Discourses on various occasions

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DISCO CJESES

OF THE KETEBEND

FATHER HYACINTHE

Nearly Ready.

A SECOND VOLUME

DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE,

CONTAlNIXa

THE CONFERENCES AT NOTRE DA^ilE

ON

CHRISTIANITY AND THE FAIVIILY ;
And Christianity and the Church ; with Miscellaneous Discourses :

AND

A Portrait on steel from j^hotograph by Brady.

In one vol., uniform with the present volunio.
N. B.— Order " THE FAMILY" Disconrsco of Father Hyacinthe.

New York : G. P. Putnam & Son.

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DISCOURSES

ON VARIOUS OCCASIONS

BY THE llEV

EREND CLoA^ (L^^«-'4WA.

FATHER HYAOINTI-IE,

Late Svpmor of the Barefooted Carmelites of Paris, and
Preacher of the Conferences of Notre Dame.

TRANSLATED BY

LEONARD WOOLSEY BACON

Pastor of a Chcrch of Christ in Brooklyn, X. Y.

WITH A BIOGPAPniCAL SKETCH.

NEW YORK:
G. r rUTNA]\I&SON.

London: S . Low, Son & ]M a r s t o n .
18G9.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1869,

By G. P. Putnam & Son,

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the

Southern District of New York.

MEsaizras :

Votre proposition de publier un volume de mes sermons et discours, tra-
duits par le liev. L. W. Bacon, ne saurait que m'être agréable.

J'autorise donc volontiers par cette lettre la publication de cette édition.
Veuillez agréer, messieurs, l'exprossiou de mes sentimcnta distingues.

FR. HYACINTHE.
New York le 26 Octobre, 1869.

A Messieurs G. P. Putnam & Son, 6G1 Broadway.

Gentlemen :

Your proposition to publish a volume of my sermons and addresses,
translated by the Rev. L. W. Bacon, is extremely gratifying to me.

It gives me pleasure hereby to autliorize the publication of this edition.
Accept, gentlemen, the assurance of my highest esteem.

FR. HYACINTHE.
New York, October 26, ISG'J.

Messrs. G. P. Putnam & Son, 661 Broadway.

Stcrcxyiypc'd by Ijtti.k, Rennie & Co., prkss or

Mi and 047 liroaUway, N. Y. Nkw Youk Tiilntino Company,

81, Fa, liiiil Si Contre St., N. Y.

PEE FACE.

The following pages contain a translation, by tho
hand of a Protestant minister, of some of the most
eloquent and powerful utterances of the Eoman
Catholic pulpit. They are translated with aljsolute
honesty and fidelity — I will not say with elegance,
for the work has been driven through at the utmost
possible speed of the jDcn — and there has been no
culling nor retrenchment to suit the volume to the
American or the Protestant public. The only prin-
ciple of selection and arrangement has been to take
all the pubHshed works of Father Hyacinthe which I
could find, in the order in which they came to hand,
and bring them out in one volume, while waiting for
an arrival from Paris for the materials for another.

I have no sort of apology to offer to any one for
thus putting in wide circulation, among Protestants
as well as Roman Catholics, these most charming
discourses, w^hich contain, with so much that will
commend itself to the universal heart of Christen-
dom, some things which I assuredly believe to be

vi PREFACE.

most serious errors. lu tlic great impendiug contro-
versy between the Roman-Catholic and Protestant
systems, I, for one, would give ever}^ honest antago-
nist the opportunity of stating his o\\ti case in his
own way. Whenever the result "of this policy shall
be to fix discussion upon the real issues between
these gi-eat parties in the Church of Christ, instead
of the factitious issues created by disputants on
either side for the convenience of their argument,
the cause of truth as well as of charity will be the
gainer.

At the same time, it need hardly be said that these
discourses, — though preached, some of them in the
most prominent metropolitan pulpit in the Catholic
world, under the auspices of church-dignitaries of
eminent rank, by a monk of the austerest sect, and of
standing then unquestioned, — are not to be taken as
representatives of ordinary Eoman Catholic preach-
ing. To acknowledge this is simple justice, both to
Father Hyacinthe, and to the Roman Catholic com-
munity, who themselves w^ould decline to be judged
by him as their representative. By their large-
hearted sympathy with humanity in every rank and
sect and nation ; by a fervid Christian love, which
attaches itself in the communion of saints to all who
love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity ; by a singu-
lar wealth and felicity of citation from the Holy
Scriptures ; by constant dwelling on themes of com-

TREFACE. Vil

mou interest to tlio Cliristian heart ; by a sileiico
wliicli iiidicates little love for those things in modern
Eomanism from which the consciences o* Protestant
Christians shrink with most tendernes^s and pain;
and by a most fiery courage in the dcnmiciation of
corruption, dishonesty, and Pharisaism ; — these ser-
mons are as exceptional in tlio pulpit-literature of
the Eoman Catholic Church, as they are exceptional
in any literature by their splendid eloquence.

This volume has been hastened through the press
to meet an immediate and urgent demand. But the
value of it will not cease with the abatement of the
local excitement connected with the visit of Father
Hyacinthe to the United States. The subjects of the
series of Notre Dame " Conferences" or Lectures, are
peculiarly appropriate to our times and circumstan-
ces. The subjects of others of the discoui'ses are
interesting for all time and everywhere.

The failure of the health of an accomplished
scholar, particularly versed in the intricate ecclesias-
tical history of France, who was to have contributed
to this volume a Biographical and Critical Introduc-
tion, threw this part of the work, at the last moment,
on my own overburdened hands. I have done the
best with it that I could.

I present my acknowdedgments, for the use of
materials, to the Bev. Narcisse Cyr ; to the Eev.
E. A. Washburn, D. D. ; and especially to my kind

VIU PREFACE.

neighbor tlie Kev. Sylvester Malone, to whose
library I am indebted for my first acquaintancô with
the writings of Father Hyacinthe.

For the patient kindness of Father Hyacinthe
himself, who nevertheless is in no degree responsi-
ble for my work, it would be impossible for me
adequately to express my gratitude.

Leonard Woolsey Bacon.

New England CnuRcn, Brooklyn,
November, 1869.

CONTENTS

Letter of Father Hyacinthe to the Translator . . . xi
Biographical Sketch of Father Hyacinthe . . , xv
Letter to the General of the Order of Barefooted Car-
melites xxxix

Speech before the Permanent International Peace

League, Paris, July loth, 1869 .... i

Reports of the Notre Dame Conferences of 1867, on
Civil Society in its Relations with Christianity :
L Civil Society in its Relations with Domestic Society 17
n. Sovereignty . . . . . . . .40

in. Religion in the Life of Nations .... 56

IV. The Higher Intercourse between Nations . . 75

V. War 90

VL Civilization 107

Sermon on the occasion of the Profession of Catholic
Faith, and the First Communion, of a converted
Protestant American Lady . . . .123

Sermon on behalf of the Victims of the South American

Earthquake 139

Letter prefixed to "The Select Works of Charles

Loyson" . . . . . . . .157

Appendix. — Men and Parties in the Catholic Church
in France just before the CEcumenical Council,
1869 165

PREFATOEY LETTER

FROM

FATHER HYACINTHE

To the Rev. Leonard W. Bacon-, Brooklyn :—

Reverend Sir — I am as much gratified as sur-
prised at the honor you are disposed to do to the few
discourses I have published in Europe. Some of them
are actually the production of my pen ; but these are
very few, and relate to circumstances of time and place
which I fear will have no interest for American readers.
The others, more important in their object, since they
are part of the course of Conferences instituted at Notre
Dame by the Archbishop of Paris, are extant only in
detached parts, taken down hastily in short-hand, and
the gaps filled by an imperfect summary.

I should have been glad, I acknowledge, if I could
have brought to America something less unworthy of
the sympathy with which I have been welcomed here,
and which I shall always reckon among the greatest
honors and the purest joys of my life.

Such as they are, however, I commit these rude pro-

Xll PREFATORY LETTER.

(luctioiis to the iiulnlgeiice of your readers. French-
man and Catholic as I am, I present them, through
your hands, to that great American republic of which
you are a citizen, to those numerous and flourishing
Protestant churches of which you are a minister.

I am proud of my France, but I deem it one of its
most solid glories to have contributed to the independ-
ence of this noble country, which it has never ceased to
love, and which it shall some day learn to imitate; — a
people with which liberty is something else than a
barren theory or a bloody practice; with which the
cause of labor is never confounded with that of revolu-
tion, and never divorced from that of religion ; and
which, rearing under all forms and denominations its
houses of prayer amid its houses of commerce îind
finance, crowns its noisy and productive week with the
sweetness and majesty of its Lord's Day. " x\nd on the
seventh day it ends the work which it has made, and
rests the seventh day from all its work which it has
made.''*

I remain faithful to my Church ; and if I have lifted
up my protest against the excesses which dishonor it
and seem bent upon its ruin, you may measure the in-
tensity of my love for it by the Ijitierness of my lamen-
latiDii. Whi'U lie wlio is in all (hiugs our blaster and
our K\'ami)le armed himself with the scourge against
the profaners of the Temple, his discii)les remembered
that it was written, " The zeal of Ihy house hath eaten

* Gencsiti, ii. 2.

PREFATORY LETTER. XI 11

me Tip." I ivmiiiu iaillil'ul to my Church ; l)iit I uni
none the less sensihle of the inteivst which will he taken
in other churches in ^vhat I may say or do within tlie
pale of Catholicism. And on the other hand, I have
never deemed that the Christian communions separated
from Rome were disinherited of the Holy Ghost, and
"without a part in the immense work of the preparation
of the kingdom of God. In my intercourse with some
of the most pious and learned of their members, I have
experienced, in those depths of the soul wiiere illusion
is impossible, the unutterable blessing of the communion
of saints. Whatever divides us externally in space and
time, A'anishes like a dream before that which unites us
within, — the grace of the same God, the blood of the same
Christ, the hopes of the same eternity. Whatever our
prejudices, our alienations, or our irritations, under the
eye of God, who seeth what we cannot see, — under his
hand, which leadeth us whither we would not go, — we
are all laboring in common for the upbuilding of that
Church of the Future which shall be the Church of the
Past in its original purity and beauty ; but shall have
gathered to itself, besides, the depth of its analyses, the
breadth of its syntheses, the experience of its toils, its
struggles, and its griefs through all these centuries.

In the sad days of schism and captivity, the word of
the Lord came to the prophet Ezekiel, saying, '•' Thou
son of man, take thee one stick, and write upon it, * For
Judah, and for the children of Israel his companions;'
then take another stick, and write upon it, ' For Joseph,

XIV PEEFATORY LETTER.

the stick of Epliraim, and all the house of Israel his
companions;' and join them one to another into one
stick, and they shall become one in thy hand."*

To me, likewise, who am the least of Cliristians, in
those spiritual visions which are ever vouchsafed to
longing souls, the Lord hath spoken. He hath placed in
my hand these two sundered and withered branches —
Kome and the children of Israel who follow her; the
churches of the Reformation and the nations that are
with them. I have pressed them together on my heart,
and under the outpouring of my tears and prayers I
have so joined them that henceforth they might make
Ijut one tree. But men have laughed to scorn my effort,
seemingly so mad, and have asked of me, as of that
ancient seer, "Wilt thou not show us what thou
meanest by these things ?"t And while I gaze upon
that trunk so bare and mutilated, even now I seem to
see the brilliant blossom and the savory fruit.

" One God, one faith, one baptism."

"And there shall be one flock and one shepherd."

BROTHER HYACINTHE.
Highland Falls, All-Souls Day,
Nov. 2, 18G9.

Êzekiel, xxxvii. 10, 17. t Ibid., IS.

BIOGEAPIIICAL SKETCH.

AViTiiiN a very few years, wc have been hearing, from lime to
time, of tlie fame of a great preacher of the Gospel that liad risen
up in France. Clad in the rough garb of a Carmelite friar, lie
has seemed (wc were told) to be filled with " the spirit and power
of Elijah." The sins of rulers and of people alike, the infidelity
of philosophers, and the pharisaism of priests, he has denoimced
with equal and intrepid severity ; and speaking in gentler tones
to the families of his people, he has sought, like the predicted
Elijah, to " turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the
hearts of the children to the fathers, lest the Lord should come
and smite the land with a curse."

The accounts of him have been as various, in some respects,
as the strangely diverse channels through which they have come
to us. In tlie innumerable crowds that have gathered within the
sound of his voice about the pulpit of the venerable cathedral of
Notre Dame, the most opposite classes have thronged each other,
having no thought nor sentiment in common, save their eager-
ness to hear the great preacher. The bitter infidels of French
liberalism, who listened to no other minister of any religion, gave
respectful audience to him, as to a friend of the common people.
The strangers and novelty-hunters of Paris sought at Notre Dame
the revival of the palmiest days of French eloquence. Protestants
of the austerest schools listened in that unwonted presence to
discourses which, after every abatement of prejudice and of con-
trary conviction, they acknowledged to be the sincere and faithful
preaching of Jesus Christ. And Roman Catholics of liberal sen-
timents justly gloried in the eloquence of their great preacher,

XVI BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

and pointed Lim out as the living proof of the compatibility
between Catholicism and the best spirit of the age. One party
aloue refused to join the general applause — it was the party of
absolutism in State and Church ; the Jesuitism that was resolved
on crushing out the rising spirit of freedom among the earnest
Catholics of France, under the heel of the Roman Court and
Pontitf. But even those who hated the great preacher confessed
his greatness. Those who hated, and those who admired, alike
conceded the magnificence of his oratory, the earnestness of his
convictions, and the heroic courage with which, in a land where
it costs something to bo thus courageous, he avowed them with-
out fear or favor. Even those who had small appreciation of the
distinctively Cliristian virtues could recognize in this poor monk
more than the realization of the ideal of the heathen poet :

"Justum et tenaccm propositi vinim,
Nou cirium ardor prava jubentiiim,
Xec vultas instantis tyranni,
Mente quatit solida.'"

Suddenly, on the 20th of September, 1869, this foremost preachei
of the whole Roman Catholic communion, declaring that he could
no longer suffer with a good conscience the constraint wiiich it
was attempted to put upon him as a preacher of the gospel, retired
from the cathedral pulpit, forsook the convent of his order, and in
a letter which must ever be accounted among the memorable doc-
uments of ecclesiastical history, appealed from the authority of his
monastic superior to the Œcumenical Council about to sit at Rome,
and gave notice of his intention to carry the case, if need were, to
a court of higher judicatory still — to the tribunal of Jesus Christ
himself.

"VVe are still too close to this great event, to estimate it in all its
relations. Some of its consequences are so nigh at hand, and
events are crowding so fast upon each other, that the boldest
prophet might well hesitate to make predictions. The issue now
on trial in the i)erson of the Carmelite preacher is this — whether
there is room and freedom in the Roman Catlujlic Church for a
faitliful preacher of Jesus Clirist, who is also a docile student of

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. XVll

tlio word of God, ;i denouncer of corruption, a liatcr of religious
persecution, a friend of the universal education of the people, and
a lover of human libert}^ The common prejudices of Protestants,
on this question, have been all ready to say No ! Tlie frank dec-
laration of the extreme papal party is Xo ! The great party of
liberal Roman Catholics have hitherto said Yes ! and have pointed
in ]iroof to the Carmelite preacher of righteousness and liberty
and the word of God in the pulpit of Notre Dame. But now,
what shall they say ? This is one of the questions that is soon to
be iK'uding on appeal before the Œcumeuical Council. The real
friends of the lloman Catholic Church may well long for a decis-
ion in the interest of liberty.

Meanwhile, this illustrious preacher, following tlie most natural
instinct of a confessor in the cause of freedom, has come to the
United States. To the masses of our people, his lips arc closed
by reason of his foreign speech. This volume must be the pulpit
from which he shall mainlj'- address them. But before presenting
his discoui*ses to the reader, it is fit, in a few pages, to give such
facts concerning his history as may serve, in some measure, as a
personal introduction.

Charles Loysox, since known to the whole Avorld as Father
Hyacinthe, was born at Orleans, on the tenth of March, 1827. His
family was humble, his grandfather having been a harness-maker
in the little city of Château Gontier, in the Department of
]Mayenne. But in the last generation, the family emerged from
the obscurity of mechanical life into literary position. An uncle
of Father Hyacinthe, bearing the same name, Charles Loyson,
having graduated at the Normal School of Paris, became " MaUrc
des Conferences'^ in that institution, and afterward, entering into
public life at the new era which opened upon France in the year
1815, was chief of bureau in the Department of Justice. Anrong
the companions of his education or of his too brief manhood, were
such statesmen as de Serre, and Maine de Birau, such philosophers
as Cousin, Jouffroy, and Royer-Collard, and such men of letters
as the late Sainte Beuve, wlio all, with beautiful unanimity, have
contributed to lay upon the early grave of their friend the homage

XVlll BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

of tlicir admiration for his genius ; while the illustrious Guizot,
having outlived him to an extreme old age, remarked not long ago
to his nephew and namesake, that there never passed two or
three months witliout the memory of Charles Loj'son coming be-
fore his mind.

The father of the great preacher, having achieved a liberal
education, became Rector of an academy under the auspices of
the University of France. When Charles was three years old,
the family removed to the beautiful little provincial city of Pau,
in the Department of the Lower Pyrenees. Here, in the midst
of inspiring natural scenery, and of a population distinguished by
many of the best virtues of country life, the character of the
young orator was matured.

His education was in the seclusion of the family, his father's
profession of teacher making it possible for him to enjoy at
home more than the ordinary advantages of school. It was, he
says, " a sort of family convent." The excellence of the instruction
and discipline of this little cloister is attested, not only by the
career of Father Hyacinthe, but by that of his younger brother,
the Abbé J. Theodose Loyson, S. T. D., who now adorns the
chah' of " Evangelical Morality" in the Sorbonuc with large
and enlightened principles worthy of his kinship.^

Besides the scholastic and literary influences prevailing in the
family of the Loysons, there were others of still greater impor-
tance. It was a Christian household, according to the best t3"pe
of Catholic religion. The letter of Father Hyacinthe to the edi-
tor of his uncle's works, contained in this volume, indicates how
the memoiy of that young statesman's Christian fidelity to right
was cherished by his surviving kindred with greater affection
than even the brief but brilliant record of his public career; and
records, as a most precious heir-loom, the tradition of a saintly
ancestor, who " through all the storm of the French Revolution
had carried the lamp of God's word in her hand, or rather in her
heart, without once letting it flicker or go out."

* Alt Inan^iral Di-'icoursc by ProfcHPor TiOyson, cntilled '-Tlic Fiiiictiou of
Reason in Thcoloi^y" {T)ii Rôle de la Raison daim la Tlûologic), \» published bv
Joseph Albancl, Pari»*.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. XIX

Amid sufli influrin-i's of lilcnitiirc, of nature, aiul of religion, it
is no -wonder that the intellect, the emotions, and the fjiilli were
c[nickcncd and developed together m that symmetry of coml)ina-
tion which constitutes the poet. In fact, the attention of the
jniblic was lirst attracted to him wiiile he was 3-et in his boyhood,
as one who gave promise, by more than one effusion of bright ])ut
immature genius, of fulfilling those hopes of a great poetic career
which had been dashed by tlie early death of his lamented uncle.
The general interest now concentrated upon him has led to the
exhuming, from among old periodicals, of some of these early
productions. The following, written by him when a lad of six-
teen yeai-s old, and published in a newspaper at the time, has a
proper place in this biography, as a picture of the beautiful sur-
roundings of his child-life, and an illustration of the traits and
tendencies alread}' forming in his character.

80UVEXIRS D'EXFAXCE.

" Dolce color d'oriental saflîro.'"— Dante.

Lorsque j'étais encore un enfant frais et blond,
Que rien n'avait troublé le calme de mon front,
Mes jours, entre les jeux, la prière et l'étude,
S'écoulaient à l'écart et dans la solitude.

Notre maison était à côté d'un couvent,

Dans l'église duquel j'allais prier souvent.

Sainte-Ursule ! — Ah ! ce nom ranime en ma pensée

Le vivant souvenir d'une époque effacée,

Époque d'innocence, époque de bonheur,

Où mon ame portait tout son printemps en fleur !

Je t'aime ! Et cependant tu n'as point, humble église,

De larges chapiteaux, ni d'élégante frise,

Ni d'ogive mystique aux vitreaux de couleur

Qui laissent pénétrer un demi-jour rêveur.

Je t'aime, et tu n'as point de dentelle de pierre.

De vieux murs tapissés par la mousse et le lierre,

XX BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

îsi d'orguillcuscs tours clout les clochers joyeux
Plus haut que les oiseaux gazouillent dans les cieux.
Tu n'as point de tombeaux : les poussières glacées
Des morts n'attendent point sous les dalles usées.
Les murs sont blancs, en tout en toi, riant séjour.
Nous apprend aussitôt que tu n'es que d'un jour.
Mais placé tout après de l'heureux monastère,
Où viennent expier tous les bruits de la terre,
Quelque chose est en toi de chaste et de pensif
Qui calme doucement notre esprit convulsif.
Et puis de mon passé comme une ombre invisible
Le revêt à mes yeux d'un charme irrésistible !
Jadis, chaque matin, bien frais et bien lavé.
J'allais m'agenouillir sur ton large pavé.
Et le front tiède encore du baiser de ma mère.
J'adressais au Dieu bon ma naïve prière.
Que de fois, que de fois, aux offices du soir,
ISFenivrant aux parfums qu'exhale l'encensoir.
J'ai senti lentement de ta voûte chérie
Descendre sur mon front la sainte rêverie,
Ange qui fait tom-ner nos regards vers le ciel.
Transformant par la foi l'idéal en réel,
Tandisqu'à la clarté des lampes et des cierges
Mourait et renaissait le chant voilé des vierges !
Comme un pain pur et blanc sur ma lèvre de feu,
Pour la première fois que je reçus mon Dieu,
C'était à tes autels, c'était dans ton enceinte.
Que pour nous avait lieu la solcmnité sainte.
Voihl pourquoi je t'aime, et sous tes murs épais
Je viens chercher toujours le silence et la i")aix !

