ICQ
MEDITATIONS.
MEDITATIONS
ON
THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY,
AND ON
THE RELIGIOUS QUESTIONS OF THE DAY.
BY M. GUIZOT.
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH, UNDER THE SUPER
INTENDENCE OF THE AUTHOR.
-LONDON:
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET.
1864.
LONDON* :
BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.
CONTENTS.
PAGK
1. NATURAL PKOBLEMS 1
II. CHRISTIAN DOGMAS 11
III. THE SUPERNATURAL 84
IV. THE LIMITS OF SCIENCE 10!)
V. REVELATION ..... . 132
VI. THE INSPIRATION OF HOLY SCRIPTURE . . . . 142
VII. GOD ACCORDING TO THE BlBLE 157
VIII. JESUS CHRIST ACCORDING TO THE GOSPELS . . . 230
NOTE . . 299
PREFACE.
DURING the last nineteen centuries, Christianity
has been often assailed, and has successfully re
sisted every attack. Of these attacks, some have
IK en more violent, but none more serious than
that of which it is, in these days, the object.
For eighteen hundred years Christians were in
turn persecutors and persecuted ; Christians per
secuted as Christians, Christians persecutors of
every one who was not Christian Christians
mutually persecuting each other. This persecu
tion varied, it is true, in degree of cruelty with
the age and the country, as it also did in the
degree of inflexibility evinced and success attained
in the prosecution of its object ; but whatever
the diversity of state, church, or punishment,
whatever the degree of severity or laxity in the
viii PREFACE.
application of the principle, this principle was
ever the same. After having had to endure pro
scription and martyrdom under the imperial
government of Paganism, the Christian religion
lived, in its turn, under the guard of the civil
law, defended by the arms of secular power.
In these days it exists in the very presence of
Liberty. It has to deal with free thought, with
free discussion. It is called upon to defend, to
guard itself, to prove incessantly and against every
comer its moral and historical veracity, to vindi
cate its claims upon man s intelligence and man s
soul. Eoman Catholics, Protestants, or Jews,
Christians or philosophers, all, at least in our
country, are sheltered from every persecution ;
for no one without incurring the risk of ridicule
could characterise as persecution the sacrifices or
the inconveniences to which the expression of
his opinion may occasionally subject him. To
every man such expression of opinion is per
mitted, and can never lead to the forfeiture, on
the part of any single individual, of any of his poli-
PREFACE. IX
tical rights or privileges. Keligious Liberty that
is to say, the liberty of believing ; of believing
differently or of disbelieving may be but imper
fectly accepted and guaranteed as a principle in
certain states ; but it still is evident that it is
becoming so every day more and more, and that
it will eventually become the Common Law of the
civilised world.
One of the circumstances that render this fact
pregnant with importance is that it does not
stand isolated ; but holds its place in the great
Intellectual and Social Eevolution, which, after the
fermentation and the preparation of centuries, has
broken out and is in course of accomplishment in
our own days. The scientific spirit, the prepon
derance of the democratic principle, and that of
political liberty, are the essential characteristics
and invincible tendencies of this revolution.
These new forces may fall into enormous errors
and commit enormous faults, the penalty for
which they will ever dearly pay ; still they are
definitively installed in modern society ; the
X PREFACE.
sciences will continue to develop themselves in
its bosom in the full independence of their methods
and of their results ; the democracy will establish
itself in the positions which it has conquered, and
on the ground which has been opened to it ; poli
tical liberty in the midst of its storms and its disap
pointments will still, sooner or later, cause itself
to be accepted as the necessary guarantee for all
the acquisitions and all the progress possible in
society. These are the grand predominant facts
to which all public institutions will now have to
adapt themselves, and with which all authority
whose action is upon the mind requires to live at
peace.
Christianity also must submit to the same
tests and trials. As it has surmounted all others,
so also will it surmount this ; its essence and
origin would not be divine did they not permit it
to adapt itself to all the different forms of human
institutions, to serve them now as a guide, now as
a support in their vicissitudes whether of adversity
or prosperity. It is, however, of the most serious
PREFACE. XI
importance for Christians not to deceive them
selves, either as to the nature of the struggle which
they will have to sustain, or as to its perils and the
legitimate arms which they may use to combat
them. The attack directed against the Christian
religion is one hotly carried on, now with a brutal
fanaticism, now with a dexterous learning ; at
one time with the appeal to sincere convictions,
and at another invoking the worst passions ; some
contest Christianity as false, others reject it as too
exacting and imposing too much restraint ; the
greater part apprehend it as a tyranny. Injustice
and suffering are not so soon forgotten ; nor does
one readily recover from the effect of terror. The
memory of religious persecutions still lives, and
this it is that maintains, in multitudes, whose
opinions vacillate, aversion, prejudice, and a lively
sentiment of alarm. Christians on their side are
loth to recognise and accommodate themselves to
the new order of society ; every moment they
are shocked, irritated, terrified by the ideas and
language to which that society gives utterance.
Xll PREFACE.
Men do not so readily pass from a state of privi
lege to one of community of rights from a state
of dominion to one of liberty ; they do not resign
themselves without a struggle to the audacious
obstinacy of contradiction, to the daily necessity
of resisting and conquering. Government accord
ing to principles of liberty is still more influenced
by passion, and entails a necessity of still more
exertion in the sphere of religion than of civil
politics : believers find it still more difficult to
support incredulity than governments to bear
with oppositions; and, nevertheless, these them
selves are forced to do so, and can only find in
free discussion and in the full exercise of their
peculiar liberties the force which they require to
rise above their perilous condition, and reduce
not to silence, for that is impossible, but to an
idle warfare their inveterate enemies.
To leave that civil society, in which the diffe
rent sects of religion are now-a-days compelled to
live in peace and side by side, and to enter reli
gious society itself, the Christian Church of our
PREFACE. Xlll
days : what is its actual position with respect to
these grand questions which it has to discuss with
the spirit of human liberty and audacity? Does
it comprehend properly, does it suitably carry on
the warfare in which it is engaged ? Does it tend
in its proceedings to a re-establishment of a real
peace, and active harmonious relations between
itself and that general society in the midst of
which it is living ?
I say Christian Church. It is, in effect, the
whole Church of Christ, and not such or such a
church that is in these days attacked, and vitally
attacked. "When men deny the Supernatural
World, the Inspiration of the Scriptures, and the
Divinity of Jesus Christ, they really assail the
whole body of Christians Romanists, Protestants
or Greeks : they are virtually destroying the foun
dations of faith in all the belief of Christians, what
ever their particular difference of religious opinion
or forms of ecclesiastical government. It is by
faith that all Christian Churches live ; there is
no form of government, monarchical or republican,
XIV PREFACE.
concentrated or diffused, that suffices to maintain
a church ; there is no authority so strong, no
liberty so broad, as to be able in a religious society
to dispense with the necessity of faith. For what
is it that unites in a church if it is not faith ?
Faith is the bond of souls. When then the foun
dations of their common faith are. attacked, the
differences existing between Christian Churches
upon special questions, or the diversities of their
organization or government, become secondary
interests ; it is from a common peril that they
have to defend themselves ; or they must recon
cile themselves to see dried up the common source
from which they all derive sustenance and life.
I fear that the sentiment of this common peril
is not, in all the Christian Churches, as clear and
well defined, as deep and predominant, as their
common safety requires. In presence of similar
questions everywhere varied, of identical attacks
everywhere directed against the vital facts and
dogmas of Christianity, I dread Christians of the
different? communions not concentrating all their
PREFACE. XV
forces upon the mighty struggles in which they
are, all, to engage. My dread, however, is un
attended by astonishment. Although the danger
is the same for all, the traditional opinions and
habits, and consequently the actual dispositions,
are very different . Many Eomanists feel the per
suasion that Faith would be saved were they only
delivered from liberty of thought. Many Pro
testants believe that they are but employing their
right of free examination, and do not lose their
title to be regarded as Christians, when they are
in effect abandoning the foundations and with
drawing from the source of Faith. Eoman Catho
licism has not sufficient reliance on its roots, and
respects too much its branches ; no tree exists that
does not need culture and clearing in accordance
with climate and season, if it is to be expected to
continue to bear always good fruit ; but the roots
should be especially defended from every attack.
Protestantism is too forgetful that it also has
roots from which it cannot be separated without
perishing, and that religion is not what an annual
XVI PREFACE.
is in vegetation : a plant that men cultivate and
renew at their pleasure. Whilst the Eomanists
dread freedom of thought too much, the Protes
tants on their side have too great a fear of autho
rity. Some believe that inasmuch as religious
Faith has firm and fixed points, movement and
progress are incompatible with religious society;
others affirm that a religious society can never have
fixed points, and that religion consists in religious
sentiment and individual belief. "What would
have become of Christianity, had it from its birth
been condemned to the immobility which the
former recommend; and what would become of
it at the present day, were it surrendered, as the
latter would have it, to the caprice of every mind,
and the wind of every day ?
Happily, God permits not that, at this crisis,
the true principles and the true interests of the
Christian Eeligion should remain without suffi
cient defenders. Eomanists there are who under
stand their age and the new constitution of
society, who accept frankly its liberty, religious
PREFACE. XV11
and politic : it is precisely they who have most
boldly testified their attachment to the faith of
Rome, who have claimed with most ardor the
essential liberties of their church, and defended
with most energy the rights of its chief. Nor
are Protestants wanting who have used with
the most untiring zeal all the liberty acquired
in our days by Protestantism ; they have founded
all those associations and originated all those
undertakings which have manifested the vital
energy and extended the action of the Protes
tant Church ; they have demanded and they
continue to demand, for this church, the re-
establishment of its Synods, that is to say, its
religious autonomy. Amongst these Protestants,
where men have appeared who have not found
in the Protestant Church as by law established
the entire satisfaction of their convictions, they
have felt no hesitation to separate from it and
to found, with their own means alone, indepen
dent churches. It may be affirmed also of the
Protestants that they have most largely put in
6
XV111 PREFACE,
practice all the rights and all the liberties of
Protestantism, in the internal ordeal through
which Christianity is at present passing ; it is
precisely they who assert most loudly the dogmas
of the Christian Faith and maintain most in
flexibly the authoritative rights established by
law in the bosom of their church. The Liberal
Komanists of the present day are the most
zealous defenders of the fundamental traditions
and institutions of Catholicism. The Protestants
who have been the most active during the last
half-century in the exercise of the liberties of
Protestantism are the firmest maintainers of its
doctrines and of its vital rules.
Humanly speaking, it is upon the influence
exercised and to be exercised in their respective
churches and on the public, by these two classes
of Christians, that depends the peaceable issue of
the crisis through which Christianity is in these
days passing. Our society is, doubtless, far from
meriting the title of a Christian one ; still it
cannot be characterised as anti-Christian; con-
PREFACE. XIX
sidcred as one vast whole, it has no hostile or
general prejudice against the Christian religion :
it maintains the habits, the instincts, I would
willingly add the longings, of Christians ; it is con
scious that Christian Faith and Ordinance serve
powerfully its interests with respect to order and
peace ; the fanatical opponents of Christianity
exercise upon it far more disquieting than seduc
tive influences, for it has already had experience
of their empire ; and where society appears to offer
a silent acquiescence or even to pride itself upon
them, still at bottom it dreads their progress.
Such being the state of the case, and such
the constitution of society, how are we to draw
men away from their apathy and their ignorance
in matters of religion ? How lead them back
to Christianity ? They alone can accomplish this
object, who, in their defence and propagation of the
religion of Jesus, shall not wound society itself in
the ideas, sentiments, rights and interests which
have at present rooted themselves in its very
life and energies. Like religion, modern society
XX PREFACE.
has also its fixed points and its invincible ten
dencies : it can never be set on terms of har
mony with the former unless by the concurring
action of men who have with each of them a
genuine and deep sentiment of sympathy. Since
the Christian Eeligion lives in these times con
fronting civil liberty, those alone can be efficient
champions of religion who at the same time
profess fully the Christian Faith and accept with
sincerity the tests of Liberty.
But in pursuing their pious and salutary enter
prise, let not these liberal Christians flatter them
selves with the probability of any prompt or
complete success : maintain and propagate the
Christian faith they may, but they will never be
able in the bosom of society to get rid either of
incredulity or doubt; even while combating them
they must learn to endure their presence ; in insti
tutions of freedom there is essentially an inter
mixture of good and evil, of truth and error;
contrary ideas and dispositions produce and
develop themselves in it simultaneously. " Think
PREFACE. -XXL
not that I am come to send peace on earth :
I came not/ said Jesus to his apostles, " to
send peace, but a sword." ! The sword of Jesus
Christ, that is, Christianity, at war with human
error and shortcomings ; a victory, still a victory
ever incomplete in an incessant struggle, that is
the condition to which those must submit with
resignation who, in the bosom of liberty, defend
the truth of Christianity.
Were these valiant and intelligent champions
of the faith of Jesus not adopted and accredited
as such in the churches to which they belong ; did
the Church of Eome furnish ground for thinking
her essentially hostile to the fundamental prin
ciples and rights of modern society, and that she
only tolerates them as Moses tolerated divorce
amongst the Jews, "because of the hardness of
their heart " ; and, on the other hand, did the
rejectors of the Supernatural, of the Inspiration of
the Scriptures, and of the Divinity of Jesus Christ,
predominate in the bosom of Protestantism ; and
* Matt. x. 34.
XX11 PREFACE,
finally, did the latter then become nought but a
hesitating system of philosophy ; if all these
deplorable things were to be realised, I am far
from thinking that, owing to such faults, such
disasters, the religion of Christ would vanish from
the world and definitively withdraw from men
its light and its support : the destinies of religion
are far above human errors ; but still, beyond all
doubt, for mankind to be turned back from them,
and for the light to return to their soul and har
mony to modern society, there would have again
to burst out in the human soul and in society one
of those immense troubles, one of those revolu
tionary whirlwinds, whose evils man is compelled
actually to undergo before he can derive benefit
from its lessons.
On the point of addressing myself to questions
more profound and of a less transitory nature,
I content myself with having merely indicated
what I think of the crisis that agitates Chris
tendom at the present day, as also of its main
cause, its perils, and the chances, good or bad,
PREFACE. XX111
that it holds out for the future. In the work of
which the first part is now before the public, I
omit all the circumstantial facts and details as
well as the discussions that grow out of them, and
it is only with the Christian Religion as it is in
itself, with its fundamental belief and its reason
ableness, that I occupy myself ; it has been my
purpose to illustrate the truth of Christianity by
contrasting it with the systems and the doubts
that men set in array against it. It is my inten
tion to avoid all direct and personal polemics ;
express reference to individuals embarrasses and
envenoms all questions in controversy, and gives
rise to ill-judged deference or unjust invective,
two descriptions of falsity for which alike I feel
no sympathy : let me have then for adversaries
ideas alone ; and whatever these may be, I admit
beforehand the possibility of sincerity on the part
of those that prefer them. Without this admis
sion all serious discussion is out of the question ;
and neither the intellectual enormity of the error,
nor its awful practical consequences, positively
XXIV PREFACE.
precludes sincerity on the part of him that pro
mulgates it. The mind of man is still more
easily led astray than his heart, and is still more
egotistical ; after having once conceived and
expressed an idea, it attaches itself to it as to its
own offspring, takes a pride in imprisoning itself
in it, as if it were so taking possession of the pure
and entire truth.
These Meditations will be divided into four
series. In the first, which forms this volume, I
explain and establish what constitutes, in my
opinion, the essence of the Christian religion ;
that is to say, what those natural problems are,
that correspond with the fundamental dogmas
that offer their solution, the supernatural facts
upon which these same dogmas repose Creation,
Eevelation, the Inspiration of the Scriptures, God
according to the Biblical account, and Jesus
according to the Gospel narrative. Next to the
Essence of the Christian religion comes its history ;
and this will be the subject of a second series of
Meditations, in which I shall examine the authen-
PREFACE. XXV
ticity of the Scriptures, the primary causes of
the foundation of Christianity, Christian Faith,
as it has always existed throughout its different
ages and in spite of all its vicissitudes ; the
great religious crisis in the sixteenth century
which divided the Church and Europe between
Koman Catholicism and Protestantism ; finally
those different anti - Christian crises, which at
different epochs and in different countries have
set in question and imperilled Christianity itself,
but which dangers it has ever surmounted.
The third Meditation will be consecrated to
the study of the actual state of the Christian
religion, its internal and external condition :
I shall retrace the regeneration of Christianity
which occurred amongst us at the commencement
of the nineteenth century, both in the Church
of Rome and in the Protestant churches ; the
impulse imparted to it at the same epoch by the
Spiritualistic Philosophy that then began again
to flourish, and the movement in the contrary
direction which showed itself very remarkably
XXVI PREFACE.
soon afterwards in the resurrection of Materialism,
of Pantheism, of Scepticism, and in works of
historical criticism. I shall attempt to determine
the idea, and consequently, in my opinion, the
fundamental error of these different systems,
the avowed and active enemies of Christianity.
Finally, in the fourth series of these Meditations
I shall endeavour to discriminate and to cha
racterise the future destiny of the Christian
religion, and to indicate by what course it is
called upon to conquer completely and to sway
morally this little corner of the universe termed
by us our earth, in which unfold themselves the
designs and power of God, just as, doubtless,
they do in an infinity of worlds unknown to us.
I have passed thirty-five years of my life in
struggling, on a bustling arena, for the establish
ment of political liberty and the maintenance
of order as established by law. I have learnt, in
the labours and trials of this struggle, the real
worth of Christian Faith and of Christian Liberty.
God permits me, in the repose of my retreat, to
PREFACE. XXV11
consecrate to their cause what remains to me
of life and of strength. It is the most salutary
favour and the greatest honour that I can receive
from His goodness.
GUIZOT.
VAL- RICHER, June, 1864.
MEDITATIONS
ON THE ESSENCE OF
THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
FIEST MEDITATION.
NATURAL PROBLEMS.
I
FROM the very origin of the human race,
wherever man has existed, or still exists, certain
questions have peculiarly and irresistibly fixed
his attention, and they continue to do so at the
present hour. This arises not alone from a
feeling of natural curiosity, or the ardent thirst
for knowledge, but from a deeper and more
powerful motive: the destiny of man is intimately
involved in these questions ; they contain the
2 THE CHEISTIAN RELIGION.
secret not only of all that he sees around him,
but of his own being ; and when he aspires to
solve them, it is not merely because he desires
to understand the spectacle of which he is a
beholder, but because he feels, and is conscious
of being himself an actor in the great drama of
existence, and because he seeks to ascertain his
own part there, and comprehend his own destiny.
His present conduct and his future lot are as
much at issue as the satisfaction of his thought.
These great problems are, for man, not questions
of science, but questions of life : in considering
them he feels himself compelled to say, with
Hamlet, "To be or not to be, that is the
question."
Whence does the world proceed, and whence
does man appear in the midst of it? What is
the origin of each, and whither does each tend?
What are their beginning and their end? Laws
there are which govern them ; is there a legis
lator ? Under the empire of these laws, man
FIRST MEDITATION. 3
feels and calls himself free : is he so in reality ?
How is his liberty compatible with the laws which
govern him and the world ? Is he a passive
instrument of fate, or a responsible agent? What
are the ties and relations which connect him with
the Legislator of the world ?
The world and man himself present a strange
and painful spectacle. Good and evil, both
moral and physical, order and disorder, joy and
sorrow, are here intimately blended and yet in
continual antagonism. "Whence come this com
mingling and this strife ? Is good or is evil
the condition and the law of man and of the
world ? If good, how then has evil found ad
mission ? Wherefore suffering and death ? Why
this moral disorder? the calamities which so
frequently befall the good, and the prosperity,
so abhorrent to our feelings, which attends the
wicked ? Is this the normal and definitive state
of man and of the world ?
Man is conscious that he is at the same time
great and little, strong and feeble, powerful and
B 2
4 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
impotent. He finds in himself matter for admi
ration and for love, and yet he suffices not to
himself in any respect ; he seeks an aid, a sup
port, beyond and above himself : he asks, he
invokes, he prays. What mean these inward
disquietudes, these alternate impulses of pride
and weakness? Have they, or not, a meaning
and an object ? "Why prayer ?
Such are the natural problems, now dimly
felt, now clearly defined, which in all ages and
among all nations, in every form and in every
degree of civilization, by instinct or by reflexion,
have arisen, and still arise, in the human mind.
I indicate only the greatest, the most apparent:
I might recall many others which are connected
with them.
Not only are these problems natural to man ;
they appertain to him alone ; they are his pecu
liar privilege. Man alone, among all creatures
known to us, perceives and states them, and feels
himself imperiously called upon to solve them.
I borrow the following admirable observations
FIRST MEDITATION. 5
from M. de Chateaubriand : " Why does not the
ox as I do ? It can lie down upon the grass,
raise its head toward heaven, and in its lowings
call upon that unknown Being who fills this
immensity of space. But no : content with the
turf on which it tramples, it interrogates not
those suns in the firmament above, which are the
grand evidence of the existence of God. Animals
are not troubled with those hopes which fill the
heart of man ; the spot on which they tread yields
them all the happiness of which they are suscep
tible ; a little grass satisfies the sheep ; a little
blood gluts the tiger. The only creature that
looks beyond himself, and is not all in all to
himself, is man."""
From these problems, natural and peculiar to
man, all religions have sprung. The object of
them all is to satisfy man s thirst for their solu
tion. As these problems are the source of religion,
the solutions they receive are its substance and
foundation. There prevails in our days a very
* Genie du Christianisme, vol. i. p. 208, edit, of 1831.
6 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
general tendency to regard religion as consisting
essentially I might say wholly in religious
sentiment, in those lofty and vague aspirations
which are termed the poetry of the soul, beyond
and above the realities of life. Through the reli
gious sentiment, the soul enters into relation with
the Divine order of things ; and this relation, of
a wholly personal and intimate character, inde
pendent of all positive dogma, of any organized
Church, is deemed to be all-sufficient for man, the
true and needful religion.
Unquestionably the religious sentiment, the
intimate and personal relation of the soul with
the Divine order, is essential and necessary to
religion ; but religion is more than this much
more. The human soul is not to be divided and
restricted to certain faculties selected and exalted,
whilst the rest are condemned to slumber. Man
is not a mere sensitive and poetic being, aspiring
to rise above the present and material world by
love and imagination : he not only feels, but he
thinks ; he requires to know and believe as well
FIRST MEDITATION. 7
as love ; it is not enough that his soul should
be capable of emotion and aspiration ; he requires
that it should be fixed, and rest upon convictions
in harmony with his emotions. This it is that
man seeks in religion ; he requires something
more than a pure and noble rapture ; he requires
enlightenment, as well as sympathy. But if the
moral problems that beset his thought are not
solved, what he experiences may be poetry, it is
not religion.
I cannot contemplate unmoved the troubles of
men of lofty minds, seeking in the religious senti
ment alone a refuge against doubt and impiety.
It is well to preserve, in the shipwreck of faith
and the chaos of thought, the great instincts of
our nature, and not to lose sight of the sublime
requirements which remain unsatisfied. I know
not to what extent, men of eminent minds may
thus compensate, by their sincerity and fervour of
sentiment, for the void in their belief; but let
them not deceive themselves ; barren aspirations
and specious doubts satisfy a man as little as to
8 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
his future spiritual interests as with respect to his
condition in the present life ; the natural problems
to which I have alluded will ever be the great
weight pressing upon the soul, and religious senti
ment will never alone suffice to be the religion of
mankind.
Besides this apotheosis of religious sentiment,
some at the present day have essayed a different,
a more serious and more daring theory. Far from
sounding the natural problems to which religions
correspond, schools of philosophy, occupying a
prominent intellectual position, the Pantheistic
School, and the so-called Positive School, sup
press and deny them altogether. In their view,
the world has existed, of itself, from all eternity,
as have the laws also by which it is sustained and
developed. In their elementary principles, and
taken altogether, all things have ever been what
they now are, and what they will ever continue
to be. There is no mystery in this universe ;
there exist only facts and laws, naturally and
necessarily linked together ; and these furnish the
FIRST MEDITATION.
field for human science, which, although incom
plete, is yet indefinitely progressive, in its power
as well as in its operations.
According to these views, Divine Providence
and human liberty, the origin of evil, the com
mingling and the strife of good and evil in the
world, and in man, the imperfection of the present
order of things, and the destiny of man, the pro
spect of the re- establishment of order in the future
these are all mere dreams, freaks of man s
thought : no such questions indeed exist, inas
much as the world is eternal, it is in its actual
state complete, normal, and definitive, though at
the same time progressive. The remedy for the
moral and physical evils which afflict mankind,
must then be sought, not in any power supe
rior to the world, but simply in the progress
of the sciences and the advance of human
enlightenment.
I shall not here discuss this system ; I do not
even qualify it by its true name ; I merely recapi
tulate its tenets. But, at the first and simple
10 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
aspect, what contempt does it manifest of the
spontaneous and universal instincts of man! What
heedlessness of the facts which fill and never cease
to characterize the universal history of the human
race !
Nevertheless to this we are come : not a solution,
but the negation of the natural problems, which
irresistibly occupy the human soul, is presented to
man for his full satisfaction and repose. Let him
follow the mathematical or physical sciences ; let
him be a mechanician, chemist, critic, novelist, or
poet ; but let him not enter upon what is termed
the sphere of religious and theological inquiry:
here are no real questions to solve, nought to
investigate, nothing to do, nothing to expect,
absolutely nothing.
SECOND MEDITATION.
CHRISTIAN DOGMAS.
THE Christian religion knows man better, and
treats man better : it has other answers to his
questions ; and it is between the absolute nega
tion of the problems of religion and the Christian
solution of these problems that the discussion lies
at the present day.
Some words there are which we now regard
with distrust and alarm : we suspect their mask
ing illegitimate pretensions and tyranny. Such,
in our days, has been the lot of the word dogma.
To many this word imparts an imperious necessity
to believe, at once offending and disquieting.
Singular contrast! On all sides we seek for
principles, and we take alarm at dogmas.
This sentiment, however absurd in itself, is in
12 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
no way strange ; Christian dogmas have served
as motive and pretext for so much iniquity, so
many acts of oppression and cruelty, that their
very name has become tainted and suspected.
The word bears the penalty of the reminiscences
which it awakens : and justly. All attacks upon
the liberty of conscience, all employment of force
to extirpate or to impose religious belief, is, and
ever has been, an iniquitous and tyrannical act.
All powers, all parties, all churches, have held
such acts to be not only permissible, but enjoined
by the Divine Law : all have deemed it not merely
their right, but their duty, to prevent and to
punish by law and human force, error in matters
of religion. They may all allege in excuse, the
sincerity of their belief in the legitimacy of this
usurpation. The usurpation is not the less enor
mous and fatal, and perhaps indeed it is, of all
human usurpations, the one which has inflicted on
men the most odious torments and the grossest
errors. It will constitute the glory of our time
to have discarded this pretension : nevertheless it
SECOND MEDITATION. 13
yet exists, with persistency, in certain states, in
certain laws, in certain recesses of the human
soul and of Christian society ; and there is, and
ever will be, need to watch and to combat it, to
render its banishment unconditional and without
appeal. Subdued, however, it is : civil freedom
in matters of faith and religious life has become
a fundamental principle of civilization and of law.
These questions, affecting the relations of man to
God, are no longer discussed or adjusted in the
arena and by a recourse to the hand of political
and executive power ; but they are transported
to the sphere of the intellect and left to the
uncontrolled working of the mind itself.
But again, in this sphere of the intellect, these
questions still start up and call loudly for their
peculiar solution that is, for the fundamental
facts and ideas, the principles in effect which their
nature requires. The Christian religion has its
own principles, which constitute the rational basis
of the faith it inculcates and the life which
it enjoins. These are termed its dogmas. The
14 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
Christian dogmas are the principles of the Chris
tian religion, and the Christian solutions of the
problems of natural religion.
Let men of a serious mind, who have not
entirely rejected the Christian religion, and who
still admire it, whilst denying its fundamental
dogmas, beware of this : the flowers whose per
fume captivates them will quickly fade, the fruits
they delight in will soon cease to grow when the
axe shall have been applied to the roots of the
tree that bears them.
For myself, arrived at the term of a long life,
one of labour, of reflection, and of trials, of
trials in thought as well as in action, I am con
vinced that, the Christian dogmas are the legiti
mate and satisfactory solutions of those religious
problems which, as I have said, nature suggests
and man carries in his own breast, and from
which he cannot escape.
I beg, at the outset, Theologians, whether Catho
lic or Protestant, to pardon me. I have no design
to cite or to explain, or to maintain, all the various
SECOND MEDITATION. 15
doctrinal points, all the articles of faith, which
have been included in the term of Christian
dogmas. During eighteen centuries, Christian
theology has very often ventured to advance out
of and beyond the limits of the Christian reli
gion : man has confounded his own labours with
the work of God. It is the natural consequence
of the union of human activity and human
imperfection. This same result may be traced
throughout the history of the world, especially
in the history of the society and religion upon
winch God has grafted the Christian religion.
At the time when God raised up Jesus Christ
amor ; the Jews, the faith and the law of the
Jews W^T no longer solely and purely the faith
and law which God had given to them by Moses :
the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and many others,
had essentially modified, enlarged, and altered
both. Christianity too has had its Pharisees and
its Sadducees ; in its turn it has been made to
feel the workings of human thought and the
influence of human passions on its Divine reve-
16 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
lation. I cannot recognize, in all the uncertain
fruits of these labours, the claim to the title of
Christian dogmas. Nevertheless I have no inten
tion here to specify particularly and to combat
such tenets in the Church and in Christian
theology, as I can neither accept nor defend.
It is not for me and I venture to say, it is
not for any Christian to scan critically the
interior of the Edifice, at a moment when its
foundations are ardently attacked. Far rather
I prefer to rally in a common defence all who
abide within its walls. I shall here allude only
to the dogmas common to them all, which I
sum up in these terms : The Creation, Provi
dence, Original Sin, the Incarnation, and the
Kedemption. These constitute the essence of
the Christian religion, and all who believe in
these dogmas I hold to be Christians.
One leading and common characteristic in
these dogmas strikes me at the outset : they
deal frankly with the religious problems natural
to and inherent in man, and offer at once the
SECOND MEDITATION. 17
solution. The dogma of Creation attests the
existence of God, as Creator and Legislator, and
it attests also the link which unites man with
God. The dogma of Providence explains and
justifies prayer, that instinctive recourse of man
to the living God, to that supreme Power which
is ever present with him in life, and which influ
ences his destiny. The dogma of Original Sin
accounts for the presence of evil and disorder
in mankind and in the world. The dogmas of
the Incarnation and of Eedemption, rescue man
from the consequences of evil, and open to him
a prospect in another life of the re-establishment
of order. Unquestionably, the system is grand,
complete, well connected, and forcible : it answers
to the requirements of the human soul, removes
the burden which oppresses it, imparts the
strength which it needs, and the satisfaction to
which it aspires. Has it a rightful claim to all
this power ? Is its influence legitimate, as well
as efficacious \
In my own mind I have borne the burthen of
IS THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
the objections to the Christian system, and to
each of its essential dogmas ; I have experienced
the anxieties of doubt : I shall state how I have
escaped from doubt, and the ground upon which
my convictions have been founded.
I. CREATION.
THE only serious opponents of the dogma of
the Creation are those who maintain that the
universe, the earth, the man upon the earth, have
existed from all eternity, and, collectively, in the
state in which they now are. No one however
can hold this language, to which facts are invin
cibly opposed. How many ages man has existed
on the earth, is a question that has been largely dis
cussed, and is still under discussion. The inquiry
in no way affects the dogma of the Creation
itself: it is a certain and recognized fact, that
man has not always existed on the earth, and
that the earth has for long periods undergone
different changes incompatible with man s exist-
SECOND MEDITATION. 19
ence. Man therefore had a beginning : man has
come upon the earth. How has he come there ?
Here the opponents of the dogma of Creation
are divided : some uphold the theory of spon
taneous generation ; others, the transformation of
species. According to one party, matter pos
sesses, under certain circumstances and by the
simple development of its own proper power, the
faculty of creating animated beings. According
to others, the different species of animated beings
which still exist, or have existed at various epochs
and in the different conditions of the earth, are
derived from a small number of primitive types,
which have possessed, through the lapse of millions
and thousands of millions of ages, the power of
developing and perfecting themselves, so as to
gain admission, through transformation, into
higher species. Hence they conclude, with more
or less hesitation, that the human race is the
result of a transformation, or a series of trans
formations.
The attempt to establish the theory of spon-
o 2
20 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
taneous production dates from a remote period.
Science has ever baffled it : the more its observa
tions have been exact and profound, the more
have they refuted the hypothesis of the innate
creative power of matter. This result has been
again recently established by the attentive exami
nation of men of eminent scientific attainments,
within and without the walls of the Academy
of Sciences. But were it even otherwise, could
the advocates of the theory of spontaneous pro
duction refer to experiments hitherto irrefutable,
these w^ould furnish no better explanation of the
first appearance of man upon earth, and I should
retain my right to repeat here what I have
advanced elsewhere on this subject:*- " Such a
mode of generation cannot, nor ever could, pro
duce any but infant beings, in the first hour and
in the first state of incipient life. It has, I
believe, never been asserted, nor will any person
ever affirm, that, by spontaneous generation, man
that is to say, man and woman, the human
* L Eglise et la Soci6t6 Chrtienne en 1861, p. 27.
SECOND MEDITATION. 21
couple can have issued, or that they have issued
at any period, from matter, of full form and
stature, in possession of all their powers and
faculties, as Greek paganism represented Minerva
issuing from the brain of Jupiter. Yet it is only
upon this supposition, that man, appearing for the
first time upon earth, could have lived there to
perpetuate his species and to found the human
race. Let any one picture to himself the first
man, born in a state of the earliest infancy, alive
but inert, devoid of intelligence, powerless, in
capable of satisfying his own wants even for a
moment, trembling, sobbing, with no mother to
listen to or feed him ! And yet we have in this
a picture of the first man, as presented by the
system of spontaneous generation. It is mani
festly not thus that the human race first appeared
upon earth."
