aid of the Bible, the Protestant must 
 create for himself the Bible by the aid of reason. But this is 
 a colossal undertaking, calculated to terrify the strongest 
 spirit. 
 
 How can we at once close the mouth of the defender of 
 Bible religion ? It is sufficient to ask him this question : You 
 are constantly quoting the Bible, but how do you know that 
 there is a Bible ? 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 SECOND DIFFICULTY OF THE PROTESTANT PRINCIPLE. EVERY 
 PROTESTANT MUST READ THE BIBLE IN THE ORIGINAL. 
 
 LET us imagine that, by long and conscientious researches, 
 our Protestant has arrived at the conviction that the Bible is 
 a divine book, all the words of which have come from heaven. 
 This is, without doubt, a great step ; but more is to be done 
 in order to arrive at a certain and complete knowledge of the 
 divine doctrine ! 
 
 He would shock reason, as well as the universal conscience 
 of Christians, who should imagine that, to reign with Christ 
 in heaven, it is sufficient to put the Bible under one's arm and 
 say: " I consider everything in this book as unquestionable." 
 
 * Wiseman, Conferences on the most important Doctrines and 
 Practices of the Catholic Church, vol. i. p. 132, &c.
 
 40 THE SOLUTIOX OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 What would then become of the important precept to read 
 the Bible ? If God himself condescends to dictate a book so 
 voluminous, it must necessarily be acknowledged that he has 
 great and precious truths to communicate to men. What 
 other design could be attributed to him than that of rectifying 
 and enlarging our thoughts, of purifying and ennobling our 
 affections, and of harmonizing both with the divine intention 
 and will ? 
 
 The Bible, no doubt, contains truths and precepts more or 
 less indispensable, but all infinitely useful and adapted to our 
 wants. " I am the Lord thy God, that teaches thee profitable 
 things ;" such is the idea which naturally presents itself at 
 sight of a Bible, even before having read these words.* 
 
 But can we penetrate into the unfathomable abyss of the 
 divine mind?f What thread can we seize to direct us in the 
 study of the infinite. 
 
 The first and most indispensable thing to a Protestant, for 
 whom there is no sufficient guarantee of the fidelity of the 
 translations of the Bible in the vulgar tongue, is the know- 
 ledge of the original texts ; that is, of Greek and Hebrew. 
 
 It may be said : There are translations whose fidelity is 
 universally recognized, and in this respect every one can de- 
 pend on public opinion, especially on that of scholars. But 
 here the infallibility denied to the universal Church is accorded 
 freely to a translator, or at least to the public, a collection of 
 ignorant and foolish men, whom the Popes have lead on from 
 one abomination to another, and from idolatry to idolatry ! 
 
 There are translations whose fidelity . . . which I would 
 ask ? the one which Luther made in German from the Hebrew ? 
 a version considered very imperfect, even by many of his 
 friends, who were not entirely satisfied with his skill in 
 Hebrew ; a version which Zwingle accused of corrupting the 
 
 * Isai. xlviii. 17. 
 
 t Judicia tua abyssus multa. (Ps. xxxv. 7.)
 
 SECOND DIFFICULTY. 47 
 
 word of God ; a version in which the brothers Valembourg 
 have detected many essential alterations, and Emser has dis- 
 covered 1400 errors ; a version now esteemed so obscure and 
 imperfect, that the Lutheran consistories of Germany de- 
 manded a complete revision of it.* 
 
 Besides, what reliance does the work of a rash man merit, 
 who struck off from the canon of the Scriptures any book 
 which displeased him, and who, when convicted of perverting 
 a text of St. Paul, answered : " I know that this word only is 
 not found in the text of St. Paul; but if any one presses you 
 upon this subject, say to him, Dr. Martin Luther has chosen 
 that it should be so, and he says that a Papist and an ass are 
 the same thing. ... I am sorry that I have not added other 
 words. On this account, the word only shall remain in my 
 New Testament, even if the Papists lose their spiteful spirit 
 concerning it." f 
 
 Does any one speak of the translations made by the other 
 leaders of the Reformation, such as Calvin, Zwingle, GEco- 
 lampadus, Beza, Leon de Juda, &c., productions all more or 
 less denied as soon as they appeared, and twenty times re- 
 modelled and revised, without being able to conciliate the 
 general confidence. 
 
 If we appeal to the authority of the learned, where is the 
 tribunal whose sentences are apparently guaranteed from 
 error? If judges are needed to decide on religious questions, 
 why reject those scholars and pontiffs, who, in the character 
 of ambassadors of Christ, unite the authority of genius, 
 science, and sanctity? 
 
 By learned men is doubtless meant our skilful Orientalists, 
 Hebraists, and Hellenists, who have made a profound study 
 of the primitive texts find one who is satisfied with the ex- 
 
 * See Audin, Vie de Luther, ch. 18. 
 
 t Opp. Luth. vol. iii. p. 141, 144. Edit. Jen.
 
 48 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 isting biblical versions, and who is not planning a new one 
 which is to throw them all into the shade. 
 
 The only method, then, by which a Protestant can approach 
 with confidence the interpretation of the sacred text, is, that 
 he endeavors himself to become a profound linguist a 
 Gesenius or a Sylvester de Sacy. Since he has already ac- 
 quired a taste for study, by taking up his abode in libraries 
 for twenty-five or thirty years, why should he refuse to sit on 
 the benches of a school, to learn Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, and 
 the thousand trifles indispensable to an accomplished com- 
 mentator ! He must make haste, however ; for, after so much 
 study, he might indeed be 
 
 De moyen age * 
 Et tirant sur le grison. 
 
 Yet he is still a Christian only in desire, or potentially. 
 Wo to him if death arrives before he has known and done 
 what must be known and done to become really a Christian ! 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 THIRD DIFFICULTY : EVERY PROTESTANT IS BOUND TO READ 
 AND EXAMINE THE BIBLE IN ALL ITS PARTS. 
 
 OUR neophyte is now provided with Greek and Hebrew, and 
 furnished with all the instruments necessary to construct his 
 edifice of Christianity from materials wholly biblical where 
 will he commence ? By the attentive reading of the whole 
 Bible, from the first verse of Genesis to the last of the Apo- 
 calypse. There, indeed, are to be found, though scattered and 
 in a chaotic state, the numerous elements of Christianity. 
 
 * Of middle age 
 And bordering on gray hairs.
 
 THIRD DIFFICULTY. 49 
 
 The sacred writers, as we have before observed, nowhere offer 
 a synopsis, or regular and complete summary of what a Chris- 
 tian should believe and practice to secure his claim to the 
 heavenly kingdom. 
 
 The Protestant, moreover, has not by his side, as the 
 Catholic, an infallible guide, who points out to him the parts 
 of Scripture which it is important for him to know, and those 
 the ignorance of which is not an obstacle to salvation. 
 
 Can the symbolic books, the confessions of faith, and the 
 catechisms which the Protestant finds in his sect, furnish him 
 any assistance ? Certainly not. What are they, according 
 to the judgment of all enlightened Protestants ? Poor, con- 
 temptible, wretched imitations of Papacy ; formal abjurations 
 of the fundamental principle of liberty of examination ; or 
 official protestations of Protestant churches against Pro- 
 testantism. 
 
 Can the true Protestant have recourse to the ministry of 
 the pastors of his sect? But, pray, who are these pastors? 
 who has sent them ? who has charged them to feed the flock 
 of Christ ? what spiritual nourishment can they offer to their 
 pretended sheep, who can agree on nothing, and who wish 
 that the faith might never again be spoken of, in any way,* 
 and who evidently could not establish among themselves 
 a common formulary of faith, without signing the sentence 
 of death upon Protestantism ? 
 
 Let them assume the pompous title ministers and teachers 
 of the holy Gospel, or the more modest, but less biblical one, 
 of ministers skilled in the interpretation of Scripture f what 
 
 * Words of the pastor Burnier, in his report to the assembly of 
 Lausanne, 1838, on the state of the reformed churches of France. (See 
 Guide du Catechumene Vaudois, torn. i. p. 221.) 
 
 t In the work quoted above, vol. iii. p. 585, et seq., may be found 
 some excellent remarks on the denomination skilful ministers, recently 
 invented by a Genevese preacher, M. Fillet Johy. 
 
 VOL. II. 5
 
 50 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 are they in Protestant churches? Bible carriers, readers for 
 wages of the divine book, and who, the reading finished, must 
 close their lips, under pain of hearing even their wives and 
 children exclaim : Be silent ! who has given you the right to 
 explain the Scriptures to us ? It would be truly singular to 
 see these persons exalt themselves into oracles, and substitute 
 their ideas of a day for the teachings of a church accredited 
 by eighteen centuries of existence, and by the submission of 
 eight or ten thousand millions of Christians ! 
 
 If the generality of men have need of skilful interpreters to 
 enable them to understand the Scriptures, is it not plain that 
 Jesus Christ must have established them, and that Catholicism 
 must then come in, by full right, with its bishops and its 
 priests ? But let us return to our catechumen. 
 
 See him alone with his Bible, condemned to read it from 
 one end to the other, to read it again, to meditate upon it, 
 and compare it with itself as often as may be necessary to 
 prevent any of the thirty-four thousand verses from escaping 
 his examination : if he omits one, who could guarantee to him 
 that the key of the true Christian system was not to be found 
 in that ? 
 
 A judge in the first and last appeal of the most important 
 and complicated causes, a frightful responsibility rests upon 
 him. How can he feel any assurance of the equity of his 
 decision, if a conscientious study of the various parts of the 
 vast process does not bring them all before his mind, does not 
 enable him to appreciate them all at their just value, before 
 he pronounces the sentence which will bring him to the happy 
 abode prepared from the beginning for those who have known 
 and accomplished the will of their Heavenly Father, or take 
 him down to the eternal abyss destined for those who have 
 broken the divine law! 
 
 Will our separated brethren allow me to ask them this 
 question : Who among you can pretend to have read with
 
 FOURTH DIFFICULTY. 51 
 
 attention I will not say examined the whole Bible ? You 
 believe you are Christians, because you have glanced at some 
 of its books ; but, how do you know that so many pages, 
 which are unknown to you, may contain nothing essential to 
 Christianity ? 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 FOURTH DIFFICULTY : EVERY PROTESTANT MUST ASSURE 
 HIMSELF THAT HE HAS READ THE WHOLE BIBLE. 
 
 IT is not enough to say, I have read all the Bible; we must 
 be able to add, I am certain of having comprehended it suffi- 
 ciently well. Is this an easy or common thing ? What does 
 Luther say on this subject? 
 
 " How great and difficult a thing is it to understand the 
 Scriptures ! Twenty years' labor are required to understand 
 the Georgics of Virgil; twenty years passed in the manage- 
 ment of affairs to have a clear comprehension of the Epistles 
 of Cicero ; a hundred years with the prophets Elias, Elijah, 
 John the Baptist, Christ, and his apostles, to have a glimpse 
 into the Scriptures." * 
 
 Can you, advocates of Bible religion, accuse me of extra- 
 vagance when I demonstrated to you before, the obligation 
 you were under to bury yourself thirty or forty years in the 
 dust of libraries and universities, when the father of the Re- 
 formation condemns you to frequent, for a hundred years, the 
 schools of masters not now to be found, in order to obtain a 
 glimpse into the meaning of the Scriptures ! 
 
 * Audin, Vie de Luther, torn. ii. p. 520. Colloq. mens. fol. 4, 290. 
 M. Michelet repeats the same words, with some variation, as written 
 by Luther, at Eisleben, two da) 5 before his death. (See Memoires de 
 Luther, liv. v. ch. 7.)
 
 52 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 I acknowledge that this may be some of the table-talk 
 which poured from the lips of the evangelist, whenever the 
 fumes of beer or of wine made the torch of the apostolic 
 spirit flicker in his brain ; yet, it is evident to all who have 
 read the Scriptures, that nothing is more difficult than their 
 interpretation. 
 
 I will not quote the words of the holy writers, nor those of 
 the fathers of the Church, who have made the most progress 
 in the study of sacred literature. All agree concerning the 
 mysterious and incalculable depth of the holy books ; all unite 
 in saying that the hand of man will reach the stars suspended 
 in the vault of heaven, before his mind can enter into the 
 depths of the divine word. 
 
 I will say nothing of the high antiquity of -the Scriptures; 
 nothing of the vast variety of their subjects ; nothing of the 
 great distance between their authors, not so much on account 
 of the years which separate us from them, as their customs, 
 turn of mind, extremely figurative style, and the genius of their 
 language ; nothing of the immensity of the subject which they 
 embrace God, man, the universe ; which considerations would 
 be sufficient to manifest, however little, yet enough to enable 
 the blind to see that the Bible is and must be the most diffi- 
 cult book to understand, and that the comprehension of the 
 Roman laws, so laborious even to our most skilful jurists, is 
 play in comparison to the interpretation of it. 
 
 I will oppose only two incontrovertible facts to the innu- 
 merable quotations with which we are deafened, to prove to 
 us the assumed clearness of the Scriptures, and the facility 
 with which they reveal themselves to those who are right- 
 minded and desirous of the truth. One of these has been 
 evident to all ages for three centuries, and the other is biblical. 
 
 1st Since the commencement of the Reformation, there is 
 ao text of Scripture upon the meaning of which the generality 
 of Protestants have been able constantly to agree. It is cer-
 
 FOURTH DIFFICULTY. 53 
 
 tain, then, that there is no passage which the generality of 
 Protestants have understood in its true sense. It is a mani- 
 fest proof that all, or almost all, misunderstand the Bible, 
 since all explain it differently. They must, then, agree on 
 one of these two things, either that the Bible is very obscure, 
 or that they themselves are not very clear-sighted. 
 
 2dly. In rectitude of mind, sanctity of life, and desire to 
 know the truth; in one word, as to everything which consti- 
 tutes intellectual and moral aptitude to comprehend the divine 
 word, the Apostles were, without doubt, as gifted as most of 
 the reformers. Who of the latter could say to Jesus Christ: 
 Behold, we have left all things, and followed thee.* 
 
 The Apostles had, still more, the immense advantage of 
 seeing the divine Master, of hearing the language in which he 
 preached, of interrogating him at will, to receive from his sacred 
 lips the divine, animated, and living word. Yet, according to 
 their avowal, they comprehended nothing even of what he told 
 them most clearly; it was hid from them;]- and after his re- 
 surrection, he was obliged to give them that understanding of 
 the Scriptures that they had been unable to acquire by three 
 years of assiduous attention to his teachings.^ 
 
 Now that every Protestant flatters himself that he compre- 
 hends the word, and the whole word of Jesus Christ, no 
 longer spoken, animated, and explained, by the gesture, look, 
 and accent of him who uttered it ; but dead, buried in a strange 
 tongue, and become the subject of interminable discussions 
 
 * Matth. xix. 27. 
 
 * f Etipsi nihil horum intellexerunt, eteratverbumistud absconditum 
 ab eis. (Luke xviii. 34.) And of what had he spoken to them .' of his 
 consubstantiality with the Father ? No, but of his passion, of his re- 
 surrection, and in terms the most intelligible. (Ib. 32, 33.) 
 
 I Tune aperuit illis senswn ut inteU\gerent Scripluras. (Ib. 24, 
 45.) It is evident from the following verses that he referred only to 
 the sense of the prophecies relative to his death and resurrection. 
 
 5*
 
 54 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 among the most learned interpreters, how can such a preten- 
 tion be designated, how can the religious system be designated 
 which establishes it as a principle ! 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 CAN THE PROTESTANT PRINCIPLE PRODUCE CHRISTIANS? 
 
 IN order to answer this question, it will only be necessary 
 to repeat, in a few words, what we have before demonstrated. 
 
 No Protestant, faithful to the fundamental principle of the 
 Reformation, can pretend to be a Christian before he has 
 acquired, by his individual efforts, a firm conviction on five 
 points. 
 
 1st. That the Bible is a divine book, and that it comes into 
 his hands free from every important error which could have 
 crept into it, through the evil intention or malice of its trans- 
 lators, copyists, or printers. 
 
 2d. That the Bible contains all that is necessary for faith 
 and practice. 
 
 3d. That for the understanding of this book, it is the ex- 
 press command of Jesus Christ that every one should rely on 
 his own judgment. 
 
 4th. That he has meditated and compared the thirty thou- 
 sand and more verses of the Bible sufficiently to have pos- 
 sessed himself of their meaning. 
 
 5th. That he has omitted, in his profession of faith, no 
 essential article of doctrine ; that his system of morality in- 
 cludes all the precepts of rigorous obligation ; that he under- 
 stands all the sacraments, the dispositions they demand, the 
 ministry clothed with the power to dispense them ; and that, 
 in a word, he knows the essential rites of worship.
 
 PROTESTANT PRINCIPLE. 55 
 
 And let us observe, that upon all these subjects pur Bible 
 Christian must have, not fluctuating opinions, nor any mode 
 of thinking whatever, but an immoveable and assured belief, 
 which will never abandon him, neither in presence of the 
 opposing convictions of his rivals in biblical interpretation, nor 
 before the funeral piles kindled by his persecutors. 
 
 I would now ask any conscientious man who has an idea 
 of the vast range of biblical studies, if there is a mind in the 
 world so comprehensive and bold as to undertake the solution 
 of these five postulates, and if there is, in the nature of these 
 questions, evidence enough to found a conviction unassailable 
 by doubt, when the ear is closed to the imposing voice of 
 tradition. 
 
 The most laborious life, and an intellect versed in all science, 
 would not be adequate to such an undertaking ; and yet this 
 is the task imposed upon the humble artisan, the wretched 
 day- laborer, and the poor mother of a family! 
 
 These good people will be compelled, by the aid of some 
 fragments of Scripture, read to them by a minister on Sunday, 
 and by the help of their own reason, which is confined within 
 the narrow circle of a small household, with the assistance of 
 that Spirit of God, which is so sparing in its communications, 
 that it has failed Catholics for many centuries, and which 
 never has made its actual appearance among the innumerable 
 sects springing out of the Reformation, all armed with ana- 
 themas against each other these good people will be com- 
 pelled, I repeat, to project from their brain a complete 
 religion ! 
 
 They will be obliged to reconstruct the magnificent edifice 
 of Christianity, which the most gifted genius cannot flatter 
 himself he has beheld in its completeness. 
 
 They must comprehend the word of Jesus Christ better 
 than the Apostles, after three years passed in the school of 
 the Savior!
 
 56 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 They must have a fixed and enlightened belief in regard to 
 those very questions which have become the subject of inter- 
 minable discussion among their most learned fellow-believers! 
 
 They must, above all things, avoid the abominable errors 
 from which a hundred and sixty millions of their Catholic 
 cotemporaries, and seven or eight hundred millions of their 
 predecessors, have not been able to protect themselves. 
 
 Among all the absurdities put in circulation since the origin 
 of the world, we should in vain seek for ono that would ex- 
 ceed this! 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 WHAT MEN DOES THE PROTESTANT PRINCIPLE FORM? WHAT 
 WOULD A CHRISTIAN BE ACCORDING TO ITS METHOD ? 
 
 IT is now very evident that no one can call himself a 
 Christian in virtue of Protestantism. Every advocate of this 
 system, if he would be consistent, will arrive by a longer or 
 shorter way at deism, naturalism, indifferentism, or contempt 
 of all revealed religion ; at Christianity never. 
 
 Even if facts did not present themselves, with their irre- 
 sistible authority ; if the organs of the Protestant press did 
 not agree in announcing the death of the reformed Chris- 
 tianity, and the impossibility of protecting any longer this 
 lifeless body from the worms that are rapidly devouring it,* 
 
 * All these churches (the Protestant Churches of Germany, Switzer- 
 land, and France,) with few, I believe almost no exception, are cor- 
 rupted in what constitutes the essence of Christianity. The gnawing 
 worms of Socinianism and infidelity have, in their devouring activity, 
 penetrated every part of the body, substance and even heart of these 
 alien churches." (Dublin Review, quoted by rUnioersile' Calholique, 
 April, 1838.) As to the Anglican Church, the British Revieic, Au-
 
 INFLUENCE OF THE PROTESTANT PRINCIPLE. 57 
 
 could the truth appear doubtful to any one who has the 
 power of detecting in a principle, the consequences which it 
 involves ? 
 
 Let any one reject with contempt, as the reformers have 
 done, all historical and traditional data in matters of faith ; 
 separate Christianity from the old and strong foundations 
 upon which it rested when Luther arose ; shut it up within 
 the covers of the Bible, and allow the first simpleton who may 
 present himself * the right to draw it from thence ; in short, 
 change the Christian Church into a true Pandemonium, where 
 all dreams, all half truths, and all errors, can disport themselves 
 at ease, and celebrate their Sabbath.^ Let us, after this, find 
 any judicious mind which can consent to see in this new con- 
 fusion of tongues the work of him who is seated in the height 
 of heaven. 
 
 Wherever men proclaim, in religion, the Bible, nothing but 
 the Bible ! they will soon boldly write, in face of the public : 
 The Bible is nothing ! the Bible is a collection of miserable 
 rhapsodies, of fabulous recitals ; the New Testament contains 
 the history and the doctrine of an imaginary being.% The 
 Bible has had its day. . . . The Koran, in some respects, is 
 nearer the truth than the Old and New Testament.^ 
 
 These are the men whom Protestantism produces whenever 
 
 gust 1838, terms it a mummy, a solemn corpse which can no longer 
 walk, nor breathe, nor live. A multitude of avowals of this kind are 
 to be found in Protestant Europe, the Archives of Christianity, le 
 JVuuvelliste Vaudois, and other Protestant publications. 
 
 * This is the expression of Luther, in his Letter to the Christians 
 of Antwerp : " There are almost as many creeds as heads. There is 
 no simpleton who, if he happens to have a dream, does not believe 
 himself visited by God, or become a prophet." 
 
 t Archives of Christianity, Jan. 12th, 1839. 
 
 f Strauss, Life of Jesus. 
 
 Lcttre a la venerable Compagnie des Pasteurs, Sfc. by 1'ex-pas- 
 teur Rojour, p. 17, 10, 26.
 
 68 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 it is permitted to take its course. This low class will number 
 many scholars, many prophets In jackets and in petticoats; 
 and, above them all, many scoffers and indifferent persons. 
 
 Is the radical incapacity of such a system to form Chris- 
 tians, after all, an evil ? What would a Christian after this 
 sort be ? He would be an individual, who, devoid of all 
 moral and religious principle which was not of his own crea- 
 tion, would commence his religious education by suspecting 
 of imposture his parents, his friends, his ancestors, and the 
 human race in general ; and who, after longer or shorter pre- 
 paration, would say with Luther : " Strong in my knowledge, 
 there is neither emperor, nor king, nor devil, to whom I would 
 yield ; no, not even to the whole universe." * I do not ima- 
 gine there is a father, a mother, a man, a woman, a master, 
 or a monarch, so ill advised as to wish for such a son, daugh- 
 ter, wife, husband, servant or subject 
 
 But I must add, this monster of impertinence, folly, and 
 pride, does not and cannot exist. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 APPLICATION OF THE PROTESTANT PRINCIPLE TO THE 
 
 CONVERSION OF INFIDELS. CIRCULATION OF THE 
 
 BIBLE. ITS RESULTS. 
 
 IF the Bible alone cannot form Christians in Europe, where 
 every one imbibes Christianity with his mother's milk, and 
 breathes it in with the air, will it meet with more success in 
 India, China, or Japan, in the Archipelagos of Oceanica, in 
 the forests of America, in the midst of people, some proud of 
 their so called civilization, and infatuated with the most absurd 
 
 Resp. ad Mated. Reg. Angl.
 
 CIRCULATION OF THE BIBLE. 59 
 
 religious systems ; others, fallen into the lowest degree of bar- 
 barism, and who must become men before becoming Christians. 
 
 What method can the advocates of Biblical religion take to 
 fulfil' the great precept of Christ : Go, and teach all nations ? 
 They devote large sums levied on their credulous fellow- 
 believers to the translation of the Bible, by wretched scholars,* 
 into all necessary tongues ; they print every year these trans 
 lations in many millions of copies. They afterwards raise a 
 levy from the working class, of blacksmiths, braziers, and 
 other artizans out of employ, who, for an annual stipend, 
 varying from six to eighteen thousand francs, according 
 to the number of children they bring in their train, will 
 consent to hawk about and disseminate the missionary book 
 in all countries where the British flag floats. 
 
 Let us imagine one of these envoys of the Bible Society 
 arriving in an Indian village, followed by two wagons loaded, 
 one with his family, and the other with a full cargo of Bibles. 
 What can he do in the midst of this population, whose lan- 
 guage and habits are unknown to him, and whose prejudices 
 and customs he will shock at first to such a degree as to cause 
 him to be hooted at or murdered,f if it were not for the re- 
 
 * These are the words of the learned Dr. Percival, Chaplain to the 
 King of England, in a document published May, 1837, under this title: 
 " Reasons why I am not a member of the Bible Society." We read 
 there: " It freezes the blood in the veins of a Christian to think, that 
 there exists in the nineteenth century a society, which insolently sport- 
 ing with the oracles of the all Powerful, dares to present to idolatrous 
 nations as the divine word, the labors of miserable scholars, and shame- 
 fully swindles simple and too credulous men who maintain this society 
 with their money." 
 
 t 1 shall here quote an anecdote of a Protestant missionary, who. 
 rinding himself thirsty in the midst of a warm address to some Hin- 
 doos, exhorting them to read the Bible, bethought himself of drawing 
 from his pocket a flagon of liquor, and pouring it into his mouth. 
 This incongruity put to flight the most delicate of his audience and threw 
 the rest into fits of laughter
 
 GO THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 spect which the English artillery inspires, which these gentle- 
 men have always the prudence to keep in sight in their 
 apostolic and biblical excursions. But these good Hindoos 
 cannot surmount their invincible repugnance to the costume 
 of this stranger.* How, then, can he make them compre- 
 hend the necessity of reading the Bible ? 
 
 Without doubt, the inquiry will be made, what this religion 
 is which he announces. What will he answer? If he takes 
 it upon himself to dogmatise, according to the particular 
 views of his sect, he is at war, not with the Hindoos, but 
 with all sects of different creeds, who also send Bible-carriers 
 into India. 
 
 He is contradicted and anathematized, at the same time, 
 by the evangelical and the unevangelical Lutheran, by the 
 Episcopalian and the Presbyterian, by the Wesleyan Metho- 
 dist and the Whitfieldian Methodist, by the Unitarian, the 
 Universalist, the Independent, the Anabaptist, the Pedobaptist, 
 the Antipedobaptist, the Freewell Baptist, the Six-principle 
 Baptist, the Free Communion Baptist, the Quaker, the Mo- 
 ravian, the Rationalist, the Superrationalist, and the other 
 representatives of the innumerable sects which multiply in the 
 bosom of Protestantism. What will the adorers of Vishnou 
 think of such a witches' Sabbath ! 
 
 If, in conformity to his principles, the Bible missionary an- 
 swers : The religion which I announce to you is all in this 
 book.f Read it with the desire to learn, and you will soon 
 
 * Concerning the horror which the form of our garments and our 
 shoes inspire in the Hindoos, and especially the animal materials of 
 which they are composed, (See the learned work of M. 1'Abbe" Dubois : 
 Mceurs et Usages des Peuples de VInde., vol. i. p. 43G.) 
 
 t In fart this is the only account which a protestant minister can 
 give of Christianity, and a celebrated Anglican Bishop in the latter 
 part of the last century, candidly acknowledged, not in a private inter- 
 view, but in a pastoral to his clergy. Speaking of the Christian doctrines 
 he says : " I can more surely indicate to you where they are found,
 
 CIRCULATION OF THE BIBLE. 61 
 
 know the true God, and the manner in which he would be 
 served. Behold, then, all those poor Pagans, who do not 
 know how to read, excluded from the kingdom of Heaven, 
 and, as for the learned, how many of them are there who 
 would consent to read through a large book, in order to find 
 in it an unknown religion, and one which its apostles them- 
 selves cannot define ! 
 
 We will suppose that curiosity may lead some to open the 
 mysterious volume, and that the translation of it is as exact 
 and intelligible as it is inaccurate and obscure, according to 
 the account of the best judges on the subject* What idea 
 could the Indian, whose principles in philosophy, religion, 
 morality, and literature, differ so singularly from ours, form of 
 this book, and the religion it contains ! In what estimation 
 could he hold the patriarchs, Jesus Christ himself, and his 
 Apostles, if he should see them drinking wine, sacrificing 
 and eating sheep and oxen, when he holds in abomination 
 intoxicating drinks, and regards the slaying of a cow as an 
 unpardonable sin ; who would be less shocked to see human Jlesh 
 
 than tell you what they are. They are contained in the Bible ; and 
 if, on reading this book, your sentiments concerning Christianity differ 
 from those of your neighbors, be assured that infallibility belongs to 
 you as little as to the Church." Address of Bishop Watson to his 
 Clergy, 1795. (See Milner, Excellence of the Catholic Religion, 
 vol. i. p. 105.) What is to be thought of a religion which its most 
 learned ministers publibly declare they do not understand ? What can 
 be thought of those same ministers who have the assurance to teach 
 to the world what they do not themselves comprehend ! This is indeed 
 absurdity carried out to its fullest extent. 
 
 * As to the theological and literary merit of these translations, the 
 disinterestedness and address of those who make and distribute them, 
 and to the fruit which infidels gather from them, some instructive and 
 curious reflections and anecdotes, taken for the most part, from Protes- 
 tant Journals, are to be found in the Jlnnals of the Propagation of 
 the Faith, vol. ii. p. 1, et seq., vol. iv. p. 174; et seq., vol. v. p. 685; 
 vol. viii. p. 5S7. 
 
 VOL. II. 6
 
 62 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 eaten lhan a slice of beef,* and who would rather die than 
 kill the vermin who were devouring him! If the Bible offers 
 to the Indian these two enormities in its most sacred persons, 
 nothing more would be wanting to complete in him the ex- 
 treme contempt he feels for everything foreign. 
 
 It will be asked, what do these five thousand itinerant de- 
 puties, men as well as women, employed by the Bible societies, 
 accomplish ? They only promulgate contempt for the Gospel, 
 " and their labors, according to the confession of their most 
 judicious fellow-believers, instead of enlightening the heathen, 
 are only adapted to strengthen their prejudices against the 
 faith, if it should ever be announced to them in a more regular 
 manner." f 
 
 If the number of Christian natives, who amounted, eighty 
 years since, to more than twelve hundred thousand in the 
 peninsula of India, is now reduced to perhaps less than half 
 that number, if the honest Indian regards a suggestion to 
 embrace Christianity as a mere pleasantry, or a serious 
 insult, J it is owing to the presence of Europeans, and espe- 
 cially Protestant missionaries. 
 
 Of what avail, then, the thirty or forty millions which the 
 Bible Societies expend annually in Bibles and Colporteurs ? 
 
 * M. Dubois, Mceurs ct Instil., vol. i. p. 430. 
 
 t Words of an English Journal, quoted by M. de Maistre, Du Pape. 
 torn. ii. p. 17. 
 
 \ Mceurs et Institutions des Peitples de Vlnde, torn. i. p. 424. 
 
 The English journals announced, in 1835, that in the year 1834, 
 alone the expenses of the Bible Society had increased to between five 
 and six millions of dollars. In December, 1841, the Missionary 
 Register, showed the receipts of the year, for the three United King- 
 doms only, to amount to five millions, and the number of Bibles 
 printed, to 3,937,944. Adding the collections made in other countries, 
 Protestant or mixed, a total amount of nearly eight millions of dollars 
 would be a low estimate. " If the money which this Society expends 
 in Bibles had been given to the Pope to be devoted to Missions, it
 
 CIRCULATION OF THE BIBLE. 63 
 
 " They serve," says the Prussian and Protestant naturalist, 
 Meyen, " to enrich the hypocritical missionaries whom a 
 grasping cupidity and devouring ambition have driven to 
 these distant shores ; men, besides, so imbecile, that many of 
 them have not been able to gain a livelihood as simple work- 
 men . . . Some of these modest personages have been able 
 in two years, to amass a fortune of more than fifteen thousand 
 crowns."* 
 
 They serve, too, to enrich the Chinese artizans who have 
 discovered the secret of employing the Bibles to supply shoes 
 for their countrymen.f 
 
 They serve, too, to divert our seamen by the spectacle of 
 the islanders of Polynesia, " Sitting crouched upon the ground 
 m a chapel, under the superintendence of a minister or his 
 wife, frequently holding their Bible upside down, and endea- 
 vouring to imitate by a kind of muttering the sound of a 
 child spelling."| 
 
 We shall see elsewhere what becomes of these poor 
 islanders, whenever the Methodist missionaries, aided by the 
 power of the sabre, have imposed on them the reading of the 
 Bible. 
 
 We have made it sufficiently evident that the idea of con- 
 would have made more Christians than these Bibles have pages." 
 De Maistre, Du Pape, liv. iii. ch. 1. 
 
 * See Annales de la Propag., torn. viii. p. 11. 
 
 t See the Asiatic Journal of London, for 183G, on the subject of two 
 Bible missionaries sent to China: "After a voyage of two months and 
 ten days, they returned to Canton, well satisfied with their expedition, for 
 they had the happiness to land, in the different places which they visited, 
 20,000 Bibles. It is true, indeed, that this cargo of Bibles very soon 
 passed into the cobblers' stalls of the country, where they were con- 
 verted into thick paper suitable for Chinese slippers; it is well known 
 that this took place recently in an enterprise of the same kind." 
 Ami de la Religion, May 12th, 1S36. 
 
 f British Review, February, 1S38.
 
 64 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 verting to Christianity by the reading of the Bible, an idea 
 absurd enough when Europe is concerned, is a ridiculous 
 extravagance, when it is applied to the infidels of India or 
 Oceanica. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 WHY HAVE THERE BEEN, AND WHY ARE THERE STILL 
 
 BELIEVERS IX THE BOSOM OF PROTESTANTISM. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 A QUESTION here presents itself. If Protestantism is really 
 incompetent to make Christians, how does it happen that it 
 contains Christians in faith and practice ? 
 
 The mystery is easily explained. Those Christians are 
 Protestant in name, but Catholics in fact, destitute, however, 
 of true Catholicity. They are worthy people whose good 
 sense has done justice to the fundamental principle of the 
 reformation, and who seeing very clearly that they were 
 incompetent to create for themselves a religion, judge it 
 easier and safer to hold to the religion of their fathers, to a 
 religion expressed in confessions of faith, books of religion, 
 catechisms, and the preaching of their ministers. 
 
 They are souls of an incomparable docility, who believe 
 on the word of ministers who do not believe or do not know 
 what they ought to believe, ministers who unceremoniously 
 place themselves in the seats from which they have driven 
 the Catholic Pontiffs, and thence exercise over consciences 
 an authority no Catholic ever conceded to Bishops, Popes, 
 Councils, or even to the Apostles. 
 
 In fact, what was the power of the Apostles touching doc- 
 trine, according to Catholics ? The power of revealing, not 
 of inventing. What power do they recognise in Popes
 
 CONCLUSION. C5 
 
 Bishops and Councils ? The power of preserving, transmit- 
 ting, preaching, explaining, and defining, in case of difference, 
 the doctrine of Jesus Christ and the Apostles, but never of 
 changing or modifying it, of taking away from or adding one 
 iota to it. 
 
 On the contrary, how is it with the Reformation ? We see 
 its leaders, lights and apostles, arrogating to themselves in 
 matters of faith an authority more than divine ; pruning, cur- 
 tailing and denying what they have affirmed, affirming what 
 they have denied, sporting insolently with the Sacred Books, 
 changing confessions of faith as they would change their 
 clothes, and causing their contemporary and disciple, Dudith, 
 to say : " Our people are carried away by every wind of 
 doctrine. If you know what their religion is to-day, you 
 cannot tell what it will be to-morrow."* 
 
 Luther, after having crushed free-will, under the action of 
 Divine foreknowledge, and made of man an automaton 
 whom faith alone justifies and whose good works are so 
 many crimes ; after having taught that God works in us both 
 good and evil, that he is no less the author of the treason of 
 Judas than the conversion of St. Paul, that he condemns the 
 innocent as he crowns the unworthy ; Luther, after all that, 
 directed his disciple Melancthon to re-establish in the Augs- 
 burg confession of faith, free-will and the merit of good 
 works, and passed over in silence the cruel doctrine of pre- 
 destination to evil. Afterwards Luther retracted his retrac- 
 traction.f He retained and defended the real presence in the 
 Eucharist, notwithstanding the great desire he had to deny it 
 in order to injure the papacy ; and yet he promised a golden 
 florin to Carlstadt if he would write on the other side. He 
 
 * Letter to Beza, Inter Epist. Bezse. 
 
 t Bossuet, Histoire des Variations, etc., liv. ii. Moehler, Sym- 
 lisme, book i. ch. 3. 
 
 6*
 
 66 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 denied transubstantiation as an impiety and a blasphemy, 
 invented consubstantiation, declared both indifferent, returned 
 to his first idea, then permitted transubstantiation to some 
 churches of Italy.* Pressed by the reasoning of Satan, in 
 the famous nocturnal conference, he abolished the mass as an 
 infernal invention, then appeared disposed to re-establish it in 
 order to sport with Carlstadtf He suppressed, re-established 
 and allowed, at will, the oblation, the elevation and the adora- 
 tion in the Supper. He recognised three, then four sacra- 
 ments, and ended by retaining only two. As to the Scrip- 
 tures, he curtailed everything which troubled him, and added 
 the word which he needed, treated the Epistle of St. James 
 as an epistle of straw, the Book of Job as a fable, &c. and 
 justified the whole by saying : " I, Martin Luther, as I choose, 
 so I ordain ; since my will takes the place of reason." 
 
 History shows us in other leaders of the Reformation, and 
 their successors in the ministry of the Bible, the same licence 
 in matters of doctrine, a wonderful fertility in constantly 
 renewed professions of faith, a rare skill in deceiving each 
 other, in cunningly changing doctrines and in trafficking in 
 them, and in the attempts they made at different periods to 
 disguise their divisions and give themselves the air of unity. 
 England, subjected by the Reformation to the spiritual gov- 
 ernment of its male and female popes, in less than one hun- 
 dred and fifty years found it necessary to change her religion 
 eight times.|; 
 
 * Histoire des Variations, 76. f Ibid., livre iii. 
 
 J An English publication (The Catholic Miscellany, June, 1S20,) 
 has the ingenious idea of giving to the picture of these eight religious 
 transformations, the frame-work of the long life of the Englishman, 
 Henry Jenkins, who, born in 1501, under Henry VII. did not die till 
 1G70, under Charles II. One of the best saints of the Anglican Reform- 
 ation, Cranmer, only lived sixty-five years, and yet he had time to 
 change his religion seventeen times. (Cobbett, Letters on the 
 Reformation.)
 
 CONCLUSION. 67 
 
 Such were the men who succeeded in imposing their absurd 
 vagaries for more than two centuries on fifty millions of men ; 
 such were the authors of those symbolic books which for a 
 long time served as a rule of faith to various synods, among 
 others to that of Dort, of so disgraceful and ridiculous mem- 
 ory. It was there that, just a century after Luther deriding 
 the thunders of the Church had proclaimed the supremacy of 
 each individual in matters of failh, that the representatives 
 of the reformed Churches were seen armed with the spiritual 
 sword, invoking even the secular arm against the unhappy 
 remonstrants, to excommunicate them, and depose them with 
 a unanimous voice, and why ? because they refused to be- 
 lieve, on the word of the misanthropic reformer of Geneva, 
 that God had resolved from all eternity to make Adam sin 
 and to precipitate into hell a large majority of his descend- 
 ants ; that Jesus Christ had suffered death only for the benefit 
 of a small number of elect ; that grace was irresistible ; 
 sanctity inadmissible, and that the most abominable crimes 
 were no obstacle to the salvation of any one who was justified 
 by faith in Christ Jesus ! * 
 
 It was by this solemn abjuration of liberty of opinion, by 
 this shameless aping of the Catholic system, that Protestantism 
 could resist the influence of the germ of incredulity that it 
 bore in its bosom, and present to the unpractised eye an ap- 
 pearance of Christianity. 
 
 And since its writers and ministers, blushing at the absurd 
 doctrines of their leaders, and the humiliating servitude which 
 was imposed upon them, have thrown off the yoke of confes- 
 sions of faith, and proclaimed individualism in religion, what 
 do we see? Is the independence which these personages 
 arrogate to themselves any advantage to the lambs of their 
 flock ? What have the Protestant people gained by this 
 emancipation of their religious leaders, where habit or the 
 * See Histoire des Variations, liv. 14.
 
 68 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 laws still retain them in a sort of belief? They have gained 
 the singular advantage of believing in the doctrine of the 
 ministers, who have no longer a doctrine, and who declare 
 that they no longer wish to hear it spoken of, in any way. 
 Here are ministers notoriously incredulous, who still employ 
 the Papist weapons of vow and excommunication to retain 
 twenty thousand dupes in a religion which no longer exists.* 
 There is the Lutheran consistory of Stockholm, which, in 
 a petition to the first tribunal of the kingdom, demands the 
 application of the royal ordinances, carrying confiscation of 
 property, privation of all rigM to succession, and perpetual 
 banishment, against all Swedes who should take it upon them- 
 selves to understand the Bible, otherwise than Gustavus Vasa, 
 founder of the Swedish Church.f 
 
 If there yet remains any vestige of Christian faith in Pro- 
 testant Churches, it is in those countries where a phantom of 
 the priesthood has retained a shade of authority. There the 
 people still believe, because they hear, faith coming by hear- 
 ing.], Protestants have retained only that proportion of 
 Christianity which they have preserved from Catholicism. 
 Nowhere do they show themselves faithful to the principle of 
 the Reformation, without becoming faithless to Jesus Christ 
 
 It has now been sufficiently proved that the rule of Protes- 
 
 * The discovery of this extremely curious fact is due to the learned 
 Prelate, who, by his Recherches Historiques sur / veritable origine 
 ties Vaudois (Paris, 1836), has just added a beautiful supplement to 
 the invaluable Histoire des Variations. (See Guide du Catechumene 
 Vaudois, &c., by Mgr. Charvaz, Bishop of Pignerol; Paris, 1840; 
 Turin, 1843; torn. i. p. 42; torn. iii. p. 6S. 
 
 t Most journalists have dated this valuable document of religious 
 toleration in Sweden, Oct. 17, 1843. The criminal who was the object 
 of the persecutions of the consistory, was M. J. D. Wilson, a distin- 
 guished artist, recently converted to Catholicism. 
 
 \ Fides ex auditer. (Rom. x. 17.)
 
 CATHOLIC PRINCIPLE. 69 
 
 tant faith has no foundation in Scripture, in history, in the 
 nature of Christianity, and of the human mind, since she has 
 everything against her, even the conviction and conduct of 
 her advocates. This demonstration will receive new light 
 from what we are about to say touching the rule of Catholic 
 faith. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 CATHOLIC PRINCIPLE. ITS IMMOVEABLE FOUNDATIONS IN 
 
 THE GOSPEL. 
 
 Is the rule of Catholic faith founded on Scripture ? Does 
 the Bible prove that Jesus Christ has established pastors who 
 must preach his doctrine with a sovereign authority, through- 
 out all the world, till the end of time, and that he has pro- 
 tected them against all serious error in their teaching, by his 
 perpetual presence in the midst of them ? 
 
 In order to answer this question, it is not necessary to 
 spend much time in turning over the leaves of the Gospels. 
 Let us listen to the farewell words of the divine Master to his 
 apostles. " Go, therefore, teach ye all nations ; baptizing 
 them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the 
 Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever 
 I have commanded you : and, behold, I am with you all days, 
 even to the consummation of the world." * 
 
 These words have no need of commentary, and all that the 
 controversialists of the Reformation have invented to elude their 
 force, only proves one thing the commendable desire that 
 Jesus did not say them, or that St. Matthew did not record them.j- 
 
 * St. Matth. xxviii. 18, 19, 20. 
 
 t The plan of this work excluding discussions of any length, the 
 reader who wishes for more full Scriptural proof, in addition to that
 
 70 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 Jesus Christ had previously said to these same disciples, whom 
 he here ordered to preach and baptize, even to the consumma- 
 tion of the world : " Verily, I say to you, whatsoever ye shall 
 bind upon earth shall be bound in heaven ; and whatsoever ye 
 shall loose upon earth, shall be loosed also in heaven."* 
 
 The evening before his death, he had said to them : " I will 
 ask the Father, and he will give you another Paraclete, that 
 he may abide with you forever, The spirit of truth whom the 
 world cannot receive ; . . . The Paraclete, the Holy Ghost, 
 whom the Father will send in my name. He will teach you 
 all things, and bring all things to your mind, whatsoever I 
 have said to you. But when He, the Spirit of Truth, shall 
 come, He will teach you all the truth." f 
 
 He had said of those to whom he sent them : " He that 
 heareth you, heareth Me ; and he that despiseth you, de- 
 spiseth Me.J And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear 
 your words, going forth out of that house or city, shake off 
 the dust from your feet. Verily, I say to you : it shall be 
 less grievous for the land of Sodom and Gomorrha on the day 
 of judgment, than for that city. He that believeth not shall 
 be condemned." || 
 
 St. Paul, in the Epistle to the Ephesians, chap, iv., insists, 
 in the first place, on the necessity of preserving the unity of 
 the spirit in the bond of peace : " You are all one body and 
 one spirit, as you are called in one hope of your calling. 
 There is one Lord, one faith, and one baptism." He shows 
 them afterwards the principle and foundation of that unity in 
 
 given in this chapter and the following, and also a detailed refutation 
 of the objections of Protestantism, will find both in the works of our 
 modern controversialists, particularly in the Discourses on the Doc- 
 trines of the Catholic Church, by Dr. Wiseman, dis. iii. iv. v. viii. ; 
 and in the Guide, du Cattchumene Vaudois, torn. ii. liv. iv. entrel. 
 viii. ix. \. ; liv. v. entrel. i. ii. iii. 
 
 * Matth. xviii. 13. t John xiv. 16, 26. xiv. 13. $ Luke x. 10 
 Matth. x. 14, 15 || Mark xvi. 16.
 
 CATHOLIC PRINCIPLE. 71 
 
 the establishment which Jesus Christ has made " of apostles, 
 prophets, evangelists, pastors, and doctors, for the perfecting 
 of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of 
 the body of Jesus Christ." How long will this ministry last ? 
 " Until we all meet into the unity of faith, and of the know- 
 ledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man ;" that is to say, 
 as long as there are men to be saved. And what is accord- 
 ing to the apostle, the authority of these pastors and doctors ? 
 It is sufficient to take away all fear of error in following 
 them. " That we be no more children tossed to and fro, and 
 carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the wickedness 
 of men." * The Apostle afterwards speaks of the intimate 
 connection and hierarchical subordination of all the members 
 of the body of the Church, a subject which he often treats in 
 his epistles, particularly in his first to the Corinthians, chap, 
 xii., and he adds : " This, then, I say, and testify in the Lord, 
 that henceforward you walk not as also the Gentiles walk in 
 the vanity of their mind ? 
 
 I invite our separated brethren to meditate on these two 
 chapters, and ask themselves afterwards, with their hand upon 
 their heart : " Where is the religious society which realizes 
 the idea that St. Paul gives us of the mystical body of Jesus 
 Christ, of that Church of the living God, which he elsewhere 
 names the pillar and ground of the truth 1" \ Is it the Church 
 which Luther found existing after fifteen centuries, and whose 
 powerful organization resisted all his fury ? or is it that con- 
 fused multitude of Christians whom he excited to rebellion 
 against her, and whom he delivered up to every wind of doc- 
 trine, and to the vanity of their mind, by telling them, in op- 
 position to the express words of St. Paul : You are all apostles, 
 prophets, doctors, and interpreters of the Scriptures ? J 
 
 * Ephes. iv. 4, 5, 11, 12, 13, 14. f I- Tim. iii. 15. 
 
 \. Numquid omnes apostoli ? Numquid omnes prophetae ? Numquid 
 omnes doctores ? Numquid omnes interpretantur ? (I. Cor. xii. 29, 30.)
 
 72 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 The Bible, tlien, shows us the establishment of a body of 
 pastors teaching, even to the end of time, the divine doctrine, 
 with that infallible authority which the perpetual presence of 
 Jesus Christ and the Spirit of Truth in the midst of them 
 gives. 
 
 This would be sufficient for the Catholic. But could not 
 the Bible afford a better-defined plan of the organization of 
 his Church, and a more complete justification of the hier- 
 archical system than he there finds. 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 HARMONY OF THE CATHOLIC HIERARCHY WITH BIBLICAL 
 PRINCIPLES. 
 
 "THE supreme power in the Church," says the Council of 
 Trent ;* " the full power of supporting, ruling, and governing 
 the universal Church," says the Council of Florence, resides, 
 by divine right, in the Pontiff of Rome, who, in quality of the 
 successor of the blessed apostle Peter, is true vicar of Jesus 
 Christ, visible Head of the whole Church, common Father 
 and Doctor of all Christians." f 
 
 To aid in this immense task, the Roman Pontiff has his 
 venerable brethren in the episcopacy : they also being divinely 
 appointed to the government of particular churches,J and 
 called, according to the exigences of the case, to take part in 
 the general government of the Church, in the general coun- 
 cils; yet, in subordination to the supreme Head, to whom 
 alone it belongs to convoke them, to preside over them in 
 person or by his legates, and to confirm their decrees. 
 
 * Sess. xiv. cap. vii. f Labbe, Collect, torn, xviii. col. 526. 
 
 * Act. Ap. xx. 28.
 
 THE CATHOLIC HIERARCHY. 73 
 
 Under tiie bishops are the priests, the deacons, and other 
 ministers destined to aid them in the care of particular 
 churches. 
 
 Such is the hierarchical chain which unites the simple be- 
 liever, by the priest who directs him, to his bishop ; by the 
 bishop to the vicar of Jesus Christ; and who makes of a 
 hundred and sixty millions of Catholics, according to the 
 words of St. Paul, one body, one spirit, having one Lord, one 
 faith, one baptism. Is this chain of divine formation, and do 
 we find the links of it in Scripture ? 
 
 Whenever the Divine Savior speaks of his Church, he em- 
 ploys expressions which imply the idea of unity : it is a king- 
 dom, a city, a house, a flock and he announces expressly 
 his intention of uniting all those who believe in him, in one 
 fold, under one Shepherd.* 
 
 Among the twelve disciples whom he chose to form his 
 flock, and found his church, it is Peter whom he destined to 
 replace himself, when he returned to his Father, as visible 
 head of all the flock, and corner-stone of the mystic edifice. 
 
 God changed the name of Abraham, when, in recompense 
 of his faith, he made him head of the old covenant, the de- 
 pository of the promise of salvation, and father of numerous 
 kings and nations.^ Simon, Son of Jona, whose great faith 
 obtained for him a similar but much higher mission, under the 
 new covenant, received also from Jesus Christ a new name. 
 " Thou art Simon son of Jona ; thou shalt be called Cephas, 
 which is, being interpreted, Peter." J 
 
 The divine Master soon revealed the mysterious significa- 
 tion of this name. " Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jona : 
 because flesh and blood hath not revealed it to thee, but my 
 Father, who is in heaven. And I say to thee, that thou art 
 Peter, and on this rock I will build My Church, and the gates 
 
 * John x. 16 f Genes, xvii. 5. f John i. 42. 
 