O temps évanoui ! temps aimé ! temps prospère !
Auprès du cabinet où travaillait mon père,
Dans une vaste salle où semblaient me garder
Des portraits ne cessant tous de me regarder,
Tnndisquo, frère et sœurs, je les entendais rire,
Sérieuse, occujie de lire ou bien d'écrire,

BIOGPvArniCAL SKETCH. XXI

J'errais de livre au livre, ainsi qu'eu un jardin
Une abeille se pose et revoie soudain.
Cette retraite avait pour moi le plus i^rand eharnie :
Eu }- pensant, parfois, je verse quelques larmes.
Je la pourrais, je erois, dessiner traits pour traits,
i\rais sans faire connaître hélas ! ces doux attraits.
Qui jusqu'au sein des jeux auxquels l'enfant se livre
]\Ie faisaient soupirer après maint et maint livre.
Pourtant jamais l'ennui ne venait me saisir
Et me rendre pensif au milieu du plaisir

"«îque sur ces coteaux où Turançon colore
Les it. '^ parfumés que son sol fait éclore,
Et dans uno villa qui retrace à nos yeux.
Les gothiques manoirs qu'aimaient tant nos aïeux,
Abri frais où jasaient de douces tourterelles
Et trois blanches enfants plus gracieuses qu'elles,
Pour partager ma joie et mes jeux innocents,
J'avais tout à la fois les oiseaux, les enfonts.
L'ainée était pour moi la fille aux lèvres roses
Dont la bouche jetait les perles et les roses,
Auge, fée ou péri. Tout prenait promptement
Pour elle un air de joie et de contentement :
La brise lui faisait de charmantes caresses,
Et folle, se jouait avec ses blondes tresses ;
En glissant sur sa peau, le ra3'on de soleil
Y versait mollement un doux reflet vermeil ;
La brebis qui fuyait, si je voulais la prendre,
Accourait à sa voix et semblait la comprendre ;
Et le ramier craintif venait manger le grain
Qu'elle lui présentait dans le creux de sa main.
. . . Combien j'aurais voulu rendre plus lente l'heure
Qu'elle passait en ville et dans notre demeure !
Lorsqu'elle me quittait, je la suivais des yeux,
Triste et pensif alors, et naguère joyeux ;
Et bien longtemps après qu'elle était disparu.
Immobile toujours, je regardais la rue.

xxii BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

Puis tout me paraissait insipide, les ris.

Les jeux, Tétude nieme et mes livres chéris,

Tout m'emiuyait: en moi je sentais mi grand vide,

Les objets avaient pris une teinte livide,

Et dans ces lieux déserts où j'errais jusqu'au soir

Sans cesse il me semblait et l'entendre et la voir.

Enfin, durant la nuit, amante du mensonge,

Son image venait me bercer dans un songe.

Un jour, un de ces jours où le ciel est si bleu
Qu'au fond de son azur on voit sourire Dieu,
Ou l'on entend monter sous sa coupole immense,
Un vague et saint concert d'amour et d'innocence,
Où la brise nous porte à travers les rameaux
L'haleine de la fleur et le chant des oiseaux.
Nous étions réunis par une douce fête
Qui ftiisait rayonner la gaieté sur ma tête.
Quand le soir suspendit notre jeu de tutin.
Nous allâmes goûter un champêtre festin ;
Et le long du coteau dont l'épaule se penche
Gracieuse et riante avec sa nappe blanche.
Nous trouvâmes la table à l'ombre, dans un bois
Dont l'écho répétait les éclats de nos voix.
On s'assit: mais hélas! j'étais placé loin d'elle.
Et le temps nous parut d'une longueur mortelle !

Aussi, quand les enfants quittèrent le repas.

Nous retournâmes vite à nos joyeux ébats.

Comme un oiseau captif échappé de la cage.

Elle fu3'ait parmi les sentiers du bocage.

Et le taillis épais, à chaque vert détour,

La voilait â mes yeux, la montrait tour à tour.

Et je la poursuivais, comme dans la jeunesse

Le cœur, longtemps plongé dans une douce ivresse

Poursuit la vague et pure image du bonheur,

Qui fuit et rei^arâit à l'horizon trompeur!

BIOGRAPmCAL SKETCH. Xxiii

J'avais douze ans, je crois: depuis celle soirée

Qui laissa dans mon ûmc une trace dorée,

Bien d'autres ont passé sans jamais affaiblir

L'éclat dont celle-là les (ait toutes pfdir.

Oui, vous serez toujours mon bonheur et ma i^loirr;

Rien ne vous ternira dans ma chaste mémoire,

0 sacrés souveuire Cjue j'adore à genoux,
Et je resterai pur et vierge comme vous !

Pau, 22 février, 1813.

Translation.*

RECOLLECTIONS OF CHILDHOOD.

"Dolce color d'oriental pafiiro."— Dante.

"While I was still an infant, fresh and fliir.
With pure calm brow beneath my sunny hair,
j\Iy days in study, prayer, and childish play,
In solitude untroubled passed away.

Our little house beside a convent stood,

"Where oft I prayed before the Holy Rood.

Saint Ursula ! — as the dear name I say,

Come thronging thoughts of years long passed away;

"When happy peace winged every Heeling hour,

And Spring within my soul burst into flower.

1 love thee ! though within thy church's walls
The sunshine through no pictured window falls,
JMaking a twilight in the dreamy air ;

No stately nave or sculptured frieze is there.
I love thee ! though no dainty carvings line
Thy ancient Avails, nor o'er them ivies twine ;
No proud bell-towers, whose chiming melodies
Outdo the birds that warble in the skies ;

* For the very felicitous translation of this poem, by Lucy Fouu^ain, I am
indebted to Putnam's Magazine for December.— L. W. B.

XXIV BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

No pomp of tombs hast thou, whcreni the dead

Low in the dust repose the Tveaiy head,

Within thy ^vhitc avails all is bright and gay,

And tells us thou wert made but for a day.

But placed beneath the happy convent's shade,

Where all earth's noises into silence fade,

Something within thee breathes a pensive calm

That fulls upon the harassed mind like balm

And like a shadow from my happy past,

A charm resistless round my soul has cast.

There, once each morning, on thy pavement wide,

I knelt me down, fresh from the limpid tide,

And with my mother's kiss warm on my brow,

My soul to God in childish prayer did bow.

How many times, while rose the vesper prayer,

And the swung censer perfumed all the au*,

Descending slowly, like the holy dove,

A sacred reverie bathed my soul in love —

An angel sent to raise desponding eyes,

Where faith shows all they long for in the skies ;

While the tall tapers gave a softened light.

And the veiled choir charmed the list'ning night.

Here, for the first time, were my footsteps led,

Where at thy altar, in the sacred bread,

My ardent lips upon my God were fed.

For this I love thee ! Ever from thy walls

A holy peace upon my spirit falls.

— Oh happy days ! O days long lost, still dear !

A lofty hall, mj' lather working near,

I see among my early memories.

Where rows of portraits watched me with their eyes.

There my young sisters and my brother played.

While soberly from book to book I strayed ;

Like the blithe bee that through the summer horn's

Flits restless o'er the garden's wealtli of llowers.

Lights on ;i Imd and I hen awny :igain,

BIOGIIAPIIICAI. SKETCH. XXV

I went from peu to book, and book to pen.

Ah, loved retreat, to memory ever dear!

The tliought of thee brings the quiek-coming tear;

E'en though I drew thine image line by line,

I cannot paint tlie spell that once was thine;

That through the mazes of our childish play

Still drew my soul to thy dear books away.

Then hand in hand with Joy my ^''oung soul strayed,

Nor ever met with Sorrow as we played

Where, on thy vine-clad hills, O Turançon,

The purple clusters ripen in the sun.

In the old villa, where our childish eyes

Saw Gothic towers in feudal pomp arise,

A COS}' nest, where gentle turtle-doves

To three sweet children murmured low their loves —

I shared my sports, and spent my happy lioiu's

With the bright group of children, birds, and tlowei's.

The eldest seemed that favored child of light

From whose red lips fell pearls and diamonds bright.

Angel or fairy seemed the vision splendid,

And peace and joy her eveiy step attended.

The breezes followed her with sweet caresses,

And held their revels iu her sunny tresses.

The sunshine there its lost gold seemed to seek.

And touched with richer rose her peachy cheek.

The lamb that fled before my outstretched hand

Ran to her call, and seemed to understand.

The timid sparrow lost its early dread,

And nibbled from her hand the crumbs of bread.

— . . . Ah, hoAv I longed to stop the flying hours

When, in our home, we seemed to call her ours !

And when she left us, in my wistful eyes

The slow large tears of sorrow would arise,

As long I stood, with saddest discontent,

T(j watch, down the long street, the way she went

For in her absence all smiles fled awav —

XXVI BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

The charm had gone from study and from play.

A void was in my heart, forlorn and weary;

Without her presence all the da}' was dreary.

Through all my liome, now but a desert drear,

Her form I saw, her voice I seemed to hear;

And through the watches of deceitful night,

Her image soothed me in a vision l)right.

— One of those da3's when God's sniile picrceth througl

The summer sky, so perfect is the blue,

And to the vast dome of the arching skies

A hymn of love and worship seems to rise,

Mingling, beneath the shady forest bowers,

The song of birds and the sweet breath of flowers,

Out in the fields we held a little feast.

And her dear presence all ray joy increased.

When evening came our wilder mirth to still,

Upon the shoulder of the little hill.

Within the dim edge of the echoing wood,

With smiling plenty heaped, our table stood.

Alas ! between us yawned a distance wide.

And weary dragged the time, far from her side.

But Avhen the feast was o'er, and we were free,

How blithely rang again our childish glee !

Like a wild bird let loose in native skies.

Through the green thickets swift her light foot flies,

And the chance turnings of the tangled maze

Now hide her form, now yield it to my gaze.

And I pursue, as wild with youthful bliss

We chase the flying steps of Happiness —

Vague form, that flies before our outstretched hands.

Then on the far horizon, guileful, stands.

I^[y years Avere twelve ; but still that happy eve

Within my heart a golden trace can leave;

And all tlu.' impressions later years have made,

Beside that bright spot into darkness fade.

BIOGIîAPHICAL SKETCH. XXVU

Q Ycs, yc arc still niy _i;l(irv ami niy joy.

In my chaste thoiii;]its iiaui^hl baser sli;ill alloy
The holy niemorics I still adore
"With si)irit jiurc and vir^^iii cNennore.

But while he was closeted in the seclusion of this " family con-
vent," in the prosecution of solid classical studies, there was one
door of his retreat that ojiened out upon a view of the great
world of livin;^ questions and interests and men; and this was
the library-door. The period of Father Ilyacinthe's youth was a
golden age in French literature. Jouifroy, on whom had fall(;n
the mantle of Royer-Collard, was expounding and developing the
l)hilosophy of the Scotch school as against the debasing mate-
rialism of the previous generation ; while Victor Cousin, with
eloquence hardly paralleled in the chair of philosophy since the
time of Plato, was delineating the philosophy of all schools and
ages, and fascinating the students of other lands as Avell as France
Mith his brilliant eclecticism. In the department of the higher
politics, while the visionary schemes of the Socialists were giving
daily and painful proof of the seriousness of the questions to be
dealt with, Guizot, in the volumes of his Lectures on the History
of Civilization, and de Tocqueville, in his unrivalled exposition
of Democracy in America, were furnishing, from the past and
from the present, the materials for their solution. In the firma-
ment of religious literature, two greater lights shone so brightly
on the vision of the young recluse at Pau, as to throw all others
into obseurit}'. The first of these was Lacordaire, in whose per-
s(jn the broken succession of the illustrious preachers of France
seemed to be renewed. Having the grace and earnestness to keep
clear of " pulpit eloquence," he became, indeed, a great orator.
Notwithstanding his monkish garb and discipline, he ever felt
himself a man among men, and most of all when dealing Mith
religious questions, for he dealt with them in their relations with
men's current philosophies, feelings, doubts, aspirations, hopes.
His wonder-working eloquence stirred the old vault of Noti-e
Dame, and transformed the venerable cathedral from a lounging-

XXVlll BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

place of tourists, and a haunt of straggliuîç devotees, to a crowded
forum of religious discussion, frequented by the most earnest men
of Paris and the world. The other was the now venerable Count
de Montalembert, the leader of those who, joining a religious en-
thusiasm for their native Church to an enthusiasm for liberty and
native land, were laboring, in the face of ecclesiastical antecedents
that might well have dismayed them, and of the Roman court
that found it all too easy a task to crush them, to reconcile the
highest obedience to the Roman Sec with true lo3Mlty to the
interests and rights of humanity.

It was mainly the influence of these two great writers over the
growing mind of the young man at Pau, that seemed to deter-
mine his vocation to the priesthood. In 1846, at the age of nine-
teen, he entered the Seminary of St. Sulpice, at Paris, an institu-
tion for the training of secular priests. Among the f\icultyof
instruction at the Seminary was one, the Abbé Baudry, to whose
inspiring genius for metaphysical thought and instruction one
pupil, at least, felt a debt of gratitude which he never failed to
acknowledge, and which, in after years, he did what he could to
requite by public eulogy upon his memory.*

After five years of preparation, Charles Loyson was ordained
priest in the cathedral of Notre Dame, With that strong attrac-
tion toward an enthusiastic and successful pupil, with which fac-
ulties of instruction often seek to recruit their own strength and
renew their 3"0uth, by devouring their offspring, the Company
of the Priests of St, Sulpice attached to their own service the
brilliant young graduate, and for six years he was emploj'cd, in
almost entire seclusion from the world, in connection with their
various institutions. Of this time, three years were spent in the
capacity of professor of Tlieology at the Seminary at Avignon,
two years in the professorship of Dogmatic Theology at Nantes,
and one year as Vicar of St. Sulpice at Paris,

About tiie end of the year 1857, he withdrew from the Company

■-^

The review of the ''Pensées Chrétiennes''' of Monbei^'uoiir Baudry, written
y Fatlicr Hyacinthe for " Le Correspondant,'' will appear in the Bccond
volume of liiH Discourees,

BTOr.EAl'IIUAL SKK'IVH. XXIX

of St. Siilpif'O, to ('i)joy one year — tlie last year, as it proved — (jf
that domestic happiness from Avhich Ids academic and monastic
engagements have sequestered liim ahiiost all his life, but of the
sweetness of which many of those discourses of his that were
conceived in the loneliness of his convent-cell, show so tender and
most human an appreciation. His tliought was, in the repose of
liome, to ripen, by a few mouths of rellection, the fruits of so
many years of uninterniitted and laborious study.

At the beginning of 1859, his resolution was taken to enter the
Order of the Barefooted Carmelite Friars; and in March of that
year he was admitted into the Novitiate of Broussey, near Bor-
deaux.

That his decision to adopt the monastic life was dictated by no
sliallow or frivolous sentiment, and no w^orldly calculation, is
clearly enough proved by the choice which he made of an Order.
The original Order of Carmelites was one of the most austere in
its discii)line of all the mendicant orders of the Roman Church.
But in the sixteenth century, that remarkable enthusiast and vi-
sionary, Saint Theresa, found that the ascetic practices which it
required, under the " mitigated observance " allowed b}^ sundry
papal dispensations, were quite inadequate to satisfy the cravings
of her soul for expiatory macerations and mystical meditations.
In cooperation with a Carmelite friar, like-minded with herself,
named John of the Cross, she instituted several religious houses,
both monasteries and nunneries, in which the discipline was
restored to the most rigid iTile of the early days of hermitage. In
her autobiography she speaks with special delight of the fidelity
with which the monks of her first convent travelled about bare-
footed in the snow from village to village. At a later day, the
rule of the order w^as so far mitigated as to allow a sandal, to pro-
tect the sole of the foot. But from this interdict of shoes and
stockings, St. Theresa's reformed branch of the Carmelites took
its name of The Discalceate, or Barefooted Friars. The monks
are allowed no beds, but sleep on a board ; and even such sleep
as this is broken off every night at midnight by the summons to
rise and say the midnight oflices. No fire is allowed, save in the

XXX BIOGr.APHICAL SKETCH.

common hall. The fare in the refectory is of the plainest, no
flesh being allowed throughout tlic j-ear : besides this, through-
out about eight months of the year, fasting is enjoined. The time
of the monks is spent in a routine of soHtary meditations and oral
religious exercises ; the ancient rule ip : " Maneant singuli in cdlis
suii^, die ac node, in lege Domini mcilitanfes : " — " let every man re-
main in his cell, day and night, meditating in tlie law of the Lord."
This, of course, is construed with some regard to the necessities
of human nature; butin actual practice two hours each day of
solitary meditation are exacted of the initiated.

The chief and primary object of the Order is c()ntemi)lution.
But a secondary and incidental object is preaching. And it may
easily be believed that such a regimen as has been descril)ed, in
the case of those robust constitutions which it does not break
down, and those refined and energetic minds which it does not
decoy into mere intellectual and spiritual indolence and sluggish-
ness, may well result in producing great preachers. Certain it is,
that when, two years after Charles Loyson had disappeared froni^
the world behind the walls of the convent at Broussey, there
emerged, in a pulpit at Lyons, the form of one Father Hyacinthe,
tlie Catholic Church of France at once recognized its prophet.

If we pause now, for a moment, to look back on this career, it
will hardly seem like the prophecy of world-famous achievements
in the public preaching of the Gospel. Father Hyacinthe had
lired for thirty-four 3'ears with the faculties and instincts of a
great orator, of which it would seem impossil)le to be unconscious,
growing and stirring within him, and yet iii) to this time his
.voice had never been lifted up in any more public discourse tiian
that of a theological professor to his knot of students. We can-
not but admire, either the self-restraint, or the power of ecclesi-
astical discipline, which could seal up, as with the seal of Solo-
mon, in so small a vase, a genius which, once let the seal be l)ro-
ken, was to fdl the world with its ])resence and influence.

If the question arises in any mind I)y what considerations such
a man could have been induced to bind himself undei: the rigors
of so austere and arbitrar}- and disabling a discii)line, it will not

BIOGIlArillCAL SKlViriJ. XXXI

be in the minds of those who h:ive any acquaintanec with the
influences whieli, in Ji Roman Catholic community, surround
persons of special devoutness of teniper, to incline them to the
monastic state. The traditionary inlcrpniation and application
of such texts as " Sell all tiiat lliou hast and i»ivc to the poor,"
" There be eunuchs which have made themselves eunuchs for
the kiui^dom of heaven's sake," adds to tiiese influences the sem-
blance of a divine authority. And even the vow of absolute,
imquestioning obedience to tlic will of a monastic superior, i.s
made attractive, not only as an expiatory penance, but by the
paradoxical conception that when all care and responsibility for
the details of daily life is disposed of by one supreme act of self-
renunciation, makini^ it over to the control of another, the soul is
thereby admitted to a true liberty. Such considerations as these,
joined to that genuine love of secluded religious stud}' and con-
templati(Mi which his whole life had tended to develop, will
explain, even in a countiy where such acts are unfamiliar, the
" impulse of unworldly enthusiasm, mingled with illusions of
youth," which divided the brilliant young professor of theology
from family and friends, and bound him under the triple vow of
poverty, chastity, and of an obedience to his superior in cveiy-
tJiing, limitcdonly by the scruples of an honest conscience.

The first appearance of Father Hyacinthe as a preacher, in the
city of Lyons, was attended b}-- the same profound impression that
has waited on all his public words from that day to this. After
this commencement of his career at Lyons, he preached a series
of Lent sermons at Bordeaux, in 1802 ; and the following year,
being solicited by his former beloved instructor, the Abbé, at that
time Bishop Baudry of Perigueux, to perform a like service in his
cathedral, he went thither, but, instead of receiving the benedic-
tion of his venerated friend, he had but to utter Avords of grief
and eulogy over his recent grave.

It was so lately as the summer of ISG-l that Father Hyacinthe
first preached to the world of Paris. This was in the church of
La ]Madeleine. The deep impression resulting from his sermons
led the Archbishop of Paris, Monseigneur Darboy, to send for the

XXXll BIOGRAnilCAL SKETCH.

friar, and make a proposition to him from which ahnost any man
miglit have been excused for slirinking -with misgivings as to his
capacity. It was that lie shouki revive tlie Advent " Conferences
of Notre Dame."

Tliis word " Conferences," in this sense, is a new word in tlie
vocabulary of the Roman Catholic Church. When the great
Dominican, Lacordaire, in the last generation, felt called of God
to vindicate for the Christian religion its right to a place in the
France of the nineteenth century, he proposed to reach the ear
of the French public, not by means of sermons, which they were
habitually indisposed to attend upon, but by "Talks" — "Lec-
tures," as we (using a word which in English has dropped its
original meaning) would have called them. Associated with
Lacordaire, the word Conference grew in the French language to
be a synonym for manly, liberal, and Christian eloquence ; and
when, after the coup d'etat, the congenial forces of political and
ecclesiastical absolutism combined to shut his mouth and drive
him to the fierce austerities of his monastic seclusion, there were
still meetings and discourses at Notre Dame, but the Conferences
were no more. The Lenten Conferences were maintained in
form, but the Advent Conferences had been entirely suspended,
waiting for another Lacordaire. Tlie Archbishop proposed now
to Father Hyacinthe that he should revive the Advent Confer-
ences of Notre Dame, and the proposition was accepted. From
that day to this, the preaching of these annual Lectures has been
the chief function of the great preacher ; and the naming of the
subjects of them is the chief record of his life.

In the very first course, beginning December, 1864, the preaclicr
opened his attack, fiiii- and square, against the atheism of French
society and of much of modern science and philosopln\ with six
Lectures on A Perwn/d God.

In close sequence with this, tlie next winter, he undertook to
exhibit the foundations of morality and of the autliority of con-
science, as resting upon God. This discussion was not only in
consecutive relation witli the preceding, but it was most oppor-
tune to th(^ course of i)ublic tliouglit when it was uttered. A

BIOGIUPIIICAL SKETCH. XXXI H

movement -which took on i^roat airs of liberaUty and cJKirity had
bci,^un to be popular in Paris, under the title of La Morale Indé-
pendante, or " Independent Moralit3\" The aim of it was to rom-
l)ine men in a sort of New Church, in Avhich there sliould be
neither Christ nor God, but only an absolute morality independent
of all relations to truth and divine authority. Infidelity never
l)Uts on a fairer disi,'uise than when, in rejecting; Christ and God,
it atTeets the virtues of Christianity. It was, therefore, a most
timely service to Christianity when Father Hyacinthe stepped
into the pulpit of Xotre Dame, to be the champion of reli^^ion as
the true foundation of morality.