The system of the transformation of species is
no less refuted by science than by the instincts of
common sense. It rests upon no tangible fact,
on no principle of scientific observation or historic
22 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
tradition. All the facts ascertained, all the monu
ments collected in different ages and different
places, respecting the existence of living species,
disprove the hypothesis of their having undergone
any transformation, any notable and permanent
change : we meet with them a thousand, two
thousand, three thousand years ago, the same
as they are at the present day. In the same
species the races may vary and undergo mutual
changes : the species do not change ; and all
attempts to transform them artificially, by cross
ings with allied species, have only resulted in
modifications, which, after two or three genera
tions, have been struck with barrenness, as if
to attest the impotence of man to effect, by the
progressive transformation of existing species, a
creation of new species. Man is not an ape
transformed and perfected by some dim imper
ceptible fermentation of the elements of nature
and by the operation of ages : this assumed
explanation of the origin of the human species
is a mere vague hypothesis, the fruit of an
SECOND MEDITATION. 23
imagination ill comprehending the spectacle that
nature presents, and therefore easily seduced to
form ingenious conjectures : these their authors
sow in the stream of events unknown and of
time infinite, and trust to them for the realiza
tion of their dreams. The principle of the funda
mental diversity and the permanence of species
firmly upheld by M. Cuvier, M. Flourens, M.
Coste, M. Quatrefages, and by all exact observers
of facts remains dominant in science as in
reality.*
Besides these vain attempts to supersede God
the Creator, and to explain by the inherent and
progressive power of matter, the origin of man
* Cuvier Discours sur les Revolutions du Globe, pp. 117,
120, 124 (edit. 1825); Flourens Ontologie Naturelle, pp.
1087 (1861) ; Journal des Savants (October, November, and
December, 1863) ; three articles on the work of Ch. Darwin, On
the Origin of Species and the Laws of Progress among Organised
Beings ; Coste Histoire Gen6rale et Particuliere du D6" veloppe-
ment des Corps Organis6s ; Discours Preliminaire, vol. i. p. 23 ;
Quatrefages Metamorphoses do PHomrne et des Animaux, p.
225 (1862) ; and his articles On the Unity of the Human
Species, published in the " Revue des Deux Mondes," in 1860
and 1861, and collected in one volume (1861).
24 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
and of the world, the Christian dogma of Creation
has yet other adversaries. One party, to combat
it, seizes its arms from the Bible itself, alleging
the account there given of the successive facts of
the creation, of which the world and man were
the result ; they cite and enumerate the difficul
ties of reconciling this account with the observa
tions and the conclusions of science. I shall
weigh the force of this class of objections in
treating of the inspiration of the Holy Scriptures,
of their real object and true meaning ; but I at
once raise the dogma of Creation above this
attack, placing it at its proper height and isola
tion : it is the general fact, it is the very principle
of creation which constitutes the dogma ; what
ever may be the obscurities or the scientific diffi
culties presented by the biblical narrative, the
principle and the general fact of the Creation
remain unaffected : God the Creator does not the
less remain in possession of His work. The
Christian religion, in its essence, asserts and de
mands nothing more.
SECOND MEDITATION. 25
But lastly, the Christian dogma of Creation is
met by the general objection raised against all the
facts and all the acts which are termed superna
tural : that is to say, against the existence of God
as well as the dogma of Creation, against all reli
gions in common with Christianity. Such a
question requires to be considered, not with re
ference to any particular dogma, or with a view
to defend one side only of the edifice of Chris
tianity. This point, then, I shall presently ex
amine frankly and in all its bearings.
II. PROVIDENCE.
GOD the Creator is also God the Preserver.
He lives, and is at the same time the source of
life. The union between Him and his creature
does not cease wiien the creature is brought into
existence. The dogma of Providence is conse
quent upon that of Creation.
Prayer is more than the mere outburst of the
desires or sorrows of the soul, seeking that satis-
26 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
faction, strength, or consolation which it does not
find within itself ; it is the expression of a faith,
instinctive or reflective, obscure or clear, wavering
or steadfast, in the existence, the presence, the
power, and the sympathy of the Being to whom
prayer is addressed. Without a certain measure
of faith and trust in God, prayer would not burst
forth, or would suddenly be dried up in the soul.
If faith everywhere resists, and everywhere out
lives all the denials, all the doubts, and all the
darkness which oppress mankind, it is that man
bears within himself an imperishable conscious
ness of the enduring bond which connects him
with God, and God with him.
Far from destroying this sentiment, experience
and the spectacle of life explain and confirm it.
In reflecting on his destiny, man recognises in it
three different sources, and divides, so to say,
into three classes the facts which make up the
whole. He is conscious of being subject to events
which are the consequence of laws, general, per
manent, and independent of his will, but which
SECOND MEDITATION. 27
by his intelligence he observes and comprehends.
By the act of his free will he also himself creates
events, of which he knows himself to be author,
and these have their own consequences and enter
too into the tissue of his life. Lastly, he passes
through events, in his view, neither the result of
those general laws from which nothing can with
draw him, nor the act of his own liberty, events
of which he perceives neither the cause, the
reason, nor the author.
Man attributes this last class of events some
times to a blind cause, which he terms chance ; at
another, to an intelligent and supreme intention
which is in God. His mind at times revolts at
the inanity of this word chance, which explains
and defines nothing ; and he then pictures to
himself a mysterious, impenetrable power, a
merely necessary chain of unknown facts, to which
he gives the name of fatality, destiny. To account
for this obscure and accidental part of human life,
which originates neither from any general and
conceivable laws, nor from the free will of man
28 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
himself, we must choose between fatality and
Providence, chance and God,
I express any meaning without hesitation. "Who
ever accepts as a satisfactory explanation the theory
of fatality and chance, does not truly believe in
God. Whoever believes truly in God, relies upon
Providence. God is not an expedient, invented
to explain the first link in the chain of causation,
an actor called to open by creation the drama of
the world, then to relapse into a state of inert
uselessness. By the very fact of his existence,
God is present with his work, and sustains it.
Providence is the natural and necessary develop
ment of God s existence ; his constant presence
and permanent action in creation. The universal
and insuperable instinct which leads man to prayer,
is in harmony with this great fact ; he who be
lieves in God cannot but have recourse to Him
and pray to Him.
Objections are raised to the name itself of God.
He acts, it is said, only by general and permanent
laws : how can we implore His interference in
SECOND MEDITATION. 29
favour of our special and exceptional desires ?
He is immutable, ever perfect, and ever the same :
how is it conceivable that He lends Himself to
the fickleness of human sentiments and wishes ?
The prayer which ascends to Him is forgetful of
his real nature. Men have treated the attributes
of God as furnishing an objection to his Provi
dence.
This objection, so often repeated, never fails to
astonish me. The majority of those who urge it,
assert at the same time that God is incompre
hensible, and that we cannot penetrate the secret
of his nature. What then is this but to pretend
to comprehend God ? and by what right do they
oppose his nature to his providence, if his nature
is, to us, an impenetrable mystery? I refrain
from reproaching them for their ambition ; ambi
tion is the privilege and the glory of man ; but
in retaining it, let them not overlook its legitimate
limits. There is only this alternative : either man
must cease to believe in God, because he cannot
comprehend Him, or in effect admit his incom-
30 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
prehensibility, and still at the same time believe
in Him. He cannot pass and repass incessantly
from one system to the other, now declaring God
to be incomprehensible; now speaking of Him, of
his nature and his attributes, as if He were within
the province of human science. Great as is the
question of Providence, the one I have here to
consider is still greater, for it is the question of
the very existence of God ; and the fundamental
inquiry is to know whether He exists, or does not
exist. God is at once light and mystery : in
intimate relation with man, and yet beyond the
limits of his knowledge. I shall presently endea
vour to mark the limit at which human know
ledge stops, and indicate its proper sphere ; but
this I at once assume as certain : whoever, be
lieving in God and speaking of Him as incom
prehensible, yet persists in endeavouring to define
Him scientifically, and seeks to penetrate the
mystery, which he has yet admitted, is in great
risk of destroying his own belief, and of setting
God aside, which is one way of denying Him.
SECOND MEDITATION. 31
But I leave for a moment these two simul
taneous propositions, namely, the impossibility
of comprehending God, and the necessity of be
lieving in Him; and I proceed at once to that
objection to the special providence of God
which is drawn from the general character of
the laws of nature. This objection results from
confounding very different things, and overlook
ing a fundamental one, the fact characteristic
indeed of human nature. It is true that the
providence of God presides over the order of
the world which He governs by general and per
manent laws : these law^s would be more accu
rately designated by another name; they are
the Will of God, continually acting upon the
world, for not only the laws but the Lawgiver
are there ever present. But when God created
man, He created him different from the physical
world; free, and a moral agent; and hence there
is a fundamental difference between the action
of God on the physical world, and his action
on man. I shall subsequently state my opinion
32 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
as to the full meaning of the expression, " Man
is a free being/ 7 and as to the nature of the
consequences to which it leads ; for the present,
I assume, as a certain and incontestable fact, this
principle of human liberty, of the free deter
mination of man considered as a moral agent.
Admitting this, it cannot be said that God
governs mankind at large by general and per
manent laws; for what would this be but to
ignore or annul the liberty granted to man, that
is to say, to misconceive and mutilate the Work
of God himself. Man exercises a free determi
nation, and in his own life actually gives birth to
events which are not the result of any general
and external laws. Divine Providence watches
the operations of man s volition, and records the
manner in which it has been exercised. It does
not treat man as it deals with the stars in
heaven and the waves of the ocean, which have
neither thought nor will; with man it has other
relations than with nature, and employs a different
mode of action,
SECOND MEDITATION. 33
There is little wisdom in instituting compari
sons between objects or facts not essentially
analogous ; and the idea of God has been so
often disfigured by representing Him in the
image of man, that I mistrust the efficacy of
any analogies borrowed from humanity to convey
a conception of God. I cannot, however, over
look the fact, that God has created man in his
own image, nor can I absolutely refrain from
seeking, in nature or the life of man, some type
to shadow forth the features of God. Let us
consider the human family : the father and
mother assist in directing the active develop
ment of the child ; they watch over it with
authority and tenderness; they control its liberty
without annulling it, and they listen to its little
prayers now granting them, now refusing them,
as their reason dictates, and with a view to
the child s main and future interests. The
child, without thought or design, by the spon
taneous instinct of its nature, recognizes the
authority and feels the tenderness of its parents ;
84 THE CHRISTIAN EELIGION.
as it advances in age, it sometimes obeys and
sometimes resists their injunctions, using or mis
using its natural liberty ; but in all the fickleness
of its will, it asks, it entreats, full of confidence
joyous and thankful when it obtains from
its parents what it desires ; yet, when denied,
still ready again to ask and to entreat with the
same confidence as before.
This is what takes place in the government of
the human family when ruled according to the
dictates of nature and right. An image we have
here, imperfect but still true a shadowing-forth,
faint yet faithful of Divine Providence. Thus it
is that the Christian religion qualifies and describes
the action of God in the life of man. It ex
hibits God as ever present and accessible to man,
as a father to his child; it exhorts, encourages,
invites man to implore, to confide in, to pray to
God. It reserves absolutely the answer of God to
that prayer ; He will grant, or He will refuse :
we cannot penetrate his motives " The ways of
God are not our ways." Nevertheless, to prayer,
SECOND MEDITATION. 35
ceaseless and ever renewed, the Christian dogma
associates the firm hope that " nothing is im
possible with God/ This dogma is thus in full
and intimate harmony with the nature of man ;
whilst recognizing his liberty, it does homage to
his dignity; in tendering to him the resource of
an appeal to God it provides for his weakness.
In science, it suppresses not the mystery which
cannot be suppressed ; but, in man s life, it solves
the natural problem which weighs upon the soul.
III. ORIGINAL SIN.
THE dogmas of Creation and Providence bring
us into the presence of God ; it is the action
of God upon the world and man that they pro
claim and affirm. The dogma of Original Sin
brings us back to man ; it is the act of man
towards God, which stands at the very beginning
of the history of mankind.
In what does this dogma consist ? What are
D 2
36 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
the elements and the essential facts which con
stitute it, and upon which it is founded ?
The dogma of Original Sin implies and affirms
these propositions :
1. That God, in creating man, has created him
an agent, moral, free, and fallible ;
2. That the will of God is the moral law of
man, and obedience to the will of God is the
duty of man, inasmuch as he is a moral and
free agent ;
3. That, by an act of his own free will, man
has knowingly failed in his duty, by disobeying
the law of God ;
4. That the free man is a responsible being,
and that disobedience to the law of God has
justly entailed on him punishment ;
5. That that responsibility and that punish
ment are hereditary, and that the fault of the
first man has weighed and does weigh upon the
human race.
The authority of God, the duty of obedience
to the law of God, the liberty and responsibility
SECOND MEDITATION. 37
of man, the heritage of human responsibility
are, in their moral chronology, the principles
and the facts comprised in the dogma of Original
Sin.
I turn away my attention for a moment from
the dogma itself, its source, its history, the
Biblical and Christian tradition of this first
step in evil of the human race. And considering
man, his nature, and his destiny in their actual
and general state, I investigate and verify the
moral facts as they manifest themselves at the
present day, to the eyes of good sense, amidst
the disputes of the learned.
Man, at his birth, is subjected to the moral
authority, as well as the physical power of the
parents who, humanly speaking, created him.
Obedience is to him a duty, and at the same
time a necessity. This physical necessity and
this moral obligation, however ultimately con
nected with each other, are not one and identical ;
and the child, in its spontaneous development,
instinctively feels the moral obligation long
38 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
before it is conscious of the physical necessity.
The instinctive feeling of the obligation is united
with the growing sentiment of affection ; and
the child obeys the look, the voice of its mother,
unconscious of its absolute dependence upon her.
As the sentiment of affection and the instinct
of obligatory obedience are the first dawn of
moral good in the development of the child, so
the impulse to disobedience is the first symptom,
the first appearance of moral evil. It is with
the voluntary disobedience of the child to the
will of its mother that the moral infraction
commences, and it is in disobedience that it
resides. It considers neither the motives nor
the consequences of its act ; it is simply conscious
that it disobeys, and regards its mother with a
mingled feeling of restlessness and defiance ; it
tries, with hesitation, the maternal authority ; it
strives to be, and especially to appear, independent
of the natural and legitimate power which rules
it, and which it recognises at the very moment
when it opposes its own will to that higher law.
SECOND MEDITATION. 39
As the child, so is the man. As man is born
free, so he lives free; and as he is born subject, so
he lives subject. Liberty co-exists with authority
and resists without annulling it. Authority exists
before liberty, and as it does not yield to it, so
neither does it supersede it. Man, inasmuch as
he knows that he disobeys, renders homage to
authority by the very fact of his disobedience.
Authority, on its side, recognizes the liberty of
man, by the condemnation which it passes on
him for having misused it ; for he would not
be responsible for his acts were he not free. In
the co-existence of these two powers, authority
and liberty, at one time in accordance, at another
in conflict, lies the great secret of nature and of
human destiny, the fundamental principle of man
and of the world.
Let it be clearly understood that I speak here
of the moral world, of the world of thought and
of will. In the physical world there is neither
authority nor liberty ; there are merely certain
forces, forces acting inevitably and unequally.
40 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
If the question concerned the material world,
could I do better than repeat what Pascal has
admirably said : " Man is but a reed the weakest
in nature but he is a reed which thinks ; the
universe need not rise in arms to crush him ; a
vapour, a drop of water suffices to kill him. But
were the universe to crush him, man would still
be nobler than the power which killed him, for
he knows that he dies ; and of the advantage
which the universe has over him, the universe
knows nothing." When man obeys or disobeys,
he knows just as well that authority confronts
him, as that liberty of action abides with himself.
He knows what he does, and he charges himself
with the responsibility. Moral order is here
complete.
Throughout all times and in all places, in ah 1
men, as in the first man, disobedience to legitimate
authority is the principle and foundation of moral
evil, or, to call it by its religious name, of sin.
Disobedience has various and complicated
sources ; it may spring from a thirst for inde-
SECOND MEDITATION. 41
pendencc, from ambition or presumptuous curi
osity, or from giving rein to human inclinations
and temptations ; but, whatever its origin, dis
obedience is ever the essential characteristic of
that free act which constitutes sin, as it is also the
source of the responsibility which accompanies it.
Eminent men, eminently pious men, have com
bated the doctrine of human liberty ; unable to
reconcile it with what they term the divine pre
science, they have denied the fundamental fact of
the nature of man, rather than fully acknowledge
the mystery of the nature of God. Others, equally
eminent and sincere, have limited themselves
to raising doubts regarding human liberty, and
denying it the value of an absolute arid peremp
tory fact. In my opinion, they have confounded
facts essentially different, although intimately
blended; they have ignored the special and simple
character of the very fact of free will. During a
course of lectures which I delivered thirty-five
years ago at the Sorbonne, on the history of civili
zation in France, having occasion to examine the
42 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
controversy of St. Augustine with Pelagius on free
will, predestination, and grace, I explained these
subjects in terms which I repeat here, finding no
others which appear to me more exact and more
complete :
" The fact which lies at the foundation of the
whole dispute," I said in 1829, "is liberty, free will,
the human will. To comprehend this fact exactly,
we must divest it of every foreign element, and con
fine it strictly to itself. It is the want of this pre
caution that has led to such frequent misconception
of the thing itself ; men have not looked simply at
the fact of liberty, and at that alone. It has been
viewed and described, so to speak, pele-mele with
other facts, closely connected to it, it is true, in
the moral life of man, but which are no less essen
tially different. For example, human liberty has
been said to consist in the act of deliberating
upon and choosing between motives ; that delibe
ration, and that choice and judgment consequent
upon it, have been regarded as the essence of free
will. Not so at all. These are acts of the intel-
SECOND MEDITATION. 43
lect, not of liberty ; it is before the intellect that
the various motives of resolution and action,
interests, passions, opinions, and such like, present
themselves; the intellect considers, compares,
estimates/ weighs, and judges them. This is a
preparatory task, which precedes the act of voli
tion, but which does not in any way constitute it.
When, after deliberation, man has taken full
cognisance of the motives presented to him, and
of their value, there takes place a process entirely
new, and wholly different, that of free will ; man
forms a resolution that is to say, he commences
a series of facts having their source in himself, of
which he regards himself as the author ; and these
are effectuated because he wills them ; they would
have no existence did he not will it, and would be
different if he desired to produce them otherwise.
Now, let us imagine all remembrance of this
process of intellectual deliberation obliterated, the
motives so known and appreciated, forgotten ;
concentrate your thought, and that of the man
\vlio takes a resolution, upon the moment when
44 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
he says, It is my will, therefore I shall do so ;
and ask yourself, ask too the man, whether he
could not will and act otherwise. Without doubt,
you will reply, as he will do, Assuredly/ and
this it is that reveals the fact of liberty ; it con
sists wholly in the resolution which man takes
after the deliberation is at an end ; it is the reso
lution that is the proper act of man, which is
through him and through him alone ; a simple
act, independent of all the facts which precede or
accompany it, identical in the most varied circum
stances, always the same, whatever be its motives
or its results.
" At the same time that man feels himself free,
and is conscious of the power of commencing by
his own will alone a series of facts, he recognises
that his will is subjected to the empire of a certain
law, which takes different names, according to the
circumstances to which it is applied moral law,
reason, good sense, &c Man is free, but
according even to man s own way of thinking, his
will is not arbitrary ; he may use it in an absurd,
SECOND MEDITATION. 45
senseless, unjust, and culpable manner, and when
ever he uses it a certain rule must govern it.
The observance of this rule is his duty, the task
assigned to his liberty/
It is that act of a will (that is to say of a will
strictly brought back to its central and essential
limits) acting freely in the intimate recesses
of his being, which, in the case of disobedience to
the law of duty, constitutes in man sin, and entails
on him its responsibility.
Is this responsibility exclusively personal, and
limited to the author of the act, or communicated,
so to say, by contagion, and transmitted in a cer
tain measure to his descendants ?
I am still considering only actual appreciable
acts, such as they produce and manifest them
selves in the moral life of the human race.
We find the poetry and mythology of nearly all
nations expressing the idea of an Utopian state of
existence, referred to times remote and primitive,
to which they assign different names, as the
Golden Age, the Age of the Gods, and which they
46 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
picture as an epoch when there existed no moral
and physical evil in the world, an era of peace,
bliss, and innocence. This is the more remarkable,
as it has no foundation, and finds no pretext in
any tradition of historical times, however remote ;
for from the commencement of history, from the
time that we can discern any trace of facts at all
precise and authentic, it is not the Golden Age, on
the contrary, it is the Iron Age which appears
an epoch of violence and ignorance and barbarism,
in which war and force are rampant, and which
has not in effect the least resemblance to those
beautiful dreams of ancient poetry. Without now
seeking to establish any relation between these
mythological dreams and the Biblical traditions ;
or, for the moment, drawing from the Golden Age
any argument in support of the Garden of Eden ;
I merely point it out as a great fact, as evidence
of a general instinct, so to say, of the human
imagination. What is the meaning of this ?
Whence comes this Utopia of innocence and bliss
in the cradle of the human race ? To what does
SECOND MEDITATION. 47
this idea of a primal time, without strife, without
sin, and without pain, correspond ?
But from this cradle of man and this primitive
poetry, to revert to the present time, to real life,
to the cradle of the infant, why is it that, apart
from all personal affection, we so readily term
infancy the age of innocence ? How is it that we
find it so charming to give it this name, and regard
it under this aspect ? Physical ill is already present,
for it begins with the very beginning of life ; but
moral ill has not yet appeared ; life has not yet
brought to the soul its trials, nor called forth its
failings, and the idea of the soul without spot or
stain has for us an inexpressible attraction ; we
feel a deep joy in witnessing innocence, or at least
its image in the child, when we no longer see it
around us, nor find it within ourselves.
What means this universal instinct, which in
the dreams of the imagination, as well as in the
intimate scenes of domestic life, whether we turn
in thought to the cradle of the human race or to
that of the infant, leads us to regard innocence as
48 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
the primitive and normal state of man, and makes
us place in the spot where innocence resides that
which some term Paradise, and others the Golden
Age?
Manifestly between the soul without spot and
the soul tainted with evil, between the creature
who is merely fallible and the creature who has
sinned, there is a very great change of state, a
distance immense, an abyss. We have a secret
feeling of this deplorable change, of the fall into
this abyss ; and it is without premeditation, by
the mere impulse of our nature, that we suffer our
thoughts to bear us far far beyond that abyss,
and to pause on the rapturous contemplation of a
state anterior to the fall. Hence spring, and thus
are explained, the power and the charm which the
idea of innocence has for us ; absolute innocence
we have never seen, but the idea is still vouch
safed to us; and so it appears to us in the cradle
of the world, and in the cradle of the infant, and
the pleasure is infinite which we derive from the
ideal spectacle of purity which they each suggest.
SECOND MEDITATION. 49
Is this a pleasure foreign to all personal senti
ment, to all secret reference to ourselves, the
pleasure, that is to say, of a simple spectator ?
No : these impressions, which the picture of inno
cence awakens in us, are connected with and
carry us back to ourselves ; this change in the
state of man, that mysterious Past which has
thrown him so far from innocence, leaving him,
nevertheless, the idea and the worship of it
these were not the lot of the first man alone : the
entire human race was, and remains, subject to
them. Our present evil does not proceed solely
from ourselves ; we have received it as a heritage
before having brought it upon us as a penalty :
we are not merely fallible beings, we are the
children of a being who has sinned.
o
How can we feel surprise at this inheritance
of woe I Have we not daily the example and
the spectacle before our eyes ? It is an incon
testable and undisputed fact, that two elements
enter into the moral life of man : on the one
side, his innate dispositions, his natural and invo-
50 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
luntaiy inclinations, on the other, his inmost
and individual will. The natural inclinations of
a man do not destroy his moral liberty nor en
slave his will, but they render its exercise more
laborious and more difficult to him ; it is not a
chain which he carries, it is a burden that he
bears. Equally incontestable and undisputed is
it that the natural dispositions of men are dif
ferent and unequally distributed ; no one is
entirely exempt from evil inclinations ; every
man is not only fallible, but prone to transgress,
and prone not only to transgress, but to trans
gress in some particular direction or other. Nor
can the fact be disputed, although appreciable
with more difficulty, that the natural and special
dispositions of the individual descend to him in
a certain measure from his origin, and that
parents transmit to their children such or such
moral propensities just as they do such or such
physical temperament, or such or such features.
Hereditary transmission enters into the moral as
well as the physical order of the world.
SECOND MEDITATION. 51
This inheritance must take effect, it has done
so from the first days of man s existence upon
earth, for man has been created complete in his
whole nature. And whilst, at the same time as
complete, he has been created fallible, I ask, who
shall measure the distance between man fallible,
but still without fault, and the first transgres
sion ? Who shall sound the depth of the fall,
and of the change which it brought into the
moral condition of its author ? Who shall weigh
the consequences of this change to the state
and the moral dispositions of man s descendants ?
To appreciate the extent and gravity of this
awful fact, of this first appearance and this first
heritage of moral evil, we have but one test,
the instinct we still preserve of a state of inno
cence, and of the immense space which this
instinct irresistibly compels us to place between
native innocence and man s first transgression ;
but this test is unexceptionable ; it dimly reveals
to us, in this fatal transformation, the whole infir
mity and responsibility of the human race.
E 2
52 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
An objection is raised to this as an injustice:
how, it is said, can each man be responsible
for a fault which he has not himself committed
for the transgression of another man, separated
from himself by so many ages 1 I consider this
objection weak and frivolous. Such an objec
tion would attach to all the inequalities which
exist among men, to the inequality of the
destinies as well as that of the nature of man,
to the inequality of his moral disposition as
well as to that of his physical powers. The
objection w T ould attach to the solidarity of suc
cessive generations, and the controlling influence
which the ideas, the acts, the destiny of each
of them exert on the ideas, the acts, the destiny
of those which follow it. The objection would
attach to the ties which unite the child with its
parents, and which are the cause of its some
times inheriting their evil dispositions, and some
times suffering for their faults. It is in short
the general order of the world to which such an
objection must apply ; it is the very existence
SECOND MEDITATION. 53
of evil, and its unequal distribution in a manner
wholly independent of individual merit which
assumes the character of a monstrous iniquity.
And when we come to this point, that we no
longer refer the source of evil to the fault and
the responsibility of man, placed here on earth
in a scene and period of transition and of trial,
see to what alternative we are brought We
must either regard evil as natural, eternal, neces
sary, in the future as in the past, as the normal
state of man and of the world ; that is to say,
we must deny God, the creation, the Divine
Providence, human morality, liberty, responsi
bility and hope ; or, on the other hand, it is to
God Himself that we must impute evil, and whom
we must render accountable.
The dogma of Original Sin alone relieves the
human mind from this odious and unacceptable
alternative : far from being in contradiction
either with the history of humanity, or with
the facts and instincts which constitute man s
moral nature, this dogma admits, illustrates, and
54 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
explains them. The fact of original sin presents
nothing strange, nothing obscure ; it consists
essentially in disobedience to the will of God,
which will is the moral law of man. This dis
obedience, the sin of Adam, is an act com
mitted everywhere and every day, arising from
the same causes, marked by the same characters,
and attended by the same consequences as the
Christian dogma assigns to it. At the present
day, as in the Garden of Eden, this act is occa
sioned by a thirst for absolute independence, the
ambitious aspirings of curiosity and pride, or
weakness in the face of temptation. At the pre
sent day, as in the Garden of Eden, it produces
an immense change in the inmost state of man,
a change, the mere idea of which seizes upon the
human soul, and disturbs it to its very depths ;
it transports man from the state of innocence
to the state of sin. At the present day, as in
the Garden of Eden, the act which produces this
change involves and entails the responsibility
not only of its author but of his descendants ;
SECOND MEDITATION. 55
sin is contagious in time as in space, it is
transmitted, as well as diffused. The Christian
dogma exhibits the first man created fallible,
but born innocent; innocent at the age of man,
proud in the plenitude of his faculties, not the
subject of any evil and fatal heritage. All at
once, for the first time, of his own will, man
disobeys God. Here lies Original Sin, the same
in its nature as sin at the present day, for they
both consist in disobedience to the law of God,
but it is the first in date in the history of man s
liberty, and the human source of that evil for
which the Christian religion, whilst pointing it
out, offers to.man the remedy and the cure.
IV. THE INCARNATION.
ALL religions have given a prominent place to
the problem of existence and the origin of evil ;
all have attempted its solution. The good and
56 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
the evil genius, Ormuzd and Ahriman among the
Persians ; God the Creator, God the Preserver,
and God the Destroyer Brahma, Vishnu, and
Siva in India ; the Titans overwhelmed by the
thunderbolts of Jove while scaling Olympus ; Pro
metheus chained to the rock for having snatched
fire from heaven ; all are so many hypotheses to
explain the conflict between good and evil, be
tween order and disorder in the world and in
man. But all these hypotheses are complicated,
confused, and encumbered with chimeras and
fables ; all attribute the derivation of evil to
incongruous causes, none assign any term to the
conflict, nor find a remedy for the evil. The
Christian religion alone clearly states and effec
tually solves the question ; it alone imputes to
man himself, and to him alone, the origin of evil ;
it alone represents God as intervening to raise
man from his fall, and to save him from his
peril.
In the course of the sixth and fifth centuries
before the Christian era, a great fact appears in
SECOND MEDITATION. 57
history ; a breath of reform, religious, moral and
social, arises, and spreads from east to west, among
all the nations then at all progressing in the path
of civilization. Notwithstanding the uncertainties
of chronology, it may be said, according to the
most recent and accurate researches, that Con
fucius in China, the Buddha Cakya-Mouni in
India, Zoroaster in Persia, Pythagoras and Socrates
in Greece, are all included in the limits of this
epoch;"* men as dissimilar as they are celebrated,
but who have all, in different ways and in
unequal degrees, undertaken a great work of re
forming both the men and the social institutions
of their times. Confucius was above all a prac
tical moralist, skilled in observation, counsel, and
discipline ; Buddha Cakya-Mouni, a dreamer, and
a mystical and popular preacher ; Zoroaster, a
* These researches gire the following dates : 1. Confuc. us,
from 551 to 478 B.C. ; 2. Zoroaster, from 564 to 487, or fiom
589 to 512 B.C. ; 3. Buddha Cakya-Mouni, in the seventh and
sixth centuries B.C. (he died, according to Burnouf, 543 B.C.) ;
4. Pythagoras, from 580 to 500 B.C. ; 5. Socrates, 470 to 400 or
399 B.C.
58 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
legislator, religious and political ; Pythagoras and
Socrates, philosophers, bent upon instructing the
distinguished bands of disciples whom they
gathered around them. There is no doubt, not
withstanding the trials of their life, that neither
power nor glory amongst their contemporaries
was wanting to them. Confucius and Zoroaster
were the favourites and counsellors of kings.
Buddha Cakya-Mouni, himself the son of a king,
became the idol of innumerable multitudes. Py
thagoras and Socrates formed schools and pupils
who were an honour to the human mind. By
their personal genius and by the excellence of
some of their ideas and actions, these men have
ensured themselves the admiration of all pos
terity. Did they act up to their teachings, and
accomplish what they attempted \ Did they
really change the moral and social condition of
nations ? Did they cause humanity to make any
great progress, and open to it horizons which it
had not before known \ By no means. What
ever fame attaches to the names of these men,
SECOND MEDITATION. 59
whatever influence they may have exerted, what
ever trace of their passage may have remained,
they rather appeared to have power than really
to possess it ; they agitated the surface far more
than they stirred the depths ; they did not draw
nations out of the beaten tracks in which they
had lived. They did not transform souls. In
considering the facts at large, and notwith
standing the political and material revolutions
which they underwent, China after Confucius,
India after Buddha, Persia after Zoroaster, Greece
after Pythagoras and Socrates, followed in the
same ways, retained the same propensities, as
before. Still more, among these very different
nations, stagnation was only be succeeded by
decay. Where are these nations at the present
day, more than two thousand years after the
appearance of these glorious characters in their
history ? What great progress, what salutary
changes, have been effected ] What are they
in comparison and in contact with Christian
nations ? Outside of Christianity there have been
60 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
grand spectacles of activity and force, brilliant
phenomena of genius and virtue, generous at
tempts at reform, learned philosophical systems,
and beautiful mythological poems ; no real pro
found or fruitful regeneration of humanity and of
society.
A few ages only after these barren efforts
among the great nations of the world, Jesus
Christ appears among a small, obscure people,
weak and despised. He Himself is weak and
despised in the midst of his people ; He neither
possesses nor seeks any social power, any tempo
ral means of action and of success; He collects
around Him only disciples weak and despised as
Himself. Not only are they weak and despised,
they proclaim it themselves, and, far from being
troubled at this, they glory in it, and derive from
it confidence. St. Paul writes to the Corinthians :
" And I, brethren, when I came to you, came not
with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring
unto you the testimony of God. For I deter
mined not to know any thing among you, save
SECOND MEDITATION. 61
Jesus Christ, and him crucified. And I was with
you in weakness, and in fear, and in much
trembling Therefore I take pleasure in
infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in per
secutions, in distresses for Christ s sake ; for when
I am weak, then I am strong."* And in truth,
Jesus Christ, the Master of St. Paul, is strong
in his sufferings, and imparts his strength to his
disciples ; from his cross, He accomplishes what
erewhile, in Asia and Europe, princes and philo
sophers, the powerful of the earth, and sages,
attempted without success ; He changes the moral
state and the social state of the world ; He pours
into the souls of men new enlightenment and new
powers ; for all classes, for all human conditions,
He prepares destinies before his advent unknown;
He liberates them at the same time that He lays
down rules for their guidance ; He quickens them
and stills them ; He places the divine law and
human liberty face to face, and yet still in
harmony ; He offers an effectual remedy for the
* 1 Cor. ii. 13 ; 2 Cor. xii. 10.
62 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
evil which weighs upon humanity ; to sin He
opens the path of salvation, to unhappiness the
door of hope,
"Whence comes this power ? What are its
source and its nature ? How did those who
were its witnesses and instruments think and
speak of it at the moment when it was mani
fested \
They all, unanimously, saw in Jesus Christ,
God ; most of them, from the first moment,
suddenly moved and enlightened by his presence
and his words ; some, with rather more surprise
and hesitation, but soon penetrated and convinced
in their turn. " When Jesus came into the coasts
of Csesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, say
ing, Whom do men say that I the Son of man
am ? And they said, Some say that thou art
John the Baptist ; some, Elias ; and others, Jere-
mias, or one of the prophets. He saith unto
them, But whom say ye that I am ? And Simon
Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ,
the son of the living God. And Jesus answered
SECOND MEDITATION. 03
and said unto liim, Blessed art thou, Simon
Barjona ; for flesh and blood hath not revealed
it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven."*
Another day, meeting with a similar instance of
doubt, Jesus says to Thomas, " If ye had known
me, ye should have known my Father also : and
from henceforth ye know him, and have seen
him. Philip saith unto him, Lord, shew us the
Father, and it sufficeth us. Jesus saith unto him,
Have I been so long time with you, and yet
hast thou not known me, Philip ? he that hath
seen me hath seen the Father." t
It has been remarked, that there are certain
variations in the language of the Apostles, and
certain shades of difference in their leading im
pressions ; and this is indeed true : they call Jesus
Christ at one time the Son of God, at another the
Son of Man ; they regard Him and represent Him
now under his divine aspect, at another under
his human aspect ; they do not present exactly
the same image of Him ; they do not all equally
* Matt. xvi. 1317. f John, xiv. 79.