 VOL. II. 7
 
 74 THE SOLUTION OP GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give tliee the keys 
 of the kingdom of heaven : and whatsoever thou shalt bind on 
 earth, it shall be bound also in heaven ; and whatsoever thou 
 shalt loose upon earth, it shall be loosed also in heaven."* 
 
 .Here we behold Peter chosen by the Divine Architect for 
 the foundation of that Church which must be forever victorious 
 over the attacks of hell. We see him possessed of the keys 
 of the kingdom of Heaven, the symbol of sovereign power ; 
 invested with an infallible authority, since all his sentences 
 are to receive the confirmation of Heaven. 
 
 And in order to make manifest that these magnificent pre- 
 rogatives have been granted to Peter only, for the advantage 
 of the whole Church, and for the support of his brethren in 
 the deadly war which the enemy of salvation will wage against 
 them, Jesus Christ has said elsewhere : " Simon, Simon, be- 
 hold, Satan hath sought you, to sift you as wheat : But I have 
 prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not, and thou being once 
 converted (allusion to his approaching fall), confirm thy 
 brethren." f 
 
 Jesus Christ, after his resurrection, addressing Peter, teaches 
 us how he will realize the idea of onejlock and one shepherd, 
 when, being in the midst of his sheep only invisibly, he can 
 no longer be their rallying point on earth. " Simon, son of 
 John, lovest thou me more than these ? " pointing to the other 
 disciples. " Yea, Lord, thou knowest that I love thee." 
 " Feed my lambs." Jesus Christ twice repeats the question, 
 and to the order twice given to feed the lambs, he adds 
 another, to feed the sheep; that is. the whole flock. J 
 
 To invalidate the proof which results from the passages 
 above cited, in favor of the Papal supremacy, Protestant 
 writers attempt to prove, either that Jesus Christ has granted 
 nothing more to Peter than to his colleagues in the Apostle- 
 
 * Malth. xvi. 17, 18, 19. t Luke xxii. .'11, 38. 
 
 J John xxi 15, 1(5, 1?.
 
 THE CATHOLIC HIERARCHY. 75 
 
 ship, or that the prerogatives bestowed were personal, and 
 must terminate with this Apostle. I shall only make two ob- 
 servations on this subject. 
 
 I. The gift which Jesus Christ granted to all the Apostles, 
 collectively, of the power to loose and bind (Matt, xviii. 18), 
 cannot annul the prerogative granted individually to Peter; 
 and both are perfectly reconcileable in the minds of Catho- 
 lics, who know that Bishops have been placed by the Holy 
 Ghost, to rule the Church of God ;* yet, in union with Peter, 
 who was divinely commissioned to guide them also, and alone 
 invested with the sovereign power represented by the keys. 
 
 II. To say that the prerogatives granted to Peter must end 
 with him, is to say that this Church, to which Jesus Christ 
 has promised eternal stability upon the rock where he has 
 built it, must lose its foundation under Nero, and that, from 
 hence deprived of him who was its strength, and who held 
 the keys of it, it must become a ruined habitation, open to 
 every passer-by ; that is to say, that the pastors who suc- 
 ceeded the Apostles, without inheriting individually their doc- 
 trinal infallibility, would have less need than they of being 
 strengthened in the faith by the presence and the voice of a 
 chief who was inaccessible to error ; in a word, it is to say, 
 that, St. Peter once dead, the lambs of Christ, hitherto united 
 in one flock, must be divided into as many flocks as there 
 were Bishops, &c., &c. 
 
 I shall not undertake to demonstrate the succession of the 
 Bishops of Rome to the spiritual supremacy, by the fact of 
 the establishment of the See of St. Peter, at Rome, and of his 
 death in that city. " The monuments still existing in this 
 city," said a learned controversialist, "and the testimony of 
 the writers of the first centuries, place this fact beyond the 
 reach of doubt. Is it not sufficient to say that the authors, 
 at the same time the most to be relied on for their erudition, 
 
 t Act Ap. xx. 23.
 
 76 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 and the most decided in their opposition to the Roman 
 Church, have recognized this fact, and have maintained the 
 authenticity of it?* Among the moderns, no ecclesiastical 
 writer of any value has contested this evidence.f 
 
 To find in the Bible the existence of the two las* links of 
 
 * To Cave, Pearson, Usher, Young, and Blonde], quoted in a note 
 by Dr. Wiseman, may be added Hammond, Grotius, Joseph Scaliger, 
 Kipping, Bebel, Leclerc, Basnage, Isaac Newton, Dumoulin, Leibnitz, 
 Casaubon, the Lutheran ecclesiastical historians of Magdeburg, &c. 
 Has not Calvin himself, who at first dened the fact, said : Propter scrip- 
 torum consensum, non pugno quin illic (Romce) mortuus fuerit. (Instit. 
 lib. iv. cap. vi. 15.) 
 
 t Wiseman, Discourses upon the Doctrines and Practices of the 
 Catholic Church, Disc. viii. Among the moderns without value who 
 have denied this fact, I may be permitted to cite M. Bost, minister of 
 the Holy Gospel, and author of the work entitled, Du Pouvoir de Saint 
 Pierre dans I'Eglise, Geneve, 1833, reproduced with an ample addition 
 of absurdities and violent outrages, under this title: Jlppel a fa Con- 
 science de tous les Catholiques Remains, particulierement addresse" 
 au Pape, Geneve, 1S40. To M. Bost I will add Dr. Malan, jiasteur de 
 I'Eg/ise du Temoignage, au Pre Beni, a Geneve, and author of the 
 pamphlets : Pourrais-je entrer jamais dans I'Eglise Remain?, aussi 
 longtemps que je croirai toute la Bible 1 Les droits divins du Pro- 
 testantisme, &c. Le Pretre et le Ministre, &c. The last among the 
 above-mentioned tracts, and innumerable others, which have given him 
 the reputation of an Origen among the five hundred lambs of the Pre 
 Beni, informs us that, among us, Catholics, The Pope is the Lord 
 God, the Lord and Creator of all things, the very great and good 
 God, the sovereign God, who should be adored by all people, that we 
 grant him the same authority as the Eternal over the crowns and 
 lives of kings, that we reward whoever kills by poison or the stvord, 
 a prince whom the Pope does not recognize, &.C., &c. (Droit divins 
 du Protest, p. 21, 22,31.) He informs us, also, which is no less curious, 
 that the Protestant Church numbered, in 1529, 5,500 years' duration ; 
 for he proves that God became a Protestant, when, in Eden, he rose 
 against Satan, who was evidently the first of the Popes. (Ibid. 36, 
 37, 50.) 
 
 When men, insensible to public contempt and the triumphant justice 
 which most of their fellow-religionists have done to the historical
 
 HISTORICAL FOUNDATIONS OF CATHOLICISM. 77 
 
 the hierarchical and catholic chain, we need only quote the 
 words of St. Paul to Timothy : Let the priests that rule well 
 be esteemed worthy of double honor;* the order which he 
 gives to Titus to establish priests in the cities, as he had 
 already directed him ; f the institution of deacons,| and what 
 the above named apostle says of their functions, and the 
 qualities which they demand. 
 
 Let us cast a glance over Christian history, and see if it 
 confirms the Biblical statements concerning the institution of 
 a body of pastors, divinely assisted in the teaching of the 
 doctrine and government of the Church. 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 EXAGGERATED CONTEMPT OF THE REFORMERS FOR TRADI- 
 TION. FAITHLESSNESS OF THEIR HISTORIANS. HIS- 
 TORICAL FOUNDATIONS OF CATHOLICISM. 
 
 IF it were not a matter of historical notoriety that science 
 and reason had no part in the establishment of Protestantism, 
 and that the real foundation of the Reformation was, as the 
 falsehoods and atrocious calumnies heaped up by the first reformers 
 against the catholic Church and the Popes, do not fear to descend into 
 the mire of the sixteenth century, to arm themselves there at all points, 
 I shall take care not to follow them into this region. It would be 
 doing an injury to the elevated minds and good hearts, of which Pro- 
 testantism still contains many, to give any importance to the buzzing 
 of the insects of a sect. The public, too, a more or less attentive 
 spectator of religious conflicts, claims our consideration. However 
 much it may be interested when it sees us opposed to loyal antagonists, 
 its delicacy is wounded when it sees us fighting against vermin ; and 
 the most complete victory over these animalculas will not prevent it 
 from telling you that such operations should be performed silently and 
 in retirement. 
 
 * Tim. v. 17. t Tit. i. 5. J Acts. Ap. vi. I. Tiin. iii. 8. 
 7*
 
 7S THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 Protestant Hume observes, the desire to steal the plate and 
 ornaments of the altars* it would be impossible to comprehend 
 the great and complete rupture that was effected by it with 
 the past. 
 
 To assume as a principle, as was then done, that the won- 
 derful structure of Christianity, reared by the Son of God 
 himself, after four thousand years of preparation, had been 
 crushed instantaneously under the assaults of hell, notwith- 
 standing the promises of the Divine Architect ; that, in order 
 to restore the Divine work, all that forty generations of 
 Christians had hitherto believed and practised must be counted 
 as nothing, and that a poor woman furnished with a Bible 
 could accomplish more towards it than all the Bishops and 
 doctors in the world, was without doubt an impiety supremely 
 extravagant. It is easy to imagine that in the insanity of 
 pride it should have presented itself to the mind of a Luther 
 and of a Calvin, whose unheard of doctrines boldly assailed 
 the faith of their cotemporaries and of all antiquity ; but that 
 from their mouth this absurdity should have passed into the 
 brain of fifty millions of men could not be explained except 
 by the favor of princes, who were proud to subject to their 
 power the domain of conscience, and increase their treasures 
 by the spoils of the sanctuary, by the attraction offered to 
 all the bad passions in the right granted to every one to 
 construct for himself a religion, after his own fashion. 
 
 * History of England, ch. xl. an. 15GS. We may add, still follow- 
 ing the history, the desire to give wives to princes who were disgusted 
 with those that were legitimate (Henry VIII.) or who found that one 
 was not sufficient, (Philip of Hesse,) and to priests and monks who were 
 weary of celibacy, (Luther, (Ecolampadius, Bucer, Zwingle, Carlstadt, 
 Ochin, Cranmer, &c.) Frederick the Great has still better said : " If 
 the causes of the progress of the Reformation were reduced to simple 
 principles, it would be seen that in Germany it was the work of inter- 
 est; in England, that^pf love; and in France, that of novelty." 
 (Mtmoires de Brandebourg.)
 
 HISTORICAL FOUNDATIONS OF CATHOLICISM. 79 
 
 Follies, however, convenient and lucrative they may be, 
 have their season. The burning fever which Luther had 
 communicated to a part of Europe, once calmed, all reflect- 
 ing minds, who still esteemed religion a serious thing, were 
 not slow to return from this insane contempt for Christian 
 traditions. It became evident that it was necessary to rank 
 Christianity among chimeras, or acknowledge that Christ and 
 his Apostles had left on the earth a Christian society animated 
 by their spirit and realising in its doctrine, discipline and con- 
 stitution, the ideal of Christianity. It was plain, that for a 
 right understanding of the Scriptures, it was better to listen 
 to the Church of the Martyrs and of the Holy Fathers, than 
 to the shoemakers, weavers, and blacksmiths whom the 
 Reformation had transformed into interpreters. 
 
 The controversy could not be transferred to this ground, 
 without an immense advantage to Catholicism. Antiquity 
 showed it coming forth from the hands of the Apostles with 
 its sacerdotal hierarchy, its dogmas, its practices and all its 
 pretended abominations which had served as a pretext for the 
 Reformation.* Hence among the Protestants most eminent 
 in learning, such as Grotius, Leibnitz, &c., that homage 
 offered to Pontifical supremacy, that regret for the fatal rup- 
 ture made by the Reformers, and that tendency towards 
 a reconciliation.! Hence those conversions, continually 
 
 * The celebrated English Bishop, Thomas Newton, avows with sim- 
 plicity, that the germs of Papacy were sowed in the times of the 
 Jlpostles. (See De Maistre, Du Pape, torn. ii. p. 262.) The deist, 
 Gibbon, also acknowledges, " that a well informed man could not 
 resist the weight of historical evidence which establishes that through- 
 out the first four ages of the Church, the principal points of Papal 
 doctrine were already admitted in theory and practice." (Memoires, 
 vol. i. ch. 1.) 
 
 t It would be easy to add a host of other illustrious names to those 
 of Grotius and Leibnitz. (See Earruel, Du Pape. Eslinger, Apology 
 for the Catholic Religion by Protestant Jlttthors.)
 
 80 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 becoming more numerous, which rapidly thinned the higher 
 ranks of protestantism. 
 
 Protestant ecclesiastical historians, as Basnage and Mosh- 
 eim, have not failed to make great efforts to disprove antiquity 
 and forcibly impose upon the Church of the first ages the 
 democratic regime which they found in their sects. Even in 
 our day a celebrated Protestant professor of history has been 
 bold enough to write, with rare contempt of historical evi- 
 dence, that " in the early times, Christian society appears as 
 a pure association of common faith and sentiments. No sys- 
 tem of prescribed doctrine is found iu it, no collection of 
 rules or discipline, no body of magistrates .... It is not 
 until later that magistrates appeared, who were called some 
 elders, who have become priests ; others, inspectors, who 
 have become bishops ; others, deacons.* 
 
 * M. Guizot, Cours cTHistoire Moderne, 182S, 2e lec,on, pag. 23, 20. 
 &c. It is probable that the celebrated professor did not know, in 1828, 
 of the existence of the New Testament; for with his well known 
 acute perspicuity he would have understood that there was a monu- 
 ment to be consulted concerning the primitive organisation of Christian 
 society, and he would certainly have seen that in the early ages, quite, 
 in the early ages, there were Bishops established by the Holy Spirit 
 to govern the Church, and priests established by the dpost/es to pre- 
 side, and deacons added by them to the priests and bishops. He would 
 have seen by all that the Apostles (in particular St. Paul, in his let- 
 ters to Timothy and Titus) say to the Bishops and the faithful con- 
 cerning their reciprocal relations that the relation of the first, with 
 regard to the second, was as independent and imperative as it has been 
 since. Joining to these data those which he would easily have found 
 in the ecclesiastical writers of the earliest times, such as St. Clement, 
 Pope, St. Ignatius and St. Polycarp in their letters, and Hermas in the 
 book of The Shepherd, &c. &c., M. Guizot could have formed a just idea 
 of the primitive constitution of the Church, and he would have spared 
 himself the absurd fable of that Church passing from the state of pure 
 association to the state of Presbyterian democracy, from this demo- 
 cracy to Episcopal aristocracy, and from this to Pontifical monarchy, 
 a fable eagerly received by the Matters, Michelets and other collegiate
 
 HISTORICAL FOUNDATIONS OF CATHOLICISM. 81 
 
 Happily, history is less flexible than the Bible in the hands 
 of those who are interested to corrupt it. It would be easier 
 to demolish the Alps than to efface from the annals of Chris- 
 tianity the profound traces which the Catholic hierarchy in 
 every age has left there. Two English writers, celebrated 
 for their antiquarian knowledge, Beveridge and Pearson, 
 have joined the Catholic writers in destroying the fabrica- 
 tions of Basnage and Mosheim, and bringing to light the 
 episcopal omnipotence of the ecclesiastical government in 
 the time of the Apostles. 
 
 If at this remote epoch, the line of demarcation between 
 the governors and governed is less prominent, if the union 
 of the faithful to the pastors is closer, the reason lies evi- 
 dently in the state of warfare which obliged the ranks to 
 press closely without mingling, and in the fervor of the faith- 
 ful and their application to divine things, which rendered 
 them more worthy of being heard in religious matters and 
 less subject to be absorbed by authority ; for the latter only 
 appears and raises its voice when the subject becomes 
 headstrong and bewildered. 
 
 This last consideration has been developed by a skilful 
 controversialist, who makes it very clearly seen, "that Bishops 
 have not been elevated, but that the people have sunk ; so 
 
 fabricators of history. But the following is the method of these gen- 
 tlemen : upon the authority of their true grand-master Voltaire, they 
 all start from this principle, that the Church is the work of priestly 
 ambition, and setting aside historical monuments, which is a great 
 abridgment of labor, they explain as best they can, the formation of 
 this work of darkness. Innocent youth whom monopoly enchains around 
 their chairs, receives with applause these conscientious historical sum- 
 maries, and the University Press reproduces by thousands the summa- 
 ries with the applauses. (See Guizot, 6e legon, p. 23.) Thus the 
 world is filled and steeped in follies and falsehoods. (Montaigne, 
 Essais, 11, 12.) 
 

 
 82 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 that the former must necessarily appear more powerful and 
 at a higher elevation than before.* 
 
 The pacific and undisputed manifestation of Pontifical and 
 Episcopal authority at the commencement of the fourth cen- 
 tury, when the state of the Church and the aggressions of 
 great heresies rendered it possible and necessary, evidently 
 shows that the divine institution of the authority of both was 
 a universally recognised fact. If there had been the least 
 doubt on this subject, the priest, Arius, and his numerous par- 
 tisans, instead of agitating the world for more than a century, 
 in order to gain to their party the Pontiff of Rome and his 
 brethren in the episcopacy, would not have failed to reproach 
 the latter with their recent origin and the unjust domination 
 which they had arrogated to themselves in the Church. 
 
 But why insist more on a fact fully established by Catholic 
 controversialists, and acknowledged by the majority of 
 Protestant writers ? f 
 
 Having examined the immoveable foundations of the Catho- 
 lic principle in evangelical and Christian history, let us exa 
 mine its intimate relation to the general plan of Providence 
 in the government of the world, the nature of religious truth, 
 
 and the wants of man. 
 
 * 
 
 * Moehler, Unity of the Church, or the Catholic principle accord- 
 ing to the writings of the Fathers of the first three centuries, Tubin- 
 gen, 1825, book ii. ch. 1. 
 
 f See VEglise Romaine reconnue. toujours des Luthiriens et des 
 pretendus reformts pour vraie Eglise de Jisus Christ, par le P. 
 Bernard Meynier.
 
 HARMONY OF THE CATHOLIC PRINCIPLE. 83 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 HARMONY OF THE CATHOLIC PRINCIPLE WITH THE GEN- 
 ERAL 8YSTE3I OF THE DIVINE GOVERNMENT. 
 
 Is it really credible, it is asked, that God, purposing to give 
 a religion to the world, has entrusted it to a few men, and 
 conferred on them the enormous privilege of infallibility, and 
 obliged the human race to receive from their mouth the 
 Divine gift of truth ? Would it not have been more worthy 
 of the common Father of men to communicate himself to all 
 his children, and to enable every one, in a matter so important, 
 to depend upon himself? 
 
 We will not notice the impropriety of thus boldly summon- 
 ing God to an account, and the inconsistency into which these 
 inquirers fall, when they propose to substitute innumerable 
 individual revelations for one single revelation which they find 
 it so difficult to believe, and when they are ready to recognise 
 in every one the enormous prerogative of infallibility. It is 
 that pride which ever says : " My God, I will obey ; but before 
 commanding, take my orders." 
 
 God, indeed, had the right to make religion a purely indi- 
 vidual and direct relation between himself and man ; but this 
 would have really been an anomaly in his government. We 
 need only open our eyes to see that the intervention of man 
 between man and God everywhere takes place in the natural 
 order. The most precious blessings are transmitted to us 
 from heaven only through human hands. 
 
 Existence is the first of blessings. The power to give it, 
 to draw a being from nothing, is, it would seem, a thing evi- 
 dently divine and incommunicable. Yet this tremendous 
 power God liberally communicates as we see. He has de- 
 creed that all men except the first, should acknowledge them- 
 selves indebted to their fellow men for life.
 
 84 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 God requires that we should ask of him every day our daily 
 bread, and the numerous necessaries of life ; but it is through 
 the intervention of man that he grants our prayer. 
 
 It is God who governs society, and causes order, justice, 
 and peace, to prevail in it ; but, even here he avails himself 
 of the interposition of man, and the sovereign justly claims a 
 part of the gratitude with which these favors inspire us. 
 
 It is God who dispenses talents and knowledge; but the 
 preceptor comes and pre-establishes his right of culture, and 
 there is no genius who must not submit himself to instruction, 
 and acknowledge himself the disciple of man. 
 
 If God accomplishes so many and so great things by man, 
 in the natural order, why should he not do the same in the 
 religious order, which is also natural ? 
 
 The aim of Divine Providence, in establishing among men 
 a hierarchical dependence, is evidently to bind them to each 
 other, by the chain of gratitude and love, and thus to prepare 
 them for the eternal tie which must unite them one day in the 
 bosom of the heavenly Father. 
 
 Would a 'purely individual religion attain this end? or, 
 rather, would it not be directly opposed to it, since its inevi- 
 table effect would be the isolation of minds and hearts ? The 
 religious tie, which can alone reach what is deepest and most 
 active in us thought and sentiment, was then much more 
 necessary for the realization of the divine plan than the tie of 
 flesh and blood and social interest The latter, when it exists 
 alone, can only form among men materials and ephemeral 
 aggregations, differing little from those which exist among 
 animals. Religion, by harmonizing the interest and will, 
 forms one single human, that is to say, moral society. 
 
 I would recommend this point of view to men of reflection ; 
 and, if I do not mistake, the two following truths shining forth 
 in all the clearness of evidence. 
 
 I. Religion, being essentially social, needs, as every society
 
 HARMONY OF THE CATHOLIC PRINCIPLE. 85 
 
 a hierarchy of powers destined to maintain and propagate it ; 
 and religion cannot be a divine institution, if this hierarchy is 
 not equally so, for God does nothing by halves. What man, 
 then, could of himself command the thought of man ? * 
 
 II. The Protestant principle, by making of religion a pri- 
 vate affair between God and the individual, falsifies the divine 
 system, introduces materialism into society, and takes from it 
 its moral character. 
 
 If, leaving the material and political order, we cast our eye 
 on the religious order in ancient times, we see primitive 
 Christianity emerging from Eden, and advancing through the 
 ages supported upon the Catholic principle of authority and 
 tradition. 
 
 It is through the intervention of some holy patriarchs, alone 
 honored with his communications, that God instructed the peo- 
 ple, and he referred them constantly to the teaching of their 
 
 * The celebrated professor of history whom we have quoted above, 
 has very clearly seen the commencement of this truth ; and in a lecture 
 in which he refutes, without naming him, one of his fellow-religionists, 
 M. Benjamin Constant, De la Religion consideree, &c.), he demon- 
 strates that the religious sentiment is. not the complete expression of 
 the religious nature of man, . . . that the religious society inevi- 
 tably springs from the essential elements of religion, . . . that the. 
 necessity of authority, of a government is implied in the fact of the 
 existence of this society, &c. (See M. Guizot, Cours d'Histoire 
 Moderne, leon 5th. It may be asked, why, after having seen this, 
 M. Guizot has not perceived the logically inevitable consequence of 
 his principle : that all power necessary to the existence of a true and 
 divine religion, is essentially divine and infallible ; for, if it were not 
 so, what would it be ? It would be the power (legitimate, since it is 
 necessary) to lead men into error, with the obligation on their part 
 (all legitimate power compels) to allow themselves to be deceived con- 
 cerning the important subject of their eternal destiny. This was 
 too striking to escape so practised an eye; but . . . How many con- 
 troversies would end, said Fenelon, if every one was compelled to say 
 wh:U he thinks ! 
 
 VOL. II. 8
 
 86 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 fathers.* It is to two or three he entrusts his word, the spi- 
 ritual food of a thousand generations.^ 
 
 If ever a law existed, in connection with which writing 
 played an important part, it was the law of Moses, whose 
 least prescriptions were faithfully registered, and were, ac- 
 cording to the command of the Lord, to be read every seven 
 years in a general assembly of the people.J If there was 
 ever a society which God governed immediately, and ren- 
 dered himself present to each individual, it was the Jewish 
 society. Yet, between the ark, which is his throne, and the 
 people, he placed the tribe of Levi, alone charged with ex- 
 plaining and directing the execution of the written ceremonial 
 law, and of transmitting with it the additional dogmas of 
 which the written law was only the envelope.^ 
 
 In difficult questions of a high order, whose decision tran- 
 scended the power of the sacerdotal class, the Prophet, the 
 Seer interposed, and his word, equally respected by the Pon- 
 tiff and the people, removed doubt and preserved unity.|| 
 
 The perfect harmony, then, between the Catholic principle 
 and the general system of the Creator in the material and 
 moral administration of the world, is manifest. As to the 
 objections of pride against the exorbitant prerogative of in- 
 fallibility, we shall answer them when we examine the Catho- 
 lic principles and its opposite, in their connection with human 
 dignity. 
 
 * Deuter. xxxii. 7. 
 
 f Verbi quod mandavit in mille generationes. (Ps. civ. 8.) 
 J Deuter. xxxi. 10, 11, 12. 
 
 On the existence of oral instruction and religious tradition among 
 the Jews. See Wiseman, Confer, iii. 
 || I. Machab. iv. 46. ix. 25. xiv. 43.
 
 WEAKNESS OF THE INTELLECT. 87 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 MYSTERIOUS CHARACTER OF TRUTH. WEAKNESS OF THE IN- 
 TELLECT. NECESSITY FOR AN INFALLIBLE AUTHORITY. 
 
 TRUTH must be strangely dazzling and of a very deceitful 
 aspect, since every man natters himself that he sees it, and 
 yet all see it differently. 
 
 Consult the seers of philosophy, not upon questions of a 
 higher order, but on the elements of philosophy : ask them, 
 for instance, what is truth, that wisdom whose heralds they 
 assume to be ; what are the true characteristics of its divine 
 physiognomy, how can it be discriminated from its unseemly 
 rival, error ; they will all begin to discourse, in emulation of 
 each other, and contradicting each other ; and you will have 
 reason to conclude that none of these personages has ever 
 received the slightest glimpse of the beautiful unknown. 
 
 If only one question of this kind is needed to confound the 
 most powerful intellects, how could these same intellects 
 grasp and master religious questions ! Powerless to define 
 the simplest philosophic truth, would they be less incapable 
 of embracing all divine truths ! What can we think, then, of 
 those who attribute to man, and even to all men, the power 
 of judging in religious matters! "They are madmen," said 
 a man of genius, " whose folly resembles that of a child 
 who strives to touch the heavens with his hand, or asks for 
 the moon as a toy."* 
 
 I shall be told that it is not demanded to draw from heaven 
 truths buried in the secrecy of the Divine thought but to dis- 
 cover in the Bible truths already revealed and brought to 
 light; that there is a great difference between inventing a 
 
 * Words of Napoleon in a conversation with Gen. Bertrand upon 
 the divinity of Jesus.
 
 88 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 religious system, and finding in a book that system already 
 complete ; that in this last consists the task of the Protestant. 
 
 Let us imagine, contrary to what we have already seen, 
 that the Bible positively contains all divine doctrines; in 
 what condition do wo find them ? Which of the thirteen 
 hundred chapters of the Bible presents a complete system of 
 religion ? What chapter announces in terms as clear and 
 intelligible as our catechisms all things to be believed and 
 practised ? This chapter does not exist. 
 
 Doctrinal and moral truths are scattered and lie in confu- 
 sion in the vast depths of the Sacred Books, as fishes and 
 shells in the unfathomable caves of the ocean. We see them 
 both appear and glitter on the surface ; but who can discover 
 their innumerable relations to each other in the abyss, and the 
 immensely graduated series of which they are only imper- 
 ceptible fractions? 
 
 Naturalists will have given us a complete Ichthyology, 
 before the interpreter of the Bible, abandoned to his own 
 powers, will be able to give us a dogmatic and moral theo- 
 logy, in which there is nothing excessive, and nothing wanting. 
 
 Every man who attempts to penetrate into the labyrinth 
 of Scripture, without holding in his hand the thread of autho- 
 rity, will inevitably fall into heresy, that is, he will elevate a 
 truth into a general axiom, will place the accessory before 
 the principal, will change a counsel into a precept, and by 
 this displacement alone, will transform the most admirable 
 evangelical maxims into as many detestable errors. 
 
 We give up our understanding to the first idea that takes 
 possession of it, and whatever refuses to follow in the train 
 of this favorite is for us as if it were not. Do we not see 
 this in heretics, those miserable half blind beings exclusively 
 pre-occupied with one Biblical text and making absurd efforts 
 to empty the ocean into a cockle shell ? 
 
 It may be objected that it is not necessary to define religion
 
 WEAKNESS OF THE INTELLECT. SO 
 
 so precisely, that faith does not subtilise, but believes and 
 adores, &c. Faith believes and adores! but in order not to 
 believe blindly, it would seem needful to discern, in some 
 manner, the object of belief; to adore without idolatry, we 
 must know whether what we adore is God or the work of 
 the imagination. 
 
 It is not necessary to define religion so exactly! It is reli- 
 gion, more than all things which must be defined, about which 
 we must have just, fixed and precise ideas ; for here volun- 
 tary ignorance is criminal, error may be dangerous, and doubt 
 is sinful. Without definitions, how is the restless activity of 
 the human mind to be checked which finds vagueness insup- 
 portable, and which, if it cannot repose in the bosom of 
 truth, falls soon from lassitude into the arms of skepticism. 
 
 You who have destroyed the power of defining, by bestow- 
 ing it on every one, cast your eye around you ; what do you 
 discover in your Churches without a head ? here the yawning 
 of stupid indifference, there the restlessness of men who are 
 always seeking and never finding,* elsewhere the transports 
 of blind fanaticism, no where the noble and peaceful attitude 
 of the Christian who believes, adores, loves, hopes and defies 
 the waves of doubt sustained by the immoveable anchor of 
 faith. 
 
 To conclude. If the Bible is not destined to. lead the 
 world through interminable religious discussions into a de- 
 cided contempt for all religion ; if, on the contrary it is a 
 divine code which is to elevate the mind and heart to the 
 height of creative thought, and teach us how to move on 
 according to the plan of the eternal legislator, nothing evi- 
 dently is more necessary than an interpreter to organise the 
 chaos of these laws, point out to us their essential elements, 
 and relieve us from all fear of error in the application of them 
 to our thoughts and actions. 
 
 * II. Tim. iii. 7. 
 8*
 
 90 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 But who is this interpreter. Where is the individual or 
 collective being humanly capable of lifting the thick veil from 
 the Scriptures, and compressing the Divine thought strongly 
 enough to extract the essence of it without perverting it, and 
 pour the substance of it into the narrowest brain ? This is 
 evidently a superhuman task. 
 
 Whoever admits that the Scripture is the work of the 
 Spirit of God, must also admit that the Spirit of God alone 
 can secure the right understanding of it, and to be consistent 
 he must choose between these two systems : either to grant 
 to every individual the gift of inspiration, like the Quakers, 
 Swedenborgians and Methodists, and of course deify all the 
 extravagances which can enter the human head ; or recog- 
 nise, with Catholics, the existence of a divinely assisted public 
 magistrate who has the right to preface his decrees with : It 
 hath seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us.* 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 ABSURD TASK WHICH PROTESTANTISM IMPOSES OX YOUTH. 
 
 DISAVOWAL OF ITS THEORY IN PRACTICE, AND THE 
 
 HOMAGE WHICH IT RENDERS TO THE 
 
 CATHOLIC PRINCIPLE. 
 
 IF there is anything necessary for man on his entrance 
 into the world, it is doubtless to find the world already com- 
 plete and moving towards its end with more or less success. 
 The newly born, would, indeed, be worthy of compassion, 
 if falling into a society in ashes, he should be obliged to seek 
 for himself a nurse, connect this nurse with a family, unite 
 this family to society, and give this society an organisation. 
 
 * Act. Ap. xv. 28.
 
 INFLUENCE OF PROTESTANTISM ON YOT7TH. 91 
 
 Very fortunately this case is unheard of. Man is born into 
 the bosom of a family, of a society, and finds himself in 
 relations previously established with his kind. He accepts 
 without difficulty the existing order, and if he is led away 
 by a desire to change it, it is only later, when the passions 
 become clamorous under the restraint of duty. 
 
 But man is also a religious being : if he has necessary 
 relations with his fellow men, he has no less essential ones 
 with the Creator to whom he will one day be accountable 
 for all the actions of his life. Who will teach him all these 
 relations and instruct him how to maintain them ? Would 
 the same Providence which spares the child the pain of form- 
 ing for himself a family and a society, impose on him the 
 heavy task of constructing for himself a religion ? 
 
 Could this chaos which we have imagined in the civil order, 
 exist in the religious order ; and should every dunce arrived 
 at the age of reason be obliged to arrange it and by a crea- 
 tive fiat, extort from it a religious system for his own use, 
 under pain of living and dying an atheist ! Without doubt, 
 if the principle of Protestants is adopted that there is no 
 divinely organised religious community and that in religion 
 every one must be his own father. 
 
 According to this hypothesis, every youth who has not yet 
 attained to sufficient necessary maturity of thought and extent 
 of Biblical knowledge to found a religion is, according to 
 reason, freed from all religious belief and moral rule ; he can 
 be an idolater, deist, materialist, skeptic, atheist, everything 
 except a Christian. 
 
 It may be said : The child should follow the religion of the 
 father, until he is convinced that it is false. Upon what 
 could this obligation be founded, I would ask, and how could 
 it be reconciled with the principle of the Reformation? If 
 it is acknowledged that there is a religion obligatory before 
 all examination, either it must be acknowledged that a legi-
 
 92 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 timate religious society exists, that is, a divine soeiety, to 
 which we are subjected by baptism, as \ve are subjected by 
 the fact of birth to civil society, as is taught by Catholicism ; 
 or confess that God orders the child to adopt a false religion, 
 which would be obviously absurd. 
 
 The child must follow the religion of the father! but, will 
 the loyal Protestant impose on his child his own religion, 
 allowing that he has one, with that absolute authority of the 
 Catholic father, who, teaching nothing but the doctrines of 
 the universal Church, can speak with the assurance of a pope 
 or a council ? If he does so, he deceives his child ; and the 
 latter, once enlightened, will see in the religion of his child- 
 hood only an unworthy artifice, and in his father only an 
 impostor. 
 
 Does the father, on the contrary, admonish the child of the 
 serious obligation which he is under to read the Bible, and 
 construct for himself a religion ? He can say to him nothing 
 more than this : " My child, you must have a religion, if you 
 would not sink beneath the brute: that religion God has 
 vouchsafed to give us, it is here (showing him the Bible). 
 He directs you to find it there ; but, while you are making 
 the necessary investigations in order to know what to deter- 
 mine on concerning your duties towards God, your parents, 
 your fellow-men, and yourself, I give you a summary of the 
 divine ordinances, such as I believe them to be : Thou shalt 
 worship one God, &c. 
 
 " I exhort you, my child, to follow these rules of conduct, 
 which you will afterwards find, I trust, entirely conformable to 
 the divine word and to the light of reason. If I have deceived 
 myself as to the nature of your obligations as a Christian, 
 which is possible, as every man is subject to ignorance, I do 
 not believe that you will have to answer for such an error 
 before God or men." 
 
 What father would be willing to use such language! A
 
 INFLUENCE OF PROTESTANTISM ON YOUTH. 93 
 
 singular religion, which a father must conceal from his chil- 
 dren under pain of abandoning them unrestrainedly to the 
 corruption of their desires. 
 
 Let us imagine the child docile enough, meanwhile, to 
 adopt the religious creed of the father. The time will come 
 for transforming these prejudices into personal convictions, or 
 rejecting them as the remains of papacy. At what epoch 
 will this formidable task be undertaken ? Probably between 
 the age of fifteen and twenty ; for the interim must heartily 
 oppress a youth who comprehends the extreme importance of 
 the religious question, and who feels how weak is a hypo- 
 thetical opinion against the most violent assaults of the 
 passions. 
 
 It is, then, in the most turbulent season of life that this in- 
 finitely complex and far-reaching question must be solved ; the 
 examination of which demands serenity of soul, and the ab- 
 solute silence of the passions ! It is at an age when no legis- 
 lation recognises in man the necessary capacity for the ad- 
 ministration of a family, much less for public affairs ; it is at 
 this age, I repeat, that he must comprehend, with perfect 
 exactness, the innumerable and mysterious relations which 
 connect man with his Creator and with his fellow-men, and, 
 in one word, construct for himself a religion. 
 
 The color rises, and one can hardly control his feelings, in 
 view of such frightful absurdities. 
 
 It must however, be confessed, that men are better than 
 their systems. If there were found, in the 16th century, two 
 beings insane and perverse enough to advance a principle _ 
 destructive of all religion, all morality, all social order, history 
 obliges us to acknowledge, that these same men availed 
 themselves of all human power, including the executive, to 
 prevent the immediate consequences of their principles, and 
 to bring under their rod the people, whom they had released 
 from the divine control of the Church. Experience shows us
 
 94 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 the unfortunate victims of the Reformation practically ab- 
 juring the fundamental principle of it. Every Protestant 
 father becomes a Catholic in the religious instruction he gives 
 his family. Every minister is the pope among his flock. 
 Every uncorruptecl child trusts, with Catholic docility, to the 
 words of his father and the minister. 
 
 Protestants, then, receive the fact, while Catholics acknow- 
 ledge the fact and the principle of the absolute necessity that 
 man, on his entrance into life, should find an established re- 
 ligion, and that he never should be under the necessity of 
 reconstructing it. Both, consequently, demand the existence 
 of the Catholic Church ; for she alone can say to the child, 
 to the youth, to the man, and to the aged : Believe with con- 
 fidence my instructions; it is evident that I cannot deceive 
 you unless God deceives you. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 OBJECTION. HOW THE CATHOLIC BELIEVES IX THE CHURCH. 
 
 THE existence of an infallible and divinely supported 
 Church is a fact so notorious and so palpable, that it may 
 reasonably be admitted before any examination. Can this 
 fact have any other testimony than the word of Jesus Christ 
 recorded in Scripture, and is it not upon this word that the 
 Catholic Church founds her claim to the obedience of the 
 
 I 
 
 faithful ? But, if faith in Scripture logically precedes faith in 
 the Church, is it not plain that the Catholic, as well as the 
 Protestant, is obliged to acquire, by his personal efforts, a 
 conviction of the authenticity and inspiration of the Scrip- 
 tures? Is he not obliged to constitute himself judge of their 
 true sense, at least in passages relative to the institution and
 
 OBJECTION OF PROTESTANTS. 95 
 
 prerogatives of the Church ? He must, then, be a sceptic for 
 twenty or thirty years, and condemned to pass half his life 
 in study (ch. 12, 13). If he receives the authority of the 
 Scriptures on the faith of the Church, and believes afterwards 
 in the Church, on the authority of the Scriptures, it is evident 
 that he revolves in a vicious circle, and destroys every rational 
 foundation of his faith. 
 
 I think I have here exposed, in all itg power, the most 
 specious objection of Protestants to the Catholic principle; 
 an objection to which they are so much attached, that, not- 
 withstanding the most decided answers a hundred times given, 
 they are never weary of reproducing it with signs of triumph; 
 yet a very sad triumph if it were real ! for, what would follow 
 if it were proved that no one could reasonably believe in 
 the Gospel, if he did not first devote himself to impossible 
 studies. It would follow that Christianity would be an 
 odious absurdity, and that we should envy the Chinese the 
 art of transforming into shoes the Bible and the numerous 
 books which the Bible has produced. 
 
 Fortunately, it is not so ; and the objection we have no- 
 ticed will no more prevent the judicious Catholic from be- 
 lieving at all times in the Church, than the sophisms of Zeno 
 against motion have prevented men from walking. 
 
 Let us follow the Catholic from the time of leaving his 
 cradle until he enters, full of days, into his eternal mansion, 
 and we shall see if, through this long career, he ever finds 
 himself necessarily wanting in the faith of a believer, or the 
 reason of a philosopher. 
 
 There is no difficulty during the first years. Having no 
 thoughts of his own, and instinctively subject to domestic 
 authority, the only thing which exists for him, the child ne- 
 cessarily adopts the religious notions which are presented to 
 him, and every one knows the influence of first-received 
 impressions.
 
 90 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 To the very powerful action of external teaching is added 
 the still more powerful interior influence of the Divine Muster, 
 who opens the mind and heart to the understanding and love 
 of divine truths, at the same time that the human master in- 
 troduces them by the ear. The Church, in fact, teaches, 
 conformably to Scripture, that faith is a celestial gift, and 
 that, in the baptismal regeneration, the Holy Spirit, uniting 
 our soul to itself, produces in it a supernatural disposition to 
 grasp and taste religious truths a disposition which needs 
 nothing for its development but external instruction. If the 
 latter is conformable to the truth, as it is in the true Church, 
 the divine influence of grace is combined with the human in- 
 fluence of language to lay the foundation of the faith of the 
 child ; and what chances of durability are there for an edifice 
 raised by the united efforts of God and man !* 
 
 At the moment when passing out of the domestic circle, the 
 child perceives that the universe is larger than his family, 
 what does he see around him which is not adapted to confirm 
 his first faith ? Led to the house of God on holy days, he 
 unites with the religious society. He sees the doctrine which 
 he has received from his mother's mouth, descending from 
 the pulpit upon an attentive and thoughtful people. The 
 prayer that he repeats every day before the crucifix and the 
 venerated image of Mary, he hears rising from innumerable 
 lips towards heaven, in the midst of clouds of incense. 
 
 * It is well to remark here the great difference of religious education 
 between the child born in the true church, and one who has the mis- 
 fortune to be educated in heresy. The latter, innocent of the crime ot 
 his parents, whilst he is invincibly ignorant of their rebellion against 
 the Church of Jesus Christ, receives without doubt in baptism the 
 supernatural gift of faith ; but the teaching of the parents offering to 
 the intellect of the child only a corrupted doctrine, the divine influence 
 is neutralized, God being incapable of seconding error. Hence religi- 
 ous instruction is only the work of man, and rests on the fragile found- 
 ation of flesh and blood.
 
 OBJECTION OF PROTESTANTS. 97 
 
 What commands his attention most, in the temple, is the 
 mysterious person of the priest, the spiritual father of the 
 whole parish, and with whom he is about to form the most 
 intimate relations, at catechism, where, during many years, 
 he is to receive, with children of his own age, the milk of the 
 divine word ; or at the confessional, where he will reveal the 
 most secret movements of his heart. It is to the priest that 
 he is indebted, and he is reminded of it by the sight of the 
 sacred font, for the sublime title of the child of God and the 
 Church ; it is from his sacred hand that he awaits the mys- 
 terious sacrament which is to unite him intimately to his 
 Creator. Great is the influence of the pastor over his spiri- 
 tual child. Napoleon, on his death-bed, confessed to his 
 companions in exile, that the presence of the priest had always 
 spoken to his heart. Here let every one recall the impres- 
 sions of his early days. 
 
 But, to the eye of the young Catholic, the religious horizon 
 extends, and gradually reveals itself with age. Around his 
 parish other parishes are gathered, living under the same 
 spiritual regime. The common father of priests and people, 
 the Priest emphatically, the Bishop, appears in the midst of 
 joyful chants. The words of the Pontiff confirm the uniform 
 instructions of parents and priest. His sacred hand touches 
 the young brow, and the union, before so close, of our youth 
 with the mystical body of the Church, becomes still closer. 
 
 Beyond and above Bishops, universal veneration points out 
 to him the Bishop of Bishops, the universal Pontiff, seated 
 upon the immoveable chair of Peter, and forming of the hun- 
 dred and sixty millions of Catholics, scattered throughout the 
 world, one only -body, animated with the same spirit, nour- 
 ished with the same doctrine, moving towards the same end. 
 
 He sees, in the clear light of history, this vast society, 
 which no visible hand has formed or supports, and for the 
 destruction of which all the known forces of the physical and 
 
 VOL. II. 9
 
 98 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 moral order have conspired, surviving all human societies, 
 resisting the most frightful tempests, and constantly bringing 
 the immense majority of Christians into subjection to its laws, 
 so unyielding to the passions of men. 
 
 Who are the enemies in every age rising up against the 
 House of the Living God? He sees odious tyrants, the ene- 
 mies of all restraint ; proud dreamers, who pretend to substi- 
 tute their thought of a day for the universal faith ; sectarians 
 without a past, without a future, with no tie to bind them to 
 each other, but their common hatred against the Catholic 
 society ; and all confessing, by the name they bear, their 
 descent from one man, and their religious illegitimacy. 
 
 What a powerful guarantee against the assaults of doubt 
 is presented to the Catholic by this fact, which is as clear as 
 the sun, and the evidence of which is more convincing every 
 step we advance in the knowledge of the present and the past. 
 He cannot refuse to believe in the Church without saying : In 
 matters of religion, I see more clearly, I alone, than a hun- 
 dred and sixty millions of my cotemporaries, and the eight 
 or ten thousand millions of Catholics who have preceded me, 
 all as interested as I am in knowing the truth, and most of 
 them with better advantages for becoming acquainted with it ! 
 
 The serious doubt of a Catholic can only be explained by 
 great ignorance or great folly. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED. SECURITY OF THE CATHO- 
 LIC IN HIS FAITH. PERPETUAL FLUCTUATIONS OF 
 THE PROTESTANT. 
 
 WE have just seen the Catholic, whose religious instruction 
 has followed the progress of his years, obliged, at all times,
 
 SECURITY OF THE CATHOLIC FAITH. 99 
 
 to believe in the Church under pain of forfeiting his reason. 
 Where is the vicious circle in which it was attempted just 
 now to entangle him ? * 
 
 It is the church, it will be answered, which obliges him to 
 believe in the Church. Yes, as the sun enables him to see 
 the sun. Would you wish him, then, to call in question the 
 existence of that luminary, under pretext that it is the witness 
 in its own cause? Such is the privilege of public and illus- 
 trious facts : they enter as conquerors into the intellect without 
 passing through the obscure and bewildering defiles of reason. 
 And for this reason, the supreme wisdom, which intends not 
 that men should be restless disputants, carried about, by every 
 wind of doctrine, but peaceable possessors of the truth, prac- 
 tising it in lovc,\ has founded religion upon facts. 
 
 It is easy to imagine that a man, educated in a religious 
 society unfriendly to Rome, and nourished from his infancy 
 with the most absurd prejudices, may have need of much 
 study and reflection to convince himself of the divine institu- 
 tion of the Catholic Church, and to overthrow the framework 
 of calumnies which deprives him, in history, of the sight of 
 this wonderful edifice. But, for the Catholic, whom a solid 
 instruction has fortified against the falsehoods of heresy (a 
 condition which I always pre-suppose; for the sun itself is 
 
 * If we have recourse to Scripture in order to establish the authority 
 of the Church, it is against heretics who deny this authority, but re- 
 cognise that of Scripture. As to those who deny the authority of the 
 Sacred Books; we do not seek to prove it to them by the authority of 
 the Church which they do not acknowledge, but we employ against 
 them the same kind of demonstrations that Protestants employ against 
 unbelievers and Jews, the constant and unanimous testimony of the 
 Christian world. ' The authority of Scriptuje once established, we de- 
 duce from it the existence and the perogatives of the Church, which 
 is entirely logical. 
 
 f Et jam non simus parvuli fluctuantes, et circumferamur omni vento 
 doctrines . . . Veritatem autem facientes in chavitate. (Ephes. iv. 14, 13.)
 
 100 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 without light for the blind), those facts are incontrovertible ; 
 and there is no mind so degraded that it cannot give the same 
 reasons for its attachment to the Catholic Church, as the 
 great Bishop of Hippo formerly gave. "If you wish to 
 know," said he to his former fellow-believers, the Manicheans, 
 " what attaches me to the Catholic Church, it is this : it is 
 the unanimous submission of the people and the nations which 
 she governs ; it is the authority which she exercises, founded, 
 without doubt, on miracles (for, if it were not, as he has said 
 elsewhere, it would be the most astonishing of miracles), an 
 authority strengthened by the hope and peace which she 
 establishes in the soul an authority propagated by charity, 
 and cemented by a long prescription. What retains me in it, 
 is the chain of pastors whom I see uninterruptedly succeeding 
 each other in the see of Peter, from that apostle to whom 
 our Lord, after his resurrection, confided the care of his sheep, 
 even to the present Pontiff. Finally, what retains me in it, 
 is the name itself of Catholic, so appropriate to this Church, 
 in the midst of so many sects who envy it this name, that if 
 a stranger asks where the Catholics assemble, no heretic will 
 have the boldness to point to his own temple or house." * 
 
 To the irresistible influence which the external and pal- 
 pable fact of the predominance of Catholicity exerts over 
 every judicious mind, may be added an interior fact, not less 
 calculated to confirm the Catholic in his submission to the 
 Church. 
 
 This fact is, the consciousness which every sensible man 
 has of his incapacity to construct for himself a religion which 
 may support him at the hour of death ; the need universally 
 felt of reposing on religion, as in other important affairs, upon 
 the sweet and soothing pillow of authority. Let us listen to 
 one who had not a weak mind. 
 
 * Augustine, Contra Ep. fund., cap. iv. Item., De util. credendi, 
 cap. vii., xiv., xvii.
 
 SECURITY OF THE CATHOLIC FAITH. 101 
 
 " The ignorant man has no need, either of books or rea- 
 soning, in order to find the true Church. The more ignorant 
 he is, the more his ignorance shows him the absurdity of the 
 sects who would institute him judge of what he is incom- 
 petent to examine. All the new sects say to him : Do not 
 reason, do not decide ; content yourself with being docile and 
 humble : God has promised me his spirit to preserve you from 
 error. Which should this ignorant person follow, those who 
 demand impossibilities of him, or those who promise him what 
 is in harmony with his incapacity and the goodness of God ? 
 Let us imagine a paralytic who wishes to leave his bed, 
 because the house is on fire. He appeals to five men, who 
 say to him : Rise, run, pierce the crowd, save yourself from 
 the conflagration. At last, he finds a sixth man, who says to 
 him : Depend on me, I will carry you in my arms. Will he 
 trust to the five men, who advise him to do what he feels he 
 cannot do ? Will he not rather confide in him who alone 
 promises him assistance proportioned to his weakness? He 
 abandons himself, without reasoning, to this man, z id only 
 lies yielding and docile in his arms. Free yourself from :. 
 evidently impracticable discussion, cast off foolish presump- 
 tion, and you will be a Catholic."* 
 
 Thus, while everything within and without conspires to 
 throw the reflecting Protestant into inextricable embarrass- 
 ment, and condemns him to perpetual doubt on religious sub- 
 jects, under pain of falling into absurdity ,| everything, on the 
 contrary, invites the Catholic to rest contented in the ample 
 
 * Fenelon, Lettres sur 'Existence de Dieu, le Christianisme, et la 
 veritable Egli.te, 3d part 
 
 t The Protestant, who has a firm fixed belief in religion, must neces- 
 sarily say : I have a conviction that I understand Christianity better 
 than the Catholics of all ages, victims of the most lamentable errors, 
 than all my fellow-believers, who, for three centuries, have agreed on 
 nothing. What more would be necessary to make this poor man a 
 proper subject for a bed and a physician ? 
 