Ilavinir proceeded from the doctrine of the personal God to tlic
duty of man as an individual, the next step was to the relations
of doctrine and duty, — in a word, of religion — to man in organ-
ized society. Following this course, the intrepid preacher boldly
laid out before himself a course which must inevitably, if faith-
full}^ followed, bring him into collision with the sins of the pub-
lic, of the government, and of the hierarchy; for he announced
as the subjects of the next three j^ears, the Relations of Christian-
ity to Domestic Societ}^ or the Family ; to Civil Society, or the
Nation ; and to Religious Society, or the Church. These three
courses of Conferences M^re commenced in December of the j-ears
18G0, 1867, and 18G8 ; and at the close of the last course, in Janu-
ary, 18G9, Father Hyacinthe descended the pulpit of the cathe-
dral of Notre Dame, perhaps never to reenter it.

No abatement of the public interest, and no failure of the signs
of a profound and salutary impression upon the vast audiences,
suggested that the Conferences should cease, or be transferred to
other hands. On the contrary, with each succeeding year, the
impression of the preacher's words seemed deepening, and the re-
nown of them widening. Neither was there dissatisfaction on the
part of the eminent prelate who had opened to him the Cathedral
pulpit. But another set of motives were at work, bringing to bear
another set of influences, to embarrass and hinder the preacher in
his duty. Year by year tlie language of the friar had been grow-
ing in boldness, and n.s in the order of his subjects he was drawn

XXXIV BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

on to speak more and more pointedly of tlic sins of rulers and
the sins of the hicrarch}-, it grew intolerable to those who felt the
stroke of his invective, the pressure of his argument. There
seemed little hope of redress from " the secular arm." Audacious
as had been the rebukes which had been uttered from the pulpit
of Notrjc Dame against the sins of the government, arbitrary as
that government had been wont to be, in its dealings with free
speech, it is simple justice to say that it never attempted to limit
the liberty of this preacher. On the contrary, even the Emperor
himself, " knowing that he was a just man and a holy, preserved
him; and when he heard him, he did many things and heard him
gladly."* For, to the great honor of the Emperor, the friar was
invited to the Tuileries, to preach in tlie imperial presence. In
fact, what could secular government do in the case ? It is impos-
sible to fine a man under a vow of povert^y ; and penal imprison-
ment could have few terrors for the inmate of a Carmelite convent.
What then could be done? To complain to the Archbishop
would have been vain, for that Gallican prelate of the old school
was well known to bear little love to the complaining party, and
not a little to the offending monk. But there was a third re-
course, at once more easy, more certain, and more effective. And
this was, to the discipline — absolute, autocratic, inexorable, claim-
ing control both of soul and of body — the discipline of the Car-
melite Order. The General of the Order resides at Rome,
surrounded by the reactionary and despotic influences of which
that unhappy city is the metropolis, and accessible to whisper-
ings and accusations against his subordinates in every part of the
Avorld. The natural pride of such an Order in the fame of its
most illustrious member might be an adequate defence against
most charges, but not against so black and fatal a one as that of
sympathy with popular liberty and education, hatred of Pharisa-
ism, and a wide charity toward all true Christians, without as
well as within the pale of his own Church. " Open attacks and
secret misrepresentations" against the preacher of Notre Dame

* Story of the dealing; of Herod Avitb John tlie Baptist. Mark, vi. 20.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. XXXV

sought the car of tlio (Jcucial of the Order; l)ut it was not until
after the cars of the absolutists of Paris had tingled with the ter-
rible concluding words of the last Conference of Notre Dame in
January, 18G9, that renewed against the Pharisaism of the nine-
teenth century the woes uttered by our Lord against that of the
first century, that " the intrigues of a parly omnij)()t('nt at Ilome"
at last succeeded.*

The convenient occasion for the rel)uk(; and punishment of
Father Hj-acinthe was not long to seek. On the tenth of July,
1809, was held a meeting, in Paris, of the '" Permanent Interna-
tional Peace League," a socict}* of liberals in ])olitics, assembled
to devise means for the preservation of îhat which long and
bloody history has satisfied all liberal minds in Europe is the
best hope of liberty for the people — civil and international peace.
Doubtless it w\as a strange place and platform for a Carmelite
friar. French lil)erals are not, as a class, very orthodox, nor very
religious, and especially not very Catholic. On the other hand,
Catholic priests, as a class, arc not very liberal. It is l>oth pitiful
and true, that love of freedom and progress and humanity, in Eu-
rope, and especially in France, is largely identified with infidel-
ity; and that, while Christianity is identified with Catholicism in
the popular mind of France, Catholicism (as a whole) is inextri-
cably implicated with " Cesarism" and enmity to popular liberty
and rights. It was a step in advance of Lacordaire, when Father
Hyacinthe took his place on the rostrum of the Peace League.
Lacordaire had brought the infidels to the church to hear the
vindication of religion. Hyacinthe carried the gospel to the very

* The conclnding paragraphs of this invective are contained in the article,
by De Pre?senpé, appended to this volume. The words*, with all the dif-
c«urses which they conchule, were preached in Rome, in the Lent of 18G8, in
the church of " St. Louis of the French," to throngs of Frenchmen, and other
foreigners, and seemed to be heard with universal respect ; and at the close
of the series, the preacher was received by the Pope with every testimony of
honor and good-will. But when, at the next Advent, the same words were
repeated before the Ultramontancs of Paris, " they perceived that he epako
of them," and took counsel from that hour more elTectually to silence him.

XXXVl BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

council chamber of •" liberalism," and there vindicated liis Saviour
and ours as l)eing- the Peacemaker of the world.

Those who read this marvellous speech in the subsequent pages
of this volume, will iind reason enough why infidelity might have
been enraged to listen to it ; and reason enough why the " per-
sonal government" of the Cesar of France might have burned to
avenge itself upon the preacher ; but they will look, and wonder,
and look again, to see wiiat scruple the friends of the gospel and
the church, even taking this latter word in its narrowest sense
of an external corporation, could have had at this vindication of
Christ among unbelievers. And yet the government listened to
this fatal invective* with patient, thougli profound dissatisfaction.
Infidelity had nothing but admiration for the brave priest who
liad attacked it to its face. Those who denounced him were the
representatives of the religion which he had defended, and of the
Christ whom lie had vindicated. Strangely enough, the passage
of the speech on which they flistened their accusations was that
eulogy on the word of God as the true source of genuine light
and civilization, in which the preacher declares that those three
communions only which derive their principles from that word —
Judaism, Protestantism, Catholicism — are able to bear the day-
Hght of modern civilization. For this the party of absolutism
gnashed upon him with their teeth, declaring that he had "cruci-
fied the Catholic Church between two thieves." Under the pres-
sure of a chorus of indignant complaints, open and secret, the
support of the Carmelite General, which hitherto had never failed
Father Hyacinthe, at last gave way. A sharp rebuke was ad-
ministered to him, condemning his course as a preacher, and re-
(piiring him thenceforth to refrain from addressing secular asscm-
lilics, and, in tlie puljiit, to restrict himself to tlie point.s on which
all Catholics wore agreed.

After all, the fault was not so much in anylhiiig he had said at
Ihis time, as in what he was, and tiiat his time had come. Those

* The H])cecli Ijcforc tho Peace Lcai^ne was pronounced cons^iderably before
that meeting of tlie French Lof,'it^latllre in which the attack npon "personal
poverumeiit" was renewed in llie hitter inferpelhitionHi of the liberals.

BIOGILVPHICAL SKETCH. XXX Ml

v,\\o h;itl narrowly observed hU preaching', Avliether a.'^ (Viend.sor as
foes, pcreeived distinclly how it all tended to three principal ends:

1. To take up and carry on the ;,nvat work of Lacordairc, of
reconcilinij; the Roman Catholic Church with Modern Society.

2. Not by compromise of convictions, but by the points of com-
mon belief and practice, and by the spirit of i>cacc and charity,
to draw toward each other the various communions of Christian
l)el levers ; and to develop and set forth before the people the doc-
trine of" the soul of the Church," which is really common alike
to the Roman and to the Protestant theolog}': — that they are not
all of the church who are in the church ; and that, on the other
hand, they are not all outside of " the soul of the church" who
arc outside its visible pale; but that the one universal sign of
true disciplcship is " this sign, that the Lord knoweth them that
are his."

3. To endeavor to bring back the Roman Catholic Church
toward the spirit of its early days.

The real question was -whether a preacher having these aims
could have liberty of speech within the Roman priesthood. This
question, decided in the negative in the court of first resort, is
now pending before the highest tribunal of the Roman Ciiurch.
But while that question waits for its linal answer, it is not the
monk that is on trial, but the Church.

It remains to add here the docmuent on which the case is car-
ried up. It might have been thought fit to include it among the
icritings of its author which follow it. But it is better here, as a
great act of his life ; a memorable fact in the history of the
Church of Jesus Christ; "a word"— as one has said before, of
utterances as brave as this — " a word which is a half-battle."

XXXVl BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

council chamber of-" lil)ci-alisni," and llicre vindicated liis Saviour
and ours as being the Peacemaker of the world.

Those who read this marvellous speech in tlie subsequent pages
of this volume, will ilnd reason enough v.diy inlidelit}' might have
been enraged to listen to it ; and reason enough why the " per-
sonal government" of the Cesar of France might have burned to
avenge itself upon the preacher ; but they will look, and wonder,
and look again, to see what scruple the friends of the gospel and
the church, even taking this latter word in its narrowest sense
of an external corporation, could have had at this vindication of
Christ among unbelievers. And yet the government listened to
this fatal invective* witli patient, thougli profound dissatisfaction.
Inlidelity had nothing but admiration for the brave priest who
liad attacked it to its face. Those who denounced him were the
representatives of the religion which he had defended, and of the
Christ whom lie had vindicated. Strangely enough, the passage
of the speech on which they listened their accusations was that
eulogy on the word of God as the true source of genuine light
and civilization, in which the preacher declares that those three
communions only which derive their principles from that word —
Judaism, Protestantism, Catholicism — are able to bear the day-
light of modern civilization. For this the party of absolutism
gnashed upon him with their teeth, declaring that he had " cruci-
fied the Catholic Church between two thieves." Under the pres-
sure of a chorus of indignant complaints, open and secret, the
support of the Carmelite General, which hitherto had never failed
Father Hyacinthe, at last gave way. A sharp rebuke was ad-
ministered to him, condemning his course as a preacher, and re-
([uiring him thenceforth to refrain from addressing secular assen\-
blics, and, in tlie pulpit, to restrict himself to the point.s on which
all Catholics were agreed.

After all, the fault was not so much in anything he had said at
this time, as in what he was, and that his time had come. Those

* The Hpccch before the Peace Leai,'ae was ])ronoiincc(l consulorably belbro
that meeting of the French Lo<,'itrhitiire in which the attack npon "jiersonal
f^'overument" was roncwcd in the bitlcr interpclluticjiH of Ihe lib. Tula.

BIOGRArniCVL SKETCH. XXXVll

who li;i<l narrowly observed liis preaeliinu', wliethcr as friends or lis
loes, perceived distinelly how it all tended to three i)riiieipal tiuls:

1. To take up and carry on the <,M-eat work of Lacordaire, of
reconciling: the lionian Catholic Church with Modern Society.

2. Not l)y compromise of convictions, ])Ut by the points of com-
mon belief and practice, and by the spirit of peace and charity,
to draw toward each other the various communions of Christian
believers ; and to develop and set forth before the pet^ple the doc-
trine of" the soul of the Church," which is really common alike
to the Roman and to the Protestant theolog}': — that they are not
all of the church who are in the church; and that, on the other
hand, they are not all outside of " the soul of the church" who
arc outside its visible pale; but that the one universal sign of
true discipleship is " this sign, that the Lord knowcth them that
are his."

8. To endeavor to bring back the Roman Catholic Church
toward the spirit of its early days.

The real question was Avhether a preacher having these aims
could have liberty of speech within the Roman priesthood. This
question, decided in the negative in the court of first resort, is
now pending before the highest tribunal of the Roman Church.
But while that question waits for its final answer, it is not the
monk that is on trial, but the Church.

It remains to add here the docmnent on which the case is car-
ried up. It might have been thought fit to include it among the
icritings of its author which follow it. But it is better here, as a
great act of his liie ; a memorable foct in the history of the
Church of Jesus Christ; "a word"— as one has said before, of
utterances as brave as this — " a word which is a half-battle."

LETTER OF FATIIKR IIYACINTIIE TO THE
GENERAL OF HIS ORDER.

To the ReverouL the (leueral af the Order of Iktrefuoted
Can)i elites, Jiniiie:

Very Revekkxd Eatheh: —

During the live years of my ministry at Notre
Dame, Paris, notwithstanding the open attacks and
secret misrejpresentations of which I liave been the ol)-
ject, your confidence and esteem have never fur a
moment failed me. I retain numerous testimonials of
this, Avritten l)y your own hand, and which relate as
well to my preaching as to myself. "Wliatever may
occur, I shall keep this in grateful remembrance.

To-day, however, by a sudden shift, the cause of
which I do not look for in your heart, but in tlie
intrigues of a party omnipotent at Rome, you find fault
with what you have encouraged, blame what you have
approved, and demand that I shall make use of such
language, or preserve such a silence, as would no longer
be the entire and loyal expression of my conscience.

I do not hesitate a moment. With speech falsified ])y

an order from my superior, or mutilated by enforecd

i'es, I could not again enter the pulpit of Noire

xl FATHER HYACINTHE's LETTER

Diime. I express my regrets for tins to the intelligent
and courageous bishop, who placed me and has main-
tained me in it against the ill-will of the men of whom
I have just been speaking. I express my regrets for it
to the imposing audience which there surrounded me
with its attention, its sympathies — I had almost said,
with its friendship. I should be worthy neither of the
audience, nor of the bishop, nor of my conscience, nor
of God, if I could consent to play such a part in their
presence.

I withdraw at the same time from the convent in
which I dwell, and which, in the new circumstances
which have befallen me, has become to me a prison of
the soul. In acting thus I am not unfaithful to my
vows. I have promised monastic obedience — but Avithin
the limits of an honest conscience, and of the dignity
of my person and ministry. I have promised it under
favor of that higher law of justice, the " royal law of
liberty," which is, according to the apostle James, the
proper law of the Christian.

It was the most untrammelled enjoyment of this holy
liberty that I came to seek in the cloister, now more
than ten years ago, under the impulse of an enthusiasm
pure from all worldly calculation — I dare not add, free
from all youthful illusion. If, in return for my sacri-
fices, I to-day am offered chains, it is not merely my
right, it is my duty to reject them.

Tliis is a solemn hour. The diurch is passing
tlmjiigh one ol' tlie most violent crises — one of the

TO THE GENERAL OF HIS OKDKII. xli

(larkf.>( and most decisive — ol" its earthly existence l-'or
llic first time in tlircc hundred years, an (Ecumenical
Council is not only summoned, ])iit declared necessiirv.
These are tiie expressions of tlie Holy Father. It is
nut at such ji moment that a i)reacher of the (Josi)el,
^vere he the least of all, can consent to hold his peace,
like the "duml) dogs'' of Israel — treacherous guardians,
Avhom the prophet reproaches l)ecause they could not
l)ark. Canex mufi, non V((Ien/e.<t latvitre.

The saints are never dumh. lam not one of them,
l)ut I nevertheless knoAV that I am come of that
stock— y/Zn' sandonini suniiis — and it has ever been my
ambition to place my steps, my tears, and, if need were,
my blood, in the footprints where they have left theirs.

I lift \\\\ then, before the Holy Father and before the
Council, my protest as a Christian and a priest against
those doctrines and practices, which call themselves
Roman, but are not Christian, and which, making
encroachments ever bolder and more deadly, tend to
change the constitution of the Church, the substance,
as well as the form of its teaching, and even the spirit
of its piety. I protest against the divorce, not less
impious than mad, which men are struggling to accom-
])lish between the Church, which is our mother for eter-
nity and the society of the nineteenth century, whose
sons we are for time, and toward which we have also
both duties and affections.

I protest against that opposition, more radical and
frightful yet, which sets itself against human nature,

Xlii FATHER hyacinthe' S LETTER

attacked aiul revolted by these false teachers in its most
indestructible and holiest aspirations. I protest above
all against the sacrilegious perversion of the Gospel of
the Son of God himself, the spirit and the letter of
which, alike, are trodden under foot l)y the Pharisaism
of the new law.

It is my most profound conviction, tliat if France in
particular, and the Latin races in general, are delivered
over to anarchy, social, moral and religious, the princi-
pal cause of it is to be found — not, certainly, in Catholi-
cism itself — but in the way in which Catholicism has
for a long time past been understood and practised.

I appeal to the Council nov/ about to assemble, to
seek remedies for our excessive evils, and to apply them
alike Avith energy and gentleness. But if fears whicli
I am loth to share, should come to be realized — if that
august assembly should have no more of liberty in its
deliberations than it has already in its preparation — if,
in one word, it should bo robbed of the characteristics
essential to an Œcumenical Council, I would cry to God
and men to demand another, really assembled in the Holy
Spirit, not in the si)irit of i^arty — really representing the
church universal, not tlie silence of some and the con-
straint of ulliers. '• For the luirt of the daughter of my
people am I Inirt. I am bhiek. Astonishment iiath
taken hoKl on nie. Is tliere no balm in Gilead — is
there no i)hysician there ? Why then is not the healtli
of the daughter of my people recovered ?" — Jeroninhy
viii. '?A,'Z2,

TO THE GENERAL OF HIS OllDKn. xliii

Ami, linally, 1 ai)i)(,'al to Tliy tribunal, (.) L<>nl .I-'sus !
Ad (iiuni, Do)}ii)ui Jrsu, irihioud appello. It is in 'I'liy
presence thai I write these lines; it is at Tliy i'fct, after
having jirayed much, pondered much, sulFered mneli,
and waited lon^^ — it isut Tliy feet that I suhscribe them.
1 have this confidence concerning them, that, however
men may condemn them n})on earth, Thou wilt a})prove
them in heaven. Living or dying, this is enough
for me.

Brother Hyacinthe,

Sx/perior of the Barefooted Carmelites of Paris, Seœnd
Definitorof the Order in the province of Avignon.

Pakis— Passy, September 20, 18G9.

The answer to this letter was everything that the enemies of
the preacher of righteousness desired. It was a peremptory sum-
mons from the General of the Order, to betake himself to one of
the convents of the Order in the south of France, within ten days,
under pai-n of excommunication from the Catholic Cliurch,
accompanied with " the mark of infamy." When the ten days
had expired, Father Hyacinthe was on liis way to the United
States of America.

He has come hither an excommunicated member of the Roman
Church, but still a member. Tlie doctrines which he has learned
in lier schools and preached in lier pulpits, lie has not repudiated.
The conception of the future union of all Christian souls in the
organic and visible fellowship of her communion, he still clier-
islics with most filial affection. But from that communion he
himself is cast out. Before the law and the hierarchy of the
Church, he is an exconmiunicate.

But before God and his own conscience ? Not at all. The doc-
trine of Poman theology, that al)Solution looses tlie stnil only
v.hen contrition is sincere (which the pric-t docs r.ut undertake

Xliv FATHER HYACINTIIE's LETTER, ETC.

certainly to know), is complemented by the (loctrine equally set-
tled, that excommunication binds the soul onl}^ -when tlie offence
charged is actual, of which the hierarcli is no infallible judge.*
Bearing, within, a conscience void of offence before God, he may
walk amid the falling thunderbolts of Rome unhurt, and " fear
no evil, for the Lord is with him."

* The famous theologian, Passaglia, I am told, has discussed the subject of
excommuuicatiou in this sense, in terms which were deemed offensive by
the Roman party in the Roman Church ; but I have not had time to find his
pamphlet.

DISCOURSES

(IF THR ki:veki:nd

FATHER HYACINTHE.

SPEECH BEFORE THE PEACE LEAGUE AT
PAEIS, JULY 10, 18G0.

Ladies axd Gentlemen : I have only a few Avords
to add to the learned and eloquent speeches to wliieli
you have been listening. After such voices, mine can
have but little weight in these matters. Its sole im-
portance is, that it more directly represents among you
the gospel.

The Permanent Liternational Peace League pro-
])oses to act on public opinion 1)y every means ; and
resorts accordingly to whatever light may illuminate it,
and whatever force is competent to guide it. Among
these lights and fiu'ces it must place in the front rank
the gospel, a liglit so pure, a force so potent, that not
even the feebleness of our w^ords nor the humbleness of
our persons can weaken or obscure it.

For my part, then, I bring to the peace movement
flie gosjycl ; not that gospel dreamed of by sectaries of
every age — as narrow as their own hearts and minds —
but my own gospel, received by me from the Church
and from Jesus Christ, a gospel which claims authority
over everything and excludes nothing — [s€)i^ation\—

2 DISCOUESES OF FATHER HYACINTHE.

which reitemies and fulfils the word of the Master, "ho
that is not ag'ainst us is for us/'' and which, instead of re-
jecting the hand stretched out to it, marches forward to
the van of all just ideas and all honest souls. [Apj^^c^^^se.]

Permit me, then, before exhibiting religion and virtue
as the best safeguards of peace, to recognize the services
which may be rendered to it by institutions and inter-
ests of a more earthly sort. Institutions, Interests, Vir-
tues— these are the instruments of peace on which I
would fix your attention.

I. I have named Institutions first. Perhaps it is a
mistake ; for when we ask ourselves thoughtfully what
sort of institutions would be adapted to secure the peace
of the world, we come upon ideas so little practical that
we seem to have reached the region of chimeras. I
scarcely see any effectual institution other than that of
a sovereign international court of justice, commissioned
to adjudicate the disagreements arising among nations,
and by authoritative judgments to prevent bloody col-
lision. The future, perhaps, will enjoy such an insti-
tution. I am one of those who believe all the more in
progress because of the entire faith we have in the gos-
pel, in redemption, in all those supernatural influences
brought into the world, directly — principally, doubtless,
to save souls, but also, as an inevitable and glorious in-
cident, to save nations and the Avliole body of mankind.
[Cries of Bravo.] Possibly, in a future more or less re-
mote, our posterity may salute that grand Areopagus
which would realize in this part of the continent some-
thing like what has been spoken of as "the United
States of Europe ;" but that is not to be to-day ror to-
morrow ; and consequently such an institution could
not be reckoned among the barriers which wo would
oppose to war.