64 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
dwell upon the same traits of his nature, or the
same facts of his earthly life. St. Matthew is
more a narrator and moralist ; it is he who
relates with fuller details the birth and child
hood of Jesus Christ, and who gives at the
greatest length the Sermon on the Mount. St.
John is more in the habit of contemplating and
depicting the divine nature of Jesus Christ and
his relation to God : " In the beginning was
the Word, and the Word was with God, and
the Word was God. . . . And the Word
was made flesh, and dwelt amongst us, and we
beheld his glory, the glory as of the only-
begotten of the Father, full of grace and
truth. ... No man hath seen God at any
time ; the only-begotten Son, which is in the
bosom of the Father, he hath declared him."*
It is also St. John who relates the testimony of
the Forerunner, St. John the Baptist, answering
to those who had said to him that all men come
to Jesus Christ: "Ye yourselves bear me wit-
* John, i. 1, 14, 18.
SECOND MEDITATION. 65
ness, that I said, I am not the Christ, but that
I am sent before him. . . . He that cometh
from above is above all. ... He whom
God hath sent speaketh the words of God : for
God giveth not the Spirit by measure unto
him. ... The Father loveth the Son, and
hath given all things into his hand/ * St. Paul
is more systematic, and enters more fully into
the questions and principles of the Christian
doctrine, and he regards the divinity of Jesus
Christ as the first of these principles. He writes
to the Philippians : " Let this mind be in you,
which was also in Christ Jesus : who, being in
the form of God, thought it no usurpation to
be equal with God : but made himself of no
reputation, and took upon him the form of a
servant, and was made in the likeness of men :
and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled
himself, and became obedient unto death, even
the death of the cross/ t .... It is he
* John iii. 28, 31, 34, and 35.
t Philippians ii. 56. I have given this verse in Oster-
F
66 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
" who is the image of the invisible God, the
first-born of every creature : for by him were
wald s translation, which is also that of the Vulgate ; but my
son Guillaume, who is following out a careful course of study of
Latin and Greek philology in sacred and profane literature,
reminds me that the text of this passage presents a difficulty
which furnished a field for the labours of Erasmus, Cameron,
Grotius, Meric Casaubon, in the sixteenth century, as well as
many others before and after them. The Greek word apiray/ji.6s
admits of two meanings, an active and a passive sense it may
designate the action of ravishing, of carrying off by force, or the
object carried off the act of depredation, or the spoil. Sub
stantives derived from verbs frequently waver between these
two acceptations, and the word apirayf), which is merely another
form of apira.ytJi.6s, is unquestionably a case in point. JEschylus,
Euripides, Herodotus, have employed it in the first sense ;
^Sschylus, Euripides, Thucydides, and Polybius in the second
sense. Now, in the passage of St. Paul, accordingly as one or
the other sense is adopted, these words must either be translated
thus : " He did not consider it a usurpation to be equal to
God;" or thus, "He did not display as a trophy his equality
to God ; " that is to say : He did not display His equality
with God as the conquerors of the earth display the spoils and
booty which they have amassed ; He did not make use of His
divinity to reign, to triumph, to pride himself in it ; He was not
the Messiah whom the carnal Jews expected, a visible king and
victorious in arms ; but, on the contrary, " he humbled him
self, and took upon him the form of a servant," etc., etc. This
second interpretation seems more probable ; the reasoning on
which it is founded is thus more connected and flowing ; and at
the same time, it leaves the doctrine of the Apostle intact ; it
changes nothing in his conception or his conclusions. In this
passage, as in many others, St. Paul likewise affirms the divinity
SECOND MEDITATION. 67
all tilings created, that are in heaven, and that
are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they
be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or
powers : all things were created by him, and for
him : and he is before all things, and by him all
things consist."* St. Peter and St. John, in their
Epistles, speak in the same terms as St. Paul.
St. Peter says, " We have not followed cunningly
devised fables, when we made known unto you
the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ,
but were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For he
received from God the Father honour and glory,
when there came such a voice to him from the
excellent glory, This is my beloved Son, in
of the Saviour whom he announces to men ; and it is from this
majesty, subjected to a voluntary humiliation, veiled under the
form of a servant, obedient unto the death of the cross, that He
presents an august example and an imperative lesson for Chris
tians of humility and mutual support. It is thus that this
interpretation has been admitted and defended by two eminent
men, a scholar of the sixteenth and a theologian of the nine
teenth century, both of whom were strongly attached to the
dogma of the divinity of Jesus Christ I allude to M6ric Casau-
bon (De Verborum Usu, pp. 138 14G, at the end of the letters
of his father), and M A. Vinet (Honiiletique, p. U6).
* Colos. i. 1517.
F 2
68 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
whom I am well pleased ; hear ye him." * St.
John writes : " Whosoever denieth the Son, the
same hath not the Father ; but he that acknow-
ledgeth the Son hath the Father also."t "Hereby
know ye the Spirit of God : every Spirit that
confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is
of God ; and every spirit that confesseth not that
Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God."t
Such is the language of the Apostles ; such are,
at the same time, its shades of variance and its
harmony. They have all evidently the same con
ception of Jesus Christ, they have all the same
faith in Him. St. Matthew, as well as St. John,
St. Peter and St. Paul, alike regard Jesus Christ
as at once God and man, the representative of
God on earth, and the Mediator between God and
men come from God, and re-ascended unto Him
as the source and centre of His being. The dogma
of the Incarnation, that is to say, of the divinity of
Jesus Christ, pervades the Holy Scriptures the
* 2 Pet. . 16, 17. t 1 John ii. 23.
I 1 John iv. 2, 3.
SECOND MEDITATION. 69
Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, the Epistles of
the Apostles, the writings of the first Fathers.
It is the common and fixed basis, the source and
essence of the Christian faith.
This was affirmed and declared by Jesus Christ
himself. What His disciples believed and related
of Him, is what He himself told them of himself,
as well as what they themselves witnessed and
thought of Him : " All things are delivered unto
me of my Father : and no man knoweth the Son,
but the Father : neither knoweth any man the
Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the
Son will reveal him."* "I and my Father are
one."t And when He approaches the term of His
mission, when, after having announced to His
disciples that the hour was coming when they
would be dispersed, each going his own way,
leaving Him alone, Jesus Christ raises His thoughts
to God and says, " Father, the hour is come ;
glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify
thee : as thou hast given him power over all flesh,
* Matt. xi. 27. f John x. 30.
70 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
that lie should give eternal life to as many as thou
hast given him. And this is life eternal, that they
might know thee the only true God, and Jesus
Christ whom thou hast sent. I have glorified thee
on the earth : I have finished the work which
thou gavest me to do. And now, Father, glorify
thou me with thine own self with the glory which
I had with thee before the world was. I have
manifested thy name unto the men which thou
gavest me out of the world : thine they were, and
thou gavest them me ; and they have kept thy
word. Now they have known that all things
whatsoever thou hast given me are of thee. For
I have given unto them the words which thou
gavest me ; and they have received them, and
have known surely that I came out from thee, and
they have believed that thou didst send me. I
pray for them : I pray not for the world, but for
them which thou hast given me ; for they are
thine. And all mine are thine, and thine are
mine ; and I am glorified in them. And now I
am no more in the world, but these are in the
SECOND MEDITATION. 71
world, and I come to thee. Holy Father, keep
through thine own name those whom thou hast
given me, that they may be one, as we are." ""
I might multiply these texts ; but these surely
suffice to show that the words of Jesus Christ in
relation to himself, and those of His Apostles, are in
perfect unison ; He speaks of himself as they speak
of Him ; He qualifies himself as they qualify Him ;
He calls God His " Father," as His disciples call
Him "the Son of God." He has the same faith
in himself, in His nature, and in His mission, as
St. Matthew, St. John, St. Peter, and St. Paul had
in Him.
It is a great source of error, in the study of
facts, not to know how to stop at their general
and essential features, and, losing sight of these, to
give prominence to partial and secondary features.
On the subject of the divinity of Jesus Christ,
that fundamental principle of the Christian religion,
the precise meaning and import of such or such a
word may be disputed ; such or such an expression
* John xvii. 1 11,
72 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
may be thought an interpolation, and so eliminated
in any particular Gospel, in any particular Epistle ;
nevertheless there will always remain infinitely
more than sufficient evidence of the fact that those
who at the present day believe in the divinity of
Jesus Christ, believe simply what the Apostles
believed and said, and that the Apostles them
selves only believed and said, nearly nineteen cen
turies ago, what Jesus Christ himself said to them.
The opponents of the dogma of the Incarna
tion and of the divinity of Jesus Christ disregard
equally man and history, the complex elements
of human nature, and the meaning of the great
facts which mark the religious life of the human
race.
What is man himself, but an incomplete and
imperfect incarnation of God 1 The materialists
who deny the soul, and the naturalists who deny
creation, are alone consistent in rejecting the Chris
tian dogma. All who believe in the distinction of
spirit and matter, who do not believe that man is
the resuit of the fermentation of matter, or of the
SECOND MEDITATION. 73
transformation of species, are constrained to admit
the presence in human nature of the divine ele
ment, and they must necessarily accept these
words in Genesis : " God created man in his own
image ;" that is to say, they must acknowledge
the presence of God in frail and fallible humanity.
I open the histories of all religions, of all
mythologies, the most refined as well as the
grossest ; I find at every step the idea and the
assertion of the Divine Incarnation. Brahman-
isrn, Buddhism, Paganism, all faiths, all religious
idolatries, abound in incarnations of every kind
and date, primitive or successive, connected with
this or that historical event, adapted to explain
this or that fact, to satisfy this or that human
propensity. It is the natural and universal
instinct of men to picture to themselves the
action of God upon the human race under the
form of the incarnation of God in man.
Like all religious instincts, that of the belief
in the Divine Incarnation may engender, and has
engendered, the most absurd superstitions, the
74 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
most extravagant hypotheses. In the same way
as the natural faith in God has been the source
of all idolatries, so the tendency to incarnate God
in man has given rise to, and admitted, every
kind of strange imagining and spurious tradition.
Are we then to pronounce all divine incarna
tion false, every tradition of it spurious ? Kather
let us say that it proceeds from the infirmity of
the human mind, if we see realities and mere
chimeras, truths and errors, in such close
proximity, if we find them calling one another
by the same names and unceasingly confounding
one another s attributes. The pretended incar
nation of Brahma, or of Buddha, proves no more
against the divinity of Jesus Christ than the
adoration of idols proves against the existence
of God. Jesus Christ, God and Man, has cha
racteristics which appertain to Him alone. These
have founded His power and. occasioned the
success of His works, a power and a success
which belong to Him alone. It is not a
human reformer, but God himself, who, through
SECOND MEDITATION. 75
Jesus Christ, has accomplished what no human
reformer has ever accomplished, or even con
ceived, the reform of the moral and social
condition of the world, the regeneration of the
human soul, and the solution of the problems of
human destiny. It is by these signs, by these
results, that the divinity of Jesus Christ is mani
fested. How was the Divine Incarnation accom
plished in man ? Here, as in the union of the
soul and the body, as in the creation, arises the
mystery; but if we cannot fathom the reason
of it, the fact not the less exists. When this
fact has taken the form of dogma, theology has
sought to explain it. In my opinion, this was
a mistake ; theology has obscured the fact in
developing and commenting upon it. It is the
fact itself of the Incarnation which constitutes
the Christian faith, and which rises above all
definitions and all theological controversies. To
disregard this fact to deny the divinity of Jesus
Christ is to deny, to overthrow the Christian
religion, which would never have been what it
76 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
is, and would never have accomplished what it
has, but that the Divine Incarnation was its
principle, and Jesus Christ God and Man its
author.
V. THE REDEMPTION.
I ENTER into the sanctuary of the Christian
faith.
God has done more than manifest himself in
Jesus Christ. He has done more than place upon
the earth and before men His own living image,
the type of sanctity and the model of life. The
Creator has accomplished, through Jesus Christ,
toward man, His creature, an act of His benefi
cence and at the same time of His sovereign
power. Jesus Christ is not only God made man
to spread the divine light upon men ; He is God
made man to conquer and efface in man moral
evil, the fruit of the sin of man. He brings not
only light and law, but pardon and salvation.
And it is at the price of His own suffering, of
SECOND MEDITATION. 77
His own sacrifice, that He brings these to them.
He is the type of self-devotion at the same time
as of sanctity. He has submitted to be a victim
in order to be a saviour. The Incarnation leads
to the Cross, and the Cross to the Eedemption.
Here are the supreme dogma and mystery.
Here are revealed plainly the sense and the im
port of Christianity. By what ways did Jesus
Christ penetrate the human soul to accomplish
this great work ? How did He win the human
soul to the Christian faith, in order to snatch it
from evil and to save it ?
When man fails in the duty of which he
recognises the law, when he commits the wrong
which he is bound to shun, when, after sin,
repentance arises within him, and a sense of the
necessity of expiation is soon joined with this
sentiment of repentance, the moral instinct of
man teaches that repentance does not suffice to
efface the fault, and that it requires to be
expiated: reparation supposes suffering.
And when the religious sentiment is joined to
78 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
the moral sentiment, when man believes in God,
and sees in Him the author and dispenser of the
moral law, he regards himself as guilty of trans
gression toward God whom he has disobeyed, he
feels the need of being pardoned and of being
restored to the favour of the Sovereign Master
whom he has offended.
Among all nations, in all religions, under all
social forms, these two instincts as to the
necessity of expiation to ensue upon the fault,
and the necessity of pardon to follow the trans
gression appear natural and inherent in the
human soul. They have been at all times and
in all places, the source of a multitude of beliefs
and practices ; some pure and touching, others
foolish and odious : these may all be briefly com
prised in the single expression, sacrifices. The his
tories of all nations, barbarous or civilized, ancient
or modern, teem with sacrificial rites of every
description, whether they be of a nature gross
or mystical, of a performance mild or bloody ;
rites invented and celebrated either to expiate
SECOND MEDITATION. 79
the sins of man, or to appease the anger of God
and regain His favour.
Nor is this all ; we have here to note another
moral fact, not less real although it seems
stranger to the eyes of superficial reason. Man
kind has believed that a fault might be expiated
by another than its author, that innocent victims
might be efficaciously offered up to influence God,
and to save the guilty. This belief has led to
sacrifices no less absurd than atrocious : the pre
tended expiation has become an additional crime :
it has at the same time been also the source of
heroic acts and sublime examples of self-devotion.
Both the domestic records of families and the
public histories of nations have furnished us
with admirable instances of innocence voluntarily
offering itself as a sacrifice, taking upon itself
the penalty, the suffering, the death, to expiate
the sin of others, and to win from Divine Justice
now satisfied the pardon of the offender.
And are we then to regard this merely as a
pious, a generous illusion, a devotedness as vain
80 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
as admirable ? Yes, such is the view that all those
must adopt who believe neither in Providence
nor prayer, nor in the existence of any efficacious
relation between the actions of man and the pur
poses of God ; no solidarity between men, no
connection between the sacrifice of him who
practises the act of self-devotion, and the destiny
of him who is its object. But those who have
faith in the living God, in His continued presence,
and His never-sleeping providence, those who
believe that nothing in man, whether it be good
or whether it be evil, is in vain, that every moral
act bears its fruit visible or invisible, immediate
or remote, such as these cannot fail to feel, to
have, as it were, a presentiment, that in such self-
sacrifice of the innocent for the salvation of the
guilty, there exists a mysterious virtue. The
secret of this it may not be given them to fathom,
but it nevertheless gives life in their bosom to the
hope that such sublime devotion will not fail of
its object.
And now, to pass from this feeling, and from
SECOND MEDITATION. 81
the acts of man, whose reality no one can dispute,
to the corresponding dogmas of Christianity, let
me, by the side of these acts of devotedness and
self-sacrifice of the human creature in his inno
cence seeking to atone for the sins of the human
creature who is guilty, place the self-devotion and
the self-sacrifice of Jesus Christ, the Man-God,
tendered to ransom from sin the race of man
kind and to open to it the way of salvation ; who
is not struck by this sublime analogy? What
connection and harmony between the purest, the
most generous, instincts of the human soul, and
the dogma of God s Eedemption \ I touch upon
none of the questions, I enter into none of the
controversies which have sprung up with respect
to this dogma of Kedemption ; I do not weigh
with a view to compare faith and works, nor do I
essay to assign the part due to divine grace or to
human virtue ; I do not define or seek to number
the elect, but I pause upon the fact itself of the
Redemption by Jesus Christ, the fact upon which
the dogma itself reposes. All that the most
82 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
renowned heroes, the most glorious saints of
humanity have striven to accomplish, in order to
expiate the sins of any creature or any nation,
Jesus Christ the Elect of God, the Son of God,
the God-Man, came to effect for all mankind, by
means of incomparable sorrow, humiliation, and
sufferings. And, as was affirmed by St. Paul in
the first century, and by Bossuet in the seven
teenth, this very suffering, this humiliation, this
martyrdom of Jesus Christ, have constituted
his victory and his empire. And I would ask,
what other spectacle than that of God made man
to constitute himself victim made victim to
become the saviour could have excited in the
soul of mankind those outbursts of admiration, of
respect, and of love, that ardent, invincible, and
contagious faith, of which the Apostles and the
primitive Christians have left us the evidences and
the example 1 It was requisite that the victim
and the sacrifice should be equal to the work.
That work was the Christian religion, that incom
parable system of facts, dogmas, precepts, pro-
SECOND MEDITATION. 83
mises, which, in the midst of all the doubts and
all the controversies of the mind of man, have for
nineteen centuries afforded satisfaction and solu
tion to those aspirings of the human race, which
nature prompts, whether they assume the form
of religious instincts or religious problems.
o 2
THIED MEDITATION.
THE SUPERNATURAL.
To a system so grand, and in such profound
harmony with man s own nature, an objection
is made which is thought decisive; that system
proclaims the Supernatural, has the Supernatural
for its principle and foundation. It is objected
that the Supernatural itself has no existence.
This objection is not novel, but it has at this
moment in appearance assumed a more serious
and formidable shape than ever. It is in the
name of science itself, of all the human sciences,
of the physical sciences, historical science, philo
sophical science, that the pretension is made that
is to reduce the Supernatural to a nonentity, and
to banish it from the world and from man.
The reverence that I feel for science is infinite.
THIRD MEDITATION. 85
I would have it as free and unshackled as I would
desire to see it honoured. But I would at the
same time like to see it deal somewhat more
rigorously and logically with itself. I would like
to see it less exclusively absorbed by its own
peculiar labours and occupations, its momentary
successes ; more careful not to forget or omit any
of the ideas or any of the facts which bear upon
the subject with which it deals, and for which in
its solution it has still to account.
In whatever quarter, at this day, the wind may
be, the abolition of the Supernatural is a difficult
enterprise, for the belief in the Supernatural is a
fact natural, primitive, universal, constant in the
life and history of the human race. We may
interrogate mankind in all times and places, in
all states of society and degrees of civilization,
we find it always and everywhere spontaneously
believing in facts and causes beyond the sphere
of this palpable world, of this living piece of
mechanism termed nature. In vain do we ex
tend, explain, amplify nature itself; the instinct
86 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
of man, the instinct of human masses, has never
suffered that nature to confine it : it has always
sought and seen something beyond.
It is this belief instinctive, and hitherto inde
structible which is qualified as a radical error ;
this universal and enduring fact in man s history
it is which men seek to abolish. They go farther;
they affirm that it is already abolished that the
people no longer believe in the Supernatural, and
that any attempt to bring them back to it would
be vain. Incredible conceit of man ! What,
because in a corner of the world in one day
among ages brilliant progress may have been
made in natural and historical science because in
the name of the sciences, and in brilliant books,
the Supernatural has been combated, they pro
claim the Supernatural vanquished, abolished ; and
we hear the judgment pronounced, not merely in
the name of the learned, but of the people ! Have
you then completely forgotten, or have you never
thoroughly comprehended, humanity and the
history of humanity ? Do you ignore absolutely
THIRD MEDITATION. 87
what the people really is, and what all those
nations are that cover the surface of the earth 1
Have you never then penetrated into those mil
lions of souls in which the belief in the Super
natural is and abides, present and active even
when the words which move their lips disown it ?
Are you then unconscious of the immense dis
tance which there is between the depths and the
surface of those souls, between the variable breaths
which only ruffle the minds of men, and the im
mutable instincts which preside over their very
being ? True, there are, in our days, amongst
the people, many fathers, mothers, children, who
believe themselves incredulous, and mock scorn
fully at miracles; but follow them in the inti
macy of their homes, amongst the trials of their
lives, how do these parents act, when their child
is ill, those farmers when their crops are threat
ened, those sailors when they float upon the
waters a prey to the tempest ? They elevate
their eyes to heaven, they burst forth in prayer,
they invoke that Supernatural power said by you
88 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
to be abolished in their very thought. By their
spontaneous and irresistible acts they give to
your words and to their own a striking dis
avowal.
But to advance a step towards you, admitted that
the faith in the Supernatural is abolished ; let us
enter together that society and those classes to
whom this moral ruin is a triumph and a vaunt.
What then ensues \ In the place of God s mira
cles, man s miracles make their appearance. They
are searched for, they are called for ; men are
found to invent them, and to contrive them to be
recognised by thousands of beholders. It is not
necessary to go either far in time or wide in
space to see the Supernatural of Superstition
raising itself in the place of the Supernatural
of Eeligion, and Credulity hurrying to meet
Falsehood half-way.
But away with these unhealthy paroxysms
of humanity ; and to return to its sober and
enduring history. We will admit that the
instinctive belief in the Supernatural has been
THIRD MEDITATION. 89
the source and abides the foundation of all reli
gions, of religion in the most general sense of
the word, and of essential religion. The most
serious, at the same time the most perplexed, of
the thinkers who in our days have approached
the subject, M. Edmond Scherer, saw plainly
enough that that was the question at issue, and
he has so put it in the third of his " Conversa
tions Theologiques," noble yet sad imaging forth
of the fermentation in his own ideas and the
struggles which they occasion in his soul. " The
Supernatural is not a something external to
religion," says one of the two speakers between
whom M. Scherer supposes the discussion, "it
is religion itself." "No," says the other, "the
Supernatural is not the peculiar element of reli
gion, but rather of superstition : the Supernatural
fact has no relation with the human soul, for it
is the essence of the Supernatural that it goes
beyond all those conditions which constitute
credibility ; its essence indeed is the being anti-
Jtuinan" The discussion continues and becomes
90 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
animated : the contrary nature of the perplexi
ties experienced by the two speakers becomes
manifest. " Perhaps/ says the Kationalist, " the
Supernatural was a necessary form of religion for
ill cultivated minds : but rightly or wrongly, our
modern civilization rejects miracles ; without posi
tive denial, it remains indifferent to them. Even
the preacher knows not how to deal with them;
the more he is in earnest, the more his Christian
feeling has inwardness and vitality, the more
does the miracle also disappear from his teaching.
Miracles formerly constituted the great force of
the sermon, at the present day what are they
but a secret source of embarrassment \ Every
body feels vaguely when confronted by the mar
vellous accounts in our sacred volumes, what he
feels when confronted by the Legends of the
Saints ; it is impossible for that to be religion,
it is only its superfcetation." " It is true," ex
claims with sorrow the hesitating Christian, " we
believe no longer in miracles ; you might have
added that neither do we any more believe in
THIRD MEDITATION. 91
God himself ; the two things go together. We
hear much now-a-days of Christian Spiritualism
of the religion of the conscience, and you yourself
seem to see that men in giving up miracles are
making progress in religion. Ah ! why is it that
the intimate experience of my own heart cannot
express itself in a forcible protest against any
such opinion \ "Whenever I find my faith in
miraculous agency vacillating within me, the
image of my God seems to be fading away from
my eyes : He ceases to be for me God the free,
the living, the personal ; the God with whom
the soul converses, as with a master and friend ;
and this holy dialogue once interrupted, what
is left us \ How does life become sad ? how
does it lose its illusions I Keduced to the
satisfaction of mere physical wants, to eat, to
drink, to sleep, to make money, deprived of all
horizon, how puerile does our maturity appear,
how sorrowful our old age, how meaningless OUT
anxieties !
"No more mystery, no more innocence, no more
92 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
infinity, no longer any heaven above our heads,
no more poesy. Ah ! be sure : the incredulity
which rejects the miracle has a tendency to
unpeople heaven, and to disenchant the earth.
The Supernatural is the natural sphere of the
soul. It is the essence of its faith, of its hope,
of its love. I know how specious criticism is,
how victorious its arguments often appear ; but I
know one thing besides, and perhaps I might
here even appeal to your own testimony ; in
ceasing to believe in what is miraculous, the soul
finds that it has lost the secret of divine life ;
henceforth it is urged downwards towards the
abyss, soon it lies on the earth, and not seldom
in the dirt."
In his turn the disbeliever in the Super
natural is troubled and saddened : " Listen/ he
says : " the history of humanity seems to be some
times moving in obedience to the following
scheme. The world begins with religion, and,
referring all phenomena to a first cause, it sees
God everywhere. Then comes philosophy, which,
THIRD MEDITATION. 93
having discovered the connection of secondary
causes, and the laws of their operation, makes a
corresponding deduction from the direct inter
vention of divinity, and then founding itself
upon the idea of necessity (for it is only neces
sity which falls within the domain of science,
and science is in fact but the knowledge of what
is necessary) ; philosophy tends in its very fun
damental principle to exclude God from the
world. It does more ; it finishes by denying
human liberty as it has denied God. The reason
is evident : liberty is a cause beyond the sphere
of the necessary connection of causes, a first
cause, a cause which serves as cause to itself:
and from that moment philosophy, unequal to
any explanation, feels itself disposed to deny that
first cause. A philosophy true to itself will ever
be fatalistic. For from that moment philosophy
corrupts and destroys itself. When it has no
other God than the universe, no other man than
the chief of the mammalia, what is it but a mere
system of Zoology \ Zoology constitutes the whole
94 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
science of the epoch, of the Materialists, and to
speak plainly, that is our position at the present
day. But materialism can never be the be-all
and the end-all of the human race. Corrupt and
enervated, society is passing through immense
catastrophes, is falling in ruins ; the iron harrow
of Eevolution is breaking up mankind like the
clods of the field ; in the bloody furrows germi
nate new races ; the soul in the agony of its dis
tress believes once more ; it resumes its faith in
virtue, it finds again the language of prayer.
To the age of the Kenaissance succeeded that of
the Eeformation ; to the Germany of Frederick
the Great, the Germany of 1812. So faith
springs up for ever and ever out of its ashes.
Ah, that I must add it, humanity rises again but
to resume the march which I have just described.
But can it be said of it besides, that like this
Globe of ours it is making any movement in
advance whilst it is so turning round itself, and
if it does so advance, towards what is it gravi
tating I
THIRD MEDITATION. 95
Whither, whither, O Lord, inarches the earth in the heavens ? " *
But it is not towards heaven that the earth
would march if it followed the path in which
the adversaries of the Supernatural are impel
ling it. It is this peculiarity, they say, of the
Supernatural, that being] incredible, it is in it3
very essence anti-human. Now it is precisely to
something not anti-human but superhuman that
the human soul aspires, and there seeks to realize
these aspirations in the Supernatural. We should
be never weary of repeating it ; the whole finite
world in its entirety, with all its facts and all its
laws, comprising indeed man himself, suffices not
for the soul of man ; it requires something grander
and more perfect for the subject of its contem
plation, the object of its love ; it desires to fix its
trust in something more stable; to lean upon
something less fragile. This supreme and sublime
ambition it is to which religion, in its widest
sense, gives birth and supplies nourishment ; and
* Melange do Critique Religieuse, par Edmoud Scherer
Conversations Thoologiqms, pp. U>9 187.
98 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
this supreme and sublime ambition it is also that
the religion of Christ more particularly responds
to and satisfies. Let those, therefore, who natter
themselves that although abolishing the belief in
the Supernatural, they leave Christians- still Chris
tians, undeceive themselves ; what they are abo
lishing, destroying, is very religion, for their
arguments assail all religion in general, and
Christianity in particular. It may be that they
do not inflict upon themselves all this evil, and
that in retaining a sincere religious sentiment they
really believe themselves nearly Christians ; the
soul struggles against the errors of the thought,
and a moral suicide is a rare spectacle. But the
evil even in spreading unveils more plainly its
nature and increases in intensity; besides men, in
masses, draw from error far more logical con
clusions than the man ever did in whom the error
had its origin. The people are not the learned,
neither are they philosophers, and only once suc
ceed in destroying in them all faith in the Super
natural, and you may consider it certain that the
THIRD MEDITATION. 97
faith in Christ must have previously disappeared.
Have you well weighed all this ? Have you
pictured to yourself what a man, what mankind,
what the soul of man, what human society itself
would become if religion were in effect abolished,
if religious faith entirely disappeared ? I will not
give way to anguish of soul or sinister presen
timents, but I do not hesitate to affirm that no
imagination can represent with adequate fidelity
what would take place in us and around us if the
place at present occupied by Christian belief were
on a sudden to become vacant, and its empire
annihilated. No one could pronounce to what
degree of disorder and degradation humanity
would be precipitated. But awful indeed would
be the result if all faith in the Supernatural were
extinct in the soul, and if man had in a super
natural state neither trust nor hope.
It is not my design, lm\v< -\ vr, to confine myself
heiv to the question regarded merely in its moral,
practical light; I approach the Supernatural as
viewed with the eyea of free and speculative reason.
THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
It is condemned for its very name s sake. No
thing is or can be, it is said, beyond and above
nature. Nature is one and complete ; everything
is comprised in it ; in it, of necessity, all things
cohere, enchain, and develop themselves.
We are here in thorough pantheism that is
to say, in absolute atheism. I do not hesitate
to give to pantheism its real name. Amongst
the men who at the present day declare them
selves the opponents of the Supernatural, most,
certainly, do not believe that they are nor do they
desire to be atheists. But let me tell them that
they are leading others whither they neither think
nor wish themselves to go. The negation of the
Supernatural, and that in the name of the
unity and universality of nature, is pantheism,
and pantheism is nothing more nor less than
atheism. In the sequel of these Meditations,
when I come to speak particularly of the actual
state of the Christian religion, and of the different
systems which combat it, I will in this respect
justify my assertion ; at present, I have to repel
THIRD MEDITATION. 99
direct attacks upon the Supernatural attacks
less fundamental than those of pantheism, but
not less serious, for in truth, whether men know
it or not, and whether they mean it or not, all
attacks in this warfare reach the same object,
and as soon as the Supernatural is the aim it is
religion itself that receives the shaft.
The fixity of the laws of nature is appealed to ;
that, say they, is the palpable and incontestable
fact established by the experience of mankind, and
upon which rests the conduct of human life. In
presence of the permanent order of nature and the
immutability of its laws, we cannot admit any
partial, any momentary infractions ; we cannot
believe in the Supernatural, in miracles.
True, general and constant laws do govern
nature. Are we, therefore, to affirm that those
laws are necessary, and that no deviation from
them is possible in nature ? "Who is there that
does not discern an essential, an absolute difference
between what is general and what is necessary ?
The permanence of the actual laws of nature is a
H 2
100 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
fact established by experience, but it is not the
only fact possible, the only fact conceivable by
reason ; those laws might have been other laws,
they may change. Several of them have not
always been what they now are, for science itself
proves that the condition of the universe has been
different from what it is at present ; the universal
and permanent order of which we form part, and
in which we confide, has not always been what we
now see it ; it has had a beginning ; the creation
of the actual system of nature and of its laws is a
fact as certain as the system itself is certain.
And what is creation but a supernatural fact, the
act of a Power superior to the actual laws of
nature, and which has power to modify them
just as much as it has had power to establish
them ? The first of miracles is God himself.
There is a second miracle man. I resume
what I have already said ; by his title as a moral
being and free agent, man lives beyond and above
the influence of the general and permanent laws
of nature ; he creates by his will effects which
THIRD MEDITATION. 101
are not at all the necessary consequence of any
pre-existent law ; and those effects take their
place in a system absolutely distinct and inde
pendent from the visible order which governs the
universe. The moral liberty of man is a fact as
certain, and natural, as the order of nature, and it
is at the same time a supernatural fact that is
to say, essentially foreign to the order of nature
and to its laws.
God is the being moral and free par excel
lence, that is to say, the being excellently
capable of acting as first cause beyond the influ
ence of causation. By his title as a moral being
and free agent, man is in intimate relation with
God. Who shall define the possible contingen
cies, or fathom the mysteries of this relation ?
Who dare to say that God cannot modify, that He
never does modify, according to his plans with
respect to the moral system and to man, t In-
laws which He has made and which He main
tains in the material order of nature ?
Some have hesitated absolutely to deny the
102 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
possibility of supernatural facts ; and so their
attack is indirect. If those facts, say they,
are not impossible, they are incredible, for no
particular testimony of man in favour of a
miracle can give a certitude equal to that which,
on the opposite side, results from the experience
which men have of the fixity of the laws of
nature.
" It is experience only/ says Hume, "which
gives authority to human testimony; and it
is the same experience which assures us of
the laws of nature. When therefore these two
kinds of experience are contrary, we have
nothing to do, but subtract the one from the
other, and embrace an opinion, either on one
side or the other, with that assurance which
arises from the remainder. But according to the
principles here explained, this subtraction, with
regard to all popular religions, amounts to an
entire annihilation : and therefore we may estab
lish it as a maxim, that no human testimony
can have such force as to prove a miracle, and
THIRD MEDITATION. 103
make it a just foundation for any such system
of religion."""" It is in this reasoning of Hume
that the opponents "of miracles shut themselves
up as in an impregnable fortress to refuse them
all credence.