 9*
 
 102 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 bark of Peter, which steers prosperously towards the eternal 
 port, through shoals and tempests, bearing within it the in- 
 numerable family of the children of obedience and charity.* 
 
 Alas ! in the general shipwreck of intellect, misguided by 
 Protestantism and incredulity, where shall we find the divine 
 peace of the Savior, bequeathed by him to his disciples, if 
 not in the vast ark of Catholicism ?| 
 
 Every day we shall see approaching it in greater numbers, 
 souls that are vigorous enough to escape the paralysis of an 
 icy indifference, enlightened enough to despise the absurd 
 mummery of Methodism, and strong enough to break the 
 material ties which chain them to the standard of the Refor- 
 mation. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 PARALLEL BETWEEN PROTESTANTS RETURNING TO CATHO- 
 LICISM AND CATHOLICS WHO BECOME PROTESTANTS. 
 REMARKABLE FACT. 
 
 IT has been said, that to judge of the two religious sys- 
 tems which have confronted each other for three centuries, it 
 is sufficient to observe and listen to those who pass from one 
 to the other. 
 
 Among the Protestants, who since the early times of the 
 Reformation have returned to die in the religion of their 
 grandfathers,^ we find, particularly in our age, a host of 
 
 * Filii sapientiae, Ecclesia justorum ; et natio illorum, obedicntia et 
 dilectio. (Eccles. iii. 1.) 
 
 t John xiv. 27. 
 
 t A celebrated Protestant, Madame de Stael, hard pushed upon the 
 religious question by a learned ecclesiastic, whom she herself had drawn 
 into the subject, had recourse to this common defence : I wish to live
 
 PROTESTANT CONVERSIONS. 103 
 
 illustrious names, of superior men, whose irreproachable life, 
 and noble use of the finest talents had won the esteem and 
 affection of those around them, and the respect and admira- 
 tion of the public. An exalted intellect, an honest and na- 
 turally religious heart, soon reveal to them the perfect nullity 
 of a religion, which by the absence of doctrines and the 
 meagerness of its worship, deprives the mind of its steadfast- 
 ness, virtue of its foundation, and piety of its nourishment. 
 Catholicism presents itself to them, often in the midst of 
 studies which might appear foreign to the religious question. 
 But, as we have said above, nothing is isolated in the intellec- 
 tual and moral order, and truth, because it is objectively 
 being, becomes necessarily the parent of all that is. 
 
 One, a celebrated professor of history, meets with Catho- 
 licism in the application of the principles of the science he is 
 teaching ; * another a profound civilian, discovers it in the 
 fundamental laws of the social order ; f a third perceives it in 
 the midst of the frightful and eminently anti-Catholic scenes 
 of the French revolution. J Some in their researches into 
 the nature of the human mind, or the principles of political 
 economy ; others in their enlightened enthusiasm for the fine 
 arts, have attained the conviction that Catholicism can alone 
 answer to the moral wants of man, can establish by its pro- 
 
 and die, sir, in the religion of my fathers. Jlnd I, Madam, in the 
 religion of my grandfathers, answered her witty opponent. This is, 
 in other terms, the same answer that a French Ambassador made to 
 some English Courtiers, who seeing him recovering from a dangerous 
 malady, asked him if he should not have regretted being buried in her- 
 etical ground ? " No," answered he, I should only have ordered my 
 grave to be dug a little deeper, and I should have found myself in the 
 midst of Catholics." To however slight a depth the Protestant pene- 
 trates either the soil or history, he meets everywhere the ineffaceable 
 inscription : Protestantism sprung up fifteen hundred years after 
 Christianity. 
 * Doctor Thilips. f M. Hallor. \ Adam Miiller.
 
 104 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 found morality a basis for political economy, and that it 
 exclusively possesses the principle of the beautiful in nature 
 and art.* 
 
 The first gleam of light makes a lively impression upon 
 souls desirous of the truth. The thorough investigation 
 which the importance of the subject demands, the conscien- 
 tious comparison of the two systems, viewed as to their 
 origin, essential principles and results; the attentive reading 
 of what their defenders have written most strongly for or 
 against; in a word, all the means necessary to form a deep 
 conviction, have been put in use. 
 
 On the other side, the very lively prejudices of early edu- 
 cation, the kind of ignominy which the numerous and influ- 
 ential family of foolish persons attach to the change of reli- 
 gion, the repugnance which the severe morality and certain 
 practices of Catholicism excite in human nature, but more 
 than all, the terrible tempest that every converted Protestant 
 draws down on his own and the heads of all belonging to 
 him, the mortal blow that he strikes at the heart of relatives 
 and friends, the tears of a wife, of children, whose brilliant 
 prospects he often ruins ; in a word, everything which to 
 ordinary minds makes truth in the wrong, presents itself 
 again and again to the thoughts of these men, and cruelly 
 assails their heart 
 
 At length, after long-continued resistance grace has tri- 
 umphed. The divine remedies which the heavenly physician 
 has entrusted to his Church have been applied to the neo- 
 phytes, and immediately a strength, a calmness and an inex- 
 pressible satisfaction succeed to the weaknesses of nature, 
 and to the tortures of doubtf 
 
 The first desire of a soul that has found God is to publish 
 
 * De Soltberg, Frederic Schlegel, Veith, Molitor, Bautain, de Coux, 
 le legon d'econ poliL 
 t Words of M. de Haller, Lettre a safamille, Sfc. Geneva, 1821, p. 20.
 
 PROTESTANT CONVERSIONS. 105 
 
 the greatness of the Divine compassion, and to invite all those 
 who are dear to it to share its happiness. The new con- 
 verts take the pen, and what do we find, in the writings in 
 which they publish the causes of their conversion ? an accent 
 of truth and love which blind enthusiasm and wavering faith 
 will never imitate. It is the language of a soul, which, long 
 a prey to the weariness of doubt, reposes sweetly in the bosom 
 of established truth, and does not fear to make the public a 
 judge of the reasons for its profound conviction. It is the 
 expression of a heart more filled with gratitude and love for 
 the religion which it embraces, than aversion for that which 
 it abandons, and which utters only words of kindness and 
 charity even to the most unjust of its former fellow believers. 
 I appeal to the general conscience, do we not find this the 
 case in the numerous writings published by Protestants 
 returned to the ancient religion, from those of the illustrious 
 Count Stolberg, to the admirable Letter of M. de Haller to 
 his family, and that of M. Laval, ci-devant minister, to his 
 old companions.* 
 
 Let Protestantism now show us her conquests. We do 
 not ask for illustrious names, for men who by their brilliancy 
 of talent, and nobleness of character, might equal the Bruns- 
 wicks, the Mecklembourg Schwerins, the Saxe Gothas, the 
 Solms Lanbachs, the Senfft Pilsachs, Stolbergs, Eksteins, 
 Hallers, Spencers, Schlegels, Werners, Mullers, Goerres, 
 
 * Lettre de M. Laval, formerly minister of Conde-sur-Noireau, a 
 ses anciens coreligionnaires, Paris, 1822. I might add the almost 
 daily publications of the members of the Anglican Church- and of the 
 University of Oxford, who have been returning in great numbers for 
 some years past to Catholicism ; which caused a very celebrated Scotch 
 Review, (Blackwood's Edinburg Magazine,) not long since to announce, 
 at the end of a long article on the progress of papacy, that almost the 
 entire press, at least in London, was in the hands of Roman Catho- 
 lics. (See M. Alfred Nettement, Introduct. anx Confer, du Dr. Wise- 
 man sur rEgli.sc, vol. i. p. 71.)
 
 106 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 Schlossers, Hurters, die., evidently there nre none of these.* 
 Let her show us at least some honest and virtuous persons 
 who have left our ranks, urged by the necessity of a better 
 faith and a better practice, and who have edified their new 
 fellow-worshippers by the spectacle of an eminently Christian 
 life. We defy her to produce one. 
 
 Who, then, nre the proselytes of Protestantism, since she 
 sometimes makes them or finds them ready made? They 
 are almost always individuals whose change of religion leads 
 them to hope for a change of fortune, or whose embittered 
 hearts would seek revenge in calumny. Here and there are a 
 few priests and members of religious orders, who having 
 exhausted the patience of their Bishops and Superiors throw 
 into the hands of strangers the ball of suspension or interdict. 
 
 Some of these men have published the reasons for their 
 conversion ; do we find in their writings anything which the 
 least severe police would not feel obliged to seize as an out- 
 rage upon morality ? f We always find in them a man, into 
 
 * I will only give as a proof of this fact the extraordinary mistake 
 of the Genevan who, in 1821, wishing to neutralise the lively sensation 
 caused by the return of M. de Haller to the Church, attempted to make 
 a dead person speak, in a " Reponse a M. de Haller, on the subject 
 of his change of religion, par feu M. de Langalerie, Geneve, 1821." 
 To oppose to the learned and excellent restorer of political science, 
 an arrogant, ambitious military man, ignorant of religion, condemned 
 to death in his own country, and who after disgracing himself in all 
 the Courts of Europe, died a professed Turk in a Hungarian prison, 
 was in fact confessing an extreme dearth of proselytes ; and here pov- 
 erty is reaHy a vice. 
 
 f At the moment when I am writing this, the journals announce the 
 apostacy of a priest of the diocese of Pamiers, named Maurette, and 
 the seizure of a pamphlet by the public ministry, entitled: Le Pape 
 et I'Evanqile, or Encore des adieux a Rome. The same journals an- 
 nounce the departure of M. Maurette for Canada, in the capacity of 
 a Protestant minister. (See rJLmi de la Religion, April 4th, 1S44.) 
 How prompt are these people in the ordination of their ministers !
 
 PROTESTANT CONVERSIONS. 107 
 
 whose hands a Bible has very fortunately fallen, beginning to 
 read it secretly (for according to these accounts it is a prohi- 
 bited article of traffic among Catholics.) He finds in it 
 neither transubstantiation, auricular confession, purgatory, 
 nor the worship of saints and images, nor the adoration of 
 the Pope, nor the celibacy of the priesthood, nor religious 
 vows, nor fasting, abstinence, nor fifty other superstitions of 
 the same kmd. He then, perhaps, consults a Catholic priest ; 
 but the latter requires him in the first place to deliver up the 
 Bible, and preaches absolute submission to Romish traditions 
 under pain of eternal flames. Indignant at finding the word 
 of man preferred to the word of God, the neophyte makes 
 haste to cast off the dust of his feet, and quit the Romish 
 Babylon. 
 
 Let us admit the truth of this fact, what follows? Here is 
 a man who tells us that he no longer believes in the Catholic 
 doctrine ; but what doctrine does he put in its place ? He 
 does not say. He tells us that he cordially detests the Pope, 
 Bishops and Priests, and that he joyfully leaves the Church 
 of anti-Christ ; but what is the charm which attracts him 
 towards Protestantism, and which among the innumerable 
 sects that are swarming in it, is about to console him, by the 
 purity of its worship, for the loss of Roman abominations. 
 He does not say. 
 
 He says that he abjures confession, fasting, abstinence, 
 celibacy, religious vows, &c., but to what practices will he 
 confine himself, in order better to conform to a Gospel which 
 only preaches renunciation and mortification ? Concerning 
 this he preserves silence. He is evidently a Christian whose 
 
 Moreover, if the essence of Protestantism consists in opposition to 
 Catholicity, or as a distinguished minister has said, M. Vinet, in an 
 irreconciledble hatred to authority. (See Guide du Catechumeni 
 Vaudois, torn. iii. p. 276,) to whom, better than to a bad priest, could 
 the care of propagating such a religion be confided !
 
 108 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 faith has met with a discomfiture, and who wishes for morality 
 at a discount. 
 
 If it is a priest or an unfrocked religious who holds the 
 pen, he will be more frank. Amid many insults and calum- 
 nies against those who have driven him from their ranks he 
 will quote Buffon on ike impossible rule of celibacy ; and 
 will confess that the noble and august image of woman, that 
 master-piece of the Creator, that complement othe imper- 
 fect portion of man . . . has charmed and attracted him.* 
 In short, it is the old comedy of the sixteenth century, which 
 invariably ends in marriage, and the living Bible which has 
 convicted Rome of error, is always a woman. 
 
 It is evident that Catholicism well understands the art of 
 forming thorough Christians, while Protestantism can only 
 unmake them. 
 
 I will conclude with a fact of public notoriety, the consi- 
 deration of which has moved many Protestant consciences. 
 There are very few of our Catholic priests, however limited 
 may be their ministry, who are not often called to receive into 
 the Catholic Church, dying Protestants, whilst it would be 
 impossible for me to cite a single example of a Catholic 
 desiring to die in any other communion than his own.f 
 
 * May I be excused for quoting the Adieux a Rome, of the ex-priest 
 and soldier Bruitte, p. 92, 94 ? It is just to observe that this vile pam- 
 phlet has obtained at Geneva as elsewhere, only the contempt which 
 must be excited for it in any honest mind. It could find favor only 
 with the sheep of the Pre. Beni. 
 
 t Milner, Excellence of the Catholic Religion, vol. i. page 105. 
 This fact which has contributed to the conversion of many distinguish- 
 ed Englishmen, is one of the Fifty reasons which induced Jlntoine 
 Ulric, Duke of Brunswick, to embrace the Catholic Religion, a work 
 which made a great sensation in Germany in the beginning of the last 
 century.
 
 SOUTH SEA MISSIONS. 109 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 APPLICATION OF THE CATHOLIC PRINCIPLE TO THE CON- 
 VERSION OF INFIDELS. SOUTH SEA MISSIONS. 
 
 LET us now follow Catholicism into Pagan countries in 
 pursuance^of the mission which was given it, eighteen hun- 
 dred years ago, to announce and teach the practice of the 
 Gospel to every creature. 
 
 Its means of action are still just what they were when it 
 came forth from the upper chamber to the conquest of the 
 world, most feeble in the eyes of human wisdom and ill pro- 
 portioned to the magnitude of the enterprise. It is always 
 nothingness which in the hands of the Most High, produces 
 prodigies, that no flesh should glory in his sight.* 
 
 Instead of the five thousand agents whom the Bible Socie- 
 ties show us with .pride, escorted by women and children, and 
 receiving every year thirty or forty millions of francs either 
 in Bibles or in salaries, f what do we see ? a few priests, a 
 
 * I. Cor. i. 20. 
 
 t In 1830, the Catholic Church only numbered four hundred Mis- 
 sionaries in heathen countries, and the receipts of The Association for 
 the Propagation of the Faith did not exceed 300,000 francs, ($60,000) 
 whilst the equipment of the Bible Missions was 5,242 individuals, and 
 the annual expenditure exceeded 20,000,000 of francs. So that a Protes- 
 tant publication (The Evangelical Magazine) exclaims : " Romish 
 Church ! now come and boast to us of thy Apostolic labors, and tell us 
 if, even in the palmiest days of thy long existence, thou hadst pha- 
 lanxes so numerous and well disciplined to oppose to the great enemy 
 of the salvation of the human race ? " (See Annals of the Associa- 
 tion, vol. iv. page 184.) No, gentlemen of The Evangelical Magazine, 
 the Roman Church is not so rich, and it is unfortunate ; for with 5,242 
 Missionaries and an income of 20,000,000 of francs, she would soon 
 have converted the world. But tell us why, with your phalanxes so 
 numerous and so well paid, you have not been able to do what one of 
 
 VOL. II. 10
 
 110 THE SOLUTION OF CHEAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 few religious embarking at Havre, Brest or elsewhere, bidding 
 an eternal adieu to their family, to their friends and to Eu- 
 rope. They carried with them a Bible, a breviary, the indis- 
 pensable articles for worship, and some pictures. The pov- 
 erty of those who sent them obliged them to calculate exactly 
 the expenses of the expedition, and having arrived at the ter- 
 mination of it, they expended every year the sum of six or 
 seven hundred francs. Instead of establishing themselves, like 
 the Bible Missionaries, between a fort and an English factory, 
 which insures safety, they landed on a savage, inhospitable 
 shore, dreaded by mariners. The captain and the crew, 
 whose affection these apostolic men had won, exclaimed at 
 their rashness and departed with tears in their eyes. 
 
 Thus landed, in the month of August, 1834, at the Isles 
 of Gambier, two priests and a. catechist of the Society of 
 Picpus ; in the same manner, three years later, the priests of 
 the Society of Mary established themselves at the Wallis 
 Isles, and at that Futuna famous in the annats of cannibalism.* 
 
 The Missionaries advanced towards the royal hut, a fright- 
 ful slaughter-house, where streams of human blood had just 
 
 our Missionaries alone has done the Jesuit Father, Jean de Brito, who, 
 a martyr at forty-five years of age had converted nearly a hundred 
 thousand heathen at Madura and among the Maravas. (See Berault 
 Bercastel, Histoire Ecclis., torn. xii. an. 1692. Lettres Edifiantcs et 
 Curieuses, torn, x.) 
 
 * According to documents taken down from the mouth of the natives 
 themselves, the number of the Inhabitants of the two islands (Futua 
 and Arofi,) commonly designated in French charts by the name of 
 Alloufatou, not long since exceeded four thousand; at present it does 
 not exceed eight hundred, and it is in a great measure the tooth of the 
 survivors which has caused this great diminution. Not more than 
 twenty years since, the rage for human flesh was so excessive, that 
 wars were not sufficient to supply the hideous banquet, the inhabitants 
 hunted each other even in their own tribe : men, women, children, old 
 men, friends and enemies, were killed without distinction. They even 
 massacred the members of their own family, mothers, &c. (See Lettre 
 du P. Chevron, Annahs, torn. xv. p. 41.)
 
 SOUTH SEA MISSIONS. Ill 
 
 before been flowing.* The mild and inoffensive air of these 
 strangers, the small gifts which they brought, the crucifix 
 glittering on their breast interested barbarian majesty. A 
 piece of land was assigned them where they could build a 
 hut of branches and plant some vegetables. 
 
 A cross was elevated ; the celestial power that bent the 
 head of the Caesars before this long despised and infamous 
 wood, soon moved the hearts of these islanders. A crowd 
 collected around the new comers ; their extraordinary life, 
 divided between prayer and labor, the care they gave the sick 
 and those wounded in their frequent savage wars, the cures 
 they effected, less by their remedies than by the power of 
 Him who sent them, conciliated the respect and affection of 
 a part of the inhabitants. According to the example of the 
 Divine Missionary, they act before teaching. \ 
 
 Destitute of the aid of an interpreter, they collected with 
 the help of signs, the most common words of the language, 
 composed an alphabet, gathered the children around them, 
 taught them to read and to bless the name of the true God.J 
 Schools were opened through a whole Archipelago : the Mis- 
 sionaries were constantly passing from one island to another, 
 in their frail barks, at the risk of perishing in the waves, or 
 by the hands of barbarians who were enraged at not being 
 able to induce them to take part in their infamous diversions. 
 
 God blessed such generous efforts. The children becom- 
 
 * The king alone, in quality of God was served with whole bodies ; 
 in other kitchens the dead were dismembered. Fourteen victims have 
 been counted at one time on the table of a prince. With roasted 
 bodies living men were also frequently served, with their feet and hands 
 tied ; they were extended on large trays that their blood might not be 
 lost . . . An old man was one day pointed out to me, who alone out 
 of a village of three hundred souls escaped the oven. (Letter of P. 
 Chevri'i, p. 42.) 
 
 t At. Ap. i. 1. t Annales, torn. viii. p. 5, 6, 40. 
 
 3*males, torn. ix. page 24.
 
 112 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 ing so many Apostles, chanted in their families the first truths 
 of religion which were introduced into their hymns, and talked 
 to their parents of the God who made heaven and earth, and 
 promises his worshippers eternal joys. All hastened to their 
 lessons, attracted by the sounds of the harmonica,* the 
 chanting of hymns and the pomp of the Holy Sacrifice cele- 
 brated in a temple of boughs. The image of Mary attracted 
 their regards, called forth questions, and in speaking of the 
 Great Mother, the Son was also spoken of, who descended 
 from heaven to crush the tyranny of the cruel Aruino.f 
 
 The manica with its three equal leaves, (the same trefoil by 
 which St. Patrick used to teach the Irish idolators the mys- 
 tery of the Holy Trinity,) became the symbol of one God in 
 three persons. J The cross erected on the public place, and 
 the sign of which was repeated on every forehead, incessantly 
 recalled the principal doctrine of Christianity. 
 
 In proportion as the divine light insinuated itself from the 
 senses into the soul of the idolators, they were ashamed of 
 the absurdity and degradation of their worship. Nine months 
 had scarcely passed after the arrival of the Missionaries 
 before two islands had planted the Cross on the ruins of 
 superstition, and a whole Archipelago celebrated with trans- 
 ports of joy the arrival of the Pontiff who came, in the name 
 of Jesus Christ, to take possession of the fifth quarter of the 
 world. What a beautiful sight to see this prince of the Church 
 enthroned on an inverted tray, in a cathedral constructed of 
 reeds, in the midst of a throng of half naked savages ! 
 
 Every day witnessed the fall of an idol beneath the blows 
 
 * Ibid., torn. ix. p. 40. 
 
 f This is the name which the inhabitants of Gambler give to the 
 bad Spirit. 
 
 J Jlnnales, torn. ix. p. 34. 
 
 Mgr. Rouchouse, of the diocese of Lyons, Apostolic Vicar of 
 Eastern Australasia, who arrived at the isles of Gambier the Oth May, 
 1835. (Jlnnales, torn, ix., p. 144.)
 
 SOUTH SEA MISSIONS. 113 
 
 of its undeceived adorers; and, before the end of 1830, the 
 rest of these monstrous fetiches were shipped to France, 
 which, in exchange for these trophies, sent the missionaries 
 cloth to cover their neophytes, medicines for the sick, mate- 
 rials for spinning and weaving cotton, instruments of labor, 
 masonry, carpentry, and husbandry, and for the building of 
 churches and houses. 
 
 There the Catholic priests are still the same as they were in 
 the forests of America, in the 17th century; in our Europe in 
 the Middle Age men of science and of arts. One is occu- 
 pied with medicine, another digs wells, plants vines, or is 
 employed in freeing the Archipelago from the formidable ani- 
 mals which devour even the roots of the trees.* A third 
 traverses the ocean to procure for the new converts of 
 Gambier books printed in their own language. 
 
 It is thus that these poor islanders, who, not long since, 
 cried " A miracle !" at seeing water boiling in a kettle,| have 
 rapidly become initiated into the prodigies of our arts, and 
 receive from the same hands the knowledge which leads them 
 to their celestial country, and that which softens the severity 
 of the terrestrial journey. 
 
 The same means effected the same prodigies at New Zea- 
 land and in the isles of Wallis and Futuna, where the priests 
 of Mary are reaping, in such abundance, the fruits of their 
 toil, and the blood of one of their brethren. J 
 
 " But," some zealous Protestant will object, " these chris- 
 tians do not read the Bible." This is true. Mgr. Pompallier, 
 landing at New Zealand, had probably only a Latin Bible, 
 
 * Jlnnales, torn. ix. p. 19. \ Annales, torn. ix. p. 141. 
 
 t The Father Chanel, massacred at Futuna, at the close of 1841. 
 (See concerning the conversion of the Wallisians, Futunians, and New 
 Zealanders, and the admirable spirit which animates them, the rela- 
 tions of the Maristes missionaries.) finales, torn. xiv. p. 1'Jl, 201, 205, 
 217 ; torn. xv. p. 29, 399, 403, 407, &c. 
 
 10*
 
 114 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 and I do not know that he translated it into the Maori, as 
 the Methodist ministers had done, who, he found, had been 
 established there for twenty years. Thus the twenty-five or 
 thirty thousand proselytes there under his direction, have not 
 the happiness of reading the Bible, as some hundreds of 
 Methodist neophytes do, and of discovering in the divine book, 
 among other pretty things, that Jesus Christ was the inventor 
 of fire-arms ;* but, on the other hand, these good people know 
 all that it is necessary to know, in order to love and serve 
 God, to fear his justice, desire heaven, cherish one's neigh- 
 bor, hold theft, injustice, and immodesty in horror, and lead 
 a life worthy of the best days of Christianity. 
 
 It must be acknowledged, the Catholic priest is some- 
 what the man of routine. He imagines that, in religion, 
 as in other sciences, he must commence with the least, 
 place the alphabet before folios, and teach the Institutes 
 before the Code. He believes that a good catechist can, 
 in an hour, give a heathen more knowledge of Christian 
 doctrine, than he could acquire by two months' reading 
 of such a book as the Bible. He has read in St. Paul, that, 
 to the carnal man, still a child in the things of God, milk is 
 
 * " A sad spectacle presented itself to me on visiting a tribe almost 
 entirely Protestant. There I found everywhere the Bible translated 
 into the Maori tongue by Methodist ministers. The young people, 
 proud of their pretended knowledge, quoted and commented upon the 
 sacred text without discrimination, pretending to find in it all their 
 own ideas, and even the invention of fire-arms, the discovery of which 
 they attributed to Jesus Christ. Now these poor people, can it be be- 
 lieved, did not even know that there was one God in three persons, 
 that the Word became man and died for us. And their teachers have 
 been twenty years in New Zealand! Instruction, moreover, is not the 
 only advantage which our disciples have over those of the Protestant 
 missionaries. Strangers easily distinguish our catechumens by the air 
 of candor and kindness which contrasts, it is said, with the stern and 
 harsh physiognomy of the heretical islanders." (Letter of Father 
 Pctiljean, vol. xiv. p. 211.)
 
 SOUTH SEA MISSIONS. 115 
 
 necessary, not meat.* Instead, then, of imitating the cruel 
 missionary, who throws the Bible to the poor Australian, say- 
 ing to him, Comprehend that, or you will be lost! he becomes 
 the nurse, who transforms bread into milk ; or, according to the 
 beautiful comparison of M. De Maistre, he imitates the dote, 
 which, before distributing to her little ones the grain that is to 
 nourish them, breaks and pulverises it, that it may not harm them. 
 
 As to the profound veneration which is due to the divine 
 code of the Scriptures, who inspires it most the Protestant 
 minister who throws it to every passenger, at the risk of 
 seeing it soon converted into shoes for Pagans, f or the Ca- 
 tholic missionary, who reads it every day at the altar, quotes 
 and explains it reverently in the pulpit, and who would give 
 himself up to be crushed under foot, strangled, crucified, 
 burned before a slow fire, rather than deliver it to the tyrant 
 who demands it ? Is it astonishing that neophytes and execu- 
 tioners conceive a high idea of the Bible, and say there must 
 be something divine in this book ? 
 
 We must, then, acknowledge that the Catholic method is no 
 less adapted to form new disciples to Jesus Christ than to pre- 
 serve and perfect those who already have adopted it. We will 
 now see if it contains nothing wounding to human dignity. 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 ON THE PRETENDED DESPOTISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. 
 
 INTELLECTUAL INDEPENDENCE OF THE CATHOLIC. 
 
 HIS SECURITY AGAINST ARBITRARY POWER. 
 
 WITH the enormous prerogative of infallibility conceded to 
 the Pope and corps of Bishops, with the obligation it imposes 
 
 * Tanquam parvulis in Christo, lac vobis potum dedi, non escam t 
 &c. I. Cor. iii. 1, 2. Heb. v. 12. 
 
 f See above, ch. xviii.
 
 116 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 upon the faithful, to submit to their decisions in matters of 
 doctrine, what becomes of the first of our rights, liberty of 
 thought and conscience! What permanent danger is there 
 in that power which commands without control whatever is 
 most active and energetic in human nature, and disposes, at 
 its pleasure, of the mind and will of a hundred and sixty mil- 
 lions of men! 
 
 " When whatever we possess most intimate, most individual 
 and free conscience, thought, and interior life is concerned, 
 to abdicate the government of one's self, to deliver one's self 
 up to a foreign power, is a true moral suicide, a servitude a 
 hundred times worse than that of the body or the soul." * 
 
 This is repeated in unison by most Protestant writers, and 
 thinking men of our universities, who desire for themselves 
 the liberty to think and teach, and are displeased that our 
 Bishops should destroy the impious and immoral reveries 
 which they would impose upon the youthful intellect of their 
 pupils. 
 
 But the truth is, that the Catholic system is precisely the 
 only one in which exists, in principle and practice, true inde- 
 pendence of thought and conscience; whilst, in every other 
 system, there is always, in fact as well as in principle, a pro- 
 found and degrading subjection of the intellect, and an ado- 
 ration of the thoughts and words of man. 
 
 It is a principle universally professed by all Catholics, from 
 the Pontiff of Rome to the hnmblest of his spiritual children, 
 that the word of God, whether written or traditional, is the 
 only subject of the faith of the Christian ; that no Pope, even 
 if he were at the head of all the Bishops of the world, united 
 in general council, can, or ever will be able to add or sub- 
 tract anything whatever from the doctrines, precepts of mo- 
 rality, and maxims of perfection, taught by Jesus Christ and 
 his Apostles, or from the sacraments instituted by him ; that 
 * Guizot, Cours (THistoire Moderne.
 
 INDEPENDENCE OF THE CATHOLIC. 117 
 
 % 
 
 the sovereign and infallible authority of the Church is limited, 
 by the Divine Founder, to the teaching of revealed doctrine 
 (which implies the right to define, in case of difference, and 
 to excommunicate the refractory from the religious society), 
 to the administration of the sacraments, to the formation and 
 execution of laws adapted to maintain purity of faith and 
 morals, and the majesty of worship. 
 
 In principle, then, the Catholic depends on God alone for 
 his faith. If men interpose, it is only as depositories of the 
 divine teaching and witnesses of the faith of all ages. He is 
 a subject, who, while submitting to the magistrate as local 
 executor of the general law, obeys only the sovereign. 
 
 But does the practice harmonize with the principle ? What 
 guarantees to the Catholic that the Pope shall not mingle 
 tares with the good grain, and give his own individual thought 
 for that of Jesus Christ and the universal Church ? 
 
 The first guarantee of the Catholic against the aberrations 
 of the Pope is in the formal and repeatedly reiterated pro- 
 mises of Jesus Christ, which would plainly be at fault, if the 
 Church should ever be misguided by its chief a promise the 
 authenticity of which could be proved to him, if necessary, 
 by the Protestant Bibles, in which it may be read.* 
 
 His second guarantee is in the constitution of the Church 
 itself, which is the most inconvenient place imaginable for 
 those who would wish to innovate in matters of doctrine, even 
 if they were the Popes themselves. 
 
 Except in case of mental alienation, which has never yet 
 been known in the person of the successor of St. Peter, but 
 which, if it occurred, would embarrass Catholics as little as 
 the very frequent event of the death of their head, a Pope, 
 however ill-disposed we may imagine him to be, would never 
 take it upon himself to change the teaching of the Church : 
 for, in evil as in good, no man in his senses attempts the im. 
 * See as above, ch. xx. xxi.
 
 118 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 possible, and lightly runs the evident risk of being cast from 
 ihe highest rank into the mire. 
 
 Even if the deceitful Pontiff obtained by address, or other- 
 wise, the silence of the seventy-two counsellors who aid him 
 in the government of the Church, and most of whom have 
 elevated him to his present situation (difficulty first, which 
 much resembles a moral impossibility), how could he deceive 
 or intimidate the fifteen hundred Patriarchs, Primates, Arch- 
 bishops, and Bishops of the Catholic world, they also being, 
 by divine right, judges of the doctrine, and pledged by the 
 most solemn oaths to defend it, even to the shedding of blood ; 
 by their situation, also, obliged to possess a thorough know- 
 ledge of universal doctrines, and surrounded by theologians 
 grown gray in sacred study ; the guide of innumerable be- 
 lievers, among whom religion numbers learned defenders, and 
 a large proportion of whom are sufficiently well instructed to 
 be struck with the least change in matters of religion. 
 
 Is it not evident that success in error is here impossible ! Two 
 observations will place this impossibility in a still clearer light 
 
 1st. The Catholic religion is not a purely speculative theory 
 addressed only to the intellect, to be comprehended only by 
 the very limited class of thinking men. It is essentially 
 practical, and accessible to every mind by the obligations it 
 imposes, and the sensible forms with which it clothes itself. 
 It has no doctrine, no precept, no sacrament, which is not 
 manifested to the senses, which is not reflected, embodied 
 and materialised in some sort in the daily practices, solemni- 
 ties, ceremonies, chants and prayers, and even in the archi- 
 tecture and decoration of the temples ; in a word, in every 
 part of the worship. If an alteration, then, were introduced 
 into the Catholic idea, the form also must be adjusted to it; 
 and if it were possible that a hundred and sixty millions of 
 men should consent to preserve silence, the stones themselves 
 would cry aloud at the innovation.
 
 INDEPENDENCE OF THE CATHOLIC. 119 
 
 2d. No definition in matters of doctrine has been or ever 
 will be given by a Pope or a General Council approved and 
 confirmed by the Pope, unless this extreme measure were 
 prompted by doctrinal differences which put in peril the unity 
 of faith. The sentence, therefore, is always preceded by full 
 and solemn debates which command the general attention. 
 Two parties are confronted : the one, more or less numerous 
 has for its founders or advocates, as is always seen, Bishops, 
 Priests, Religious and Princes, who put everything in requisi- 
 tion to obtain for it confidence, and to avert the painful pre- 
 possession which is hovering over it ; the other party com- 
 posed of a large majority of clergy, are occupied with 
 defending the ancient faith, and arming the faithful against 
 the new opinions while they are awaiting the supreme 
 decision. 
 
 The Scriptures, the monuments of the tradition and faith 
 of all ages, are discussed, and cited on each side ; innumera- 
 ble documents, of every shade of opinion are interchanged ; 
 the universities and religious bodies are ranged on the right 
 and left; the Princes interpose and join their voices to those 
 of the Bishops that the Sovereign Pastor may cause his 
 voice to be heard. The Catholic world is in expectation, 
 and even heretical societies maliciously lend an ear. Must 
 not the least discreet Pope necessarily be upon his guard ! 
 
 The Pontiff prescribes public prayers, and if he cannot 
 assemble the Bishops, he establishes congregations of Cardi- 
 nals, Bishops and Theologians, who for many months and 
 sometimes for many years, discuss a question already tho- 
 roughly discussed, read all that has been written of import- 
 ance on each side, listen patiently to the arguments of the 
 prejudiced, and neglect nothing to bring to light the true 
 doctrine of the Universal Church upon the point under dis- 
 pute. It must be observed, indeed, with regard to the prin- 
 ciples of Catholicism, a doctrinal definition is not the result
 
 120 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 of the supernatural and sudden inspiration of the Pope, or 
 the Bishops assembled in Council; it is not a new revelation, 
 or the creation of a dogma hitherto unknown ; but it is the 
 solemn declaration of what the Church has always believed 
 and taught more or less definitely; and the effect which 
 Jesus Christ has promised to the pastors assembled is to pre- 
 vent them from error in the distinction they make between 
 the constant faith of the Church and the new opinions. 
 
 Let the Pope decide ; it is a hundred thousand to one 
 that, independently of the divine promise, he will pronounce 
 aright. If, after he has spoken, the Church bows with re- 
 spect and answers Amen, there is a certainty, for every man 
 of sense, that the Pope has not made an innovation. 
 
 Considering the Church, then, merely in a human point of 
 view, there is, and can be no social organisation which binds 
 so strongly the hands of its chiefs, and* presents so many 
 guarantees against the exercise of arbitrary power. Thus 
 this permanent danger which is thought to exist in a power 
 that absolutely disposes of the understanding and will of one 
 hundred and sixty millions of men, has no reality but in the 
 brain of fools. 
 
 Finally, history comes to gives her testimony that the de- 
 posit of Catholic Faith is pure from all human alloy. How 
 many attempts have been made at innovation in every age by 
 the most distinguished minds, from the great Tertullian and the 
 sublime Origen to the author of the " Essai sur V Indifference /" 
 Yet, these powerful minds who would have made all things 
 bend under their yoke in a church of human formation, have 
 been dashed to pieces against the immoveable rock on which 
 Jesus Christ has built his Church. This is because the 
 Catholic recognises in genius the mission to preserve, to 
 defend and to cultivate the common inheritance of Christian 
 truths, but not to change its divine limits. 
 
 Thus while we can point out in history the precise date
 
 SPIRITUAL DESPOTISM OF SOVEREIGNS. 121 
 
 and the inventors of the different religious systems which 
 have enjoyed a longer or shorter period of favor in the sepa- 
 rated Churches, we defy heresy to cite one single dogma, one 
 single rule of morals or of perfection, one single sacrament, 
 which we have adopted on the word of any learned man or 
 Pope whatever. 
 
 The Catholic, while lending a docile ear to the Church, 
 has then the assurance that he is listening to Jesus Christ; 
 and if he relinquishes the very questionable power of creating 
 for himself a religion, it is into the hands of God himself. If 
 this is not the true and perfect liberty of the children of God, 
 where is it to be found, and in what does it consist? 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI 
 
 OF THE PRETENDED ENFRANCHISEMENT OF THOUGHT BY 
 
 PROTESTANTISM. SPIRITUAL DESPOTISM OF SOVEREIGNS. 
 
 EVANGELICAL CHURCH OF PRUSSIA. 
 
 NEVER did the human mind attain a greater independence, 
 than in the sixteenth century, when Luther, that liberator of 
 modern thought, to speak in academic language,* throwing 
 off the yoke of Catholic authority, summoned every one to 
 invest himself with the sovereign power in matters of faith.-j- 
 
 Yet, where can be found an instance of a more blind cre- 
 dulity, of a more entire intellectual abnegation, than among 
 
 * Michelet, Mlmoires de Luther, pref., p. 12. 
 
 t Let us break their ties and cast off their yoke from our heads, 
 cried Luther, borrowing the words of the Psalmist, in his answer to 
 the bull of Leo X., " without remembering," says Bossuet, " that 
 this unfortunate canticle is by David put in the mouth of rebels, whose 
 plots are raised against the. Lord and against his Christ." (Hist, 
 dcs Variations, liv. i., 26.) 
 
 VOL. II. 10
 
 122 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 the nations which then severed the tie of religious unity ! 
 We see them exchanging the Catholic doctrine, which for 
 fifteen centuries had guided generations of Christians into the 
 luminous paths of truth and virtue, for the incoherent, fluctu- 
 ating, absurd and supremely immoral speculations of a few 
 men whose heart had corrupted their understanding. 
 
 Germany revered, as a prophet, the inventor of the slavery 
 of the will, the dissolute monk of Wittemberg, endowed, it 
 is true, with great eloquence, but at the same time an impu- 
 dent and low buffoon, dogmatizing in taverns amid the fumes 
 of beer, incredibly violent in his bursts of passion,* and out- 
 raging in his fury that same Bible which he presented for the 
 only rule of faith. 
 
 A part of Switzerland poured out its blood to defend the noc- 
 turnal visions of Zvvingle.f Geneva professed the frightful 
 doctrines of Calvin and drove brutally from her walls or 
 burned alive those who dared to protest against the defini- 
 tions of her sanguinary apostle. 
 
 England, in order to free herself from what was called 
 papal tyranny, humbly bestowed the spiritual supremacy on 
 the abominable tyrant, who, according to his own avowal, 
 never spared the life of a man or the honor of a woman. 
 Some years later, the worthy daughter of Henry VIII. and 
 Anna Boleyn took the title of reigning Sovereign of the 
 Anglican Church, and from the interior of the palace where 
 she lived, surrounded by a throng of lovers, spies and execu- 
 tioners, that cruel woman created a new religion for her sub- 
 jects, and placed the English between the Thirty-nine Arti- 
 cles and the Scaffold. 
 
 * "I tremble," exclaimed Melancthon, "when I think of the pas- 
 sions of Luther. They do not yield in violence to the rage of Her- 
 cules ;" and he acknowledges that he has received blows from him. 
 (Leltre u Theodore.) 
 
 j See Hisloire des Variations, liv. ii., 27.
 
 SPIRITUAL DESPOTISM OF SOVEREIGNS. 123 
 
 If we follow Protestantism through its innumerable reli- 
 gious transformations, from its origin in the brain of Luther 
 to the last founder of the last in date of the thousand and 
 one religions that it has produced ; always and everywhere we 
 shall see it tossed from system to system at the sport of influ- 
 ential ministers or absurd visionaries, submitting alternately 
 or simultaneously to the direction of innumerable popes, all 
 more powerful than the Roman Pontiff, since in religion they 
 play the part of inventors. 
 
 And what are these names, of Lutherans, Zwinglians, Cal 
 vinists, Melancthonians, Gomarists, Arrninians, Socinians, 
 Mennonites, Vaudois, Swedenborgians, Wesleyan Methodists, 
 Whitfieldian Methodists, and numerous others equally pecu- 
 liar, if not the badges of human religion, the fatal acknow- 
 ledgment that man has placed his mind and conscience at 
 the mercy of a man ? 
 
 The liberty of interpreting the Bible at one's pleasure, and 
 creating religions, monopolized at first by party leaders, soon 
 became, under the Reformation, the exclusive privilege of 
 temporal sovereigns, who, " imagined," says a profound con- 
 troversialist, " that they must believe for their subjects, and 
 that their own opinion was the supreme law." * Thus, we 
 see pastors and their flocks drilling like lacqueys, under the 
 iron crook of kings and sovereign lords, and frequently re- 
 ceiving orders to change their religion, from a foster father or 
 mother, a prince or princess, countersigned by a regent of 
 one sex or the other. 
 
 Nothing, in truth, is more natural or more just than this 
 religious omnipotence of temporal sovereigns in reformed 
 countries. Is not Protestantism indebted to them for its ex- 
 istence ? Who could, without doing violence to history, dis- 
 pute with Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, with Frederic of Saxony, 
 Philip of Hesse, and other German Electors and Princes, with 
 
 * Moehler, Symbolism, introd., p. 69.
 
 124 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 Frederic I. of Denmark, Gustavus Vas.i in Sweden, the 
 Prince of Orange in Holland, the Lords of Berne in Swit- 
 zerland, the glory of submitting their people to the New 
 Gospel at the point of the sword. Moreover, could a reli- 
 gious system, which gives every one liberty of action, \\liilc 
 it grants liberty of belief, and which made its entrance into 
 the world amid the ferocity of the Anabaptists and the cruel 
 peasants' war, be restrained by political chiefs, under pain of 
 seeing the States deluged with blood ? It was very wise, 
 then, for princes to 'attach religion to their territory, and sub- 
 mit consciences to a fiscal imposition. 
 
 Some of them, as Elizabeth, Gustavus Vasa, and Fred- 
 eric I., wishing to put an end to the too prolific action of 
 the Bible, which, in the hands of the people, brought forth 
 every day some new religion, saw fit to oppose to it some 
 royal religions, with an order to their courts of justice to 
 treat as a felon and as guilty of high treason, any one who 
 should undertake to give the Bible an interpretation contrary 
 to the royal exegesis.* 
 
 Other princes, as the German nobles, preferred to reserve 
 to themselves the amusement of seeing their people rove from 
 Lutheranism to Calvinism, from Calvinism to Lutheranism, 
 or to any other religion which pleased them. Thus, in the 
 Palatinate, Frederic III. changed his subjects from Lutherans 
 to Calvinists, then gave them a catechism of his own inven- 
 tion, in 1562. At his death, in 1576, his son Louis re-esta- 
 blished Lutheranism; but, in 1582, another Frederic restored 
 to their dignity the dogmas of Calvin, and ordered submission 
 to the decisions of Dort under pain of banishment. 
 
 In the principality of Anhalt Dessau, John George sub- 
 stituted, in 1586, the Calvinistic worship for the Lutheran, 
 
 * For England, see Cobbett, Letters on the Reformation. Cam- 
 den, Annales, &c., 1571. For Sweden, the fact cited above (chap. 19) 
 proves that Gustavus Vasa always ruled the consciences of his subjects.
 
 SPIRITUAL DESPOTISM OF SOVEREIGNS. 125 
 
 and published, in 1597, a symbol, in twenty-eight articles, 
 obligatory under pain of exile. Prince John succeeded him, 
 and ordered, under the same penalty, a return to Lutheranism. 
 
 In Hesse Cassel, the Landgrave Maurice deposed the Lu- 
 theran ministers, gave their pulpits to the Calvinists, and im- 
 posed on the Hessians the Confession of Dort. 
 
 In Brandebourg, the Margrave, John Sigismund, in 1614, 
 abandoned for himself and followers the Lutheran doctrine, and 
 established Calvinism, with the ameliorations, however, furnish- 
 ed by the particular creed which he gave to his dear flock.* 
 
 But all these religious manifestations are thrown into the 
 shade by the achievement of evangelical amalgamation effected 
 in our own time by the King of Prussia, Frederic William III. 
 
 This prince, after the frosts of Russia had freed him from 
 the terrible conqueror who had made Berlin one of his plea- 
 sure houses, appeared to have but one idea that of abolishing 
 the Catholic Church in his states, and rebuilding on its ruins 
 the already decayed temple of Protestantism. His zeal was 
 only more inflamed by his various unsuccessful attempts to 
 range under the same standard the numerous and turbulent 
 families who had sprung from the bosom of reform. 
 
 From 1817 to 1834, when he gave the finishing touch to 
 his Evangelical Church of the Rhine, there issued from the 
 royal head a series of circulars, regulations, statutes, ordi- 
 nances, and edicts, which in volume would compare with the 
 complete works of Luther. But the most important docu- 
 ment is the Agenda or Ritual, issued in 182G, and regulating 
 the divine service of the new worship. A species of mass 
 was prescribed, with crucifix, candles, and incense, the chant- 
 ing of the Kyrie Eleison, with a kind of German Gloria, 
 Credo, Preface, Dominus vobiscum, Amen and Alleluia ; in a 
 word, it was, for the most part, a restoration of what had 
 hitherto been called the superstitions of the Romish Church. 
 
 * See Moehler, Symbolism, introd., p. 69, 70. 
 11*
 
 126 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 Yet, by a truly paternal attention, the doctrine of the real 
 presence of Jesus Christ in the supper was preserved to the 
 Lutherans ; and to the Calvinists, the doctrine of the mystical 
 presence was allowed ; so that the minister who administered 
 the supper must say to the Lutheran communicant: Receive 
 tliejlesh and blood of Jesus Christ, and to the Calvinist, placed 
 at his side : Receive the figure ofthejlesh and blood! 
 
 The little bell was found ; nothing was necessary but to 
 attach it to the neck of some thousand of ministers Luther- 
 ans, Calvinists, Prelates, Rationalists, and Super-rationalists, 
 &c. The difficulty did not intimidate Frederic William, 
 who, failing of theological arguments, had in reserve two 
 hundred thousand bayonets, and justly thought, that ministers 
 armed only with the Bible would be more tractable than the 
 soldiers of Napoleon. 
 
 The order was issued from Berlin, Feb. 28, 1834, to con- 
 form to the Agenda, and the troops marched against those 
 who made a show of resistance. Insubordinate ministers 
 were supplanted. Of two who alone dared to raise their voice, 
 one was imprisoned, and the other banished. The inhabitants 
 of the village of Oels, in Silesia, obstinately refused to open 
 their temples to the ministers of the new worship. A batta- 
 lion arrived, killed or wounded a score of rebels, and twelve 
 or fourteen bailiffs established in each family, soon forced 
 these brave people to confess the doctrinal infallibility of the 
 prince.* 
 
 Is anything more needed to show the frightful intellectual 
 degradation into which Protestantism has led its partisans ? 
 It is, however, from the ranks of this religion, which has in- 
 flicted upon twenty Christian nations injuries unknown to the 
 followers of Buddha, that professors of philosophy and history 
 
 * See with regard to these evangelical expeditions, the journals of 
 the period, especially the Universal Gazette, of Augsburg, Dec. 1S31; 
 Jan. 1S35.
 
 ACTUAL PROTESTANTISM. 
 
 have come forth, who, from the chairs of our universities have 
 dared Co cast upon Catholic nations the reproach of servility, 
 and claim for their king-worshipping sects the glory of having 
 enfranchised human thought. 
 
 In fact, there are men who wish to excel in impudence and 
 provoke contempt. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII. 
 
 THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED. ACTUAL PROTESTANTISM. 
 
 ENTHUSIASTIC SECTS. RATIONALISTS. SERVILITY 
 
 OF BOTH. 
 
 I AM aware of the efforts of the Protestant writers of our 
 day to free themselves from the responsibility of so much 
 meanness, and relieve their churches from the ignominy with 
 which they are invested by uncompromising history. 
 
 If we trust to them, Protestantism has nothing in common 
 with these contemptible parodies of Catholicism, so long 
 enacted, in despite of its fundamental principle, by men who 
 did not comprehend it, or who feigned not to do so. This 
 was, at most, only a purifying process, necessary to the 
 newly-born among the Papist impurities, which sullied his 
 cradle. Is it astonishing, that, bursting the narrow swaddling 
 clothes in which the Church had compressed him for fifteen 
 hundred years, three centuries were required to break his bonds 
 and overcome his profound lethargy ? Now that so many royal 
 hands have completely roused him, he will define for us the 
 idea which agitated him almost unconsciously, in the sixteenth 
 century. That idea was liberty of examination, opinion, and 
 worship ; it was the principle of liberty and individuality ap- 
 plied to the affairs of religion; it was irreconciledble hatred
 
 128 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 against all authority in religion ; it was the insurrection of 
 the human mind against absolute power in the spiritual order.* 
 
 Let us admit that Protestantism has not been comprehend- 
 ed, either by its authors or its partisans, and that, born blind, 
 it did not open its eyes until the nineteenth century ; still it 
 has always made a poor commencement, as far as concerns 
 independence, and, judging by the sports of its protracted 
 childhood, it will not make much progress. 
 
 It is not, however, on account of faithlessness to its funda- 
 mental principle of contempt and hatred of all religious au- 
 thority, that Protestantism has constantly found itself exposed 
 to the mercy of absurd visionaries, or popes reigning over the 
 conscience of men by the power of the sabre. This subjec- 
 tion is, on the contrary, the inevitable consequence of the 
 insurrection against the power established by God in the 
 spiritual order. 
 
 If we cast an intelligent glance over history, we shall, in 
 every part of it, read this law of eternal order : Whoever de- 
 spises legitimate authority will be punished with slavery; and 
 the more legitimate the authority, that is, marked with the 
 divine seal, the more complete and degrading will be the ser- 
 vitude. If you refuse to obey those whom God has chosen 
 for your parents, you will be lead as the blind, by fools, or 
 bound by executioners. The first slave of whom mention is 
 made in the first history was a rebellious son.f 
 
 In vain does man affect, in our day, that absolute indepen- 
 dence which is only granted to the wild ass of the desert.^ 
 The nineteenth century will see what all ages have seen, man 
 
 * See M. Vinet, Professor at Lausanne, Supplement to No. 129 of 
 the J\"arrateur Religieux. M. Guizot, Cours d'Histoire. Modernc, 
 Leon 12th. 
 
 t Maledictus Chanaan, servus servorum erit fratribus suis. (Genes, 
 ix. 25.) 
 
 % Vir vanus in superbiam erigitur, et tanquam pullum onagri se 
 liberum natum putat (Job xi. 12.)
 
 ACTUAL PROTESTANTISM. 129 
 
 panting under the debasing power of man, in proportion to 
 the efforts he makes to throw off the yoke of divine power. 
 