SPEECH BEFORE THE TEACE LEAGUE. 3

I recur rutlier to two jiowits iiuw existing; clii)lo-
iiiacy, representing tlio governments — and opinion,
representing the peo2)le. It devolves on diplomacy
and on public opinion, rising to the grandeur of that
mission "which the will of CJod and the conscience of
mankind have appointed to them, to opi)ose insur-
mountable obstacles to the invasion of this scourge.
Let diplomacy renounce the spirit as well as the letter
of Machiavelli, let it reject the false science of expedi-
ents, the mean arts of deceit, and illuminated by the
grand light of principles, glowing with the flame of
generous sentiments, it will speedily have established
in all the great centres of Europe an international
league, a permanent and sovereign council of peace.
But why speak of Europe only, when from the depths
of Asia, over the crumbling battlements of the great
wall, I hear that old China is sending us the son of
youthful America, and claiming, through her repre-
sentative, the honor of a place among civilized nations.
This is the sort of diplomacy which has indeed the
secret of the future !

But, after all, it is less to diplonuicy than to public
opinion that we must have recourse for our projects of
peace. Pascal says, '' Opinion is the queen of the
world; force is but its tyrant." It was but the morn-
ing twilight of public opinion that was shining in the
days of Pascal and Louis XIV. The morning has
advanced since then ; it approaches its meridian, and
everywhere, to-day, it tends to put an end to the ca-
prices of personal government. [Urcwo! Bravo! En-
tJnisiastic shouts.]

Personal governments have had their reason and
their uses in other ages. [SiniJes. Good! [/ood!] A
child stands in need of masters and tutors of a very

4 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE.

personal sort ; but, as St. Paul says, speaking of regen-
erate humanity, we are no longer children nor slaves ;
we arc entitled to come into possession of the inherit-
ance. It is no time now for personal governments.
[Applause.] It is time for the government of public
opinion, for the government of the country by itself;
and now that all countries are calling and stretching
out the hand to one another, the hour is at hand for
the government of mankind by itself

I put the question, What is it that the nations de-
mand to-day ? Is it war, or peace ? From the shores
of America to those of Europe, and from all lands of
the earth, there comes up a great cry that answers,
Peace ! Mankind (as was said in the speech to which
we have just listened), mankind to-day more than
ever feels that it is one; faithful to its several mem-
bers, to particular countries, it sees above these coun-
tries the universal country, that commonwealth of God
and man of which Cicero spoke: " Universus liic mim-
dus, itna civitas communis Deoriim atque liominum"
Mankind is conscious that every war within itself is a
civil war; it has no wish to be henceforth a camp, but
a forum and a market, and over these a temple, whither
it may ascend to worship God. [Ajrplause.']

Ladies and Gentlemen, I had almost forgotten an in-
stitution for Avhich (as our honorable Secretary seems
disposed to remind you), I have been accused, in other
circumstances, of having had some partiality — I mean
the army. I believe that, properly restricted and prop-
erly organized, the army is one of the most potent in-
struments of peace. The pure type of the soldier seems
to me, in the ejioch in Aviiicli we live, almost as neces-
sary to civilization as that of the priest ; and I should
be extremely sorry not to do justice to it. I do not

SPEECH BEFORE THE VKU'K lA-.XGUK. 5

speak of llio<e inoiistruiis armies born in clays of fever,
under the iulluence of vertigo, and which, making of
])eacc a seonrge almost as terrible as war itself, dig
nnder the tramp of their ponderous battalions IxAtom-
less pits in the liminces of the Slate, in the jjrosiierity
of families, in the blood of sueh multitudes of young
men made sterile or corrupt. [Lircli/ cfj)probufion.\
Surely I have no admiration for that; and when Europe
wakes, at last, from this bad dream which she has been
dreaming for some years, not content with effacing such
scandals from her laws and usages, she will blush that
she cannot also expunge them from her history. What
we want is the army reduced to its legitimate propor-
tions; withdrawn in time of peace from the corrupting
life of the garrison, and organized in such wise as to lind
its greatest satisfaction in peace. We have been told of
the six thousand men who constitute the effective force
of the United States. [S/niles.] I do not think that we
are far enough advanced toward the future to be satis-
lied with that. [JIarls of assent.] But we have on
the old continent other examples moi'c in correspond-
ence with our social condition, which we shall do well,
I will not say to copy, but to imitate with originality
and independence, hi the better part of Europe, the
soldier is less isolated than with us from family and
country life. It is in cultivating the soil, in dwelling
by the fireside, that he learns to love them and defend
them. Fro avis ct focis. But why look beyond our-
selves ? Have we forgotten the first wars of our own
republic, and those levies in mass to save the country,
and those armies of undrilled peasants, oftentimes with-
out shoes and without bread, who went forth to cover
the frontier with a belt of heroic hearts, that they might
hide from the eye of the stranger the shame within—

6 DISCOUESES OF FATHER HYACINTHE.

the scafFold and tlic satiiriuilia— and that tlicy might hurl
back the veteran armies of all Europe in league against us ?

II. I liave a word to say concerning Interests.
Earthly interests are a great matter — full of ideas and
virtues ; and after all, when God puts us on the earth,
it is not to dream about heaven, but to prepare for it.
[Good! good I] It is by the conquest of earth that man
should advance to the conquest of heaven. The holy
Book tells that God in his wisdom has made man to
establish this world in justice and truth.* These are
words which we cannot too often ponder ; most of all,
we cannot too closely apply them.

Ladies and CTcntlemen, the justice which man owes
the earth is agriculture, industry, commerce. Agricul-
ture holds the foremost place. The earth lies in a
lethargic slumber till it is roused by the stout arm of
the laborer. It imbibes the sweat of man's broAV, and
becomes intoxicated v/itli those bitter and sacred drops ;
it becomes disgusted at its native barbarism, and yields
itself, actively and gladly, to the transforming and ferti-
lizing culture. So the earth, established in justice and
truth, becomes the fostermother of multitudes, opening
her generous breasts to men of every nation, and pour-
ing out to them those great streams of physical life
without which moral life itself would speedily die away.
The farmer with worthy pride turns over to the artisan
the product of his labor, and says. Brother, complete
my work and begin your own ! pursue the great toil pre-
scribed by God to man. And the artisan takes the fruits
of agriculture, summons from every quarter the hidden
or refractory powers of nature, subdues the refractory,
brings to light tlie liidden, and in his turn creates those
wonders which are tlie last utterance of man and of

* Wisdom, ix. 2, 3.

SPEECH BEFORE THE PEACE LEAGUE. 7

mutter in the splieiv of tlie useful, as \ho line arts arc
their last utterance in the sphere of the beaut ifiil. And
Avlien farmer and artisan have done tlieir work, then
commerce lifts her broad wings, her sails fill, her engines
hiss and throb, lier ships plough tlie sea, her liery chariots
traverse the land, the arteries of nations open in every
direction, that the blood of a common civilization, the
vivifying sap of the same moral ideas and the same
material products, may permeate all mankind. And
the word of Saint Paul is fullilled, which was not made
known before tliQ coming of Christianity, that supreme
inspirer of great things, Gentes esse cohœredes, "that
the nations should be fellow-heirs."

Xow, Ladies and Gentlemen, what is it but peace, that
stands, with Christianity, at the beginning and at the
end of all these things ? Peace as origin and result ;
peace always and everywhere ! Woe, woe, if the war-
trumpet sounds, if the arms of laborers in field and
workshop are turned violently from their proper object,
if the sails of the merchant-ships are suddenly furled,
and if, alike by land and sea, instead of the glad din of
labor, we hear only the fearful shock of destruction !
[General signs of aj)2^roi'al] Away with these hateful
images ! Let us pause a moment before tAvo great spec-
tacles of the passing hour.

You are Christians. I also am a Christian, and a
priest, and a monk. But neither in the Christian
religion, nor in these glorious rags of the monastic
habit, nor in the seclusion of cloister and temple, has
it been in my wish, nor in my power, to sever myself
from interest in the things of earth! [Good! good!]
Accordingly, Ladies and Gentlemen, it is with genuine
emotion, that in behalf of you all, I hail these new
triumphs of human toil and genius !

8 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE.

I turn toward the East, whence morning by morning
comes tlic sun, whence comes the light of the gospel,
and at the point which once divided Europe and Asia,
I see no longer division, but the sign of glorious union.
It is the admiration and advantage of the world ; but
it is the work of France. My France has wrought it!
[Cries of Bravo.] France conceived the project; she
maintained it against the sneers which are the portion
of genius as well as of virtue ; she invented those pro-
digious machines, and made the rocks, as the Psalmist
says, " to leap like rams," and sends gliding and spark-
ling throngh the sunshine of the desert the waters of
the canal that is to join two w^orlds I

I turn now to the West. This time it is the Avater
which divides — the vast Atlantic, rolling between
America and us. But see, from the lofty decks of the
glorious Leviathan, in our harbor of Brest — for it is
France still ! — see that gigantic cable plunging with the
noise of thunder, with the swiftness of lightning! It
sinks into the waves, dispelling, as it goes, the monsters
of the deep, and braving the stress of storms. It stretches
from Europe to America, to carry messages, not of war
but of peace, and to fix as a reality the nnion of the three
nations which form the aristocracy of the world, and
which, whenever they shall so choose, have power to
establish throughout our planet the reign of peace —
America, England, and J'^rance ! \E)i/hvsiaslic ap-
2)Iau.sc.]

III. Tlie Virtues. Eadies and Gentlemen, liuman
society rests on a deeper and more sacred basis tium
mere interests, or even ideas. The moral order is tlie
necessary foundation of the social order. It would be
an illusion, then, to suppose that the various forces
just enumerated are suflicieiit of themselves to main-

SPEECH liEFORE THi: I'EACE LEAGUE. 9

tain pciice, and (liai tlicy may safely ent loose from this
snprenu* force — virtne. Onr honorable and learned
Cliairman has jnst exhibited the disordered passions of
the heart as a permanent principle of war. Permit nie
to remark that I had said this very thing on the sub-
ject of war in a lecture of mine, for which some of the
friends of peace have complained of me. I said " war is
the ideal of sin, the ideal of the brute and the devil.''
\^A2^pIause.^ \\\\t it is just becanse it is the ideal of the
brute and the devil, that it is, in one aspect, the ideal
of man. There is something of the brute and of the
devil in man. The root of war is in pride, concupis-
cence, revenge — in all the bad passions that ferment
within us. It is our burden and our glory to struggle
against these ; but if we would conquer them, we must
not ignore their existence and energy. To banish war,
to say to it what the Lord says to death — " 0 death, I
will be thy death" — we must make exterminating war
on sin — sin of society as well as of the individual — sin
of peoples as well as of kings. AVe must record and
expound to the world, which docs not understand them
as yet, those two great books of public and private
morality, the book of the synagogue, written by Moses
with the fires of Sinai, and transmitted by the prophets
to the Christian Church ; and our ovrn book, the book
of grace, which upholds and fulfils the law, the gos])el
of the Son of God. The decalogue of Moses, and the
gospel of Jesus Christ ! The decalogue which speaks
of righteousness, while showing at the height of right-
eousness the fruit of charity; the gospel which sjx'aks
of charity, while showing in the roots of charity the sap
of righteousness. This is what we need to afiirm h\
word and by example, wluit we need to glorify before
peoples and kings alike ! [Prohj^jgrd appJausc.']

1*

10 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE.

Thank yon for this applause ! It comes from your
hearts, audit is intended for these divine hooks! In
the name of these two books, I accept it. I accept it
also in the name of those sincere men who group them-
selves about these books, in Europe and America. It
is a most palpable fact that there is no room in the
daylight of the civilized world except for these three
religious communions, Catholicism, Protestantism, and
Judaism ! [Renewed ap2)Iause.']

The want of a peace catechism has been spoken of
with regret. AYe have one. Something more detailed
in form, or more appropriate to our special wants, may
be desirable, but I must assert that the catechism is
already made. You need but carry the decalogue to
its conclusions. You need but apply to nations the
principles of individual morality, and abolish that
refuge of lies — one rule for private life, and another for
public life. [ Good ! good .^]

" Thou shalt not kill," says the everlasting law.
But does it only condemn the cowardly and cruel
wretch who skulks behind his victim and plunges a
dagger into his heart, or blows out his brains with a
pistol ? Is murder no longer a crime when it is com-
mitted on a great scale, and is the act of a i^rince or
of a deliberative assembly? What! think you that
without breaking God's law, without offending human
conscience, without branding on your forehead the
mark of Cain, without heaping burning coals on your
liead — think you that you can lay open to the gaze of
history tliose vast fields of carnage, and there, for the
gratification of your Avhim or the accomplishment of
your design, mow down your fellow-creatures with
grape-shot by the liundrcd-thousaiul ? Cain ! Cain
where is Abel thy brother? [General (tjij)l((i(sc.\

SPEECH BEFOKE THE PEACE LE.VGUE. 11

"Thou sliiilt. not kill," .^ays tlu' hiw. It also says,
''Thou shalt not steal." Here is a pour man. His
wife and children, emaciated "with want, are languishing
on foul straw in one of those penfolds that abound in
gretit cities tilled with luxurious palaces. In the fever
of his distress, in the delirium excited in his soul by
the tears he has su})pL-d from his wife's cheeks and his
little children's hands, this man snatches a loaf of
bread, or a piece of money, and brings back, not joy,
but life into the dwelling of famine. Thither human
justice pursues him ; it tears him from that weeping
family; it smites him, with one blow, in bis love, his
honor, and his liberty. And here, on the other hand,
is a government which is meditating some straightening
or other of the frontier without — [cqjphmse] — some able
diversion of public attention within — [apjjiausc] — some
traj) or other, baited with glory to catch liberty — [sJiouis
of Bravo, long continued ;~\ — and while waiting for the
judgment of history, and the surer judgment of God,
the public conscience will condone, perhaps will glorify,
the robbery of so many cities or provinces, the crafty
or violent annexation of a whole peo2)le ! For my part,
as a minister of the living God, laying my hand upon
the Ten Commandments, I am not afraid to say : In
the former case, if there be sin, it is venial sin ; in the
latter case it is mortal sin ! [Long applause.]

'' Thou shalt not covet," proceeds the book of inspi-
ration. And in fact, in the judgment of the Chris-
tian conscience, the sin is not only in the hand that
acts, it is in the longing eye, the plotting heart. 0
kings, potentates, peoples — for the peoples have their
times of madness, and democracies as well as personal
governments, have those who flatter them to their
ruin — [apj^Iause] — whoever you are, kings or peoples,

12 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE.

ye shall not covet ! Ye shall not say, We hide our time ;
and as the hrigand hides his, in the darkness of his den,
ye shall not snifl' in advance the savor of the blood ye
do not dare to shed. Ye shall not covet.

You see, Ladies and Gentlemen, Avhat is wanted is
not to construct a catechism, it is to reconstruct his-
tovj. We do not want to he taught henceforth from
the cradle upward that the greatest glory is that of the
conqueror. [Applcmse.'] What you must tell your chil-
dren— I speak to you, mothers — is that the man who
makes two Ijlades of grass grow where one grew before,
has done more for mankind than the victor of twenty
battles ; that they should respect the independence of
nations as they respect the modesty of women ; that it
is as cowardly and criminal to insult the independence
of a neighboring country as to tolerate insults on the
independence of our own. [^Renewed ajjjylaiisc]

Ah I if it were a war of independence, I would be
the first, if not to wage it, at least to preach it. If the
flag of France were at the frontier for defence and not
for attack, torn it might be by bullets, blackened with
smoke, red with blood, but around it we would rally,
one and all, and it would not waver ! Dear, glorious
flag I if warriors' hands were lacking, the hands of our
women Avould grasp the staff, and it would not waver.
[(rood! good!]

I have spoken of justice ; but justice alone is not
cnougli, whether between mitions or between individ-
uals. There must Ije charity with it. AVhy is it that
llie law is so hard, so impossible to keep, until the
Spirit of grace descends into the heart? It is because
mere justice is an irksome thing. It limits our rights
by the rights of others, and restricts the sphere of our
activity. ]5ut let love enter the lieart and expand it

SrEECII liEFOKE THE PEACE LEAGUE. lU

until it lincls its own good and its own liap^jincss in the
happiness and good of otlicrs, and tlie hiw is no longer
hard to keep. It becomes a iiccessity of the soul as
well as a duty. This is the meaning of that deep say-
ing of St. Augustine, ''only love, and you may do wliat
you choose." But to this end, the nations, not salis-
lied with being just, must be good, kind, trustful
toward each other. The nations of Europe must main-
tain among themselves dispositions like those of prov-
inces of the same country.

Does the prosperity of one of our provinces produce
invidious feelings in the rest? Xo ; because in their
individuality — too imperfect, in my opinion, but real,
nevertheless — they form the grand unit, France. "Well,
let each of the nations of the continent consider itself
a province of that United States of Europe, wliich has
not yet received its political constitution, but has re-
ceived its moral one. Then, in the superior unit}'
which knits together their interests, and instead of
impairing, strengthens and develops them, they will
learn to trust each other ; and when, as the result of
iionorable effort — of industry and virtue — the prosper-
ity of one of them shall be increased, it will not excite
fear in any quarter, but pride and satisfaction every-
where. The little States will say, "\Ye have one pro-
tector more. And the great States will open ranks to
welcome a new and potent auxiliary.

But how much closer and holier this unity becomes,
when we consider it in its relations to Christianity I 1
have referred already to the wonderful teaching of St.
Paul. " The nations are fellow-heirs, and of the same
body.'"" ''' ConcorjwraJcs ;" it is one of those new words
coined by Christianity to express the new ideas wliich it

* Eplu'sians, iii. G.

14 DISCOURSES or FATHER HYACINTHE.

l)roiiglit into the world, tlio idea of true cosmopolitan-
ism and luimanitarianism, the idea of the city and peo-
ple of God! The nations are more than consolidated;
they are concorpcvcaJ, because they are "partakers of one
promise," and of one divine life, " in Christ by the gospel."

Ladies and Gentlemen, I call to mind the first appear-
ance of the symbol of the cross on a military standard.
A prince, of Avhom I speak reservedly — for thongh in
certain relations he was tlie beneûictor of the gospel, he
also, in my opinion, inflicted on it no little injury —
Constantine the Great — {tokens of a2)provaI] — at that
moment he was great, indeed, for he was struggling
against the blind and violent resistance of expiring
paganism; in one of those prophetic dreams which
come to great men on the eve of the great events of
their lives and of the world's life, Constantino saw the
Christ holding in his hands, oh w^onder! a flag of war;
but on that flag was traced the cross !

The cross upon the flag ! It is first the transforma-
tion of war, and then its destruction : transformation by
justice and charity, destruction by peace. No ! since
that ray of heaven marked out the cross upon the
Labarum, there must be no war save just war, waged
only for the defence of right against violent aggression,
and consequently against war, and in the interest of
l)eace. All other war than this is pagan, even though
Christians l)e its soldiers ; and the cross of Jesus which
it profanes shall be avenged, in tlie judgment of the last
day. No ! under the standard of tlie cross, no more of
liatred, revenge, cruelty! But on these fields of horror,
yet of moral beauty, the same hands Avhich have in-
flicted wounds shall come near, trembling with pity, I
liad almost said with remorse, to stanch and heal. In-
stead of that savage war-cry of antiquity, Vce victiSj

SrEECn liEFOllE THE PEACE LEAGUE. 15

"woo to tilt' vanquislu'd !"— tliriv sliuU be svvn and
lu'anl iiothiiiL,^ Imt love (uward the conqiioivd, and
res])c'C't.

The day .^hall ('uine, it may Ije ages from tlii.s lime —
l)ut to the tlioiiuht of God, and to the life of liiimanity,
ages are but days — when the liglit of t]ie cross shall
shijie out upon the prophetic Labaruni, and the battle-
standard shall be thenceforlh only the standard of the
immortal victory of peace.

In the present age of the Avorld, universal and perpet-
ual peace is only a chimera. In the age to come, it will
be a reality. For my part, I have always believed — and
now, in this assembly of my brethren, I don't mind
telling the secret — I have always believed that in some
nearer or remoter future, mankind would come, not to
complete perfection, which does not belong to earth, but
to that relative perfection which precedes and prepares
for heaven. After the fall of Jerusalem and Iiome, and
the predicted end of the ancient world, the primitive
Christians, heirs of the promises of Jewish prophecy,
did not expect immediately the beginning of the
heavenly and eternal state, but a temporal reign of
Jesus Christ and his saints, a regeneration and triumph
of man upon the earth. I, also, look for this mysterious
millennium, about which our errors of detail cannot
shake the deep, unalterable truth. I look for it, and in
the humble but faithful measure of my labors, my words,
my prayers, I strive to prepare the way for it. I believe
that nations as well as individuals shall some day taste
the fruit of universal redemption by the Son of God
made man. I believe that the law and the gospel shall
reign over this whole planet. I believe that we — that
you and I — shall see descending from heaven a manhood
humbler and nobler, meeker and mightier, purer and

16 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE.

more loving", in a "word, grander, than our own. '•' x\nd
this man shall be the peace !" Et erit iste Pax:^'

Over the cradle of our Lord Jesus Christ the angels
sung, in tlie majestic beauty of that Christmas night,
^•' Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace,
good-will to men." And over tlic tomb from which ho
rose, the cradle of his new life, Christ says himself, "' I
have overcome the world ! My peace I give to you I"
The future shall receive that promise of the angels, and
that gift of Christ — the double hosanna of his cradle
and his tomb. The future is the inheritance, not of
the violent, but of the meek. Then shall be brought
to pass that other saying, w^ritten among the words that
shall never pass away, " Blessed are the meek, for they
sliall inherit the earth." \^Loud and long-continued
applause.]

* Micah, V. 5.

THE XOTRE-DAME LECTURES.

A1)VI:NT, 18G7.

CIVIL SOCIKTY IX ITS RELATIONS WITH
CIIlllSTIAXITY.

LECTURE FIRST.

December 1, 1867.

Civil Society ix its Relations with Domestic
Society.

My Loud AiiCHBisnop axd Gextlemex: Li en-
tering, last year, upon the study of social questions in
tlieir moral and religions aspect, we distinguished, at
the outset, three principal forms of society, which,
for different but equally imperatiye reasons, are essen-
tial to the perfect organization of mankind on the
eartli : domestic society, or the family — civil society, or
the State ; religious society, or the Churcli. AVe luive
spoken of the family. The subject needed years — we
devoted to it six lectures ; but as far as our limits al-
lowed us we have treated of that subject.