What confusion of facts and ideas ! What
a superficial solution of one of the grandest
problems of our nature! What! a simple opera
tion of arithmetic, with respect to two experi
mental observations, estimated in ciphers, is to
decide the question whether the universal belief
of the race of man in the Supernatural is well-
founded or simply absurd ; whether God only
acts upon the world and upon man by laws
established once for all, or whether He still con
tinues to make, in the exercise of his power, use
of his liberty ! Not only does the sceptic Hume
here show himself unconscious of the grandeur
of the problem ; he mistakes even in the motives
* Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects, by David Hume ;
Essay on Miracles, vol. iii. p. 119145, Bale, 1793. [Same
work, p. 91, Loudou, IGmo, 1800. TRANSLATOR.]
104 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION".
upon which he founds his shallow conclusion ; for
it is not from human experience alone that human
testimony draws her authority : this authority
has sources more profound, and a worth anterior
to experience : it is one of the natural bonds, one
of the spontaneous sympathies which unite with
one another men and the generations of men.
Is it by virtue of experience that the child trusts
to the words of its mother, that it has faith in
all she tells it? The mutual trust that men re
pose in what they say or transmit to each other
is an instinct, primitive, spontaneous, which
experience confirms or shakes, sets up again or
sets bounds to, but which experience does not
originate.
I find in the same essay of Hume,* this
other passage: "The passion of surprise and
wonder, arising from miracles, being an agree
able emotion, gives a sensible tendency towards
the belief of those events from which it is
derived."
* Hume s Essay on Miracles, p. 128, ubi supra.
THIRD MEDITATION. 105
Thus, if we arc to credit Hume, it is merely
for his pleasure, for the diversion of the imagina
tive faculty, that man believes in the Super
natural ; and beneath this impression though
real, still only of a secondary nature which does
no more than skim the surface of the human
soul, the philosopher has no glimpse at all of the
profound instincts and superior requisitions which
have sway over him.
But why an attack of this character, so in
direct and little complete? Why should Hume
limit himself to the proposition that miracles can
never be historically proved, instead of at once
affirming the impossibility of miracles themselves?
This is what the opponents of the Supernatural
virtually think ; and it is because they commence
by regarding miracles as impossible that they
apply themselves to destroy the value of the
evidences by which they are supported. If the
evidence which surrounds the cradle of Christianity,
if the fourth, if even the tenth part of it were
adduced in support of facts of a nature extra-
]06 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
ordinary, unexpected, or unheard of, but still not
having a character positively supernatural, the
proof would be accepted as unexceptionable : the
facts for certain. In appearance, it is merely the
proof by witnesses of the Supernatural that is
contested ; whereas, in reality, the very possi
bility of the thing is denied that is sought to
be proved. The question ought to be put as it
really is, instead of such a solution being offered
as is a mere evasion.
Lately, however, men of logical minds and
daring spirits have not hesitated to speak more
frankly and plainly. " The new dogma, they
say, the fundamental principle of criticism, is
the negation of the Supernatural Those
still disposed to reject this principle have nothing
to do with our books, and we, on our side, have
no cause to feel disquietude at their opposition
and their censure, for we do not write for them.
And if this discussion is altogether avoided, it
is because it is impossible to enter into it with
out admitting an unacceptable proposition, viz.,
THIRD MEDITATION. 107
one which presumes that the Supernatural can in
any given case be possible.*
I do not reproach the disciples of the school
of Hume for having evinced greater timidity : if
they attacked the Supernatural by a side way, not
as being impossible in itself, but as being merely
incapable of proof by human testimony, they
did not do so designedly and with deceitful
purpose. Let us render them more justice,
and do them more honour. A prudent and an
honest instinct held them back on the declivity
upon which they had placed themselves ; they
felt that to deny even the possibility of the
Supernatural, was to enter at full sail into pan
theism and fatalism, that is to say, was the same
thing as at once dispensing with God and doing
away with the free agency of man. Their moral
sense, their good sense, withheld them from
any such course. The fundamental error of the
* Conservation, Involution, rt Positivism^, par M. Littre,
Preface, p. \.\\i. :ml following pages M. Havet, Revue des
Deux MomK-s, 1 A. nit, 1803.
108 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
adversaries of the Supernatural is that they con
test it in the name of human science, and that
they class the Supernatural amongst facts within
the domain of science, whereas the Supernatural
does not fall within that domain, and the very
attempt so to treat it has led, indeed, to its being
entirely rejected.
FOUETH MEDITATION.
THE LIMITS OF SCIENCE.
AN eminent moralist, who was at the same
time not only a theologian, but a philosopher
well versed in the physical sciences, I mean Dr.
Chalmers, professor at the University of Edin
burgh, and corresponding member of the Institute
of France, wrote in his work on Natural The
ology, a chapter entitled : On mans partial and
Iim/tl knowledge of divine things. The first
pages are as follows :
" The true modern philosophy never makes
more characteristic exhibition of itself, than at the
limit which separates the known from the un
known. It is there that we ln-hold it in a twofold
aspect that of tin- utnmst deierence and respect
i nr all the findings of experience within this limit;
110 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
that, on the other hand, of the utmost disinclination
and distrust for all those fancies of ingenious or
plausible speculation which have their place in
the ideal region beyond it. To call in the aid of
a language which far surpasses our own in expres
sive brevity, its office is indagare rather than
divinare! The products of this philosophy are
copies and not creations. It may discover a
system of nature, but not devise one. It pro
ceeds first on the observation of individual facts
and if these facts are ever harmonised into a
system, this is only in the exercise of a more
extended observation. In the work of systema-
tising, it makes no excursion beyond the territory
of actual nature for they are the actual pheno
mena of nature which form the first materials of
this philosophy and they are the actual resem
blances of these phenomena that form, as it were,
the cementing principle, to which the goodly
fabrics of modern science owe all the solidity
and all the endurance that belong to them. It
is this chiefly which distinguishes the philosophy
FOURTH MEDITATION. Ill
of the present day from that of by-gone ages.
The one was mainly an excogitative, the other
mainly a descriptive process a description how
ever extending to the likenesses as -well as to the
peculiarities of things ; and, by means of these
likenesses, these observed likenesses alone, often
realising a more glorious and magnificent harmony
than was ever pictured forth by all the imagina
tions of all the theorists.
"In the mental characteristics of this philo
sophy, the strength of a full-grown understanding
is blended with the modesty of childhood. The
ideal is sacrificed to the actual and, however
splendid or fondly cherished a hypothesis may
be, yet if but one phenomenon in the real history
of nature stand in the way, it is forthwith and
conclusively abandoned. To some the renuncia
tion may IK- as painful as the cutting off a right
hand, or the plm-king out a right eye yet, if
true to the great principle of the Baconian
school, it must ! >ul>mitted to. With its hardy
disciples one valid proof outweighs a thousand
112 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
plausibilities and the resolute firmness where
with they bid away the speculations of fancy is
only equalled by the childlike compliance where
with they submit themselves to the lessons of
experience.
"It is thus that the same principle which
guides to a just and a sound philosophy in all
that lies within the circle of human discovery,
leads also to a most unpresuming and unpro
nouncing modesty in reference to all that lies
beyond it. And should some new light spring
up on this exterior region, should the information
of its before hidden mysteries break in upon us
from some quarter that was before inaccessible,
it will be at once perceived (on the supposition
of its being a genuine and not an illusory light)
that, of all other men, they are the followers of
Bacon and Newton who should pay the most
unqualified respect to aU its revelations. In
their case it comes upon minds which are without
prejudice, because on that very principle, which
is most characteristic of our modern science, upon
FOURTH MEDITATION. 113
minds without preoccupation .... The strength
of his confidence in all the ascertained facts of
the terra cognita is at one or in perfect harmony
with the humility of his diffidence in regard to
all the conceived plausibilities of the terra
incognita.
"And let it further be remarked of the self-
denial which is laid upon us by Bacon s Philo
sophy, that, like all other self-denial in the cause
of truth or virtue, it hath its reward. In giving
ourselves up to its guidance, we have often to
quit the fascinations of beautiful theory ; but in
exchange for them, we are at length regaled by
the higher and substantial beauties of actual
nature. There is a stubbornness in facts before
which the specious imagination is compelled to
give way; and perhaps the mind never suffers
more painful laceration than when, after having
vainly attempted to force nature into a compli
ance with her own splendid generalizations, she,
on the appearance of some rebellious and imprac
ticable phenomenon, has to practise a force upon
114 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
herself when she thus finds the goodly specula
tion superseded by the homely and unwelcome
experience. It seemed at the outset a cruel
sacrifice, when the world of speculation, with all
its manageable and engaging simplicities, had to
be abandoned ; and on becoming the pupils of
observation, we, amid the varieties of the actual
world around us, felt as if bewildered, if not lost,
among the perplexities of a chaos. This was a
period of greatest sufferance ; but it has had a
glorious termination. In return for the assiduity
wherewith the study of nature hath been prose
cuted, she hath made a more abundant revelation
of her charms. Order hath arisen out of confu
sion, and in the ascertained structure of the
universe there are now found to be a state and a
sublimity beyond all that was ever pictured by
the mind in the days of her adventurous and un
fettered imagination. Even viewed in the light
of a noble and engaging spectacle for the fancy to
dwell upon, who would ever think of comparing
with the system of Newton, either that celestial
FOURTH MEDITATION. 115
machinery of Des Cartes, which was impelled by
whirlpools of ether, or that still more cumbrous
planetarium of cycles and epicycles which was the
progeny of a remoter age ? It is thus that at the
commencement of the observational process there
is the abjuration of beauty. But it soon reappears
in another form, and brightens as we advance, and
at length there arises on solid foundation, a fairer
and goodlier system than ever floated in airy
romance before the eye of genius. Nor is it
difficult to perceive the reason of this. What we
discover by observation is the product of divine
imagination bodied forth by creative power into a
stable and enduring reality. What we devise by
our own ingenuity is but the product of human
imagination. The one is the solid archetype of
those conceptions which are in the mind of God :
the other is the shadowy representation of those
conceptions which are in the mind of man. It is
just as with the labourer, who, by excavating the
rubbish which hides and besets some noble archi
tecture, does more for the gratification of our
i 2
116 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
taste, than if by his unpractised hand he should
attempt to regale us with plans and sketches of
his own. And so the drudgery of experimental
science, in exchange for that beauty whose fasci
nations it withstood at the outset of its career,
has evolved a surpassing beauty from among the
realities of truth and nature
" The views contemplated through the medium
of observation, are found not only to have a just
ness in them, but to have a grace and a grandeur
in them far beyond all the visions which are
contemplated through the medium of fancy, or
which ever regaled the fondest enthusiast in the
enchanted walks of speculation and poetry. But
neither the grace nor the grandeur alone would,
without evidence, have secured acceptance for
any opinion. It must first be made to undergo,
and without ceremony, the freest treatment from
human eyes and human hands. It is at one time
stretched on the rack of an experiment, at another
it has to pass through fiery trial in the bottom of
a crucible. In another it undergoes a long ques-
FOURTH MEDITATION. 117
tiouing process among the fumes and the filtra-
tions and the intense heat of a laboratory ; and
not till it has been subjected to all this inquisi
torial torture and survived it, is it preferred to a
place in the temple of Truth, or admitted among
the laws and lessons of a sound philosophy."
No one certainly will contest that this is the
language of a fervent disciple of science. It is
impossible to have a keener apprehension of its
beauty, and to accept more completely its laws.
What mathematician, natural philosopher, physio
logist, or chemist, could speak in terms of greater
respect and submission of the necessity of obser
vation, and of the authority of experience ? Dr.
Chalmers is not the less for that a true and fer
vent Christian ; his religious faith equals his
scientific exactitude : he receives Christ, and pro
fesses Christ s doctrine with as firm a voice as he
does Bacon and Bacon s method. Not that for
him religious belief is the mere result of educa
tion, of tradition, of habit ; but it, on the contrary,
springs as much from reflection and learning, as
118 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
his acquirements in natural science themselves ;
in each sphere he has probed the very sources and
weighed the motives of his convictions. How
did he, in each instance, reach such a haven of
repose ? "Whence in him this harmony between
the philosopher and the Christian 1
Let us again allow Dr. Chalmers to speak for
himself :
"It is of importance here to remark that the
enlargement of our knowledge in all the natural
sciences, so far from adding to our presumption,
should only give a profounder sense of our natural
incapacity and ignorance in reference to the science
of theology. It is just as if in studying the policy
of some earthly monarch we had made the before
unknown discovery of other empires and distant
territories whereof we knew nothing but the exis
tence and the name. This might complicate the
study without making the object of it at all more
comprehensible, and so of every new wonder which
philosophy might lay open to the gaze of inquirers.
It might give us a larger perspective of the crea-
FOURTH MEDITATION. 119
tion than before, yet, in fact, cast a deeper shade
of obscurity over the counsels and ways of the
Creator. We might at once obtain a deeper
insight into the secrets of the workmanship, and
yet feel, and legitimately feel, to be still more
deeply out of reach, the secret purposes of Him
who worketh all in all. Every discovery of an
addition to the greatness of his works may bring
with it an addition to the unsearchableness of his
ways ....
" That telescope which has opened our way to
suns and systems innumerable, leaves the moral
administration connected with them in deepest
secresy. It has made known to us the bare
existence of other worlds ; but it would require
another instrument of discovery ere we could
understand their relation to ourselves, as products
of the same Almighty Hand, as parts or members
of a family under the same paternal guardianship.
This more extended survey of the Material Uni
verse just tells us how little we know of the
Moral or Spiritual Universe. It reveals nothing
120 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
to us of the worlds that roll in space, but the bare
elements of Motion, and Magnitude, and Number
and so leaves us at a more hopeless distance
from the secret of the Divine administration than
when we reasoned of the Earth as the Universe,
of our species as the alone rational family of God
that He had implicated with body, or placed in
the midst of a corporeal system ....
" To know that we cannot know certain things,
is in itself positive knowledge, and a knowledge of
the most safe and valuable nature .... There
are few services of greater value to the cause of
knowledge than the delineation of its boundaries.""""
In holding this language, what in effect is
Dr. Chalmers doing ? He is separating what is
finite from what is infinite, the thing created from
the Creator, the world subject to government from
the Sovereign that governs it ; and in marking
this line of demarcation, he says in his modesty
to science, what God in his power says to
* Chalmers s Works : Natural Theology, pp. 249265 ;
Glasgow,
FOURTH MEDITATION. 121
the ocean: "Thus far shalt thou go, and no
farther/
Doctor Chalmers was right ; the limits of the
finite world are those also of human science : how
far within these vast limits science may extend
her empire, who shall affirm ? But what we cer-
t a inly may assert is, that she never can exceed
them. The finite world alone is within her reach,
the only world that she can fathom. It is only
in the finite world that man s mind can fully grasp
the facts, observe them in all their extent, and
under all their aspects, discriminate their relations
and their laws (which constitute also a species of
facts), and so verify the system to which they should
be referred. This it is that makes what we term
scientific processes and labour, and human sciences
are the results.
What need to mention that in speaking of the
finite world, I do not mean to speak of the mate
rial world alone ? Moral facts there also are which
fall under observation, and enter into the domain
of science. The study of man in his actual con-
122 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
dition, whether considered as an individual or as
forming a member of a nation, is also a scientific
study, subject to the same method as that of the ma
terial world : and it is its legitimate province also to
detect in the actual order of this world the laws of
those particular facts to which it addresses itself.
But if the limits of the finite world are those of
human science, they are not those of the human
soul. Man contains in himself ideas and ambi
tious aspirations extending far beyond and rising
far above the finite world, ideas of and aspirations
towards the Infinite, the Ideal, the Perfect, the
Immutable, the Eternal. These ideas and aspi
rations are themselves realities admitted by the
human mind ; but even in admitting them man s
mind comes to a halt ; they give him a presenti
ment of, or to speak with more precision, a reve
lation of, an order of things different from the
facts and laws of the finite world which lies under
his observation ; but whilst man has of this supe
rior order the instinct and the perspective, he can
have of it no positive knowledge. It proceeds
FOURTH MEDITATION. 123
from the sublimity of his nature if he has a glimpse
of Infinity if he aspires to it; whereas it results
from the infirmity of his actual condition if his
positive knowledge is limited by the world in
which he exists.
I was born in the south, under the very sun.
I have yet, for the most part, lived in regions either
of the north, or bordering upon the north, regions
so frequently immersed in mists. When under their
pale sky we look towards the horizon, a fog of
greater or less density limits the view ; the vision
itself might penetrate much farther, but an
external obstacle arrests it ; it does not find there
the light it needs. Kegard now the horizon under
the pure and brilliant sky of the south; the plains,
distant as well as near, are bathed in light ; the
human eye can penetrate there as far as its orga
nization permits. If it pierces no farther, it is
not for want of light, but because its proper and
natural force has attained its limit : the mind
knows that there are spaces beyond that which
the eye traverses, but the eye penetrates them not.
124 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
This is an image of what happens to the mind
itself when contemplating and studying the
universe : it reaches a point where its clear sight,
that is to say its positive appreciation, halts, not
that it finds there the end of things themselves, but
the limit of man s scientific appreciation of them ;
other realities present themselves to him ; he has
a glimpse of them ; he believes in them sponta
neously and naturally ; it is not given to him
to grasp them and to measure them; but he
can neither ignore them, nor know them, neither
have positive knowledge of them, nor refrain from
having faith in them.
I cannot deny myself the pleasure of citing
what I wrote thirteen years ago upon the same
subject, when philosophically examining the real
meaning of the word faith. " The object of every
religious belief/ said I, "is in a certain, a large
measure, inaccessible to human science. Human
science may establish that object s reality ; it may
arrive at the boundary of this mysterious world ;
and assure itself of the existence there of facts
FOURTH MEDITATION. 125
with which man s destiny is connected ; but it is
not given to it so to attain the facts themselves as
to subject them to its examination.
"Their incapacity to do so has struck more
than one philosopher, and has led them to the
conclusion that no such reality exists, that every
religious belief contemplates subjects simply chi
merical. Others, shutting their eyes to their own
incompetency, have dashed daringly forwards
towards the sphere of the supernatural ; and just
as if they had succeeded in penetrating into it, they
have described its facts, resolved its problems,
assigned its laws. It is difficult to say who
shows more foolish arrogance, the man who main
tains that that of which he cannot have positive
knowledge has no real existence, or the man
who pretends to be able to know everything
that actually exists. However this may be,
mankind has never for a single day assented to
either assertion : man s instincts and his actions
have constantly disavowed both the negation of
the disbeliever and the confidence of the theo-
126 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
logian. In spite of the former, he has persisted
in believing in the existence of the unknown
world, and in the reality of the relations which
connect him with it : and notwithstanding the
powerful influences of the latter, he has refused
to admit their having attained their object
raised the veil; and so man has continued to agi
tate the same problems, to pursue the same truths,
as ardently and as laboriously as at the first day,
just as if nothing had been done at all."*
I have just read again the excellent com
pendium given by M. Cousin in his General
History of Philosophy from the most Ancient
Times to the End of the Eighteenth Century.
He establishes that all the philosophical labours
of the human understanding have terminated in
four great systems sensualism, idealism, scepti
cism, and mysticism the sole actors in that
intellectual arena where, in aU ages and amongst
all nations, they are in turn in the position of
combatants and of sovereigns. And, after having
* Meditations et fitudes Morales, p. 170. Paris, 1851.
FOURTH MEDITATION. 127
clearly characterised in their origin and their
development these four systems, M. Cousin adds,
"As for their intrinsic merits, habituate yourselves
to this principle: they have existed; therefore they
had their reason to exist ; therefore they are true
at least in part. Error is the law of our nature : to
it we are condemned ; and in all our opinions and
all our words there is always a large allowance to
be made for error, and too often for absurdity.
But absolute absurdity does not enter into the
mind of man ; it is the excellence of man s
thought, that without some leaven of truth it
admits nothing, and absolute error is impossible.
The four systems which have just been rapidly
laid before you have had each their existence ;
therefore they contain truth, still without being
entirely true. Partially true, and partially false,
these systems reappear at all the great epochs.
Time cannot destroy any one of them, nor can it
beget any new one, because time develops and per
fects the human mind, though without changing
its nature and its fundamental tendencies. Time
128 THE CHRISTIAN KELTG10N.
does no more than multiply and vary almost
infinitely the combinations of the four simple
and elementary systems. Hence originate those
countless systems which history collects and
which it is its office to explain/ *
M. Cousin excels in explaining these number
less philosophical combinations, and in tracing
them all back to the four great systems which
he has defined ; but there is a fact still more
important than the variety of these combinations,
and which calls itself for explanation. Why did
these four essential systems sensualism, idealism,
scepticism, and mysticism, appear from the most
ancient times ? why have they continued to re
produce themselves always and everywhere, with
deductions more or less logical, with greater or
less ability, but still fundamentally always and
everywhere the same? Why, upon these supreme
questions, did the human mind achieve at so early
* Histoire GenSrale de la Philosophic depuis les temps les
plus anciens jusqu a la fin du XVIII Siecle, par M. Victor
Cousin, pp. 431. 1863.
FOURTH MEDITATION. 129
a period, what may be termed, it is true, but
essays at a solution, but which essays in some
sort have exhausted the mind rather than satis
fied it ? How is it that these different systems,
invented with such promptitude, have never been
able either to come to an accord, nor has any
one been able to prevail decidedly against another
and to cause itself to be received as the truth I
Why has philosophy, or, to speak more pre
cisely, why have metaphysics, remained essentially
stationary ; great at their birth, but destined not
to grow : whereas the other sciences those styled
natural sciences have been essentially progres
sive: at first feeble, and making in succession
conquest after conquest ; these they have been
able to retain, until they have formed a domain
day by day more extended and less contested ?
The very fact that suggests these questions
contains the answer to them. Man has, upon
the fundamental subject of metaphysics, a primi
tive light, rather the heritage and dowiy of
human nature, than the conquest of human
130 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
science. The metaphysician appropriates it as
a torch to lighten him on his obscure and ill-
defined path. He finds in man himself a point
of departure at once profound and certain ; but
his aim is God ; that is to say, an aim above his
reach.
Must we, then, renounce the study of the great
(questions which form the subject of metaphysics
as a vain labour, where the human mind is turn
ing indefinitely in the same circle, incapable not
only of attaining the object which it is pursuing,
but of making any advance in its pursuit \
Often, and with more ability than has been
evinced by the Positive school of the present
day, has this judgment been pronounced against
metaphysics. But that judgment man s mind
has never accepted, and never will accept ; the
great problems which pass beyond the finite
world lie propounded before him ; never will
he renounqe the attempt to solve them ; he is
impelled to it by an irresistible instinct, an
instinct full of faith and of hope, in spite of the
FOURTH MEDITATION. }31
repeated failure of his efforts. As man is in the
sphere of action, so is he also in that of thought ;
he aspires higher than it is possible to achieve :
this is his nature and his glory ; to renounce his
aspirations would be declaring his own forfeiture.
But without any such abdication, it is still neces
sary that he should know himself, it is necessary
that he should understand that his strength here
below is infinitely less than his ambition, and
that it is not given him to have any positive
scientific knowledge of that infinite and ideal
world towards which he dashes. The facts and
the problems which he there encounters are such,
that the methods and the laws which direct the
human mind in the study of the finite world are
inapplicable. The infinite is for us the object not
of science but belief, and it is alike impossible
for us either to reject or penetrate it. Let man,
then, feel a profound sentiment of that double
truth : let him, without sacrificing the ambitious
aspirations of his intelligence, recognise the limits
imposed upon his achievements in science ; he
K 2
132 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
will not then be long in also recognising that, in
the relations of the finite with the infinite of
himself with God he stands in need of super
human assistance, and that this does not fail him.
God has given to man what man never can con
quer, and revelation opens to him that world of
the infinite over which, by its own exertions and
of itself alone, man s mind never could spread
light. The light man receives from God himself.
FIFTH MEDITATION.
REVELATION.
WHEN it was objected to Leibnitz " that there
is nothing in the intelligence that has not first
been in the sense," Leibnitz replied, " if not the
intelligence itself." *
In the answer of Leibnitz I will change but a
single word, and substitute for intelligence, soul.
Soul is a term more comprehensive and more
complete than intelligence ; it embraces every
thing in the human being that is not body and
matter ; it is not the mere intelligence, a special
faculty of man ; it is all the intellectual and
moral man.
The soul possesses itself and carries with it
Nihil est in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu.
Nisi iutellectus ipse.
134 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
into life native faculties and an inborn light :
these manifest and develop themselves more and
more as they come into relation with the exterior
world ; but they had still an existence prior to
those relations, and they exercise an important
influence upon what results. The external world
does not create nor essentially change the intel
lectual and moral being that has just come into
life, but it opens to it a stage where that being
acts in accordance at once with its proper nature,
and the conditions and influences in the midst of
which the action takes place. The hypothesis of
a statue endowed with sensibility is a contradic
tion ; in seeking to explain man s first growth, it
loses sight of the entire intellectual and moral
being.
When, as I said before, man first entered the
world, he did not enter it, he could not enter it,
as a new-born babe, with the mere breath of life ;
he was created full grown, with instincts and
faculties complete in their power and capable
of immediate action. We must either deny the
FIFTH MEDITATION. 135
creation and be driven to monstrous hypotheses,
or admit that the human being who now de
velops himself slowly and laboriously, was at
his first appearance mature in body and in mind.
The creation implies then the Eevelation, a
revelation which lighted man at his entrance into
the world, and qualified him from that very
moment to use his faculties and his instincts.
Do we, can we, picture to ourselves the first
man, the first human couple, with a complete
physical development, and yet without the essen
tial conditions of intellectual activity, physically
strong and morally a nonentity, the body of
twenty years and the soul in the first hour of
infancy? Such a fact is self-contradictory, and
impossible of conception.
AVI i at was the positive extent of this primal
revelation, the necessary attendant upon creation,
which occurred in the first relation of God
with man ? No man can say. I open the book
of Genesis and there I read :
" And the Lord God took the man, and put
136 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to
keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man,
saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest
freely eat : But of the tree of the knowledge
of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it : for in
the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely
die. And the Lord God said, It is not good that
the man should be alone ; I will make him an help
meet for him. And out of the ground the Lord
God formed every beast of the field, and every
fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam
to see what he would call them : and whatsover
Adam called every living creature, that was the
name thereof. And Adam gave names to all
cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every
beast of the field ; but for Adam there was not
found an help meet for him. And the Lord God
caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he
slept : and he took one of his ribs, and closed
up the flesh instead thereof ; and the rib, which
the Lord God had taken from man, made he a
woman, and brought her unto the man. And
FIFTH MEDITATION. 187
Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and
flesh of my flesh Therefore shall a man
leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave
unto his wife : and they shall be one flesh."* 1
According, then, to the Bible, the primitive
revelation essentially bore upon the three points,
-marriage, language, and the duty of man s
obedience to God his Creator: Adam received at
the hand of God the moral law of his liberty, the
companion of his life, and the faculty by which
he was enabled to name the creatures that were
around him : in other words, the three sources
of religion, of family, and of science were im
mediately unclosed to him. It is not necessary
here to enter upon any of the questions which
have been raised, as to the human origin of
language, the primitive language, or the formation
of families, with their influence upon the great
organisation of society : the limits of the primi
tive revelation cannot be determined scientifically ;
the fact of the revelation itself is certain. This
* Genesis ii. 1524.
138 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
is the light which lighted the first man from his
first entrance upon life, and without which it
is impossible to conceive that he could have sur
vived.
The primitive revelation did not abandon man
kind on its development and dispersion ; it
accompanied it everywhere, as a general and
permanent revelation. The light which had
lighted the first man spread amongst all nations
and throughout all ages, assuming the character
of ideas, universal and uncontested ; of instincts,
spontaneous and indestructible. No nation has
been without this light, none left to its own un
assisted efforts to grope its way through the
darkness of life. Let not the human understand
ing pride itself too much upon its works ; the
glory does not belong to it alone : what it has
accomplished it has accomplished by aid of the
primitive principles received from God ; in all
his works and all his progress man has had for
point of departure and support that primitive
revelation. All the grand doctrines, all the mighty
FIFTH MEDITATION. 139
institutions, which have governed the world,
whatever intermixture of monstrous and fatal
errors they may have contained, have preserved
a trace of the fundamental verities which were
the dowry of humanity at its birth. God has
forsaken no portion of the human race ; and not
less amidst the errors into which it has fallen,
than in the noble developments which constitute
its glory, we recognise signs of the primitive
teaching derived from its Divine Author.
After the revelation made to the first man, and
in the midst of the general revelation diffused
over all mankind, a great event occurs in history :
a special revelation takes place, and has for its
seat the bosom of an inconsiderable nation, that
had been shut in during sixteen centuries in a
little corner of the world ; and it was thence that,
nineteen centuries ago, that revelation proceeded
to enlighten and to subdue, according to the
predictions of its Author, all the human race.
A man of an imagination as fertile as his
knowledge is profound, who, with an admirable
140 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
candour has in his works associated hpyothesis
and faith, M. Ewald, professor at the University
of Gottingen, has recently thus characterised this
event : " The history of the old Jewish people is
fundamentally the history of the true religion,
proceeding from step to step to its complete
development, rising through all kinds of struggles,
until it achieves a supreme victory, and finally
manifesting itself in all its majesty and power, in
order to spread irresistibly, by its proper virtue,
so as to become the eternal possession and blessing
of all nations." *
How is the great event thus characterised by
M. Ewald proved ? By what marks can we dis
tinguish the Divine origin of this special revelation
that became the Christian religion \ What does
it affirm itself in support of its claim to the moral
conquest of mankind ?
At the very outset, in proving her dogmas and
precepts to have come from God, the Christian
* H. Ewald, Geschichte des Volkes Israel, bis Christus. 2nd
ed., vol. i. p. 9. Gottingen, 1851.
FIFTH MEDITATION. 141
revelation asserts that the documents in which it
is written are themselves of divine origin. The
divine inspiration of the sacred volume is the first
basis of the Christian Faith, the external title of
Christianity to authority over souls. What is
the full import of this title \ What the signi
fication of the inspiration of the sacred volumes ?
SIXTH MEDITATION.
THE INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES.
I HAVE read the sacred volumes over and over
again, I have perused them in very different
dispositions of mind, at one time studying them
as great historical documents, at another admiring
them as sublime works of poetry. I have expe
rienced an extraordinary impression, quite diffe
rent from either curiosity or admiration. I have
felt myself the listener of a language other than
that of the chronicler or the poet ; and under the
influence of a breath issuing from other sources
than human. Not that man does not occupy a
great place in the sacred volumes ; he displays
himself there, on the contrary, with all his pas
sions, his vices, his weaknesses, his ignorance, his
errors ; the Hebrew people shows itself rude, bar
barous, changeable, superstitious, accessible to all
SIXTH MEDITATION. 143
the imperfections, to all the failings, of other
nations. But the Hebrew is not the sole actor
in his history ; he has an Ally, a Protector, a
Master, who intervenes incessantly to command,
inspire, direct, strike, or save. God is there,
always present, acting
" Et ce n est pas un Dieu comme vos dieux frivoles,
Insensibles et sourds, impuissants, mutiles,
De bois, de marbre, ou d or, comme vous le voulez. " *
" Not such a god as are your friv lous gods,
Insensible and deaf, weak, mutilated,
Of wood, or stone, or gold, as you will have them."
It is the God One and Supreme, All Powerful,
the Creator, the Eternal. And even in their for-
getfulness and their disobedience, the Hebrews
believe still in God : He is still the object at once
of their fear, of their hope, and of a faith that per
sists in the midst of the infidelity of their lives.
The Bible is no poem in which man recounts and
sings the adventures of his God combined with his
own ; it is a real drama, a continued dialogue be
tween God and man personified in the Hebrews ;
* Corneille, Polyeucte, acte iv. sc. 3.
144 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
it is, on the one side, God s will and God s action,
and, on the other, man s liberty and man s faith,
now in pious association, now at fatal variance.
The more I have perused the Scriptures, the
more surprised I feel that earnest readers should
not have been impressed as I have been, and that
several should have failed to see the characteristic
of divine inspiration, so foreign to every other
book, so remarkable in this one. That men who
absolutely deny all supernatural action of God in
the world, should not be more disposed to admit it
in the sources of the Bible than elsewhere, is per
fectly comprehensible ; but the attack upon the
divine inspiration of the sacred books has another
motive, and one more likely to prove contagious.
It is not without deep regret that I proceed
in this place to contradict ancient traditions, at
once respected and respectable, and perhaps to
offend sober and sincere convictions. But my
own conviction is stronger than my regret, and it
is still more so because accompanied by another
conviction, which is, that the system that it is my
SIXTH MEDITATION. 145
intention to contest, has occasioned, continues to
occasion, and may still occasion, an immense ill to
Christianity.
Whoever reads without prejudice in the Hebrew
and Greek the original texts of the Scriptures,
whether of the Old or New Testament, meets
there often in the midst of their sublime beauties,
I do not say merely faults of style, but of gram
mar, in violation of those logical and natural rules
of language common to all tongues. Are we to
infer that these faults have the same origin as the
doctrines with which they are intermixed, and
that they are both divinely inspired ? *
And yet this is what is pretended by fervent
and learned men, who maintain that all, abso
lutely all, in the Scriptures is divinely inspired
the words as well as the ideas, all the words used
upon all subjects, the material of language as
well as the doctrine which lies at its base.
* I indicate, in a note placed at the end of this volume, some
instances of these grammatical faults met with in the Scriptures,
and to which it is impossible to assign the character of divine
inspiration.
146 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
In this assertion I see but deplorable confusion,
leading to profound misapprehension both of the
meaning and the object of the sacred books. It
was not God s purpose to give instruction to men
in grammar, and if not in grammar, neither was it,
any more God s purpose to give instruction in
geology, astronomy, geography, or chronology.
It is on their relations with their Creator, upon
duties of men towards Him and towards each
other, upon the rule of faith and of conduct in
life, that God has lighted them by light from
heaven. It is to the subject of religion and
morals, and to these alone, that the inspiration of
the Scriptures is directed.
Amongst the principal arguments alleged to
prove that everything in the sacred volumes is
divinely inspired, particular use has been made
of the Second Epistle of St. Paul to Timothy,
where in effect we find the passage :
" All Scripture is given by inspiration of God,
and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for
correction, for instruction in righteousness :
SIXTH MEDITATION. 117
"That the man of God may be perfect, tho
roughly furnished unto all good works." *
Is it possible to determine in words of greater
precision the religious and moral object of the
inspiration ?