 Look more closely at Protestantism as it is, and it will not 
 be found less enslaved at the present day than it was for- 
 merly. Its fundamental principle of individualism in religious 
 matters destroying, as we have seen, the human foundation 
 of Christian faith, as the rational conviction that it is in pos- 
 session of the true doctrine of Jesus Christ, has placed inevi- 
 tably the human mind between the rationalism which excludes 
 all belief, and the blind faith which excludes all reason. 
 Thus, the innumerable fractions which it contains are all 
 arranged under two very distinct banners : on one side, en- 
 thusiastic believers, who still profess the divinity of Christ 
 and the Bible, such as the Pietists, in Germany, and the 
 Quakers and Methodists in England and the United States ; 
 on the other side, the Socinians, Latitudinarians, and Ra- 
 tionalists, who, denying or questioning the divine mission of 
 Christ, which is acknowledged in the Koran, are, in fact, less 
 Christian than the disciples of Mahomet. But, neither the 
 former in their faith, nor the latter in their unbelief, offer us 
 that high intellectual independence which the Reformation 
 boasts of having given to the world. 
 
 And, in the first place, does it become the ignorant and 
 blindly-guided disciples of Spener, Zinzendorf, George Fox, 
 and John Wesley, to boast of their freedom of thought they 
 who, rejecting every other light than that of divine inspira- 
 tion, have formally renounced the right of thinking in matters 
 of religion, and blindly follow the impulse of the visionaries 
 or impostors who direct them? 
 
 If we see the most numerous and active of these sectarians, 
 the Methodists, reproducing, with a rare intrepidity, in the pres- 
 ence of the nineteenth century, the long-banished dogmas of 
 Calvin, it is because no enthusiastic sect has ever possessed, 
 in the same degree, the art of suppressing reason and exciting
 
 130 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 the brain. It might be said, that the genius who gave to the 
 Romans the idea of the legion, has revealed to the children 
 of Wesley the magnetic power of the Revival.* What ad- 
 mirable innocence is that of the little flock to whom the min- 
 ister, when he has forgotten the hour for preaching, can uncere- 
 moniously say : " Be not surprised at my delay, my brethren ; 
 I have just had a conversation with Christ on the vine!"f 
 
 Is it among the large class of indifferent persons and 
 ministers who wish no longer to speak of dogmas, in 
 any form, that we shall find the free-thinkers of the Refor- 
 mation ? 
 
 * Let us see the operation of the Revival or regeneration in the 
 United States, where the Methodists enjoy almost unbounded liberty. 
 " They establish, during fine summer weather, a camp meeting, assem- 
 bling in the forest to the number of two or three thousand, without 
 counting spectators. They make huts of the branches of trees, the 
 whole of which forms a vast circular inclosure. There, elevated on a 
 platform, preachers, with stentorian voice, address the multitude in 
 turn for five or six days, from five to ten o'clock in the morning, and 
 from sunset to near midnight; and what do they preach ? Hell, with 
 frightful pictures of darkness, flames, and demons. The women have 
 nervous attacks ; the men have them too, or profess to have them. 
 Both roll on the ground of the inclosure. The preachers and their as- 
 sistants hasten to the spot: It is the coming of the Holy Spirit, they 
 cry, howling into the ears of these maniacs. They turn them over, 
 they move them from place to place, whilst the male and female pa- 
 tients, the last always the most numerous, send forth convulsive sobs, 
 utter groans and inarticulate cries. The scene becomes more and more 
 animated; the spectators have soon before their eyes only a horrible 
 confusion of arms,- legs, and heads, beating pell-mell against the 
 ground. This is termed receiving the spirit. But what spirit ? What 
 takes place in the tents by lamp-light or even sun-light cannot be de- 
 scribed." (Mcs Doutcs, torn. ii. p. 19.) 
 
 f This is the excellent excuse which M. Malan, pastor of the Gene- 
 vese Methodists, gave to his audience, one day when he had kept them 
 waiting more than half-an-hour. (See Voyage pittoresqite, historiqne 
 ct lillcraire de Geneve, by M. Lalande, ch. xxxiii. Jlmi de la Re- 
 ligion, Feb. 4th, 1S43.)
 
 ACTUAL PROTESTANTISM. 131 
 
 As I have previously shown, nothing degrades and para- 
 lyzes the intellect more than indifference and unbelief.* If 
 there is a fact proved to the conscientious observer, it is that 
 unbelievers are all on trust so, and reject Christian creeds 
 through pure credulity. Who among them could say, without 
 violating his conscience : No one has taught me to disbe- 
 lieve; if I despise all religions, it is because the profound 
 study I have made of them has revealed to me their falseness. 
 
 Are not these two principles, which are at the foundation 
 of Protestant unbelief and philosophic incredulity that every 
 one is a judge, in a last appeal, of the Bible ; that every one 
 must admit only that of which his reason clearly forms an 
 idea articles of faith adopted confidently on the word of 
 Luther, Socinus, or Jean Jacques ? Could axioms so prolific 
 of absurdities, even when not considered in themselves or in 
 their applications, be the fruit of an independent and consi- 
 derate reasoning? 
 
 Either the unbeliever is lulled into indifference while he 
 renounces the knowledge of moral truth, or what is he? 
 His soul, a stranger to the sublime realities of the invisible 
 order, of which, however, it makes a part, is transferred 
 into the service of the vile appetites of the body: it is a 
 grain of salt which the hand of the Creator has mingled with 
 a mass of flesh to prevent it from corrupting.- If, on the 
 contrary, the unbeliever seeks the immoveable rock of truth 
 in the deep void of his individual thought, will he do more 
 than exhaust himself in the pursuit of phantoms, and revolve 
 forever in the circle of human dreams ? 
 
 Let us finish with one fact, which confirms what we have 
 said of the servile tendencies of Protestantism. It has put in 
 circulation those two principles, unknown to antiquity: an 
 honest man never changes his religion. We must live and die 
 in the religion of our fathers. Absurd propositions, which 
 * See 1st Problem, ch. 4th, 53.
 
 132 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 betray an extreme incapacity for reflection or a disgusting 
 servility. 
 
 Indeed, what does this signify ? That an honest man must 
 be either so stupid as never to perceive the falseness of the 
 religion in which he has had the misfortune to be born, or so 
 hypocritical as to conceal his religious convictions, and sport, 
 even to death, with God, his conscience, and his fellow-men. 
 What more can be said ? That, if it pleased our fathers to 
 adore a cat, after the manner of the Egyptians, and to eat 
 men in honor of the gods, as the Anthropophagi of the South 
 Sea, we must live and die like them, adorers of cats and de- 
 vourers of men. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 
 ADVANTAGES OF THE CATHOLIC METHOD. RELIGIOUS 
 
 EQUALITY AND UNITY. CONCLUSION. 
 
 EVERY one must now see the truth of what I have already 
 advanced that the Catholic system is the only one in which 
 there exists, in principle and practice, true independence of 
 conscience and of thought. 
 
 There alone reigns perfect freedom of mind, which docs 
 not consist, indeed, in rejecting religious authority, as the 
 Protestants, who, depriving themselves of every means of ar- 
 riving with certainty at religious truth, introduce moral sui- 
 cide ; but, in freeing one's self from the darkness of error and 
 from the endless fluctuations of human opinion, by the certain 
 possession of divine truth.* 
 
 It is only there that true intellectual force prevails ; for the 
 intellect is only strong through the truths which she possesses, 
 * Veritas liberabit vos. (John viii. 32.)
 
 RELIGIOUS EQUALITY AND UNITY. 133 
 
 and her steps in the intellectual world are only falls, or idle 
 groping, whenever she departs from the landmarks planted 
 by Christ. 
 
 There human thought alone becomes immeasurably en- 
 nobled and elevated by its union with the divine thought, 
 whilst everywhere else it creeps on the earth, and is dragged 
 along by man. The Catholic believes in God alone; he 
 knows that the divine word, entrusted to the Universal Church, 
 can neither be lost nor sullied in passing through the human 
 mouth which transmits it. 
 
 There alone is found true equality, minds enlightened by 
 the same knowledge, and wills restrained by the same duties. 
 Governing and governed, pontiffs and people, the highest 
 genius and the lowest intellect, descend to the same level, or 
 rather rise on the wings of faith, to the height of the same 
 conceptions. In the order of necessary truths, Bossuet and 
 Fenelon know nothing which a peasant boy of twelve years 
 old does not know as well as they. Each knows enough to 
 guide himself, no one enough to elevate him above his breth- 
 ren. An admirable and divine system, where the learned 
 man is obliged to humiliate himself to the simplicity of the 
 child, and the child is elevated to the wisdom of the learned, 
 that all may respect and love each other as the children and 
 disciples of the same Father and the same Master. 
 
 On the other hand, reward pride, as Protestantism does, by 
 proportioning religious knowledge to the intellectual power 
 of each individual, you consecrate intellectual inequality in 
 religion, and inequality on this point will sanctify all other 
 kinds of inequality ; for it is intellectual power which classes 
 men and governs the world. But this consideration belongs 
 more properly elsewhere. 
 
 Finally, in Catholicism alone is found the divine character 
 of unity. Let us allow an eloquent controversialist to cele- 
 brate " that sacred union which connects men not only so 
 
 VOL. it. 12
 
 134 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 far as to make them citizens of the same society, but mem- 
 members of a mystic body, not collected together by the sen- 
 timent of mutual wants, not united by the ties of blood and 
 of kindred or by temporary interests, but joined, or if I may 
 so say, blended in the adoration of Him be} r ond whom human 
 thought cannot ascend ; meeting in these high moral and 
 intellectual regions, iu the warm atmosphere of chanty, and 
 laboring in common, not to increase the wealth and power 
 of the common societ\', but to enrich and adorn it with new 
 virtues ; still more, resisting nothing but their passions, hating 
 nothing but vice, and walking as belongs to intelligent chil- 
 dren, not with their eyes cast down upon the miserable goods 
 of earth, but fixed on Heaven ! 
 
 " Reflect again upon the incontestable superiority of this 
 influence over all the influences which can contribute to the 
 union of men. Religious unity, in fact, soaring in a sphere 
 superior to those partial sympathies in laws, customs and in- 
 terests, which only act for a limited time and in a limited 
 circle, is neither circumscribed by rivers nor mountains; it 
 traverses the vast extent of seas to place in the mouth of 
 nations, the most unlike and the most distant from each other, 
 the same hymn of praise ; in their mind the same symbol of 
 faith, in their heart the same sentiment of charity; every- 
 where teaching the same doctrine, and announcing by the 
 thousand voices of its ministers the same truth, it prostrates 
 vast multitudes before the same altar; each of those souls 
 whom it unites on all points of the globe, in a holy commu- 
 nity of prayer and love, is, as it were, suspended by one of 
 those innumerable golden chains which all meet and join in 
 the hand of God, that intellectual Sun : as the rays of the 
 material sun diffused through space, all meet at that centre 
 <?>f fire which we see sparkling above our heads." * 
 
 Compare with this vast society, whose members, scattered 
 * Wiseman, Lectures, &c., vol. i., p. 206.
 
 SACRAMENTS. 135 
 
 over the face of the earth, have all but one creed, one altar, 
 one voice, the reformed Churches with their thousand creeds 
 and thousand discordant voices, and of whom according to 
 Tertullian, schism constitutes the unity;* then, with your 
 hand upon your heart, ask yourself, on which side are found 
 the children of truth and love, and on which side the victims 
 of error and pride. 
 
 I think it has been sufficiently demonstrated, that the Catho- 
 lic system, reconciling the respective claims of divine and 
 human reason, is the only one which can unite our thought 
 to the thought of God, and place us in the situation to render 
 to the supreme intelligence the homage of a faith immove- 
 able in its foundation, and enlightened and rational in its 
 motives. 
 
 Let us now see if this system so adapted to give stability 
 to the understanding has equal power to warm and elevate 
 the heart. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV. 
 
 CHRISTIAN DEIFICATION OF MAN. GRACE. ITS DEFIN- 
 ITION, ITS NECESSITY. SACRAMENTS. 
 
 THE aim proposed to man by Jesus Christ, is indeed 
 placed at an alarming elevation. Be you, therefore, perfect 
 as also your heavenly Father is perfect.^ 
 
 This is progress, without doubt, upon the most gigantic 
 scale ; but it is also the evident tendency of humanity. 
 When the father of lies said to Eve : You shall be as 
 
 * Quibus schisma unitas est. De Prescript., 42. 
 t Matth. v. 48.
 
 136 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 Gods* he only touched the strongest fibre of the human 
 heart. 
 
 Man having left God desires to return to God; and if he 
 is ignorant of the true means of deifying himself he will over- 
 throw the political and intellectual world to exalt himself into 
 a divinity. Behold, here, the haughty conqueror who says to 
 a hundred subject people : " Adore me, for I am God."| 
 There, see the proud philosopher who, not being able to arro- 
 gate divine honors exclusively to himself, deifies humanity in 
 the mass, and exclaims: We are all God. 
 
 The Divine restorer of fallen man must then open to us 
 the true road which leads from the degradation of the carnal 
 life to the height of the spiritual and divine life ; but how are 
 we to be induced to walk in it ? 
 
 If it is easy for the mind to ascend to God on the wings of 
 faith, it is not so with the heart, that weak and low and lan- 
 guid portion of the human being. Who can lift it to heaven, 
 the heart, which never rises above the earth except to soar 
 into space upon the capricious breath of pride ! To inflame 
 the heart with Divine love, to regulate its affections and 
 desires according to the affections and good pleasure of God. 
 is the achievement of grace. 
 
 * Genes, iii. 5. 
 
 t Napoleon, who sometimes forgot in the intoxication of power, as 
 he afterward avowed, that he was a Christian, often appeared to regret 
 the time when princes had absolute power over the mind and body. He 
 said one day to the grand-master of the University : " I was not born 
 in my right time, Monsieur de Fontanes : see Alexander the Great ; he 
 could call himself the son of Jupiter, without contradiction. As for 
 me, in this age I find a priest more powerful than I, for he reigns over 
 souls, and I reign only over matter." {Histoire tie Pie VII., by M. 
 Arland, ch. xxix.) In this the reflective man finds an excellent demon- 
 stration of the following truth : Without one sole head, invested with 
 the supreme spiritual power, and independent of political powir, 
 Eur;>pe jiould still be Pagan, or would at once infallibly become so.
 
 SACRAMENTS. 137 
 
 But what is grace ? will the man ask, who has never 
 availed himself of it. Let us speak to this son of earth in 
 a language which he can understand. " Have you never 
 experienced," I would say to him, " the inexplicable but very 
 real power of the graces of this world ? Has your heart 
 never pursued the enchanting vision of glory through the 
 field of battle, or the difficult parts of science ? Has it never 
 taken wing to follow some earthly beauty? And is it not 
 true that while you have been under the spell, the labors of 
 Hercules have seemed to you less fabulous ? In this, behold 
 what the Christian soul experiences, only in a higher degree, 
 when rising by reflection and prayer above the sphere of the 
 body, a ray of infinite beauty appears to him and enkindles 
 in his heart the flame of love ; when contemplating the mag- 
 nificent crowns and the eternal triumph of the conquerors of 
 hell, of the flesh and the world, he feels the beating of his 
 heart and cries with a noble ambition : And I also, I wish 
 to become a hero of eternity, a saint ! Is it possible that the 
 infinite centre of all beauty, of all greatness, should be with- 
 out its influence over the human heart, when we see this heart 
 so often yielding to the attractions of inferior charms and 
 more empty greatness." 
 
 Divine grace, then, is the attraction which the sublime reali- 
 ties of the invisible world exercise over the mind and will of 
 man ; an attraction no more mysterious and no less real than 
 that which wheels the planets around their centre, with this 
 difference that the one is involuntary and the other free. 
 
 Grace is, if I may so express it, the accompaniment of 
 revelation. The latter is the action of God upon the under- 
 standing, enlightening it, and teaching it what we should 
 believe and practise : the former is the action of God upon 
 the heart to quicken it and accustom it to the practice of 
 virtue. 
 
 If revelation is the voice of our Heavenly Father who 
 12*
 
 138 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 stoops to our ear and says to us : " What are you doing on 
 the earth, my children ? behold this beautiful Heaven where 
 I have prepared you a throne!" Grace is the paternal hand 
 of the Father which grasps ours while he says to us : " Cou- 
 rage, my children ! if the path to heaven is rough, I will 
 sustain your steps." 
 
 Now, as the Divine thought, in order to penetrate our intel- 
 lect, which is veiled in a gross body, must assume the sensible 
 form of external speech, so grace in order to reach the heart 
 must, in some way, incarnate itself. Hence the sacraments, 
 which are according to the Catholic doctrine, the sensible and 
 productive signs of grace. 
 
 It is into this Christian method of cure, by which the hea- 
 venly physician has prepared divine cordials for the soul, that 
 we are about to enter. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXV. 
 
 FOUNDATION OF THE CATHOLIC THEORY OF JUSTIFICATION. 
 FALL OF MATS'. KEDEMPTIOX HOW IT IS APPLIED TO US. 
 
 To form a just idea of the Catholic theory concerning 
 the sacraments and the justification of man, we must go 
 back to the great principles of Christian philosophy of which 
 this theory is only the application. 
 
 God, because He is He who is, and by whom all things 
 are,* can love nothing except in Himself and by relation to 
 Himself. All being, all perfection existing in Him and by 
 Him, what could He love beyond Himself and His works ? 
 Nothing has nothing worthy of love. 
 
 God loves himself infinitely in his Word, in which he sees 
 * Exod. iii. 14.
 
 CATHOLIC THEORY OF JUSTIFICATION. 139 
 
 the perfect and substantial image of his own perfections ; 
 it is also in his Word that he contemplates with love his 
 creatures, for it is by it that he has drawn from nothing 
 all ihat is in Heaven and on the earth, things visible and 
 invisible, &c. ; * but he only loves these beings in proportion 
 to the resemblance which they bear to himself, that is, through 
 their conformity to the Word. None among them will find 
 favor in his sight and will enter into his glory, except the 
 Heavenly Father sees in him the image of the beloved Son 
 in whom alone he is well pleased, f It is in this sense that 
 the Word, although it be the only and eternal Son of the 
 Father, is so often called the first born of all creatures, the 
 representative, the archetype, the head of the vast family 
 of creatures.J 
 
 Wo, then, to the creature, who, abusing his liberty, wan- 
 ders from the way traced out for him by the Word, in which 
 to complete the divine image ! This did the rebel angel. 
 This did also man, at the instigation of the fallen angel. 
 
 Adam, by his rebellion, threw off the divine character of 
 the child of God, and became justly the slave of the rebel, 
 whose will he obeyed, in contempt of the divine will. He 
 transmitted to his children the human nature which he fright- 
 fully degraded ; he transmitted it to his children ; and these 
 are all born children of v:rath. Why? Because they are 
 all jlcsh ;|j because crime has changed the noble instincts 
 which God gave to innocent man, into the vile and brutal 
 
 * Qui cum sit splendor gloriae, et figura substanties ejus, portansque 
 omnia verbo virtutis suae. (Hebr. i. 3.) Qui est imago Dei invisibi- 
 lis, &c. (Coloss. i. 13.) 
 
 f Ques prsescivit et pracdestinavit conformes fieri imaginis Filii sui, 
 &c. (Rom. viii. 29.) 
 
 \ Primogenitus omnis creaturse . . . Ipse est ante omnes, et omnia 
 in ipso constant, &c. (Coloss. i. 16, et seq.) 
 
 Ephes. ii. 3. See 1st Problem, ch. xxii. 
 
 H Genes, vi. 3.
 
 140 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 appetites which too often sink him beneath the brute. Do 
 not expect that heaven will ever open its gates to this de- 
 graded being, nor that the Most High will seat him upon his 
 throne. Has he, then, who so passionately clings to earth, 
 the least thought of heaven ? Certainly not ; flesh and blood 
 can never possess the kingdom of God.* 
 
 Divine justice required the death of man. Mercy pleaded 
 for his pardon. The Word reconciles these opposite claims. 
 With a devotion which captivates the adoration and love of 
 angels and of men, He who by his divine nature is equal to 
 the Father, condescends to take upon himself the human na- 
 ture, the degraded nature of Adam, without the sin which is 
 humanly inseparable from it. We have seen how the whole 
 force of divine justice fell upon the soul and body of the great 
 Victim.f He was bruised for our sins, according to the ex- 
 pression of the prophet,! and the body which the God-Man 
 held from Adam by his mother, nailed to the infamous wood, 
 shed from its veins the last drop of a blood, pure, it is true, but 
 proscribed by love, and abandoned to the celestial vengeance. 
 Humanity, purified and renewed by this blood, comes forth 
 triumphant from the tomb, where it must descend in order to 
 fulfil the divine decree : Thou shall die, and return to the dust ; 
 and soon it will go to seat itself at the right hand of the Father. 
 
 Humanity is saved ! But, how are men to be saved ? A 
 question which will seem minute to our pantheistic thinkers, 
 who are occupied very much with the general, and not at all 
 with the particular. Of what importance is it to them if we 
 all should disappear under the bloody car of humanitary re- 
 volutions, provided that humanity advances ? This question, 
 however, has pre-occupied the mind of Christ ; for he became 
 man, and delivered himself up to death, only to save every 
 individual of the human family. 
 
 * I. Cor. xv. 50. t See 1st Problem, ch. xxx. 
 
 f Isa. liii. 5. Rom. viii. 32. Ephes. v. 2.
 
 CATHOLIC THEORY OF JUSTIFICATION. 141 
 
 How can man, then, participate here below in the justice 
 and sanctity of Jesus Christ, an indispensable condition for 
 sharing, at a future time, his glory?* It is by reproducing 
 in himself the life of Jesus Christ ; that is to say, by putting 
 aside the old man, and his corrupt inclinations ; by the cruci- 
 fixion of the flesh and its appetites ; and incorporating himself 
 with the new man, by a life of holiness and justice-^ 
 
 It is in this moral transubstantiation, which transforms the 
 corrupt child of Adam into a member of the body of Christ, liv- 
 ing by his spirit, that the work of the regeneration and sanctifi- 
 cation of man consists ; the united work of divine activity oper- 
 ating through grace, and of human activity, which excited and 
 strengthened by grace, freely co-operates with the divine action. 
 
 It is to effect, maintain, and perfect this intimate union of 
 man with Jesus Christ, that the evangelical ministry exclu- 
 sively conspires, that all the powers concur, and all the in- 
 stitutions bequeathed by the Savior to his Church, but, above 
 all, the sacraments. 
 
 Let us cast a rapid glance over what I shall call the dyna- 
 mics of Catholicism, and admire the efficacy of its means for 
 uniting souls to their divine Head, and lifting them to heaven. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI. 
 
 A GLANCE AT THE SACRAMENTS. PURGATORY. PRAYERS 
 
 FOR THE DEAD. WORSHIP OF SAINTS. 
 
 To regenerate man, it is necessary, in the first place, to 
 efface the odious character of a rebellious child, the slave of 
 
 * Rom. viii. 17. 
 
 ( Deponere . . . veterem hominem qui corrumpitur secundum desi- 
 deria erroris . . . et induite novum hominem, &c. (Ephes. iv. 22,24.) 
 Qui autem Christi sunt, carnem suam crucifixerunt cum vitiis et con- 
 cupiscentiis. (Galat. v. 24.)
 
 142 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 Satan, and impress upon him (he divine traits of him who has 
 saved us by obedience. As we bring into being the image of- 
 the terrestrial man, we must, as the apostle says,* take at the 
 new birth the resemblance of the celestial man. Such is the 
 effect of baptism, in which the soul casts off the sullied image 
 of Adam, and clothes itself with Jesus Christ, f 
 
 If it is an adult, before the baptism he must be instructed, 
 open his mind to the light of the Gospel, and unite his thought 
 to that of Jesus Christ by the tie of faith.J He must open 
 his heart to penitence, detest his sins, and renounce them for 
 ever. By this breaking of the heart, which is called contri- 
 tion, the catechumen is united to Jesus crucified ; he dies 
 afterwards with him, and descends into the tomb, which was 
 typified by the immersion formerly employed in baptism. 
 The Holy Spirit, hovering over the baptismal waters, as in 
 the first days of creation over the waters of chaos, to im- 
 pregnate them, completes the destruction of the old man, and 
 communicates to this mystic dead body the life of the new 
 Adam, bathing the soul in the blood of Jesus Christ, at the 
 same time that the body is baptized with it.|| The neophyte 
 comes forth from the sacred font, radiant in innocence ; hea- 
 ven opens over his head, and his heavenly Father says to the 
 angels: "Here is my child, the living image of my well- 
 
 * Sicut portavimus imaginem terreni, portemus et imaginem crelestis. 
 (I. Cor. xv. 49.) 
 
 f Quicumque enim in christo baptizati, estis, christum induisti. 
 (Galat. iii. 27.) 
 
 f The regeneration of the child presented at the sacred font is the 
 exclusive operation of the Holy Spirit and the Church. Lost by an 
 act independent of his will, why should he not be saved in the same 
 manner ? 
 
 Spiritus dei ferebatur super aquas. (Genes, i. 1.) 
 
 || St. Paul often reveals in his Epistles the deep significance of the 
 baptismal rite. An ignoratis quia quicumque baptizati sumus in 
 Christo-Jesu in Morte ipsius baptizati sumus ? Consepulti enim sumus 
 cum illo per baptismum in mortem, &c. (Rom. vi. 3 et seq.)
 
 WORSHIP OF SAINTS. 143 
 
 beloved Son ! Watch over him with love along the road that 
 lends him to his destined throne." * 
 
 The new-born soul enters upon the arena of the world, 
 where it must choose between the arduous victories which 
 hoaven crowns, and the cowardly defeats which lead to eter- 
 nal servitude. Feeble as we always are at the entrance upon 
 life, surrounded by the thousand dangers which besiege in- 
 fancy and make so many their victims, the principle of divine 
 life, which he has received in baptism, must be unfolded, ex- 
 panded, and strengthened. 
 
 This vital principle is the spirit of Jesus Christ, communi- 
 cated more abundantly by the imposition of hands of the 
 priest, and the unction of the holy chrism. That spirit, ac- 
 cording to the promise of Jesus Christ, guards the spirit of 
 the young Christian from all error, by teaching him all truth, \ 
 and strengthens his heart against the assaults of vice by un- 
 folding in it the germ of all the virtues. 
 
 Such is the Sacrament of Confirmation, the effect of which 
 is to strengthen in the faith, and to make the perfect Christian 
 a sacrament which realizes the promise of Jesus Christ, to 
 give his disciples the Spirit, the Comforter a promise which 
 St. Peter understands as extended to all Christians J a sac- 
 rament which we find the Apostles administering after bap- 
 tism, and which St. Paul very distinctly mentions.^ 
 
 The permanent union of the Christian with Jesus Christ is 
 especially cemented and elevated to its highest perfection, by 
 the eucharistic bread, that centre of spiritual light and heat. 
 There the Author of life himself, entering in person into our 
 souls, unites himself as closely to them by love, as he is united 
 by nature to the divine persons. He that ealeth myjlesli, and 
 drinketh my blood, abideth in me, and I in him. . . . As 1 
 live by the Father, so he that eatelh me lives by me.\\ 
 
 * Matth. iii. ult. Ps. xc. 11. f John xvi. 13. J Act Ap. ii. 38. 
 Ibid. viii. 17. xix. 6. II. Cor. i. 21. || John vi. 57.
 
 144 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 Are these various ties \vliich connect the Christian soul 
 \vith (!ud, destroyed by tlie slow or sudden eruption of the 
 never wholly extinguished fires of concupiscence? and does 
 the soldier of Christ, invulnerable while united to his Chief, 
 receive a mortal wound from the assaults of his passions? 
 See him pierced with grief and shame at the feet of the spiri- 
 tual physician, to whom Christ has given the power to cure 
 all the infirmities, and heal all the wounds of the soul. The 
 "lying gladiator, re-animated by divine strength, rises at these 
 consoling words: " Go, my l)rother, in peace, and repair this 
 defeat by new triumphs." This is the Sacrament of Penance, 
 instituted for the remission of sins committed after baptism ; 
 a difficult baptism, according to the Holy Fathers ; a plank 
 of safely offered to the shipwrecked, a very necessary plank ; 
 for who has been able to traverse the sea of the world with- 
 out suffering shipwreck from the sudden whirlwind of the 
 passions ! 
 
 Our Christian arrives at an age when he is to choose the 
 companion of his life, the angel to whom he will offer his 
 hand for the journey towards the eternal country at the head 
 of a more or less numerous family. Religion presides with 
 maternal solicitude, over this act, so often decisive for the 
 temporal and eternal life. It is in his Heavenly Father's house 
 that it is celebrated, far from those passions which would not 
 fail to break the tie which they themselves had formed. This 
 is the sacrament of marriage destined to sanctify the legiti- 
 mate union of man and woman ; a sacrament truly great in 
 Christ and in the Church, as St. Paul expresses it.* 
 
 Does the young Christian, instead of dividing his heart by 
 
 uniting himself to a wife,f feel moved to consecrate it entire 
 
 to the Lord and to the spiritual good of his brethren ; docs 
 
 \e hear a celestial voice which says to him : Leave all and 
 
 follow after me ; I will make tJiec a jisher of men ? J After 
 
 * Ephes. v. 32. f I- Cor - vii - 33 t Matth. iv. 10.
 
 WORSHIP OF SAINTS. 145 
 
 long conflicts and slow and measured steps towards the high 
 places of the sanctuary, behold him ready to ascend the last 
 steps of the altar. The Pontiff surrounded with his priests, 
 covers with his hands the head of the Levite and invokes the 
 treasures of the Holy Spirit, the sanctifier, on this new dis- 
 penser of the Divine mysteries, and by Holy unction he pre- 
 pares his hands for the battles of our Lord. This is the 
 Sacrament of Ordination, which confers the power of filling 
 the ecclesiastical functions, and the grace to exercise them in 
 a holy manner. 
 
 Finally, whether priest or simple believer, the Christian 
 approaches the end of his career, and confined to the bed of 
 pain, he hears already the footsteps of the inexorable judge 
 who leaves no fault without its punishment. On the other 
 hand, Satan seeing the end of the combat approaching, sum- 
 mon's the infernal legions, and profiting by the decay of 
 nature, assails him furiously. What is to be done ? Let the 
 priests be summoned, said the Apostle St. James, and let them 
 pray over the sick man, anointing him with oil in the name of 
 the Lord ; and the prayer of faith shall save the sick man, 
 and the Lord shall raise him up, and if he be in sins they 
 shall be forgiven him.* This is what the Church does in 
 the Sacrament of Extreme Unction, established for the spi- 
 ritual and corporal consolation of the sick. 
 
 This last purification terminated, the Church confidently 
 says to her child : " Go forth, Christian soul ! " 
 
 Death which dissolves the ties of flesh and blood, respects 
 those of Catholic charity and seems even to bind them more 
 closely. The Church believes and teaches, according to the 
 tradition of all time, which is perfectly conformable to Scrip- 
 ture and the light of reason, that beyond this world, between 
 the frightful abyss into which impenitent crime descends for- 
 ever, and the happy abode open to souls without stain, there 
 * James v. 14, 15. 
 
 VOL. II. 13
 
 146 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 exists a place of temporary suffering, where, according to the 
 words of Jesus Christ, Divine justice demands even to the 
 last farthing its dues for faults committed in the journey 
 through life.* 
 
 The Church also believes and teaches, according to the 
 doctrine of the transfer of merits and penalties, upon which 
 all Christianity rests, that the prayers, sacrifices and good 
 works of the living may propitiate God in favor of the vic- 
 tims of purgatory, and abridge their sufferings. Thus has 
 this tender mother given a large space to the dead in her 
 Liturgy : by recalling them incessantly to the remembrance 
 of her children, she at the same time engages these last to 
 extend their charity beyond the tomb, and keep themselves 
 from the least taint of sin. 
 
 The only departed ones for whom the Catholic does not 
 pray, but whose powerful intercession, on the contrary he 
 invokes, are those heroic souls whom the voice of the people, 
 confirmed by the miraculous voice of heaven has determined 
 the Church, after rigid formalities, to propose to the venera- 
 tion, invocation, and holy emulation of her children. 
 
 This magnificent system of restoration, of which I have 
 given only a very incomplete sketch, Protestantism has dis- 
 owned and almost entirely destroyed. Her sacrilegious attacks 
 are principally directed against the adorable Eucharist, the 
 Sacrament of Penance, Ordination and the Worship of the 
 Saints. Let us vindicate these admirable institutions from 
 the brutalities of ignorance. But first we must say a few 
 words concerning the primitive theories of Protestantism 
 concerning sin, justification and the sacraments. 
 
 * Matth. v. 25.
 
 THE SACRAMENTS. 147 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVII. 
 
 THEORY OF THE FIRST REFORMERS CONCERNING SIN. JUS- 
 TIFICATION. GOOD WORKS. THE SACRAMENTS. 
 
 ORIGINAL sin, which the Catholic Church attributes to the 
 voluntary weakness of man and the artifice of the seducer, 
 Luther, Zwingle and Calvin had the temerity to attribute to 
 the will of the thrice Holy God. 
 
 Frequently in his book on Free Will and in many other 
 productions, the evangelist of Wittemberg declaims against 
 moral liberty as a human invention cherishing self-love ; and 
 he attempts to establish Christian humility upon that princi- 
 ple of fatalism, that God "by an immutable, eternal and 
 infallible will regulates, plans and does all things," that, pas- 
 sive instruments of this sovereign will, " all that we do, it is 
 not freely, but by pure necessity that we do it."* 
 
 The mild and gentle Melancthon at first very warmly sus- 
 tained this oracle of the fiery apostle, and inveighed against 
 the Catholic theologians whom he accused of having borrowed 
 from philosophy and imported into Christianity the impious 
 doctrine of liberty, a doctrine absolutely opposed to Scripture. 
 It is also, to the philosophy of Plato, according to him that 
 we are indebted for the equally pernicious word, reason.^ 
 
 Zwingle, in his brutal book On Providence, repeats at 
 every page that God leads and forces man into evil ; that he 
 makes use of the creature to produce injustice, and that 
 jet he does not sin ; for the law which makes an act sinful 
 does not exist for God, and moreover he always acts from 
 right and supremely holy intentions. The creature, on the 
 contrary, although acting involuntarily under the Divine 
 
 * De Servo arbit. opp. ed. Jen. vol. iii. p. 170, 177. 
 t Loc. Theol. ed Aug. 1821. p. 10.
 
 148 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 guidance sins because he violates the law and acts from 
 damnable motives.* 
 
 As to Calvin, it is well known, that as a consequence of 
 his favorite dogma of absolute predestination, by which 
 God from all eternity has irrevocably devoted some to good- 
 ness and eternal happiness, and others to evil and eternal 
 misery, has filled his Christian Institutes with such beautiful 
 assertions as the following, that, for reasons incomprehensi- 
 ble to our ignorance, God irresistibly impels man to violate his 
 laws, that his inspirations turn to evil the heart of the wicked, 
 that man falls, because God has thus ordered it. 
 
 The mellifluous Theodore of Beza, second Pope of the 
 Genevese Church, goes farther still, and wishing to explain 
 absolute predestination, which Calvin had taught as an incon- 
 trovertible but profoundly mysterious dogma, he boldly affirms 
 that God has created the largest portion of men only with 
 the object of making use of them to do evil ; and then gives 
 as a reason for it, that God, in the creation of the universe, 
 designed to manifest his justice and his mercy; but how 
 could this end be attained with creatures who remaining 
 innocent, would need no pardon, nor merit any punishment ! 
 God then ordains that they should sin ; he saves some, and 
 here his compassion is seen ; he condemns others, and behold 
 his justice. The end that God proposes to himself is evi- 
 dently just and holy ; consequently the means must be the 
 same.f 
 
 According to such a system what is the action of justifica- 
 tion and spiritual regeneration except a mechanical movement 
 of man under the irresistible influence of God? and what 
 must be the effect of this movement of conversion ? is it as 
 has hitherto been believed casting off the degradation of sin, 
 
 * De Providentia, opp.vol. i. p. 355. See Moehler,Si/mZic/wm vol. i. ch.i. 
 t Abaters, Calumn Heshus, Adv. Calvin. Moehler, Symbolism vol. 
 i. p. 35.
 
 THE SACRAMENTS. 149 
 
 freeing oneself from the tyranny of passion, and the corrupt 
 love of creatures, and following in the footsteps of Jesus 
 Christ and in the way of his commandments ? Not so ; that 
 would have been, according to the Reformers, to make man 
 the author of his justice, and bring to naught the merits of 
 Jesus Christ, by the power of which alone we are justified. 
 The justice which renders us holy and agreeable to God is 
 not in us, but out of us ; it is the justice of Jesus Christ 
 which is imputed to us, and which, leaving the soul still sul- 
 lied, covers it as with a mantle. God closes his eyes upon 
 our inward condition, that vile receptacle where all the vices 
 rage to rest them with complacency upon his Son, who 
 extends the veil of his merits over this frightful sink of 
 corruption. 
 
 But how can the sinner shelter himself under this Divine 
 mantle ? By faith, and faith alone, answer the Reformers. 
 It must be observed, however, that this justifying faith is not 
 what is commonly understood by faith, belief in revealed 
 truths ; but it is the certain faith that we are just and holy. 
 " The sinner," says Luther, " must believe in his justifica- 
 tion with the same faith with which he believes that Jesus 
 Christ came into the world . . . Cursed be he who does no. 
 place himself among the number of the saints ! Believe, and 
 henceforth you are as holy as St. Peter."* 
 
 But, what become of good works, the practice of virtue, 
 and the observance of the divine commandments, the only 
 way, according to Jesus Christ, which leads to life ?f These 
 are troublesome superfluities, of which Christian liberty must 
 rid us. Rather, according to Luther, they are invincible ob- 
 stacles to salvation, if one places the least reliance upon 
 them. " Faith alone," said he, " is necessary for our justifi- 
 cation : nothing else is commanded or forbidden. Do not say 
 that God will punish sin. The law, in truth, says so ; but 
 * Opp. vol. i. prop. 15, IS. f Matth. xix. 17. 
 
 13*
 
 150 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 what have I to do with the law ? I am free. . . . There is 
 only one unpardonable sin, unbelief. . . . The way to heaven 
 is narrow," adds the sacrilegious jester ; " if you wish to pass 
 through it, throw away your good works." * 
 
 " Those pious souls," he says farther, " who do good to 
 gain the kingdom of heaven, not only will never succeed, but 
 they must even be reckoned among the impious ; and it is 
 more important to guard them against good works than 
 against sin." f 
 
 " Be a sinner, and sin boldly," he writes to a friend, from 
 the Patmos of Wartburg ; " but, believe yet more boldly, 
 and rejoice in Jesus Christ, the conqueror of sin, of death, 
 and the world. We must sin so long as we are here below. 
 This life is not the abode of justice. It is sufficient that, by 
 the riches of the glory of God, we know the Lamb that takes 
 away the sin of the world. Hence, sin cannot separate us 
 from Jesus Christ, even if, in one day, we should commit a 
 hundred thousand murders, and a hundred thousand adul- 
 teries." J 
 
 To the certainty of justification by faith, Calvin added the 
 certainty of salvation in the justified man ; so that every true 
 Christian must believe, with an unwavering faith, that he could 
 never again lose, even by the greatest crimes, the friendship 
 of God, and his right to the celestial inheritance. The synod 
 of Dort professed solemnly this doctrine, so favorable for 
 criminals, and sustained it by the spiritual thunders of excom- 
 munication, in the age of Bossuet, Fenelon, Grotius, and 
 Leibnitz. 
 
 It is necessary to have before our eyes the incontrovertible 
 testimony of history, and the works of the leading reformers, 
 
 * Galat. ch. ii. De Captiv. Babyl., chap, de - Bapt. Serin, de Nov. Test. 
 
 t Opp. Wittemb., vol. vi. p. 1GO. 
 
 t Ep. of Martin Luther, &c. Symbolism, vol. i. p. 165. 
 
 See Histoire de Variations.
 
 THE SACRAMENTS. 151 
 
 edited by Protestant hands, to believe in the existence of such 
 horrors. We can easily perceive that Luther, Calvin, and, 
 above all, their disciples, must have been obliged afterward 
 to veil such baseness, and revive the obligation, at first so 
 brutally denied, of the moral law. But what power had such 
 feeble palliatives against the fundamental doctrine of justifi- 
 cation by faith alone ! And fatalism, introduced by the ex- 
 tinction of free will and absolute predestination, would be 
 ready to lend a strong hand to the passions, and justify the 
 greatest excesses. 
 
 Do we not still see the new Methodistic Calvinism move 
 heaven and earth to bring these horrible doctrines into re- 
 pute ? The Methodist pulpits of England and the United 
 States resounded, not long since, with these oracles of the 
 preacher Hill : " If I should sin more grievously than Manas- 
 seh, I should be still a child of grace ; for God always regards 
 me as Jesus Christ. Art thou plunged, my soul, in crime ? 
 Art thou red with homicidal blood ? It- matters not. Thou 
 art ah 1 beauty, my lover, my faithful spouse ; thou art without 
 stain. I am not among those who say : Let us sin, that grace 
 may abound; but it is no less certain, on that account, that 
 adultery, incest, and murder, will render me more holy on the 
 earth, and happier in heaven." * 
 
 In a word, Geneva shows us the ministers of her petrified 
 Church always dabbling in the infected mire of Calvin, and 
 exhuming from it this vile maxim, that Christ, by attaching 
 himself to the cross, has conquered liberty of mind, heart, 
 and body.f 
 
 It may be easily imagined, that such doctrines took from 
 the sacraments their efficacy and importance. What advan- 
 
 * Moehler, Symbolism, book ii., ch. iii., vol. ii., p. 299. 
 
 t This is the favorite dogma of Dr. Malan. (See his Letire (Tun 
 Protestant a un Cntholique de Vtrscix. Les Jldieux u Rome, de 
 1'Apostat Bruitte.)
 
 152 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 tage from these divine channels, destined to conduct into 
 the soul the grace and the blood of Jesus Christ, if this soul 
 is condemned to remain impure, and without activity in the 
 cause of goodness ? Consequently, the Reformers, after manj 
 changes, reduced the sacraments to two baptism, a faint 
 emblem of justification by faith, an equivocal sign of the 
 divine covenant; and the supper, in which Luther maintained 
 the reality of the body of Jesus Christ, in opposition to 
 Zwingle and Calvin, who only recognised in it a type or figure 
 But let us turn our eyes from the sad dreams of these 
 apostles of falsehood, and fix them upon the ineffable inven- 
 tions of divine love,* which the Church offers us. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVIII. 
 
 THE EUCHARIST, REAL PRESENCE OF JESUS CHRIST. UNIVER- 
 SAL INFLUENCE OF THIS DOCTRINE. 
 
 THE Immanuel, the God with vs, the thought of whom 
 made Isaiah tremble eight hundred years before the event, 
 and inspired him with accents so tender and so sublime ;f 
 the truly hidden God, whom the prophetic spirit showed him 
 veiling the rays of his infinite Majesty, and the brilliancy of 
 his glorious humanity, to reach more surely the weak and 
 timid heart of man ;J that divine teacher, who should never flee 
 away from the midst of his people,^ the Catholic Church be- 
 holds him with ever new transports of admiration, gratitude, 
 and love, dwelling in the midst of us full of grace and truth. [| 
 
 * Isai. chap. xii. 4. f Isai. chap, vii., xi., xii. 
 
 t Vere tu ea Deus absconditus, Deus Israel salvator. (Ibid xlv. 15.) 
 Et non faciet avolare a te ultra dectorem tuum, (Isai. xxx. 20.) 
 || John i. 15.
 
 THE EUCHARIST. 153 
 
 Proud sectarians, whose errors she has confounded, tyrants 
 who have shed her blood in torrents, prophets of death, who 
 so many times have announced her obsequies, be not sur- 
 prised that she has so easily triumphed over your sophisms, 
 wearied your executioners, and given the lie to your predic- 
 tions; she has with her a God infinite in wisdom, infinite in 
 power, infinite in duration. 
 
 But should not the language of controversy, always bitter, 
 however fraternal it may be, expire on our lips before the 
 altars of the Lamb ! 
 
 You who, without bitterness against Catholicism, have even 
 words of esteem and respect for it; noble and elevated souls, 
 whose mind and heart have resisted the malignant influence 
 of errors imbibed with the milk of infancy ; it is for you that 
 these pages are intended: they will offer you the explanation 
 of phenomena which, for a long time, have attracted your 
 attention. 
 
 Frequently, on visiting our ancient cathedrals,- you are 
 amazed at the sight of the varied ornaments which convert 
 these gigantic masses into a world of artistic wonders. You 
 admire the infinite patience of the chisel which has given life 
 to the whole interior, from the mosaic pavement to the aerial 
 arches springing with such boldness from their delicate 
 mouldings, and to the exterior, from the mossy trunks of a 
 forest of columns, to the grotesque ornaments of the roof. 
 This profusion of the riches of art will be found more or less 
 in almost all our churches. 
 
 Often, when present at our religious solemnities, you have 
 been witnesses of the magic power of a worship which groups 
 around its altars numerous populations, while the frequency 
 and monotony of the spectacle never create disgust. The 
 hoty gravity of our ceremonies, the divine beauty of our 
 chants, have spoken to your hearts, but have failed to explain 
 to you the general serenity of countenance, and that religious
 
 154 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 expression of physiognomy, which led you to say : " There 
 are souls in these bodies, and God is in these souls. 
 
 Perhaps you have sometimes entered our churches to rest 
 your soul, wearied with the tumult of the world, or wounded 
 in its affections, and did you not then experience, like Rous- 
 seau, their secret power to lead to prayer, to sweet and con- 
 soling thoughts, to everything which refreshes and re-animates 
 the heart, and disposes it to suffer patiently the disappoint- 
 ments of life? 
 
 You have often endeavored, perhaps, to explain to 3'our- 
 self that spirit of sacrifice, that self-forgetfulness, that self- 
 devotion, so common in Catholicism, and so entirely unknown 
 elsewhere; and you enumerated, with admiration, the multi- 
 tudes of virgins who devote themselves to the sick, to the 
 education of poor children, our Brothers of the schools, the 
 hospitallers of St. Bernard, who have, for charit}', lived eight 
 hundred years above the habitable world. You recalled the 
 names of our Trappists, our children of St. Bruno, of St. 
 Francis, of Assisiurn, who brought back to us the angels of 
 the Thebais. You remembered our missionaries making 
 themselves savages with the savage, and pressing to the scaf- 
 fold by the way of suffering and privations; and then you 
 cited our priests, for the most part so separated from the joys 
 of life, so present in all its miseries, so prodigal of life when 
 death is knocking at every door. 
 
 Afterwards, comparing the two worships, you have said 
 to yourself: Why are our temples so different from their 
 churches? Why does all that is seen and practised in them 
 leave the heart so cold ? Why are our ministers so bold, 
 when contempt and insult are to be cast on Catholic priests, 
 and so reserved and timid when they are called upon to sit, 
 like them, by the pillow of the dying, and converse with the 
 infected and the irascible? Do we not adore the same God? 
 Have we not the same Gospel? Yes, we, in truth, adore
 
 THE EUCHARIST. 155 
 
 the same God; but your fathers, deceived by wretched men, 
 have chosen that this God, who was made man, and whose 
 delights were to be with men* should return to heaven after 
 thirty-three years abode upon the earth, whilst the Catholic 
 Church adores him always dwelling upon her altars, and 
 communicating to the sheep of his flock the treasures of his 
 divinity indissolubly united to his flesh and his blood. 
 
 Dear separated brethren, whom an invisible hand is gra- 
 dually guiding back to the fold, approach the sacred taber- 
 nacles, and contemplate him whom, we are assured, }'ou will 
 one day receive with us. Let the poor symbols which conceal 
 him, far from scandalizing you, remind you of the crib where 
 he was born, of the wretched swaddling-clothes in which he was 
 presented to kings and shepherds. He is always a humiliated 
 God who takes his place at the lowest extremity of existence of 
 in order to raise us to the sublime heights of the divine life. 
 
 Here, assuredly, is the central fire, which animates and 
 quickens the Catholic world, and increases there in such 
 abundance, in the midst of human coldness, those harvests of 
 virtues which rejoice the earth, and fill the store-houses of the 
 heavenly husbandman.j- This is the undying centre of heat 
 at which the genius of the artist is enkindled, from which the 
 heart of the people, the religious, and the priest, borrows a 
 constantly renewing ardor for great enterprises and sublime 
 devotion. 
 
 What was it that interested, for so many years, numerous 
 populations in the construction of those immense edifices, 
 whose support alarms our most wealthy governments? What 
 animated the hundred thousand indefatigable workmen who 
 labored on the cathedral of Strasburg, and found the days 
 too short ? | It was this simple thought. Can we do too 
 
 * Prov. viii. 31. t John xv. 1. 
 
 J See Esi>ais Historiques, et Topographiqucs, sur la Cathedrale de 
 Strasbourg, by M. Grandidier.
 
 15G THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 much for Him who has done so much for us? and can the 
 edifice in which he condescends daily to renew the prodigies 
 of his mercy, ever be worthy of his love and our gratitude ? 
 
 The Church, for the Catholic, is not only the place for re- 
 ligious assemblies ; it is, indeed, the tabernacle of God among 
 men* the heaven on earth, the point of contact, the common 
 meeting place of angels, saints, and men, around their divine 
 Head and the august Trinity. 
 
 Hence, with what indescribable ardor and patience the re- 
 ligious artist of the middle ages devoted himself to the deco- 
 ration of the sanctuary, two steps from the altar, under the 
 eye of the Divine Redeemer, who counts the drops of sweat 
 as they fell from his brow, and records in the book of life 
 every stroke of the chisel ! Be no longer surprised to see the 
 marble become pliant in his hands, and lend itself, with the 
 flexibility of metal and the suppleness of silk, to the brilliant 
 conceptions of his imagination, shaping itself into leaves and 
 flowers, into lace and embroidery, with grace and freshness, 
 and charming delicacy. 
 
 You have, also, before your eyes the divine Enchanter, 
 who, at the first stroke of the bell, brings joyfully crowding 
 around the altar our still faithful population. 
 
 You will not deny that the God whom love confines within 
 our tabernacles must be benevolent, and dear to the hearts of 
 the faithful ! He is not the abstract, incomprehensible God 
 of philosophy. He is not God individualising himself in 
 each one by the reading of the Bible, a Being as manifold, 
 as various, as grotesque as the brains where he is moulded. 
 He is not even the historical God-Man, seated upon the invi- 
 sible throne of the heavens, and whom the Gospel describes 
 as suffering for us eighteen hundred years ago, a vast dis- 
 tance for our mind and heart so forgetful of the past, so little 
 moved by what they cannot touch ! This God is God with 
 
 * Ponam tabernaculum meum in medio vestri. (Lcvit. xxvi. 11.)
 