The order of subjects brings me, this year, to the con-
sideration of Civil Society, or the State.

But is this a time for bringing such a subject into
the Ciiristian pulpit ? Is it becoming to lift up a voice

18 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE.

— a priest's voice, wliieli slionld be ever grave and
calm — amid the tumult of heated passions, and, so to
speak, under the gleam of the lightning and the roll
of thunder ? This, Gentlemen, is the very thing which
attracts me. Xot that I love danger. I remember the
word of our holy Book : " He who seeks peril shall
perish in it himself."* I do not love danger, but I go
throuo:h it without fear when it lies between me and
duty. Yes, it is a duty for the minister of the gospel,
at least in this presence ; the hour is solemn and pro-
pitious ; and because the men of error and the men of
hate have been speaking too loud, and because events
have given echo to their voice, it is full time to lift up,
above, far above the clamor of parties, the impartial
voice of righteousness and truth.

And then. Gentlemen, what reassures me is your
presence — the presence of this audience, the very sight
of w^hich imposes on me wûsdom and moderation — the
presence of the eminent prelate whose benediction I
have just received. To tell you my inmost thought, I
am reassured by my own conscience. A loyal, respect-
ful subject of the Government of my country, lirmly re-
solved to follow no political flag save that which may
rally about it all honest citizens, the flag of the legiti-
mate elevation, the material, and still more the moral
elevation, of the most numerous and the most suffering
classes of society. If 1 look deeper in my heart, I And,
it is true, two passions ; but I am not afraid freely to
avow them in your presence. The first is the passion
— the burning ixission — of love for the holy catholic,
apostolic, and Roman Church, our mother, the mother
of J'lurope and America, the mother of the great civili-
zation of the AVest. And then, beside her, witli hej-,

* EcclL'(*iasticiirt, iii. 2T.

CIVIL socnyi'Y and christianity. 19

"svitliin lin", the ]);issi()ii oC love to l-'raiicc, Avliicli lias
always been, and .^liall ever he her eldest daughter.

I am not, then, out of my ])lacc in discussing soeial
questions in their n'lations ^vith the gospel, Avith mo-
rality and religion. I am in my phice, because 1 am a
})riest, and because 1 am a citizen ; because I have not
abdicated for the heavenly country the interests and the
love of my earthly country ; because, my Lord Arch-
bishop, I rememlx'r that what has been the motto of
your "whole life, has been in recent days one of your
most eloquent inspirations at St. Genevieve, at that fes-
tival which I might call the Avedding of science and
faith, when you saluted, in the name both of the one
and of the other, " those tAVo things Avhich ought to
control the Avhole of human life— country and religion."

Part First. — The Origiii and End of Civil Society in
its Relation to Domestic Society.

[Having to define Civil Society in this first Lecture, Fatliei
Hyacinthe considered that he could not better do this tliau by
comparins: it with Domestic Society, which precedes it in the
world both in the order of history and in the order of reason, and
is consequently a natural limit to its rights. He would treat,
then, successively, of the origin and end of Civil Society in its re-
lation to the Family.]

I. At the outset, I find myself face to face Avith an
immense error bequeathed to us by the ancients, by the
philosophy and jurisprudence of Greece and Rome. It
consists in confounding the social order in general,
Avhicli is essential to the existence of mankind on the
earth, Avith civil society, Avliicli is only a particular form
of the social order; and, coming nearer to our present
subject, it supposes that the family did not exist before

20 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE.

the commonwealth ; that it received from civil society
its constitution, its laws, and its spirit; that conse-
quently civil society possesses over the family, over its
internal affairs, and over its substantial rights, a power,
so to speak, unlimited.

You see that we are concerned at the very start with
a question of origin between the two societies which we
are comparing. AMiich of the two comes first ? Histor-
ically and logically, in the order of ideas and in the
order of facts, which is the root and which the fruit ?

Against the authority of the pseudo-philosophers of
the eighteenth century, and of the pseudo-politicians
of the French Revolution, I declare that civil society is
relatively of recent date, and that domestic society pre-
ceded it, I do not say by years, but by ages.

I ask the Bible. I have told you before, I am not
ashamed of the Bible. Anti-religious prejudice may
deny its inspiration ; but it cannot contest its historical
authority. I take the Bible, which one of the deepest
thinkers of our age has called " the book of humanity,"
the Bible, which is not the history of a political organi-
zation or of a religious sect, but the history of the great
race of man ; I open its first book, the book of the be-
ginning. Genesis. Nothing, here, of empire or republic,
nothing about political society, but from end to end it
breathes the pure and fruitful spirit of domestic society!
From the marriage-bed of Adam and Eve, to the wan-
dering tents of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob — everywhere
domestic society !

But this page of ancient Scripture, how it is dis-
l)layed before our eyes, subjected to our very touch, in
contemporary facts! Providence is wonderful in its
inventions. It has written tlie liistory of our globe
and its primeval transformations in i he bowels of the

CIVIL SOCIETY AND ( HKISTIANITY. 21

carl il, and day l)y day, as tliese arc laid open, gocdogLsts
bring up again before our eyes the unknown ages un-
nieasuivd by (lie life of man. But it has been not less
ingenious for tln' moral world; only, instead of dumb
relics entombed in dcatli, it reveals to us living relics
which it has cherished in the bosom of the human
family, in such wise tliat tlie successive stages which
our race has passed through, arc displayed to us simul-
taneously in the light of day. — 1 trausi)ort myself witli
vou for a moment to those loftv summits of the fflobe,
those table-lands of central Asia which have been so
well styled '' the hive of nations." It is the region of
heavy grasses, and from immemorial time the dwelling-
j)lace of nomadic tribes. It is one of the most magn ill-
cent and fascinating sights which man can contemplate.
Nothing equals the steppe, or at least nothing surpasses
it; not the sea Avith its monotonous and majestic im-
mensity, nor the virgin forest with its mysterious depths,
nor the mountains Avith their sublime upspringing of
earth toward heaven. Plains Avithout end, covered in
spring Avitli luxuriant and spontaneous vegetation ; an
ocean of floAvers and verdure, undulating from east to
west, from AVest to east, nnder the June breezes; toAver-
ing grasses, the offspring of nature, untouched by the
sweat of man's broAA% engulfing in their dense groAvth
the caravans of the desert, men, horses, camels, even,
and spreading afar their intoxicating perfumes ! . . . .
For whom has God made these faA'ored regions? Was
it for those saA'ages who, according to Rousseau and
the " Contrat Social,'' CA-eryAvhere preceded the estab-
lishment of civil society ? ÂVas it for that man-monkey
which the false science of our generation exhibits to
us, struggling through ages of endeaA'or to free itself
from the limitations of brute-existence? "Tor mv

22 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE.

part/'' remarked an eminent traveller to me, on his
return from tliese distant lands, " what I saw over there
was a great deal of Abraham !'' And in fact, excepting
the purity of the primitive religion, which has decayed
among them, it is a marvellous relic of tliat patriarchal
society the simplicity of which is so superior, in grandeur
and beauty, to the complicated and scientilic organiza-
tion of our civil society. These are the nomadic shep-
herds among whom intercourse with nature has developed
a remarkable practical sense and meditative intelligence ;
these are tlie communities sustained only by tradition
and the domestic virtues, among which each father of a
family commands in authority and in liberty .... Hail,
sacred deserts, plains of Tartary, that have poured out
again and again your healing floods eastward toward
China — westward toward Greece and Eussia ; perad ven-
ture for us also ye are guardifig the secret of the future !
Ah! if we contiuuc to slip aloug tliis fatal slope, if we
go on in the progress of decay to atheism in doctrine, to
materialism in morals, to revolt against all authority
worthy of the name, to servitude under every revolution-
ary despotism ; if our posterity follows us into these
lower depths — 0 tlien, ye plains of Tartary, send forth
to us our latest saviors ! Trample us beneath the hoofs
of your steeds; smite us down Avitli the weapons of your
warriors, and then, baptized with the lingering remains
of our Christianity, rise up like tlie Germans and the
Iluns of yore, and you will have snatched Europe froTii
the corruption in which it has been dragged })y sophists
and hai-l(jt3, Ijy demagogues and tyrants !

[After liaviiig estaljlislicd 1)}^ the Bible, by history, and by coii-
t(;inpcjrary gcograpliy, the priority of domestic society to civil
society, Father Hyacinthe proved that on the contrary it is the
Slate which has its origin and the groiiii'l of its existence in the

CIVIL SOCIETY AND CHRISTIANITY. 23

necessities of llic laiuily. As he Ii;is already observed, lie means
here by Stute not merely the sovereign power of civil society, but
the whole nation in so lar as it constitutes such society. In ojjim)-
silion to the error of the " social compact" which represents civil
society as an arbitrar}' work of man, there comes up the error of
certain philosophers and thooh>i2,ians who rei^ard it as being
directly and exceptionally a divine creation. This error origi-
nates in confounding the su per natural organization of the polity
of the Hebrews, and the natnral organization of the polity of
other nations. It is an error which predisposes the State to put
itself in the place which belongs of right to the family, and to
extend the exercise of its supremacy to private life.]

I acknowledge, Gentlemen, tliiit many of our philoso-
phers and theologians have not kept quite clear of this
doctrine. Must it be confessed ? — Bossuet is one of them.
I oAvn no connection with that line of vulgar detractors
who think to magnify themselves by attacking Bossuet.
Bossuet, the last link in the august tradition of the
Fathers of the Church I Bossuet, the glory, not of France,
but of all Catholicism ! But the loftiest genius is affected
in some degree by the delusive spirit of its age. Bossuet
came after the ruin of those Middle Ages, which, mis-
understand them as Ave ma}^ were in so many respects
an era of liberty. He lived in the splendor of those
absolute monarchies which have risen upon the modern
world, and which seem to have concentred the whole
social system in themselves. Under the dominion of the
prejudices of his time, it Avas possible for tliis great man
to teach that the right of property was derived from the
Government, and that "in general every right must
needs be derived from the public authority."* But
pushed to its last results, and aimed, in turn, by the
al)Solutism of demagogues against the absolutism of

* Politique tirée des propres paroles do i'Ecriture Saiutc, livre 1er, Art. iii.,
propos, iv.

24 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE.

kings, such a principle would justify tlie crimes of the
French Revolution, and the criminal dreams of social-
ism itself.

Xo ; the right of property is not derived from the
State ! Land, that foothold of the family, that basis of
the home, is owned by a better title than the concession
of the State ! It takes hold of the deepest secrets of
human nature, the most absolute necessities of a. free
and intelligent man. The Columl)us of primitive ages,
or of newly discovered regions, I tread some uninhab-
ited land. I gaze upon it in its virgin beauty, — its wild
nncomeliness, perhaps ; — no matter, I am charmed by
it. I form witli it that bond, so full of mystery, which
unites person and thing, and in which interest, reason,
affection itself, are intertwisted. Ah ! when I have done
this, there is no power on earth, even though it call it-
self Louis XIV., which has the right to stand up and
say, as this monarch once said, " I am the owner, you
are the tenant." No! the owner is myself. It is all
mine, soil as well as crop. You cannot rend that patch
of earth from me ; neither can you give me a title to it.
My right consists in the act of my will, which said to
this field, this forest, " Be mine." My right consists in
the landmark I have placed, in the hedge I have planted.
My right! it is in the sweat of my brow, the blood
upon my hands, the rude embraces with which my love
and labor have seized and fertilized the land. Hence-
forth that land belongs to the person of man. I hold
it in my own right, and God stands by me in the claim.

[ Douljllc'ss when Uu; existence of a central and sovereign
power is necessary to the maintenance of justice and peace
Ixtwcen domestic communities hitherto independent of each other,
tills power is ordnined of God; '* for there is no power but of

CIVIL SlJCIKTÏ AM) CllKlSTlANITi'. lio

God ;"'' and it is not free to the several lieiids of families to refuse
their assent to the institution of it. But this institution is not
effected directly by God. Only one such instance is furnished by
history; — the Jewish nation, Avell styled tlic miraculous nation.
This nation was formed by God, at Sinai ; but the nation was
itself the Church of Jesus Christ in a preparative stai^e. The
historical ori.i^in of civil society has considerably varied in differ-
ent time.^ and places, with dilferent races and in ditrercnt cir-
cumstances; but the underlyini!; reason which has produced aud
maintained it, is the need felt by families of a new organization
to regulate and protect their rights. This takes place often in
consequence of the change from the wandering pastoral life to
the settled life of the husbandman. Aljraham and Lot, nomadic
shepherds, may separate from each other on the face of the earth :
the tribes descended from Jacob, and planted on the soil by
Joshua, need, if they would dwell in peace, judges, and by and
by kings. War, also, was a potent means of organization for po-
litical society : blood is the primitive cement of the most of them,
and the earliest kings were soldiers that had been crowned by
victory. Sometimes it is the defender of a group of families
against outside aggressions who, victorious, becomes the organ-
izer of society; sometimes it is the enemy himself Avho becomes
iirst conqueror, then legislator.]

II. But whatever the fiicts may liavc been "with regard
to the historical origin of civil society, we liave now
reached the philosophical notion of it. It is the union
of a certain number of heads of families, in order that
the mutual exercise of their rights may be regulated
by common arbitrament, and, if necessary, protected by
force. This union supposes an agreement, implied if
not expressed, between the heads of families, which
hears no resemblance to the ^' social compact," since it
is ordained by Providence, demanded, at a certain stage
of development, by human nature, and governed by
tlie absolute principles of justice.

* Romans, xiii. 1.
o

26 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE.

Look on the l)row of the fiitlior, on the gray hair of
the patriarcli. It is encircled by a triple crown, the
tiara, if I might call it so, of secular authority. When
I behold the pontiff' of the Catholic Church, the father
of redeemed humanity — let me call him by his name,
that sweet name that grows in glory as it grows in ex-
perience of trial — when I behold Pius IX., I see upon
his gentle and majestic brow three crowns not to be
disjoined. In primeval times, when as yet there was
no universal pope, these three crowns were worn by the
pontiff of every dwelling : he was father, king, and
priest. Oh, how lovely, and at the same time how ven-
erable, the father's crown ! I salute it with trembling
lips. Thou art a father, 0 aged patriarch with hoary
head, that gatherost upon thy knees and in thy bosom
the children of three generations ! Thou art a father,
0 son of man, that hast reached the highest grade of
natural greatness possible to humanity ; from thy loins
have sprung a numerous seed, in thy heart have been
treasured all the affections of humanity, on thy voice
waits obedience only less complete than that w^hich is
yielded to God. A father, thou art a priest as well.
Thus far, Christ has not yet come into the world with
his sacerdotal institution, with his bishops and priests;
thou standest alone in the sanctuary of the household,
holding all their consciences in thy hand, uiiiting all
their prayers in thy prayer, oftering all their hearts in thy
heart. A priest, thou art a king withal ! Thou stretch-
est fortli the ^cepti-c of righteousness to regulate and
guard ail rights ; tliou bcarest the sword to defend and
to avenge, as Al)raham, a mere head of family, using
the right of war A\liicli belonged to him, rescued liis
nephew's family from the hands of his enemies. . . .

Now, from tlie head of the father of the family

CIVIL SOCIETY AND CHKISTIANI'IT. 27

these two crowns., oi" })riest and of king, liavc fallen off.
The priestly crown has i)assecl, in part at least, in the
constitution of religious society, to the Catholic hierar-
chy. The royal diadem has passed altogether, in the
organization of civil society, to the chiefs of the State.
To civil society, Avliatever the form of it, republic or
empire, belong now the sceptre and the sword. But the
father of the family still retains all his rights, except-
ing that one which consists in regulating and guarding
all the rest, and which constitutes the sovereign jiower.
One of the acutcst and exactest thinkers of our day,
whom I desire to mention by name on account of the
obligation I am under to him in my own studies, the
illustrious Abbé lîosmini-Serbati — a genuine Italian to
the very marroAV of his bones, and at the same time a
Catholic to the very core of his heart — has helped me
to the best conception of civil society. According to
him, civil society has for its object, not, like the family
in the natural order, or the Church in the supernatural
order, the substance of rights, but simply the modalily
of rights. It does not create rights. ]\Ian exists before
the State, with all those essential and inalienable rights
which he holds directly from God, by virtue of reason
and moral liberty. The family, also, exists before the
State, with rights equally essential, equally inalienable,
exercised in its bosom by the human person raised to
his fullest dignity and felicity. It is not for the State
to create those rights which are antecedent to it, and
which come, I am bold to say, from a far higher source ;
it is only for the State not to destroy them nor encroach
upon them. Its mission extends no further than to
})rotect them, and to establish over them the sway of
what the English, in their noble language, call '•' the
queen's peace" — what Saint JPaul bids us ask for when

28 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE.

Ave pray for kings and all that are in authority, '* that
we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness
and honesty."* The mission of the State consists, then,
in fixing the modality of rights, that is, in regulating
the best way in which the reciprocal duties of individ-
uals and fixmilies should be exercised in order to help
rather than hinder each other in their common develop-
ment. It consists, further, in protecting by force the
rights and interests which belong to it from every un-
just and violent attack, whether from within or from
without. Such are the natural frontiers of civil society
and domestic society, the family and the State — fron-
tiers far more important for the peace and liberty of
the world than those of the Pyrenees, the Alps, or the
Ehine !

On these frontiers I pause, and salute that sceptre
which requires nothing but righteousness, produces
nothing but peace; the oppressor of none, the liberator
of all. I salute the sword of which Saint Paul declares
that the king bears it not in vain.f Xext to right-
eousness, I know nothing more sacred tliaii force, when
force is not the assassin of right, but its champion.

Part Second.— TAe Mutual Rights of Domestic Society
and of Civil Society in Relation to the Marriage Con-
tract, to Education, and to the Sanctity of Wills.

[In this second part, Father Il^'acintlie proposes to consider
tlie three principal functions of domestic life, in their relation to
civil society. Birth, love, death, are the three crises of individual
life; and transposin<5 these terms according to the social order
of the family, of wliicli love is the basis, we have the contract of
liusband and wife, the education of children, the testament of tho
aged.

* 1 Timothy, ii. 2. 1- Romane, xiii. 4.

CIVIL SOCIETY AND CIIKJSTIANITY. 20

1. T/tc Marri<(r;c C<m{r,trf.—YA\\nv Hyacinthe i;\\\v. notice tliat
he did not intend, :it this time, to consider the niarriage contract
in its speciticaliy Christian aspect, and in the snpernatnral order,
in 's\hich it is exalted to the diîçnily of a sacrament; that he
treated of it liere in a moi'c p:cneral wa)', and wherever it exists,
as the fundamental act of domestic society. lie sets the State,
then, in comparison, not with the Church, but with the family.

After remarking that the State invades the domain of individual
liberty when it imposes marriage, as Augustus did in a famous law,
or when it interdicts it, like certain States of modern Germ.any,
the orator comes directly on the question of the power of the
Slate over the contract considered in itself. This power does not
affect the substance of the contract, but only the civil solemnities
wliich accompany it, the civil eilects which follow it, and on
which it belongs to tiie civil power to determine ; it is the mo-
dality of right. There is, then, no propriety in the expression,
sometimes used, of " civil marriage," and Pope Pius YI. was right
when he declared in a brief that " marriage is a natural contract,
instituted and confirmed antecedently to all civil societ)\" So
that it is not only the sanctity of the sacrament which the Church
has in ever}»- age so euergeticall}'- defended against the attacks of
secular powers; it is more than this, it is the integrity of the
rights of the flimily.]

For this cause I bless thee, 0 my Churcli ! Cliiircli
Cutliolic, Church of the ^liddlc xVges, and of the great
pontiffs, Gregory VII. and Innocent III.! Xot alone
for the sanctity of thy sacrament hast thou contended,
thou hast been the defender of the liberty of our con-
sciences, the purity of our morals, the peace and dignity
of our homes. . . . The Churcli has de'fended the family ;
and because the soul of the family is, so to speak, con-
centrated in .the wife, a priceless treasure in a frail
vessel, it is especially over w^oman that it extends its
protection ; — woman, with whom the Church has affini-
ties so affecting and sublime, that it were vain to at-
tempt to sunder them ; woman, whose liberty is always

30 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE.

appealed to when the design is to oppress or to corrupt
her: the Church defended her against the violence of
the powerful in days of yore, as it novf defends her
against the barbarity of sophists. It covers her with
the shield of its wrath, which the prophets so well speak
of* as '-tlic fury of the dove" and "the wrath of the
Lamb," and stretching over her its unarmed, but ter-
rible hand, it tells the monarch, quailing before it in
his pride and lust,

"This woman is GocVs charge ; forbear thy haucl.''"

[2. The Education of CMId re n.— F aihcv Ilyacinllio alluded to his
argument of last year's lecture, showing how education, being
the complement or rather the chief clement of parental autliorit}^
the care of it belongs, of natural right, to the parents. The
State, doubtless, has the right to keep watch over instruction,
and to hinder anything from entering into it detrimental to pub-
lic morality and peace ; but it may not impose on families a sys-
tem of education, nor enforce the employment of such and such
a school or teacher.]

The child belongs to its parents. I know the preju-
dices of my contemporaries; but I afhrm none the less,
in some measure, a right of property of man in man ;
and there can be no example of this sort of right more
legitimate and noble than that of the right of the father
to the child. Doubtless the person of every human be-
ing is essentially free and sovereign ; it belongs to itself,
under the "eminent domaiiv' of God. But it is not so
with its nature. Saving and excepting tlie rights of
the person, we may say — we 'inust say — that the nature
of the son belongs to the fallier. It is llesh of his flesh
and bone of his bone. The breath which inspires it is
breathed from his nostrils. The vital heat which ani-

♦ Je»'omiah, xxv. ?^ (Viil;,'aie, " a fcicle ircc columb.z:") Iloveialion, vi. IC.

CIVIL SOCIETY AND CllKlSTlANirV. 'M

ma(os it is kiiuUt'd from hims'll'; and as tlicy wero wout
to say in Israel, it is his spark, his himp, which is to go
sliining on Avhcn lie is dead, and i)e'rp.'tuatc liis name
and r-lorv in tlie midst of liis pi-oj-dc. 'Vhc latlx-r is
then, indeed, the proprietor of this sacred .natnre ; to
liim alone it belongs to impress iii)on it its controlling
momentum and direction t<,)ward the future. Conse-
quently the school, the sanctuary of education, has its
l)roper place beneath or near the parental roof.