Appeal is made to a consideration of a different
description. If, it is said, we at the same time
admit, on the one side, the inspiration of the sacred
books, and on the other, that this inspiration is
not universal and absolute, who shall make the
selection between these two parts ? who mark
the limit of the inspiration \ who say which
texts, which passages are inspired, and which are
not ? So to divide the Holy Scriptures is to
strip them of their supernatural character, to
destroy their authenticity, by surrendering them
to all the incertitudes, all the disputes of men : a
complete and uninterrupted inspiration alone is
capable of commanding faith.
Never-dying pretension of man s weakness !
Created intelligent and free, he proposes to use
* 2 Timothy iii. 1C, 17.
L 2
148 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
largely his intelligence and his freedom ; at the
same time, conscious how feeble his means are,
how inadequate to his aspirations, he invokes a
guide, a support ; and from the very moment
that his hope fixes upon it, he will have it immu
table, infallible. He searches a fixed point to
which to attach himself with absolute and perma
nent assurance. In creating man, God did not
leave him without fixed points ; the Divine reve
lation, and the inspiration of the Scriptures, had
precisely for object and effect to supply these, but
not on all subjects alike and without distinction.
I refer here again to what I lately said respecting
the separation of the finite and the infinite, of the
world created, and of its Creator. At the same
time that the limits of the finite world are those
of human science, it is to human study and
human science that God has surrendered the finite
world ; it is not there that God has set up his
divine torch ; He has dictated to Moses the laws
which regulate the duties of man towards God,
and of man towards man; but He has left to
SIXTH MEDITATION. M-9
Newton the discovery of the laws which preside
over the universe. The Scriptures speak upon all
subjects ; circumstances connected with the finite
world are there incessantly mixed with perspectives
of infinity ; but it is only to the latter, to that
future of which they permit us to snatch a view,
and to the laws which they impose upon men,
that the divine inspiration addresses itself ; God
only pours his light in quarters which man s eye
and man s labour cannot reach ; for all that
remains, the sacred books speak the language
used and understood by the generations to whom
they are addressed. God does not, even when He
inspires them, transport into future domains of
science the interpreters He uses, or the nations to
whom He sends them ; He takes them both as He
finds them, with their traditions, their notions,
their degree of knowledge or ignorance as respects
the finite world, of its phenomena and its laws. It
is not the condition, the scientific progress of the
human understanding ; it is the condition and
moral progress of the human soul which are the
150 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
object of the Divine action, and God requires not
for the exercise of his power on the human sou],
science either as a precursor or a companion ; He
addresses himself to instincts and desires the most
intimate and most sublime as well as the most
universal in man s nature, to instincts and desires
of which science is neither the object nor the
measure, and which require to be satisfied from
other sources. Whatever true or false science we
find in the Scriptures upon the subject of the finite
world, proceeds from the writers themselves or
their contemporaries ; they have spoken as they
believed, or as those believed who surrounded
them when they spoke : on the other hand, the
]ight thrown over the infinite, the law laid down,
and the perspective opened by that same light,
these are what proceed from God, and which He
has inspired in the Scriptures. Their object is
essentially and exclusively moral and practical ;
they express the ideas, employ the images, and
speak the language best calculated to produce a
powerful effect upon the soul, to regenerate and to
SIXTH MEDITATION. 151
save it. I open the Gospel according to St. Luke,
and I there read the admirable parable :
" There was a certain rich man, which was clothed in
purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day :
" And there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, which
was laid at his gate, full of sores,
" And desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from
the rich man s table : moreover the dogs came and licked
his sores.
" And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was
carried by the angels into Abraham s bosom : the rich man
also died, and was buried ;
" And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and
seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom.
" And he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy
on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his
finger in water, and cool my tongue ; for I am tormented
in this flame.
"But Abraham said, Son, remember that thou in thy
lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus
evil things ; but now he is comforted, and thou art tor
mented.
" And beside all this, between us and you there is a great
gulf fixed : so that they which would pass from hence to
you cannot ; neither can they pass to us, that would come
from thence.
" Then he said, I pray thee therefore, father, that thou
wouldest send him to my father s house :
152 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
" For I have five brethren ; that he may testify unto
them, lest they also come into this place of torment.
" Abraham saith unto him, They have Moses and the
prophets ; let them hear them.
" And he said, Nay, father Abraham : but if one went
unto them from the dead, they will repent.
" And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the
prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose
from the dead."*
Was it the intention of Jesus, and of the Evan
gelist who has repeated his words, to describe, as
they really are, the condition of men after their
earthly existence, their positive local position after
God s judgment, and their relations either with
each other or with the world which they have
quitted ? Certainly not ; the material circum
stances intermixed with this dialogue are only
images borrowed from actual common life. But
what images so strike, so penetrate the soul ?
What more solemn warning addressed to men in
this life, to rouse them to a sense of their duties
towards God and their fellow creatures, in the
name of the mysterious future that awaits them ?
* Luke xvi. 1931.
SIXTH MEDITATION. 153
Nothing is further from my thought than to
see in the sacred books mere poetical images and
symbols ; those books are really, with respect to
the religious problems that beset man s thoughts,
the Light and the voice of God ; still, that Light
only lights, that voice only reveals revelations of
God with man, duties which God enjoins men
in the course of their present life, and prospects
which He opens to them beyond the imperfect and
limited world where this life passes. As for this
life itself, it is the object of human study and
science, not of the inspiration of the sacred Scrip
tures. In disregarding this limit, in pretending to
attribute to the language of the Scriptures, used
with reference to the phenomena of the finite
world, the character of divine inspiration, men have
fallen with respect both to thought and act into
deplorable errors. Hence proceeded the trial of
Galileo, and numerous other controversies, nume
rous other condemnations still more absurd, still
more to be regretted, in which Christianity
was immediately placed in opposition to human
154 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
science, and constrained to inflict or receive re
markable disavowals. The same is the case at
the present day with respect to numerous objec
tions made in the name of the natural sciences to
Christianity, and which from the learned circles
where they have their birth, spread over a world
at once curious and frivolous, where they cause
the Christian faith itself to be regarded as ignorant
credulity. Nothing of this kind could ever occur,
no necessity of such conflict could await the
Christian religion, if on the one side the limits of
human science, and on the other those of divine
inspiration, were recognised as they really are,
and respected according to their rightful claims.
I might cite in aid of the opinion I support
numerous and great authorities. I will refer to
but three, appealed to by Galileo himself in 1615
in his letters to the Grand Duchess Christina of
Lorraine" " (who could appeal to authorities more
august ?) " Many things," says St. Jerome, " are
* Opere Complete di Galileo-Galilei, t. ii. chap. ii. pp. 26
64. Florence, 1843.
SIXTH MEDITATION. 155
recounted in the Scriptures according to the
judgment of the times when they happened, and
not according to the truth." * " The purpose of
the Holy Scriptures," says the Cardinal Baronius,
"is to teach us how to go to heaven, and not how
the heavens go." "This," says Kepler, "is the
counsel I give to the man so ill informed as not
to understand the science of astronomy, or so
weak as to regard adhesion to Copernicus as
proof of want of piety : Let him at once leave
the study of astronomy and the examination of
the opinions of philosophers ; instead of devoting
himself to those arduous researches, let him remain
at home, till his fields, and occupy himself with
his proper business ; and thence, raising towards
the admirable vault of heaven his eyes, which
constitute for him his sole mode of vision, let him
pour forth his heart in thanksgivings and praises
to God his Creator. He may rest assured that he
is thus rendering to God a worship as perfect as
* CEuvres de St. Jerome, Comment, in Jereniiam, ed. Vallars.
t. ix. p. 1040.
156 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
that of the astronomer himself, to whom God has
accorded the gift of seeing clearer with the eyes
of his intelligence ; but who, above all the worlds
and all the heavens that he attains, knows and
wills to find his God." *
I discard, then, as absolutely foreign to the
grand question that occupies me, all the diffi
culties suggested to the Scriptures in the name of
those sciences whose province is finite nature. I
seek and consider in these books only what is
their sole object, the relations of God with man,
and the solution of those problems which these
relations cause to weigh upon the human soul.
The deeper we go in the study of the sacred
volumes, restored to their real object, the more
the divine inspiration becomes manifest and
striking. God and man are there ever both
present, both actors in the same history. Of this
history it is my present object to illustrate the
grand features.
* Kepler, Nova Astronomi.i, Introductio, p. 9. Prague, 1609.
SEVENTH MEDITATION.
GOD ACCORDING TO THE BIBLE.
IT is far from my intention to evade the
questions which concern the authenticity of the
Bible, and of the respective books which compose
it. I shall enter upon them in the second series
of these Meditations, when I touch upon the
history of the Christian religion. Those questions,
however, have no bearing upon the subject which
occupies me at the present moment ; the Bible,
whatever its antiquity, whatever the comparative
antiquity of its different parts, has been ever that
witness of God in which the Hebrews believed,
and under the law of which they lived, the great
monument of the religion in the bosom of which
the Christian religion took its birth. It is this
God of whom in the Bible, and in the Bible alone,
158 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
it is my purpose to seek the peculiar and true
character.
The nations of Semitic origin have been honoured
for their primitive and persistent faith in the unity
of God. Under different forms, and amidst events
very dissimilar, nearly all nations have been poly
theistic ; the Semitic nations alone have believed
firmly in the one God. This great moral fact has
been attributed to different and to complex
causes ; but the fact itself is generally acknow
ledged and admitted.
In two respects in this assertion there is exag
geration. On one side, among the nations of
Semitic origin, several were polytheistic ; the
descendants of Abraham, the Hebrews, and the
Arab Ishmaelites, alone remained really mono
theistic ; on the other side, the idea of the unity
of God was not entirely strange even to the
polytheistic nations. The greater part, like the
Hindoos and the Greeks, admitted one sole and
primordial Power anterior and superior to their
gods ; idea, vague and searched from afar,
SEVENTH MEDITATION. 159
derived from the instinct of man or the reflection
of the philosopher, and which amongst those na
tions became neither the basis of any religion that
deserves the name, nor any efficacious obstacle to
idolatry. The God of the Bible is no such sterile
abstraction ; He is the one God at the present
time as in the origin of all things, the personal
God, living, acting, and presiding efficiently over
the destinies of the world that He has created.
He has besides another characteristic, one far
more striking, which belongs to Him more exclu
sively than that of Unity. The gods of the
polytheistic nations have histories filled with
events, vicissitudes, transformations, adventures.
The mythology of the Egyptians, of the Hindoos,
of the Greeks, of the Scandinavians, and numerous
others, is but the poetical or symbolical recital of
the varied and agitated lives of their gods. We
detect in these recitals sometimes the personi
fication of the fancies of nations described in
accordance with their actual phenomena, some
times the reminiscences of human personages who
160 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
have struck the imagination of the people. But
whatever their origin, whatever their name, each
of those gods has his individual history more or
less overladen with incidents and acts, now heroic,
now licentious, now elegantly fantastic, now
grossly eccentric. All the polytheistic religions
are collections of biographies, divine or legendary,
allegorical or completely fabulous, in which the
careers and the passions, the actions and the
dreams of men, reproduce themselves under the
forms and names of deities.
The God of the Bible has no biography, neither
has He any personal adventures. Nothing occurs
to Him and nothing changes in Him ; He is
always and invariably the same, a Being real and
personal, absolutely distinct from the finite world
and from humanity, identical and immutable in
the bosom of the universal diversity and move
ment. " I Am That I Am/ is the sole definition
that He vouchsafes of himself, and the constant
expression of what He is in all the course of the
history of the Hebrews, to which He is present
SEVENTH MEDITATION. 161
and over which He presides without ever receiving
from it any reflex of influence. Such is the God
of the Bible, in evident and permanent contrast
with all the gods of polytheism, still more distinct
and more solitary by his nature than by his
Unity.
This is, indeed, so peculiarly the proper and
essential character of the God of the Bible, that
this character has passed into the very language
of the Hebrews, and has become there the very
name of God. Several words are employed in
the Bible as appellations of God. One of these
El, Eloah, in the plural EloTiim, expresses force,
creative power, and is applied to the manifold
gods of Paganism as well as to the one God of
the Hebrews. El Shadddi is translated by the
all-powerful. Adonai signifies Lord. The word
Yahwe or Yehwe, which becomes in Hebrew
pronunciation Jehovah, means simply He is y
and means self-existence, the Being Absolute and
Eternal. This name occurs in no other of the
Semitic languages, and it is at the epoch of
162 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
Moses that it appears for the first time amongst
the Hebrews : "And God spake unto Moses,
and said unto him, I am the Eternal" (Yahwe,
Jehovah}. "And I appeared unto Abraham,
Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of the All-
powerful (El Shaddal), but by my name Eternal
was I not known to them/ * Yaliwe, Jehovah,
is at once the true God and the national God of
Israel, f
The history of the Hebrews is neither less sig
nificant nor less expressive than their language ;
it is the history of the relations of the God, One
and Immutable with the people chosen by Him
to be the special representative of the religious
principle, and the regenerating source of religious
life in the human race. This people undergoes
the destiny and trials common to all nations ; it
* Exodus vi. 2, 3.
f I have consulted respecting the precise sense and the dif
f erent shades of meaning of the terms expressing God in Hebrew,
my learned confrere at the Academy of Inscriptions, M. Munk,
who has replied to all my inquiries with as much clearness as
courtesy.
SEVENTH MEDITATION. 163
demands, and becomes subject to, a variety of
different governments ; it falls into the errors
and faults usual to nations ; it frequently suc
cumbs to the temptations of idolatry ; like the
others, it has its days of virtue and of vice, of
prosperity and of reverses, of glory and of abase
ment. Amidst all the vicissitudes and errors of
the people of the Bible, the God of the Bible
remains invariably the same, without any tincture
of anthropomorphism, without any alteration in
the idea which the Hebrews conceive of his
nature, either during their fidelity or disobedience
to his Commandments. It is always the God
who has said, " I Am That I Am," of whom his
people demand no other explanation of himself,
and who, ever present and sovereign, pursues
the designs of his providence with men, who
either use or abuse the liberty of action which
that God had accorded to them at their creation.
I wish to retrace, according to the Bible, the
principal phases and the principal actors in this
history. The more I study, the more I feel that
M 2
164* THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
I am watching, as M. Ewald lias expressed it,
"the career of the true religion, advancing step
by step to its complete development," that is to
say, that I am there observing the action of God
upon the first steps and upon the religious progress
of the human race.
I. GOD AND ABRAHAM.
THE history of the Hebrews, temporal and
spiritual, opens with Abraham. At his first
appearance in the Bible, Abraham is a nomad
chief, who has quitted Chaldsea and the town
of Haran, where his father, Terah, descended
from Shem, is still living. He is wandering
with his family, his servants, and his flocks, at
first on the frontiers and afterwards in the interior
of the land of Canaan, halting wherever he finds
water and pasturage, and conducting his tents and
his tribe at one time through the mountainous
districts, at another along the plains below. Why
has he left Chaldsea ? According to the Bible
SEVENTH MEDITATION. 165
itself, his father was an idolater : " Your fathers,"
said Joshua to the people of Israel, " dwelt on the
other side of the flood" (the Euphrates) "in old
time, even Terah, the father of Abraham, and the
father of Nachor : and they served other gods."*
The book of Judith contains a similar assertion ; f
and the Jewish and Arabian traditions confirm, at
the same time that they amplify, the statement :
the father of Abraham, they say, was an idolatrous
fanatic, and his son Abraham, having set himself
against the practice of idolatry, was upon his
charge thrown into a burning furnace, from which
a miracle alone preserved him. The historian
Josephus speaks of the insurrections which took
place amongst the Chaldaeans on the occasion of
their religious dissensions.
The Bible makes no allusion to these traditions ;
from the very beginning God intervenes in the
history of the father of the Hebrews. "The
Eternal had said unto Abram, Get thee out of
thy country, and from thy kindred, and from
* Joshua xxiv. 2. f Judith v. 69.
166 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
thy father s house, unto a land that I will shew
thee : I will make thee a great nation, and I will
bless thee, and make thy name great ; . . . . and in
thee shall all families of the earth be blessed
So Abram departed, . . . andAbram took Sarai
his wife, and Lot his brother s son, and all their
substance that they had gathered, and the sons that
they had gotten in Haran ; and they went forth
to go into the land of Canaan ; and into the land
of Canaan they came." * How had God spoken
to Abraham 1 By a voice from without or by an
internal inspiration 1 The writer of the Biblical
narrative occupies himself in no respect with the
question. God is for him, present and an actor
in the history just as much as Abraham is ; the
intervention of God has in his eyes nothing but
what is perfectly simple and natural. The same
faith animates Abraham ; he issues forth from
Chaldaea and wanders through Palestine, accord
ing to the word and under the direction of the
Eternal.
* Genesis xii. 1 5.
SEVENTH MEDITATION. 167
He wanders through the midst of populations
already established upon the land of Canaan, and
with these he lives in peace, but still, not uniting
with them ; bringing them succour when attacked
by foreign chieftains ; fighting in their behalf as a
faithful ally, sometimes, perhaps, in the character
of a valiant condottiere, but remaining isolated in
his capacity of nomad Patriarch, with his family
and his tribe ; repelling even the gifts and favours
which might perhaps lower his character or affect
his independence. Everywhere that he halts, or
that any incident of importance occurs to him,
at Sichem, Bethel, Beersheba, Hebron, he raises an
altar to his God. In his wandering uncertain life
a famine impels him on one occasion even as far
as Egypt : the first perhaps of those shepherd
chiefs who issued from Asia, and who were so
soon to invade that rich country. Abraham
passes in Egypt several years, well treated by the
reigning Pharaoh ; on excellent terms with the
Egyptian priests, imparting to them and receiving
from them such knowledge of astronomy or of
168 THE CHKISTIAN RELIGION.
natural philosophy as they mutually possessed ;
but maintaining ever carefully the isolation of
his family, of his tribe, and of his religion. Of
his own accord, or at the instance of the Pharaoh,
he quits Egypt, carrying with him not only his
flocks and his camels, but his Egyptian slaves, and
amongst others Hagar. He returns to the country
of Canaan, again wanders through several of its
districts, takes part in different events internal
troubles or foreign wars, and finally settles with
his family and dependents at Hebron, near the
oaks of Mamre, amongst the tribe of the children
of Heth ; but still always in his capacity as a
foreigner, and always careful as such to preserve
his character and his independence. When his
wife Sarah died, the book of Genesis tells us that,
"Abraham stood up from before his dead, and spake unto
the sons of Heth, saying,
" I am a stranger and a sojourner with you : give me a
possession of a buryingplace with you, that I may bury
my dead out of my sight.
" And the children of Heth answered Abraham, saying
unto him,
" Hear us, my lord : thou art a mighty prince among
SEVENTH MEDITATION. 1G9
us : in the choice of our sepulchres bury thy dead ; none
of us shall withhold from thee his sepulchre, but that thou
mayest bury thy dead.
"And Abraham stood up, and bowed himself to the
people of the land, even to the children of Heth.
"And he communed with them, saying, If it be your
mind that I should bury my dead out of my sight ; hear
me, and entreat for me to Ephron the son of Zohar,
" That he may give me the cave of Machpelah, which he
hath, which is in the end of his field ; for as much money
as it is worth he shall give it me for a possession of a
buryingplace amongst you.
" And Ephron dwelt among the children of Heth : and
Ephron the Hittite answered Abraham in the audience of
the children of Heth, even of all that went in at the gate
of his city, saying,
" Nay, my lord, hear me : the field give I thee, and the
cave that is therein, I give it thee ; in the presence of the
sons of my people give I it thee : bury thy dead.
"And Abraham bowed down himself before the people
of the land.
"And he spake unto Ephron in the audience of the
people of the land, saying, But if thou wilt give it, I pray
thee, hear me : I will give thee money for the field ; take it
of me, and I will bury my dead there.
" And Ephron answered Abraham, saying unto him,
"My lord, hearken unto me: the land is worth four
hundred shekels of silver ; what is that betwixt me and
thee ? bury therefore thy dead.
170 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
" And Abraham hearkened unto Ephron ; and Abraham
weighed to Ephron the silver, which he had named in the
audience of the sons of Heth, four hundred shekels of silver,
current money with the merchant.
" And the field of Ephron, which was in Machpelah, which
was before Mamre, the field, and the cave which was therein,
and all the trees that were in the field, that were in all the
borders round about, were made sure
" Unto Abraham for a possession in the presence of the
children of Heth, before all that went in at the gate of his
city.
"And after this, Abraham buried Sarah his wife in the
cave of the field of Machpelah before Mamre : the same is
Hebron in the land of Canaan.
" And the field, and the cave that is therein, were made
sure unto Abraham for a possession of a buryingplace by
the sons of Heth."*
Little importance does Abraham attach to his
precarious condition as a wanderer and a stranger ;
he has faith in God. God commands, and Abra
ham obeys. God promises, and Abraham trusts.
One day, however, with a feeling of anxious
humility, Abraham makes the following prayer
to God : " Lord Eternal, what wilt thou give
me, seeing I go childless, and there is Eliezer of
* Genesis xxiii. 3 20.
SEVENTH MEDITATION. 171
Damascus shall be my heir \ And behold the
word of the Lord came unto him, saying, This
shall not be thine heir, but he that shall come
forth out of thine own bowels shall be thine heir.
I am God, the mighty, all-powerful ; walk before
my face, be thou perfect. I will establish my
covenant between me and thee, and thy seed after
thee, in their generation, for an everlasting posses
sion, and I will be their God. But thou shalt
keep my covenant therefore, thou and thy seed
after thee, in their generations. And Abraham
believed in the Lord ; and the Eternal counted
it to him for righteousness." *
In these days, in the bosom of Christian civili
zation, obedience to God and confidence in God
are the first precepts, the first virtues of Christi
anity. They were also the virtues of Abraham,
and the precepts inculcated by Abraham s history
in the Bible. And the God of Abraham, the God
of the Bible, is the same who is the object of
adoration to the Christian of the present day ; the
* Genesis xv. 1 G. and xvii. 1 9.
172 THE CHRISTIAN EELIGION.
same conception as that of those philosophers of
the present day who believe in God, and believe
in Him as in God Absolute and Perfect, Self-
dependent, Eternal, without the possibility or
attempt to define Him otherwise. Thousands of
years have changed nothing as to the biblical
notion of God in the human soul, nor as to the
essential laws regulating the relation of man with
God.
Historical tradition fully confirms the moral fact
here mentioned. Abraham has not been the object
of any mystical conception, or any mythological
metamorphosis ; nowhere has he been transformed
into demigod or son of God; he has ever remained
the model of religious faith and submission, the
type of the pious man in intimate relation with God.
Throughout all antiquity, and in all the East, as
much for the primitive Christians as for the Jews
and Arabs, as much for the Mussulmans as for the
Jews and Christians, God is the God of Abraham ;
Abraham is the friend of God, the father and the
prince of believers ; these are the very names that
SEVENTH MEDITATION. 173
the Gospel gives him ; * and the Koran, too, cele
brates him in these words :
"And when the night overshadowed him, he
saw a star, and he said, This is my Lord ; but
when it set, he said, I like not gods which set.
And when he saw the moon rising, he said, This
is my Lord ; but when he saw it set, he said,
Verily, if my Lord direct me not, I shall become
one of the people who go astray. And when he
saw the sun rising, he said, This is my Lord, this
is the greatest ; but when it set, he said, my
people, verily I am clear of that which ye associate
with God. I direct my face unto him who hath
created the heavens and the earth." t
The Eternal, the God One and Immutable, is
the God of Abraham ; Abraham is the servant
and adorer of the true God.
* St. Paul s Epistle to the Romans iv. ; Galatians iii. ;
Epistle of St. James ii. 23. t Koran vi.
174 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
II. GOD AND MOSES.
THE true idea of God, and the faith in his
effectual and continued providence, are the two
great religious principles which the name of Abra
ham suggests. This is the beginning of the history
of the Hebrews, and the origin of that ancient
Covenant which, in passing from the Pentateuch
to the Gospel, has become the new Covenant,
the Christian Eeligion.
About five centuries later, we find the Hebrews
settled in Egypt, in the land of Goshen, between
the lower Nile, the Eed Sea, and the Desert, in
a condition very different from that in which
they had first been when attracted to the court
of Pharaoh by the prosperity of Joseph, the
great-grandson of Abraham. The new Pharaoh
oppresses them cruelly ; they are a prey to the
miseries of slavery, the contagion of idolatry,
to all the evils, all the perils, physical and moral,
which can afflict a nation numerically weak, fallen
under the yoke of one powerful and civilized.
SEVENTH MEDITATION. 175
The Hebrews nevertheless persist in their religious
faith, cling to their national reminiscences ; they
do not suffer their nationality to be lost in and
confounded with that of their masters ; they en
dure without offering any active resistance ; they
will not deliver themselves, but they have never
ceased to believe in their God, and they await
their Deliverer.
Moses has been saved from the waters of the
Nile by Pharaoh s own daughter. He has been
brought up at Heliopolis, in the midst of the
pomp of the court, and instructed in the sciences
of the Egyptian priests. He has served the
sovereign of Egypt ; he has commanded his troops
and made war for him against the ^Ethiopians.
He has received an Egyptian name, Osarsiph, or
Tisithen. Everything seems to concur to make
him an Egyptian. But he remains a faithful
Israelite : true to the faith and to the fortunes of
his brethren. Their oppression rouses his indig
nation ; he avenges one of them by killing his
oppressor. The victims of oppression, alarmed,
176 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
disavow Moses, instead of supporting him. Moses
flees from Egypt and takes refuge in the Desert,
amongst a tribe of wandering Arabs, the Midian-
ites, sprung, like himself, from Abraham. Their
chief, the sheick of the tribe, Jethro, called also
Hobab, receives him as a son, and gives him
his daughter Zipporah in marriage. The proud
Israelite, who has declined to remain an Egyptian,
becomes an Arab, and leads, several years, the
nomadic life of the hospitable tribe. It is now
in the peninsula of Sinai that Moses wanders
with the servants and flocks of his father-in-law.
In the centre of that peninsula, of yore a province
in the empire of the Pharaohs, but which had
fallen into the possession of the pastoral Arabs,
rises Sinai, a mount with which from time im
memorial, among the neighbouring tribes, have
been connected as many sacred traditions as
have ever been assigned to Mount Ararat in
Armenia, or the Himalayas in India. In this
venerable spot, before a burning bush, Moses, with
a heart full of faith, hears God calling him and
SEVENTH MEDITATION. 177
commanding him to lead his people, the children
of Israel, out of Egypt. Moses is humble, dis
trustful of himself, just as Abraham before him
had been. "Who am I, that I should go unto
Pharaoh, and that I should bring forth the chil
dren of Israel out of Egypt ? . . When I
come ynto the children of Israel, and shall say
unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me
unto you ; and they shall say to me, What is his
name ? What shall I say unto them ? And God
said unto Moses I AM THAT I AM : and he said,
Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel,
I AM hath sent me unto you/ *
Moses receives his mission from Jehovah, and
feels no other disquietude than arises from the
desire to accomplish it.
In presence of such facts, with this association
of God and man in the same work, the opponents
of the Supernatural still clamour : " Why," ask
they, "this confusion of divine action and of
human action ? Has God need of man s con-
* Exodus iii. 11, 13, 14.
N
178 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
currence ? Can He not, if He will, accomplish all
his designs by himself, and through the fulness
of his omnipotence V In my turn, I would ask
them if they know why God created man, and
if God has put them into the secret of his inten
tions towards the instrument whom He employs
for his designs ? There precisely lies the privi
lege of humanity : man is God s associate, subject
to Him, yet a free agent independent of Him ;
he intervenes by his proper action in plans of
which only an infinitely small part is revealed to
his intelligence and reserved for his execution.
Western Asia and its history are full of the name
of Moses : Jews, Christians, and Mahometans
style him the First Prophet, the Great Lawgiver,
the Great Theologian ; everywhere, in the scene
of the events themselves, the places retain a
memory of him : the traveller meets there the
Well of Moses, the Ravine of Moses, the Moun
tain of Moses, the Valley of Moses. In other
countries and other ages, this name has been
given as the most glorious that the saints could
SEVENTH MEDITATION. 179
receive : St. Peter has been styled the Moses of
the Christian Church ; St. Benedict, the Moses of
the Monastic Orders ; Ulphilas, the Moses of the
Goths. What did Moses do to obtain a renown
so great and so enduring? He gained no battles ;
he conquered no territory ; he founded no cities ;
he governed no state ; he was not even a man in
whom eloquence replaced other sources of influ
ence and power : " And Moses said unto the
Lord, my Lord, I am not eloquent, neither
heretofore, nor since thou hast spoken unto thy
servant : but I am slow of speech, and of a slow
tongue." *
There is not in this whole history a single
grand human action, a single grand event, pro
ceeding from human agency ; all, all is the work
of God ; and Moses is nothing on any occasion
but the interpreter and instrument of God : to
this mission he has consecrated soul and life ; it
is only by virtue of this title that he is powerful,
and that he shares, as far as his capacity as a
* Exodus iv. 10.
v 2
180 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
man permits, a work infinitely grander and more
enduring than that accomplished by all the
heroes and all the masters that the world ever
acknowledged.
I know no more striking spectacle than that
of the unshakeable faith and inexhaustible energy
of Moses in the pursuit of a work not his own,
in which he executes what he has not con
ceived, in which he obeys rather than commands.
Obstacles and disappointments meet him at each
turn ; he has to struggle with weaknesses, infi
delity, caprices, jealousies, and seditions, and these
not merely in his own nation, but in his own
family. He has himself his moments of sad
ness, of disquietude : " And Moses cried unto
the Lord, saying, What shall I do unto this
people ? they be almost ready to stone me.*~ . . .
I beseech thee, shew me thy glory/ And God
answers him, " I will make all my goodness pass
before thee Thou canst not see my face :
for there shall no man see me, and live." And
* Exodus xvii. 4 j xxxiii. 1820.
SEVENTH MEDITATION. 181
Moses trusts in God, and continues to triumph
whilst he obeys Him.
The work of deliverance is consummated ;
Moses has led the people of Israel out of Egypt,
has surmounted the first perils and the first
sufferings of the Desert. They advance through
the group of mountains in the peninsula of Sinai
Passing from valley to valley, they arrive "at the
entrance of a large basin surrounded by lofty
peaks. Of these the one which commands the
most extensive view is covered with enormous
blocks, as if the mountain had been overthrown
by an earthquake. A deep cleft divides the
peak into two.
" No one who has approached the Ras Sufsafeh
through that noble plain, or who has looked down
upon the plain from that majestic height, will
willingly part with the belief that these are the
two essential features of the view of the Israelitish
camp. That such a plain should exist at all in
front of such a cliff is so remarkable a coincidence
with the sacred narrative, as to furnish a strong
182 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION
internal argument, not merely of its identity with
the scene, but of the scene itself having been
described by an eyewitness. The awful and
lengthened approach, as to some natural sanc
tuary, would have been the fittest preparation
for the coming scene. The low line of alluvial
mounds at the foot of the cliff exactly answers to
the i bounds ? which were to keep the people off
from touching the Mount/ * The plain itself
is not broken and uneven, and narrowly shut in,
like almost all others in the range, but presenting
a long retiring sweep, against which the people
could remove and stand afar off/ The cliff,
rising like a huge altar in front of the whole
congregation, and visible against the sky in lonely
grandeur from end to end of the whole plain, is
the very image of the mount that might not
be touched/ and from which the voice of God
might be heard far and wide over the stillness
of the plain below, widened at that point to its
utmost extent by the confluence of all the con-
* Exodus xix. 12.
SEVENTH MEDITATION. 183
tiguous valleys. Here, beyond all other parts of
the peninsula, is the adytum, withdrawn, as
if in the end of the world/ from all the stir
and confusion of earthly things."* Such was three
thousand five hundred years ago, and such is
still, the place where Moses received from God
and gave to the people of Israel that law of the
Ten Commandments which resound still through
all the Christian Churches as the first foundation
of their faith and the first moral rule of Christian
nations.
The Hebrews, at the moment when the Deca
logue became their fundamental law, were in a
crisis of social transformation ; they were upon
the point of passing from the pastoral nomadic
condition to that of farmers and settlers. It
seems that, at such an epoch, the political insti
tutions of a people would, as the basis of their
government, be its most natural and most urgent
* Sinai and Palestine in connection with their History. By
Arthur Stanley, Dean of Westminster, pp. 42, 43. London,
1862.
184 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
business. The Decalogue leaves the subject
entirely untouched; makes to it not the remotest,
the most indirect allusion. It is a law exclu
sively religious and moral, which only busies
itself about the duties of man to God and to his
fellow-creatures, and admits by its very silence
all the varying forms of government that the
external or internal state of society may seem to
require. Characteristic, grand, and original, not
to be met with in the primitive laws of any
other nascent state, and an admirable and re
markable manifestation of the Divine origin of
this one ! It is to man s natural and his moral
destiny that the Decalogue addresses itself; it is
to guide man s soul and his inmost will that it
lays down rules ; whereas it surrenders his exter
nal, his civil condition to all the varying chances
of place and of time.
Another characteristic of this law is not less
original or less urgent : it places God, and man s
duties towards God, at the head and front of
man s life and man s duties ; it unites intimately
SEVENTH MEDITATION. 185
religion arid morality, and regards them as inse
parable. If philosophers, in studying, discri
minate between them ; if they seek in human
nature the special principle or principles of
morality; if they consider the latter by itself
and apart from religion, it is the right of science
to do so. But still the result is but a scientific
work only a partial dissection of man s soul,
addressed to only one part of its faculties, and
holding no account of the entirety and the reality
of the soul s life. The Human Body, taken as
one whole, is by nature at once moral and reli
gious ; the moral law that he finds in himself
needs an author and a judge; and God is to him
the source and guarantee, the Alpha and Omega
of morality.
A metaphysician may, from time to time, affirm
the moral law, and yet forget its Divine Author.
A man may, now and then, admit, may respect
the principles of morality, and yet remain
estranged from religion; all this is possible, for
all this we see. So small a portion of Truth
186 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
sometimes satisfies the human mind ! Man is
so ready and so prone to misconceive and to
mutilate himself ! His ideas are by nature so in
complete and inconsequent, so easily dimmed or
perverted by his Passions or the action of his free
will ! These are but the exceptional conditions
of the human mind, mere scientific abstrac
tions ; if men admit them, their influence is
neither general nor durable. In the natural and
actual life of the human race, Morality and Eeli-
gion are necessarily united ; and it is one of the
divine characteristics of the Decalogue, as it is
also one of the causes of that authority which has
remained to it after the lapse of so many centuries,
that it has proclaimed and taken as its foundation
their intimate union.