 THE EUCHARIST. 157 
 
 us, the God of all and each, of great and small, of cities and 
 hamlets. He dwells equally in the sumptuous temples which 
 kings rear for him, the rustic church which the peasant pre- 
 pares for him, or the tent of green branches in which the 
 savage adores him. A Father of ineffable tenderness he is 
 everywhere, where he sees two or three of his children as- 
 sembled in his name.* 
 
 He is God the shepherd whom David sang in an idyl of 
 divine beauty, leading his sheep on the patlis of justice, along 
 tranquil waters, animating them by his presence, encouraging 
 them by the power of his crook ; in the dangerous defiles, pre- 
 paring them a table, a delicious nourishment, in the desert of 
 life ; anointing their heads with precious oil, and putting no 
 limits to his loving solicitude to bring them to the fold, where 
 an eternity of repose awaits tliem.\ 
 
 If in his Eucharistic life as in the days of his mortal life, 
 Jesus Christ is too much neglected and forgotten by the 
 happy in this world, how is it he, on the other hand, compre- 
 hended and loved by the simple and religious visiter, who has 
 seen him visit and console on his death-bed his grandparents 
 and his parents, whom he sees with compassion descending 
 into the heart of his children to strengthen their youthful 
 virtue, and who so often has himself calmed his soul, at the 
 sacred banquet! See him anticipating the dawn in the field 
 to resume the hard-labor which will end only with the day : 
 perhaps he turns his eye with envy towards the baronial 
 mansion where the repose of the day succeeds the sleep of the 
 niaht. but the sound of the matin bell summons him to salute 
 
 O * 
 
 the mother of God, and repeat these words : The word was 
 
 * Ubi enim sunt duo vel tres congregati in nomine meo, ibi sum in 
 medio eorum. (Matth. xviii. 20.) 
 
 f Dominus regit me, et nihil mihi derit, &c. (Ps. xxii.) This de- 
 licious picture, and a multitude of others that are found in the prophets, 
 are a sealed book for sheep deprived of the real presence of the shepherd 
 
 VOL. II. 14
 
 158 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 made Jlesh and dwelt among us ! The thought of God gain- 
 ing a support for thirty years by the sweat of his brow, and 
 watching day and night in the village church, changes the 
 currc-nt of his ideas and increases his strength tenfold. The 
 sun 7-ises, and the power of its rays joined to the burden of 
 toil brings down the thoughts of the good laborer to earth 
 again. The bell sounds anew and announces that the priest 
 is ascending to the altar : the Christian uncovers his head, 
 crosses himself and says : Behold the innocent Lamb that 
 was slain for my sins ; and I, mean sinner, shall I refuse to 
 unite my sweat to his blood! 
 
 How happy in the midst of his trials is the Catholic who 
 is nourished by faith! Everything recalls to him the infinite 
 tenderness of God who has made himself the companion of 
 his exile and his fellow citizen. Every day he sees him borne 
 to the bedside of the sick. There is no by-path, no house 
 that has not been sanctified by his presence. The whole 
 parish is a Holy Land, a Palestine where the Man-God has 
 dwelt for ages, where he has incessantly preached patience, 
 resignation, charity and the pursuit of Heaven, where he still 
 brings thousands of the dead to life, and heals all manner of 
 diseases. 
 
 It, indeed, belongs to Catholics to say : There is not and 
 tfiere never has been any nation who can boast of having Gods 
 as familiar as ours.* And let it not be imagined that this 
 familiarity ever diminishes respect and love. It is for man, 
 in the depth of his weakness and misery, to withdraw himself 
 from a too penetrating scrutiny, if he would escape contempt. 
 God is despised only by those who are ignorant of him and 
 flee from him. Adored and loved in proportion as he is 
 known, he is surrounded by a reverence and love without 
 limits, where he is seen without a cloud. 
 
 * Nee est alia natio tarn grandis, qua?. habeat deos appropinquantes sibi, 
 sicut Deus nostcr adest cunctis obseorationibus nostris. (Deuter. iv. 7.)
 
 THE EUCHARIST. 159 
 
 But if the people can drink joyfully full draughts from the 
 fountains of life which the love of the Savior everwhere 
 opens,* what must it be with the priest, the instrument of 
 such prodigies! will he, through whose hands daily flows the 
 blood of his celestial victim, ever find that he can do enough 
 for souls purchased at so great a price ! If he retreats before 
 the awful solemnity of the Divine ministry, will he not believe 
 himself obliged to go into the desert to pray for pastors and 
 people, and to teach both to raise the soul by prayer and to 
 conquer the flesh by mortification ? 
 
 Among so many sacrifices, is it remarkable that many leave 
 the altar and tear themselves from us to go and exhaust them- 
 selves by toil and privations under the burning sun of Africa 
 or India, in the forests of America or in the midst of the 
 Anthropophagi of Polynesia; that others go to Tonquin, 
 Cochin-China and Corea to fill the places of their brethren 
 who have been strangled, decapitated, burned before a slow 
 fire, or who have fallen, hewn to pieces under the sword of 
 their persecutors? Intrepid apostles, we justly honor you; 
 but it is just also that you should despise yourselves, when 
 measuring your steps by those of your Divine Master, you 
 see him traverse the awful distance from the eternal throne 
 to the manger, coming forth from the work-shop of Nazareth 
 to ascend Calvary, and only quitting the tomb to imprison 
 himself in our tabernacles ! 
 
 This is the perpetual devotion which inspires and exalts all 
 devotion, and protects our heroes from the poison of pride 
 by convicting them all of weakness and cowardice. It is 
 this which inspired St. Francis Xavier. when expiring on the 
 coast of Sancian, after unheard-of labors and success. 
 What am I, alas! my Lord, but a vile and useless servant! 
 
 * Haurietis aquas in gaudio de fontibus Salvatoris. (Isa. xii. 3.) The 
 rest of the chapter is a still more visible allusion to the Eucharistic 
 mystery.
 
 1GO THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 CHAPTER SXXIX. 
 
 PERPETUITY OF FAITH IN THE REAL PRESENCE. INVEN- 
 TORS OF THE FIGURATIVE PRESENCE. CONTRADICTION 
 
 AND DISHONESTY OF THE SACRAMENTARIANS. 
 
 IT may be said, "We allow that the real presence is a 
 touching belief and has wonderful power over the heart, but 
 can the mind accept it?" How can a just mind consent to 
 deprive the human heart, a prey to so many sorrows and sub- 
 ject to so many frailties of so divine a balm, of so efficacious 
 a source of strength ! Is not the well authenticated power 
 of the remedy, a strong proof, to every judicious mind of its 
 divine origin ? How long since, and from whom did error 
 receive her commission to benefit man and lead him to God ! 
 
 I readily acknowledge that this dogma, considered in itself, 
 is strange, inconceivable and even incredible ; but what 
 should we conclude from that? That it is not of human 
 invention, that only the Divine voice could announce to man 
 a thing so unimaginable, and make it accepted. The first vi- 
 sionary who should dream of such an extravagance could not 
 have found a second to adopt it; and if such had been found, 
 universal opinion would have given him and his fellow 
 believers the first rank in the history of human follies. 
 
 Let those who consider this doctrine as absurd explain, 
 then, how the Christian world has believed it for sixteen cen- 
 turies, and still believes it with very few exceptions. Is reason 
 a Calvinistic creation ! As to sense and genius, our old 
 Christians have established their claims to them, as well as 
 the Catholics of modern times. To deny them reason would 
 be to want it oneself. 
 
 If this doctrine were not as clearly stated in the Gospel, 
 as in fact it is, its divine origin would be no less satisfactorily
 
 PERPETUITY OP FAITH. 161 
 
 demonstrated by the uniform and constant faith of Christians 
 of all ages, from those who had the happiness to hear these 
 words uttered by the mouth of the Savior on the evening of 
 his death : Receive and eat, this is my body, dec., even to the 
 Christians of the sixteenth century, who, not without sur- 
 prise, heard Carlstadt and Zwingle translate thus the words 
 of Christ ; This is the fgure of my body. This belief, the 
 Oriental Churches who have been separated from Catholicism 
 since the fifth and the ninth century, have carefully preserved 
 till our day, as has been proved to the sacramentarians with 
 a force of erudition which has reduced them to silence.* 
 
 If the peaceable and immemorial possession of a doctrine 
 so popular, and concerning which every believer must neces- 
 sarily have a fixed and established faith, was disturbed for a 
 moment, in the eleventh century, at only one point of the 
 Church, the attempt of Berenger, only more fully confirmed 
 the universal harmony, and the teacher in the schools of St. 
 Martin of Tours, hastened to abjure an opinion whose novelty 
 provoked the anathemas of pastors and people.f 
 
 As to those miserable journalists, strangers to all know- 
 ledge of men and history who dare yet to assert that faith in 
 the real presence was imposed on the Catholic Church by a 
 monk of Mount Sinai or of the convent of Corbie, between 
 the seventh and ninth centuries, or even by a religious of the 
 thirteenth, I hold them as irrefutable as those ancient geolo- 
 
 * It is sufficient to quote the great work De la PerpetuitS de /a 
 foi de I'Eucharistie, on the subject of which Leibnitz wrote. " Dis- 
 tinguished learned men have recently demonstrated that all the churches 
 of the world, with the exception of those that are called reformed, and 
 others which by their innovations have gone farther than the reformed, 
 at the present day admit the real presence of the body of Christ; it 
 has been proved, I repeat, by such evidence, that the fact tnust be 
 acknowledged as established, or we can never hope to prove any asser- 
 tion with regard to foreign countries. (Systeme de ThcoL, art. Euchar.) 
 
 f See Bergier, Dictionn. Tkeol. art. Berengarians. 
 14*
 
 1G2 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 gists who taught that the universe was brought forth from a 
 crocodile's egg. 
 
 The two men to whom it was given to tear from the heart 
 of many millions of Christians this ancient and touching be- 
 lief, were Carlstadt and Zwingle ; the first Archdeacon of 
 Wittemberg a barbarian, without talent, without faith, des- 
 titute even of common sense, living in intoxication among 
 pots and glasses, as Melancthon has said ;* the other, an old 
 curate of Glacis and Einssedlen, from which he was banished 
 on account of misconduct, f They were the first to applaud 
 the invectives of Luther against the indulgences of the Roman 
 Pontiff; the first also, who, using the very plenary indulgence 
 accorded by the Pope of Wittemberg to his priests, trans- 
 formed their maid-servants into wives. 
 
 If this wonderful effect of the love of Jesus Christ must be 
 denied, what more natural than that it should be by such 
 men ! The unhappy man who dares to approach the altar 
 with impure heart and hands, is peculiarly interested to find 
 on the altar only an insignificant image of what we adore 
 there. 
 
 However this may be, the commentary which Zwingle 
 gave of the words of the Eucharistic institution, was a little 
 less absurd than the burlesque interpretation of Carlstadt, 
 which threw Luther into fits of laughter, and drew down on 
 its author a deluge of burning sarcasm. J 
 
 * See Audin, Vie de Calvin, vol. i. ch. xxii. 
 
 t Ib. De Haller, Histoire de la Reforme Protestante dans ?e 
 Suisse occidental, ch. iii. 
 
 J See Audin, as above quoted. Carlstadt thus explained the sup- 
 per : Jesus Christ, after saying to his Apostles, when giving them bread : 
 Take and eat, pointed to himself, saying : This is my body ; then pass- 
 ing the cup of wine, inviting them to drink, he probably showed them 
 his arteries and veins, saying: This is my blood, &c. ! ! ! Here is 
 a charming application of the principle of individual interpretation.
 
 PERPETUITY OF FAITH. 163 
 
 Discomfited by Luther, who armed himself with the express 
 words of Jesus Christ, and also with universal tradition, which 
 he considered decisive, when it was favorable to himself, 
 Carlstadt and Zwingle found an aid in Calvin, who endea- 
 vored at first to reconcile, by his hybrid doctrines, Lutheraji 
 realism with Zwinglian symbolism,* and finally decided in 
 favor of the latter. 
 
 Luther, who so bravely defended the reality of the body 
 and blood of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, was, however, in 
 despair at finding himself agreeing on this point with those 
 Papists, whose name alone whitened his lips with foam. He 
 then denied transubstantiation, and maintained that the bread 
 and the wine remained on the altar after the consecration, 
 eonjointly with the body and blood. For these words : this 
 is my body, the pure and simple acceptation of which he 
 preached so strongly to the Zwinglians ; he, in fact, substi- 
 tuted the following : With this, or under this, or in this is my 
 body. 
 
 It belonged to the sixteenth century to decide between these 
 three masters : the Son of God affirming, of the Eucharistic 
 bread, that it is his body; Luther pronouncing that it contains 
 his body ; and again, Carlstadt, Zwingle, and Calvin, teaching 
 that it is only the image, the type of the body.\ Is it aston- 
 
 It is however to this profound commentator that the Sacramentarians, 
 that is to say, three-quarters of the Protestants, are indebted for the 
 dogma of the figurative presence. 
 
 * See Bossuet, Histoire des Variations, liv. ix. 
 
 t A painter of that period had the happy idea of uniting the three 
 suppers on the same canvass. In the centre the divine Savior was 
 represented distributing the sacred bread to the Apostles, and uttering 
 these words : This is my body ; on the right, a little lower, Luther 
 administering the supper to his followers, saying : This contains my 
 body ; on the left Calvin, in the same act, murmuring : This is the 
 type of my body. In the back ground the artist wrote in large letters : 
 Which of the three speaks the truth 1 This picture caused many con-
 
 164 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 ishing, that, of two hundred and sixty millions of Christians, 
 then existing, more than two hundred millions have decided 
 to hold to the words of Christ, as the Christian world had 
 hitherto understood them ! 
 
 I have no intention to bring forward here the passages of 
 Scripture and the monuments of tradition which establish the 
 real presence as an eminently scriptural and Christian doc- 
 trine. It would be impossible for me to add anything to the 
 very complete demonstrations of our theologians and contro- 
 versialists ; * and to collect them, a volume would be needed. 
 I shall limit myself to one reflection on the singular conduct 
 of the theologians of the Reformation. 
 
 For three entire centuries they enforce upon us the neces- 
 sity of referring, in matters of faith, not to old traditions, but 
 to Scripture, to the pure word of Christ. They are continu- 
 ally repeating to us, as a Jewish Rabbi would do these words 
 of Moses : You shall not add, nor take away from the word 
 (hat I speak to you.\ 
 
 Catholics take them literally. It is Christ himself, who, 
 on the occasion of the miraculous multiplication of the loaves, 
 speaks of the far more miraculous food that he is preparing 
 for his disciples. The people whom he has just exhorted to 
 believe in him as in the ambassador of God, judge that the 
 
 versions. The truth, indeed, is never more eloquent than when re- 
 duced to its simplest expression. A few years later the artist would 
 have been able to crowd his canvass with a hundred and ninety-eight 
 other personages ; for in the time of Bellarmine, two hundred different 
 interpretations of the words of the supper could be enumerated among 
 Protestants. 
 
 * Among the moderns I shall mention here only those of our con- 
 trovertialists who appear to me to have included the most in the fewest 
 pages. Ltttres du P. Scheffmacher, Gth and 7th. Discussion amicale, 
 by Mgr. le Pappe de Trevern, Lettres 6th, 7th, Sth, 9th, 10th. Lectures 
 on the Church, by Dr. Wiseman, 14, 15, 16. Guide du Catechumcne 
 Vaudois, by Mgr. Charvaz, torn. iii. Entretiens, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th. 
 
 t Deuter. iv. 2.
 
 PERPETUITY OF FAITH. 
 
 1G5 
 
 miracle which they have just witnessed, and which was per- 
 formed for their benefit, cannot be compared to the prodigies 
 by which Moses subdued the Israelites to the faith ; and, as 
 it were, they challenge the Savior: What dost tliou work 
 which approaches what our fathers have seen, who did eat 
 manna in the desert, and to whom Moses gave bread from 
 heaven.* Jesus denies at first that Moses gave them the true 
 bread from heaven, and, after having affirmed, at length, that 
 he is the true bread descended from heaven to give life unto 
 man, he plainly tells them that this heavenly bread, which he 
 will give to eat, is his flesh, which he will sacrifice for tlie 
 life of the world.^ 
 
 This is not intended to signify, the Calvinists will say, 
 literally the eating of Jesus Christ, but the firm belief in the 
 virtue of the sacrifice of his flesh ; it is this which gives life to 
 the soul. 
 
 Now the people of Capharnaum, understanding these words 
 as the Catholics understand them, as signifying the real eating 
 of the flesh of Jesus Christ, were shocked by such an asser- 
 tion. Jesus, far from removing the scandal by having re- 
 course to the Calvinistic commentary, only increased it by 
 these words : Amen, amen, I say unto you : Except you eat. 
 thcjiesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, you shall not 
 
 * John vi. 29 et seq. 
 
 t John vi. 52. I would uige the reader to follow attentively the 
 dialogue of Jesus Christ with the people of Capharnaum. He will see 
 that Christ, accepting, if I may so express it, the challenge of the lat- 
 ter, pledges himself to give to all those who shall believe in him, a 
 food far more miraculous than that which Moses had given to the Israel- 
 ites in the desert. Now how could he have accomplished his promise 
 by the institution of the Calvinistic supper? Which would exhibit 
 the most power and testify the most love for his people, Christ inviting 
 his disciples to eat a bit of bread, and drink a drop of wine in memory 
 of him, or Moses causing the food of two millions of men to rain 
 from heaven for forty years.
 
 1G6 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 have life in you. He lhat catcih my flesh, and drinketh my 
 blood, haih everlasting life ; and I will raise him up at the 
 last day. For my flesh is meat indeed: and my blood is 
 drink indeed;* and the divine Master, who sees this innu- 
 merable people, and even his disciples, with the exception of 
 the Apostles, indignantly withdrawing from him, no less than 
 three times repeats these words, which they were unable to 
 bear.f 
 
 Let us now listen to the objection of the Calvinists. Some 
 will say to us : This had no connection with the supper, and 
 must be understood of faith in Christ. If you do not eat the 
 flesh, if you do not drink my blood, should be translated: If 
 you do not believe in the sacrijir.e on the cross of iliejlesh and 
 blood, &c., you will not have life. My jlesh is meat indeed, 
 translate : My jlesh is metaphorically meat. Others will tell 
 you : These words may relate to the Eucharistic institution, 
 but then translate thus: If you do not eat the type of the Jlesh, 
 if you do not drink the type of the blood, &c. 
 
 Let us transport ourselves to the supper-room. Jesus 
 Christ celebrated the last passover with his Apostles, and he 
 distributed to them the Eucharistic species, saying : This is 
 my body, Ihis is my blood. And the reformed theologians, 
 reforming the words of Christ, force him to say : This repre- 
 sents my body, this represents my blood. 
 
 St. Paul, writing to the Christians of Corinth, said to them : 
 The chalice of benediction, which ice bless, is it not the 
 communion of the blood of Christ, and the bread ichich ice 
 break, is it not the partaking of the body of the Lord ?\ And 
 the Calvinists add : communion through faith, participation 
 through faith, &c. 
 
 In the next chapter, St. Paul, after relating the institution 
 of the Eucharist, declares that he who eats this bread, and 
 
 * John vi. 54, 55, 56. t John vi. 57, 58, 59. 
 
 I. Cor. x. 16.
 
 PERPETUITY OF FAITH. 167 
 
 drinks this chalice, unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and 
 blood of Jesus Christ; and he invites every one to descend 
 into his conscience before touching this bread and this cha- 
 lice; for, he adds, Whosoever eatelh or drinketh unworthily, 
 eateth and drinketh judgment to himself, not discerning the 
 body of the Lord.* And here, too, the interpreters of the 
 Reformation heap commentaries upon commentaries, to prove 
 to us that these words do not, by any means, imply the real 
 presence in the supper of the body and blood of the Lord. 
 Is it not plain, indeed, that the Calvinist who has the misfor- 
 tune to swallow a morsel of bread and a drop of wine in the 
 temple, without having justifying faith, is a monster as fright- 
 ful as he who outrages and crushes under foot the real body 
 and blood of the Son of God ? 
 
 In the midst of these murmurs of the faithless disciples 
 and their scandalous efforts to falsify or pervert the words 
 of Christ, what is the course of the Catholics ? like the 
 Twelve Apostles, they listen to Jesus Christ and are silent ; 
 if they are interrogated, they answer with St. Peter: Lord, 
 thou hast the words of eternal life ; we believe, because we 
 know that thou art the Christ, the Son of God.] 
 
 I appeal to every honest man : on which side are found the 
 believers in the pure word of the Gospel ? on which side the 
 sacrilegious cavillers who torture it in a thousand ways and 
 encumber it with the most absurd explanations to extort from 
 it the contrary of what it declares ? 
 
 * I. Cor. xi. 27 et seq. 
 
 f Respondit ergo ei Simon Petrus : Domine ad quern ibimus ? 
 Verba vitse seternae habes. Et nos credidimus et cognovimus quia tu 
 es Christus Filius Dei. (John vi. 69, 70.)
 
 ]G8. THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 CHAPTER XL. 
 
 OBJECTIONS AGAINST THE POSSIBILITY OF THE REAL PRES- 
 ENCE. ANALOGOUS MYSTERIES IN THE NATURAL ORDER. 
 
 IN order to justify such complicated and absurd commen- 
 taries on the signification of words so simple and so clear, 
 the advocates of the figurative sense never fail to insist on 
 the alleged absurdity which the literal sense would involve. 
 How can we imagine Jesus Christ inclosed in a small wafer 
 and in each of its visible parts, present simultaneously on 
 a hundred thousand altars and constantly occupied with 
 changing bread into his body and wine into his blood ! 
 
 How ! this, also, the people of Capharnaum asked and 
 the unbelieving disciples,* more excusable than those Calvin- 
 ists who still believe that Jesus Christ is the same eternal 
 Word who spoke and the heavens and the earth were created. 
 
 These difficulties are not of yesterday : they also pre- 
 sented themselves to the minds of the early Fathers of the 
 Church, St. Ambrose, St. Hilary, St. Cyril, St. Jerome and 
 St. Augustine; but instead of shaking their faith, they only 
 led them still more to admire in the adorable food given by 
 the God of Mercy to those who fear him, the magnificent com- 
 pletion of the Divine prodigies.f 
 
 St. Gregory, of Nyssa, and St. John Chrysostom asked, 
 " How can this one body, being distributed to thousands of 
 the faithful, be entire in each one, and remain entire in itself; 
 how can Jesus Christ be offered in so many different places 
 at the same time ; the identity of the victim, and the unity 
 
 * Quomodo potest hie nobis carnem suam dare ad manducandum ? 
 Durus est hie sermo, et quis potest eum audire ? (John vi. 53 61.) 
 
 t Memoriam fecit mirabilium suorum misericors et miserator Domi- 
 nus ; escam obedit timentibus se. (Ps. ex. 4, 5.)
 
 ANALOGOUS MYSTERIES. 169 
 
 of the sacrifice not being injured by this diversity and 
 multiplicity.* 
 
 There is r.o objection, even to that of which J. J. Rousseau 
 boasts so absurdly in his Lettre a I'Archeveque de Paris, which 
 St. Jerome and St. Augustine have not very plainly seen. The 
 former asks us to admire Jesus Christ seated at the banquet 
 of his sacred body, himself eating and being eaten there ; f 
 the other speaks to us of the unheard of prodigy by which 
 the Savior at the Supper held and carried his body in his own 
 hands>| 
 
 What led these great men to believe things so incredible ? 
 the power of that Divine word which having called into exist- 
 ence substances that were not, can very well change one sub- 
 stance into another. They, in their turn asked those who 
 questioned how wine could become the blood of Christ, how 
 water could be changed into wine at the marriage of Cana. 
 They asked of those who were astonished to see the body of 
 Jesus Christ inclosed in so narrow a space, how the Infinite 
 Word could be confined in the womb of the Virgin. They 
 opposed miracle to miracle, mystery to mystery, and proved 
 that it was necessary to admit everything or reject everything. 
 In fact there is no difficulty in the real presence and transub- 
 stantiation, which the deist could not discover in the Incarna- 
 tion, Trinity, &c. ; and the deist brings nothing against the 
 mysteries of Christianity, which the atheist could not bring 
 against the profound mystery of an Eternal and Infinite God. 
 Cecil, in the Octavius of Minutius Felix, considered as incre- 
 dible the existence of a being, curious even to impertinence, 
 who wishes to see everything and understand everything and 
 who by his omnipresence is necessarily found in many places 
 which the honest man would wish to avoid. 
 
 * St. Greg. Nyss., Orat. Catech., chap. 37. St. John Chrys., Homil. 
 in Ep. ad Hebr. 
 
 t Ep. ad Hedibiam. J Ps. in Psalm xxxiii. Octav. x. 
 
 VOL. II. 15
 
 170 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 The chain of our ignorance is far reaching. He who 
 would believe only what he can comprehend, will believe 
 nothing; for everywhere there is mystery. It is the part of 
 fcols to find incomprehensible things only in religion. 
 
 Doubtless it will be said, that the Holy Fathers were liberal 
 in their transactions with God and that not knowing as we 
 do the inviolable limit which Divine power encounters in the 
 essence of matter, they dealt freely in physical impossibili- 
 ties. I should be very desirous to know what modern science 
 has taught us really new concerning the essence of bodies 
 and their immutable relations with space. Show me the limit 
 where matter can say to the Creator : Thus far slialt thou 
 come, but no farther* 
 
 He who has long sought to comprehend what is really 
 primitive and incomprehensible in matter will find the circle 
 of physical impossibilities singularly contracted, while that of 
 ignorance becomes immeasurably expanded. 
 
 With regard to acquired science and philosophical penetra- 
 tion, I do not imagine that even among our adversaries many 
 pretend to be superior to their fellow believer Leibnitz ; and 
 yet this great man has told us that after four years of pro- 
 found meditation on the subject which occupies us, he has 
 been brought to acknowledge that " God can cause the sub- 
 stance of the same body to be at the same time in many 
 separate places or what amounts to the same thing exist 
 under many species." f 
 
 Let those who find so much difficulty in the idea that the 
 smallest visible portion of a wafer contains the body of 
 Christ, explain to us how God has inclosed in a small black 
 grain, ten thousand of which would not fill your hand, a 
 gigantic tree, or rather an innumerable quantity of those 
 
 * Job xxxviii. 11. 
 
 t Systerne Tholog. t art. Euchar. Pensies de Lcilnitz. 
 a Jlrnaud.
 
 ANALOGOUS MYSTERIES. 171 
 
 trees; for there is not a pine of our forest which could not in 
 time cover the globe with its kind. 
 
 Let those who do not comprehend how the uncreated sun 
 which enlightens every man who comes into the world, can 
 re-produce the material being which is united to it, in a hun- 
 dred millions of persons at the same time, without injury to its 
 numerical unity, explain to us how the same luminous rays 
 which proceed from the sun or are put in motion by that 
 planet, can simultaneously re-produce its image in innumera, 
 Lie reflectors and yet the integrity and identity of the image 
 remain unbroken by their number? These things are very 
 different, it will be said. Yes, they are different; but whoever 
 has studied the laws of reflection without being dazzled by its 
 technology will find that the only sensible difference between 
 these two phenomena is that we believe the second on the testi- 
 mony of the eyes without comprehending it, whilst we admit the 
 first on the word of God without comprehending or seeing it. 
 
 It will be asked again, how the Eternal Word of God, 
 clothed with a human body and elevated by the resurrection 
 to its Ingnest power, can communicate itself really, totally 
 and simultaneously to two hundred millions of men. Let it 
 be explained to us how the human word, being also complex, 
 since it strikes the ear and enlightens the understanding, 
 coming forth as it does from one mouth, can reach at the 
 same time in its intellectual and physical identity the ear and 
 the soul of ten thousand auditors.* 
 
 Finally, the atheist can make this objection against the 
 mullilocalion of the body of Christ, with as much reason 
 against the existence of God, who, because he is infinite is 
 necessarily omnipresent without ceasing to be one. The spi- 
 rituality of the Divine Being has nothing to do with the subject. 
 
 * Doubtless the youth who has learned his acoustics by heart, will 
 laugh at the simplicity of this problem; but I propose it to those who 
 have renewed their studies.
 
 172 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 God is a substance, and the question is precisely whether a 
 substance can exist simultaneously in different places. 
 
 It is evident, then, that all the objections against the real 
 presence proves but one thing, our ignorance of the means 
 by which it is effected. Is this surprising? The Eucharist 
 is, like the Incarnation of which it is the complement, the 
 highest act of omnipotence inspired by Divine love. 
 
 CHAPTER XLI. 
 
 FUNCTIONS OF JESUS CHRIST IN THE EUCHARIST. FUNDAMEN- 
 TAL IDEA OF SACRIFICE. ITS UNIVERSALITY. EUCHAR- 
 
 ISTIC SACRIFICE. EFFECT OF ITS ABOLITION IN 
 
 PROTESTANT WORSHIP. 
 
 THE real presence of Jesus Christ on the altar once ad- 
 mitted, one question arises in all minds: What does Jesus 
 Christ in the midst of us? What can he do but continue his 
 part of Mediator between God and man ! An eternal priest 
 according io the order of Melchisedech,* always interceding 
 for us, in the bosom even of the repose and glory which he 
 enjoys at the right hand of the Falher,\ can he be present on 
 our altars, without fulfilling towards God, as Head of the 
 Church, the duty of perfect adorer, and without fulfilling 
 towards man, still stained by sin, the functions of Sanctifier 
 and Savior? 
 
 The consequence is so plain, that the most enlightened 
 Protestants have been obliged to admit, with Bossuet, that the 
 whole question of sacrifice must really be reduced to that of 
 the real presence.\ 
 
 Here let us raise our thoughts, and endeavor to form to 
 * P. cix. 4. t Rom. viii. 34. Heb. vii. 25. 
 
 J Exposition de la Doctrine, &c. xv.
 
 EUCHARISTIC SACRIFICE. 173 
 
 ourselves a just idea of Sacrifice, that common foundation of 
 all the religions of the world. 
 
 Man, the workmanship of God, is devoted and consecrated 
 to his Author, by virtue even of his existence. The first law 
 of his being is to adore his Creator; that is, to offer himself 
 to kirn in testimony of his total dependence, and say to him : 
 " It is through Thee, Great God, that I am all that I am ; 
 accept the offering that I make of myself, and if it please 
 Thee to endow me with thy gifts, let me use them only for 
 thy glory !" It is in this oblation, which refers to God the 
 glory of his works, that the essence of religion consists, and 
 every religious act which is not in some way connected with 
 it, is without value before God. 
 
 This act, man in his innocence performed in his heart, and 
 outwardly produced, without doubt, by some symbol. God, 
 who beheld in man only the image of his own perfections, 
 and the yet unsullied work of his own hand, accepted this 
 offering, and corresponded to it by an increase of grace. 
 
 Man became degraded by sin. Oblation is impossible. 
 What has he to offer to God, but a corrupted nature, the ob- 
 ject of contempt and anger? How is this nature to be so 
 purified as to find favor in the eye of God? By blood ; for 
 in that is concealed an expiating virtue.* Indeed, the life is 
 in the blood,f and the loss of blood or of life is the just satis- 
 faction which God demands from him who dares to rebel 
 against him.| 
 
 But what blood can cleanse the deep corruption of the soul, 
 and the horrible injury inflicted upon the divine Majesty? 
 That of man is too vile and impure, and, if it flowed eternally 
 under the hand of the executioner of divine justice, he could 
 
 * Sanguis pro animae piaculo sit. (Levit. xvii. 11.) Sine sanguinic 
 cfTusione non fit remissio. (Hebr. ix. 22.) 
 
 t Anima carnis in sanguine est. (Levit. xvii. 11 alibi.) 
 J Stipendia enim pcccati, mors. (Rom. vi. 23.) 
 15*
 
 174 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 never exclaim : It is enough ! I pardon man ; he can re-appear 
 before me without fear. 
 
 The Word offers the blood which he has resolved to re- 
 ceive from a woman. The sacrifice is accepted, and is 
 already realised in the divine intention from the beginning of 
 the world.* Infinite compassion is waiting to apply the fruits 
 of it to sinful man, who is instructed in the remedy which divine 
 love is preparing for him ; and the attempt of the Divine Re- 
 storer, who alone is able, by his sacrifice, to reconcile humanity 
 with God, becomes the basis of religion among all people."}" 
 
 To unite oneself to the great victim, and participate in 
 his merits, is the rite universally practised. As man is to 
 be rescued, it is the creature nearest to man, and the purest, 
 who must represent the agent for humanity. All the sins 
 of the people will be called down on his devoted head, the 
 decree of death, which is pronounced on sin, must afterwards 
 be executed on him. Purified by blood, the victim will 
 appear on the altar, and will find only sweetness in the coun- 
 tenance of his God. The people, then, will communicate, will 
 unite themselves to the victim by his blood, with which they 
 are sprinkled, by his flesh, which they will incorporate with 
 themselves, and they will be pardoned and sanctified.J 
 
 Immolation, oblation, communion, are the three fundamental 
 ideas which appear in the profound mystery of sacrifice. 
 
 It must be observed, that real immolation does not enter 
 into the absolute and primitive notion of sacrifice. It sup- 
 poses the unrepaired guilt of man. The blood of the victim 
 
 * Agni qui occisus est ab origine mundi. (Apoc. xiii. S.) 
 
 t See De Maistre, Eclaircissemcnts sur Ics Sacrifices. Schmitt, 
 
 Redemption du genre humain, annonce's par les traditions, ct 
 
 figurie par les sacrifices de tons les peuples. 
 
 J Leviticus attests the existence of these practices among the Jews, 
 
 and MM. de Maistre and Schmitt prove, in the works above quoted, 
 
 that they have been in use among all nations.
 
 EUCIIARISTIC SACRIFICE. 175 
 
 is shed ; because sin, always weighing upon him, demands 
 death. Immolation precedes purification, purification pre- 
 cedes oblation. Possessing a victim pure, holy, and agreeable 
 to God, and who, by virtue of his blood once shed, has fully 
 satisfied the divine justice, you can offer him every day with- 
 out shedding his blood anew. This takes place in the Eu- 
 charist. Jesus Christ, by the bloody oblation of Calvary 
 alone, having given superabundant satisfaction, according to 
 the Apostle, for all human iniquities,* it is no longer neces- 
 sary that his blood should really be separated from the body 
 upon our altars ; it is sufficient that it be so mystically that 
 is to say, that the spiritual sword of the words of consecra- 
 tion, while separating the blood from the body only in ap- 
 pearance, powerfully recalls the remembrance of the sacrifice 
 on the cross, in conformity to the precept: Do this in me- 
 mory of me. For as often as you shall eat this bread, . . . 
 you shall show the death of the Lord.\ 
 
 The Savior being, then, on the altar, full of that life which 
 he can no more lose,| is perpetually offering himself to his 
 Father, by the ministry of the priest, in the name of the Chris- 
 tian people who are united to him. By this infinitely pleasing 
 oblation, he furnishes us the means of accomplishing perfectly 
 the duty of adoration, of rendering to the Most High as much 
 
 * Una enim oblatione consummavit in sernpiterum sanctificatos. 
 (Heb. x. 14.) 
 
 t Luke xxii. 19. I. Cor. xi. 26. This principle, that the essence 
 of sacrifice consists in the oblation, and not in the immolation, radi- 
 cally destroys the objection that Protestants make, that where there is 
 no real immolation, as in the Eucharist, there can be no real sacri- 
 fice. I do not see how theologians who maintain the necessity, not 
 hypotheticalty, but absolutely, of immolation, can resolve this diffi- 
 culty. In fact, if immolation is a necessary element of sacrifice, the 
 sacrifice will correspond to the nature of the immolation ; and, if this 
 is only apparent, the sacrifice is only apparent. How can a thing vary 
 in its absolute qualities ! 
 
 J Christus resurgens ex mortuis jam non moritur. (Rom. vi. 9.)
 
 176 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 glory as our crimes have taken from him, of testifying to him 
 as much gratitude as his benefits demand, and obtaining from 
 him as many graces as our necessities require. 
 
 At the same time that he appeases God, and disposes him 
 to shed down upon us his blessings, Christ the Mediator is 
 occupied with effacing and preventing our constantly recur- 
 ring sins, strengthening our weakness, detaching us from our 
 selves, elevating us to God; and how? Let us admire here 
 the excess of his love. By the real communication which he 
 makes us of his flesh and his blood, united to his soul and his 
 divinity, he enters entire into each of us, to transform us into 
 himself. If we do not place any obstacle to the sovereignly 
 powerful influence of his divine being, his soul assimilates our 
 soul to itself, his flesh is incorporated with our flesh, and his 
 blood circulates in our veins : the child of man disappears, 
 absorbed into the Son of God. // is not we who live, but 
 Christ who liveth in vs.* The inhabitant of earth has no rea- 
 son to envy the inhabitant of Heaven, except the spectacle of 
 the infinite good which he possesses. 
 
 What, then, is the sacrifice of the mass ? It is the most 
 animated and lively representation, the most efficacious appli- 
 cation imaginable, of the Sacrifice of the Cross; it is its 
 continuation through ages, in the presence of all the genera- 
 tions called to participate in it ; it is its application to every 
 individual. In this sacrifice which sums up his whole life 
 which is signified by these words : Do this in remembrance 
 of me " Jesus Christ gives us," said a profound theologian, 
 " all that he has done for us : his immolation, objective as it 
 was, becomes subjective, adapted to each of us individually. 
 The Redeemer sacrificing himself for us on the Cross, is still 
 a stranger to us ; in worship, he is our own peculiar posses- 
 sion, our victim. There, he gave himself for all men ; here, 
 he gives himself for each of us."f 
 
 * Galat. ii. 20. f Moehlcr, Symbolism, vol. i. p. 3J9.
 
 EUCHARISTIC SACRIFICE. 177 
 
 Ho\v can I refuse to open my heart to this affecting con- 
 viction that all which Jesus Christ has done and suffered, he 
 has done and suffered for me as if I had been alone in the 
 world,* when I receive him entire in this minute form in 
 in which I have just seen him becoming incarnate, at the 
 voice of his minister ; inclosing himself for many days in a 
 tabernacle less pure than the womb of Mary, suffering anew 
 the sneers of the impious, filled with disgust for our indiffer- 
 ence and exposing himself to fall into the mouth of the 
 sacrilegious! 
 
 I have answered, I believe, to the reproach made against 
 us by Protestants, of violating the glorious unity of the sacri- 
 fice of Jesus Christ, opposed by St. Paul to the multitude of 
 sacrifices of the ancient law,f and of degrading the oblation 
 of Calvary by the daily repetition of it. 
 
 The Catholic Church has read the Epistle of Paul to the 
 Hebrews, and understands aright the texts produced, but she 
 also attaches importance to innumerable passages of St. Paul| 
 and the ancient prophets, which all imply, under the new law, 
 the existence of an altar, of a priesthood and a victim witJiout 
 stain offered in every place, passages which the Protestant 
 commentator only perverts. 
 
 The Catholic Church also believes that the greatest injury 
 which can be done to the Sacrifice of the Cross, is to allow 
 its memory to fade away among Christians, is to expose them 
 to lose the fruits of it by a wholly profane life. Now, what 
 is better adapted to prevent this evil than the pressing invita- 
 tion she gives them, to be present every day, at most every 
 eight days at the great Mystery, and there eat the flesh, 
 and drink the blood of the august victim ! 
 
 * Tradidit semetipsum pro me. (Galat. ii. 20.) f Hebr. x. 14. 
 
 t I. Cor. x. 13 et seq. Hebr. xiii. 10. 
 
 Isa. xix. 19. Ixvi. 2. Jerem. xxxiii. 18. Dan. viii. 11; xii. 11. 
 Malach. i. 10, 11. Ps. cix. 4.
 
 178 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 The admirable efficacy of such an institution to impress 
 on the mind and heart in characters of fire the memory of the 
 crucified God, the deep life which it communicates to a wor- 
 ship, all the ceremonies of Avhich harmonise with the action 
 which is their centre ; the moral omnipotence which it gives 
 to the evangelical ministry, are all so many powerful reasons 
 which Luther could have opposed to the wretched sophistry 
 of his interlocutor, in the famous dialogue in which Satan 
 succeeds in convincing him that the Mass is, an abomination 
 that surpasses all other abominations.* But this man who 
 boldly burned the bulls of Leo X. which proclaimed the 
 doctrine of the Universal Church and who, in his answer to 
 Henry VIII. wrote : "If I should have against me a thousand 
 Cyprians and a thousand Augustins, I should deride them," that 
 man could only listen and submit when Satan addressed him. 
 
 What have Protestants gained by yielding, like Luther, to 
 the father of lies, against the uniform testimony of the Pro- 
 phets, of Christ, the Apostles, the Holy Fathers and all Chris- 
 tian antiquity? They, alone, among all the nations upon 
 whom the sun has ever shone (except the Jews) they are with- 
 out, an altar, without a priesthood, witJiout a sacrifice.^ Having 
 no longer with them him whose powerful voice makes our 
 supplications penetrate even to the heart of God,J they have 
 seen public prayer expiring in their religious assemblies, " and 
 their empty and silent temples seem rather to be the sepul- 
 chres of a dead worship, than the temples of a living worship." 
 
 * Those who are desirous of reading this ever memorable document, 
 and who have not at hand the works of Luther, will find it extracted 
 word for word, from the 7th vol. of his works, Wittemberg edition, in 
 the new edition of Lettres de Scheffmacher, by M. Caillau, vol. iii. 
 p. 99, et seq. 
 
 f Hose. iii. 4. 
 
 | Preces supplicationesque . . . cum clamore valido ct lacrymis of- 
 ferens, exauditus est pro sua rcverentia. (Heb. 5, 7.) 
 
 Wiseman, Lecture 5lh.
 
 MORAL INFLUENCE OF JESUS CHRIST. 179 
 
 CHAPTER XLII. 
 
 MORAL INFLUENCE OF JESUS CHRIST ON THE SOUL IN THE 
 
 EUCHARIST. VIRTUES OF WHICH HE GIVES THE 
 
 EXAMPLE. CONNECTION OF THE EUCHARIST 
 
 WITH PENANCE. 
 
 THE sanctifying influence which Jesus Christ exercises 
 directly over the soul to which he unites himself in commu- 
 nion, is doubtless of infinite power if considered in itself; 
 but it is limited in its effects by human will which yields or 
 resists, at pleasure, the impulse towards sanctity, which Christ 
 impresses upon it. The will then must be influenced, and the 
 best means of determining it to the practice of virtue, is to 
 realise virtue in the living lesson of example. 
 
 The sublime maxims of Jesus Christ's Sermon on the 
 Mount* would only have produced a fruitless admiration 
 among the children of men, if the Savior had not joined the 
 influence which overrules the sluggishness of the heart, to the 
 word which enlightens the mind. It was by doing, far more 
 than by teaching, that he has determined so many souls to 
 follow him in the difficult paths of self-denial.f But every 
 one knows that example loses much of its efficacy in passing 
 through the medium of history, and that virtues perceived at 
 the distance of eighteen centuries are not sufficiently elo- 
 quent to move our hearts ! It was then very necessary that 
 the Divine model of the elect should dwell in the midst of us 
 full of grace and truth, and that he should offer to each one 
 the living picture of the same virtues which charmed the wit- 
 nesses of his mortal life and attached to him so powerfully 
 the heart of his disciples. 
 
 This need, Jesus Christ satisfies in his Eucharistic life ; at 
 the same time that he acts, if I may thus say, physically on 
 * Matth. v. t Act. Ap. i. 1.
 
 ISO THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 the soul by the sacramental virtue of the Communion, he acts 
 morally on the understanding and will by the overpowering 
 spectacle of the virtues of which he offers us the example. 
 Let us limit ourselves to a few considerations on a subject 
 which would demand a volume. 
 
 In order that the sinner may return to God, he must open 
 his heart to a filial confidence in the Divine compassion and 
 say as the prodigal child : / will arise, and I will go and 
 throw myself at the feet of the lest of my fathers.* This is 
 not an easy thing. The first effect of the entrance of crime 
 into the soul is to pervert the idea of God. Instead of a 
 Father infinitely good, more sensible of the wo of his chil- 
 dren than of the injuries he receives from them, and always 
 ready to pardon sincere repentance, the sinner looks upon 
 God only as a cruel master, armed with thunderbolts. Hence 
 that profound aversion which leads him to avoid the thought 
 and the presence of God. Like guilty Adam, he conceals 
 himself;f like the first fratricide, he often repels the Divine 
 advances, and abandoned to a secret despair, he passes the 
 rest of his days far from the face of God.\ 
 
 What means will infinite compassion employ to recall this 
 fugitive, to subdue this savage ? She will descend to earth 
 and assume a body and a soul, she will take the name of the 
 Friend of sinners ; and while conversing and eating with 
 them, will entangle them in the nets of his love.]] He is 
 no longer the God of Sinai speaking in thunder; he is the 
 Son of the Virgin, charming the multitude by the grace and 
 sweetness of his words,1T receiving sinners with unspeakable 
 kindness and urging them to give by their return joy to the 
 angels of God.** He is the good shepherd, who leaves the 
 ninety and nine faithful sheep to follow that which has gone 
 
 * Luke xv. 18. t Genes, iii. 8. J Genes, iv. 16. 
 
 Luke vii. 34. || In vinculis charitatis. (Hos. xi. 4.) 
 IT Luke iv. 22. ** Ibid xv. 10.
 
 MORAL INFLUENCE OF JESUS CHRIST. 181 
 
 astray, and spares him the fatigue of returning by bearing 
 him on his shoulders.* 
 
 Could Jesus Christ manifest more strikingly his unspeak- 
 able tenderness for sinners, and his ardent zeal for their sal- 
 Vation than he does in the adorable sacrament in which he 
 condemns himself to remain on the earth so long as there is 
 one soul to save ? 
 
 How effectually can the infinite Divine mercy be preached, 
 and hearts opened to receive hope before the altars where 
 Jesus Christ resides! For one sinner who has yielded to 
 these terrible words of the Sovereign Judge of the living and 
 the dead : Go, ye c.ursed, into everlasting fire, how many thou- 
 sands have yielded to the tender invitations of the Divine 
 Recluse of our tabernacles: Come to me, all ye who groan 
 under the weight of your crimes, and I will console you ! \ 
 
 After the sinner has been led to God, he must be brought 
 to annihilate himself before that Supreme Majesty, to which 
 he has dared to say, ia the delirium of pride ; I will not obey 
 thee ; | for if God turns with indignation from him who 
 exalts himself, he lovingly condescends to him who humbles 
 himself. 
 
 You, who are repelled by the very word humility because 
 you have never endeavored to comprehend this simple truth, 
 that it is folly for a being, created from nothing, to attribute 
 to himself anything, behold God concealed under the Eucha- 
 ristic species. 
 
 It was, indeed, a wonderful humiliation when the Son of 
 God was wrapped in poor swaddling clothes and laid crying 
 in a manger! but he was an infant. It was a dreadful spec- 
 tacle when the King of Kings was crushed under foot by his 
 executioners; and expired on the infamous wood between 
 two criminals! Yet, amid the sighs of the victim, and the 
 blood that flowed in streams from his wounds, a living 
 * Luke iv. 5. f Matth. xi. 2S. { Jerem. ii. 20. 
 
 VOL. II. 16
 
 182 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 body was visible. But here, the God, the man, the child, 
 have all disappeared. There is nothing which implies life. 
 What do we see ? What we see everywhere, bread and 
 wine ; and yet only in appearance. It is mere nothingness. 
 After that, child of earth, fallen by sin below that nothing, 
 which is pure in the eye of God, wilt thou dare to exalt 
 thyself! 
 
 It is by opposing his will to the supreme will that man ren- 
 ders himself guilty of infinite disorder. It is by resigning his 
 will into the hands of God, and of every creature divinely 
 appointed for the government of society,* that man compen- 
 sates for his rebellion, re-enters into order, and offers to God 
 the most acceptable of sacrifices, the sacrifice of himself ;f 
 for there is nothing so precious or so dear to him as his will. 
 
 To obtain from us this abnegation of self, it was not enough 
 that the Son of God obeyed Mary and Joseph | for thirty 
 years ; made himself, during his public life, the servant of all, 
 and delivered himself, without resistance, to his executioners. 
 For eighteen hundred years that he has reigned at the right 
 hand of the Father, he never has ceased to give to men the 
 example of the most universal and humiliating obedience. 
 Every day multitudes of priests, be they fervent, lukewarm, 
 or vicious it is the same summon him where it pleases 
 them, give him to whom they will, confine him under lock 
 and key, and dispose of him at their will. There is no person, 
 from the youth to the old man, who has not a right to ask 
 that he may enter into his heart, and whether this heart be 
 the habitation of angels, or a receptacle of the infernal legions 
 of vices; Christ muxt obey. There, again, the Son of the 
 Most High becomes obedient to death.\\ What will is so irn 
 
 * I. Peter ii. 13. 
 
 t Melior est obedtentia quatn victim'*. (I. Kings xv. 22.) 
 
 J Luke ii. 51 Matth. xx. 28. || Philipp. ii. 8.
 
 MORAL INFLUENCE OF JESUS CHRIST. 183 
 
 patient of restraint that it does not yield to the yoke of obe- 
 dience at the spectacle of such self-abnegation ! 
 
 God, who is called charity * desires not a heart closed to 
 the love of its neighbor, and he does not pardon him who 
 refuses pardon to his brother. Now what can be more ad- 
 apted to melt the ice of selfishness, and dispose the most 
 wounded heart for the forgetfulness of wrongs and injuries, 
 than the daily spectacle of a God, who, not content with 
 dying for us when ice were his enemies,^ forgets our perpetual 
 ingratitude to become our nourishment, and pours out for us, 
 in love, that same blood that we have shed and trampled 
 under foot by our crimes. How, then, can I wish, and do 
 evil to this brother, who, by communion, has become a living 
 member of Jesus Christ! Would not my hatred and my 
 blows fall upon him whom I adore! The Catholic who would 
 open his heart to the breath of hatred and vengeance must 
 first renounce his faith. 
 
 What protection have we against the allurements of dis- 
 graceful pleasures, like that thought of the Apostle, that our 
 ladies are the members of Jesus Christ, and that we cannot 
 pollute them without dreadful sacrilege !| Could he degrade 
 himself to the level of a brute, who, at the Eucharistic ban- 
 quet, has felt the virginal blood of the Son of Mary flowing 
 through his veins! 
 
 It is not surprising that, in a church where Christ in person 
 gives every day such instructions, there are found men court- 
 ing contempt, enemies of their own will, men who cheerfully 
 sacrifice their lives in the service of their brethren, and who 
 live in the body as if they had none. 
 
 To these happy effects, in the midst of us, of the real pre- 
 sence of the Divine Physician of souls, let us add another still 
 
 * I. John iv. 1G. t Rm. v. 10. 
 
 J Nescitis quoniam corpora vestra membra sunt Chrisli ? Tollens 
 ergo membra Christi v &c. (I. Ccr. vii. 15.)
 
 184 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 more so ; it is the determination to take the bitter remedy of 
 Penance, I would here express mj own thought, in the 
 words of a celebrated Protestant thinker: " Without the real 
 presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, and the obligation 
 to receive him in it by communion; the sacrament of penance, 
 as it is practised in the Catholic Church, would never be ac- 
 cepted ; and, to take from Catholicism the sacrament of pen- 
 ance, is to close up the source of the virtues which it offers 
 to our admiration."* We will begin by giving an idea of 
 penance. 
 
 CHAPTER XLIII. 
 
 PRINCIPLES OF LUTHER CONCERNING PENANCE. PRINCIPLES 
 
 OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. CONTRITION. 
 
 NOTHING sounds so ill in the ear of the world as the word 
 Penance. Why has not an attempt been made to efface 
 from the Gospel this unfortunate expression? But certainly 
 this is not an easy thing to do. What do we find in Scrip- 
 ture, if not the obligation to resist the impure tendencies 
 of the heart, and to crucify it with its immoderate desires! 
 Of the seven thousand six hundred verses of the New Tes- 
 tament, there are three thousand, at least, which make pen- 
 ance and mortification the indispensable condition of sal- 
 vation for the sinner. 
 