"We are proud of France, and with good reason ; but
it is not right for us to despise other countries. There
are countries of Europe which are of value to us in
many relations, and may well serve us as models. Let
me cite a touching example of primary instruction as
it is given at the family tireside in certain parts of
Norway. In those mountainous regions, so sombre and
sad in their gentle beauty, but so rugged in climate
during the cold season, the summer is devoted to the
culture of the fields, the winter to the household. It
gathers, then, about the fireside, the radiant centre of
light and heat both for body and for soul, and there the
education of the children is taken in hand. The most
aged of the family overlook the task ; the mother and
the elder sisters are the teachers, aided, commonly, by
the travelling schoolmaster, a household pilgrim, whose
business takes him about through the snow-paths,
Avith his little baggage of Christian science and na-
tional history and poetry. Beside the schoolmaster,
and sometimes in his vacant chair, sits the minister of
religion — a Protestant minister, I know, but ordina-
rily a man who has kept the vital principle of Chris-
tianity, with the faith of Christ and the morality of the
gospel. At this house-school is forming, day by day,
the character of generations in whom the religious and

32 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE.

patriotic sentiments are far stronger and more closely
united than with us.

[It is not, liowever, the rule that the school is kept in the fam-
ily ; but if it is detaclied from the fireside, it should nevertheless
not cease to be dependent on it. It is by the law of nature that
the schoolmaster is subordinate to the parent. He is the aux-
iliary, not the rival of the fatlier and mother; lie is to carry for-
ward their work, not destroy it.]

The public interest, that pagan idea so often appealed
to against the rights of the individual and the family,
could not give to the State a power over education
which it does not possess itself. In Sparta, the republic
claimed the right of educating tlie children, because it
regarded them as its property ; and this principle was,
in a greater or less degree, that of all Greek and Roman
antiquity.* This is what the latest type of democracy
seems ready to reproduce amongst us. It puts at the
head of its programme. Obligatory Instruction — obliga-
tory, not only as to the fact of instruction (which of
itself would be too much), but as to the school and
as to the teachers. We can have no doubt of what its
design is, in view of its systematic enmity to the liberty
of teaching in general, and to religious instruction in
particular. It means to deliver future generations from
the influences of the family, which form the chief hin-
drance to its plans, and to its so-called ''progress." It
means to supplant the cnstomary mould of domestic
education with tlie mighty mould of national educa-
tion ; to withdraw tlie school from the family, in order
to give it over to the exclusive control of tlie State.

* The ^Taud i)ri]iciple of Lycnrf^iiP, ri'])catcd in express terms l)y Aristotle,
Avas tliat as the children belong,' to the State, they f hoiild be educated by the
State, accordin-? to the views of the i-itate. (See Rollin"» Ancient Uistory.)

CIVIL SOCIETY AND CHRISTIAXITY. oS

Sucli is tlie libtTly Miiicli tlicy liavc in iircparuiion
for us ! SiK'li is their Ijoastcil democracy 1 And with
such a phitiorm as tliis they dare to make their ap})eal
to universal suffrage. Ah ! I liave a respect for the bal-
lot-box of France, but I liave a higher respect for its
liome. Leave its ballot-boxes free, and leave its house-
iiolds sovereign ! True national education is tlie free
and liarmonious resultant of all the educations of tlie
liousehold. True public opinion is the great soul of a
people breathing at once û'om every fireside. However
mighty, however enlightened the Government of any
nation, it has neither the mission nor the right to fasli-
ion that nation in its own image and likeness, and to
run it in tlie mould which it has wrought. It has sim-
ply to receive the nation such as it has grown of itself,
such as it has come down to it with each of its genera-
tions growing up in the bosom of the family, such as it
has been moulded in the minds of fathers, in the hearts
of mothers, in the discipline of teachers chosen by fa-
ther and mother, private teachers or public, lay or cler-
ical— no matter what, so long as they are the choice of
the parents, and therefore representatives of the family
and of Christianity.

[3. llie FlgJtt of Bequest. — The supreme act of parental author-
ity and providence is not education, but testation. The right of
testation, one of the sublimcst rights that can be exercised by a
luiman being, is sublimer yet when it is vested in the person of
the fatlier. In every man, it is a grand affirmation of the immor-
tality of the soul. In the case of the father, it affirms, besides, the
principle of the immortality of the family, and, by a sequence too
little imderstood, the i:>i'i'iciple of the immortality of the nation.
Here, too, civil society is under obligation to regulate the forms
and guard the effects of this act ; but it cannot tamper witli the
right itself, nor rob the father of the family of the liberty. of tes-
tation.]

34 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE.

Tlie greatest philosopher of Germcany, great in heart
as well as in genius, Leibnitz, saw in the AVill a supreme
affirmation of the iiiiDwrtaliff/ of the soul The Will, in
fact, is not a contract, or, to use the barbarous expres-
sion of some writers, a '' quasi-contract" between one
living man and others. It is the Will of the dead.
" A testament,'' says St. Paul, and all legislation agrees
with him, *' a testament is of force after men are dead ;
otherwise it is of no strength at all while the testator
livetli.''* It is in the Will that the ancestor, if I may
so speak, rises in his grave, wiser and more potent in
death than in life, marks out to his posterity the course
that they must follow, and proclaims the law of the fu-
ture. It is in vain that men assert that all rights perish
with the present life. The testament is the will of the
dead imposing duties on the living. It is, I will not say
a 'moral relation, that is too weak a vrord, it is a juridi-
cal relation formed from the tv/o sides of the tomb, and
constituting one of the bonds of that universal society
which Leibnitz called the commonwealth of soids. It is
no chimera, thou sage of Germany, this commonwealth
of souls. It is a truth, and we are coming back to it.

How then could Robespierre, that great foe of the
family and of the Will, put the question before the Con-
stituent Assembly, which refused to listen (the Conven-
tion did listen to it at a later day) — how could he put
the question : " Is a man to be allowed to dispose of
the land he cultivated, after he himself has gone to
dust ?" Xo, Iiobes])ierre, you were wrong, you gave the
lie to your own nobler instincts. Was it not yourself,
some years later, Avho, at the sight of the revolutionary
atheism that was swelling from that time and now over-
flows upon us, affrighted at the fruit of your loins, 0

* Hebrews, ix. 17.

CIVIL SOCIETY AND CIIRISTLVNITY. 35

grand thougli sanguinary (rihinu^ — was it not yourrfolf
Avho invoked God and tlie immortal soul oi' num as the
last salvation of the people in its madness ?

[The liberty ot" testation in the father of the family is also the
effective i>rinciple o{ tlic immortality of i/tc fdmili/.]

The family is not a structure reared fora few years at
most, built on the marria2:e contract, and taken down
when the children come of age. It is an institution
Avhieh passes down the ages, like the State itself, of
which it is the more lasting hasis. In a learned and
eloquent plea for the wise enlargement of the liberty of
testation, an eminent magistrate, who now occupies a
seat in the council of his sovereign, exhibits to us the
picture of this institution, parcelled out in its patrimony,
enfeebled in its authority, and arrived at a point of
degradation which compromises it as a power in society.*
The mortal wound dealt to the family by Robespierre
and the Convention, has been but imperfectly healed by
the genius of the First Consul. The only efiectual rem-
edy is to restore to the hands of the father the plenary
power needful for the repression of evil and the encour-
agement of good in the society which he governs. On
tiie son who has dishonored his name and corrupted his
blood by vice, paternal justice, full of merc}^ must be
able to inflict punishment salutary to all, recovering,
perhaps, the guilty, protecting from him the rest of the
family. To the family itself he must be able to bequeath
the elements of j)rosperity and continuance, Mdiich at
present are sorely lacking.

Between the family and the land which supports and
sustains it, there grow up ties which ought not to be

* Speech on the right of Testation in its Relations with raterual Authority,
by M. Pinard, procurer-general. Page 58.

36 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE.

l)rolven Avith every genenition : the lUmily homestead is
a Iluly Liuul, like tliat wliicli God promised to the seed
of the patriarehs ; and tlie hearth, the central point of
it, has all the dignity of its Most Holy Place. Shall
this homestead be parcelled ont in patches ? The works
Avhicli grow np with it, in agricnltnre or other indus-
tries, shall they come to naught? Shall the fireside
be given over to strangers ? * Shall these articles of
household use, redolent of the remembrances of former
kindred, be sold under the hammer ? Ah! Gentlemen,
let us show that res2")ect for tlie domestic hearth with
which it is honored by free and virtuous peoples. One
such I know, which, like the Hebrew people, has with-
stood the destructive power of the centuries, and of
which a glorious remnant is still left to- us. As free
under the family roof, as respectful to the public author-
ity, the Basques have written in their fueros, on the
other side of the Pyrenees, this noble custom : " No
public force may approach the house of a Biscayan
nearer than nine paces.''

The last of the three great patriarchs, Jacob, was
about to die. His eye was dim with age, so that he
could not see. But when they told him, '' Behold thy
sons are coming,'' the old man gathered up his strength ;
he kneeled upon his couch, and bowed himself and wor-
shipped at the head of his bed.* Then when he had
prayed, renewing his strength by thus waiting on Jeho-
vah, the living and mighty God, he sat upon his bed,
his feet resting on the ground, and, takiug the best be-
loved in his arms, he embraced Ephraim and IManasseh

* Gcnesip, xlvii. 31. (Yulj,'ate vcreiun, " Adoraiit Israel Dcv?n, conveiTUs ad
kctull caput.."")

CIVIL SOCIETY AND CHRISTIANITY. lî?

before lie Ijk-ssed tlioin. Xou' mark, (iciitlcinon, -vve
have hero, not the authority of superior age, we liave the
right of testament ! In tlie experience of his entire life,
condensed into that supreme act, — in tlie ])i-()})helic li.L;ht
Avhicli sliincs about liim, one feeble ray of which is by
and by to glance and touch upon the Christian fathers,
Jacob sees the future of each of his children, and takes
the measures Avhich the Avelfare of his race demands.
Through the dimness which covers his eyes, with that
look of the soul which pierces every veil, he gazes on his
eldest son: ''Reuben," cries he, "my first-born, that
sliouldst have been my might, thou hast been the be-
ginning of my troubles. Thou hast flowed aAvay like
water. Thou shalt not increase. Thou hast defiled
thy father's house, thou canst no longer hold control
therein.''*

*• But thou, Judah, thou art he whom thy brethren
shall praise ; thy father's children shall bow down be-
fore thee. 0 Judah, how fair thine eyes ! They glow
like wine within the cup, and whiter are thy teeth than
milk. Bind thy foal to the vine, 0 my son, thine ass's
colt to the choice vine. Thou shalt wash thy garments
in vv'ine, thy clothes in the blood of the grapes."t How
imposing this sight in its simplicity ! There they Avere,
twelve men prostrate in tears at the feet of a dvinor
man, — twelve alien Hebrews on the soil of Egypt : and
the authority of the father, exercised in the right of
testament, consecrated by religious faith, created an
immense nation, v/ith whose existence were bound up
the destinies of mankind, — an indestructible race, de-
tached at last from its own land under the crush of
formidable and repeated invasions, only to fill tlie whole
Avorld with the miracle of its immortality !

* Geneeie, xlis. 4. (See the Vnl-ate version.) + Genesis, xUx. 11. 12.

38 DiscouESEs or father hyacinthe.

[In closing:, Father lîyacinthc spoke of that immortaliiy of
nntiom uhich has the ground of its existence in the immortalit}^
of families.]

The domestic spirit and the national spirit, far from
beino- antac-onistic. as the theorizcrs and jurists of the
Ee volution conceived, are really developed and strength-
ened each by the other. A nation is not an assemblage
of individuals, but an assemblage of families. A nation
of individuals is only the dead body of a nation, buried
under the weight of centralized despotism, or galvanized
into the convulsions of anarchy. The necessary and
providential counterpoise to both despotism and anarchy
is found in the family, an element at once conservative
and liberal, a principle of order and at the same time
of independence.

Let us, then, no longer set up the State in opposition
to the family, either on the question of marriage, or on
the questions of education and of testament; and since
the need of social reforms is felt more keeuly at this
liour than ever before, let us learn, at last, to understand
tliis great truth, so long misunderstood, that the urgent
and decisive reforms are those of domestic life; that
political reforms are only of secondarj^ importance.

0 statesmen and legislators of my country, turn your
attention to questions such as these. They are less fitted,
I know, to inflame the passions; but the solution of
them would be fiir more effective for the regeneration
of our character, and of the public morals! Ask your-
selves what -are the means to be employed in order to
restore to private life the liberty Avhich it possesses in so
inadequate a measure ; — to revive in domestic society
ilie spirit of the traditions which used to constitute its
vigor! Inquire, above all, by what way and in what
measure the authority of the head of the h.mily should

CIML SOCIETY AND C'lll;TSTIA>;iTY. 3'J

be magnified. Cast your eyes, also, upon the friuliiful
ravages "wliich corruption is working anionic women. . . .
Pardon this groan extorted from me by the ignominy
of the daughters of my people, the daugliters of Israel

and of Cliristian France At our very doors, in

England and in Prussia, to say nothing of otlier coun-
tries, there arc severe and efficient laws against seduc-
tion. Is there nothing for you to do, to guard for our
daughters— above all, for the daughters of the common
people, for the Avorking-girls in shops and factories —
the first, most sacred liberty of all, the liberty of being
chaste ? The things you censure in the laws, do not
approve in books or on the stage. Strive against im-
morality under every guise which it puts on to work
our ruin. Yes ! I will not leave this lesson half said !
Strive against evil in the bosom of your own family.
"What! you would be the lawgivers of the nations; you
Avould teach France first, then tlie West, by what flying
leaps the summits of progress and civilization are to be
reached! Begin then, lawgivers of the people, by ob-
serving the laws of the fiimily, the laws which make
husbands virtuous and fathers respected and obeyed.
Livy and Seneca speak of the father of the family as a
magistrate in his own howsQ—mar/isfya/us denncsticus.
Ye household magistrates, check your own passions,
control your own homes, and you shall then be worthy
of being magistrates of the empire and the common-
wealth.

LECTURE SECOND,

December 8, 1867.

SOYEREIGIS^TY.

GENTLEMEîq" : I approacli to-day the question of sover-
eignty in civil society — a question of peculiar gravity
and delicacy. I acknowledge tliat it is not without
misgivings tliat I set foot on this ground. To he sure,
the Catholic Church has given ancient and autliorita-
tive instruction in this important department of morals.
In every age it has taught the people their duty toward
the sovereign, and taught sovereigns their duty toward
the people ; and I have no novelties of doctrine to in-
troduce here. But am I quite sure, in my weakness,
of reproducing the doctrine of the Church with all need-
ful precision and tact ? . . . I am encouraged, as here-
tofore, Gentlemen, by your presence, and by my failli in
God. He will give me grace to shun those slippery de-
clivities along which one must encounter irritated pas-
sion and political partisanship, and to touch these for-
midable questions only at the summits whicli they lift up
into that pejiceful region vv^hich is luminous with tbouglit
and duty. In that region, please God, we sliall abide to-
gether in our study of the subject of political sovereignty.

I set aside, from the start, the famous question of the
popular origin of sovereignty. In affirming, as it lias
often been affirmed in a general Avay, that tbe natural
and necessary source of all civil authority is in the
people, and tliat consequently tbere can be no individ-

SOVEIIEIGNTY. J 1

luil uY colloetivo per.son in Irgitiinute possi'ssion of
power Avitliout holding it originiilly IVoni the nation, it
seems to me, to say the least, that the case has heen
very badly stated. A people is not a people until it is
constituted under some sort of government; until then,
therefore, it has no political rights. I see a multitude
without organization ; or rather, I see a congeries of do-
mestic societies in juxtaposition and independence ; but
i lind there no civil society. This is what is perfectly
expressed in the ancient maxim: TuUe nnum, tiirha
est; addc nnum, 2)02)ulus est. ^'Subtract one, it leaves
a mob ; add one, it makes a nation." The existence of
government in civil society is not subsequent to the
existence of civil society itself. The two facts are si-
multaneous and inseparable. Consequently the people
cannot be the source of power, since it does not exist as
a people except in the presence of povrer. The Power
and the People are twin brotliers. Together they come
forth from God, tlie source of all order and all right,
and too-ether thev return to him.

For the question of the origia of sovereignty, I will
substitute that of the seat in which sovereignty resides,
and I will conclude with that of the exercise of sover-
eignty. This will l)e more practical, and at the same
time more logical and true.

Part First. — The Seat of Sovereignfij.

[1. The subject wliercin sovereignty primaril}' and absolutely
inheres is God himself. In la3'ing down this position Father
Hyacinthe merely draws the conclusions which follow from the
teachings of the three preceding years, converging on the exist-
ence and authority of the personal and living God.]

In that day of. utter amazement in which I found
mysf'lf called to ascend this pulpit, I cried, like Moses,

42 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE.

" Who am I, that I should speak to the cliildren of Is-
rael ?'-* And from the depth of my heart I heard the
answer of God, with that spiritual ear with which every
diligent soul, even on earth, may hear it, " Thus
shalt thou say unto them, I AM hath sent me unto
you.'*t Thereupon I came to you, in my weakness and
in my might, to speak to you of the God of Abraham
and Isaac and Jacob — the personal and living God.
Before making appeal to revelation I questioned rea-
son, both yours and mine, and from the depth of hu-
man thought there came the answer, " I Am that I
Am." It was the sovereignty of God in the domain of
ideas. The next year we came down together into the
lights and shadows of the human conscience, and we
sought there the secret of the moral system. The voice
of conscience was in unison with the voice of reason.
It affirmed tlic necessary existence of a religious mo-
rality and the sovereignty of the God of virtues. Con-
stantly advancing, we entered tlie first circle of the so-
cial system — the family. Here, *too, in the authority of
the father, in the tenderness and solicitude of the mother,
in all the strong and beautiful structure of the house-
hold, we recognized the presence of the kingdom of God.
And now, standing face to face with the problems of
political philosophy, I have no other answer to give. I
speak for myself and for you, and I say, it is God; and
again, and always, it is God ! The true King as well as
the first Father, the supreme Lord of civil as well as
of domestic society, is God. He alone is the real Majesty,
wlio covers all tlieir borrowed majesties with the reflec-
tion of his glory. '' Tlie Lord is our King'' .... "yea,
the Lord sitieth King forever.'-| From tlie first page

* Exodup, iii. 11. t Ibia.,11.

t Ipaial), xxxiii. 2'2. Psalms Ixxii. 11 ; xxix. lU.

SOVEREIGNTY. 43

to tlio last, (lie snl)j(.'C't-mattcT of tlir lîildo is ilie history
of liis kingdom, and it is summed up by Saint Juliii in
ilic majestic vision of tlic Apocalypse, in which he he-
held the Son of Cod, the Logos of the Father, the ever-
lasting Iveason and Kighteousness, coming to set up his
empire on the earth, sitting on a Avar-horse, clothed
with a vesture dipped in blood, and having on his thigh
u name written, Kinrf of Jcuigs and Lord of Jovdt'J^

But some one will say, this is theocracy.

I am not afraid of a name ; and I have already ex-
pressed myself on the subject of this one. But since it
stirs u}) about our ears such a storm of hate and male-
diction, I will return to it. I open the dictionary of the
French language, and alongside of it that of the primi-
tive language of Western civilization, the Greek. I look
in them for this execrated word, and I find the defini-
tion, Power of God. Theocracy, then, is Power derived
from God and exercised in God's name. This is that
very kingdom of God "which I have met from step to
step through all my course. In the sovereignty of the
idea of Being in tlie world of ideas, in the sovereignty
of the moral law in the world of conscience, in the
sovereignty of paternal authority in the home, — every-
where I have come upon theocracy, llow could I fail
to come upon it in political society? How could it be
otherwise, here as elsewhere, but that God should have
the sole glory of reigning over man, and man the glory
of obeying none but God ?

Yes, theocracyi It is no fault of mine if men under-
stand this word in a perverted sense, repugnant at once
to etymology and history. It is no fault of ours if we
have imputed to us, every day, under this name of the-
ocracy, that notion wliich we have openly combated iind

* Kevclation. xix. IG.

4A DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE.

vanquished — tlic confusion in the same hands of politi-
cal and religious power, both of which come from above,
but separatel}- and differently. NoAvhere in Catholic
Christendom do I find this fearful confusion.' If you
point me to Rome, I do not find there the confusion of
these two powers, but the exceptional alliance of them,
in a place which is itself exceptional like a miracle.
Beneficent alliance ! league of the liberty of conscience,
never to be untwined, since it unites there what there is
need to separate everywhere besides ! never has the
necessity of it slione more conspicuously than at this
hour ! Already hast thou received the witness of French
blood, shed by those whom men call mercenaries, but
who are nothing less than heroes ! And now thou art
sustained by the truly national eloquence of our orators,
and the energetic and loyal declarations of our Grovern-
ment.

[3. After having proved the existence of the theocracy, in
that lofty and universal sense in which it is spoken of in the
Bible, Father Hyacinthe remarked, that in the political system
the sovereignty of God is not exercised immediately and directly.
This was done, indeed, among the Israelites, among whom it
seemed good to God to preserve for a time, not only the primary
right of sovereignty, hut also the actual exercise of it. In ful-
filling at once the functions of captain, lawgiver, and judge, he
marched with the ark at the head of the armies, and gave
response from the- merc3'-seat to political as well as religious
questions of conscience. But all this was but a sensible type —
we might even say, with Origeu, sometimes a gross type — of the
sovereignty which he was afterward to exercise over Christian
nations by their princes and legislators. " B}^ me kings reign and
princes decree justice."* God does not act ordinarily by way of
miracle; neither would it be worthy of himself to condescend
constantly to the government of States. But those who preside
in such government in his name, are only the depositaries of his ,

* Proverbs, viii. 15.

SOVEIŒIGNTÏ. 45

sovereignty, and, as they arc called iu the holy Book, " the minis-
ters of his kingdom."* It is m this sense that Saint Paul instructs
us that " there is no power but of God, that the powers that bo
arc ordained of God."f

Waiving, then, all secondary questions concerning the form of
]iower and the seat of power. Father Hyacinthe remarked only
two great facts which have the importance of principles : sover-
eignty may exist outside of the nation and be exercised over it,
or it may exist in the nation and be exercised by it. The first
case is that of (Hi absolute prince ; the second, that of a sovereifjn
2)eoplc.']