This is not the place to consider the laws of
Moses in civil and penal matters, nor to refer to
his ordinances respecting the worship, or to those
that regard the organization of the priesthood of
the Hebrews. In the former of these two branches
of the Mosaic code, numerous dispositions, singu-
SEVENTH MEDITATION. 187
larly moral, equitable, and humane, are found in
connection with circumstances indicating a state
of manners gross and cruel even to barbarism.
The legislator is evidently under the empire
of ideas and sentiments infinitely superior to those
of the people, to whom, nevertheless, his strong
sympathies attach him. When we consider the
Mosaic Legislation, we find that in everything
which concerns the external forms and practices of
worship, the ideas of Egypt have made great im
pression upon the mind of the Lawgiver, and the
frequent use that he has made of Egyptian customs
and ceremonies is not less visible. But far above
these institutions and these traditions, which seem
not seldom out of place and incoherent, soars and
predominates constantly the Idea of the God of
Abraham and of Jacob, of the God One and
Eternal, of the True God. The Laws of Moses
omit no occasion of inculcating the belief in that
God, and of recalling Him to the recollection of
the Hebrews. And this, not as if they were
recalling a principle, an institution, a system ; but
188 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION,
as if they propose to place a sovereign, a lawful
and living sovereign, in the presence of those
whom he governs, and to whom they owe obe
dience and fidelity.
Moses never speaks in his own name, or in the
name of any human power, or of any portion of
the Hebrew nation. God alone speaks and com
mands. God s word and his commands Moses
repeats to the people. At his first ascending Mount
Sinai, when he had received the first inspiration
from the Eternal, "Moses came and called for the
elders of the people, and laid before their faces all
these words which the Lord commanded him. And
all the people answered together, and said, All
that the Lord hath spoken we will do/ *
When Moses, again ascending Mount Sinai,
had received from God the Decalogue, he re
turned, " And he took the book of the covenant,
and read in the audience of the people : and they
said, All that the Lord hath said will we do, and
be obedient." t
* Exodus xix. 7, 8. f Exodus xxiv. 7.
SEVENTH MEDITATION. 189
As the events develop themselves, the Hebrews
are found far from rendering a constant obedience :
they forget, they infringe and that frequently
these laws of God which they have accepted;
and God sometimes punishes, sometimes pardons
them ; still it is always God alone that is acting ;
it is from Him alone that all emanates ; neither
the priests who preside over the ceremonies of
his worship, nor the elders of Israel whom He
summons to prostrate themselves from afar before
Him, nor Moses himself his sole and constant
interpreter do anything by themselves, demand
anything for themselves. The Pentateuch is the
history and the picture of the personal government
by God of the Israelites. " Our legislator," says
the historian Josephus, " had in his thoughts not
monarchies, nor oligarchies, nor democracies, nor
any one of those political institutions: he com
manded that our government should be (if it is
permitted to make use of an expression somewhat
exaggerated) what may be styled a Theocracy/ *
* Joseph, contra Apionem, ii. c. 17.
190 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
The eminent writers who have recently studied
most profoundly the Mosaic system M. Ewald
in Germany,* Mr. Milman and Mr. Arthur Stanley
in England, M. Nicolas in France have adopted
the expression of Josephus, attaching to it its real
and complete sense. " The term Theocracy," says
Mr. Stanley, "has been often employed since the
time of Moses, but in the sense of a sacerdotal
government : a sense the very contrary to that in
which its first author conceived it. The theo
cracy of Moses was not at all a government by
priests, or opposed to kings ; it was the govern
ment by God himself, as opposed to a govern
ment by priests or by kings/ t
"Mosaism," says M. Nicolas, "is a theocracy
in the proper sense of the word. It would be a
complete error to understand this word in the
sense which usage has given to it in our language.
There is no question here in effect of a govern-
* Geschichte des Voltes Israel, bis Christus, ii. 188. Got-
tingen, 1853.
f Lectures on the Jewish Church, p. 157.
SEVENTH MEDITATION. 101
ment exercised by a sacerdotal caste in the
name and under the inspiration, real or pre
tended, of God. In the Mosaic legislation the
priests are not the ministers and instruments
of the Divine Will ; God reigns and governs by
himself. It is He who has given his laws to the
Hebrews. Moses has been, it is true, the medium
between the Eternal and the people, but the
people has taken part in the grand spectacle of
the Eevelation of the Law ; of this the people, in
the exercise of its freedom, has evinced its ac
ceptance ; and in the covenant set on foot be
tween the Eternal and the family of Jacob, Moses
has been, if I may be allowed the expression, only
the public officer who has propounded the con
tract. He was himself, besides, not within the
pale of the sacerdotal caste ; and the charge of
keeping, amending, and seeing to the carrying
out of the body of laws was not confided to the
priests." *
Let the learned men who thus characterise the
* Etudes Critiques sur la Bible Ancien Testament, p. 172.
192 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
Mosaic theocracy pause here and measure the
whole bearing of the fact which they comprehend
so well. It is a fact unique in the history of the
world. The idea of God is, amongst all nations,
the source of religions ; but in every case, except
that of the Hebrews, scarcely has the source
appeared before it deviates and becomes troubled ;
men take the place of God ; God s name is made
to cover every kind of usurpation and falsehood ;
sometimes sacerdotal corporations take possession
of all government, civil and religious ; sometimes
secular power overrules and enslaves Eeligious
Faith and Eeligious Life. In the Mosaic Dis
pensation we have nothing of the kind ; its very
origin and its fundamental principles condemn
and prohibit even the attempt at any such
deviations. No paramount priesthood here ; no
secular power playing the part of the oppressor.
God is constantly present, and sole Master. All
passes between God and the people ; all, I say, so
passes through the agency of a single man whom
God inspires, and in whom the people have faith,
SEVENTH MEDITATION. 193
asking no other authority than that of the reve
lation which he receives. No sign here of a fact
of human origin : just as the God of the Bible is
the true God, the religion that descended, by
Moses, from Sinai upon the elect people of God
is the true Eeligion destined to become, when
Jesus Christ ascends Calvary, the Religion of the
Human Race.
III. GOD AND THE KINGS.
MOSES having brought out of Egypt the people
of Israel, and having conducted it through the
Desert as far as the eastern bank of the Jordan, in
sight of Canaan, the Promised Land, his mission
terminates. " Get thee up," says the Eternal to
him ; " get thee up into the top of Pisgah, and
lift up thine eyes westward, and northward, and
southward, and eastward, and behold it with thine
eyes : for thou shalt not go over this Jordan.
But charge Joshua, and encourage him, and
strengthen him : for he shall go over before this
194 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
people, and he shall cause them to inherit the
land which thou shalt see/ *
Moses has been, in the name of Jehovah, the
liberator and the legislator; Joshua is the con
queror, the rough warrior, of yet signal piety and
modesty, the ardent servant of Jehovah, the
faithful disciple of Moses. After passing the
Jordan, traversing the land of Canaan in every
direction, and giving battle in succession to the
greater part of the tribes that inhabit it, he
destroys, or expels, or negotiates with them, and
divides their lands among the twelve tribes of
Israel. These exchange their wandering life for
that settled agricultural life of which Moses has
given them the law. The descendants of Abraham
settle as masters in the soil in which Abraham
had demanded as a favour the privilege of pur
chasing a tomb.
The consequences of this new situation are
not long in showing themselves. The conquest is
protracted and difficult : the violence and rapine
* Deut. iii. 27, 28.
SEVENTH MEDITATION.
that characterise a state of war one of dispos
session and of extermination replace amongst the
Hebrews the adventures and the pious emotions
of the Desert. In spite of their successes, the
conquest nevertheless remains incomplete : seve
ral of the Canaanitish tribes defend themselves
efficaciously, and cling, side by side with the new
comers, to their territory, their laws, their gods.
The twelve tribes of Israel disperse and settle,
each on its own account, upon different and
distant points, some being even separated by the
Jordan. The unity of the Hebrew nation, of its
faith, of its law, of its government, and of its des
tiny weakens rapidly ; the tendency to idolatry,
which the Hebrews had so often evinced when
wandering in the Desert, reappears and developes
itself, fomented by the vicinity of the Polytheistic
tribes of Canaan. Not, however, that we can
precisely say that Polytheism prevails against
the One God ; but rather that material images of
Jehovah become, in the midst of particular tribes,
the object of the idolatrous worship so strongly
196 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
prohibited by the Decalogue. " And the children
of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord, and
forgat the Lord their God, and served Baalim and
the groves." *
Under such influences the moral and social
state of the people of Israel undergoes profound
changes ; the barbarism, which had been formerly
amongst them fanatical and austere, becomes un
ruly and licentious ; their chiefs, their Judges,
during the epoch which bears their name, no longer
possess, sometimes no longer merit, their confi
dence ; even the heroic acts of some amongst
them of Gideon, of Deborah, of Samson, present
rather a strange than an august character. The
Mosaic Theocracy veils itself ; the Hebrew nation
becomes disorganized ; day by day, the religious
and political anarchy in Israel extends and
becomes aggravated.
But where the Divine Light has once shone,
it is never completely extinguished ; and when
the voice of God has once spoken, the sound is
* Judges iii. 7.
SEVENTH MEDITATION. 197
never entirely lost, even to ears that no longer
listen. It has been affirmed that after Joshua, in
the lapse of time that took place between the
government of the Judges and the end of the
reign of Solomon, the recollection of Moses, of his
actions and his laws, had almost entirely disap
peared had lost all authority in Israel. Some
passages from the biblical narrative will suffice
to remove this error. I read in the Book of
Judges, with respect to the Canaanitish tribes
who resisted and survived in their countries the
conquest and settlement of the Hebrew tribes :
These nations "were to prove Israel, to know
whether they would hearken unto the command
ments of the Lord, which he commanded their
fathers by the hand of Moses." * And again,
in the Book of Samuel, it is the Eternal "that
advanced Moses and Aaron .... which brought
forth your fathers out of the land of Egypt,
and made them dwell in this place." f And in
the Book of Kings,! David, on the point of ex-
* Judges iii. 4. f 1 Samuel xii. G, 8. 1 Kings ii. 3.
198 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
piling, says to his son Solomon, " Keep the charge
of the Lord thy God, to walk in his ways, to
keep his statutes, and his commandments, and his
judgments, and his testimonies, as it is written
in the law of Moses." And when Solomon, after
the solemn dedication of his Temple, had addressed
to God his prayer of thanksgiving, " he stood, and
blessed all the congregation of Israel with a loud
voice, saying, Blessed be the Lord, that hath
given rest unto his people Israel, according to all
that he promised : there hath not failed one word
of all his good promise, which he promised by
the hand of Moses his servant/ *
In the customs and lives of the Israelites these
"good promises" had not practically, it is true,
preserved all their efficacy : the worship of Jeho
vah and the legislation of Moses had fallen into
sad oblivion, and undergone serious changes.
But, in the national sentiment, Jehovah the
Eternal was ever the One God, the True God ;
and Moses his interpreter. Moral and social
* 1 Kings viii. 55, 56.
SEVENTH MEDITATION. 109
disorder had invaded the Hebrew Confederation ;
the Divine Law and Tradition were incessantly
violated, still not ignored : they ever continued
the Divine Law and Tradition, the objects of the
faith and veneration of Israel.
When the evil of anarchy had brought with it
great national reverses, when the Philistines on
the south, the Ammonites on the east, and the Meso-
potamians on the north, had placed in jeopardy
the Hebrew settlement in Canaan, a general cry
arose ; on all sides, the tribes demanded a strong
government, a single chief, one capable of main
taining order within, and supporting abroad the
position and the honour of Israel. A great and
faithful servant of Jehovah, the last of the judges,
and the greatest of the prophets since Moses,
Samuel, had recently governed Israel, and strenu
ously struggled to arrest the progress of popular
vice and misfortune ; but he had become old, and
his sons whom he had made "judges over Israel
. walked not in his ways, but turned aside after
lucre, and took bribes, and perverted judgment.
200 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
Then all the elders of Israel gathered themselves
together, and came to Samuel unto Kamah, and
said unto him, Behold, thou art old, and thy sons
walk not in thy ways : now make us a king to
judge us like all the nations/ *
The demand had in it nothing singular ; even
at the epoch when God, by his servant Moses,
was personally governing Israel, the chance of the
establishment of a human kingdom had been
foreseen and provided for beforehand by the
Divine Law : " When thou art come unto the
land which the Lord thy God giveth thee, and
shalt possess it, and shalt dwell therein, and shalt
say, I will set a king over me, like as all the
nations that are about me ; thou shalt in any wise
set him king over thee, whom the Lord thy God
shall choose : one from among thy brethren shalt
thou set king over thee : thou mayest not set a
stranger over thee, which is not thy brother." t
Although thus provided for by the Divine Law,
the demand of a king was extremely displeasing
* 1 Samuel viii. 15. f Deut. xvii. 14, 15.
SEVENTH MEDITATION. 20 L
to Samuel ; " for the kingly rule was odious to
him," says the historian Josephus ; " he had an
innate love of justice, and was ardently attached
to the aristocratical form of government, as to the
form of polity which rendered men happy and
worthy of God." * But the Eternal " said unto
Samuel, Hearken unto the voice of the people in
all that they say unto thee : for they have not
rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I
should not reign over them . . . Now therefore
hearken unto their voice ; howbeit yet protest
solemnly unto them, and shew them the manner
of the king that shall reign over them." f
Samuel predicted to the Hebrews how much
the kingly form of government would cost them,
all that they would have to suffer in their families,
their property, and their liberties : " Nevertheless
the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel ;
and they said, Nay ; but we will have a king over
us ; that \ve also may be like all the nations ; and
that our king may judge us, and go out before us,
* Josephus, Ant. Jud. vol. vi. ch. iii. 3. f 1 Sam. viii. 7 9.
202 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
and fight our battles. And Samuel heard all the
words of the people, and he rehearsed them in the
ears of the Lord. And the Lord said to Samuel,
Hearken unto their voice, and make them a king." *
The world s history offers no example where the
merits and defects of absolute monarchy were so
rapidly developed, where they were displayed so
strikingly, as in this little Hebrew monarchy,
instituted with the view of escaping from anarchy
by the express desire of the people itself. Three
kings succeed to the throne, in origin, character,
conduct, and reign absolutely dissimilar. Saul
is a warrior, chosen by Samuel for his strength,
bodily beauty, and courage ; ever ready for the
combat, but without foresight, without perse
verance in his military operations ; easily intoxi
cated with good fortune ; hurried away by brutal,
capricious, or jealous passions ; now engaged in
furious struggles, now appearing in a dependent
position, with his patron Samuel, his son Jonathan,
his son-in-law David ; a genuine barbarian king,
* 1 Samuel viii. 1922.
SEVENTH MEDITATION. 203
arrogant, changeable of humour, impatient of con
trol, prone to superstition, a moment serving Israel
against her enemies, but incapable of governing
Israel in the name of its God. David, on the con
trary, is the faithful and consistent representative
of religious faith and religious life in Israel ; the fer
vent and submissive adorer of the Eternal ; he is so
at all the epochs and in the most varying aspects
of his career, whether of humility or of grandeur ;
at once warrior, king, prophet, poet ; as ardent to
celebrate his God in his character of poet, as to
serve Him in the capacity of warrior, or to obey
Him in that of king ; equally sublime in his
thanksgiving to the Eternal for his triumphs as in
his invocation to Him in his distresses; accessible
to the most culpable human weaknesses, but
prompt to repent the offence once committed ;
and giving always to impulses of joy or pious
sadness the first place in his soul ; very king of
the nation that adores the very God. David
accomplishes the work of his time : he obtains
the object for which the monarchy had been
204 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
demanded and instituted : he leaves behind him
the tribes of Israel reunited at home, and reassured
against foreign enemies, proceeding too in the
path of good order and confidence. Heir to his
father s work, his father s success, Solomon comes
next, and reigns forty years years of almost as
much repose as splendour : " God gave Solomon
wisdom and understanding exceeding much, and
largeness of heart, even as the sand that is on
the sea shore."* "And he had peace on all sides
round about him. And Judah and Israel dwelt
safely, every man under his vine and under his
fig tree, from Dan even to Beersheba, all the
days of Solomon." f
The kingdom and the kingly authority rose
under the government of Solomon, and through
out all Western Asia, to a degree of power
and splendour before unknown to the Hebrews.
A prosperity out of all proportion with the
position of a new king and a small state, and
which reminds us of the rapid histories and the
* 1 Kings iv. 29. f Ibid. 24, 25.
SEVENTH MEDITATION. 205
political comets of the East. Solomon at tins
point lost sight of both wisdom and virtue : the
first hereditary prince of the Hebrew monarchy
terminated his life like a voluptuous sovereign
of Ecbatana or of Nineveh ; the son of the pious
King David became a sceptical moralist ; although
a profound observer of the nature and destiny of
man, such observation had led but to feelings
of disgust. Nor did the monarchy survive the
monarch : the nation became effeminate and
corrupt, in the effeminacy and corruption of its
sovereign. Scarcely was Solomon dead, when his
monarchy was divided into two kingdoms, which,
at first rivals, became soon openly hostile to each
other ; sometimes a prey to tyranny, sometimes to
anarchy, and almost always to war. It was not,
as formerly, merely a bad phase of transition in
the history of the Hebrew nation ; it was the
commencement of national decline decline irre
mediable, hopeless.
But what, in this decline, will become of the
law revealed on Sinai to Moses ? Is it destined
206 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
to fall with the monarchy of Solomon, or to lan
guish and die out in the midst of the struggles
and disasters of Judah and of Israel ? Quite the
contrary : the religious faith and law of the
Hebrews will not only perpetuate themselves, but
will again shine forth at this epoch of political
ruin.
Above the fortune of states are the designs of
God, to which instruments are never wanting ;
the kings continue to perpetrate acts of violence,
and the people to show marks of weakness ; but
amidst all, the prophets of Israel will maintain
the ancient Covenant, and prepare the coming of
that new Covenant which is to make of the God
of Israel the God of mankind.
IV. GOD AND THE PROPHETS.
A CELEBRATED political writer a freethinker
belonging to the Eadical school, somewhat also to
the school of Positivism Mr. John Stuart Mill, has
recently said, in his work on Government, " The
SEVENTH MEDITATION. 207
Egyptian hierarchy, the paternal despotism of
China, were very fit instruments for carrying
those nations up to the point of civilisation Avhich
they attained. But, having reached that point,
they were brought to a permanent halt, for want
of mental liberty and individuality ; requisites of
improvement which the institutions that had
carried them thus far, entirely incapacitated them
from acquiring ; and, as the institutions did not
break down and give place to others, further
improvement stopped. In contrast with these
nations, let us consider the example of an opposite
character afforded by another and a comparatively
insignificant Oriental people the Jews. They,
too, had an absolute monarchy and a hierarchy, and
their organised institutions were as obviously of
sacerdotal origin as those of the Hindoos. These
did for them what was done for other Oriental races
by their institutions subdued them to industiy
and order, and gave them a national life. But
neither their kings nor their priests ever obtained,
as in those other countries, the exclusive moulding
208 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
of their character. Their religion, which enabled
persons of genius and a high religious tone to be
regarded and to regard themselves as inspired
from Heaven, gave existence to an inestimably
precious unorganized institution the Order (if it
may be so termed) of Prophets. Generally under
the protection it was not always effectual of
their sacred character, the prophets were a power
in the nation, often more than a match for kings
and priests, and kept up in that little corner of
the earth the antagonism of influence, which is the
only real security for continued progress. Eeligion
consequently was not there what it has been in
so many other places a consecration of all that
was once established, and a barrier against further
improvement. The remark of a distinguished
Hebrew, M. Salvador, that the prophets were,
in Church and State, the equivalent to the
modern liberty of the press, gives a just but not
an adequate conception of the part fulfilled in
national and universal histories by this great
element of Jewish life ; by means of which, the
SEVENTH MEDITATION. 209
canon of inspiration never being complete, the
persons most eminent in genius and moral feeling
could not only denounce and reprobate, with the
direct authority of the Almighty, whatever ap
peared to them deserving of such treatment, but
could give forth better and higher interpretations
of the national religion. Conditions more favour
able to progress could not easily exist ; accordingly
the Jews, instead of being stationary like other
Asiatics, were, next to the Greeks, the most pro
gressive people of antiquity, and, jointly with
them, have been the starting-point and main
propelling agency of modern cultivation."*
Mr. Mill is right, only he does not go far
enough. Modern civilization is in effect derived
from the Jews and from the Greeks. To tin-
latter it is indebted for its human and intellectual,
to the former for its Divine and moral, element.
Of these two sources, we owe to the Jews, if
not the more brilliant, at all events the more
* Considerations on Representative Government. By Job i
Stuart Mill, pp. 4143. London.
210 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
sublime and dearly acquired one. After the
development of power and grandeur which took
place amongst the Jews in the reigns of David
and Solomon, their history is but a long
series of misfortunes and reverses, an eventful,
painful decline. The Hebrew state is divided
into two kingdoms, almost constantly at war
with each other. And whilst the kingdom of
Israel is a prey to continual usurpations and
revolutions, making it the scene of all the violence
and all the vicissitudes of a tyranny, the king
dom of Judah has a line of princes, in turn good
or bad, who keep it unceasingly in a state
of trouble and of jeopardy. Religion falls be
neath the yoke of secular government; idolatry
appears in the kingdom of Israel, and braves
audaciously the ancient national faith. The king
dom of Judah, however, remains more faithful to
Jehovah and his law, to the traditions of Moses,
and to the race of David ; but its languishing
faith is no longer strong enough to arrest its
march in the path of decline. In the two king-
SEVENTH MEDITATION. 211
doms, internal disorders are aggravated by reverses
abroad ; in the meantime, around them mighty
empires spring up and succeed to each other.
First Israel and then Judah are invaded by
strangers ; they are subjugated in turn by the
Assyrians, the Egyptians, the Syrians, the Baby
lonians. The Hebrews are not only vanquished
and reduced to subjection, but exiled, transported,
led captive far from their country. A new con
queror, Cyrus, permits them to return to Jerusa
lem ; but not to resume their independence ; at
first subjects of the Persian kings, they soon pass
from their empire to that of the Greek generals,
who have divided amongst one another the con
quests of Alexander ; then to the rule of the
Greeks succeeds that of the Eomans. During
this succession of servitudes, scarcely are they
allowed any moments of existence as a free
nation, and even this freedom is more apparent
than real. Judea, like Greece, is subjugated, but
under circumstances of greater humiliation and
distress.
p 2
212 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
And shall, then, the Hebrews oppose no effica
cious resistance to these reverses ? What is to
become, in this absolute ruin of the nationality of
the Jews, of their God, and their faith ? Shall the
miracles of Sinai have no more virtue than the
mysteries of Eleusis, and Jehovah languish away
and vanish in the routine of sacerdotal cere
monies, or in philosophical scepticism ?
By no means : in the midst of his people s
decay, the God of Israel maintains interpreters
who struggle with indomitable fidelity against
public calamities and popular errors. The first
of the prophets, Moses, had spoken in the name
and according to the commandment of Jehovah.
After him there never were wanting to Israel
men who inherited or pretended to the heritage
of the same Divine mission. " I will raise them
up a Prophet from among their brethren, like
unto thee," said the Eternal unto Moses, " and will
put my words in his mouth; and he shall speak
unto them all that I shall command him. . . .
But the prophet, which shall presume to speak
SEVENTH MEDITATION. 213
a word in my name, which I have not com
manded him to speak, or that shall speak in
the name of other gods, even that prophet shall
die."*
From Moses to Samuel, the series of the
prophets is continued ; some of them are of
renown, like Nathan in the reigns of David and
Solomon ; but the greater number, without name
in history, and appearing scattered over a long
course of years. They are called the Seers,\ or
the Inspired.^ Their speech gushes forth like
a well under the breath of God. When the
government of the Judges gives place to that
of the Kings, the great actor in this drama of
transition, Samuel, opens for the prophets a new
era ; dedicated from his infancy to God s service,
he feels beforehand and abides the divine
inspiration : " Speak, Lord ; for thy servant
heareth."
Not long after, his renown spreads amongst the
* Dent, xviii. 18, 20. f Roeh or Chozeli, in Hebrew.
J Nabi. 1 Samuel iii. 9, 10.
214 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
people ; he is not pontiff, he is not even priest.*
But he is pre-eminently the seer : " Is not the
seer here 1 " Such is the question addressed to
some young maidens by the men who are in
search of Samuel. Saul meets him without
knowing him, and says to him, "I pray thee
tell me where the house of the seer is." "I
am the seer," replied Samuel ; and soon after,
it is Samuel himself, who, in compliance with
the popular vote, approved by God, proclaims
Saul king. But at the moment when he thus
changes the theocracy in Israel into a monarchy,
he foresees the vices and perils attendant upon
the new government, and opposes to them the
element of resistance drawn from their national
beliefs and traditions ; he transforms the order
of prophets into a permanent institution ; he
founds schools of prophets, independent ser
vants of Jehovah, consecrated to the defence
of his law and the enunciation of his will;
* Samuel propheta fuit, judex fuit, levita fuit, non pontifex,
lie saoerdos quidem. St. Jeroni adv. Jovinianum.
SEVENTH MEDITATION. 215
constituting a sort of congregation indepen
dent of both Church and State; leading, in
fixed and appointed places, at Kama, Bethel,
Jericho, Jerusalem, a life in common, but with
out exclusive privileges ; the sons of the prophets
are brought up near their fathers ; but still tin-
mission of prophecy is accessible to all who have
the call from God : " Go, thou seer," said the
priest Amaziah, in his anger, to the prophet
Amos, " flee thee away into the land of Judah,
and there eat bread, and prophesy there : but
prophesy not again any more at Bethel : for it
is the king s chapel, and it is the king s court.
Then answered Amos, and said to Amaziah, I
was no prophet, neither was I a prophet s son :
but I was a herdman, and a gatherer of syco-
more fruit : and the Eternal took me as I fol
lowed the flock, and the Lord said unto inc.
Go, prophesy unto my people Israel." *
The prophets are neither priests nor monks:
sprung from all the classes of the Jewish nation,
* Amos vii. 12 15.
216 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
their vocation is essentially independent. They
belong to God alone, and await divine inspira
tion to oppose, as it may happen, at one time
the tyranny of the kings, at another the passions
of the populace, at another the corruption of
the priesthood: their only arms, the com
mands of God and the gift of prophecy. The
functions assigned to them are as different as
the places and circumstances of their life; but
they are ready to take any part and to encounter
any peril : some of them, like Elijah and Elisha,
are men of action and of combat ; the others,
like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Amos, are narra
tors, moralists, prophets ; some devote them
selves to attacks upon the acts of violence and
impiety committed by the kings, the others to
the vices and corruption of the people ; the same
spirit, however, animates them all ; they are all
interpreters and labourers of Jehovah ; they
defend, all of them, the faith of God against
idolatry, justice and right against tyranny, the
national independence against foreign dominion.
SEVEXTH MEDITATION. 217
In the name of the God of Abraham and of
Jacob, they labour and succeed in maintaining
or in reanimating religious and moral life amidst
the decay and servitude of Israel. " All the
time," says St. Augustine, "from the epoch when
the holy Samuel began to prophesy, to the day
when the people of Israel was led captive into
Babylonia, is the period of the prophets." *
To accomplish their mission, to ensure their
hard-earned successes, they had other arms
than lamentations and exhortations, arising out
of what was past and inevitable; other expe
dients than pious reproaches and expressions of
regret. These defenders of the ancient faith of
Moses do not shut themselves up within the
external forms and rites of their religion; they
pursue the moral object that it proposes ; they
insist upon the spirit that vivifies it. "Your
new moons and your appointed feasts my soul
hateth" (said the Lord, according to Isaiah) :
"they are a trouble unto me ; I am weary to b-ar
* De Civitatc Dei, 1. xvii. ch. 1.
218 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
them. And when ye spread forth your hands,
I will hide mine eyes from you : yea, when
ye make many prayers, I will not hear : your
hands are full of blood. Wash you, make you
clean ; put away the evil of your doings from
before mine eyes ; cease to do evil ; learn
to do well ; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed,
judge the fatherless, plead for the widow." *
"Wherewith shall I come before the Lord"
(said the prophet Micah), "and bow myself
before the high God I shall I come before him
with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old ?
Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,
or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? shall I
give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit
of my body for the sin of my soul ? He hath
shewed thee, man, what is good; and what
doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly,
and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy
God?"t
Even whilst calling the people of Israel back
* Isaiah i. 1417. t Micah vi. 68.
SEVENTH MEDITATION. 219
to the faith of their fathers, the prophets open
to them new perspectives : whilst reproaching
them with the errors that have led to their decay
and servitude, they permit them yet to see the
future delivery and regeneration. It is their
divine character to live at once in the past and
in the future ; to confide alike to the ordinances
of the Eternal and to his promises : they move
forward, but they change not ; they believe, they
hope ; they are faithful to Moses whilst they
announce the Messiah.
V. EXPECTATION OF THE MESSIAH.
CONTROVERSY has the mischievous power of
the Homeric Jupiter : it collects clouds amidst
which the light that we seek for disappears.
The Old and the New Testament, the history
of the Jews and the history of Jesus Christ, lie
before us. Do these two monuments form but
one single edifice ? That second history, is it
comprised and written beforehand in the first 1
220 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
Such is the question which has for the last
eighteen centuries occupied and divided the
learned. Some affirm that Jesus Christ was fore
seen and predicted among the Jews, and that
the series of prophecies continued from the very
time of Moses until the advent of Christ. Others
lay stress upon the hiatus the want of connection
and cohesion the contradictions to be detected
here between the Old and New Testament ; and
thence they conclude that the text of the Old
Testament by no means contains the facts that
appear in the New Testament, and that the
miraculous history of Jesus Christ was, in the
bosom of Israel, neither miraculously foreseen nor
predicted.
Why was it, and how was it possible, that
two assertions so contradictory came to be both
adopted and maintained by men most of them as
sincere as learned ?
They have all committed the fault of plunging
into the petty details of facts and texts, searching
in all places, without exception, for the complete
SEVENTH MEDITATION. 221
demonstration of their particular theses, and
losing sight of the great fact, the general and
dominant fact to which we should refer as alone
capable of solving the question. They descend
into the mazy paths which perplex the plain
below, instead of grasping from the summit of
the mountains, the whole comprehensive view,
and the grand road leading to the goal itself.
Believers have insisted upon discovering, fact by
fact, in the biblical prophecies the whole mission
and all the life of Jesus. The incredulous, on the
other hand, have minutely adverted to all the
discrepancies, all the difficulties, suggested by a
comparison of the texts of the Old Testament
and of the Gospel narrative ; they have contrasted
the glories of the Messiah, the powerful King of
Israel, so often announced by the prophets, with
the humble life, the cruel death of Jesus, and
with the ruin of Jerusalem. In my opinion, they
have on both sides lost sight of the inward and
essential characteristic of this sublime history ;
the special action of God is revealed therein, but
222 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
without suppressing the action of men ; miracles
take their place in the midst of the natural course
of events ; the ambitious aspirations of the Jews
connect themselves with the religious perspective
opened to them by the prophets ; the divine and
the human, the inspiration from on high and the
impulse of the national imagination, appear toge
ther. These two elements should be disentangled:
the mind should be raised above the perplexing
influences which they exercise, and the attention
directed to that heavenly beam which pierces the
vapours of this earthly atmosphere. Thus, all
the embarrassment that controversy occasioned
vanishing, the history yields to us its profound
meanings, and, in spite of complications having
their origin in the wordy explanations of man, the
design of God makes itself manifest in all its
majestic simplicity.
Discarding all discussion and commentary, let
us merely collect, from epoch to epoch, the prin
cipal texts which speak of the advent of the
future Messiah. I might here multiply citations,
SEVENTH MEDITATION. 223
but I limit myself to those where the allusion is
evident. It is the Bible, and the Bible alone, that
is speaking.
The first act of disobedience to God, the act
of original sin, has just been committed. The
Eternal God says to the serpent that has seduced
Eve : " Because thou hast done this, thou art
cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of
the field And I will put enmity between
tliee and the woman, and between thy seed and
her seed ; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt
bruise his heel." *
He that shall bruise the head of the serpent
shall belong, says the Book of Genesis, to the
race of Shem, to the posterity of Abraham and
Jacob, to the kingdom of Judah. "But thou,
Beth-lehem Ephratah, though thou be little-
among the thousands of Judah, yet out of th<M>.
shall he come forth unto me that is to be Ruin-
in Israel. "t
* Genesis iii. 14,* 15.
f Genesis ix. 26 ; xii. 3 ; xlix. 10 ; Micah v. 2.
224 THE CHRISTIAN EELIGION.
Israel is at its apogee of splendour : David
prophesies alike the sufferings and the glory of
that Saviour of the world who is to be not merely
the King of Zion, but " the Son and the Anointed
of the Eternal:" "My God, my God, why hast
thou forsaken me ? " is the expression attributed
to him by the prophet king. . . . "All they that
see me laugh me to scorn : they shoot out the lip,
they shake the head They gave me also
gall for my meat, and in my thirst they gave me
vinegar to drink They part my garments
among them, and cast lots upon my vesture. . . .
He trusted on the Lord that he would deliver
him ; let him deliver him, seeing he delighted in
him. ... Ye that fear the Lord, praise him ; all
ye the seed of Jacob, glorify him ; and fear him,
all ye the seed of Israel All the ends of
the earth shall remember and turn unto the
Lord : and all the kindreds of the nations shall
worship before thee."* The kingdom of David
* Psalms ii. 2, 6, 7 ; xxii. 1, 7 ; Ixix. 21 ; xxii. 18, 8,
23, 27.
SEVENTH MEDITATION. 2:25
and of Solomon has begun to decay ; Judah and
Israel are separating ; both kingdoms have their
prophets, who at one time struggle against the
crimes and evils of their respective ages, and,
at another, occupy themselves in disclosing
prospects of the future.
" Hear ye now, house of David
"Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign;
Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall
call his name Immanuel
" The people that walked in darkness have seen a great
light : they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death,
upon them hath the light shined
" For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given :
and the government shall be upon his shoulder : and his
name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty
God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace
" And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of
Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots :
"And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him,
the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of
counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear
of the Lord ;
" and he shall not judge after the sight of his
eyes, neither reprove after the hearing of his ears :
" But with righteousness shall he judge the poor, and
reprove with equity, for the meek of the earth
THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
" Listen, isles, unto me ; and hearken, ye people, from
far ; The Lord hath called me from the womb ; from the
bowels of my mother hath he made mention of my
name .....
" And said unto me, Thou art my servant, Israel, in
whom I will be glorified.