 If the law of toilsome expiation were not so frequently and 
 clearly laid down in Scripture, would not the life of Jesus 
 itself, which was only a protracted martyrdom,f impose on 
 the Christian the obligation to chastise himself, and follow the 
 
 * Lord Fitz-William, Letters of Jltticus, 5th. 
 
 t Tota vita Christ! crux fuit et martyrium. (De Imitationc Clitisti, 
 ii. xii. 7.
 
 PRINCIPLES OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. 1S5 
 
 footsteps of the Man of Sorrows! How could he hope to 
 share the glory of his chief, if he remained a stranger to his 
 sufferings.* 
 
 Yet it is upon the sufferings of the Mediator that the au- 
 thors of the Reformation rely, to free sinners from the obli- 
 gation of suffering. Christ, according to them, has given sa- 
 tisfaction for our iniquities, why should we afflict our minds 
 and hearts by penances which would add nothing to the 
 merits of the Redeemer, and would even be injurious to 
 them ? 
 
 If it was objected, on the other hand, that the object of 
 Christian penance was not alone to expiate sin committed, but 
 to prevent the recurrence of it, and that there is a certain 
 demon, according to the words of Jesus Christ, which can be 
 conquered only by fasting and prayer. f " Leave these fine 
 recipes," answered Luther, to the stupid Papists ; " a )d if you 
 wish to put the devil to flight, always do more than he sug- 
 gests to you." Let us listen to the Apostle of Wittemberg 
 instructing his followers in his admirable asceticism. 
 
 " Poor Jerome Weller," he writes to a friend who asked 
 him for arms against the devil, " thou hast temptations ; they 
 must be overcome. When the devil comes to tempt thee, 
 drink, my friend, drink freely, make merry, sport and sin, in 
 hatred of the evil spirit, and to torment him. If he says to 
 thee : Will you not stop drinking, answer him : I will drink 
 glasses full, because you forbid it ; I will drink great draughts 
 in honor of Jesus Christ. Imitate me, I never drink so well, 
 I never eat so much, I never enjoy myself so much at table, 
 as when I am vexing Satan. I should really like to find some 
 good new sin, that he might learn to his cost, that I ridicule 
 everything that is sin, and that my conscience is never op- 
 pressed by it. Away with the Decalogue, when the devil 
 
 * Si tamen compatimur, ut et conglorificemur. (Rom. viii. 17.) 
 t Matth. xvii. 20. 
 
 16*
 
 186 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 comes to torment us! When he breathes into our ear: 
 ' Thou sinnest ; thou art worthy of death and hell.' Ah, my 
 God ! yes, I know it only too well ; what would you tell me ? 
 But you will be condemned in the other life. It is not true; 
 I know some one who has suffered and given satisfaction for 
 me : he is called Jesus Christ, Son of God ; where he is, there 
 I shall be." * 
 
 Let us compare, with the vile prescriptions of the apostle 
 of taverns, the salutary remedy which the Catholic Church 
 offers to the Christian who has had the misfortune to violate 
 seriously the engagements contracted in baptism. To free 
 him from the chains of sin, she prescribes for him three 
 things, contrition, confession, satisfaction. 
 
 "Contrition," says the Council of Trent, "which holds the 
 first place among the acts of penance, is sorrow of soul and 
 a sincere detestation of the sin committed, with a firm deter- 
 mination never more to commit it." f 
 
 Contrition is the penance of the heart; the first that God 
 requires, and without which fasting and maceration of the 
 body would be only hypocrisy in his eyes.J From the heart, 
 said Jesus Christ, come forth evil thoughts, murders, adul- 
 teries, <^c. On the heart, then, punishment must first be in- 
 flicted. It is that which by sin has withdrawn itself from the 
 divine control to place itself under the debasing yoke of the 
 
 * The remaining words refuse themselves to any translation : (See 
 Audin, Histoire de Calvin, ch. xxv. torn. i. p. 453.) Other recipes 
 against the suggestions of the devil may be found in the Memoires de 
 Luther, Merits par lui-meme, by M. Michelet, liv. v. ch. 6. Add 
 to that the Sermon on Marriage, then ask what is to be thought of 
 the nations who hailed by the name of Apostle and Evangelist the im- 
 pudent and sacrilegious libertine, whom Pagan Rome would have con- 
 demned to death by the rod of the lictor. 
 
 \ Sess. xiv. De Pcenit, cap. iv. 
 
 f Scindite corda vestra et non vestimenta vestra. (Joel ii. 13.) 
 
 Matth. xv. 19.
 
 PRINCIPLES OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. 187 
 
 passions ; it must, then, be brought back, crushed with sorrow 
 and covered with shame * to the feet of the master whom it 
 has meanly abandoned. 
 
 Let us follow the series of virtuous acts by which the 
 repentant sinner prepares himself freely under the Divine in- 
 fluence of grace for the blessing of justification according to 
 the council quoted above.f Nothing can be more logical, 
 more natural, or more moral than the path it marks out for 
 this prodigal son, by which he can be delivered from the abyss 
 of misery into which crime has led him and conducted back 
 to his home where the embraces of the kindest of fathers 
 await him, and the joys which his return will occasion. 
 
 While Protestant justification requires but two unimportant 
 acts for a true moral renovation, in which the soul receives 
 the Divine influence much more than it co-operates with it,J 
 
 * Cor contritum et humiliatum, Deus, non despicies. (Ps. i. 19.) 
 
 t Concil. Trent. Sess. vi. De Justific. cap. vi. 
 
 \ These two acts are at first the fear, the terrors, which the criminal 
 experiences in view of his sins and the punishment preparing for him 
 by the divine justice; a sentiment adapted it is true, to disturb the 
 factitious pleasure which the sinner finds in crime, but incapable of 
 breaking the ties which bind him to it. The fear of hell can delay the 
 steps of the sinner in the road which leads to it ; but of itself it will 
 not lead to God by the way of justice. 
 
 Afterwards comes the act of justifying faith, by which the sinner 
 seizes the robe of Christ's righteousness, covers himself with it as with 
 a garment, impenetrable to the assaults of divine vengeance, and ac- 
 quires the certainty that, however polluted he may be in himself, he 
 is holy, pure and perfect before God. Shame, decency, it is true, ob- 
 liged the leaders of the Reformation to demand of the justified sinner 
 a new life, and the practice of virtue; but, as we have already observ- 
 ed, the corrective disappears before the Calvinistic dogma of Persever- 
 ance, and before the principle a hundred times repeated by Luther, 
 that there is only one sin worthy of damnation, that is unbelief, and 
 that the most enormous crimes repeated a hundred times a day, never 
 corrupt in any way him who perseveres in thinking he is holy. (See as 
 above, ch. 37.)
 
 188 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 The Catholic penitential system embraces the whole interior 
 man, and imposes on every faculty some restoring effort 
 adapted to expel the diseased principle and reinstate the soul 
 in its normal condition. 
 
 Is the mind of the sinner touched with a ray of divine 
 light, or awakened by a movement of the heart, given from 
 above, does he determine to throw off the lethargy into 
 which the intoxication of the passions has plunged him, and 
 place himself, by meditation, on the great principles of faith, 
 at the only true point of view where man can know him- 
 self? He cannot but be greatly alarmed at the account he 
 must every moment give at the tribunal of a God so just 
 in the duties he imposes on man, so munificent in the re- 
 wards he promises, so terrible in the punishments he inflicts, 
 so lavish in the means he furnishes to merit the one, and avoid 
 the other. 
 
 This terror penetrates even into the marrow of the bones,* 
 when reflecting on the past ; the sinner discovers in it so much 
 hostility to God and such defiance of his justice. 
 
 But God, whose avenging arm will eternally smite the 
 hosts of angels guilty of one rebellion only, is also the God 
 of charity who has delivered up his own Son for the salva- 
 tion of the world. At the thought of the all-powerful Advo- 
 cate who solicits and always obtains pardon for him who 
 confidently has recourse to him/j- hope revives in the criminal. 
 His heart before contracted by fear, expands and gradually 
 turns lovingly towards the compassionate source of all jus- 
 tice. The sin, which he at first detested as bringing down 
 
 What then is justification according to the principles of Calvin and 
 Luther ? It is a divine permission to sin, which takes from crime its 
 last restraint, fear and remorse. 
 
 * Non est pax ossibus meis a facie peccatorum meorurn. (Ps. xxxvii. 4.) 
 f Si quis peccaverit, advocatum habemus apud Patretn, Jesum Chris- 
 tum. (John ii. 1.)
 
 CONFESSION". 189 
 
 upon him the weight of celestial vengeance, appears to him 
 much more odious when love teaches him to look upon it as 
 an offence against a supremely good and infinitely kind Father. 
 
 Such are the holy stations through which the Catholic 
 Church intends the sinner should pass before receiving the 
 sentence of absolution, whenever divine love does not diminish 
 the length of the way by consuming in its burning flames the 
 pollutions and the bonds of sin. In fact, the Church, which 
 judges contrition so indispensable to the validity of the Sa- 
 crament of Penance, that no absolution on the part of the 
 priest, no act of repentance on the part of the sinner could 
 ever be a substitute for it, attributes to it, at the same time, 
 so much power, when it is inspired by divine love, that it can 
 reconcile the sinner with God before the sacramental act* 
 
 It is easy to see the effectual securities which these preli- 
 minary acts of reconciliation furnish to the sinner against a 
 relapse into vice. It is easy, too, for each one to estimate 
 the justice of the reproach that Protestants bring against us, 
 of favoring crime by making confession a magic bath, where 
 the blackest criminals may plunge but for an instant and come 
 forth white as snow. 
 
 CHAPTER XLIV. 
 
 CONFESSION. IT IS NATURAL. DIFFERENT KINDS OF ABSO- 
 LUTION. NECESSITY AND UNIVERSALITY OF CONFESSION. 
 
 To the truly humble and contrite sinner confession appears, 
 not as a punishment inflicted upon sin, but as a natural and 
 necessary, and a divinely soothing remedy for a tortured 
 conscience. 
 
 * Concil. Trent., Sess. xiv. De Pcenit. cap. iv. De Contrit.
 
 190 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 The most painful and the most burdensome secret to be kept 
 by a heart not jet polluted by disease, is that of crime. The 
 soul which is animated by a real hatred of sin, naturally 
 tends to separate herself from it, to force it out, as it were. 
 
 " The stomach which contains poison and which throws 
 itself into a convulsion in order to reject it, is the natural 
 image of a heart into which crime has poured its venom. It 
 suffers, it labors, it contracts itself until it reaches the ear of 
 friendship, or at least that of benevolence."* 
 
 To the desire of consoling itself by banishing the evil is 
 united, in the penitent soul the need of expiating it. Now, 
 " the universal conscience recognises in spontaneous confes- 
 sion an expiatory power and a merit of grace : there is but 
 one sentiment on this point from the mother who questions 
 her child concerning the breaking of a piece of porcelain, 
 or a sweetmeat eaten contrary to orders, to the judge who 
 from his high tribunal interrogates the robber and the 
 assassin. f 
 
 The shame inseparable from confession, already so much 
 diminished by the eternal silence divinely imposed on the only 
 confident who receives it, will never check the true penitent 
 in whom the fear and love of God have prevailed over the 
 fear of man and the desire for an undeserved reputation. 
 The most insupportable confusion for him is that which he 
 endures in the secrecy of his own conscience, before the pre- 
 sence of^Gpd, who is the unavoidable witness of so many 
 sins. What does it import to him that a feeble being and 
 sinner like himself should know what he cannot conceal from 
 
 the eye of ^ 'ifiv J tip , ^5^" ess 
 
 Even for the man whom a sincere conversion has re-esta- 
 blished in the truth, there is need of showing himself as he 
 is, of accepting the contempt which he merits, of rejecting 
 as undeserved the esteem which ignorance offers him. This 
 * De Maistre, Du Pape, liv. iii. ch. 3d. f Ibid.
 
 CONFESSION. 
 
 t\ 
 
 thirst for truth and justice which leads a soul, deeply moved, 
 to the public avowal of its errors, is not rare ; and every ex- 
 perienced director knows that if there arc cowardly penitents 
 whose silence and timidity afflict the physician who has taken 
 it upon himself to heal them, there are others whose indiscreet 
 fervor must be restrained. 
 
 To these natural predispositions which singularly facilitate 
 the approach to the confessional, may be added the pressing 
 need that every soul agitated by remorse feels, of hearing the 
 consoling words : Go in peace, my brother, thy sins are for- 
 given thee. 
 
 But, it will be objected, what mortal can ever have the 
 right to hold this language to a fellow mortal ? The question 
 is not a new one;* but what means have those who judge 
 the power of remitting sins to be incommunicable to mortals, 
 of pacifying consciences convinced of their crimes and 
 uncertain of pardon ? For myself, I know but four kinds of 
 absolution. 
 
 1st. The absolution which the Catholic priest gives to the 
 penitent sinner in virtue of the power granted to the first 
 priests : Whatever lliou shall loose on earth, <$fc. Receive of 
 the Holy Ghost ; whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven 
 them, <$fc.\ 
 
 2d. The absolution which the atheist gives himself in virtue 
 of this principle : There is no God, or it matters little to me 
 if there be one. 
 
 3d. The absolution which the multitude of unreflective 
 minds administer to themselves in virtue of this extraordinary 
 though tacit reasoning : God is good ; hence I may insult him 
 ii-ithout fear. 
 
 4th. The absolution which the Lutheran gives himself, or 
 rather the canonisation which he makes of himself, when he 
 
 * Quis poteat demittere peccato nisi solus De'is. (Mark ii. 7.) 
 t Matth. xviii. IS ; John xx. 23.
 
 192 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 modestly says on the faith of Luther: Sinner that I am, I 
 hare the ccriainly of being as holy in the eyes of God as the 
 Aposlles, Peter and Paul. 
 
 Choose from among these different modes of absolution, 
 the one which appears to you most moral, most soothing for 
 the individual, most abounding in securities against everything 
 which disturbs families and society. 
 
 So long as the soul inhabits a healthy body, and finds in 
 pleasures and business food for its activity she may say in a 
 kind of good faith, that in the conscience there is no room 
 but for God ; that the affairs of religion must be transacted 
 between man and his Creator with closed doors; but this 
 philosophic assurance becomes necessarily of diminished 
 value as soon as age, infirmities and cruel deceptions oblige 
 man to fall back upon himself, as soon as he feels the close 
 of the drama of life approaching, and asks himself if the 
 part he has played will obtain for him the praise or the blame 
 of the Invisible Spectator. 
 
 Does he ask of God in prayer? His questions will remain 
 
 1 unanswered. Those mortals are very rare with whom God 
 
 ^ deigns to converse.* He always makes use of an interpreter, 
 
 and the word which he destines for Paul, he breathes into the 
 
 ear of Ananias.f 
 
 Nothing is, then, more natural or more consoling than the 
 intervention of a third person, who, after an exact examina- 
 tion of the conscience, says : " Have confidence, my brother ; 
 by the knowledge which I have of the divine goodness and 
 the dispositions of your soul, and, above all, by the power 
 which I have received from heaven, I am authorized to say to 
 you that your sins arc forgiven." 
 
 How many of our separated brethren we have it from 
 good authority make the ministers of their worship sadly 
 
 * Ore enim ad es loq lor ci, &.c. (Numer. xii. 8.) 
 t Act. Apos. ix.
 
 CONFESSION. 193 
 
 sensible of the melancholy inefficacy of the part they are 
 playing, when, at the approach of death, they ask of them, 
 with tears, some testimony of the divine forgiveness ! Unfor- 
 tunate tools of a fantastic priesthood, you recall to my memory 
 the heart-rending histo7-y of a child, who, deprived by ship- 
 wreck of the breast which nourished him, cast himself in 
 agony upon a bust of his mother, and expired, clinging to its 
 bosom ! 
 
 I have thus, I think, brought to light the germ of confession 
 deposited by the Creator in the depths of the human heart, 
 until the Redeemer unfolded it into a great tree, which would 
 lend to repentant crime a salutary shelter from the strokes of 
 divine justice and the devouring fires of despair. 
 
 I have, at the same time, explained the very singular and 
 yet incontestable fact of the practice of confession among all 
 the people of Pagan antiquity, and most of the modern idola- 
 trous nations. 
 
 You who give credit for the invention of this painful prac- 
 tice to those whom it oppresses the most, the Catholic priests, 
 if you were a little less ignorant, you would know that always 
 and everywhere there has been confession. 
 
 Confession was made to the priests among most of the 
 nations of Greece and Asia. The Emperor, Marcus Aurelius 
 himself, having been initiated into the mysteries of Eleusis, 
 was obliged to speak, for a long time, into the ear of the 
 hierophant. Among the ancient Mexicans and Peruvians there 
 was confession.* The people of Persia, China, Thibet, the 
 kingdom of Siam, Ceylon, and Hindostan, &c., still confess.f 
 
 " On this point, as on all others, what has Christianity 
 done? She has revealed man to man; she has taken pos- 
 session of his inclinations, of his eternal and universal beliefs, 
 
 * See Jlnnales de Philosophic Chretienne, torn. xxii. p. 145. 
 t See De Maistre, as above cited. Recherches sur la Confession au- 
 riculaire, by M. 1'Abbe Guillnis. 
 VOL. II. 17
 
 194 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 and placed under protection their ancient foundations; she 
 has cleansed them from every stain, from every foreign ad- 
 mixture; she has honored them with the divine impress; and, 
 upon these natural bases, she has established her supernatural 
 theory of penance and sacramental confession.* 
 
 However pride may rebel against this salutary institution, 
 it will only bring into stronger light this truth : Confession, 
 by the humiliation which accompanies it, is the best specific 
 against the first cause of our errors,^ as it is, by the profound 
 peace that follows it, the most unequivocal proof of our re- 
 conciliation with the supreme justice, Peace being the work of 
 justice.^ 
 
 CHAPTER XLV. 
 
 MOKAL AND SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CONFESSION. ACKNOW- 
 LEDGEMENT OF UNBELIEVERS. OMNIPOTENCE OF THIS 
 
 PRACTICE IN THE MORAL EDUCATION OF MAN. 
 
 CONNECTION BETWEEN CONFESSION AND 
 COMMUNION. 
 
 CONFESSION, had it only the power to soothe and pacify 
 the conscience, by freeing it from the poison of crime, would 
 still be dear to virtuous souls, and would only offend hearts 
 so hardened in sin as to blunt the sting of remorse. But this 
 is only one of the many benefits we owe to it. 
 
 Its remarkable moral power has imposed silence on the 
 most violent anti-Catholic prejudices, and there is but one 
 voice, even among writers of the most opposite opinion, cele- 
 brating the salutary influence of this practice. 
 
 * Ibid, Du Pape. 
 
 f Initium omnis peccali est superbia. (Eccle. 5. 15.) 
 
 J Et erit opus justitae, pax. (Isa. xxxii. 17.)
 
 ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF UNBELIEVERS. 19o 
 
 The Pagan, Seneca, has spoken of the reforming and guiding 
 power of confession, after the manner of the masters of the 
 spiritual life; and one cannot read his Epistles without in- 
 dining more and more to the belief that the preceptor of Nero 
 had lent an ear to St. Paul, and received a summons to lay 
 down the pride of philosophy at the feet of the minister of 
 Jesus Christ.* 
 
 From the heathen philosophers of the first century, we pass 
 to the anti-Christian sophists of the eighteenth. Voltaire, 
 their chief, tells us, in various parts of his works, that "there 
 is, perhaps, no wiser institution," , . . that (l confession is an 
 excellent thing, a restraint upon inveterate crime, a very good 
 practice to prevent the guilty from abandoning themselves to 
 despair, and relapsing into sin ; to influence hearts ulcerated 
 by hatred, to forgive, robbers to make restitution," . . that 
 " the enemies of the Romish Church, who have opposed so 
 beneficial an institution, have taken from man the greatest 
 restraint that can be put upon crime," &c.f 
 
 Rousseau exclaims : How many restitutions and reparations 
 does confession procure among Catholics !| The madman 
 Raynal attributes to this very useful practice, which takes the 
 place of penal laws, and watches over purity o.f manners , the 
 prodigies of the Jesuits at Paraguay, and he adds \ " The 
 best of all governments would be a theocracy, in which the 
 tribunal of penance should be established." 
 
 * See Epistles 52, 53 Concerning the more than probable relations 
 of Seneca with St. Paul, who had formed, a. sn^all community of Saints 
 even in the Court of Nero. (Ep. to. Philipp. vi. 23.) Sep ; J}e IV^aistre, 
 Soirees de St. Petersburg, Entret. vii 
 
 t Diet. Philosoph., art. Catgcfy. du Curt. Jlnnales de r.Emjjire, 
 torn. i. p. 41, &c. &c. 
 
 J Emile, torn", iii. p. 201. 
 
 Histoire Philosoph. et polit. du commerce dot Indes, \.om. iii. p. 
 238. It is (rye that he adds: If it tocre always directed by virtuous 
 men,. This is the microscopic spirit of the philosophers of the last
 
 196 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 But no writer has more clearly shown the social utility of 
 this practice than the Protestant author of the Letters of At- 
 tlcus. Every judicious mind which examines it as closely as 
 he, will agree with the celebrated nobleman, that auricular 
 confession is the only truly efficacious remedy against the 
 moral evils which torment the individual and society ; that it 
 is the exclusive source of all the virtues which constitute the 
 happiness and security of the family and the State ; and that, 
 by the moral power which it exercises over the mind and 
 will, it can take the place of all the laws, if the practice of it 
 becomes general ; whilst every system of government which 
 is not based on it, is condemned to become only an illusion.* 
 
 What is, in fact, confession, seen from the most elevated 
 point of view ? It is Christianity employing its whole moral 
 power for the correction and perfecting of the individual. 
 
 Those who know what was the condition of the world at 
 the moment when Christianity commenced, and who have 
 followed its giant steps, from its beginning in the upper 
 chamber, to our own time, will know its wonderful achieve- 
 ments. How many intellectual aberrations has it dispelled, 
 from the shocking absurdities of idolatry to the seducing 
 speculations of heresy and false science, by opposing to them 
 the luminous simplicity of its doctrine ! How many abo- 
 minable practices has it abolished in the family, in the temples, 
 and in the theatres! How much violence and social injustice 
 has been repaired by the sanctity and sweetness of its mo- 
 rality ! How many virtues, how much devotion, how many 
 touching and heroic institutions its divine philanthropy has 
 
 century ! They saw no remedy for abuses but in the destruction of 
 institutions which elsewhere they recognised as vastly wise and use- 
 ful. Poor maniacs who deliberately set fire to their houses to free 
 themselves from cobwebs, and who did not comprehend that the most 
 disastrous of abuses is not to endure them ! 
 * Letter 5th.
 
 ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF UNBELIEVERS. 197 
 
 substituted for the fierce calculations and barbarous inven- 
 tions of Pagan selfishness ! 
 
 And these wonderful transformations effected in the masses, 
 Christianity daily reproduces in the individual at the con- 
 fessional. 
 
 Here, again, the ambassador of Christ meets hearts in 
 which reigns an idol, not of wood or metal, but animated, 
 living, commanding. If this false God is not overthrown, 
 after having received the incense of guilty thoughts, he will 
 demand victims and blood ; and the most abominable sacri- 
 fices of antiquity, human sacrifices, will revive. 
 
 Let us suppose that Robespierre, Marat, and their asso- 
 ciates, instead of blindly following the inspirations of their 
 pride, had consulted a confessor on the first approach of this 
 familiar demon, is it not certain that two or three words 
 whispered in the ear would have spared France many frightful 
 hecatombs ! 
 
 If we descend from historical criminals to those of lo%ver 
 conditions, what are they all? Infidels, whom the idol of 
 gold, pleasure, or revenge, has rendered sanguinary. If docile 
 to the voice of the Church, they had opened their heart to the 
 eye of religion, at least once a year, justice would not be ob- 
 liged to expiate in their blood the blood of their victims. 
 
 Generalize confession, and criminal tribunals would be 
 superfluous. How many despisers of this practice owe to it 
 the preservation of their fortune and their lives ! 
 
 Here, again, the minister of Jesus Christ, approaching 
 every mind with the torch of truth, prevents and stifles in the 
 bud innumerable great and small heresies, dissipates many 
 illusions of the mind and heart, which, brought into being by 
 half knowledge and pride, would end by turning many 
 brains. 
 
 There is a great difference between the word at a distance 
 and the word in the ear ; between the public word diffusing 
 
 17*
 
 198 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 itself Very unequally among two or three thousand auditors, 
 and the special word reaching the individual in all its fulness. 
 Confession is the religious light proceeding from its source 
 and individualizing itself in every heart. Take away con- 
 fession, religious instruction loses its efficacy, and, ceasing to 
 be the director of individual opinion, becomes its sport. 
 
 Here, again, the minister of Jesus Christ meets cruel pa- 
 rents, who, if they no longer destroy their new-born offspring 
 as formerly, prevent their birth, or, at least, by their mis- 
 conduct and neglect, prepare for them a future of misery and 
 shame. How many children are indebted to confession for 
 their existence, their morality, and the ease which they 
 enjoy ! 
 
 Here, again, the minister of Jesus Christ finds himself in 
 the presence of masters, stern lords 1 , who, if left to their na- 
 tural inclinations, would, in fact, soon re-establish slavery, 
 though abolished by our laws and customs. Their heart must 
 be softened by the breath of charity, if they would not be ex- 
 cluded from the public banquet, where religion consoles and 
 regales their victims. 
 
 It is at the confessional that the laws of justice and charity 
 receive that rigorous application which the individual is in- 
 capable of making, blinded as he is by avarice and pride. 
 The wrongs which confession prevents, checks, and repairs, 
 are innumerable ; the number of thefts, where it returns to 
 the master what belongs to him, and preserves to the guilty 
 the restraint of public esteem; the number of law-suits which 
 it prevents or terminates quietly, and without expense ; the 
 animosities it quells, the reconciliations it effects, and the re- 
 venge that it changes to kindness, escape all calculation. 
 
 It is at the confessional that religion teaches Statesmen 
 that to govern a nation is not to devour it* Whatever may 
 
 * Among most Asiatic nations, the language, the faithful expression 
 of the habits, has made devour synonymous with reign ; " To reign,
 
 ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF UNBELIEVERS. 199 
 
 be said to the contrary, happy are the people whose governors 
 confess!* They will be governed by their confessor, it may 
 be said. Even if it were so, is not the influence of a man 
 who is under a religious obligation to speak to princes and 
 ministers the language of the Gospel, far better than to be at 
 the mercy of mistresses and courtiers exclusively occupied, as 
 they are, with moulding and turning to their own advantage 
 the passions of their master ? But this is not all ; every prince 
 who does not make a sport of confession, must reflect ser- 
 iously on his duties before presenting himself there, and he 
 cannot long be ignorant that his first obligation is to be and 
 to remain what God has made him, a king. If Henry VIII, 
 had continued to confess, and had bequeathed this practice to 
 his successors, would the English have been sufferers on that 
 account ! If Napoleon, instead of awaiting the forced tran- 
 quillity of exile to set his conscience in order, had employed 
 some hours every year, at Easter, in making an exact review 
 of his conduct, and consulting the law of God on its moral 
 and even political bearing, he, undoubtedly, would have died 
 
 in Siamese, says a learned missionary, is translated by Savenirat, which 
 signifies to eat the people. It is not said of such a mandarin that he 
 is governor of a certain city, but it is said; he eats such a city ; and 
 often with more truth than would be believed." (Letter of Mgr. 
 Bruguiere, Bishop of Capse, Annale,s de la Propag. torn. v. p. 172.) 
 The revolution of '93, which led immediately to barbarism, also intro- 
 duced many synonymes of this kind. 
 
 t M. Dupin said not long since to the Chamber, (March 19, 1844,) 
 " Let us remind the clergy that we are all under a government where 
 there is no confession ! " Alas ! M. Dupin, is not the fact evident from 
 the constant increase of our expenditures, and the constantly descend- 
 ing progress of our affairs ! To remind our clergy of the neglect of 
 religion by our governors does no great harm ; but to proclaim it aloud 
 in the ear of the people, is imprudence. A master, however undevout 
 he may be, likes to see those in his employ going from time to time to 
 confession. If he finds they neglect it, he distrusts them, and begins 
 to think of their removal.
 
 200 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 on the throne, and his glory, still greater than it now is, and 
 above all power, would have eclipsed all other glory. 
 
 It is, moreover, at the confessional that the eye and the 
 hand of religion, penetrating into the deepest recesses of the 
 heart, roots out its vices and its faults, plants and develops in 
 it the virtues, and raises them, by wise and assiduous culture, 
 even to heroism. 
 
 Ask the angels in human form, who devote themselves, in 
 our hospitals, to the service of the unfortunate, what attaches 
 them to offices so revolting to our nature ; they will tell you 
 it is confession and frequent communion. The one offers 
 celestial light to the mind, long subjected to the dazzling 
 sophisms of selfishness; the other nourishes the heart with 
 the bread of angels, which, without it, would become lifeless, 
 and return to the leeks of Egypt. 
 
 Confession and Communion are the two royal gates by 
 which Christianity penetrates into the internal man, wipes 
 away its numerous stains, heals all its diseases, changes it to 
 a delicious garden, where Christ refreshes himself, and from 
 which virtue breathes forth its fragrance far and wide. 
 
 Close one of these doors, and the other will close too. 
 Confession is exact, sincere, and will produce the fruits of 
 justice, only in proportion as it is the effect of faith in the 
 real reception of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist. The com- 
 munion, without the preliminary of confession, would be 
 abandoned by timid virtue, or would be unworthily frequented 
 by presumptuous pride. 
 
 This double gate once walled up, however inventive Chris- 
 tianity may become externally, in multiplying festivals, dis- 
 playing the eloquence of its Chrysostoms, thundering forth the 
 shouts of its Pergoleses and its Palestrinas ; man, from the 
 high ramparts of his pride, will sometimes deign to take part in 
 the sport of the player, will bestow upon him some praises, 
 and perhaps a few pieces of gold ; but he will remain himself.
 
 DIVINITY OF CONFESSION. 201 
 
 Such is the melancholy position of religion where there is 
 no confession. She is hardly tolerated in the temples; and 
 Paganism, refined by Christian civilization, rules all hearts. 
 
 CHAPTER XLVI. 
 
 DIVINITY OF CONFESSION. ABSURDITY OF THE CONTRARY 
 
 OPINION. OBJECTION THAT IT DEGRADES MAN. 
 
 RESULTS OF ITS ABOLITION. 
 
 LET me now be permitted to address the following ques- 
 tion to those who have examined the preceding considerations. 
 Do you really believe than an institution so exclusively effi- 
 cacious as confession, and which can never be replaced by 
 any other, could have escaped the divine eye of the Author 
 of Christianity, and have been neglected by his will, so power- 
 ful to liberate man from himself, in order to lead him to aspire 
 to the possession of God, and confer happiness on his fellow- 
 beings ? 
 
 If the precept of confession had not so evidently originated 
 from the power given by Jesus Christ to his ministers to loose 
 and to bind, to grant and withhold the remission of sins, ac- 
 cording to the exigencies of the case,* if the practice of con- 
 fession had not been established, even in the infancy of Chris- 
 tianity ,j- if all Christian antiquity did not present so compact 
 a body of testimony in favor of the perpetuity and univer- 
 sality of this practice, everything would lead us to believe 
 it to be a divine institution. 
 
 The fact, alone, of its immemorial usage in the Catholic 
 Church and in the schismatic churches of the East, does not 
 
 * Matth. xviii. 18. John xx. 23. 
 
 f Matlh. iii. 6. Act. Ap. xix. 18. James v. 16. I. John i. Q
 
 202 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 permit the least doubt on this subject. Who but the God- 
 Man could have induced human pride to accept a remedy so 
 repugnant to it ! 
 
 I shall immediately be answered : The priests have invented 
 confession! The difficulty is not at all in the invention, but 
 in the adoption by the Christian world of a practice so hu- 
 
 Let us exaggerate, as much as we will, the ignorance and 
 barbarism of the middle ages. The men of that period were 
 generally less learned than we ; but, as to points of Christian 
 doctrine, they knew as much of them, and incontrovertibly 
 adhered to them more tenaciously. If, at an epoch when 
 even the words confession and confessional were unknown, a 
 foolish fellow should have taken it into his head to ascend 
 the pulpit and say: By order of Jesus Christ and his church, 
 confess to the priests all your sins, even the most secret, if you 
 wish to obtain pardon, he would have been received with 
 shouts of laughter, and, in case of resistance, would have been 
 led to the stake, the method established at that time for re- 
 futing obstinate innovators. 
 
 It is, certainly, an amusing absurdity, that three hundred 
 thousand bishops, priests, abbes, and monks, should conspire, 
 and, some fine day, intimating to the world the obligation 
 hitherto unheard of to confess, should establish confessionals 
 everywhere, and confine themselves to them for half their life, 
 with no other personal advantage than the hatred which ac- 
 crues to them from so painful and repulsive an office.* But 
 to imagine that two hundred millions, at least, of Christians 
 had graciously yielded to such an imposition, and that no one 
 
 * Every one can see, and the priests above all, must know, that it is 
 neither by their homilies in the pulpit, nor by their chants before the 
 altar, nor by their charitable care of the sick and the unfortunate, that 
 the ministers of Jesus Christ accomplish daily these prophetic words: 
 Eritis odio omnibus propter nomen meum. (Matth. x. 22.)
 
 DIVINITY OF CONFESSION. 203 
 
 appealed, in aid of his deeply wounded pride, to the very 
 legitimate zeal for the ancient religion of his fathers, is an 
 extravagance which surpasses all bounds, and will only excite 
 the pity of any one who has not. received his soul in vain. 
 
 The enemies of confession should remember that there have 
 been before them men, also endowed with common sense, 
 and whose passions were no less rebellious than ours. The 
 repugnance which this practice meets with in men of the 
 nineteenth century it encountered from the men of the middle 
 age, and probably still stronger. Certainly, those fierce chil- 
 dren of the North who had triumphed over the legions of 
 Rome, and seen at their feet the masters of the world, had 
 not such pliant joints! But miscreant pride still repeats: I 
 clearly see, myself; what have I to do with the convictions 
 of the old world, an abject troop of feeble persons, led at will 
 by the priests ! 
 
 As to the objection made to confession, that it degrades 
 man too much by dragging him to the feet of his fellow-man,* 
 in addition to the derision passed on it by the fact of a divine 
 institution, every man of sense will consider it unfounded ; 
 he will find in the dealings of God towards the miserable 
 transgressors of his laws a delicacy, a reverence for their 
 reputation,^ which the most merciful sovereign never mani- 
 fested towards the infringers of human law. 
 
 * " Catholicity forces men into a very puerile practice, and does 
 not sufficiently respect human dignity, when it leads man to the feet 
 of man, to that tribunal which it names its tribunal of penance." 
 (Des Beaux Arts et da la langue des signes dans les fglises chr6- 
 tiennes rform6ts, by M. C. A. Muller, Paris, 1S41.) It is unpleasant 
 to meet such words in a work full of excellent things, and written with 
 a fairness and impartiality unfortunately very rare among Protestant 
 ministers, when treating of the subject of Catholic worship. The 
 estimable author should know that the Catholic Church invites to con- 
 fession, but never forces any one. As to the puerility of this practice, 
 1 would refer my readers to the two preceding chapters. 
 
 t Cum inagna reverentia disponis nos. (Sap. xn. 18.)
 
 204 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 What legislature has ever said to criminals : Choose from 
 among my ministers him who inspires you with the most con- 
 fidence ; confess to him all your crimes ; you will preserve 
 your honor, your property, your liberty, your life, and death 
 awaits your confidant alone, if he betrays your secret! God 
 has done this; and yet man complains! Pascal saw in these 
 absurd objections a strong proof of our original perversity.* 
 
 Man is degraded when he destroj's his reason by the vio- 
 lation of the moral law. He elevates himself, on the con- 
 trary, when he voluntarily acknowledges his errors to his 
 chosen confidant and applies to him for the means of living 
 as man should live. 
 
 What, then, can be more ridiculous than this reproach of 
 the forgetfulness of human dignity, brought by a handful of 
 men against the whole Catholic world! Subtract from the 
 catalogue of human examples all those who have violated 
 honor by confessing at least on their death-bed, what will 
 remain but the kingdoms of empty space ! 
 
 From a multitude of names which form the most brilliant 
 constellations of history, I shall quote only three, that were 
 so brilliant as to eclipse their age, Charlemagne, Louis XIV., 
 Napoleon. All three had to a high degree, the conscious- 
 ness of their personal dignity ; yet, all three confessed ; and 
 it is well known that, with the last, this act of religions sub- 
 mission was neither the influence of habit, nor caused by the 
 solicitation of those around him, but from a deep conviction. j- 
 Irreligion, it is true, terms it the last abdication, of the great 
 man ; J but it is just to observe that it was more voluntary 
 
 * Penstrs, Art. v. 8. 
 
 t In the Vie de Napoleon, by M. Michaud, may be seen, (Biograph. 
 Univ. torn. Ixv,) the obstacles and the ridicule which the illustrious 
 captive had to overrule from his mean jailors and even from one of his 
 companions in exile, in order to fulfil his religious duties. 
 
 $ This striking absurdity belongs, if my memory does not deceive 
 me, to the soporific Histoiie de Napoleon, by M. Navins.
 
 DIVINITY OF CONFESSION. 205 
 
 than that of Fontainbleau and that it caused him less regret ; 
 for the following words were uttered by the great abdicalor 
 himself to the noble attendant on his misfortunes : 
 
 " General, I am happy, I have fulfilled all my duties ; I 
 wish you, at your death, the same happiness. I felt the need 
 of it, you perceive : I am an Italian, a Corsican schoolboy. 
 The sound of the bells moves me ; the sight of a priest gives 
 me pleasure. I intended to keep all this a secret ; but it must 
 not be ; I ought, and I wish to give glory to God."* 
 
 Among his brave soldiers without fear and without reproach, 
 who, like him, had escaped the fire of the battlefield, how 
 many have wished thus to give glory to God ! 
 
 To fear God and ridicule those who despise him is courage 
 and wisdom. To brave God and our conscience for fear of 
 displeasing some bipeds who do not see the one, and do not 
 feel the other, is the lowest degree of cowardice and folly. 
 
 Let us observe, finally, that if Reformers have cast a blight 
 upon religion, by depriving it, with confession, of the regulator 
 of the mind and heart, they at least have had the frankness 
 to deplore this fault and to seek to repair it. 
 
 It is well known that the first Reformers made various 
 efforts to save this precious institution from the general 
 shipwreck. 
 
 Luther, in a singular manner, adhered to what he called 
 the only remedy for afflicted souls ; f and Melancthon, in pre- 
 paring the Augsburg Confession places auricular confession 
 among the sacraments adopted by the new Church. Calvin 
 recognised its utility, and there was a time when his disciples 
 in France taught its necessity. J The Anglican Liturgy pre- 
 served it for the consolation of the sick. 
 
 But the Divine seal once effaced, there was little gained by 
 
 * Words of Napoleon to M. Montholon, in the Biography quoted above, 
 t Little Catechism. Concerning BabyJ. Captiv. x. 
 \ Nouveaut& du Papismc, by the minister Dumonlin, liv. vii. ch. 1 
 VOL. II. 18
 
 206 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 boasting to the people of the excellence of this restraint to 
 aid them in controlling their passions, they threw it far from 
 them, and celebrated their deliverance by such a horrible 
 relaxation of habits, that the end of the world seemed at 
 hand.* 
 
 The inhabitants of Nuremburg in alarm sent an embassy 
 to Charles V. to obtain from him an edict re-establishing con- 
 fession. The Swedish Church solicited that measures should 
 be taken against the libertinism which was let loose by the 
 absence of confession, libertinism so frightful, they exclaimed, 
 that there is no one who does not believe himself at liberty to 
 satisfy his passions. Tlie horses are running away with the 
 coachman, according to the proverb, and the reins no longer 
 guide the chariot.^ The ministers of Strasburg in 1670, also 
 vainly implored the magistrates of the city to declare confes- 
 sion obligatory.J 
 
 Last of all, the same demand was addressed to Frederic 
 William III. by one of his counsellors. I can recommend 
 nothing more important to your Majesty than confession. 
 The Church possesses no more effectual instrument to pre- 
 serve Christians in the fear of God. 
 
 What does all this prove? That men might have spoken 
 and written for twenty centuries the finest sentiments con- 
 cerning the necessity of confession, and not have been able 
 to induce even one individual to go any farther, if a divine 
 voice had not said : Confess ! 
 
 * Mlmoires of Luther, book v. ch. vii. 
 
 t See Guide du Catich. Vaudois, torn. iii. p. 435. 
 
 I Ibid. Scheffmacher, Letter v. 
 
 Gazelle (oangtlique de Berlin, 1829. n. 81.
 
 SACRAMENT OF ORDINATION. 207 
 
 CHAPTER XLVII. 
 
 SACRAMENT OF ORDINATION. CELIBACY. ITS INTIMATE 
 
 CONNECTION WITH THE PRIESTHOOD. 
 
 EVERYTHING is connected in the Catholic system. If the 
 Eucharist requires penance, both demand the Sacrament of 
 Ordination. 
 
 Is it not evident that the unction of divine grace must flow 
 in large waves over the feeble mortal who has the awful 
 power of bringing down upon the altar the Holy One, offer- 
 ing him as the victim of propitiation in the name of the 
 human race, receiving him into his heart, and distributing him 
 to those present! Must not that man be impressed with the 
 divine seal, who has the right to penetrate into the con- 
 science, and the power to transform this polluted den of all 
 the vices into a sanctuary worthy of the Divinity! 
 
 In religious societies of human formation, men assemble and 
 say to one of their number: "Be the minister of our wor- 
 ship ;" and that is ordination. The same act which qualifies 
 the person elected to receive the emolument of minister, con- 
 fers upon him the right to exercise his functions. What more 
 is necessary to a man than a human choice in order to govern 
 a human institution ? 
 
 In a divine religion, human election is not sufficient. How 
 could men confer on a man the right to conduct the af- 
 fairs of God, and dispense his gifts! Can the master of 
 heaven and earth be proscribed or held in tutelage ! 
 
 It is evident that no man can take ilie honor to himself, but 
 he ihat is called by God as Aaron was ; so also Christ did 
 not glorify himself to be made a High Priest, but he himself
 
 208 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 that said to him : Thou art my Son, and in creating thee from 
 my own substance, I have made thee my equal in power.* 
 
 That the Pontiff of the Church, before communicating to 
 the candidates of the sanctuary a power formidable to the 
 angels, turns towards the religious assembly, and asks of it 
 if it judges them worthy of such a charge, and if it has no 
 objection to offer against them ; that the people and their 
 magistrates united to the clergy have preserved the custom 
 of electing and presenting these subjects, is a preliminary, 
 but does not constitute the priest. The elected of men cannot 
 become the Man of God, except Christ says to him by the 
 mouth of a successor of the Apostles: I send you as my 
 Father has sent me : Go, teach, baptize ! Do this in memory 
 of me ; Forgive or retain sin, <$fc. ! \ 
 
 Take from the ministry of religion its divine investiture, 
 and it is only a miserable deception ; its functions are only 
 a sacrilegious and absurd mockery. What would be thought 
 of the individual who should announce himself as minister 
 of state without the sanction of the sovereign ? How would 
 his acts be substantiated ! 
 
 I will say nothing of the rite by which the Catholic 
 Church consecrates her ministers. I pass on to the obliga- 
 tion she imposes on them to live in celibacy. Is this obliga- 
 tion in harmony with the duties of the priesthood ? Is there 
 nothing in it prejudicial to society ? 
 
 The world has decided the first question in favor of the 
 Catholic Church. Even when the priest ascended the altar 
 only to offer upon it the smoke of incense and the flesh of 
 bulls, the universal conscience imposed continence upon him. 
 
 *. Nee quisquam sumit sibi honorem, sed qui vocatur a Deo tanquam 
 Aaron. Sic et Christus non semetipsum clarificavit ut pontifex fieret ; 
 sed qui locutus est ad eum : Filius meus es tu, ego hodie gen-ai te. 
 (Hebr. v. 4. 5.) 
 
 f Tu autem, 6 Homo Dei. (I. Tim. vi. 11.)
 
 SACRAMENT OF ORDINATION. 209 
 
 The incompatibility of the priestly office willi intercourse with 
 women, even in the legitimate relation of marriage, is an opin- 
 ion common to men of all times, of all places, and of all reli- 
 gions, as the distinguished author of the immortal book Du 
 Pape has demonstrated, with rare erudition.* 
 
 How strange ! that after Christianity has elevated the priest 
 to the incomprehensible dignity of the coadjutor of God in 
 the redemption of the world,]- that the question has been pro- 
 posed, if it would not be suitable that he should take a wife ! 
 
 If silence is imposed on the men whose incompetency is 
 manifest, I mean on bad priests and the systematic enemies 
 of every priesthood, it will be found that Christian nations 
 absolutely unite in opinion on this subject with the rest of the 
 world. Protestantism itself, the born enemy of religious 
 celibacy, in its quality of offspring of married monks and 
 priests, has only confirmed the universal opinion by the pro- 
 found contempt with which it overwhelms reverend husbands, 
 and the insult it attaches to the epithet son of a priest!^ 
 
 I do not wish to repeat here what I have elsewhere said of 
 the invincible repulsion which exists between the idea of the 
 priest and the idea of the husband, between the duties of a 
 father according to the spirit and a father according to the 
 flesh. Let the conscientious man reflect and weigh the fol- 
 lowing questions. 
 
 Is it right that the mortal whom Jesus Christ has called 
 to become the light of the world, the salt of the earth, and 
 whom he has elevated above the angels, by associating him 
 with the infinite grandeur of his priesthood, should be drawn 
 into the routine of common life ! 
 
 Could we see, without a shudder, the hand which received 
 by holy unction the power to consecrate and dispense the 
 
 * Du Pape, liv. iii. ch. 3. 
 
 t Dei enim adjutores sumus. (I. Cor. iii. 9-) 
 
 J Du Pape, loc. cit 
 
 18*
 
 210 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 body of the Son of the Virgin, clasping the hand of a woman 
 before the altar? 
 
 Can he to whom the eternal priest has said : Go, teach all 
 nations under the sun, bind himself to one spot by the various 
 ties of family ? 
 
 Is the spiritual head of four or five hundred families, whcr 
 is obliged to share his bread with those who have none, to 
 guide all ages, frdm the earliest infancy to extreme old age, 
 in the arduous path of salvation, and to diffuse, among count- 
 less numbers of the spiritually diseased, the very delicate care 
 that the divine art of healing souls demands can he take 
 upon himself the solicitudes of married life? 
 
 Finally, who would consent to make him the possessor of 
 his secrets, who has made a wife the possessor of his own 1 * 
 
 Let us listen to the eloquent thinker above quoted. " That 
 wonderful power which checked Theodoslus at the gate of 
 the temple, Attala before that of Rome, and Lewis XIV. 
 before the altar; that still more wonderful power, which can 
 soften, confound, and restore to life ; which enters the palace 
 to extort gold from the unfeeling or thoughtless man of 
 wealth, in order to pour it into the lap of poverty ; which 
 confronts everything, and overrules everything, as soon as a 
 soul is to be soothed, enlightened, or saved ; which insinuates 
 
 * " In countries where the marriage of priests is customary, confee- 
 sion, the most beautiful of moral institutions, has, and must necessarily 
 have ceased at once. It is natural that persons should not put him in 
 possession of their secrets who has put a wife in possession of his own ; 
 there is a reasonable fear of trusting to a priest who has violated his 
 contract of fidelity with God, and repudiated the Creator to wed the 
 creature." (Chateaubriand, Ginie du Chretien, liv. i. ch. 8.) De 
 Maistre, in the work above quoted, has completely answered those who 
 would produce the example of the schismatic churches of Greece and 
 Russia, where confession has survived celibacy. The able author of 
 I'Hcrmite en Russie, has shown in his true or factitious history of Var- 
 inka, one of the many dangers that confession incurs in the priest who 
 is half a woman, ch. 48.
 
 SACRAMENT OF ORDIXATIOX. 211 
 
 itself gently into the conscience, to obtain from it its dreadful 
 secrets, and to root out vice; the indefatigable organ and 
 guardian of sacred unions, the no less active enemy of all 
 license ; wild without weakness, terrible, yet loving ; the in- 
 valuable support of reason, probity, honor, and all human 
 strength, at the moment when they declare themselves power- 
 less ; a precious and inexhaustible source of reconciliations, 
 reparations, restitutions, and effectual repentance, of all that 
 God loves most next to innocence ; standing by the cradle of 
 man with a benediction, still standing by his death-bed, and 
 saying to him, in the midst of the most pathetic exhortations 
 and the tenderest adieus : Depart, ; this supernatural power is 
 not found "in the country where the priest takes a wife." 
 There the priesthood is powerless, and trembles before those 
 whom it should cause to tremble. It dares not, it cannot say 
 to him who acknowledges he has robbed : Restore. The vilest 
 man is bound to him by no promise. The priest is employed 
 like a machine. It might be said that his words are a kind 
 of mechanical operation which effaces sin, as the soap effaces 
 material stains." * 
 
 Let us consult history, and ask what would have become 
 of Christianity in the hands of a clergy rendered stationary 
 by matrimony. Neither the sword of the Cesars, nor the pen 
 of a Celsus nor a Julian, would have been needed to stifle it 
 in its cradle ; the prisons of the Sanhedrim and the officers 
 of the high-priest Caiphas would have sufficed. At the first 
 tempest which arose against them, the ambassadors of Christ 
 would hav-e forgotten their mission to attend to their wives 
 and children. 
 
 Protestant ministers are seen every day traversing the seas, 
 accompanied by their wives and children, and going to esta- 
 blish themselves in the English possessions of India and Poly- 
 nesia, with the certainty of finding there a lordly mansion, 
 
 i 
 
 * Du Pape, liv. iii. ch. 3. ii.
 
 212 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 and the means of making a sudden fortune ; but we never see 
 them, and we shall never see them, going to plant the cross 
 or the Bible in China, Corea, or Japan, at the evident risk of 
 soon expiring in frightful tortures. 
 
 A married clergy must necessarily be separated from the 
 queen of virtues, and the mother of great self-devotion, charity, 
 from profound study, and all that wins favor from God and 
 man. It will neither aspire to the martyr's crown, nor the 
 sceptre of science, nor the triumphs of benevolence over 
 every variety of misery. Vainly should we demand from it 
 an Ambrose, an Augustine, a Chrysostom, a Leo, a Gregory, 
 a Bossuet, a Fenelon, a Bourdaloue, a Mabillon, a Francis 
 Xavier, a Francis de Sales, a Vincent de Paul, a John-of-God, 
 a John Baptiste de la Salle, &c. ; it will supply only what is 
 to be found everywhere hirelings. 
 