1. Tlie Absolute Prince.

In considering the origin of society from an abstract
point of view, in the order of ideas, I have fonnded it
on a formal or implied compact among the fathers of
families — that is, according to the langnage of the
Koman law, among those who are either actually at the
liead of a family, or Avho, having come of age, have a
right to become such. This is the order of ideas. But
the facts of history do not always tally with political
metaph3'sics ; and wlion I come with you to examine
the real origin of nations, I find no trace of any such
compact. What we most commonly find in place of it,
is what has been called " the law of the hero." Instead
of nations constituting themselves, I behold mighty and
predestinated individuals who create nations, giving
birth to them, so to speak, from their own great souls.

The masses, at the beginning, and, it may be, always,
need some one's wonder-working finger to be laid upon
their breast, in order to call into animation the sleeping
spark. Such is a Hercules or a Theseus, slaying mon-
sters, dispersing robbers, by their strength and valor
becoming the liberators of oppressed families and the

* Wiedom, vi. 5. t Romans, xiii. 1.

46 DiscouriSEs of father hyacinthe.

organizers of nascent society. Such is an Orpheus or
an Aniphion, towering above the multitude by their
wisdom and eloquence — a Xuma, commanding them by
his piety. From whom do these men receive their
power ? From the nation ? But there is no nation.
These are the men who form tlie nation by the very
exercise of power. They reign by force of sword and
battle-axe. They rise by virtue of their wisdom and of
the benefits they confer. The sovereignty was like the
uninhabited land of which I spoke a week ago. God,
from the circle of the heaven, humanity from the depth
of its wretchedness — everything — was calling for some
master, who with one stroke should make it his personal
property, and the salvation of all the rest. 'No vulgar
hand might be laid upon it. Make way, then, for the
hero ! Let him step in to the unoccupied place, be the
instrument of righteousness and peace, and, dying,
leave the sovereignty to children and children's chil-
dren, an inalienable and uncontested inheritance !

[This is the power called absolute, not because it is absolute in
its exercise, since, in this respect, it is subject to the same limita-
tion as popular power, and extends only to the modality of rights,
but because it is such in its origin, and its sovereign holds his
right of proprietor only from himself and from God. Father
H3'acinthe protested against the injustice of the liberal schools
of politics, which aflect to confound absolute power with arbi-
trary and despotic poAver. Absolute power, in the sense in which
it has just been explained, is one of the two great forms of sover-
eignty. It has been the past, it is still the present, of great
nations.]

2. The Sovcn'i(j)i People.

[The absolutist schools arc no less unjust than the liberal
schools, when they make jiwe-dkino monarch}^ to be the only
legitimate form of government, and anathematize ever}' constitu-
tion founded on national sovereignty.]

SOVEREIGNTY. 17

I turn now to modern times. I look iliere for na-
tions formed under our own eyes, or at least under per-
fect cognizance of their own consciousness. What ex-
ample shall I take ? Shall I go to Switzerland ? Shall
I question the commonwealth of the Lakes, the ])eople
of the glaciers, the sons of William Tell ? Shall I
tread again the dear paths of Belgium ? No ! let me
cross the ocean, and stand in presence of that gigantic
nation of which I have spoken. I am no courtier of the
United States of America : thanks to my priestly oflice,
I am no one's courtier. I am not even a blind admirer
of them ; and, if this were the proper place, I would
warn them that they arc slipping down the steep slope
of moral decay, and that they will infallibly come, as we
have come, to political and social decay. I would cull
them back to the better spirit of their early age, and to
the genuine patriotism of their founders. This I may
say. Gentlemen, I am a true son of Pius IX. ; and
Pius IX. has put honor on himself in sending his
homage and his gift of a block of stone to the national
monument to AVashington. Oh, how grand that nation
was 1 how grand it continues still ! 0 jieople, thou art
like the lion's whelp that is gone up to seize the prey !
Thy prey is the wealth of botli the hemispheres,
thy proud independence, thy vast and fertile continent.
Thou hast couched between the two oceans, in the
shadow of thy lofty mountains, on the banks of thy
rivers that are like seas ! Thou hast roared like the
lion ; and like the lioness thou art slumbering in thy
might. Who shall dare rouse thee up ? Quia suscllahil
cum .?*

Well, then, wlio is it that holds the sovereignty in
this nation? Xonc but itself. The very day when it

* Gcucsie, xlix. 9.

48 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE.

was born in pangs of travail, it grasped the sovereignty
in its own bloody and jealons hands, and to this day it
has not let it go. There every man is at once citizen
and kin^-.

[There is, thcu, such a thing as sovereignty — legitimate and to
be respected — besides the sovereignt}^ of absoUite princes : the
sovereignty of the nation itself, or democracy.

Can the nation whicli retains the sovereignty retain also the
exercise of it ? " Pure democracy," or power exercised directly
by all the citizens, has been possible only in little republics like
those of Greece, which were substantially nothing but sovereign
villages ; moreover, as has been excellently said, " the ancient
commonwealth, gay but fragile flower, found the moisture of its
root in slavery." In larger communitios tlie people can exercise
Bovereignt}^ only through representatives. This is representative
democracy, whatever the form of it, republican or monarchical.
Autocracy, that is, the riglit of commanding in its own name-
in other M'ords, absolute power — still rcsirlcs in the hands of the
nation ; but the exercise of it is delegated to magistrates of its
choice.

In presence of these two forms of sovereignty, which share be-
tween them the present of mankind, as they have shared the past,
and doubtless are to share the future, Christianity has no choice
to make, but one unvarying instruction to give. Be it man or
nation that holds sovereign power on earth, this power is held
only in trust. In truth, the sovereign is only the minister of
God,^" who alone is the real sovereign.]

Part Secoxd. — The Exercise of Sovereignty.

Power is divine in its origin, and therefore inviolable.
Power is hnman in its depositary, and therefore limited. *
These are the two laws of sovereignty, alike in the most
absolnte of monarchies and in the most radical of de-
mocracies.

I. Power is divine in its origin. " There is no power

* Romans, xiii. 1.

SOVEKEiCiNTY. 49

)iit of God." Every right, in fact, if it is a riglit, i.s
Icrived from absolute reason and justice, which are only
mother name for God. A riglit purely liuman is sim-
ply absurd. "When, tlicrelore, I set up ilie claim to
■xact from my fcllcnv-man a deference to my acts, liow-
.'ver contrary tliey may Ije to liis interests and prefer-
ences ; wlien I undertake to put restraint upon his
ictions, and even on his person, by "what I call my right,
it is because I feel within me something that comes from
.ibove me, and which, for the time being, croAvns me the
sovereign of my fellow and my peer. Political power
ts a right in him who exercises it; it gives rise to duties
m those who are subject to it. It is consequently
Jivine just as all legitimate rights are divine, from the
right of owner to that of husband or father ; " for there
is no power but of God."

Being divine, power is therefore inviolable and not to
be resisted by any. Saint Paul himself comes to this
conclusion : " Whosoever therefore resistetli the power,
resisteth the ordinance of God;"* and he adds, "' Where-
fore ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but
.ilso for conscience' sake."f Ye are to bow yourselves,
not to the might of the sword nor to the might of law,
but to your own conscience. Might is not right, neither
can man find Avithin himself the ground of authority
to command his fellow-man. But whenever your OAvn
conscience shows you your felloAV-man in the majesty of
riglit, then yield 3'our obedience, not to man, but to God.
The principle of the inviolability of power belongs
both to the doctrine and to the constant practice of the
Catholic Church. We are permitted, many a time
we are bound, to resist the abuses of power, but never
to attack the power itself.

* Romans, xiii. 2. t Ibid., xiii. 5.

50 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE.

It is the blunder and the crime of the French Eevolu
tion, that it erected into a principle what had thereto-
fore been only a transient disorder in the life of nations
— the overthrow of power. It has been said that it is
time to make an end of the Revolution, and that, in
order to end it, we must sit in judgment on it. Let me
add, that in order to judge it, we must analyze it. If
I take it at the start — at that famous date of 1789, I
find before me two very different movements, which
nevertheless are often confounded together. At the
beginning, it was a legitimate and necessary reaction
against the political abuses and moral corruption of the
last days of the old regime. Political abuses had stifled,
under an unprecedented centralization, the remains of
the liberty of the Middle Ages, and the recent pros-
perity of the France of Henry lY. and Louis XIII.
And as to moral corruption, my illustrious predecessor
in this pulpit has depicted it with an admirable stroke
of eloquence, courage, and truth : " In the room where
Saint Louis had slept, Sardanapalus lay down ! Stam-
boul was transported to Versailles, and there found
itself entirely at home."* A shamefully large propor-
tion of the provincial nobility, leaving behind them with
their old-fashioned morals the scourge of absenteeism,
hastened to follow or at least admire the new foshions
in morality ; and the court clergy united witli them to
sanction tlicse corruptions, not, of course, in words —
that would have been impossible — but l)y guilty silence.
Against such a state of things, reaction could not be too
energetic nor too indignant; but it should have con-
tinued to Ije peaceful and lawful. It was to reform the
power, not destroy it. liut what am 1 saying? The

* " CoTiftrences de Notre-Dame de Paris, by the lîcverciul Father Lacordaire.
Xllle. Conf., De la Chasteté/'

SOVEIŒIGNTY. 51

reform emanated from tlic power itself; and lliis frciior-
ous initiative, sustained as it was by tlic vast majority
of the country, made wliat I would call the ITSO of the
honest king and the true French nation. Unhappily
there was another 1789. The whole guilt does not rest
on 1793; 1789 must hear its share of it. It is guilty
of that contempt of authority, at once instinctive and
systematic, which shows in its acts as well as in its
ideas, which expressed itself sometimes in the wordy
insurrection of the tribune, sometimes in the violent
insurrection of the street, and which from the begin-
ning opened the way for those who, having humbled
the throne of the monarch before the National Assem-
bly, finally erected his scaffold in front of his palace.

The French Revolution is noAV eighty years old, and
it has come to be the European revolution. It has done
enough in the way of destruction, it seems to me, and it
is high time now to build up. Let us have done, then,
with the shameful and perilous instability of our insti-
tutions, and to that end let us restore to its place in
men's thoughts and consciences the Christian dogma of
the inviolable sacredness of power.

[XL Sovereignty is liinited in its exercise. If power is neces-
sarily inviolable in its principle, wliicli is divine, it is essentially
limited in its exercise, which is hiinian. All authority exercised
by men has its limits, and those of civil authority are found in
the modality of riffhfs v>'h.ich it is its mission, as I have already
explained, to regulate and defend. Political sovereignty no more
extends to the substance of human rights when it is vested in the
people than when it is vested in a prince ; neither can it legiti-
mately tamper v*'ith them, whether they be rights of the individ-
ual, rights of the family, the primitive society, rights of the-
Church, the superior society, or rights of voluntary associations.
Every man has, by his own natural right, Uie power of associating
himself with his fellows, so long as he does it openly and for ob-

52 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE.

jects not incompatible Trith morality and the public peace,
CUvil law has only one thing to do in this case : it has not to grant
the right, but to acknoAvledge it]

When civil authority oversteps these limits it is guilty
of an abuse. It must be warned of it ; if need be, it
must be resisted. AVe are speaking, as it Avill be evi-
dent, not of insurrection, which is never " the holiest
of duties," but of moral resistance, a resistance respect-
ful toward the power, energetic against the abuses of
power — the only permissible resistance, and the only
effective.

The holy Scriptures present to us many line examples
of this legitimate protest of conscience against arbitrary
and tyrannous government.

AVe read the gospel, and we do well ; but we do not
read the Old Testament as much as we ought — the his-
tory of that people Israel, of whom Moses says, in lan-
guage full of mysterious significance, that it is the
measure and type after which the other nations have
been formed.*

For my own part, in studying these incomparable
annals, from Judges to Maccabees, I have often been
struck with a charming touch of nature, full of house-
hold poetry, full of social instruction : it is, that the
peaceful tenure of the homestead is presented as the
sign of the kingdom of God on earth. '• Judali and
Israel dwelt safely, every man under his vine and under
his fig-tree."f The vine and the fig-tree ; that is to
sa}', the whole liomestead, with all the outward belong-
ings which constitute its comlorl and its charm, and

* "When the Mos^t Hiyh divided to llie natiuns Ihoir inheritance, when hO
separated Uie eons of Adam, he set the hounds of the people according to tho
number of the children of Israel." Deuteronomy, xxxiii. 8.

t 1 Kings, iv. 25.

SOVEREIGNTY. 53

tliat connection with naluiv wiiicli is so do.siral.>lo, Ï was
about to say so essential, to the idea of home.

Now in Israel, as in some other countries, pul^lic
authority did not always respect the rights of private
life. The book of Kings informs us that in the time of
Ahab, a certain man had a vineyard in Jezreel, hard by
the palace of the king. Ahab wanted this vineyard for
a garden, and went himself to see Xaboth, and said to
him : *' Give me thy vineyard and I will give thee for
it a better vineyard ; or, if it seemeth good to thee, I
will give thee the worth of it in money."'*

And Xaboth said to Ahab, '' The Lord forbid it me
that I should give the inheritance of my fathers unto
thee." To the mind of this simple man, full of the
spirit of earlier days, it would have been an act of im-
piety to abandon the family home. The king of Israel
paused and trembled before this assertion of the right
of the fiimily. ''He came into his house," says the
sacred text, '"heavy and displeased; and he laid him
down upon his bed, and turned away his face, and
would eat no bread.-' Then his wife, Queen Jezebel,
came in and asked the occasion of his trouble. And
the king told her of his generous offer, and how it had
been refused by that obscure working-man, and how
that worthless bit of property had set itself in insurrec-
tion against the exigences of court splendor. '• Truly,"
says Jezebel, with superb irony, "it's a marvellous
authority that you hold, and grandly you govern the
kingdom of Israel. Arise and eat bread, and I will
give yon the vineyard of Xabotli the Jezreelite." So
she wrote letters in Ahab's name, and sealed them with
his seal, and commanded the elders of the city to exe-
cute swift and severe justice on a certain seditious per-

* 1 Kings», xxi. 1, 2.

54 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE.

SOD, Naboth, who had blasphemed God and the king.
And on this occasion, as, ahas, on so many others, the
judges peeped nnder the sacred bandage of justice, and
saw something more than justice itself. They cited
Naboth before the people, and suborned two sons of
Belial to bear witness against the innocent. The guilt-
less man was. stoned. Jezebel, in triumph, said to
Ahab, ^' Arise, take possession of the vineyard of Xaboth
the Jezreelite, which he refused to give thee for money :
for î^aboth is not alive, but dead." But while he was
going toward that coveted estate, a man was Vv'aiting to
meet him at the gate. Covered with the skins of wild
beasts, with a leathern girdle about his loins, he had
descended from the rocky heights of Carmel. A dwell-
er in the desert, he respected the kingly majesty, but
he braved the wrath of kings, when the kings trampled
on the law of the Lord, and on the rights of their sub-
jects. It was the prophet Elijah. Looking the usurper
in the face, the prophet spake to the king : ^' Thou hast
killed, and now thou hast taken possession. Eobber
and murderer, thus saith the Lord : In the place where
dogs licked the blood of Naboth, shall dogs lick thy
blood, even thine."*

This is liberty! It is the outcry of every honest
man's conscience in face of the violation of a right. It
is the protest of public opinion against the abuse of
force, and the more perilous abuse of law.

[In conclusion, Father Hyacinthe remarked upon tlie error,
now-a-cla3's so common, of identiiying the interests of liberty
with questions of the form of government, Avhich are necessarily
secondary and subordinate to circumstances of time and place.
It is not the form of power, but the limits of power, which it is

♦ 1 Kings, chapti-r xLx,

SOVEREIGNTY. 55

important to (Icfino. In that direction lies, imuiirally, tlio future
of the world's liberty.]

Tlie despotism oi' r('|)iil)lic's is as IVcf^iu-nt, ami iiKjre
terrible tliaii tliat of monarchies. Nothing equals tlie
excesses of poi)ular sovereignty when it begins to tamper
with men's rights. The maxim of Lycurgus — ïor that
matter, it was the common sentiment of all antiquity —
was this: ''that each citizen is the property of the
country, and that as against the country he has no
riglits over himself.'' It is the identical doctrine which
was enunciated in our day by the revolutionary Ruault,
in the clean-cut and ferocious phrase, " All belongs to
the State, body and goods."

To oppose itself to the encroachments of positive
law, in tlie name of the unwritten law of human
nature and of everlasting justice, has ever been the
glorious mission of the Church, in Christian common-
v/-ealths. I am astounded, Gentlemen — I say it out of
the fullness of my heart — I am astounded and grieved
when I hear it said that the pope has preached sedition,
l)ecause he has protested against the legal violation of
the rights of the Church, which arc also the natural
rights of property. Such words as these affect to be
liberal, but they are as much opposed to liberty as to
reverence, and it is my duty to protest against them.

No, no I the Catholic Cliurch, the liomau pontiff, do
not commit an act of sedition when they say to the
State, '' You have no right to interfere Vv-ith right." On
the contrary, they perform an act of the most brave
and loyal respect both to the State and to liberty. To
speak and act thus is to glorify the State, for it is to
maintain it in its noble frontiers, which arc righteous-
ness. It is to glorify us all ; for it is to settle us upon
our legitimate ground, which is liberty.

LECTURE TtlIPwD,

Decembek 15, 1867.

RELIGION IN THE LIFE OF NATIONS.

My Lord Archbishop axd Gentlemen: We have
recognized the divine right of power, whatever its par-
ticular form or its immediate origin ; and in separating
this doctrine from the exaggerated meaning ascribed to
it by its adversaries and by a party of its defenders, w^e
have affirmed, with the Apostle Paul, the supernal
origin of all power, the inviolable and sacred cliaracter
of all rights — rights of princes as well as citizens, riglits
of democracies as well as monarchies. '*' There is no
power but of God."

But rights are not the only things which have within
themselves an inspiration from on high. There is in
political society something less delinite but not less
]-eal : it is life ; and to-day I am to inquire what part
religion occupies in the life of nations.

None at all ! is the ansAver of that sort of opinion,
now-a-days so common, Avliicli would banish God from
the social order, and wliicli, thougli making up its mind
to the speculative dogma of his existence, undertakes to
cj-owd away his action into the recesses of tli'/ imlivid-
ual conscience, and to close against him all the gates
of public life. Tliey demand not only that the law
should l)c atlieist — wliich would certainly be quite too

RELIGION IN THE LIFE OF NATION'S. 57

miu'Ii to grant — but (liov ask the sani;' for jiolitical
ideas, lor national morals, in a word, fm* (he lile of lliu
country.

It is no part of my subject to examine in what degree
civil legislation ought to connect itself with the exist-
ence of God in general or Avitli Christianity in particu-
lar. At another time I shall come back to this im-
portant and complicated question, so much agitated of
late. For the moment, then, I lay aside the subject of
laws — a matter which belongs rather to the outward
than to the interior structure of a nation. I waive the
definite relations of Church and State, and taking
things in their freer and profounder aspect, in religious
creeds and public morals, I ])ropose to prove that re-
ligion is the principle of national existence and pros-
perity.

I shall do tliis in two ways : first, by a general view,
showing, not so much by reasoning as by history, how
nations are constituted by their soul, and that this soul
itself is quickened by religion ; and then, with a more
impressive particularity, tracing the action of the reli-
gious principle into the midst of the passions of public
life, where it wakens and sustains those two forces the
loss of wliich nothing else can make good — social justice
and patriotic faith.

Pakt First. — Jxdigioji is ilie Superior Principle of
National Life.

[1. To begin with, Fiitlier Hvaciuthe put the question, What
is the true principle of national life?]

Is it the political organism, the positive laws of the
established government ? To see in the constitution of

58 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE.

a nation this only or this chiefly, is to fall into the gross
blunder of those who confound the life Avith the exter-
nal organs of life. It is political materialism !

Is it, underneath these artificial limitations of laws
and government, the more natural limitations of the
soil — the course of the rivers, the conformation of the
seas, the barriers of the mountains ? Tliese tilings may
assuredly contribute to the perfect constitution of a na-
tion, to its independence and its prosperity ; and I am
not one of those who fail to recognize the mysterious
but purposed preparation of the globe w4th reference to
the nations who were to dwell in it. But this element,
also, is secondary. It enters into combination wdth
others, or even disappears before them. How many
great nations are there in Europe for which tlie natural
frontiers have never been drawn !

Let us go a little deeper than these geographical or
social forms. There is the blood, which gives character
to the physical life ; and the language, giving character
to the moral life. Is it community of blood and lan-
guage which constitutes a nation ? Is it the race-prin-
ciple ? It is not for me to discuss the modern notion
of nationalities. At this very hour it is condemned ;
condemned in tlieory by words full of authority, which
have laid bare, from under the truths which it perverts,
the error and peril wliich it covers ; condemned in prac-
tice l)y the formidalde events whicli have arisen, and
Ijefore whicli the earth keeps silence!

What makes a nation is its soul. There is a soul in
nations as in individuals, and this soul is their life.

A nation is a more or less considerable group of fami-
lies, sprung sometimes of most diverse blood, but con-
sciously united by one and the same public spirit. This
people has a history in the past — not two histories, but

RELIGION IN THE LIFE OF NATIONS. ÔO

one. Oiiee \ct tliiii liviiii^ tniditioii Ix' interrupted, and
it is no lono^or the same people. It loses its identity.
This people has ii common conscience in the present, a
common stock of beliefs, aifections, interests, morals:
and it is in the profound consciousness of this collective
life that it declares its unity to itself, before declaring it
to its rivaL^'.

Xow, in this national soul, 1 do not hesitate to say,
the lar<^est and best place belongs to religion. It is the
essential law of the soul that it is constituted, in its na-
ture and its proper life, by virtue of its relation -with
God. So that the materialists show their good sense
when, in order to make an end of God, they seek, in the
first place, to make away with the soul, both in the in-
dividual and in society. The soul of a people is, above
all, its religion : it is this national worship of ours which
(as some one so well expresses it) has held us in its
embrace for twelve centuries, which has inspired our
arts, our arms, our whole history, and which can be re-
nounced only by renouncing with it the soul of the
count rv.