" Then I said, I have laboured in vain, I have spent my
strength for nought, and in vain : yet surely my judgment
is with the Lord, and my work with my God.
"And now, saith the Lord that formed me from the
womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob again to him,
Though Israel be not gathered, yet shall I be glorious
in the eyes of the Lord, and my God shall be my
strength.
" And he said, It is a light thing that thou shouldest be
my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore
the preserved of Israel : I will also give thee for a light to
the Gentiles, that thou mayest be my salvation unto the
end of the earth .....
" Eejoice greatly, daughter of Zion ; shout, daughter
of Jerusalem : behold, thy King cometh unto thee : he is
just, and having salvation ; lowly, and riding upon an ass,
and upon a colt the foal of an ass.
". . . . For he shall grow up before him as a tender
plant, and as a root out of a dry ground : he hath no form
nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no
beauty that we should desire him.
" He is despised and rejected of men ; a man of sorrows,
and acquainted with grief: and we .hid as it were our
SEVENTH MEDITATION. 227
faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him
not.
" Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sor
rows : yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and
afflicted.
"But he was wounded for our trangressions, he was
bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace
was upon him ; and with his stripes we are healed.
"All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned
every one to his own way ; and the Lord hath laid on him
the iniquity of us all.
" He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened
not his mouth : he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter,
and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so ke openeth
not his mouth.
" He was taken from prison and from judgment : and
who shall declare his generation ? for he was cut off out of
the land of the living : for the transgression of my people
was he stricken
"Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him; he hath put
him to grief : when thou shalt make his soul an offering
for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and
the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.
" He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be
satisfied: by his knowledge shall my righteous servant
justify many ; for he shall bear their iniquities.
" Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great,
and he shall divide the spoil with the strong ; because he
hath poured out his soul unto death : and he was numbered
228 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
with the transgressors ; and he bare the sin of many, and
made intercession for the transgressors." *
Whatever controversies may arise out of these
texts, and many others which I might cite, one
fact subsists and rises above all question and all
controversy. Seventeen centuries passed in the
interval between the Decalogue being received by
Moses upon Mount Sinai, and the actual approach
of the Messiah announced by the prophets ; and
at the end of these seventeen centuries, the God,
from whom Moses received the Decalogue, He
who defined himself to be " I am that I am."
Jehovah, still is, has never ceased to be the God,
the sole God of Israel. Israel has passed through
all governments, undergone all vicissitudes, fallen
into all the errors to which it is possible for
a nation to succumb : the Jews have had a
hierarchy, and judges, and kings; they have been
alternately conquerors and conquered, masters
and slaves ; they have had their days of power
* Isaiah vii. 1314 ; ix. 26 ; xi. 14 ; xlix. 16
Zechariah ix. 9 ; Isaiah liii.
SEVENTH MEDITATION. 22 ( .)
and their days of humiliation, their temptation
to idolatry and paroxysms of impiety ; still they
have ever returned to the One God : to the true
God ; their faith has survived all their faults and
all their misfortunes ; and after those seventeen
centuries, Israel is waiting at the hand of Jehovah
a Messiah, to be, according to the affirmation of its
greatest prophets, the Liberator and the Saviour,
not of Israel alone, but of all nations. Fact
without parallel in history ! In vain shall men
exhaust against it all their science, and all their
scepticism : there is here more than the work
of man ; the fact itself is not human. But
what more shall that fact become, and what shall
be our belief, when all shall have received its
consummation, the prophecies their accomplish
ment, when Jehovah shall have given to the
world Jesus Christ ?
EIGHTH MEDITATION.
JESUS CHE1ST ACCORDING TO THE GOSPEL.
NEED I say that by the words, " the Gospel,"
here used, I understand the four Gospels, the Acts
of the Apostles, the Epistles, all the books, in fact,
which compose the Canon of the New Testament
as it is received by all Christians ?
These books have been variously studied : now
with the design of disproving, now of explaining
the life of Jesus Christ ; now with the object of a
Controversialist, now with that of a Commentator.
I approach the subject in neither character. I
would wish to study Jesus Christ in the New
Testament solely to know Him well, and to make
Him well known ; to place Him before the reader,
and to depict Him faithfully according to the
evidence of his history. I propose hereafter, in a
EIGHTH MEDITATION. 231
second scries of these Meditations, to examine its
authenticity, and the degree of credit to which
it is entitled. For the moment I assume the testi
mony as good and valid. Beyond all doubt, at the
outset, it is at least entitled to this respect. The
powerful influence of these books, and of the
accounts which they contain, such as they remain
to us, has been put to the test and proved. They
have overcome Paganism. They have conquered
Greece, Eome, and barbarous Europe. They
are actually overcoming the world. And the
sincerity of the authors is no less certain than
the virtue of the books : however possible it may
be to contest the enlightenment, the critical
sagacity of the original historians of Jesus Christ,
their good faith is beyond all question : it appears*
in their language ; they believed what they said ;
they sealed their assertions with their blood : " I
believe/ said Pascal, "only those histories, the
witnesses to which confirm their attestation by
submitting to death." Although not always a
sufficient reason to believe an account, it consti-
232 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
tutes a decisive motive to believe in the sincerity
of the witness.
I have before cited from the Old Testament
some of the texts which contain the promises
made to Israel of the Messiah. These promises
had evidently excited lively attention amongst
the Jews ; the satisfaction felt at their accom
plishment expressed itself loudly at the birth of
Jesus Christ : " And behold, there was a man in
Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon .... wait
ing for the consolation of Israel: and the Holy
Ghost was upon him. . . . Lord, now lettest thou
thy servant depart in peace, according to thy
word : For mine eyes have seen thy salvation,
which thou hast prepared before the face of all
people; a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the
glory of thy people Israel."*
Besides Simeon, a pious woman, Anna, "of
about fourscore and four years, which departed
not from the temple, but served God with fast
ings and prayers night and day. And she coming
* Luke ii. 2532.
EIGHTH MEDITATION.
in that instant gave thanks unto the Lord, and
spake of him to all them that looked for redemp
tion in Jerusalem."*
But there was far more than merely the
demonstrations of Simeon and Anna, - - than
these impulses of joy on the part of the faithful
followers of Jehovah : " In those days came
John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness
of Judaea And the same John had
Ins raiment of camel s hair, and a leathern
girdle about his loins ; and his meat was
locusts and wild honey And saying,
Kepent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at
hand. For this is he that was spoken of by the
prophet Esaias, saying, The voice of one crying
in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the
Lord, make his paths straight I indeed
baptize you with water unto repentance
But there standeth one among you, whom ye
know not. He it is who, coming after me, is
preferred before me, whose shoe s latchet I am
* Luke ii. 37, 38.
234 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
not worthy to unloose And I knew him
not : but that he should be made manifest to
Israel, therefore am I come baptizing with water.
.... And I saw, and bare record that this is
the Son of God."*
Attempts have sometimes been made, although
with no very great confidence on the part of the
propounders of the theory, to represent Jesus
as the most eminent among several reformers,
who, about the same epoch, aspired to the title
and character of the Messiah predicted by the
prophets and expected by Israel. Eeference
has been particularly made to one of His pre
decessors, Judas the Gaulonite, who, a few years
after the birth of Jesus, on the occasion of a
census ordered by the Imperial Legate Quirinius,
undertook to raise Judaea in insurrection against
this measure against the tribute that it imposed,
and against the Emperor himself proclaiming
that to God alone belonged the appellation
* Matt. iii. 15 ; Mark i. 211 ; Luke iii. 118 ; John i.
2634.
EIGHTH MEDITATION. 235
Master, and that liberty was worth more than
life.*
These comparisons I forbear to use the word
assimilations are entirely without foundation.
These men, who, as it is pretended, anticipated
the career of Jesus, were simply men who op
posed the Eoman dominion, and who stood up,
like the Maccabees before them, in the name of
national independence, and in a spirit of re
action in favor of the Mosaic government. Jesus
was not so anticipated : His mission had no
relation with any previous essay; and his sole
forerunner was John the Baptist, as strange as
himself to any political view or conspiracy, and as
humble before Him before the true, the sole
Messiah as Judas the Gaulonite and his ad
herents were bold and daring towards the
Emperor.
There is an interval of thirty years between
the birth of Jesus and the day when He enters
* Joseph. Antiq. Jud. 1. xvii. ch. 6 ; 1. xviii. ch. 1. Acts of
the Apostles, ch. v. 3439.
236 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
actively on the performance of his divine
mission.* These thirty years, however, were not
idly passed, nor were they without their peculiar
testimony to Christ and the future in store for
Him:
" And Joseph and his mother marvelled at those things
which were spoken of him
" And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled
with wisdom : and the grace of God was upon him.
" Now his parents went to Jerusalem every year at the
feast of the Passover.
"And when he was twelve years old, they went up to
Jerusalem after the custom of the feast.
" And when they had fulfilled the days, as they returned,
the child Jesus tarried behind in Jerusalem ; and Joseph
and his mother knew not of it.
" But they, supposing him to have been in the company,
went a day s journey ; and they sought him among their
kinsfolk and acquaintance.
* The question as to the precise epoch of the birth of Jesus
Christ, as well as of the commencement and the duration of His
public career, has been well and concisely considered in the
Synopsis Evangelica of M. Constantin Tischendorf (p. 16 19.
Leipzig, 1864). The preferable conclusion from these researches
is, that Jesus Christ was born in the year of Borne 750, that he
commenced his divine mission towards the end of the year of
Rome 780, and that his death took place in the fourth month of
the year of Borne 783.
EIGHTH MEDITATION. 237
. " And when they found him not, they turned back again
to Jerusalem, seeking him.
" And it came to pass, that after three days they found
him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, both
hearing them, and asking them questions.
" And all that heard him were astonished at his under
standing and answers.
" And when they saw him, they were amazed : and his
mother said unto him, Son, why hast thou thus dealt with
us ? Behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing.
" And he said unto them, How is it that ye sought me ?
wist ye not that I must be about my Father s business ?
"And they understood not the saying which he spake
unto them.
" And he went down with them, and came to Nazareth,
and was subject unto them : but his mother kept all these
sayings in her heart.
"And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in
favour with God and man."*
Thus begins that manifestation in the person
of the child Jesus Christ, that mixture of
humanity and divinity, of natural life and mira
culous life, which is his peculiar and sublime
characteristic. In the opinion of the men who.
in principle, reject the supernatural, this mixed
* Luke ii. 33, 4052.
238 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
divine - human nature, and consequently Jesus
Christ himself, is at once incomprehensible and
inadmissible. What wonder if Christ has in these
days to encounter such adversaries ? Had He
not to do so when invested with the attributes
of humanity, among contemporaries, and even
in his own family? In his first days of human
existence, his mother, Mary, saw Him and
understood Him not. And nevertheless "Mary
kept all these sayings in her heart." Expression,
at once profound and touching ; revealing the
mysterious complication of the nature of man !
Man is not content to resign himself to the limits
imposed by the actual laws of the finite world ;
his aspirations tend elsewhere. And still, when
called upon to rise above the present order of
nature that order which he is able to appreciate
he experiences a certain astonishment, a certain
hesitation ; he does not know if he ought to
believe in that supernatural that he was recently
invoking, and that he never ceases to invoke ; for,
like Mary, he preserves the instinct in his heart !
EIGHTH MEDITATION. 239
It is just at the present day as it was nineteen
centuries ago. Jesus has ever to encounter
such contradictory moods of human nature : He
is confronted at once by the hope of, the thirsting
after, the supernatural inherent in the human
soul, and by all the objections, all the doubts that
the supernatural itself suggests to the human
mind. He has to satisfy that hope, to surmount
those doubts. The Gospel opens the history of
this solemn straggle, that gave rise to Christianity,
and is the source of all those agitations which
afflict Christians at the present day.
I. JESUS CHRIST AND HIS APOSTLES.
ON entering upon the active purposes of his
mission, it is the will of Jesus to have, and He has
Disciples Apostles. He knows the power of an
association founded upon faith and love. He
knows also that faith and love are virtues as rare
as they are efficacious. It is not numbers that He
seeks. He surrounds himself with a select band
240 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
of believers, and lives with them in a complete
and enduring intimacy.
In the midst of these intimate relations, Jesus
declares his authority primitive and supreme :
" Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you,
and ordained you, that ye should go and bring
forth fruit/ *
But the authority of the Master does not
prevent Him from evincing a tenderness full of
trust, and from respecting himself the dignity of
his disciples: "Henceforth I call you not ser
vants ; for the servant knoweth not what his lord
doeth : but I have called you friends ; for all
things that I have heard of my Father I have
made known unto you." t
He evinces on all occasions towards his apostles
the trust that He feels in them, and shows his
sense of the superiority of the position to which
He has elevated them. His language sometimes
fills them with astonishment, and they are more
peculiarly struck by the numerous parables in
* John xv. 16. f John xv. 15.
EIGHTH MEDITATION. 241
which, whilst addressing the assembled multitude,
He clothes his precepts: "And the disciples
came, and said unto him, Why speakest thou unto
them in parables ? He answered and said unto
them, Because it is given unto you to know the
mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them
it is not given .... But unto those that are
without, all these things are done in parables." i
The confidingness of Jesus, however, never
descends to weak compliance ; when, in an im
pulse of vanity and ambition, one of his apostles
asks for a particular favour, Jesus rebukes him
with severity : " James and John, the sons of
Zebedee, come unto him, saying, Master, we would
that thou shouldest do for us whatsoever we shall
desire. And he said unto them, What would ye
that I should do for you ? They said unto him,
Grant unto us that we may sit, one on thy right
hand, and the other on thy left hand, in thy glory.
But Jesus said unto them, Ye know not what ye
ask : can ye drink of the cup that I drink of ?
* Matt. xiii. 10, 11 ; Mark iv. 10, 11.
242 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
and be baptized with the baptism that I am bap
tized with ? And they said unto him, We can.
And Jesus said unto them, Ye shall indeed drink
of the cup that I drink of ; and with the baptism
that I am baptized withal shall ye be baptized :
But to sit on my right hand and on my left
hand is not mine to give ; but it shall be given to
them for whom it is prepared .... Ye know
that they which are accounted to rule over the
Gentiles exercise lordship over them ; and their
great ones exercise authority upon them. But so
shall it not be among you : but whosoever will be
great among you, shall be your minister." *
Jesus having thus selected and intimately at
tached to Him his apostles, commissions them to
carry forth his law : " Go not into the way of
the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans
enter ye not : But go rather to the lost sheep of
the house of Israel. And as ye go, preach,
saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Heal
the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast
* Mark x. 35 43 ; Matt. xx. 2026.
EIGHTH MEDITATION. 243
out devils : freely ye have received, freely give.
Provide neither gold, nor silver, nor brass in your
purses, nor scrips for your journey, neither two
coats, neither shoes, nor yet staves : for the work
man is worthy of his meat .... Behold, I send
ye forth as sheep in the midst of wolves : be
ye therefore wise as serpents and harmless as
doves." *
It is, in effect, prudence side by side with
absolute self-denegation that Jesus, in his first
instructions, enjoins upon his disciples ; at the
very commencement of their mission He limits
its object ; He recommends to them particularly
"the lost sheep of the house of Israel ;" He declares
his will to be that, instead of a pertinacity with
out bounds, " they should depart, shaking off the
dust from their feet, out of the city that should
not receive them nor hear their words." But He
adds immediately, as if to give to their mission
all its grandeur : "What I tell you in darkness,
that speak ye in light : and what ye hear in the
* Matt. x. 5 10, 1C ; Luke x. 112.
244 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
ear, that preach ye upon the house-tops. And
fear not them which kill the body, but are not able
to kill the soul : but rather fear him which is
able to destroy both soul and body in hell." *
Jesus knows that his disciples will need the
firmest courage, and, far from promising them
any of the goods of this world, any temporal
successes, He discloses to them unceasingly all
the perils they will incur, all the invectives they
will have to endure. " But beware of men : for
they will deliver you up to the councils, and
they will scourge you in their synagogues; and
ye shall be brought before governors and kings for
my sake, for a testimony against them and the
Gentiles . . . And ye shall be betrayed both by
parents, and brethren, and kinsfolks and friends ;
and some of you shall they cause to be put to
death. And ye shall be hated of all men for my
name s sake." f
What Eeformer, other than Jesus Christ, ever
held to his followers such language ? Who else
* Matt. x. 27, 28. f Matt. x. 1722. Luke xxi. 1217.
EIGHTH MEDITATION. 215
than God could have imparted to their language
such virtue that they would in obedience to it
sacrifice with joy not merely all the good things
of this life, but life itself? Nevertheless, one of
those apostles, and the first of them all, Peter,
evinces some disquietude, if not at their lot in
this world, at least at their destinies in the king
dom of heaven. "Then answered Peter and
said unto him, Behold, we have forsaken all, and
followed thee ; what shall we have therefore 1
And Jesus said unto them, Verily I say unto you,
That ye which have followed me, in the regenera
tion when the Son of man shall sit in the throne
of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones,
judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And every
one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or
sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children,
or lands, for my name s sake, shall receive an
hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life." *
But Jesus does not intend that the prospect
of their lofty inheritance should inspire in the
* Matt. xix. 2729.
246 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
minds of any of his apostles, and not more in
that of Peter than the rest, any proud presump-
tuousness, and He immediately adds, " But many
that are first, shall be last ; and the last shall be
first/ 5 * The world s history may be perused and
reperused ; the causes of all the revolutions that
have taken place in the world, whether religious
or political, may be probed and investigated ;
but we shall nowhere be able to trace in the
dealings of chiefs and accomplices, of origina
tors and fellow-workmen, the divine character
istics of absolute and uncompromising sincerity
that reign throughout the actions and language of
Jesus Christ in His conduct towards His apostles.
Them He has chosen and loved ; to them He has
entrusted His work ; but He practises with them
no arts of worldly wisdom ; He withholds nothing
from them ; here is no faltering encouragement,
no exaggeration in the promises that He makes
or in the hope that He holds forth ; He speaks to
them the language of pure truth, and it is in the
* Matt. xix. 30.
EIGHTH MEDITATION. 247
name of that truth that He gives them His com
mands and transfers to them His mission. " Never
did man speak like this man/ * nor so deal with
men.
II. JESUS CHRIST AND HIS PRECEPTS.
JESUS speaks : and it is at one time with His
disciples alone, at another surrounded by eager,
astonished multitudes ; now from the mount, now
on the shore of the sea of Gennesareth, from a
bark ; by the road side ; in the house of the Pha
risee, Simon, and the toll-gatherer, Levi ; in the
synagogue of Nazareth, in the Temple of Jerusa
lem : Jesus speaks, " not like the scribes," not like
the philosophers ; He expounds no system ; He
discusses no question ; He does not pace up and
down like Socrates with his learned friends in the
gardens of the Academy, nor lose himself in the
mazes of the human understanding. Jesus speaks
to men, to all men without distinction; He speaks
to them of man s life, man s soul, man s destiny,
* John vii. 46.
248 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
of matters that touch all alike. And He speaks
to them " as one having authority."
What does He say to them ? What teach,
what command, in that speech full of authority 1
He teaches them, He enjoins them, to have
faith, hope, charity : those virtues which have now
borne His name nineteen centuries, those virtues
which are essentially Christian.
Is it, then, in His own name that Jesus Christ
teaches and commands ? By no means : " My
doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me. If
any man will do his will, he shall know of the
doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I
speak of myself.
" He that speaketh of himself seeketh his own
glory : but he that seeketh his glory that sent
him, the same is true, and no unrighteouness is in
him Then cried Jesus in the Temple
as he taught, saying, Ye both know me, and ye
know whence I am : I am not come of myself,
but he that sent me is true, whom ye know
not.
EIGHTH MEDITATION. 2 I J
" But I know him : for I am from him, and he
hath sent me." *
Whilst He refers everything to God, Jesus
Christ seeks not to define or explain Him ; He
affirms Him and demonstrates Him ; God is the
first cause, the point from which all things spring ;
faith in God is the paramount source of virtue,
and of power, as well as virtue, of hope and of
resignation.
For Jesus Christ has not only a perfect faith
in God, He has also a profound knowledge of man :
He knows that, unaided, man s soul cannot, with
out despair, without withering, bear the burthen
imposed by the injustice of the world and of life,
of the miseries and erroneous appreciation of
mankind. To this injustice and this wietchedneaa
Jesus Christ never ceases to oppose God, God s jus
tice, God s benevolence, God s succour : He recom
mends to Him all the forsaken, all the oppress* I,
all the wretched, all the victims of society. He
enjoins to these not resignation alone, but Hope
* John vii. 1618, 28, 29.
250 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
as the sister and companion of Faith. Nor does
He hold forth to those that suffer the realization
of earthly expectations, the restoration of worldly
prosperity, as their resource and their consolation.
He has nothing to do with remedies deceitful like
these. He acts with the most perfect truthfulness
and sincerity towards mankind in general, as He
also does with His disciples : He only promises
them the re-establishment of justice, and the
reward of virtue, in that mysterious future
where God alone reigns, and of which He dis
closes to them the perspective without unfold
ing the secrets.
Nothing strikes me more in the Gospel than
this double character of austerity and of love, of
severe purity and tender sympathy, which con
stantly appears, which reigns in the actions and
the words of Jesus Christ in everything that
touches the relation of God and mankind. To
Jesus Christ the law of God is absolute, sacred ;
the violation of the law, and sin, are odious to
Him ; but the sinner himself irresistibly moves
EIGHTH MEDITATION. 251
him and attracts him : " What man of you, having
an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth
not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness,
and go after that which is lost, until he find it 1
And when he hath found it, he layeth it on his
shoulders, rejoicing. And when he cometh home,
he calleth together his friends and neighbours,
saying unto them, Eejoice with me ; for I have
found my sheep which was lost. I say unto you,
that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sin
ner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine
just persons, which need no repentance." * Jesus
said unto them, " They that are whole need not
a physician, but they that are sick .... For I
am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to
repentance." f
What is the signification of this sublime
fact ; what the meaning in Jesus of this union,
this harmony of severity and of love, of saint
like holiness and of human sympathy ? It is
Heaven s revelation of the nature of Jesus him-
* Luke xv. 47. t Matt. ix. 12, 13.
252 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
self, of the God-man. God, lie made himself
man. God is his father, men are his brethren.
He is pure and holy like God : He is accessible
and sensible to all that man feels. Thus the vital
principles of the Christian faith, the divine and
the human nature united in Jesus, start to evi
dence, in his sentiments and language respecting
the relations between God and man. The dogma
is the foundation of the principles.
Another fact is not less significant. At the
same time that the divine and mysterious charac
ter of Jesus Christ appears in the Gospel, his acts
and his words have a character essentially simple
and practical. He pursues no learned object, no
scientific plan ; He develops no system; his object
is something infinitely grander than the triumph
of any logical abstraction : it is to pervade the
human soul, to establish himself in it to save it.
He speaks the language He appeals to the ideas
most calculated to ensure Him success. Some
times He addresses himself to the task of inspiring
in men the most poignant disquietude as to their
EIGHTH MEDITATION. 253
future destiny, if they violate the laws of God ; at
other times He causes to shine before their eyes
the realisation of the most magnificent hopes, if
with sincerity they persist in faith. He knows the
generation that He is addressing; He knows human
nature in its universality, and what it will be in
future generations : his object is to produce upon
it an effect at once positive, general, durable ; He
chooses the ideas, He employs the images suitable
to his design for the regeneration and the salva
tion of all. God s Ambassador is the most pene
trating and able of human moralists.
More than once, the attempt has been made to
find Him at fault, to detect in his language exagge
rations, contradictions, incoherences irreconcilable
with his divine authority. Surprise, for instance,
has been expressed, that He should have one day
said, according to St. Matthew : " He that is not
with me is against me ; and he that gathereth not
with mescattereth abroad ;"* and that He should
another day, according to St. Mark, have used the
* Matt. xii. 30.
254 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
expression, " For lie that is not against us is on
our part."* These two passages have been cha
racterised as furnishing "two rules of proselytism
entirely opposed to each other, and as involving
a contradiction growing out of some impassioned
struggle." f In my turn I observe that it asto
nishes me how earnest men can fall into any
such error. Jesus does not lay down in these
two passages two contradictory rules of proselyt
ism, He merely observes and refers in turn to two
different facts : who has not learnt, in the course
of actual life, that, according to the difference
of circumstances and persons, the man who
abstains from active concurrence, who keeps him
self aloof, by that very fact may at one time give
support and strength, and at another injure and
impede \ These two assertions, far from being
in contradiction, may be both true, and Jesus
Christ, in uttering them, spoke as a sagacious
observer, not as a moralist who is enunciating
precepts. I have heard other critics reproachfully
* Mark ix. 40. f Vie de Jesus, par M. Kenan, p. 229.
EIGHTH MEDITATION. 255
regard another passage as a sort of blasphemy.
According to St Luke : " There was in a city a
judge, which feared not God, neither regarded
man : and there was a widow in that city ; and
she came unto him, saying, Avenge me of mine
adversary. And he would not for a while : but
afterward he said within himself, Though I fear
not God, nor regard man ; yet because this widow
troubleth me, I will avenge her, lest by her con
tinual coming she weary me." *
Is it possible to infer from these words an
intention on the part of Jesus to liken God to
an unjust judge, and to make the mere impor
tunate persistence in praying a claim to God s
grace ? He only cited an occurrence which made
noise in his time, in order to instil a lively
impression of the utility of perseverance. To
attain his end, He never makes use of out-of-the-
way or impure expedients ; but He draws from
the ordinary events of human life examples and
reasons to illustrate and n-ndrr intelligible the
* Luke xviii. 1 5.
256 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
divine precepts, and to insure their acceptance.
All the parables have this meaning and object.
Next to the precepts which refer to the rela
tions of man with God come those which respect
the relations of men with one another. Whilst
Faith and Hope regard God, Charity has man for
its object.
Charity, it has often been repeated, is the great
principle of Jesus Christ, pre-eminently the
Christian virtue. I know, not, however, whether
the source whence Christian charity derives its
character and grandeur has been adequately
perceived or remarked.
In the different pagan religions, whether of
character gross or learned, we have deifications of
the different forces of nature or of men themselves.
And even in those religions in which gods in their
turn are said to assume man s shape, it is man
particularly that is predominant, and that lives in
the incarnation of God. Whereas in Christianity,
it is not a god sprung from nature or of human
origin that becomes man, but the God self-existent,
EIGHTH MEDITATION. 25?
anterior, and superior to all beings, the God, One,
Eternal. The Hebrew religion, alone of all reli
gions, shows God essentially and eternally distinct
from the nature and the mankind that He has
created, and that He governs. The Christian
Faith alone shows God one and eternal ; the God
of Abraham and of Moses making himself man,
and the divine nature uniting itself to the human
nature in the person of Jesus. And in this union
it is the divine nature that shines forth, that
speaks, that sets in movement. And this incar
nation is unparalleled like the God its author.
And why did God make himself man ? "What
is the object of this unparalleled, this mysterious
incarnation \ It is God s purpose to rescue in MM
from the evil and the peril which have continued
to weigh upon him since the fault committed by
his first progenitor. It is God s purpose to ransom
the human race from the sin of Adam, the heritage
of Adam s children, and to bring it back to tin-
ways of eternal life. These are the <lc>i^n>, Inudlv
proclaimed, of the divine incarnation in Jesus, and
258 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
the price of all the sufferings and agonies which
He endured in its accomplishment.
Need I say more I Who does not see how this
sublime fact exalts man s dignity at the same time
that it illustrates the worth of man s nature ? By
the mere fact of God having assumed his form is
man s nature glorified ; and all men, so to say,
have their share of the honour done by God to
humanity in uniting himself with it, and in
accepting, for a moment of time, all the conditions
of humanity. But as far as mankind is here con
cerned, it is far more than a mere accession of an
honour or a glorifying of his nature : it is a
striking manifestation of the value that all men
have in the eyes of God. For it is not for some
of them only, for some class or nation, or portion
of humanity, it is for all humanity that God
became incarnate in Jesus Christ, and that Jesus
Christ has submitted to all human sufferings.
Every human soul is the object of this divine
sacrifice, and called upon to gather the fruit.
This is the source, this the privilege of Christian
EIGHTH MEDITATION. 259
charity. The dogma makes the force of the pre
cept itself. Jesus crucified is God s charity towards
man. Impossible that men should not feel them
selves bound to act towards each other as God has
done to them ; and towards what man is not
charity a duty? Without the divinity and sacri
fice of Jesus Christ, the value of man s soul, if I
may be pardoned the expression, sinks, neither
his salvation nor the example of his Saviour is
any longer the question, charity becomes nothing
more than human goodness ; a sentiment, however
noble and useful, still limited both in impulsive
energy and in efficacy ; having its source in man
alone, it can but incompletely solace the unequally
distributed sufferings of mortality. It is not suited
to inspire any long effort or great sacrifice : it is
not adequate to convert the longing desire for the
moral amendment, the physical relief of hum; mil v,
into that inextinguishable sympathy and untiring
and impassioned emotion which really constitute
charity, and which the Christian Faith, in the
history of the world, has alone been able to inspire.
260 THE CHEISTIAN RELIGION.
Thus the essential precepts of Jesus, the virtues
which He commands as the basis and source of
all the others, have an intimate connection with
his doctrine, a doctrine " which is not," He tells us
himself, "his, but of him that sent him;" that is
to say, they are connected with the fundamental
dogmas of the Christian religion. No one denies the
perfection, the sublimity of the Gospel morality ;
men indeed seem to feel a sort of self-complacency,
a satisfaction in celebrating it, with a view to the
conclusion, more or less explicitly stated, that that
morality constitutes the whole Gospel. This is,
however, not less than absolutely to mistake the
bond which unites in man thought with sentiment,
and belief with action. Man is grander and less
easy to satisfy than superficial moralists pretend ;
the law of his life is for him, in the profound
instinct of his soul, necessarily connected with the
secret of his destiny ; and it is only the Christian
dogma that gives to Christian ethics the Eoyal
authority of which they stand in need to govern
and to regenerate humanity.
EIGHTH MEDITATION.
III. JESUS AND HIS MIRACLES.
I HAVE called myself one of those who admit
the supernatural ; and I have stated my reasons.
I might stop there and enter into no special
reflection as to the Gospel Miracles. The pos
sibility of miracles once accorded in principle,
nothing remains but to weigh the value of the
testimony in their support In the second series
of these Meditations, where I treat of the authen
ticity of the localities specified in the Holy Scrip
tures, I shall occupy myself with tin s examination.
It is not, however, my wish to elude, upon the
subjects that lie at the bottom of this question,
any of the difficulties that it presents : for here
we find the point of attack sought by the adver
saries of the Christian faith. The image of
Christ as it results from the Gospel would be
besides singularly unfaithful, did we not range
in it his miracles by the side of liis precepts.
I avow once more my belief in God, in God
the Creator, the Sovereign Master of the Universe,
262 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
who orders it and governs it by that independent
and constant action of his providence and power
styled the Laws of Nature. To those who regard
nature as having existed from all eternity of
itself, and governed by laws immutable and pro
ceeding from fate, I have nothing to say of Jesus
or his miracles ; the question at issue between
them and me is more important than that which
respects miracles ; it involves the very question
of Pantheism or Christianity, of Fatalism or
Liberty, affecting both God and man. Upon
these subjects I have already expressed my
general opinion and its grounds. I propose to
enter further upon it in the third series of
these Meditations, when I come to speak of
the different systems which are now in conflict
throughout Christendom. But at this moment
I address myself to Deists and to men of waver
ing minds, and to these alone.
One thing is beyond all doubt : the perfect
sincerity of the apostles and of the primitive
Christians as to their faith in the miracles of
EIGHTH MEDITATION. 263
Jesus. Sincerity still more striking that it is
united to every sort of hesitation in the mind
and weakness in the conduct, and that it only
triumphs gradually and slowly when Jesus has
quitted his disciples and has left them alone
charged with his work. Whilst He was with
them, St. Peter has failed, St. Thomas has
doubted ; after several miracles have been per
formed by Jesus, his disciples are astonished, put
questions to Him, yet still doubt of Him and
of his power. Upon several occasions Jesus ad
dresses them as men " of little faith," and at the
moment when He is arrested, they abandon Him,
they fly from Him. No impassioned enthusiasm,
no exaggeration in their trustfulness and th ir
devotedness ; even with them Jesus sees himself
confronted by all the vacillations and pusillani
mity of humanity; He persuades them, He wins
them, He preserves them only by great exertion,
and by dint, so to say, of divine power and
divine virtue. They only really believe in Him
after having witnessed the accomplishment of his
264 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
sacrifice and his last miracle, when they had seen
his Crucifixion and his Eesurrection. Only then
they believed ; but from that moment their faith
became absolute, superior to all perils and all
trials : full of the Holy Spirit, and associated in
a certain measure to their divine Master, they
pursue his work with unshaken confidence and
firmness, without pretending to any merit, with
out any impulse of personal pride. Before " the
gate of the Temple which is called Beautiful,"
St. Peter has healed a lame man and made him
to walk. " And as the lame man which was
healed held Peter and John, all the people ran
together unto them in the porch that is called
Solomon s, greatly wondering. And when Peter
saw it, he answered unto the people, Ye men of
Israel, why marvel ye at this ? or why look ye so
earnestly on us, as though by our own power or
holiness we had made this man to walk ? . . . .
Ye killed the Prince of life, whom God hath raised
from the dead ; whereof we are witnesses. And
his name through faith in his name hath made
EIGHTH MEDITATION. 2 03
this man strong, whom ye see and know : yea,
the faith which is by him hath given him this
perfect soundness in the presence of you all."*
It was not the people only that felt astonishment,
but " the rulers and elders ; the scribes, the high
priest, and all those who were of the kindred of
the high priest, were gathered together at Jeru
salem, and set in their midst " Peter and John,
and after a deliberation full of anxiety, they
" commanded them not to speak at all, nor teach
in the name of Jesus. But Peter and John
answered and said unto them, Whether it be
right in the sight of God to hearken unto you
more than unto God, judge ye. For we cannot
but speak the things we have seen and heard." f
What sincerity and what firmness ever showed
themselves more strikingly than those that gr.-\v
out of the faith of St. Paul ? From such faith ].
had been originally farther removed than the
other apostles; he had done far more than nu-iely
err like Peter or doubt like Thomas ; he had
* Acts iii. 1 1G. t Acts iv. 5, G, U 20.
266 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
hotly persecuted the first followers of Christ.