 In presence of the admirable moral effects of religious celi- 
 bacy, and the universal veneration which it inspires, of what 
 importance is the favorite argument of the host of Epicureans 
 of all ages, from Vigilantius to Luther, and from Luther to 
 the libertines of our day, who repeat their disgraceful homilies 
 upon the necessity of obeying nature, and the danger of doing 
 violence to it? How shall we answer men who do not fear 
 to charge, with a horrible hypocrisy, the innumerable imita- 
 tors of the virginity of Christ, whom Christian history presents 
 to our veneration, and who, while they refuse to believe in 
 the possibility of virtue, prove that they have reached the 
 lowest limits of brutality ? We will answer them in words 
 which they have doubtless read in one of their own books, 
 which we hardly venture to name (La nouvelle Heloise), that 
 ihis necessity is imaginary, and only acknowledged by persons 
 of bad life: that all these pretended wants have not their 
 origin in mature, but in the voluntary degradation of the senses. 
 
 Let us proceed to the political point of view.
 
 POSITION OF THE PRIEST IN SOCIETY. 213 
 
 CHAPTER XLVIII. 
 
 SOCIAL IMPORTANCE OF RELIGIOUS CELIBACY. POSITION OF 
 
 THE PRIEST IN SOCIETY. NULLITY AND INCONVENIENCE 
 
 OF A MARRIED PRIESTHOOD. 
 
 WE are far removed from those times when the great poli- 
 ticians of the Encyclopedia feared the approaching end of the 
 human race, if priests did not take wives, and nuns husbands. 
 The nineteenth century is not sufficiently profound to imagine 
 what tenor lies in that oracle of Rousseau : Celibacy is so 
 injurious to the human race, that it would perish if it were 
 every where practised.* 
 
 The Catholic clergy cannot be reproached with discou- 
 raging marriage. They might rather be accused of increasing 
 pauperism by their alleged blind encouragement of it. A 
 writer filled with the narrow prejudices of the last century 
 has recently done this.f 
 
 All modern political economists, with Malthus at their head, 
 agree in declaring that society is threatened with terrible 
 catastrophies, if that unknown force is not checked, which is 
 constantly swelling population beyond the means of sub- 
 sistence. 
 
 Some persons would counsel governments to place a formal 
 interdict on the marriage of the poor ;| others, which nearly 
 amounts to the same thing, would not hesitate to forbid mar- 
 riage to the laborer who did not hold ten acres of property, 
 or rent twenty acres. 
 
 * Lettre a M. de Beaumont, .Urcheveque de Paris. 
 
 t M. Sismonde de Sismondi, JVbuveaux principes d'conomie poli- 
 tique, quoted and refuted by M. the Viscount Alban de Villeneuve, 
 Economic politique chrStienne, torn. i. p. 207. 
 
 f Among others, M. Stewart, in his work previously quoted, p. 198. 
 
 M. Sismondi, ibid.
 
 214 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 It appears that this counsel has been followed in many 
 Protestant States of Switzerland and Germany. The restric- 
 tions of all kinds that have been imposed upon the marriage 
 of the poor, and of laborers who have only their industry for 
 a support, prove that, with all our intelligence and civiliza- 
 tion, we could give lessons in barbarism to the Caflres and 
 Hottentots.* 
 
 To the honor of political economy it must be said, that 
 most of the writers who discuss these vital questions, reject 
 all means of constraint, which are contrary to humanity and 
 good morals, and insist on the moral restraint so much re- 
 commended by Malthus. Thus, they would wish, that while 
 enlightening the people with regard to their true interests, 
 individuals of the working and poorer classes should be in- 
 duced not to involve themselves in marriage without great 
 prudence. But, as M. de Maistre observes, " this is the fable 
 of the bell ; the difficulty is to attach it to the bearer. Pro- 
 pose to the youth of ardent feelings to relinquish marriage, 
 in order to maintain the equilibrium of society, how would 
 you be received ? " f 
 
 What no human power could do, the Church has done by 
 the law of celibacy, " And with all the perfection which hu- 
 man affairs will allow ; since Catholic restraint is not only 
 moral, but divine, and the Church supports itself on motives 
 so sublime, on means so efficacious, on menaces so terrible, 
 that it is not in the power of the human mind to imagine any- 
 thing equal or approaching to it." J 
 
 Besides the advantage of opposing a barrier to the exces- 
 sive increase of population, ecclesiastical celibacy possesses 
 another of still greater weight in the social scale ; it is to 
 
 * On this subject may be recommended a work of great research, 
 and full of interesting facts, by M. F. N. L. Naville, De la charitf ?gale, 
 Geneva, 1830, torn. i. part ii. sect. ii. 
 
 t Du Pape, torn. ii. p. 107. J Du Pape, torn. i. p. 108.
 
 POSITION OF THE PRIEST IN SOCIETY. 215 
 
 prevent the priesthood from becoming, by its monopoly in a 
 few families, the most expensive, as well as the most useless 
 of sinecures. 
 
 Habit alone renders us insensible to the admirable social 
 position of the Catholic priest. He is peculiarly the public 
 man, the point of meeting of all classes. 
 
 So much the more powerful in this world, as his power 
 is not of this world, he rules all conditions by the eleva- 
 tion of his character, and embraces them all in the circle 
 of his charity. No greatness is so high, no misery so low, 
 as to escape his influence. 
 
 In the morning he catechises the vagabonds of the streets, 
 carries consolation and hope to the outcasts of society, and 
 takes his place in the death-car between the criminal and his 
 executioner ; in the evening, under the surplice of a Bourda- 
 loue, he makes the haughtiest monarchs and the most brilliant 
 courts tremble. 
 
 Judging of men, not according to the distinctions by which 
 they are classed in space and time, but according to their 
 common origin and destiny, he reminds them all of the sen- 
 timents of fraternity which their equal dependance on their 
 Father and Master in Heaven demands. He brings down 
 continually to the level of death the swelling of pride, the 
 grandeur of power and wealth ; he elevates the morality of the 
 humble and unfortunate by the right of the elder-born to the 
 majesty of heaven, which a God who became poor, has 
 secured to them. He obliges the great to regard the poor, 
 not as the unfortunate who are to be consoled, but as friends 
 and protectors, whose mediation with the King of kings must 
 be purchased by alms,* as a skilful financier who has the 
 secret of increasing a hundred-fold the gold confided to his 
 care. He teaches the poor man to reverence and bless the 
 
 * Facite vobjs araicos . . . ut recipiant vos in soterna tubernacula. 
 (Luke xyi. 9.)
 
 21G THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 great as his benefactors, and the noble representatives of tho 
 divine bounty. 
 
 If, faithful to his mission, the priest forgets himself, content 
 with modest garments and his daily bread, knowing no other 
 kindred, no other family than that which religion gives him, 
 he becomes all powerful. His respectful, but firm and in- 
 trepid voice, will make the cry of misery, the plaints and 
 murmurs of the victims of injustice and oppression resound 
 in the saloon of wealth, in the ear of the great, and in the 
 council of kings; his hand will unlock the treasures of opu- 
 lence and pour them into the abodes of misery. 
 
 He will not be satisfied with procuring bread for the 
 hungry and forsaken invalid ; he will solicit for him the 
 honors due to the living representative of a poor and suffer- 
 ing God. The inhabitants of palaces will follow him to the 
 hospitals, and the most forlorn dwellings ; royal hands will 
 smooth the pillow of the mendicant, prepare his garments, 
 his linen, and his remedies. 
 
 Then is established that interchange of favors and benedic- 
 tions, of love and gratitude which forms of all the members 
 of society one family, of whom the rich and great are the 
 elders. Then is realised the miracle of Christian society, 
 sung by Isaiah : 
 
 " The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, the leopard shall lie 
 down with the kid ; the calf and the lion, and the sheep shall 
 abide together, and a little child shall lead them. The calf, 
 and the bear shall feed : their young ones shall rest together: 
 and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the sucking 
 child shall play on the hole of the asp : and the weaned child 
 shall thrust his hand into the den of the basilisk." 
 
 But from whence does the priest obtain this divine author- 
 ity which he exercises for the advantage of all ; of the humble 
 whom he saves from oppression, and of the great whom he res- 
 cues from the abyss into which tyranny is rushing ? From
 
 POSITION OF THE PRIEST IN SOCIETY. 217 
 
 whence does he derive that power of levelling and blending 
 which he incessantly opposes to the selfish tendencies that 
 would soon divide men into nobles surfeited with riches, and 
 into voracious serfs, or rather pariahs ? From the fact of his 
 celibacy as much as from his title of minister of the Most High. 
 
 Let priests marry, what would be the consequence ? What 
 has happened in England and all Protestant countries which 
 have preserved the sacerdotal hierarchy. The anti-social 
 spirit of cast, against which Catholicity has not ceased to 
 protest by recruiting its ministry from all ranks, and recog- 
 nising no other claims to the highest functions but those of 
 merit and virtue, the spirit of cast invades the priesthood. 
 The highest dignities have become the exclusive apanage of 
 the younger sons of the family. And these, to revenge them- 
 selves for the contempt with which inexorable public opinion 
 pursues a false and useless priesthood, seek to surround them- 
 selves with the consideration which is attached to wealth. 
 
 Not satisfied with vast revenues, they do not disdain the 
 smallest profits of the smallest traffic, and write boldly on 
 the gate of the episcopal palace : Here small beer is sold.* 
 They bestow on their children, their sons-in-law, their rela- 
 tives and friends the best benefices, and the richest curacies. 
 They plunder so successfully that, in poor Ireland, twelve 
 Bishops of the Church established by law, have left to their 
 families the modest sum of sixty one millions and a half of 
 francs !f 
 
 * Cobbett, Letters on the Reformation, &c., Letter 4th. 
 
 t An English work recently published under the title : Ireland as 
 a Kingdom and a Colony, presents (239) estimates the total amount 
 of property left by twelve of the last Anglican Bishops deceased in 
 Ireland, at " 01,500,000 francs." (See FJlmi de Religion, May 18th, 
 1544.) The same journal gave some time after, the amount of property 
 left by Mgr. Troy, Catholic Archbishop, Primate of Ireland, recently 
 deceased, leaving for his whole fortune 10 pence half-penny, (one franc, 
 five cents.) 
 
 VOL. n. 10
 
 21S THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 Subordinate to the higher clergy, are a throng of poor 
 curates and vicars, " whose only function (except reading and 
 some chants in the church on Sunday) is to rear large fami- 
 lies ; and these escape beggary only by means of two or three 
 millions, which their cries wrest every year from the English 
 parliament." * 
 
 The absolute nullity of such a priesthood leads selfishness 
 to divide the human family into two classes ; on one side 
 power, riches, pleasure, science, consideration ; on the other, 
 indigence, opprobrium, ignorance, famine, and death between 
 them an abyss of hatred and antipathy. 
 
 CHAPTER XLIX. 
 
 BARRIER WHICH THE CATHOLIC PRIESTHOOD OPPOSES TO 
 DESPOTISM. WEAKNESS OF CONSTITUTIONAL GUARAN- 
 TEES. POLITICAL NECESSITY FOR THE DISTINCTION 
 
 OF POWER INTO SPIRITUAL AND TEMPORAL. IM- 
 MENSE SERVICES WHICH CATHOLICISM HAS 
 RENDERED TO LIBERTY. 
 
 A PRIESTHOOD which derives its powers from God alone, 
 and which, by celibacy, escapes the seductions of fortune, 
 will, without doubt, displease certain statesmen, who, once 
 placed at the helm of affairs, find the concentration of all 
 powers in the same hands a very fine thing, and also the 
 liberty thus given of saying to every public functionary who 
 dares to open his mouth : Obey in silence, or retire ! 
 
 What can be more inconvenient for the governing who are 
 enemies of all restraint, than an eccentric inalienable admin- 
 istration, which will boldly say to them on many occasions: 
 Gentlemen, you are leaving your own sphere and invading 
 * Cobbett, Letters on the Reformation, &c., Letter 4th.
 
 BARRIER TO DESPOTISM. 219 
 
 ours! We cannot obey you without disobeying God, and 
 betraying the spiritual interests of the people whom he h;is 
 committed to us. 
 
 Nothing could be more mortifying for a man ambitious of 
 power, than this distinction between spiritual and temporal 
 authority, and the reservation that God has made to the first, 
 of the glorious department of souls. 
 
 How much rivalry, how many conflicts would disappear, if 
 the tiara of the Pontiff and the royal or imperial crown were 
 placed upon the same head ; the sword and the crosier, the 
 sceptre and the censor, the baton of justice and the keys of 
 heaven, in the same hand. 
 
 Alexander, at Tilsitt, boasted much to his friend of the 
 Tuilleries of the homogeneousness of the Russian government 
 and unqualified submission to the ukase of its Bishops, Ab- 
 bots, and Priests. Perhaps the Emperor of the West, much 
 disturbed then at finding a priest who dared to dispute 
 with him the empire of minds* envied the Czar his omnipo- 
 tence. 
 
 However that may be, I doubt much if there are many 
 men in Europe, who, to avoid the conflicts of jurisdiction, 
 would be willing to transmute their sovereigns into autocrats. 
 I doubt even if the most ambitious man would accept the 
 Muscovite despotism with the qualification that accompanies 
 it. It is well known that these Russians, who anticipate all 
 the wishes of their master, like their Turkish neighbors ; like 
 them, too, have reserved to themselves the right to strangle. 
 
 Do all you please, and when we are weary we will murder 
 you, is the threat which the subjects of a despot are always 
 expected to inflict upon him."}" And it should be so : it is a 
 principle of eternal justice engraved on the hearts of men, and 
 
 * See the words of Napoleon to M. de Fontanes, as quoted, ch. 
 xxxiv. note. 
 
 t Du Pupe, liv. ii. ch. iv.
 
 220 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 on the pages of history, that everything is permitted against 
 a man to whom nothing is forbidden. 
 
 A wise and moderate principle of opposition may, indeed, 
 annoy ambitious power, but it saves it, and preserves its real 
 strength, by compelling it to be just. It is the ballast which, 
 while moderating the progress of the ship, prevents it from an 
 overturn. We always advance rapidly enough, when we tra- 
 vel in the right direction. 
 
 Much might be said in praise of that general law of the 
 universe, which everywhere resists homogeneousness, divides 
 forces, opposes them to each other, and produces, as the re- 
 sult, order, beauty, and life ; not unity, but union.* 
 
 The last age and our own have seen no securities for 
 liberty, except in the division and balance of the political 
 powers. This is the great effort of human wisdom against 
 despotism. It is, also, if we may be permitted to say it, a 
 beautiful hint borrowed from the divine constitution of the 
 Church, which possesses, in the episcopacy, a peerage and a 
 representation serving as a balance and support to the Pontifi- 
 cal Supremacy. 
 
 But the balance of powers is only a mockery where reli- 
 gion does not check the passions, by protecting, with the seal 
 of divine inviolability, the rights of all, and bending the will 
 to the common yoke of duty! It is easy to balance material 
 forces; but how can human wills of such unequal power be 
 harmonized, except by submitting them to the rule marked 
 out by an all-powerful will ! 
 
 * What is called union in a political body is a very equivocal thing; 
 the true union is one of harmony which unites all parties, however 
 antagonistic they may appear, for the general welfare of society, as dis- 
 cords in music contribute to a complete harmony. There may be union 
 in a state, where only disturbance is apparent; that is a harmony from 
 which happiness results, which is the only true peace. As the various 
 parts of the universe are eternally united by the action of some and the re- 
 action of others. (Montesquieu, Grand, et Dtcad. des Remains, ch. ix.)
 
 BARRIER TO DESPOTISM. 221 
 
 Among a people who have ceased to be truly Christian, by 
 ceasing to be Catholic, what is a representative government? 
 It is despotism passing from hand to hand, until it becomes 
 established in a more or less numerous aristocracy, which 
 will govern for its own advantage, leaving the people to die 
 of hunger, if it refuses the bread of a prison. 
 
 Behold liberal England ! put aside the small number of its 
 eligible landed proprietors and electors, what do we see be- 
 neath this nation of princes ? Fourteen millions of the working 
 class, on whom industrialism imposes a servitude unknown to 
 the negro slave of the colonies.* Beneath them, again, what 
 do we find ? Four millions of paupers, given up to destitu- 
 tion, for whom iron law fixes the limits beyond which they 
 must not breathe.f 
 
 If there is anything certain in theory or in practice to the 
 mind which is not blinded by irreligion, it is that human 
 liberty and human dignity can find no secure protection, ex- 
 
 * This pre-eminence granted to the negroes, vrill not astonish those 
 who, without having seen England, have read what the English and 
 French writers agree in telling us, of the sad lot of the manufacturing 
 population, and its frightful moral and physical degradation. This 
 better condition is easily explained. It is for the interest of the plan- 
 ter to preserve his slaves as long as possible, in health and vigor ; if 
 they are ill, he is bound to take care of them. If they die he can only 
 replace them at a great expense. It is not so with the head manufac- 
 turer. For him the operative is a hired machine, from whom he is to 
 obtain the greatest possible amount of labor, at the least possible expense. 
 His life is of slight importance ; as soon as he is disabled, he may be 
 cast aside, and others will come to take his place. 
 
 t The number of paupers in England, amounts to a sixth part of the 
 whole population. (See Econom. polit. chrtt., by M. de Villeneuve, 
 torn, ii.) M. the Baron Morogues, estimates it at a fourth and even a 
 third. (De fa Miser e des Ouvriers.) (See De Faction du Clfrge dans 
 fa societes modernes, ch. ii.,) by M. Rubichon, in which he speaks of 
 tlie worse than barbarian English institutions, that take from the poor 
 the privilege of changing their residence. 
 
 19*
 
 222 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 cept in the old distinction established by Catholicity between 
 the spiritual and temporal power. 
 
 It is intellect which directs and governs the world. Pro- 
 duce in every mind, by a knowledge of the Christian law, a 
 uniform and deep conviction concerning the rights and duties 
 of men, and the relations between subjects and rulers, confirm 
 the public conscience in its love of virtue and its aversion for 
 crime, by a firm faith in the inevitable and impending future, 
 when one will be crowned and the other punished, so that the 
 fear of men who have power only over the body, yields to the 
 fear of him who can destroy eternally both body and soul ; 
 elevate this law and this belief above the assaults of the pas- 
 sions, by entrusting them to a hierarchy which, by its univer- 
 sally acknowledged divine character, its ramifications ex- 
 tending throughout the world, and the political independence 
 of its head, will escape the overwhelming influence of tem- 
 poral power ; in a word, render a nation truly Catholic, and 
 3 T ou will have raised an impregnable barrier against abso- 
 lutism. 
 
 Only a moderate share of ability is needed by an ambitious 
 and corrupted prince in order to trifle with paper charters, 
 and bribe or intimidate the guardians of the public liberties. 
 But how is he to violate the charter of justice and truth en- 
 graved on all minds and all hearts, and defended by a priest- 
 hood whose silence would be a crime which would call forth 
 the reproaches of its head, and rouse the indignation of the 
 Catholic world! A national religion is always under the 
 control of the rulers of the nation ; but how can they lay 
 their hand upon the Catholic Church, without extending it 
 over the whole universe ? and this is not easily done. 
 
 I know that a servile spirit is not unfrequently found in 
 some members of the clergy, and history only proves this 
 too well. 
 
 The most Catholic of kingdoms saw, in 1682, a certain
 
 BARRIER TO DESPOTISM. 223 
 
 number of her bishops, assembled by order of the king, as- 
 sume, in opposition to the Holy See, the defence of a prince, 
 who, arrived at the summit of glory, confiscated, in favor of 
 a power already excessive, the last remains of civil and ec- 
 clesiastical liberties.* But this scandal, which the clergy oi' 
 France were to expiate and repair with so much glory a 
 century later, in the bosom of the Constituent Assembly, only 
 proves the inevitable weakness of certain churches in presence 
 of the temporal authority, and the absolute necessity for them, 
 if they would resist its unjust demands, to remain firmly united 
 to the centre of unity. 
 
 These local and temporary weaknesses should not prevent 
 us from affirming that the Catholic religion is the only one in 
 the world which has taught men firmly to resist the will of 
 despots, without having recourse to insurrection or promoting 
 anarchy. 
 
 It is a fact written in characters of blood on every page of 
 Christian history, from the hosts of heroes who marched to 
 death rather than bend the knee before the crowned statues 
 of the Roman emperors, to the Christians of our own times, 
 defying at Tonquin all the fury of Min-Meh ; and from St. 
 Peter preaching the good tidings, in spite of the menaces of 
 the Sanhedrim and the edicts of Nero, to Pius VII., opposing 
 an indomitable courage to the giant who had triumphed over 
 the forces, and thrown into desperation all the intrepidity of 
 Europe. 
 
 Every one knows the long and desperate struggles of the 
 priesthood of the middle ages against the material force, which, 
 without it, would have crushed the last germ of civilization, 
 and irrevocably buried Europe in servitude and barbarism ! 
 
 * On the ecclesiastical and political oearing jf the affair of La R- 
 gate and of the Declaration du Clerge, which was the consequence 
 of it. See M. de Maistre, (Dc FEglise Gallicane dans st-s rapports, 
 &c., liv. ii.)
 
 224 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 But this portion of our ecclesiastical records are yet to be 
 re- written, disfigured as it has been by many of our historians, 
 who have written under the eye of parliaments. It is an ex- 
 traordinary thing, that, while Catholic priests have deafened 
 us with foolish lamentations over the alleged aberrations of 
 Pontifical power in the middle ages, Protestant science, indig- 
 nant at so much ignorance and meanness, seized the pen and 
 wrote : It is an assured fact, that, since the memory of man, 
 there has not been a single example of a Pope who has at- 
 tempted anything against those who have confined themselves to 
 maintaining their rights, without intending to overstep the 
 limits prescribed to them.* After dispelling the clouds which 
 covered the noble figure of those Pontiffs, who have been the 
 real educators of Europe and founders of that magnificent 
 Christian republic, admired even by Hume,f she has shown 
 that, without the struggles of the Papacy against the empire, 
 all Europe would have fallen very early into one or many 
 caliphats, and would have submitted as infallibly as disgrace- 
 fully to Turkish sway, and to oriental oppression and stu- 
 pefaction.^. 
 
 Will it be said that the Church fought more for her own 
 independence and privileges than for those of the people ? 
 This would be giving boldly the lie to history, which shows 
 us that the ecclesiastical power of this epoch was the sole 
 
 * Entretiens philosophiques sur la reunion des diffcrentes com- 
 munions chrttiennes, by M. the Baron de Starck, p. 394. 
 
 f History of the House of Tudor, torn. ii. p. 9. 
 
 | M. de Starck, Entretiens, &c., p. 300. It must be acknowledged 
 to our shame, said with reason the author of an excellent compilation, 
 that we owe to strangers and Protestants the best works published on 
 the Papacy : " The History of the Life and Pontificate of Leo X. by 
 William Roscoe; La Vie de Gr^goireVll.,by M. Voigt; I'Histoire 
 rf' Innocent III., et ses contcmporains, by Hurter, &c." (Annalcs de 
 Philosoph. chrtiien., xvii. p. 250.)
 
 BARRIER TO DESPOTISM. 225 
 
 and indefatigable defender of the weak and oppressed.* Be- 
 sides, was not the cause of ecclesiastical immunities the cause 
 of the people, at a time when the Church, which had become 
 their asylum, offered the only approach to honors, wealth, and 
 power. f Was it not effectually serving liberty and civilization 
 to maintain in the bosom of feudal barbarism a society which, 
 by opening its ranks to inferior conditions, elevated serfs to 
 princes, defended the sacred doctrine of the unity of races, 
 and protested against the anti-social classification of our race 
 into lords and serfs, into men of rank and ciphers ? 
 
 All liberties, moreover, are kindred. It is destroying des- 
 potism to teach temporal power that it is not omnipotent, that 
 there are certain limits beyond which it cannot pass, under 
 pain of finding itself disobeyed. 
 
 Let us suppose that, when Henry VIII., in order to ex- 
 change his lawful wife for a girl whom he afterwards con- 
 demned to death as a prostitute, declared himself head of the 
 Church of England, that the clergy and magistracy, obedient 
 to the voice of Rome, had opposed to him the unconquerable 
 resistance of Cardinal Pole, Bishop Fisher, and Chancellor 
 More, is it not evident that England would have preserved, 
 with religious unity, her Magna Charter, and the noble pri- 
 vileges which she owed to her Catholic kings? 
 
 A Catholic parliament would never have condemned, with- 
 out, form of laic, to be hung and quartered, according to the 
 good pleasure of the Mng,\ seventy thousand Englishmen of 
 every condition, whose crime was having displeased the most 
 
 * This is the testimony of two men who cannot come under suspic- 
 ion : M. Guizot, Cows. d'Hisl. moderne, lec.on vi., and M. Michelet, 
 Histoire de France, liv. ii. ch. i. 
 
 t " Her salutary protection was extended to all ; even those whom she 
 did not ordain she covered with the protecting symbol of the tonsure. 
 She became a vast asylum an asylum for the conquered, the Romans 
 and the serfs; the serfs rushed into the church." Michelet, loc. cit. 
 
 J These are the words of the sentence passed upon Anne Boleyn.
 
 226 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 horrible monster who ever soiled the annals of Christian 
 monarchies. 
 
 No Catholic nation would have abandoned to the accom- 
 plices, women, and scullions of that crowned ogre,* innu- 
 merable abbeys, hospitals, colleges and pious foundations, 
 which were the resource of the poor, and whose suppression 
 has produced an alarming number of paupers, whom the an- 
 nual sum of two hundred and forty millions of francs hardly 
 rescues from death.f 
 
 In order to corrupt a nation, and mould it into slavery, it 
 must first be un- Catholicized. Tyrants have understood this 
 admirably well, and it is, more than ever, necessary that the 
 people too should thoroughly understand it. 
 
 CHAPTER L. 
 
 CONFIRMATION OF THE PRECEDING. APPEALS OF THE EPIS- 
 COPATE IN FAVOR OF LIBERTY OF TEACHING. UNIVER- 
 SITY QUESTION IN ITS TRUE LIGHT. REFLECTIONS. 
 
 IT is very important, for the maintainance of social equili- 
 brium, that there should be men obliged, by their situation, to 
 raise their voice against injustice, when fear closes other 
 mouths ; and, if these men can only employ prayer and the 
 principles of reason and the Gospel, against the most iniqui- 
 tous power, if they have no other sword to oppose to it than 
 
 * " He carried so far this prodigality, that he gave the entire revenve 
 of an Abbey to a woman, to reward her for making a pudding accord- 
 ing to his taste." (M. de Villeneuve, Econom. polit., torn. ii. p. 431.) 
 
 t M. de la Borde, in his work, De F Esprit (T.Ussociation, estimates 
 at this sum the annual amount of the pour rates, including in it the 
 expenses of collection. This is the direct territorial tax of England, 
 (1-2,000,000,) multiplied by 20. (Ibid. liv. iv. ch. vii., torn. ii. p. 203.)
 
 APPEALS OF THE EPISCOPATE. 227 
 
 that of divine justice, if it is forbidden them to make an ap 
 peal to the passions, and to risk any other blood than their 
 own, it is plain that they present the essential character else- 
 where not to be found, of a wise opposition, which restrains 
 despotism without unchaining anarchy. 
 
 Such is the Catholic priesthood, even when it is most iso- 
 lated from the affairs of the times. It protects moral liberty, 
 the mother of all other liberty, by maintaining the exclusive 
 sovereignty of God over thought, and preventing intelligence 
 from falling under the control of man. 
 
 If there remained any doubt on this subject, we need only 
 cast our eyes over the glorious struggle which the French 
 Episcopate is now sustaining (1847,) in favor of liberty, 
 which is the dearest to a nation that believes in the existence 
 and dignity of the soul. 
 
 Vainly did the university coterie, in order to defend the 
 most odious of causes, endeavor to impose upon public opin- 
 ion with regard to the scope of the debate. The subject is a 
 vast one, on whatever side we view it. In the constitutional 
 point of view, it stands thus : Will the charter which has 
 sanctioned liberty of teaching prove a reality or a deception ? 
 Will the university monopoly, which was abolished in 1830,* 
 be revived by a law, and the corporation which exercises it 
 confiscate to its own advantage the public privileges solemnly 
 granted in the fundamental compact, such as the equality of 
 all before the law, the equal right of all to admittance to pub- 
 lic offices, the liberty of worship and of conscience, the liberty 
 of the press and of opinions, &c., liberties evidently decep- 
 
 * It has not been forgotten that, in 1S30, the civil abolition of the 
 university monopoly was a fact which the organs of power did not hes- 
 itate to recognise. " When we invoke the university monopoly, said 
 M. the Attorney General Pusil, in the legal process of the free school, 
 we lean on an expiring legislation, the abrogation of which we would 
 hasten with our earnest wishes, &,c.
 
 228 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 tivo, without liberty of worship and of conscience, liberty of 
 the press and of opinions, &c., privileges evidently delusive 
 without liberty of teaching ? * 
 
 Considered more carefully still, and under all its phases, 
 the question presents itself thus : 
 
 Shall the State, the government (that is, the individual 
 whom a coterie may elevate to the presidency of the coun- 
 cil of ministers), besides the power of administering what 
 have been hitherto called political affairs, with that omnipo- 
 tence which centralization gives, possess, also, the power of 
 controlling the intellect, and arbitrarily ruling thought ? 
 
 Will the State, which has already absorbed the communes 
 and the department to the advantage of an absurd social 
 unity, also annihilate the family, and, seizing the child when 
 it leaves its nurse's arms, will it assume the right of saying to 
 the father: "That being belongs to me; provide if you will 
 for its material future, but it belongs to me to form its mind 
 and heart ! " 
 
 Will the State, which converts everything into gold, make 
 the same use of knowledge ? Will she put a tariff on science ? 
 Will she say to the poor man: " Since you are poor, renounce 
 all idea of education and the hope of deliverance from your 
 misery ; if any one has the audacious charity to cherish 
 your talents, I shall check him"? Will she say to families 
 in easy circumstances : " I know that you regard my estab- 
 lishments for education as sinks of iniquity; but, if your 
 children do not attend them, they will be excluded from all 
 occupations"? 
 
 * Those who would still deceive themselves with regard to the des- 
 perate assaults which the university monopoly made on the public 
 rights, guaranteed by the charter to all Frenchmen, can disabuse them- 
 selves by reading the spirited reflections of un Ami de la Charte. (See 
 La Charte-VeritS, ou le Monopole devant les Chambres, Lyons, 
 Janvier, 1S44.)
 
 APPEALS OF THE EPISCOPATE. 229 
 
 Will the State, which has been made atheistical by the law, 
 and indifferent to every religious belief, undertake the absurd 
 mission of teaching religion to youth, or assume the right to 
 educate, in infidelity, a nation which cannot, without suicide, 
 cease to be Christian ?* Can she say to six millions of pa- 
 rents, to whom she has guaranteed the free exercise of their 
 religion : " I know the great influence of teachers over the 
 minds and hearts of their pupiis; I know that religion is 
 always indifferent to the man whose youth has not been in- 
 spired by it ; I intend, then, to entrust your children to mas- 
 ters who will, in various ways, inculcate upon them contempt 
 for all religion " ? 
 
 Will the State, in order to satisfy the low prejudices of a 
 tyrannical faction, have a right to destroy the religion of the 
 majority, by proscribing its dearest institutions ? Armed with 
 an inquisitorial power, will she boldly violate the asylum of 
 conscience, and, in defiance of the fundamental laws of uni- 
 versal opinion, confound the religious Catholic in the same 
 civil incapacity with the fugitive from justice, and the par- 
 doned criminal ! 
 
 In short, will the French nation fall under the power of a 
 despotism without parallel, a Caliphate more degrading than 
 that which oppresses the followers of the Prophet ? 
 
 This is, indeed, the indelible disgrace which will be re- 
 served for her, if the public authorities, intimidated by the 
 
 * This was the idea of Napoleon whose name is much used by the 
 advocates of monopoly. Confiding his son to the care of Madame 
 Montesquiou, (governess of the king of Rome,) whose rare virtues and 
 deep piety he appreciated, he said to her : " Madame, I entrust to you 
 my child, upon whom depend the destinies of France, and perhaps of 
 all Europe ; make a good Christian of him." Some one smiled at this ; 
 and the enraged Emperor at once turned to him and addressed him thus : 
 " Yes, Sir, I know what I am saying, rny son must be made a good 
 Christian, for otherwise he cannot be a good Frenchman." (Fie dc 
 vVapolton, by M. Michaud, Biogr. , torn. Ixxv.) 
 
 VOL. II. 20
 
 230 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 clamors of a faction which publicly names itself revolutionary, 
 imperialist, and Voltairean, remain deaf to the unanimous 
 voice of the Bishops speaking in the name of Catholic France. 
 
 And what do these eighty Bishops demand, whose words, it 
 would seem, have a little more power in the country than 
 those of Villemain and Thiers? They demand what all in- 
 dependent minds, whatever may be their religious designation, 
 demand, the free and loyal execution of the fundamental 
 compact 
 
 It is a singular fact that the same clergy who were for a 
 long time accused of a secret antipathy to the charter, now 
 take upon themselves the defence of it, and with wonderful 
 energy solicit the natural and indispensable fulfilment of it! 
 It is the same clergy who were called the friends of privilege 
 and exception, who are now resisting with all their power, 
 privilege and exclusiveness, and demand liberty for all. 
 
 They are accused of taking upon themselves the charge 
 of education, and it is even feared that they may monopolise 
 it; but even if their penury did not render this fear absurd, 
 what means have they of rendering their co-operation with 
 the University formidable, except the confidence inspired by 
 their knowledge and virtue. Would such competition involve 
 anything disastrous for the state ? Would France be in peril, 
 if many heads of families preferring for the education of their 
 children the ministers of Jesus Christ to the followers of 
 Voltaire, the University should be itself brought back to the 
 principles of Christian instruction. 
 
 What, in fact, is proposed by excluding the clergy from the 
 education of youth ? Is it thought possible to form religious 
 men without the ministry of the priesthood, or govern a nation 
 of atheists. If the generation which in ten years will consti- 
 tute the French nation, remains subject to a teaching, the 
 immorality and irreligion of which are proved by an over- 
 whelming body of facts to which nothing has been opposed
 
 APPEALS OF THE EPISCOPATE. 231 
 
 but calumnious recrimination and insolent denial,* what hand 
 in ten years will be able to hold the reins of France ? 
 
 Napoleon himself did not believe it possible to re-organize 
 alone a society dissolved by Voltaire and Rousseau, and 
 esteeming his sword too light to balance so many unchained 
 passions, he summoned religion to the re-construction of the 
 State. Do the men of July believe themselves more powerful 
 than he ? 
 
 It excites an indescribable pity to see the presumption of 
 pretended statesmen who, after adding humiliation to humi- 
 liation, as the great captain added victory to victory, cast con- 
 tempt and disdain on that religion whose co-operation they 
 claimed, and boldly proclaim from the midst of a society in 
 ashes : " Let the priest guard their altars, we and our brave 
 followers will guard the state and the throne!" 
 
 This was said more than sixty years since when the Bishops 
 of France vainly contended with the rulers, that the altar was 
 indispensable to the support of the throne and of public 
 liberty. Are the events of that time already forgotten. The 
 altar was scarcely shaken, when the axe of the revolution 
 splintered the oldest throne of Europe, and five hundred 
 thousand swords protected the scaffold on which the heads 
 of kings, deputies, ministers, soldiers, citizens and priests 
 were thrown in confusion. 
 
 * This is in fact the only answer given, to this day, to the formal act 
 of accusation drawn up by the courageous author of the Monopole uni- 
 vcrsitaire destructeur de la Religion et des Lois, and whoever has 
 read the work, will acknowledge that the defenders of the University 
 were compelled to choose between silence and abuse.
 
 232 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 CHAPTER LI. 
 
 EXTERNAL WORSHIP. ITS NECESSITY. BEAUTY OF THE CATH- 
 OLIC WORSHIP. NULLITY OF PROTESTANT WORSHIP.^IT 
 
 IS ILLOGICAL. VAIN EFFORTS TO RESTORE IT TO LIFE. 
 
 RELIGION must assume a form if it would interest man, 
 and be apprehended by him. Eternal truth was compelled 
 to incarnate itself in order to subject itself to our sensual 
 intelligence. Her revelations would soon vanish, if entrusted 
 to a book, and confined within the dreamy regions of the in- 
 dividual thought, they were not embodied in the living words 
 of pastors, and the animated forms of public worship. 
 
 Endowed with understanding, imagination and sentiment, 
 the soul naturally feels the need of translating, and express- 
 ing the interior results of its three faculties, by words, images 
 and action. To forbid it the very expressive language of 
 signs and symbols, is doing violence to nature, and destroy- 
 ing thought and feeling ; for thought is neither well conceived, 
 nor developed, nor preserved without the aid of expression, 
 and symbols ; feeling can neither live nor communicate nor 
 perpetuate itself without its offspring gesture. 
 
 The human mind expanded, ennobled and spiritualised by 
 the sublime and touching faith of Christianity must re-produce 
 it in various ways, and demand from the fine arts, expressions, 
 images, and ceremonials worthy of the elevation of its 
 thoughts, the grandeur of its affections, its hopes and fears. 
 A glorious reflection of the light which enlightens every man 
 coming into this world, the Christian worship must be CathoHc 
 and universal, and surpass other worships by the variety, har- 
 mony and beauty of its forms, as Christian thought surpasses 
 all other thought. This it has done. Are not the noblest 
 inspirations of eloquence, poetry, music, architecture, painting 
 and sculpture, both Christian and Catholic ?
 
 ETERNAL WORSHIP. 233 
 
 This is acknowledged ; homage is paid to the beauties of 
 the Catholic worship,* to the immense impulse it has given 
 at all periods to the fine arts. Hence philosophy with reason 
 accuses Protestantism of having disavowed and brutally vio- 
 lated by its false spiritualism one of the first laws of human 
 nature. The lover of the beautiful demands of it an account 
 of the master-pieces which its vandalism has destroyed, and 
 for those which it has checked in their birth, by proscribing 
 the great vehicle of genius imagination.]- Religious men. 
 reproach it with having dethroned piety by taking from it 
 its finest ornaments. 
 
 We must observe, however, with regard to this last reproach, 
 
 * " It must be acknowledged," says a Protestant minister, " that the 
 Catholic liturgy is incomparable, and that nothing is more desirable 
 than to approach it as nearly as possible. When we enter those vast 
 basilicks, at the moment of the celebration of the offices, with that 
 beautiful Gregorian music, which with the sound of instruments, fills 
 the whole extent of these immense edifices, and see here and there those 
 images of the prophets, saints, and seraphim, with their harps and 
 trumpets, that old priest with white locks, who entones the stanzas 
 from the depth of the sanctuary, those acolytes with their censers, and 
 the eagle rising towards heaven from the midst of the choristers, we 
 experience really the power of music and the language of religious 
 signs. Separated for a moment from the things of earth, we believe 
 ourselves transported into the midst of a vision of the Apocalypse. 
 This is a public worship worthy of Christianity, and of the gratitude 
 of a refined people who are indebted to it for their civilization." (M. 
 Muller, Des Beaux Jlrts et de la Ldngue dcs Signes, &c., p. 116.) 
 
 f " By subtracting the imagination from the faculties of man, it, (the 
 Reformation,) clipped the wings of genius and set it on its feet. Goethe 
 and Schiller did not appear until Protestantism, abjuring its dry and 
 morose spirit, returned towards the arts and subjects of the Catholic 
 religion. This last has covered the world with her monuments. Pro- 
 testantism sprung up just three centuries ago; it prevails in England, 
 Germany, and America; it is practised by millions of men. What has 
 it constructed ? It will show the ruins it has made, among which it 
 has planted some gardens or established some manufactures." (Chateau- 
 briand, Etudes Histor., preface.
 
 234 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 that it is easy for the Reformation to justify itself by reply- 
 ing that its fundamental principle necessarily excludes public 
 worship, and that its only error in the matter is having pre- 
 served some fragments of it. 
 
 Indeed public worship being only the expression of public 
 belief or the symbolic language of the common faith, what 
 can be the public worship where there is neither common 
 faith, nor public belief, except a criminal mockery ! 
 
 The Bible, and a silent Bible, is the only religious symbol 
 which Protestants can permit in their temples ; for religious 
 assemblies are very inconsistent with a religion which is es- 
 sentially individual. 
 
 Thus, nothing is more perfectly ridiculous than the enthu- 
 siasm of certain devotees of Germany and elsewhere, for the 
 restoration of Protestant worship. It certainly will be very 
 easy to re-establish in their temples what Protestantism form- 
 erly demolished as an obstacle to the adoration in spirit and in 
 truth, as an abominable invention of the Roman anti-Christ. 
 
 Images, statues of Jesus Christ, of the Apostles, the Cress, 
 candelabras and the censer will be restored. The organ 
 will mingle its majestic sounds with the voice of the choris- 
 ters ; a minister after many invectives against the papist 
 mass, will ascend the steps of a pretended altar, clothed 
 with a sort of chasuble, and offer an imitation of a sacrifice ; 
 after which, turning towards those present, he will invite them 
 to come and receive from the same hand, some the figure, 
 others the reality of the body of Christ. 
 
 These are the signs of life with which a dead body might 
 be surrounded in a chapel ; but to make Protestantism move, 
 preach, sing, sigh and pray is radically impossible ; a corpse 
 does nothing of all that. 
 
 It will be said: This is at least an edifying spectacle. 
 Spectacle it may be : but not edifying. Nothing can be less 
 edifying than a solemn public falsehood connected with mat-
 
 OBJECTIONS AGAINST CATHOLIC WORSHIP. 235 
 
 lers of religion. As a spectacle, such a worship has not, 
 like profane spectacles, the advantage of interesting the 
 public by representing to them the passions whose language 
 every one comprehends. Exhibiting a religion which belongs 
 to no one, what can it be but an unintelligible pantomime, a 
 phantasmagoria no less sacrilegious than absurd ? And 
 moreover, what attracts to these temples but the charm of 
 solitude?* 
 
 CHAPTER LII. 
 
 OBJECTIONS AGAINST TUB CATHOLIC WORSHIP. MULTI- 
 PLICITY OF CEREMONIES. USE OF LATIN. 
 
 I shall speak elsewhere of the civilizing influence of Ca- 
 tholic worship. I would here notice three reproaches that 
 are cast upon it. 1st, for multiplying its rites and ceremonies 
 so much as to conceal the substance under an oppressive 
 mass of forms ; 2d. for employing in its Liturgy a language 
 unknown to the people ; 3d. for giving too high a place to 
 the creature in an institution which has God for its object 
 (by this the worship of the Saints, and particularly of Mary, 
 is intended.) 
 
 I shall not give much attention to the first two objections, 
 upon which far less weight is laid since there has been an 
 opportunity of estimating the moral and artistic effect of 
 Liturgies in the vulgar tongue, and in a worship with scanty 
 rites. 
 
 If instead of condemning from the elevation of their igno- 
 
 * Stoves are necessary in Protestant temples, said a lively traveller, 
 M. Veuillot, Pelerinage en Suisse, torn, i., p. 27. Very well for win- 
 ter ! but in summer ? Perhaps ices may sometimes be distributed there '
 
 236 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 ranee, the numerous ceremonies of the Catholic worship, the 
 objectors would take the pains to penetrate the deep signifi- 
 cance of them and study their vast and wonderful symbolism, 
 they would see that everything is perfectly connected in this 
 beautiful system, that every part has its reason and also its 
 effect, and that the skill with which the Church has intro- 
 duced so great a variety into the very limited plan of its 
 Liturgy cannot be sufficiently admired. 
 
 Indeed, what do we find in this series of mysterious pic- 
 tures which it presents to our eye in the course of the year ? 
 Nothing less than the history of the world, from the Word 
 which created heaven and earth, to the Word which is to 
 produce a new heaven, and a new earth ; the history of the 
 Redeemer, from the day he was promised to guilty man, to 
 the day when he will receive into his glory the last, in time, 
 of the elect; the history of the Christian Church, from the 
 period when it was sighing in the catacombs, to the final 
 period when pursued into the depths of the deserts by tri- 
 umphant impiety, it will see the banner of the spouse unfurled 
 in heaven and will entone an eternal Hosannah ! 
 
 If the Catholic ceremonies are generally considered beau- 
 tiful and imposing by those who only comprehend the mate- 
 rial part of them, what effect would they not produce on those 
 who really understood the spirit of them ! Would the longest 
 office leave room for ennui if those present could follow the 
 thought of the Church? 
 
 Very few Christians indeed are sufficiently well instructed 
 to enjoy the internal beauties of the worship ; but because 
 many are too short-sighted to comprehend the whole extent 
 of this vast edifice, is this a reason that the Church should 
 demolish it? In an age like ours when so much is said of 
 the brotherhood of nations ; when wonderful inventions an- 
 nihilate distances and promise to make of the whole world 
 only one city, is there not some grandeur in the idea, vainly
 
 OBJECTIONS AGAINST CATHOLIC WORSHIP. 237 
 
 cherished by Leibnitz,* of a universal language, which while 
 diffusing the alphabets of every nation over the world, should 
 also bestow upon it all the philosophers, historians, literati 
 and learned men, whom antiquity and our ancient Europe 
 can number? Would not its realisation be an immense step 
 towards the union of human families ? 
 
 This miracle has been worked long since by the Catholic 
 Church. Thanks to its contempt for the ridicule of heretics 
 and the blind counsels of some of its children, the elders of 
 all the nations of the globe now speak the language of Cicero, 
 Virgil, Livy, Tertullian, St. Augustine, Kepler, Descartes and 
 Newton. 
 
 Must not such a result, which the Church alone could ob- 
 tain by rendering obligatory the use of Latin in its Liturgy, 
 show the disadvantage of singing the praises of God in 
 a language which is understood only by a few, especially 
 if it is easy to remedy this disadvantage by translations 
 which are in all hands and by the oral explanations of the 
 priest. 
 
 The following is the problem presented to the Church in 
 view of thousands of people who were divided by language 
 more than by space: 
 
 Must she procure for these nations the immense advantage 
 of understanding each other, by establishing the same reli- 
 gious language, at the risk that by inattention and ignorance 
 a few of the words should be lost which she addresses to 
 God in the name of this vast family ; or would it be better 
 for the good pleasure of those who cannot or will not read 
 their prayers at Mass that she should herself odopt the three 
 thousand five hundred idioms which the world speaks, and 
 leave these nations forever mute, and without the means of 
 communication with each other? 
 
 Have those who so lightly condemn the solution which 
 
 * See Esprit de Leibnitz, langue universelle, torn. iv. p. 202.
 
 238 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 Rome has given to this problem, ever considered or even 
 looked at it ! 
 
 " What a sublime idea," exclaims M. de Maistre, " is that 
 of a universal language for the Universal Church! From the 
 North Pole to the South, the Catholic who enters into a 
 church of his own ritual is at home and nothing is strange 
 in his eyes. On arriving he hears what he has heard all his 
 life ; and he can mingle his voice with those of his brethren. 
 He understands them, they understand him ; he can exclaim : 
 " Rome is entire in all places ; the whole of her is found where I am." 
 
 " The corruption of the age seizes continually certain words, 
 and spoils them for its amusement. If the Church spoke 
 our language, some bold free-thinker would be sure to render 
 the most sacred word of the Liturgy either ridiculous or in- 
 decent. On every account the religious language should be 
 put beyond the power of man."* 
 
 CHAPTER LI 1 1. 
 
 WORSHIP OF SAINTS. WHY REJECTED BY PROTESTANTISM. 
 
 FOUNDATION OF THIS WORSHIP. 
 
 MOST Protestants at length candidly acknowledge that the 
 Catholic Church does not adore and has never adored the 
 saints, and the absurd accusation of idolatry is no longer met 
 with except in the scandalous pamphlets of the Bosts, Malans, 
 Monods and other traffickers in the scurrility of the old 
 Reformation. But we are reproached with giving to the 
 saints too high a place in our worship. Might we not ask of 
 them in our turn why they have not given them any ? 
 
 In their religious system, what has become of the great 
 * Du Pape, liv. i. ch. 20.
 
 WORSHIP OF SAINTS. 239 
 
 family of the children of God, united forever by the indisso- 
 luble ties of charity, and the elder brethren of which, fortu- 
 nate possessors of the celestial inheritance, employ their credit 
 with the common Father for the benefit of their brethren who 
 are still engaged in the conflicts of life ? 
 
 Was this consoling interchange of honors and merits, of 
 prayers and intercessions, between^the inhabitants of earth 
 and those of heaven, a belief which all Christian antiquity 
 professed in the creed by the expression communion of saints, 
 was it so offensive to God and injurious to men, as the pre- 
 tended Reformers affirmed it to be ? We must acknowledge, 
 however, that in this they showed themselves perfectly con- 
 sistent with their principles. 
 
 How could those who repudiate the visible hierarchy by 
 which Christ transmits to us his words and his sacraments, 
 how could they accept the invisible hierarchy which bears 
 our supplications to the foot of the eternal throne, and brings 
 down from it streams of grace ? Since God deigns to con- 
 verse with each of us and has appointed no one to explain to 
 us his word, why should we commission any one to present 
 to him our demands ? If he speaks to us without an inter- 
 preter, will he not hear us without an intercessor ? 
 
 Sad reasoning this, which separating the individual from 
 his kind, under pretext of uniting him more closely with God, 
 converts him into a savage as isolated from God as from 
 men ; for it is written : Wo to him who is alone ? * 
 
 And on what do these miserable cavillers depend in order 
 to destroy the magnificent spiritual city which faith offers to 
 our homage and our love ; an immense city, of which God 
 and his Christ are the chief, the corner-stone, of which Mary 
 is the Queen ; of which angels, prophets, apostles and all the 
 blessed are in different- degrees the ministers, the high offi- 
 cials, the adult citizens ; of which we ourselves are the new- 
 * Eccles. iv. 10.
 
 240 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 born, still hovering between life and death?* Is it on the 
 Bible, to which they incessantly appeal ? But the Bible 
 everywhere represents to us God surrounded with his angels 
 and saints, as so many ministers and counsellors ; f honoring 
 them with the name of friends ; J making their names a title 
 of glory ; seating them on his throne, associating them in 
 the exercise of his sovereignty as he associates them with the 
 joys which the earth offers him ; [| placing individuals, cities 
 and kingdoms under their guardianship.lT 
 
 They seem to fear debasing God in the eyes of men by 
 elevating the saints ! This shows a very great ignorance of 
 God and man. What more sad, or less benevolent than this 
 isolated God, jealous of reform, eclipsing the saints by the 
 brilliancy of his glory, instead of making them shine as 
 suns,** and compelling them to be only automata in his 
 presence. 
 
 Transport the sun into empty space, extinguish those 
 floods of light with which he enriches our planet, how will 
 he appear to the eye of man ! It is the earth which makes 
 us admire the sun, and it is in his saints that God would 
 render himself admirable.ff 
 
 To allow the blessed an active part in the Divine govern- 
 ment, would be assuming, according to the objectors, that the 
 hand of the Most High is not strong enough to hold alone 
 the sceptre of the world. 
 
 What bar-room philosophy! Did it ever enter into the 
 
 * Ephes. ii. 19, 20 ; Hebr.i. 14 ; I. Peter ii. 2. 
 f Daniel vii. 10; III. Kings xxii. 19,4. 
 
 I Ps. cxxxviii. 17. 
 Exod. iii. 16. 
 
 || Sap in. 8; Apoc. iii. 21. 
 
 II Daniel vii. 16 ; ix. 21 ; x. 13 ; xii. 1 ; Luke xv. 17. 
 ** Justi fulgebunt sicut sol. (Matth. xiii. 43.) 
 
 tf Mirabilis Deus in sanctis suis. (Ps. Ixvii. 36.)
 