In his turn penetrated and subdued on the road
to Damascus by the voice of Jesus, he devotes
himself to Him life and soul ; he recounts himself
his miraculous conversion,* and as little doubt
can be entertained of the authenticity of his
Epistles as of the sincerity that dictated them.
The history of all religions abounds in miracles ;
but in all religions except the Christian, the
miracles recounted by their historians are evi
dently either contrivances of the founder to
induce persuasion, or they spring from the play
of the human imagination, ever disposed to
delight in the marvellous, ever particularly prone
to give way in the sphere of religion to its
fantastic suggestions. In the Gospel miracles, on
the contrary, we have nothing of the kind ; no
artifice in their Author ; none of the marvellous
machinery of poetry, nor any hasty credulity in
the historians. The miraculous agency of Christ
* 1 Corinth, xv. 8. 2 Corinth, xi. 32, 33 ; xii. 15. Galat.
i.1 4.
EIGHTH MEDITATION. 207
is essentially simple, practical, and moral : He
does not go in search of miracles ; neither does
He make any vain display of them : they
are wrought when a pressing emergency or a
natural occasion calls for them ; and when they
are demanded in faith and in trust, He tin -n
works them without ostentation and in right of
his divine mission ; whilst at the very moment
He makes the doubt and the coldness with which
He is received, the subject of complaint : " Woe
unto thee, Chorazin ! wo unto thee, Bethsaida !
for if the mighty works, which were done in you,
had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would
have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes."*
Jesus has full confidence in himself, in the mira< ! -
that He effects, in the doctrine that He inculcates.
He feels no astonishment, but merely sorrow, that
His work, the work of light and of salvation,
pursued by Him in accordance with the will
of God his Father, should not obtain a more
rapid, a more general success.
* Matt. xi. 21.
268 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
As for us, remote spectators, the astonishment
must be not the slowness or limited nature of
that success, but its rapidity and its extent. All
religions that have taken place in the world s
history, have been established by moral and by
material agency ; all appealed from their very
commencement as much to force as to persuasion,
as much to the arm as to the tongue. Christi
anity alone lived and grew during three centuries
by its own single native virtue, without any
other appeal than that made to Truth, without
any other aid than that of Faith. During those
three centuries the dogmas, the precepts, and
the miracles of its Author constituted its only
weapons, and weapons which have prevailed
against all other arms. Those dogmas, those
precepts, and those miracles effected the conquest
of man s mind and of human society in spite
of the resistance of Greek philosophy, Eoman
power, and all the poetical or mystical mytho
logies of antiquity marshalled against them.
The victory has not, it is true, put an end to
EIGHTH MEDITATION. 2G9
all struggle of man s intelligence : neither has the
light from Christ dissipated all darkness, nor
satisfied all minds ; the explanation and com
mentaries of man have obscured the doctrines
of Christ ; human prejudices have mistaken
his precepts ; and legends have been grafted
upon his miracles. But the fact does not the
less exist, that the dogmas, the precepts, and
the miracles of Christ, without any aid from
human sources, sufficed to found and ensure tin-
triumph of the Christian religion : this is a fact
primitive and supreme. And from this single
result shines forth the divine character of the
Christian religion, for its triumph without the
miraculous agency of God, would be of all
miracles the most impossible to receive.
IV. JESUS, THE JEWS, AND THE GEM II l>
"TniNK not that I am come !> <lr>tnv the
law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy,
but to fulfil."*
* Matt. v. 17.
270 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
" Do not think that I will accuse you to the
Father : there is one that accuseth you, even
Moses, in whom ye trust. For had ye believed
Moses, ye would have believed me : for he wrote
of me. But if ye believe not his writings, how
shall ye believe my words?"* This was the
language that Jesus used to the Jews. It was in
the name of their history and of their faith, in the
name of the God of Abraham and of Jacob, that
He called them to Him, presenting himself to
them in the double capacity of conservative and
reformer, and appealing to the ancient law against
those who, whilst observing it outwardly, really
changed its character. " Then came to Jesus
scribes and Pharisees, which were of Jerusalem,
saying, Why do thy disciples transgress the tra
dition of the elders ? for they wash not their
hands when they eat bread. But He answered
and said unto them, "Why do ye also transgress
the commandment of God by your tradition ?
For God commanded, saying, Honour thy father
* John v. 4547.
EIGHTH MEDITATION. 271
and mother : and, He that curseth father or
mother, let him die the death. But ye say, Who
soever shall say to his father or his mother, It
is a gift, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited
by me ; and honour not his father or his mother,
he shall be free. Thus ye have made the com
mandment of God of none effect by your tradi
tion !*.... Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees,
hypocrites ! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise
and cummin, and have omitted the weightier
matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith :
these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the
other undone." f
Jesus was incessantly warning, making ap
peals to the Jews ; and when He saw that
they pertinaciously disavowed and rejected Him,
He cried, in an impulse of patriotic, affec
tionate sadness: "0 Jerusalem, Jerusalem,
which killest the prophets, and stonest tin in
that are sent unto thee ; how often would I
have gathered thy children together, as a Inn
* Matt. xv. ] 6. f Matt, xxiii. 23.
272 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
doth gather her brood under her wings, and ye
would not ! " *
I know nothing more imposing than the appa
rition of a grand idea, a divine idea rising and
mounting rapidly upon the human horizon. Such
is the spectacle afforded to us in its short dura
tion by the history of Jesus Christ. In his first
instructions to his apostles, He said to them, " Go
not to the Gentiles and enter not into any city of
the Samaritans ; but go ye rather to the lost
sheep of the people of Israel." Thus he carefully
avoided offending the sentiments of the day, and
only enjoined upon his apostles what they might
do with success at the very beginning of their
mission. But soon the light increases that issues
from the words and the actions of Jesus; as I
advance in the books of the Gospel, I there read :
"And when Jesus was entered into Capernaum,
there came unto him a centurion, beseeching him,
and saying, Lord, my servant lieth at home sick
of the palsy, grievously tormented. And Jesus
* Matt, xxiii. 37. Luke xiii. 34.
EIGHTH MEDITATION. 2? )
saith unto him, I will come and heal him. The
centurion answered and said, Lord, I am not
worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof :
but speak the word only, and my servant shall be
healed. For I am a man under authority, having
soldiers under me : and I say to this man, Go,
and he goeth ; and to another, Come, and he
cometh ; and to my servant, Do this, and he do< -tli
it. When Jesus heard it, he marvelled, and said
to them that followed, Verily I say unto you, I
have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel.
And I say unto you, That many shall come from
the east and west, and shall sit down with Abra
ham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of
heaven/
Thus a great stride has been made ; it is no lorn^ r
for the sheep of the house of Israel that Jedus lias
come; from the East and from tin- West will mm
come to Him, and He will receive tlimi all. T.
continue the Gospel narrative: departing i mm tlir
borders of the lake of Geiinrsaivth, Jrsus w de-
it Matt. viii. 5-11.
274 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
parted into the coasts of Tyre and Sidon. And,
behold, a woman of Canaan came out of the same
coasts, and cried unto him, saying, Have mercy on
me, Lord, thou son of David ; my daughter is
grievously vexed with a devil. But he answered
her not a word. And his disciples came and be
sought him, saying, Send her away; for she crieth
after us. But he answered and said, I am not
sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of
Israel. Then came she and worshipped him,
saying, Lord, help me. But he answered and
said, It is not meet to take the children s bread,
and to cast it to dogs. And she said, Truth,
Lord : yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall
from their master s table. Then Jesus answered
and said unto her, woman, great is thy faith :
be it unto thee even as fchou wilt." *
Another day, near the city Sychar and the
well of Jacob, Jesus conversed with a woman of
Samaria, who had come there to draw water :
" The woman saith unto him, Sir, I perceive that
* Matt. xv. 2128.
EIGHTH MEDITATION. 275
thou art a prophet. Our fathers worshipped in
this mountain ; and ye say, that in Jerusalem is
the place where men ought to worship. Jesus
saith unto her, Woman, believe me, the hour
cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain,
nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father ....
But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true
worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit
and in truth : for the Father seeketh such to
worship him. God is a Spirit : and they that
worship him must worship him in spirit and in
truth." *
Thus disappears gradually, in the name of the God
of the Jews himself, the exclusive privilege of the
Jews to the divine revelation and to divine grace.
And thus, too, the restricted religion of Israel
gives place to the grand catholicity of the reli
gion of Christ. The benefit of the true faith and
of salvation is no longer limited to one people,
whether great or small, ancient or modern ; but is
imparted to all the races of mankind. "Go ye
* John iv. 5 -24.
T 2
276 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in
the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of
the Holy Ghost." * " And he said unto them, Go
ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to
every creature." f
These were the last words which Christ ad
dressed to his apostles, and the apostles execute
faithfully the instructions of their divine Master ;
they go forth in effect, preaching in all places
and to all nations his history, his doctrine, his
precepts, and his parables. St. Paul is the special
apostle of the Gentiles. From Jesus, says this
apostle, " We have received grace and apostle-
ship, for obedience to the faith among all nations,
for his name." " Is he the God of the Jews
only \ is he not also of the Gentiles \ Yes, of the
Gentiles also." "For there is no difference be
tween the Jew and the Greek : for the same Lord
over all is rich unto all that call upon him." J
In spite of his prejudices as a Jew, and of the
* Matt, xxviii. 19. f Mark xvi. 15. Romans i. 5. ;
iii. 29 ; x. 12.
EIGHTH MEDITATION. 277
differences that took place in the infancy of the
Church, St. Peter adheres to St. Paul ; the apos
tles and the elders assembled at Jerusalem adhere
to St. Peter and St. Paul. The God of Abraham
and of Jacob is now not merely the One God, He
is the God of the whole human race ; to all
men alike He prescribes the same faith, the same
law, and promises the same salvation.
Another question, more temporal in its nature,
still a great, a delicate one, is raised in the pre
sence of Jesus Christ. He withdraws from the
Jews their exclusive privilege to the knowledge
and the grace of the true God ; but what does He
think of that which touches their existence as a
nation, and as a great one ? Does He direct them
to rebel and to struggle against their earthly
governor and sovereign? "Then went the Pha
risees, and took counsel how they might entangle
him in his talk. And they sent out unto him
ilit-ir disciples with the Herodians. saying, Mast.-r.
we know that thou art true, and teachest the way
of God in truth, neither carest thou for any man :
278 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
for thou regardest not the person of men. Tell
us therefore, What thinkest thou ? Is it lawful
to give tribute unto Cesar, or not ? But Jesus
perceived their wickedness, and said, Why tempt
ye me, ye hypocrites ? Shew me the tribute
money. And they brought unto him a penny.
And he saith unto them, Whose is this image
and superscription ? They say unto him, Cesar s.
Then saith he unto them, Eender therefore unto
Cesar the things which are Cesar s ; and unto
God the things that are God s. When they had
heard these words, they marvelled, and left him,
and went their way." :
In this reply of Christ there was much more
matter for admiration than the Pharisees sup
posed ; it was in effect much more than an adroit
evasion of the snare that had been extended for
Him ; it defined in principle the distinction of
man s life as it regards religion, and man s life as
it concerns society ; the bounds, in fact, of Church
and of State. Csesar has no right to intervene,
* Matt. xxii. 15-22. Mark xii. 1217. Luke xx. 1925.
EIGHTH MEDITATION. 279
with his laws and material force, between the soul
of man and his God ; and on his side, the faithful
worshipper of God is bound to fulfil towards
Caesar the duties which the necessity of the
maintenance of civil order imposes. The inde
pendence of religious faith, and at the same time
its subjection to the laws of society, are alike the
sense of Christ s reply to the Pharisees, and the
divine source of the greatest progress ever made
by human society since it began to feel the
troubles and agitations of this earth.
I take again these two grand principles, these
two great acts of Jesus, the abolition of every
privilege in the relations of God and man, and
the distinction of man s religious ami his civil
life : I confront with these two principles all
the history, and every state of society previous
to the advent of Jesus Christ, and I am
unable to discover in those essentially Christian
principles any kindred, any human origin.
Everywhere before Christ, religions were na
tional local religions ; they were religions
280 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
which established between nations, classes, indi
viduals, enormous differences and inequalities.
Everywhere, also, before Christ, man s civil life
and his religious life were confounded, and mutu
ally oppressed each other ; that religion or those
religions were institutions incorporated in the
state, which the state regulated or repressed
as its interest dictated. But in this catholicity
of religious faith, in this independence of reli
gious communities, I am constrained to recog
nise new and sublime principles, and to see in
them flashes from the light of heaven. It needed
many centuries before mental vision was capable
of receiving that light ; and no one shall pro
nounce how many centuries will be needed before
it will pervade and penetrate the entire world.
But whatever difficulties and shortcomings may
be reserved in the womb of the future for the
two great truths to which I have just referred,
it is clear that God caused them first to beam
forth from the life and teaching of Jesus Christ.
EIGHTH MEDITATION. 281
V. JESUS AND WOMEN.
AT the very source of all religions, as well as
in their subsequent history, women find a place
to fill and a part to perform. At one time they
constitute the material and furnish the ornament
of licentious systems of mythology. At another, on
the contrary, they are, for the heroes of those ivli-
gions, objects either of pious horror or of obser
vances at once rigorous and austere : women an-
considered by them as creatures full of evil and
of peril; and they are accordingly thrust from
their lives as men thrust from them what is a
temptation and an impurity. Voluptuous pictures
and adventures on the one hand, and zealous
impulses of rigid asceticism on the other, con
stitute the two extremes to which religions in
their ages of youth and of vigour are altrrnat -\y
prone. Sometimes and it is more fortunate for
women when it is the case they are described in
the narrative of these religions, such as they really
are in human life, charmers and at tin- s;im<- thm-
?,S2 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
charmed, seducers and seduced, idols and slaves ;
at first votaries of the enthusiasm, the victims of
the errors and the passions which they at once
inspire and feel. Whether Asiatic or European,
rude or refined, such are the striking features
with which all systems of religion, excepting
Christianity, have characterised the women whom
they have introduced in their narratives.
Neither of these characteristics, nor anything
analogous, is met with in the Gospel and in the
relations of Jesus with women. They seem irre
sistibly attracted towards Him, with hearts moved,
imaginations struck by his manner of life, his
precepts, his miracles, his language. He inspires
them with feelings of tender respect and confiding
admiration. The Canaanitish woman comes and
addresses to Him a timid prayer for the healing
of her daughter. The woman of Samaria listens
to Him with eagerness, though she does not know
Him : Mary seats herself at his feet, absorbed in
reflections suggested by his words ; and Martha
proffers to Him the frank complaint that her
EIGHTH MEDITATION. 283
sister assists her not, but leaves her unaided in
the performance of her domestic duties. The
sinner draws near to Him in tears, pouring upon
his feet a rare perfume, and wiping them with
her hair. The adulteress, hurried into his presence
by those who wished to stone her in accordance
with the precepts of the Mosaic Law, remains
motionless in his presence, even after her accusers
have withdrawn, waiting in silence what He is
about to say. Jesus receives the homage, and
listens to the prayers of all these women, with
the gentle gravity and impartial sympathy of
a being superior and strange to earthly passion.
Pure and inflexible interpreter of the Divine law,
He knows and understands man s natuiv, and
judges it with that equitable severity which
nothing escapes, the excuse as little as tlu- fault.
Faith, sincerity, humanity, sorrow, ivpriitunce,
touch Him without biassing the charity and the
justice of his conclusions; and He expresses ll;.me
or announces pardon with the same calm seienity
of authority, certain that his eye has rci.d the
284 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
depths of the heart to which his words will pene
trate. In his relations with the women who
approach Him, there is, in short, not the slightest
trace of man ; nowhere does the Godhead mani
fest itself more winningly and with greater purity.
And when there is no longer any question of
these particular relations and conversations, when
Jesus has no longer before him women suppliants
and sinners, who are invoking his power or im
ploring his clemency ; when it is with the
position and the destiny of women in general
that He is occupying himself, He affirms and
defends their claims and their dignity with a
sympathy at once penetrating and severe. He
knows that the happiness of mankind, as
well as the moral position of women, depends
essentially upon the married state ; He makes
of the sanctity of marriage a fundamental law
of Christian religion and society ; He pursues
adultery even into tha recesses of the human
heart, the human thought ; He forbids divorce ;
He says of men, "Have ye not read, that he
EIGHTH MEDITATION. 283
which made them at the beginning made them
male and female 1 .... For this cause shall a
man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to
his wife : and they twain shall be one flesh.
Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh.
What therefore God hath joined together, let not
man put asunder. They say unto him, Why did
Moses then command to give a writing of divorce
ment, and to put her away ? He saith unto them,
Moses because of the hardness of your hearts
suffered you to put away your wives : but from
the beginning it was not so. And I say unto you,
Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it In
fer fornication, and shall marry another, commit -
teth adultery: and whoso manic th her which fa
put away doth commit adultery." ;
Signal ami striking testimony to the progress \-
action of God upon the human race ! Jesus Christ
restores to the divine law of marriage the purity
and the authority that Moses had not enjoined to
* Msitt. xix. 4-9; v. 27 Mark x. 212. Romans
vii. 2, 3. 1 Corinth, vi. 1018 ; vii. 111.
286 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
the Hebrews "because of the hardness of their
hearts."
VI. JESUS CHRIST AND CHILDREN.
THE sentiments expressed by Jesus Christ
towards children, and the language that He uses
towards them, as these appear in the Gospel nar
rative, must strike even the most careless reader.
Let me refer to the passages themselves :
" And they brought young children to him, that
he should touch them : and his disciples rebuked
those that brought them. But when Jesus saw it,
he was much displeased, and said unto them,
Suffer the little children to come unto me, and
forbid them not : for of such is the kingdom of
God. Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not
receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he
shall not enter therein. And he took them up in
his arms, put his hands upon them, and blessed
them."*
* Mark x. 13-16 ; Matt. xix. 13-15. Luke xviii. 1517.
EIGHTH MEDITATION. 287
Another day, "came the disciples unto Jesus,
saying, Who is the greatest in the kingdom of
heaven ? And Jesus called a little child unto
him, and set him in the midst of them, and said,
Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted,
and become as little children, ye shall not enter
into the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever therefore
shall humble himself as this little child, the same
is greatest in the kingdom of heaven."*
Again another day, Jesus, deploring the cold
ness that his preaching and his miracles fre
quently encountered, and that even in his closest
vicinity, exclaimed, here no longer addressing
his disciples, but God himself, "I thank tln-r.
Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because
thou hast hid these things from tin- wise and
prudent, and hast revealed them unto l>;ilu s."t
What is the full meaning of these Av>nls ( They
are not simply the expression of that impulse of
gentle benevolence excited in all hearts at tin-
sio-ht of children, and their innocent confidence in
* Matt, xviii. 1 4 ; Mark ix. 33-37. t Matt. xi. .:>.
THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
all who come near them. Jesus Christ no doubt
experienced the influence of this feeling, for He
was strange to none of man s noble emotions ;
but his thoughts passed far beyond the children
whose approach he permitted, and they merely
furnished Him with the living occasion to address
to men themselves his solemn warnings.
The child, I have already mentioned in these
Meditations,* is, for us, the image of innocence,
the type of the creature fallible, yet who has not
yet sinned, who knows not yet either error of
understanding, or the seduction of passion, or the
blinding influence of pride, or the troubles of
doubt, or the extreme folly of sin, or the anguish of
repentance ; who follows in the first impulses of
infancy only the spontaneous instincts of tender
confidence in the parent to whom he is indebted
for security and for love, for the first joys and the
earliest blessings. Jesus does not pretend to bring
men back to that fair condition, to restore to
them their primitive innocence : but He comes to
* Meditation II. , Christian Dogmas, p. 48.
EIGHTH MEDITATION.
ransom them from sin ; He brings them the hope
of pardon and salvation. Confidence in God, a
confidence sincere, unpretending, and loving, is
that disposition which opens the soul of man to the
divine blessing. This is also the disposition that
the child evinces towards its parents ; he calls
upon them, and he hopes in them. Hence those
words of Jesus : " Suffer little children to come
unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the
kingdom of heaven." The way of innocence is a
far better way than that of science to lead man up
to God.
Science is a splendid thing; it is also a n<>ll<
privilege of man that God, in creating him an
intelligent and a free agent, has given him a
capacity to desire and to pursue through study
the truths of science, and even to attain tin-in in
a certain measure, and in a certain sphere. Hut
when science attempts to exceed that m -a.-un- ami
to quit that sphere ; when it ignores and scorns tin-
instincts, natural, universal, and permanent in
stincts, of the human soul; when it easayfi i
290 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
up everywhere its own torch in the place of that
primitive light that lights mankind: then, and
from that cause alone, science fills itself with
error ; and this is the very case which called
forth those words of Jesus : " I praise thee, Father,
Lord of heaven and of earth, that thou hast hid
den these things from the wise and prudent, and
hast revealed them unto babes." *
VII. JESUS CHRIST HIMSELF.
I HAVE sought to gather from the Gospels the
scattered facts that constitute the life of Jesus.
I have searched for them in his acts, his precepts,
his words : in his different relations in life. I
have added nothing, exaggerated nothing ; on the
contrary, the life of Jesus is infinitely grander
and more sublime than I have made it; his
* Matt. xi. 25. The words &vb votyQv KO.I a-weToSv are better
rendered, " from the learned and the prudent," than " wise and
intelligent ;" " sages et intelligents," as in the French version
bv Osterwald.
EIGHTH MEDITATION. 201
words are infinitely more profound and admiral >lo
than I have described thjem. And I have sai<l
nothing of the seal affixed to his work and ///>
mission by his Passion ; nor have I shown Jesus
at Gethsemane and upon the Cross.
According to the Bible, God is without pjir;ill-l
ever the same. Jesus is also so according to
the Gospel. The most perfect, the most constant
unity reigns in Him : in his life as in his soul ;
in his language as in his acts. His action is pro
gressive, and proportionate to the circumstai.
which call it forth and in the midst of which He
lives; but his progress never entails anydia.
of character or purpose. As He appears at the
age of twelve, in the Temple, already full of the
sentiment of his divine nature, in his reply to
his mother who was searching for Him with dis
quietude, "Knowestthou not that I must be about
my Father s business?" the same He remains ami
manifests himself in the whole course of his
active mission in Galilee and at Jerusalem, with
his apostles and with the people, amongst the
u 2
292 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
Pharisees and the Publicans, whether they be men,,
or women, or children who approach Him ; alike
before Caiaphas and Pilate, and under the eyes
of the crowd pressing around to listen to Him.
Everywhere and in every circumstance, the same
spirit animates Him ; He diffuses the same light,
proclaims the same law. Perfect and immutable,
always at once Son of God and Son of Man, He
pursues and consummates amidst all the trials
and all the sorrows of human existence his divine
work for the salvation of mankind.
What need to add more? How speak in detail
of Jesus himself when one believes in Him, when
one sees in Him God made man, acting as God
alone can act, and suffering all that man can
suffer to ransom mankind from sin, and save it
by bringing it back to God ? How sound closely
the mysteries of such a person and such a pur
pose ? What passed in that divine soul during
that human existence ? Who shall explain those
cries of agony of Jesus in the bosom of the most
absolute faith in God his father and in himself,
EIGHTH MEDITATION. 293
and those moments of horror at the approach of
the sacrifice without the slightest hesitation in
the sacrifice, without the smallest doubt as to its
efficaciousness ? This sublime fact, this intimate
and continual intermixture of the divine and
human finds no competent, no adequate ex
pression in human speech, and the more \v-
consider it the more difficult we find it to speak
of it.
Those who have no faith in Jesus, who admit
not the supernatural character of his person, of
his life, and of his work, do not feel this difficulty.
Having beforehand done away with God and
with miracles, the history of Jesus is for them
nothing more than an ordinary history, which
they narrate and explain like any other biography
of man. But such historians fall into a far <lif-
ferent difficulty, and wreck tli-m>el\vs <.n a far
different rock. The supernatural Uin^ a n<l
power of Jesus may be dispute. 1, but the per
fection, the sublimity of his actions and of his
precepts, of his life and of his moral law, are
294 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
incontestable. And in effect, not only are they
not contested, but they are admired and celebrated
enthusiastically, and complacently, too ; it would
seem as if it were desired to restore to Jesus as
man, and man alone, the superiority of which
men deprive Him in refusing to see in Him the
Godhead. But then, what incoherence, what
contradictions, what falsehood, what moral im
possibility in his history, such as they make it ;
what a series of suppositions, irreconcilable with
fact, nevertheless admitted! The man they
make so perfect, so sublime, becomes by turns
a dreamer or a charlatan; at once dupe and
deceiver : dupe of his own mystical enthusiasm
in believing in his own miracles; deceiver in
tampering with evidence in order to accredit him
self. The history of Jesus Christ is thus but a
tissue of fables and falsehood. And nevertheless
the hero of this history remains perfect, sublime,
incomparable ; the greatest genius, the noblest
heart that the world ever saw ; the type of virtue
and moral beauty, the supreme and rightful chief
EIGHTH MEDITATION. 295
of mankind. And his disciples, in their turn
justly admirable, have braved everything, suf
fered everything, in order to abide faithful to
Him and to accomplish his work. And, in
effect, the work has been accomplished : the
pagan world has become Christian, and the whole
world has nothing better to do than to follow
the example.
What a contradictory and insolvable problem
they present to us instead of the one they are
so anxious to suppress!
History reposes upon two foundations posi
tive written evidence as to facts and persons, and
presumptive evidence resulting from the connec
tion of facts and the action of persons. These
two foundations are entirely lost sight of in
the history of Jesus such as it is recounted,
or rather constructed, in these days ; it is, on
the one hand, in evident and shocking contra
diction with the testimony of the men who BOW
Jesus, or of the men who liv..l n.-arly in
the time of those who had seen Him ; on the
296 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
other side, with the natural laws presiding over
the actions of men and the course of events.
This does not deserve the name of historical
criticism ; it is a philosophical system and a ro
mantic narrative substituted for the substantial
proof and the circumstantial evidence ; it is a
Jesus false and impossible, made by the hand of
man pretending to dethrone the real living Jesus
-the Son of God.
The choice lies between the system and the
mystery; between the romance of man and the
purpose of God. Even in revealing himself God
still interposes veils, but these veils are no false
hoods. The Gospel history of Jesus shows us
God acting in ways which are not his ways of
every day. This special action of God characterises
also many other facts in the history of the uni
verse ; amongst others, the great fact of the actual
creation, where man, at his appearance upon earth,
received the first divine revelation. The super
natural does not merely date from Jesus Christ ;
and if a man from this motive rejects the history
EIGHTH MEDITATION. 297
of Jesus, he will have to deny also a far different
thing. To escape this fatal necessity, men of
learning have recently striven to curtail indefi
nitely the proportion of the supernatural in the
history of Jesus, and to explain by natural means,
most of the acts and circumstances of his life. A
puerile attempt, which has altogether failed in the
details, still leaving untouched the substance of
the problem. No better success will attend the
new attempt that has in these days been made,
and which consists in placing the Ideal in the
place of the Supernatural, and in elevating reli
gious sentiment upon the ruins of the Christian
faith. This is doing either too much or too little.
The human soul is not sati>ti<-d with these
leavings, nor human pride with such refusals,
When one is so hardy as to pretend, in the name
of the science of man in this finite \\ml.l, to
determine the limits of the po\\vr <>i <id, ore
must be still more hardy and dethrone ( <d
himself.
NOTE.
I SAID (p. 145) that I would indicate some
instances of grammatical faults to be met with
in the Scriptures, to which the character of divine
inspiration cannot be assigned. Upon the subject
of the books of the Old Testament I have con
sulted my learned confrere, M. Munk ; his reply
is in the precise words which follow :
" The biblical authors," he writes to me, " whose style is
most incorrect, are Ezekiel and Jeremiah. These authors,
and particularly the first, err frequently against grammar
and orthography ; they are not merely influenced by the Ara-
mean dialect, but they disclose grammatical faults capable
of being traced to no source in any of the Semitic dialects.
This remark has also been made by Hebrew grammarians
of the middle ages, and Isaac Abrabanel (towards the close
of the 15th century), in the preface to his commentary upon
Ezekiel, does not hesitate to declare that this prophet was
but superficially acquainted with Hebrew grammar and ortho
graphy. Nevertheless, neither Jeremiah nor Ezekiel, of whom
300 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
both are distinguished by a certain originality of style,
unlike that of any of the other Hebrew writers, is wanting
in elegance, energy, and boldness in images, and they dis
play in the highest degree their proficiency in the art of
composition. The following are some instances of the
grave faults against grammar to be met with in their
writings :
Examples of Incorrect Expressions in Ezekiel.
(mischta hawithem), " and they wor
shipped" (viii. 16), a barbarism for D^nnttfE (misch-
tcChawim).
"iNttfSSI (we-neschaar ani), " and I remained " (xi. 8),
for ^HtPNi (wa-eschaer) or TDNttfDI (we-nischarti).
(There are here faults both of orthography and
grammar.)
(ischotti), " women " (xxiii. 44), for >E72 (nesche).
VTlV)37 nmttf (schiVa\ "his seven burnt oiferings" (xl.
26), for i?na? (scheltf). In the number seven the mas
culine is used instead of the feminine.
(M-bm6ihayikh), " in that thou buildest " (xvi. 31),
instead of ^m3:n (bi-benoihekJi).
(le-schouUni), " when I returned " (xlvi. 7), instead
of vtfl&n (be-schouln).
(gabehd), "his height was exalted " (xxxi. 5),
instead of nran (gdbehd). The last letter is aleph,
for he.
The Chaldean plural is used in several words, for instance :
NOTE.
(hitting "wheat" (iv. 9), for tFfcn (hitttm) \
(ha-iyytn), " the isles," or " the isles in the sea "
(xxvi. 18), instead of Q>sn (ha-iyyim), an error in botli
orthography and grammar.
Examples of Incorrect Expressions in Jeremiah.
(6WM), " I will destroy " (xlvi. 8), for nTOWW
(aabidd).
(nibletha), " hast thou prophesied " (xxvi. 0), instead
of nsra (nillclha). The syllable W has a yod instead
of an aleph.
(athanou) "we come" (iii. 22), instead of irnN
(athinou.).
()> "thec" in the feminine (terminating with yod
mute), for n (ait), a Syriasm very frcqiK-nt in ,
miah, who often forms the second person of the perfr-t
fern, in >n- (/ followed by // "O instead of rr (/)
(16 written with wv quieecent), "not" vm- often for
(16 without the //v///-).
(hoylat/,), ft ahal] bci-arricd away captive" (xiii.
instead of nnban (hoylclha). The latter Chaldaism
we meei also in tlie Pentateuch (Leyiticai IXT,
l/i), "licr fruits (shall) OQ9DM in." faf
a*Mk :lll(1 illi(1 - xxvi - :;l : r -" n "
she shall enjoy," lor nn:nrn (in
cetfui).
With respect to the New Testament, I hate
302 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION,
required a similar notice from my son William,
who has made the Greek language in general, and
its deviations in the writings of the Gospel, the
object of particular and careful study. I insert,
also, the note which he has drawn up upon the
subject :
" On first approaching the text of the New Testament,
after having learnt the Greek language and grammar in the
classical writers, we are struck by numerous irregularities of
expression : amongst these, however, we must carefully dis
tinguish those which constitute merely particular and singu
lar modes of expression from those which are real faults.
The former are susceptible of explanation and justifica
tion by different examples and different arguments ; the
latter are not capable of being reconciled with the elemen
tary and necessary laws of language. Thus we may justify
such or such a strange form of conjugation or of declen
sion, which would be accounted a barbarism by a school
boy, but which was nevertheless in actual use in some one
or other of the local dialects, written and spoken by the
Greeks. Again, however it may have been the rule in
Greek to set the verb in the singular when used with a
neuter substantive in the plural, the rule has not been
invariably observed even by the purest classical writers,
and we may justify by exceptions collected here and there
in their compositions, several passages of the New Testa-
NOTE. 303
ment which, at first sight, might appear amenable to a
charge of solecism* Thus, in short, after our attention
haring, at first sight, been arrested and our minds discon
certed by other passages in which the sacred writer ha-
confounded the sense of two words which resemble each
other, as /^oprvpo^cu, which signifies summon a witness, and
which St. Peter employs instead of paprvpfc* which means.
give testimony,* as ddiWrcur, which signifies l ln> in
capable, and which St. Matthew and St. Mark employ in
the sense of being impossible,} as pcffovparrjfia, which signi
fies the nil rid id /i or zenith of a star, and which, on t
occasions in the New Testament, is used in the sen
in the middle of the air, or, even when we meet words, not
merely strange to the ear, but formed without attention to
the rules and in contradiction to analogy, as irtiBos for
iriiQavos^ we may again, without any departure from logical
rules, by judicious or subtle distinctions, escape from the
difficulties which the passages suggest, and have a perfect
right to do so. But after having made allowances for the
irregularities susceptible of explanation in the language of
the New Testament, there still remain some which an- n-;il
faults. The same word cannot be written by the same
hand, at an interval of but three pairus, both masculine and
feminine, as the word Tp, Tambov, in th> Jy<",,///,
When the substantive is feminine, the ad j.vtivr cannot be
masculine, as i-//*- \nvw . . rov piyav.* AVheii the
* 1 Peter i. 11. t Matt. xvii. 20 ; Luke i. 37. t 1 Cor. ii 1.
(Compare iv. 3, aiid x. 1. || Apoc. xiv. 19.
304 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
substantive is in the accusative, the adjective cannot be in
the nominative. In such an employment of words we are
able to trace in the sacred writings the hand of man, marks
of human imperfection and error; and we must not forget
that these faults become more numerous and grosser the
greater the antiquity of the MS. in which w r e find them,
and the purer the Jewish origin of the writer. Thus the
Greek of the Apocalypse is singularly incorrect, at the
same time that the imaginative turn of the expression is
remarkably Hebraic.* In the text, styled the received
text, and which was fixed in the 16th century, many of
these faults have disappeared, because it has borrowed from
MSS. of then recent date. But now that biblical philosophy
has mounted higher, we can discern how the copyists, one
after the other, actuated by pious scruples, or thinking only
to correct some error of their predecessors, have little by
little effaced what appeared to them too great a departure
from rules to have been written by an evangelist or an
apostle. At the present day, these admitted irregularities
are an element indispensible to every serious discussion re
specting the nature and extent of the divine inspiration to
be met with in the sacred volume.
* Apoc. i. 16 ; iii. 12 ; iv. 7 ; ix. 13 & 14 ; xiv. 12 ; xvi. 13;
xx. 2, &c.
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