 WORSHIP OF SAINTS. 241 
 
 mind of the Christian, however uninstructed, that God, by 
 associating the saints in his government, proposed rather to 
 relieve himself by it than to glorify them? What ignorance 
 would this show of Scripture and of man ! These wise stu- 
 dents of the Bible do not know that the Heaven which Jesus 
 Christ promises us, is the kingdom of his Father, his own 
 throne, whose heirs we are, conjointly with him.* They 
 were ignorant of the promise which he made to his Apostles 
 and their followers to associate them in the power he had 
 received to judge the world, and the invitation which he has 
 given us to make friends in Heaven who are capable of open- 
 ing for us its gates.f They regard, then, these thrones vir- 
 tues, powers, dominations and principalities, with which Scrip 
 ture peoples heaven, as so many sinecures. 
 
 In a word, they have never read the heart of man. Is not 
 the unbounded ambition which agitates it, its insatiable thirst 
 for grandeur and power, plain proofs of our vocation for the 
 supreme empire ? Who would wish for heaven, if the felicity 
 enjoyed there were only an eternal idleness. 
 
 What do the Reformers oppose to this collection of bibli- 
 cal and philosophical proofs, which not only justify the wor- 
 ship that we render to the saints, but would tend to lead us 
 to look upon it as necessary, if the Catholic Church had not 
 limited itself to declaring it good and useful ?J A few pas- 
 sages of Scripture, among others that of St. Paul : " For 
 there is one God, and one Mediator of God and men, the 
 man Christ Jesus." To have recourse to the intercession 
 of saints, it is said, is to recognise many mediators, and do 
 an injury to Jesus Christ; what can be more evident? 
 
 But what they answer will be given to the following ex- 
 actly similar reasoning! Christ has said: Call none your 
 
 * Romans viii. 17. f Matth. xix. 2S ; Luke xvi 9. 
 
 % Council Trent, Sess. xxv. I. Timoth. ii. 5. 
 
 VOL. II. 21
 
 2-12 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 father upon earth : for one is your Father who is in heaven : * 
 then the child who gives to the author of his days the name 
 of lather, and pays him the obedience and honor attached 
 to this title, violates the law of Christ, insults God, and assails 
 his Divine descent. 
 
 It will, doubtless, be answered, that the honors, rendered to 
 the fathers of this world, far from being derogatory to the 
 Heavenly Father who expressly commands them,f are agree- 
 able to him and terminate in him, human paternity being only 
 a flowing out or a visible image of the Divine paternity ; and 
 as God when he connects parents with the creation of the 
 child, gives them a share in the rights and honors of patern- 
 ity, on condition, however, that the child should honor his 
 parents and adore God alone, the only true author of life ; 
 so it is this title only and the absolute authority which is de- 
 rived from it, which Jesus Christ, in the text above quoted, 
 claims for our Heavenly Father. 
 
 Such is also our answer to the objection drawn from the 
 words of the Apostle. In honoring the saints it is God whom 
 we honor, the author of their glory, and who wishes to be 
 glorified in them.| We openly avow that the favor which 
 they enjoy, as well as the graces which they obtain for us, 
 are the fruit of the blood of Jesus Christ. To pray them to 
 employ this favor, to second our petitions, and to think that 
 their prayers will be more acceptable than ours, would it be 
 doing an injury to the Supreme Mediator, or rather is it not 
 rendering glory to him ? Nothing is more to the glory of 
 Jesus Christ than having peopled heaven with the dispensers 
 of his favors; nothing so much displays the infinite riches of 
 his merits as the privilege he allows to millions of drawing 
 perpetually upon them. 
 
 Finally, the Protestant must concede to the Apostles during 
 
 * Matth. xxiii. 9. t Exod. xs. 12. 
 
 j II. Thessal. i. 10.
 
 WORSHIP OF SAINTS. 243 
 
 their mortal life that benevolent intervention between Christ 
 and men, which he refuses to the saints. 
 
 It is evident from Scripture that Christ had established 
 them as his ministers, his plcnipolcnliaries, the dispensers of 
 his gifts, the falliers of souls, his coadjutors in the redemption 
 of the world, and that they had in these different qualities, a 
 right to the homage, to the respect, to the submission and 
 confidence of all Christians.* It is evident also that they 
 were the organs, the petitioners of men near God and that 
 they regarded prayer as their most important function.-)- 
 
 But could death destroy those glorious relations which 
 connected the Christian society with its founders? While 
 giving to Jesus Christ and his Church the greatest proof of 
 love by the effusion of their blood, would the Apostles have 
 lost the glorious mission of enlightening and saving the 
 world, and their right to the admiration, love and gratitude 
 of men ? J 
 
 While associating them in his glory, would Christ have 
 excluded them from a share in his solicitude for that Church 
 which was won by his blood, but edified and cemented by 
 their labors and their martyrdom ? Would that zeal which 
 made them eager to be cursed for their brethren be extin- 
 guished in the bosom of eternal charity ? Could their prayer, 
 so effectual to restore the dead to life, be now without value 
 before God ? In short, could they be in heaven only a vain 
 shadow of what they were on earth. Who would dare to 
 think it! 
 
 I have sufficiently proved, it seems to me, that the total 
 neglect of the saints in the Protestant worship is entirely at 
 variance with Scripture and the general spirit of Christianity. 
 I will now show, in a few words, that it is no less objec- 
 tionable in a philosophical and moral p'lint of view. 
 
 * Matth. x. 14 ; Mark xvi. 16 ; Luke x. 10 ; I. Cor. iii. 9 ; II. Cor.v. 2C 
 f Act. A p. vi. A. f Matth. v. 13, 1-1. Rom. ix. 3.
 
 244 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 CHAPTER LIV. 
 
 NATURAL FOUNDATION FOR THE WORSHIP OF SAINTS. ITS 
 
 MORAL INFLUENCE. 
 
 AMONG the noble instincts which do honor to the heart of 
 man, we should place in the first rank the need which he 
 naturally feels of offering the homage of respect and venera- 
 tion to noble and virtuous actions. 
 
 To celebrate the memory of men who have deserved well 
 of their kind by the exhibition of lofty virtues, by their teach- 
 ings, or by the establishment of wise and useful institutions, 
 is at the same time a debt of gratitude and a great incitement 
 to virtue. "The honors rendered to heroes," a Christian 
 philosopher has said, " are the best encouragement to hero- 
 ism." * The nation which does nothing to perpetuate the 
 remembrance of its great men, is without its most necessary 
 institution, a school of virtue. But this nation does not exist 
 and never has existed. 
 
 Every nation has its heroes and its sages, whose practice 
 and precepts she proposes as a model to succeeding genera- 
 tions, the respect which she bears them extends to everything 
 which recalls their memory; to their mortal remains, to the 
 spot which gave them birth, the places where they have lived 
 and died, to their images, their statues, and even their arti- 
 cles of household use. The worship of illustrious men, of 
 relics and of images is as ancient, and as universal as the 
 human race ; it is then legitimate in its principle ; and makes 
 a part of the laws of humanity. 
 
 Without doubt, men have abused this law as all others. 
 Pagan antiquity was grossly deceived in the choice of its 
 heroes and more grossly still in the worship which it rendered 
 * St. Augr. Ssrm. 47, tie Sanct.
 
 FOUNDATION FOR THE WORSHIP OF SAINTS. 245 
 
 them. The material force which arbitrarily ruled the earth, 
 appropriated to its own advantage the honors of the apotheo- 
 sis. The Sacred Way which conducted the ravagers of the 
 world to the Capitol, became the only road to Heaven. 
 
 Christianity did justice to this monstrous worship. It 
 reserved to God alone the supreme honors of adoration ; but 
 instead of changing God into a monarch inaccessible to 
 human weakness, jealous of maintaining the infinite distance 
 which separates him from the creature, it represented him as 
 an infinitely good Father who loves to surround himself with 
 men as with his children, and who subjects them for a few 
 days to the painful trials of life, only to associate them with 
 his glory, his power, and his joy in the kingdom which will 
 have no end. 
 
 What is Heaven according to Scripture ? It is the house 
 of the father of the family; it has places for every one, for 
 every one is called to its enjoj'ment. What is necessary to 
 enter it? It is sufficient to love God and man sincerely; 
 tins is the whole law. The love of God and of our neighbor 
 carried to perfection, that is to say, to forgetfulness of self, 
 constitutes the Christian hero and gives a claim to the highest 
 place. If the condition is difficult, it does not exceed the 
 power of any one. Is there any one who cannot prefer God 
 to everything and his neighbor to himself. 
 
 What higher morality than to direct all our ambition to- 
 wards promoting the glory of God and the happiness of 
 man ! What an easy condition, within the power of every 
 one, for attaining the first rank ! What better adapted to 
 excite a universal enthusiasm ! 
 
 But this teaching, to become efficacious, must be realized 
 before the eyes of men. As worship only attains its end, 
 which is to inspire the sentiment of adoration, when it re- 
 calls the sovereignty of God by its grandeur and pomp; so 
 teaching could only attain its end, which is to excite in man 
 
 21*
 
 24G THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 the aspiration to sanctity, by presenting to his eyes the bril- 
 liancy of the celestial crown. God must appear in his temple 
 as he presents himself to our thought, as he will show him- 
 self to us at the Last Day, surrounded with the glorious 
 company of Saints. 
 
 This is done by the Catholic Church. She excites and 
 maintains a holy emulation among her children, by inviting 
 them every day to meditate on the example, and celebrate 
 the triumphs of those among them whom heaven and earth 
 have called with one voice to take their place upon her altars. 
 
 What eloquent preachers, are those heros of every age, 
 of either sex, of every condition, who say to each one : We 
 were what you are ; it depends on yourself soon to become 
 what we are, and even greater ; for the seed-time which has 
 passed for us, still promises you rich harvests ? 
 
 I do not wish to discuss here the validity of the reasons 
 according to which the Church decrees to a saint the honors 
 of public worship. Whoever knows, and every one can 
 know, the slow processes of these matters at Rome, the pub- 
 licity which she is bound to give them, the extreme severity 
 of her examinations, and the multiplicity of proofs which she 
 demands,* will avow without hesitation, that every precaution 
 has been taken against the sad, but happily unheard of neces- 
 sity in the Roman Church, of deposing a saintf 
 
 * An English Protestant being at Rome, a Prelate with whom he was 
 intimate, showed him an official report containing the examination of 
 several miracles. After having read it with much attention, he said, as he 
 returned it : " If all the miracles that are received in the Roman Church 
 were established on proofs as indisputable as these, we should have no 
 difficulty in receiving them." " Well ! " answered the Prelate, " of all 
 those miracles which appear to you so well authenticated, none has 
 been admitted by the Congregation of Rites, because they were not con- 
 sidered as satisfactorily proved." (Vie de St. J. F. Regis, by Father 
 Daubenton, book iv.) 
 
 t The head of the Russian Church has just given this unheard of
 
 FOUNDATION FOR THE WOK SHIP OF SAINTS. 247 
 
 To one \vlio doubts the miracles by which God signalises 
 the triumphant entry of a hero into heaven, and invites men to 
 unite their acclamations to those of the blessed, I would say : 
 Reflect for a moment, and you will see even in the worship 
 of the saints a much more astonishing miracle than those 
 which you refuse to believe. 
 
 That the Church should obtain the honors of public wor- 
 ship for kings, pontiffs, and popular men, who have died sur- 
 rounded by the testimonies of universal veneration, has noth- 
 ing in it surpassing human power. But that she should have 
 been able to raise from the dust to the altar, obscure men, 
 slaves, servants, herdsmen, laborers, poor artisans, and men- 
 dicants ; that she should have brought emperors, kings, and 
 nobles to bow before the remains of these dregs of creation, 
 to transform the huts they inhabited into sumptuous temples, 
 and to choose them for the protectors of their capitals and 
 their estates,* this is humanly speaking inexplicable. 
 
 But I wish to examine here only the rn'oral effect of these 
 apotheoses. It is immense. Nothing could be imagined more 
 adapted to preserve the great from pride, the humble from 
 
 example of the public degradation of a saint. Ten years since the 
 Emperor Nicholas solemnly canonised a certain person named Metro- 
 phanes, created him knight of all the orders of the State, ornamented 
 his tomb with the different decorations of these orders, and instituted 
 by a public ukase a festival in his honor, to be celebrated throughout 
 the empire. But afterwards the researches of some learned men proved 
 to a demonstration that Metrophanes had been a robber on the high- 
 way, and that for this reason, according to an ancient custom of the 
 Russians, he had been thrown into a monastery, to undergo perpetual 
 imprisonment. Consequently, last year the Emperor caused him to be 
 degraded in the same manner, depriving him of all his decorations, and 
 publishing a new ukase to prohibit his worship. (.Znnates de Pliilos. 
 cJirct. torn. xxiv. p. 391.) 
 
 * It is sufficient to cite St. Genevieve, a shepherdess, patron of Paris. 
 St.. Isidore a laborer, patron of Madrid. St. Zita, a servant girl, patron- 
 ess of Lucca. St. Benezet, a shepherd, patron of Avignon, &c.
 
 248 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 abjectncss, to inspire them with the reciprocal sentiments of 
 esteem and charity, and to recall to them that they are broth- 
 ers, and that before God virtue is the only nobility. 
 
 The world which is all error and corruption * has also its 
 heros and its festivals. History, poetry, and the fine arts, 
 celebrate in a thousand ways the triumphs of pride, ambition, 
 cupidity, and luxury. What would become of society if 
 religion did not oppose the worship of all the virtues to the 
 apotheosis of all the vices. 
 
 Admiration is a want that must be satisfied : take from it 
 its legitimate aliment, the spectacle of great virtues, it will 
 attach itself to great crimes. In those places where Protest- 
 antism has over thrownthe statues of Christian heroes, irrelig- 
 ion and cynicism have raised them in honor of their apostles. 
 The crowns which the Genevese youth formerly offered at the 
 feet of Christ and his mother, it now offers to the author of 
 the Nouvelle Heloise and of the Confessions. The visits to 
 the sanctuary of the Queen of Virgins have given place to 
 the pilgrimage of Ferney. 
 
 Those who imagine that the Reformers of the sixteenth 
 century are profound thinkers, who have promoted the pro- 
 gress of tJic human mind, grossly deceive themselves. Strang- 
 ers to the knowledge of man as to that of Christianity, they 
 were only iconoclasts, and, like savages, had nothing in com- 
 mon but the genius of destruction. The outrages inflicted 
 by their hands on the monuments of Christian art, are only a 
 feeble image of the barbarous devastations made by their 
 pen in a higher department. 
 
 * I. John v. 19.
 
 UNITY OF THE HUMAN FAMILY. 249 
 
 CHAPTER LV. 
 
 UNITY OF THE HUMAN FAMILY. MISSION ANB FUNCTIONS 
 
 OF ADAM AND EVE. THEIR FALL. CHOICE OF A NEW 
 
 MAN AND A NEW WOMAN. UNIVERSAL EXPECT- 
 ATION OF THE VIRGIN-MOTHER. SALUTATION 
 
 OF THE ARCHANGEL TO MARY. 
 
 GOD has chosen to form one family of the human race : 
 a father and mother were needed for this family. 
 
 Adam and Eve were at first invested with this high dig- 
 nity, and it would be strangely degrading their office to limit 
 it to the propagation of the race. 
 
 In the plan of the Creator, Adam is not a man, but the 
 man, the head, the king of humanity ; he holds in his hands 
 the eternal destinies of his innumerable children. His was 
 the sublime mission of conducting them to the abodes of 
 glory through the way of obedience ; his, the terrible power 
 of ruining them eternally by associating them in his rebellion ! 
 
 God gives him support that he may not sink under the 
 weight of such a responsibility. 
 
 The influence of woman in the family is incalculable. If 
 man is its head, woman is its heart. His is the reason which 
 guides to wisdom and happiness ; hers, the feeling which in- 
 spires the one and produces the other. If she charms and 
 doubles by her virtues the existence of her husband,* what 
 blessings does she not pour out upon her children ! The 
 least, perhaps, is to bear them a few months in her bosom ; 
 she bears them all her life on her heart. She lives, she 
 breathes only for them. Their joys are her joys, their griefs 
 are her griefs. Her inventive tenderness has consolation for 
 
 * Mulieris bontc beatus vir : numerus enim annorum illius duplex. 
 (Eccles. xxvi. 1.)
 
 250 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 all sorrow, remedies for all woes, and she always soothes 
 those which she cannot heal. As her hand is soft and deli- 
 cate for the cares which the body demands, so are her words 
 insinuating and subtile to penetrate into the windings of the 
 soul. The lessons which the father addresses to the intellect, 
 she impresses upon the heart ; she possesses the art of trans- 
 forming precepts into virtuous habits, knowledge into feeling 
 and truth into love. 
 
 Woman, mistress of the heart, is the strongest link in the 
 family tie. Has the child defied paternal authority ? the 
 father has but one feeling, that of indignation ; one thought, 
 that of punishment. The justice which he consults before 
 anything else, demands rigid satisfaction as the preliminary 
 of pardon. That pride which has misled the child, prevents 
 him from submitting ; fear keeps him at a distance. The se- 
 paration would be eternal, if the mother were not there to 
 open the heart of the criminal to repentance, and that of the 
 father to clemency. If the sight of the fugitive excites a 
 half-extinguished anger, the mother interposes, and the tem- 
 pest dies away before this sun of gentleness. 
 
 The mediation of the religious mother is not less powerful 
 with God. Borne on the wings of faith and love, sentiments 
 which predominate in her, her prayers quickly reach the 
 Divine heart. Read the lives of the saints; you will find few 
 who have not imbibed virtue with their mother's milk, or who 
 have not been led back to God by the counsels, the example 
 and the prayers of a virtuous mother. The heart is the whole 
 of man, and a good heart is the work of a good mother. 
 
 Such was to be the sublime office of the first woman in 
 the midst of the immense family, of which she was to be the 
 mother; and it is with reason that she received from man a 
 name synonymous with life.* 
 
 What an accession of glory and power she would have 
 * Genes, ill. 20.
 
 UNITY OF THE HUMAN FAMILY. 251 
 
 acquired for herself and for her husband, if, faithful to her 
 mission, she had sustained him in the struggle against the 
 tempter and decided his triumph as she decided his defeat! 
 All the generations of humanity would have hailed, from age 
 to age, by a unanimous cry of gratitude and love, the two 
 beings to whom, next to God, they were indebted for life and 
 happiness, Adam would have been the blessed of the nations, 
 Eve the woman eternally blessed. 
 
 What influence would they not have exercised over God 
 by their prayers, when confirmed in his love by a first victory 
 or series of victories, the consequence of the first, they would 
 have occupied themselves only with the fate of their child- 
 ren who were still subjected to temptation ! If we ima- 
 gine that one among them had yielded to it, is it not indubit- 
 able that he would have found in Adam and Eve powerful 
 and victorious intercessors? If the prayer of Moses could 
 annul the decree of death which had gone forth against his 
 people,* how could God resist the supplications of the Pa- 
 rents of the human race, seconded by the prayers of their 
 children who had remained faithful ? 
 
 These blessed relations with God and their posterity, Adam 
 and Eve lost with their innocence. Instead of imparting life 
 to the soul and body, they transmitted double death to the 
 soul and body. But if they changed their office God did not 
 change his design. 
 
 It was the will of God to restore the human family who 
 had been ruined by the rebellion of its head, by giving it a 
 new head. As we have received death by the disobedience 
 of the first Adam, we must find life in the obedience of the 
 second. It was by woman that Satan triumphed over man ; 
 it is by woman that man will triumph over Satan. 
 
 Let us listen to God himself as he announces to the t\vo 
 criminals the choice which he has made of a new man and a 
 * Rom. v. 12.
 
 252 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 new woman. Addressing the conqueror, this warfare which 
 thou th'nikest, to have terminated to thy own advantage, said he, 
 / will enkindle between thee and the woman, between thy race 
 and hers ; she shall break thy head.* If the Christian world 
 has constantly recognised Christ the Redeemer, in this race of 
 the woman destined to crush the empire of the devil; it must 
 also recognise the Mother of Christ in the promised woman. 
 
 We see Mary, then, at the head of the new struggle in 
 which hell will be subdued, as Eve has been the first in the 
 attack in which man fell. 
 
 The consoling promise, received with joy by our unfortu- 
 nate parents, is transmitted from generation to generation and 
 during four thousand years, all nations are waiting for the 
 blessed Virgin Mother who bears in her bosom the salvation 
 of the world. j 
 
 The race of Jacob sigh more than others for the Siar 
 which was to rise upon it.| The prophets of the Lord, gave 
 them glimpses, from time to time, by the most touching 
 images of that woman who will conceive by a prodigy new 
 upon the carth. Here, it is a stem that rises bearing a 
 divine jlower ; || there, it is the earth opened by heaven where 
 the Savior buds.^ 
 
 The nation was just sinking under the blows of two for- 
 midable enemies. God sent it a prophet to raise its courage ; 
 and what does he announce ? Behold, a Virgin shall con- 
 ceive, and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emma- 
 nuel.** Like a good father he consoles his family by saying 
 to them : Courage, my children, your mother is coming! 
 
 At length the time is accomplished ; the desired of nations 
 arrives, but unknown yet to men and to herself; the Most 
 High is about to reveal to the world its deliverer, and to 
 
 * Gen. iii. 15. 
 
 f Voy. Troisieme Icttre, de M. Drach, a ses corcligionnaires. 
 
 J Num. xxiv. 17. Jerein. xxxi. 22. 
 
 II Isa. xi. 1. IT Ibid. xiv. 8. ** Ibid. vii. 14.
 
 PARALLEL BETWEEN EVE AXD MAIIY. 253 
 
 Mary the prodigies of mercy which he designs to perform in 
 her and by her. 
 
 Ye who accuse us of elevating Mary too high, listen to 
 the words of the Celestial Messenger, addressed to the Virgin 
 of Nazareth. 
 
 Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee ; Blessed art 
 thou a?no?ig women. Behold thou shall conceive and bring 
 forth a son ; and thou shalt call his name Jesus. He shall be 
 great, and shall be called the Son of the Most High, &c.. &c.* 
 
 What are all the praises which the Church has always 
 decreed to Mary, whether in its prayers, by the mouth of its 
 preachers, or the pen of its writers, except a faint commentary 
 on the words of the Archangel? What are the honors which 
 it renders her, and the sentiments of gratitude, love and con- 
 fidence with which it inspires us for her, if not the natural 
 and legitimate consequence of the incomprehensible dignity 
 to which God has elevated her, and the innumerable blessings 
 which we have received by her interposition. 
 
 But in order better to conceive, as far as it is permitted to 
 our weakness, the greatness of the new Woman and its claim 
 upon our homage, let us resume the parallel of the two Eves 
 
 CHAPTER LVI. 
 
 PARALLEL OF EVE AND MARY. PRE-EMINENCE OF MARY 
 
 OVER THE FIRST WOMAN. HER CLAIM TO THE 
 
 TITLE OF MOTHER OF MEN. 
 
 WE have seen that the mission of the first woman was 
 great and full of dignity in the eyes of God and man ; but it 
 was conservative, and on that account easy to fulfil. In order 
 
 * Luke i. 23, et seq. 
 VOL. ii. 22
 
 254 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 to guard herself from the seductions of hell, and rescue from 
 it her children who were born with virtuous inclinations, Eve 
 needed only a common degree of wisdom and virtue. 
 
 The work entrusted to the new Woman, on the contrary, 
 was one of great difficulty. If Divine omnipotence was re- 
 quired in the hands of the Son to overthrow the throne of 
 Satan, which had been strengthened by a reign of forty cen- 
 turies, and lead back into the way of holiness a world which 
 worshipped every vice, did not the Mother need a boundless 
 charity, she who was to gather into her bosom numberless 
 generations of wretched beings who were cast by Adam and 
 Eve upon an accursed world! 
 
 God, who always proportions the power of the means to 
 the greatness of the end, would necessarily show himself 
 lavish of his grace towards Mary, and if the author of Eccle- 
 siasticus tells us that Eve received it in large measure* the 
 Archangel Gabriel teaches us that Mary had received it in 
 its plenitude.! As the new Adam, descending from heaven, 
 must surpass Adam formed from the clay of the earth, in the 
 same proportion (save the infinite distance which exists 
 between the uncreated Being and the creature) the ^ irgin 
 destined to be the mother of the God- Man must surpass the 
 virgin drawn from the side of man. Indeed, only a little at- 
 tention is necessary to what Scripture teaches *us of both, to 
 comprehend the vast difference which separates them. 
 
 In the plan of creation, Eve is represented only in the 
 second rank. Adam existed and had received the investiture 
 of the world and the law of God, before she appeared. She 
 came forth from the side of Adam and was given him as a 
 companion. It is Adam from whom she learns her origin 
 and her destiny and from whom she receives her name.J 
 
 In the plan of re-generation the woman occupies the first 
 rank. I icill put enmities between tkec and the woman, &c. 
 
 * Ecclus. xvii. f Luke i. 23. \ Gen. ii. 23, 24.
 
 PARALLEL BETWEEN EVE AXD MARY. 255 
 
 A Virgin u-ill conceive, &c. In the gospel, Mary appears 
 before Jesus. She does not come forth from the side of the 
 God-Man, but the God-Man is conceived and formed in her 
 chaste body ; she could say to him with perfect truth ; thoii 
 art, bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. 
 
 It was not the new Adam from whom she learned her des- 
 tiny, and who gave her a name ; it was to her that the Most 
 High revealed the grandeur of his Son, and conferred upon 
 her the right of bestowing on him the adorable name of Jesus. 
 She was not only the aid and companion of the Savior; she 
 was his mother, and in this quality, she commanded for thirty 
 years, Him, before whom every knee must bow, in Heaven, on 
 earth and in Hell.* 
 
 Heaven did not reveal to the first woman the designs 
 which it had for her; it did not ask her consent; it was 
 without her knowledge and by the absolute will of the Crea- 
 tor, that she was called to share the sovereignty of the world. 
 
 God dealt differently with Mary ; he deigned to communi- 
 cate to her the great mystery by a prince of the celestial 
 court. Mary makes her own conditions, stipulates the pre- 
 servation of her virginity, and the act of the Incarnation 
 tcldch for so many ages had held Heaven and earth in 
 expectation, is delayed until the Virgin has consented to it.\ 
 
 What human eye can measure the distance from the 
 Mother of God to the companion of Adam! But let us 
 continue, Scripture in hand, the history of these two women. 
 
 Eve had scarcely come forth from the hands of the Crea- 
 tor, instructed by Adarn in her duties, than we see her con- 
 versing with the angel of darkness, plucking the fatal fruit 
 from the tree, and transmitting death from her own person to 
 that of her husband and to all posterity. The two criminals, 
 
 * Luke ii. 51. 
 
 f Bossuet, I. Sermon pour la J\"atioit de /a Sainte Vifrge, III. 
 Point.
 
 25G THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 filled with terror and confusion, endeavor to conceal them- 
 selves from their own eye and that of the Creator. Cod 
 appears and announces long and terrible punishments. 
 
 Mary, after her interview with the messenger of Heaven, 
 had no sooner conceived the Author of Life, than devoured 
 by the flames of charity, she climbed mountains and entered 
 the house of Elizabeth, a ray of life from her entered the 
 bosom of her cousin, and awakened the infant who was sleep- 
 ing there in the shades of death. The greatest of the chil- 
 dren of men, having become the first of the adopted children 
 of Mary, celebrated by a movement of joy his deliverance 
 and the presence of his divine benefactress. The joy of the 
 son was communicated to the mother; Elizabeth, filled with 
 the Holy Spirit, lavishes upon the Mother of her Lord the 
 tribute of her love and reverence. Mary celebrates in a 
 divine canticle, the accomplishment of the promise which 
 mitigated the decree of death, long before uttered in Eden, 
 and the streams of mercy which the Lord will pour forth 
 through her over all generations.* 
 
 Eve brought forth her first-born, and in the joy which she 
 feels at finding herself the mother of a man, she called him 
 her possession,]- a sad possession, indeed, a child who is to 
 become the first fratricide, and people the earth with an 
 impious and accursed race ! 
 
 Mary brought forth her only son, and by the name of 
 Savior which she gave him, she announced that ho was the 
 possessor and the possession of the world. She heard the 
 angels celebrating the glory which he will render to God and 
 the peace he will bring to men. She saw with grief, mingled 
 with joy the first drop of blood shed by him, at the circum- 
 cision, for the salvation of the human race. She offered him 
 as the victim of propitiation on the altar of the Most Ilign, 
 and the Most High announced to her, by the prophet Simeon, 
 * Luke i. 46, et seq. f Gen. iv. 1.
 
 PARALLEL BETWEEN EVE AND MARY. 257 
 
 (hat, associated herself in the sacrifice of her Son, (hs turord 
 of sorrow shall pierce her soul.* Hence with the slow mar- 
 tyrdom of the Son, began the slow martyrdom of the Mother, 
 in the exile which they endured in Egypt, and in the hard 
 and humiliating life which they led in Nazareth. 
 
 The Scripture makes no more mention of Eve after the 
 birth of her third son ; but her work survives her. The error, 
 crime, misery and death which she introduced into the world 
 continue their devastations and secure to her name a sad 
 immortality. 
 
 The office of Mary expands with that of her Son. Jesus 
 came forth from his long and obscure retreat of Nazareth, 
 was present with some disciples at the nuptials at Cana, and 
 Mary was at his side. Her watchful charity perceived the 
 embarrassment of the married pair, and wishing to spare them 
 confusion, she asked of Jesus a miracle. He seemed at first 
 to repel her by his answer ; but this answer which the ene- 
 mies of the worship of Mary pervert, contains under a severe 
 form, a magnificent eulogium upon her power. What do 
 these words, indeed, signify : My hour is not yet come,\ fol- 
 lowed immediately by the miracle demanded, except that the 
 prayer of Mary can hasten the movement of Omnipotence 
 and abridge the delay which it imposes ! 
 
 This miracle, observes the evangelist who relates it, ths 
 frsl that Jesus worked, manifested his glory, and his disciples 
 believed in him.\ Thus it was by the ardor of her charity 
 and the power of her praj-er that this ever-blessed Mother 
 contributed to reveal to the world its Savior, and planted in 
 the heart of the Apostles that faith which, some years after, 
 covered the earth with its flowers and fruits. 
 
 Mary, during the public life of Jesus, returned to her life 
 among her people, and was seen no more except at the foot 
 of the Cross. How can the presence of so loving a mother 
 
 * Luke ii. 33. f John ii. 4 \ John ii. 11. 
 
 22*
 
 25S THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 at so heart-rending a spectacle be explained, if her place had 
 not been designated there for the accomplishment of a great 
 mystery, by the order of heaven ! 
 
 Golgotha is the divine counterpart of the infernal drama 
 of Eden. What do we sec on both sides? A tree, a man, 
 a woman, the invisible demon under a visible form. There 
 is the tree of the knowledge of evil, loaded with the fruit of 
 death; here, the tree of salvation bearing the fruit of life. 
 
 There, at the word of the infernal angel, the fruit of death 
 fell from the tree into the lap of the woman, and passed from 
 her hands into those of the man ; and these two corrupted 
 beings, united by the instinct of pleasure, introduced a stream 
 of death into the veins of the human race. 
 
 Here, the fruit of life, conceived in the Woman, after her 
 interview with the Celestial Messenger, passed from her bosom 
 into her arms, and thence by the power of a vast chanty was 
 lifted on the tree of the Cross, where, cruelly crushed under 
 the weight of Divine justice, he diffused over regenerated 
 humanity a flood of blessings and of life. 
 
 There, the devil crept towards the feet of the woman, 
 and offering her the temptation of pleasure and of grandeur 
 he brought her with man into subjection, and precipitated 
 both into an abyss of grief and confusion. 
 
 Satan, at the foot of the Cross, appeared to triumph over the 
 Woman by the outrages with which he overwhelmed her, and 
 the rage with which he assailed her Son ; but it was there that 
 the victorious foot of Mary crushed his head, and before leav- 
 ing Calvary the Sorrowing Mother hears heaven, earth and 
 even the demons of hell rendering homage to the Divinity of 
 her Son, and at the same time to her Divine Maternity.* 
 
 But the point to which we should particularly give our 
 attention in the comparison, is this ; Eve having brought death 
 into the world by drawing man into rebellion, lost all claim 
 
 * Matth. xxvii. 51.
 
 DEVOTION 1 TO MAIIY. 2 ; 3f) 
 
 to the glorious title of Mother of the Living, and if it was 
 given her by Adam, it was on account of the blessed Daugh- 
 ter full of grace and life whom God announced to him as 
 proceeding from a mother blighted by sin and death. 
 
 Mary, delivering up her soul to the sword of grief and associ- 
 ating herself with an heroic charity to the sacrifice of her Son, 
 restores us to life by him, and receives in her maternal arms 
 the family of the children of God, the fruit of the cruel pangs 
 of Calvary. Woman, said the Savior to her, just before ex- 
 piring, behold thy Son, showing her the only Christian pres- 
 ent ; and to the latter he said : Behold thy Mother. 
 
 Are not these various titles sufficient to establish the rights 
 of Mary to the veneration, gratitude, love and confidence of 
 the Christian, and will it be said that her divine substitution 
 for Eve in the prerogatives and functions of common mother 
 of the children of God is an illusion ? 
 
 CHAPTER LVII. 
 
 DEVOTION TO MAKY INNATE IN THE CHRISTIAN. FIRST 
 
 SOURCE OF THIS SENTIMENT. ITS UNIVERSALITY. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 THE question which now occupies us is one of the heart 
 rather than of the intellect. 
 
 Can a true Christian be found, that is to say, one animated 
 with a sincere love for Jesus Christ, who does not turn with 
 gratitude and affection towards the mother who bore him and 
 whose breast has nourished him ! Where is the sinner touched 
 with grief for his faults, and struck with fear of the judg- 
 ments of God, who does not invoke with confidence that 
 Mother of mercy whose persuasive prayer smooths the brow
 
 200 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 of our heavenly Father, and who covering with her shadow, 
 as with a merciful cloud, the guilty earth, defends it from the 
 fires of the sun of justice, and transmutes the scathing light- 
 ning into dew?* 
 
 What more natural than for the unhappy child of Eve who 
 daily feels the poison of sin circulating in his veins, to have 
 recourse to her whom heaven has chosen to dry it at its 
 source ! Does not the same faith which teaches him that the 
 blood of Christ is the only remedy for his woes, teach him 
 also that the blood of Christ is the blood of the Virgin ? 
 
 We are accused of exalting the power of Mary too much 
 liy calling her the dispenser of graces ; but is it not through 
 her that God has chosen to give us his Son, who is the source 
 of all graces ? It is called a crime in us to go to Jesus 
 through Mary ; but is it not through Mary that Jesus has 
 come to us? Is the interposition of this Divine Mother any- 
 thing but a divine fact which the Catholic does not create, 
 but which he recognizes and accepts? 
 
 These considerations, like all those which we have hitherto 
 developed, are no doubt adapted to justify the sentiment of 
 filial piety of the Catholics towards the Mother of God ; but 
 they do not create it. This sentiment has an origin more pro- 
 found, more intimate, more powerful ; it is the effect of the 
 communication which Jesus Christ makes us of his life, even 
 the voice of his blood which flows in our veins. 
 
 Let us here call to mind the Catholic doctrine of Christian 
 justification, and the ineffable union which the sacraments 
 establish between Christ and the Faithful. The assured effect 
 of baptism, according to all evangelical principles, is to make 
 us children of God and brothers of Jesus Christ, or rather 
 his living members ; but can one be a brother of Jesus Christ 
 without being a child of Mary ? Can we live according to 
 
 * Ego feci in coelis utoriretur lumen indeficiens, et sicut nebula texi 
 otnnem terram. (Eccles. xxiv. 6.)
 
 DEVOTION TO MARY. 201 
 
 his moral lift 1 , and be animated with his sentiments, without 
 sharing his tenderness for his Mother? Is not our affiliation 
 with Mary the necessary effect of our transubstantialion 1o 
 Christ in the Eucharistic Sacrament? Can the blood of the 
 Son really circulate in our hearts without making them thrill 
 with love for the Mother, and without calling down upon us 
 all the tenderness of Mary ? 
 
 If we examine this subject a little, we shall see that the 
 devotion towards Mary has its root in the very foundations 
 of Christianity, that it is the logical and necessary conse- 
 quence of the intimate relations of Christ with his members; 
 we shall see even in the profound indifference of the parti- 
 sans of Reform for the Mother an unequivocal proof of their 
 rupture with the Son. 
 
 It is a remarkable fact and one which proves how naturally 
 the devotion to Mary finds its place in the Christian soul, that 
 among the number of Protestants who are every day return- 
 ing to Catholicism, there are scarcely any who experience 
 the least repugnance to this devotion. Many had even long 
 cherished in their heart a profound veneration for the Mother 
 of Christ, and were afflicted at the cruel neglect in which 
 Protestant worship had buried her. Let us listen to the words 
 of a man whose return is at this moment giving joy to the 
 Catholic world. 
 
 " From my earliest j'ears," says M. Hurter, " without 
 seeking instruction from any book, without entering into any 
 discussion, without possessing any knowledge of Catholic 
 teaching with regard to the Mother of God, I felt myself 
 penetrated with an inexpressible veneration for her. I ima- 
 gined in her the advocate of the Christian, and from the 
 depths of my heart I addressed myself to her in the retire- 
 ment of my private life."* 
 
 * Exposl dts motifs qui ont decidt son retour dans le sein de 
 rEgliss CathoUque. (See L'Jlmi de la Religion, Sept. Cth, 1844.)
 
 2G2 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 To these testimonies of the naturally Christian soul in 
 favor of the worship of Mary, to this mass of Biblical facts 
 and Christian arguments which conspire to justify it, what 
 can its miserable detractors oppose ? 
 
 They demand one passage of Scripture which prescribes, 
 or at least authorises this worship. But has not Christ said 
 to us all, in the person of the well-beloved disciple, behold 
 your Mother! as he commanded us all in the person of the 
 Apostles, receive and eat; this is my body.* Do not the 
 Scriptures show us every where Mary fulfilling towards us 
 the office of the most devoted Mother, and submitting her 
 heart to the most dreadful tortures in order to restore to us 
 the most precious of lives ? What more is necessary for well- 
 disposed children ? What can we think of that heart which, 
 in presence of the best of Mothers, would wait for the order 
 to love her! 
 
 If the words of Scripture are needed to authorise the 
 hoHors which we render to Mary, the Holy Spirit himself 
 announced, by the mouth of Mary, the concert of benedic- 
 tions which will be eternally ascending to her from the midst 
 of all the generations of humanity; "And behold from this 
 moment all generations shall call me blessed.] 
 
 Where among us, we would ask of our separated brethren, 
 is that public testimony of veneration and love towards the 
 Mother of the God-Savior ? For the three centuries of your 
 existence, what are the monuments which you have reared in 
 the midst of you in her honor ? For monuments are the 
 voice of the people, the sensible expression of their thought. 
 
 * We may find a learned and splendid demonstration of what we can 
 here only hint at, in the work of Father Ventura, La Madre di Dio, 
 Madre degli Uomini, &c. Rome, 1841 ; and we are happy to be able 
 to announce to our readers, that the Lyonese press will soon give to 
 France an excellent translation of this work. 
 
 f Luke i. 48.
 
 DEVOTION TO MARY. 2G3 
 
 What do we discover in our cities and our villages which 
 recalls the memory of Mary, but the ruins of temples and 
 the shapeless fragments of statues which the piety of your 
 Catholic fathers had dedicated to her? What do we find in 
 your sacred orators and writers, but a torrent of calumnies, 
 insults and sarcasms against the servants of the common 
 Mother. 
 
 It is inconceivable and even deplored by one of your most 
 able ministers, that the Woman by pre-eminence she whom 
 heaven has exalted far above all women is precisely the 
 only one whose praises and whose name your worship pre- 
 scribes.* Is this knowing and honoring Christ? Do 3*011 
 believe that he who was so sensible of the least favor, and 
 who wished that the memory of the woman who shed pre- 
 cious perfume upon his head, should be spread as far and 
 endure as long as the Gospel, that he would approve among 
 Christians this disgraceful neglect of the incomparable Mother 
 who formed him of her flesh and blood, nourished him with 
 her milk, followed him to the foot of the Cross, and received 
 in her arms his inanimate remains ! Let us review all the 
 Christian ages, and find if we can, one of them which has 
 not realised the prophetic language of Mary by striking de- 
 monstrations of its piety towards her. What religious emu- 
 lation to celebrate and honor the Mother, among all people 
 who have known and adored the Son ! We no where dis- 
 cover that solitary and abstract Christ, dreamed of by the 
 founders of your worship, but Christ as he showed himself to 
 the eye of the prophets, as he appears in the Gospel ; a child 
 
 * " No one dares to speak of Mary. And yet when theological pre- 
 judice is no longer present to oppose good sense and reason, true 
 natural feeling takes the ascendency, and ministers discourse at the 
 cemetery or in the temple, upon the men and women whom they in- 
 ter." (M. C. A. Muller, Des Beaux-Arts et de la Langne des 
 signes, &.C., p. 42.)
 
 2G4 THE SOLUTION OF GREAT PROBLEMS. 
 
 of the Virgin, long borne in her bosom and in her arms, ful- 
 filling towards her for thirty years the duties of the most 
 obedient Son, expiring under her eyes, and still reposing in 
 her arms before passing from the Cross to the sepulchre. 
 
 Let us interrogate all tho Christian nations; we shall not 
 find one of the great voices of Christianity from the first sue 
 cessors of Peter to Gregory XVI., from Ignatius, Irenscus, 
 Epiphanius, Cyril, Ambrose and Augustine, to Bossuet and 
 Fenelon, who has not entoned a hymn of praise to Mary ; 
 not a sovereign dear to religion, who has not wished to reign 
 under her auspices; not an illustrious name in science, litera- 
 ture or the fine arts, who has not consecrated to her some of 
 his vigils. How many great works in every department have 
 been inspired by devotion to Mary! 
 
 What year has passed when the faithful have not repeat- 
 edly thronged to the foot of her altars to solemnise her fes- 
 tivals; what week of which they, have not consecrated one 
 day to her memory ; what day when the bell does not summon 
 them to address to her the angelical salutation. There is no 
 city where she has not a temple, no temple where she has 
 not an altar, no altar which does not present some memorial 
 of the confidence of the children and the bounty of the 
 Mother. 
 
 And when has this universal sentiment of tender devotion 
 to Mary, which we see triumphing over the sarcasms of im- 
 piety and heresy, as well as over the destroying influence of 
 time, when has it appeared with more energy than in our age 
 of coldness and indifference ! Admirable instinct of tho 
 Christian family ! it is at a time when the hissing of the ser- 
 pent makes itself most loudly heard and his last venom is 
 distilled, that on all sides rise the most ardent prayers towards 
 her who has bruised his head ; it is at a time when infamous 
 inventors of romance penetrate the deepest folds of the human 
 heart to introduce into it their corruption, that the shepherds
 
 DEVOTION TO MARY. 265 
 
 and their flocks seek an asylum in the Immaculate Heart 
 whose ineffable purity is never tarnished by a breath of impu- 
 rity.* As children in extreme peril, they are not satisfied 
 with pressing around their mother and taking refuge in her 
 arms, but they throw themselves upon her bosom. 
 
 My beloved separated brethren, for a moment impose 
 silence upon prejudices which are no less repugnant to the 
 feelings than the understanding of the Christian, and ask 
 yourselves if that is not the true family of Christ, where his 
 Divine Mother is most reverently cherished and honored. 
 
 * Arch-confraternity of the Holy and Immaculate Heart of Mary, 
 
 THE END. 
 
 VOL. ir. 23
 
 CONTENTS OF VOLUME II. 
 
 CHAPTER. PAGE 
 
 I. WHAT it is to be a Christian, - - -5 
 
 II. Idea of faith. Its necessity, ... 7 
 
 III. Powerlessness of reason. Pretensions of the phil- 
 osophy of the present day. Necessity of reve- 
 lation, - - 9 
 IV. Existence of revelation. Extravagance of Ration- 
 alism, - 12 
 V. Sketch of Christian communions. Could they all 
 be the work of Christ ? Latitudinarian system. 
 Its principles, - - - 15 
 VI. Absurdity of the first hypothesis. Nature and neces- 
 sity of mysteries, - - - 19 
 VII. Falseness of the second hypothesis. Doctrinal intol- 
 erance of Christ and his Apostles, - 25 
 VIII. Necessity of doctrinal intolerance. Absurdity of the 
 
 third hypothesis, - ~ - 27 
 
 IX Rule of Faith. Protestant rule. Catholic rule, - 31 
 X. The Protestant principle finds nothing which does 
 not condemn it in the bible, and in the history 
 of the apostolic times, ... 33 
 
 XI. Worthlessness of passages of scripture cited in sup- 
 port of Protestant principles. Its true origin, 37 
 XII. Difficulties of the Protestant principle in practice ; 
 first difficulty : Every Protestant must make a 
 Bible for himself, - - - - 4 1 
 
 XIII. Second difficulty of the Protestant principle. Every 
 
 Protestant must read the Bible in the original, 45 
 XIV. Third difficulty : Every Protestant is bound to read 
 
 and examine the Bible in all its parts, - 43
 
 2G8 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER. PAOK 
 
 XV. Fourth difficulty : Every Protestant must assure him- 
 self that he has read the whole Bible, - 51 
 XVI. Can the Protestant principle produce Christians ? 54 
 XVII. What men does the Protestant principle form ? 
 What would a Christian be according to its 
 method, - 56 
 XVIII. Application of the Protestant principle to the con- 
 version of Infidels. Circulation of the Bible. 
 Its results, - 59 
 XIX." Why have there been, and why are there still be- 
 lievers in the bosom of Protestantism. Con- 
 clusion, - 64 
 XX. Catholic principle. Its immoveable foundations in 
 
 the Gospel, - - 69 
 
 XXI. Harmony of the Catholic hierarchy with biblical 
 
 principles, 72 
 
 XXII. Exaggerated contempt of the reformers for tradition. 
 Faithlessness of their historians. Historical 
 foundations of Catholicity, - - 77 
 
 XXIII. Harmony of the Catholic principle with the general 
 
 system of the divine government, 83 
 
 XXIV. Mysterious character of truth. Weakness of the in- 
 tellect. Necessity for an infallible authority. 87 
 XXV. Absurd task which Protestantism imposes on youth. 
 Disavowal of its theory in practice, and the 
 homage which it renders to the Catholic prin- 
 ciple, - 90 
 XXVI. Objections. How the Catholic believes in the 
 
 Church, - 94 
 
 XXVII. The same subject continued. Security of the Catho- 
 lic in his faith. Perpetual fluctations of the 
 Protestant, - - OS 
 
 XXVIII. Parallel between Protestants returning to Catholi- 
 cism and Catholics who become Protestants. 
 Remarkable fact, - Jlhi 
 
 XXIX. Application of the Catholic principle to the conver- 
 sion of infidels. South Sea missions, - 109 
 XXX. On the pretended despotism of the Catholic Church. 
 Intellectual independence of the Catholic. 
 His security against arbitrary power, - 115
 
 CONTENTS. 269 
 
 CHAPTKR. PAGE. 
 
 XXXI. Of the pretended enfranchisement of thought by 
 Protestantism. Spiritual despotism of Sove- 
 reigns. Evangelical church of Prussia, - 121 
 XXXII. The same subject continued. Actual Protestantism. 
 Enthusiastic sects. Rationalists. Servility 
 of both, - - 127 
 
 XXXIII. Advantages of the Catholic method. Religious 
 
 equality and unity. Conclusion, - 132 
 
 XXXIV. Christian deification of man. Grace. Its defin- 
 ition, its necessity. Sacraments, 135 
 XXXV. Foundation of the Catholic theory of justification. 
 Fall of man. Redemption. How it is applied 
 to us, - - 138 
 XXXVI. A glance at the sacraments. Purgatory. Prayers 
 
 for the dead. Worship of saints, - 141 
 
 XXXVII. Theory of the first reformers concerning sin. Jus- 
 tification. Good works. The sacraments, - 147 
 XXXVIII. The Eucharist, real presence of Jesus Christ. 
 
 Universal influence of this doctrine, - 152 
 
 XXXIX. Perpetuity of faith in the real presence. Inventors 
 of the figurative presence. Contradiction and 
 dishonesty of the Sacramentarians, - - 160 
 
 XL. Objections against the possibility of the real pres- 
 
 ence.-Analogous mysteries in the natural order, 163 
 XLI. Functions of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist. Fun- 
 damental idea of sacrifice. Its universality. 
 Eucharistic sacrifice. Effect of its abolition in 
 Protestant worship, - .172 
 
 XLI I. Moral influence of Jesus Christ on the soul in the 
 Eucharist. Virtues of which he gives the ex- 
 ample. Connection of the Eucharist with Pen- 
 ance, - - 179 
 XLIII. Principles of Luther concerning Penance. Prin- 
 ciples of the Catholic Church. Contrition. 134 
 XLIV. Confession. It is natural. Different kinds of absolu- 
 tion. Necessity and universality of confession, ISO 
 XLV. Moral and social influence of confession. Acknow- 
 ledgment of unbelievers. Omnipotence of this 
 practice in the moral education of man. Con- 
 nection between Confession and Communion, 194
 
 270 COSfTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER. PAGl 
 
 XLVI. Divinity of confession. Absurdity of the contrary 
 opinion. Objection that it degrades man. 
 Results of its abolition, ... 201 
 
 XLVII. Sacrament of ordination. Celibacy. Its intimate 
 
 connection with the priesthood, - 207 
 
 XLVIII. Social importance of religious celibacy. Position 
 of the Priest in society. Nullity and inconve- 
 nience of a married priesthood, - - 213 
 XL1X. Barrier which the Catholic priesthood opposes to 
 despotism. Weakness of conslitutional guar- 
 antees. Political necessity for the distinction 
 of power into spiritual and temporal. Immense 
 services which Catholicism has rendered to 
 liberty, - 218 
 L. Confirmation of the preceding. Appeals of the 
 episcopate in favor of liberty of teaching. Uni- 
 versity question in its true light. Reflections, 226 
 LI. Eternal worship. Its necessity. Beauty of the 
 Catholic worship. Nullity of Protestant wor- 
 ship. It is illogical. Vain efforts to restore 
 it to life, - 232 
 LI I. Objections against the Catholic warship. Multipli- 
 city of ceremonies. Use of Latin, - 235 
 LIII. Worship of Saints. Why rejected by Protestant- 
 ism. Foundation of this worship, - - 233 
 LIV. Natural foundation for the worship of Saints. Its 
 
 moral influence, - 244 
 
 LV. Unity of the human family. Mission and functions 
 of Adam and Eve. Their fall. Choice of a 
 new man and a new woman. Universal ex- 
 pectation of the Virgin mother. Salutation of 
 the Archangel to Mary, - 2-19 
 
 LVI. Parallel of Eve and Mary. Pre-eminence of Mary 
 over the first woman. Her claim to the title 
 of mother of men. - 253 
 
 LVII. Devotion to Mary innate in the Christian. First 
 source of this sentiment. Its universality. 
 Conclusion. ..... 259
 
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