[II. It is mainly by lucts tliat we must convince an n^c which
is all the time appealini? from theory to facts. Father Hyacinthe
seeks, tlierefore, in ancient and in contemporary history, the ex-
perimental proof of the alliance of the religious sentiment with
the national sentiment. With this in view, he questions the his-
tory, successively, of the times before Christ, of the times after
Christ, and finally of this present and doubtful hour of which
the poet speaks —

" By what name shall we call thee, troubled hour
On which our fate is cast ?"*

* " De quel nom te nommer, heure trouble où nous sommes ?"

Victor Ilcao.l

60 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE.

1. Ilistonj before Clirist.

The movement of humanity, like that of nature, ia
from East to West. It is from the East that the liglit
comes, morning by morning. Thence we receive Chris-
tianity, the light of the soul. Thence, also, came the
Aryan races, from which we are descended. Of what
sort were these jmmeval communities? Theocracies,
in which the national sentiment was so rooted in the
religious sentiment, that the two were confounded to-
gether:— vast empires of Egyptians, Assyrians, Persians,
Avhose first dynasties were composed of gods, wliose law-
givers were priests, and who claimed to conquer their
enemies less by force of arms tlian by the might of their
divinities. Ear beyond the regions in which these em-
pires flourished, I perceive, in the remotest East, an-
other, at once their contemporary and ours — Cliina, that
strange empire, the least religious in the world, and
which, for that matter, comes nearest to the dreams of
modern democracy. It is, in fact, an immense democ-
racy, in which liberty is always willingly held subordi-
nate to equality; — an authoritative democracy, disci-
plined under the mighty liand of a chief. It is the
government, ex officio, of educated men. Instruction is
not obligatory (and in this respect China is governed by
a better inspiration than its imitators), but it penetrates
none the less into the innermost recesses of the nation,
and tliere it takes on those forms of ^' inilcpoKleiit moral-
itif' which are so much preached up. It has i)uslied
dogmas out of the way, southward toAvard India, nortli-
ward toward Thiljet. Scarcely has there been retained
a vague, inoffensive deism; and the morality taught in
tlie (?mi)iré is, uft<M' that of Socrates, th(^ noblest and

RELIGION IN THE LIFE OF NATIONS. V)l

purest of liiiinau iiioralilics — that oi' Coiiruciiis. Tlio
most entire absence of prejudgments concerning the
future life, united with a diligent and thrifty industry,
makes China a model of social order, according to modern
notions, possessing peacefully, hy way of tradition, just
what we are painfully reaching after by way of innova-
tion. But now notice, for it is a marvellous fact, that
in withdrawing i)rivate life from the influence of the
religious idea, China has nevertheless deemed it impos-
sible to establish the system of public life on anything
but that idea. It claims to have relations with eternity;
it calls itself the Celestial Empire, and its sovereign
wears the title of the .Son of Heaven.

[Returning from Asia to Europe, and pausing to consider the
great civilization of the Romans, and its Sabine and Etruscan
originals, Father Hyacinthe remarks their profoundly religious
character.]

The manner in which cities were founded, according
to the Etruscan rite, is an eloquent witness to the con-
viction then prevailing that the civil order has no other
foundation than the religious order. The priests made
a careful scrutiny of the site, and, marking off a myste-
rious spot in the centre of the enclosure, they dug there
a pit in the form of the sky reversed. The lowest part
of it was consecrated, diis manibics, to the gods of the
departed, and the entrance of it was closed Avith a stone.
This pit was called mundus, the world, and, according
to the ideas of those nations, it was the communication
between the visible and the invisible worlds, the out-
ward allirmation of the fellowship of the living and the
dead in one commonwealth. Thrice a year, the mundus
was opened in solemn silence ; public and private busi-
ness was suspended, and the community beheld in its

G2 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE.

depths the secret of its origin and of its superhuman
destiny.

Gods at its foundations — gods at its hill-tops — such
■was the old Italic commonwealth. It was from wells
of tradition like these that Eome drew the strength
that made her great, and became her enduring name.
Founded by a gang of robbers and adventurers, she be-
came the mistress of the world only when she had laid
herself on her own altars, and consecrated the patriotism
of her sons in acts of impassioned -worship.

[Doubtless idolaliy is a mad and guilty error. Nevertheless,
under these perverted symbols were concealed great truths, often
even great natural virtues, and this is the way in which it has
been possible for false religions to contribute to the prosperity of
families and States. Between the perversion of the religious sen-
timent, which is idolatry, and its utter extirpation, which is at the
root of rationalism, patriotism cannot hesitate which to choose.]

2. History since Christ.

We are proud of our modern civilization, and with
good reason ; but we are not half enough familiar with
the sources of it. A pen not less erudite than eloquent
has lately exhibited them to us in a book which the fu-
ture will think shame of us for having only half under-
stood. I mean '' The Monks of the AVest.'''* It is dis-
covered that the history of these monks was the history
of the West itself, and that in its cradle, if I might so
npeak, Europe was wrapped in monks' robes and grew
up under tlieir discipline. England, particularly, that
classic land of liljerty, has been plainly proved to be
now bearing, in its institutions and its character, the
livwly impress of monastic life, tlio laws and usages of

* Lc? Mu'uies (V Occident, ')V Muntnlcmbert.

RELIGION IN THE LIFE OF NATIONS. 03

those old cloisters l)y Avhiuli it -was tbiuided, but Avhich
it has overthrown.

If it has been for a Catholic hist(jrian to remind Enîr-
land that she is the handiwork of her monks, it has
been for an .Miiii-lisli Protcsiaiit historian to show l^'j-ance,
in the conrse of tlie last centnry, that she is the handi-
work of her bishops. On a field of battle, in the heart
of a hero, the patriotism of Franks became wedded to
the faith of Christians. Their alliance was sealed by
the hand of Saint Remigius, and from the soul of
Clovis it passed to the soul of the whole nation. From
that time forth this alliance has run the gauntlet of the
centuries, defying prosperity to corrupt, and misfor-
tune to subdue it. . . . Let me call to mind Joan of
Arc — a name that can never grow commonplace to the
ears of Frenchmen. " When Paris falls, all history
shows that France is fallen." When Chateaubriand
wrote these words, he did not remember Joan of Arc.
The king of England was reigning here almost uncon-
tested, and Charles VIL, settled down into the " king of
Bourges," was gayly celebrating the funeral of the
French monarchy by the inauguration of the era of
royal mistresses. Who shall be the savior of France ?
A countrj^-girl, simple and pure as nîiture and the
jK'ople in whose bosom she had been reared, and, like
tiiem, religious. She listened to the murmur of the
bells ; she gazed into the sky. Beneath the beech-tree
of Domremi she heard voices speaking to her of God
and France, and commissioning her, not to bring back
the king to Paris, but to cause him to be anointed at
Rheims.

[lu order to completeness, it would Le ncedtlil to run over the
entire history of the Christian nations in their best epochs. This
would demonstrate at every turn the alliance, or rather the fasion

64 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE.

of the religious aud the national sentiments. Father Hyacinthe
referred to Spain, now lallen, once so great ; the heroic and some-
times age-long struggles of its religious patriotism against the
.Moors ; and that national epopee which closed amid tlie splendors
of Isabella and Ferdinand the Catholic — an epoch in which Spain
was the first nation of Europe.]

3. Contemj^orary Nations.

Contemporary nations are no exception to this established
law. Notwithstanding the crisis that some of them are passing
through, Christianity continues among them to be the controlling
influence over public character, and the inspirer of national
feeling. Nothing can be more contrary to a just and careful ob-
seiTation of Europe and America than the opinion, so common
amongst us, that the religious element has been eliminated from
national life.]

We liear a great deal said about Germany, and some-
times tliere are those who remaria witli dismay upon her
formidable growth at our very gates. Well, Gentlemen,
France has nothing to fear from Germany in the matter
of material power. J^either has it anything to borrow
from Germany in the way of that pantheist or mate-
rialist philosophy against which Germany itself has re-
acted. What I admire among the Germans is their re^'-
erence for home, tlieir respected and cherished traditions
of family life, and, despite the stubborn eftbrts of skep-
ticism and revolution, their national faith in Jesus
Christ and his gospel.

•it î): -*}: * *

The school of opinion against which I am contend-
ing tliinks that it linds in tlie United States an example
iiiid model of the separation of the religious and the
national life. I do not know a more complete mistake.
What is separated in the United States is the State and
the Church, or railier tlic clitirclies wliicli that count rv

RELIGION IN THE LIFE OF NAIIGNS. G5

reckons up without iiuiul)cr : iu\d in tliat st;itc of tliin;;s
it could not be otlierwise. lîut if religion has nothing
to do there ^vith legislation, it has much to do with
public character. The scourge of rationalism which
desolates all Europe is known there only in rare and ex-
ceptional cases ; public opinion rejects it as not less con-
trary to the prosperity of the nation tlian to the wel-
fare of the soul. The courts of justice refuse with
horror the testimony of an avowed atheist.* . . . Thus
the most perspicacious of those French publicists who
make democracy to consist iu the exclusion from civil
society of all religious influence, refuse to acknowledge
the American Union as ^'a perfect democracy," and
make against it this bitter reproach : ^' that the Ameri-
can commonwealth is not satisfied wdtli philosophy, but
that it admits one as a citizen only on condition of his
being a Christian."!

[Father Hyacinthe conchidcd the historical ar^çumcnt by the
example of two nations whose rare privilege it has been to unite
the sympathies both of Catholic and of Liberal opinion — Poland
and Ireland. Politicall}-, these two nations are dead ; they livo
only in their soul, and their soul is wholly wrapt up in Catholi-
cism. This is declared in eloquent terms by their orators and
poets, and more loudly yet, by the veiy nature of the odious
oppression they have suffered.]

Part Second. — lidigion the PrincijiU of Social Jus-
tice and Patriotic Faith.

[Father Hyacinthe proposed, next, to give the reason for -what
he had proved to be the universal fact.]

Why is it that the soul of a people subsists mainly on
God and religion ? Strictly speaking, it is enough to

* Neio York Spectator, Anj^ust 2.3, 18.31 ; quoted by de Tocqueville,
t La Démocratie, by il. Vacherot, pp. 34, 35.

Q6 DISCOURSES or father hyacinthe.

liaYC proved the fact. The ftict is conclusiye of itself,
as soon as it is established. But I wish to penetrate
with you to the roots of this fact. I wish to define the
principal functions of religion in the domain of public
life. These functions are chiefly to maintain social
justice and create patriotic faith.

I. Social Justice. We have seen, Gentlemen, that in
the political system two great forces come together —
Power and the People. These are two great forces, and
at the same time, two great rights. . We have refuted
the narrow conception of certain publicists who recog-
nize in the right of power, a right exceptionally divine.
The right of power is ^'of God," but just as all other
rights are from him. There are, then, rights divine,
and consequently sacred and inviolable, in that multi-
tude of individuals that make up a people — in that
group of families and homes which we call a nation.
There are rights in the individuals, in the families, in
the nation itself; and besides these, there are rights in
the power. And because all these rights are vested in
human hands — blind, passionate — they arc liable to be
brought together in terrible collisions.

Ah, how needful, in the midst of society, that there
should be some moral power to rise up and prevent or
appease these collisions! Political society needs it even
more than domestic society. Ilarmony exists by natu-
ral law in the family; antagonism exists by natural law
in the State. Harmony exists by natural law between
husband and wife, between father and child. Order in
the family springs from the loins of fatherhood ; it ger-
minates with love in the bosom of mother and child ;
it grows out of the coalition of all the interests and
affections of human nature. But in the State, this is
no longer true. On tlie one side are the temptations of

RELIGION IN THE LIFE OF NATIONS. G7

power — the most formidable tliat I know of in the
world. A man, or men — no matter which — an individ-
nal person or a collective person, bnt any way a i)ersnn
l)0ssessin2: nnlimited power, since it rests with one hand
on law, and with the other on force — since it has only
to will, and there are set in motion millions of beings,
and the world receives an impnlse and direction Avhieh
controls, more or less, the future itself; how, in such a
case, can there help forming little by little, and rising
to the heart, that intoxication of pride, and of the fore-
most pride of all, the i:)ride of power? Pleasure has
Ijeen called the great passion of human nature. It is a
mistake. The great passion is domination. To this,
men sacrifice everything, even pleasure, when pleas-
ure stands in the way of it.

And in face of these encroachments of power, in face
of that towering pride in the hearts of sovereigns ('' their
pride ascending forever'),* there is another sort of pride
not less detestable, other sorts of outrage not less terri-
ble. A people weary with always obeying, with toiling
much, and suffering much : a people which looks up-
ward, and first envies and then threatens! Chained,
like Samson to his grinding in the prison-house, like
him it perceives the growing locks of strengtli upon its
brow, it heeds its swelling veins, and the vital sap of
manhood in its heart. Xow its turn has. come ; it grows
drunken with the Avine of its wrath, and reckless of its
own ruin, it pulls down the pillars of the edifice Avhich
is to crush itself and its oppressors together.

0 men and bretliren, gaze upon this great ocean of
human society ! Behold these two great waves that
heave themselves from its depths — the wave of the
People and tlie wave of the Sovereign. They nnnint,

* Psalm Ixxiv. CS. (Viili;atc vo^^ion.)

68 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE.

they swell, they crest themselves and roar ! If nothing
check them, they shall dash themselves against each
other with a thnnder-crash ! And now before these two
waves, these two conflicting oceans in the same bed,
lay down that grain of sand of which Jehovah speaks:
" Thus far shalt thou come, and no farther." Ocean
of Power, Ocean of Multitude, abase your wrath, hum-
ble all your pride before this powerless but divine
boundary of duty !

Eeligion is the only thing which can put self-devo-
tion into the heart of governments and respect into the
hearts of the people. It is hard for government long
to deny itself; it is hard for the people always to yield
respect. But the Lord Jesus has said to human gov-
ernments— Of old, the kings of the nations have been
called from among the mighty, and have wielded lordly
dominion over them. Henceforth it shall not be so.
Henceforth kings shall be but ministers, and "he that
would be greatest must make himself servant of all."*

Christ alone could make such promises. Christianity
alone, by inspiring governments with practical and
lasting devotion, could fulfil them. Christianity alone
has been able to hold the people steadily to their alle-
giance. It alone has been able to speak thus to them
and get a hearing : " There is nothing that you cannot
do, but nothing that it is right for you to do. Ye are to
be subject, not for wrath's sake, but for conscience'
sake, not only to the just and upright prince, but also
to the froAvard."

I am right, then, in saying, with our holy Book, that
righteousness is the salvation of nations, and that Chris-
tianity has for its mission upon earth to establish the
kingdom of social as well as individual righteousness.

* Mutthcw. XX. 2T.

IlKLKilOX IN THE LUE OF NATIONS. 69

3Iachiuvelli is wrong, and liis disciples with him. Xo
Government c:in long stand supported on one side by
force, on tlio otlier by cunning. 'J'lie time will come
'wiien it will encounter one stronger and slirewder than
itself, and will find, too late, that Avhat preserveth and
"cxalteLli a nation"' is righteousness.

And this is why the Catholic Ohurch has always
proclaimed that the laws of morality were laws not only
for private but for public life ; that the Ten Command-
ments of Moses and the Gospel of Jesus Christ were
made not only for individuals but for nations ; and that
citizens and monarchs, social rights and social powers,
hold alike of justice and of God.

And this is why I, standing here, am right, whatever
timorous and complaining souls may think, in teaching
tliese truths of which the world has need.

I am right in taking in my hands " the everlasting
Gospel," unfolding it in all its breadth, and crying
aloud, like the apocalyptic angel, to kings and peoples,
witliout respect of person, to all the dwellers upon earth,
liighteousness ! Ivighteousness I and again Righteous-
jiess !

[II. Patriotic Faith. To love and serve one's conutry, it h
needful to have faith in it, and this is inspired by religion.]

The heart of man is so made that it loves ardently
and long only when it feels a breath of divine inspira-
tion in its love. This inspiration may be abused, but
there can be no true love without it. If I saw in my
country nothing but an institution of human contri
vance, a sort of social clock-work whose numberless
little wheels are ticketed off in the Bulletin of LaAvs
and set in motion by the myriad hands of the bureau-
cracy ; if I saw in it nothing but a patch of common

70 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE.

cartli occupied by people foreign, and sometimes hostile
to each otlier, how could such a France as that Avakeu
in my heart one throb of enthusiasm ? The false pro-
phet of Italian revolution rejiroaches his country with
being materialist. He would have it religious; or
rather, he vrould have it a religion.^ And so do I, but
in a better sense, desire France to be a religion.

I desire it for two reasons : because this religion of
patriotism will give us strength to sacrifice to it per-
sonal selfishness ; and because it will give us wisdom to
subordinate to it humanitarian sentiment.

1. Personal Seljishness.

An illustrious patriot has said, "Remember that love
of country is sacrifice, not enjoyment." AVhen love is
enjoyment, it is very easy ; but it is often, then, nothing
but selfishness. But when love costs one the persevering
sacrifice of everything, 0 what need for it to rest on
faith — faith profound, enthusiastic!

Such is love of country. We have to obey laws which
trammel us ; we have to give up, not our rights, indeed,
but the personal, independent way of exercising our
rights. Positive law says to us, "I shall not interfere
with your right ; but, tliat you may not encroach on
your neighbor's right, you must exercise your own under
such and such limitations and conditions." Then, after
the yoke of the law, there comes down on us the burden
of taxation, falling alike on the penury of the poor and
tlie superfiuity of tlie ricli. And then, after the taxa-
tion of property, the draft upon person and blood —
a necessary thing, but a cruel ; — cruel to the father,
from whom it snatches the companion of his labors;

* The I{di;,'iou:^ Side of Uic Italian Question, by Joaeph î.Iazzini. Atlantio
MontMy, October, 1667.

lîELIGlON IN THE LIFK OF NATIONS. 71

to tlio molluT, from -wlioin it tr-ars the joy ui' tlio little
liome ; and to the young man liimsclf, from whom it
takos away the noblest period of his free and hlooming
youth.

All those sacrifices the failli of patriotism — that is,
the national sentiment purified and transfigured by
religion — counts as nothing. It leads the soldier to the
lield of carnage, there to fight like a hero, and to die
like a Christian. Let me cite one instance of it, to the
honor of our enemies ; those were enemies grand even
in defeat, and their valor magnified our victory. Well,
on the field of Inkermann, the battle over, when they
came to observe the dead with that regard for science
which is not inconsistent with a tender heart, the sur-
geons were struck with the look of religious and almost
ecstatic serenity impressed upon the laces of the l\us-
sian dead.

2. Tlie Ilumanitarian Sentiment.

[Father Hyacinthe remarked that, in our da3's, patriotic faith
has not, as formerly, to react only against personal selfishness,
but against the perversion of that sentiment, otherwise so just
and noble, the humanitarian sentiment.]

When I was yet a boy, I used to read those noble lines
of one of our greatest poets :

•' Yc nations ! (pompous name for savaj^c hate !)
Can love be halted at your boundarj'-lincs ?
Tear down those envious flags ! and hear the voice-
That other voice — that speaks this stem reproach :
' Self-love and hate alone possess a country',
But brotherly love has none/ "*

* Nations ! mot pompeux pour dire barbarie !
L'amour s'arrête-t-il où s'arrêtent vos pas ?
Déchirez ces drapeaux ; une autre voix vous crie :
L'égoïsme et la haine ont seuls une patrie,
La fraternité n'en a pas î

De LAMAnTiNK, La MarstVJai(>e de la jmix.

72 DISCOUIiSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE.

These are fine lines; but they arc fiihje, and tlieir
generous but fatal illusion has too much affected the
minds of our fellow-citizens. They may not "tear
down" their flag, but they lower it. They unlearn true
patriotisnij not by loA'ing humanity too well, but by
loving it unwisely.

If I were to indulge myself in the argumentnm ad
honiinem, I sliould haye an easy time of it. I should
say to the philosophic and revolutionary school : You
have been accusing us, till within a few years — us
Christians, and especially us Catholics — of not compre-
hending the love of country; of extirpating it, or at
least drying it up in the heart ! You have been telling
us that we could not love an earthly countr}^, because
we did nothing but dream of a heavenly one : — that we
could not serve our native land, because we w^ere labor-
ing for the universal Church. You haye been telling
us these things, flinging against us these unjust re-
proaches, to which our whole history makes answer;
and now, forsooth, you yourselves are setting humanity
in the place of the Church, and under our very eyes
are sacrificing to it the interests of your country, and
(though you may not suspect it) its honor also.

[Ill conclusion, Father Ilyacinllie referred to the example of
tlie typical people. Nothing could be more religious than the
national sentiment of Israel, and therefore, by a beautiful neces-
sity, nothing more genuinely humanitarian.]

I have spoken of all the rest of tlte nations, but said
nothing of Israel. Nevertheless, this people has pos-
sessed, in the highest degree, tlie two spirits which
make up a nation; — the spirit of tlie hearth, and the
ppirit of tlie altar — the two sanctuaries which religion
occupies or deserts at the same time. Israel was a

RFXIGION IN THE iAVK OF NATIONS. 73

fiiiiiily, and its |hm.|)](' was called •* llic liuiiiC of Jacolj."
It i)ivsL'rvcd ill ils pultlic archives the genealogy of its
fathers, and, as 1 might say, a complete history of its
blood. It knew liow, from the heart of its first ancestor,
by the veins of the twelve patriarchs as by so many
sacred channels, the blood which God had blessed liad
ilowed downward to itself. The twelve tribes remained
distinct, almost independent, and yet united; and in
each of them each family maintained the sovereignty of
its own home. Every fifty years, at the solemn jubilee,
tlie homestead, that might have been sold under some
pinch of necessity, reverted to its former owners. The
old home seemed to leap for joy as it welcomed tliem
l)ack; and on the spot where the grandsirc luid been
wont to dwell, he joyfully greeted his descendants.

And to the domestic spirit, what people has better
united the religious spirit ? It was God's own peojile.
Its city was a temple, the holy hill of Zion. Its histor}^
its poetr}^, its laws were all contained in the insjiired
book. Its sages sj^oke to it in the name of the Lord ;
in his name its kings held empire and its warriors
fought its holy wars.

Xow, this obscure people, that had to choose between
the oblivion of the world and its contempt, this petty
State, whose breadth was not more than twenty leagues,
is that one of all tlie world whicli has rendered the
greatest service to mankind. To it humanity awes
everything, from that idea — not Shemitic, but Hebrew —
which gives its nobleness and strength to modern
thought, the idea of the one, personal, and living God,
down to that mysterious blood of Calvary, which alone
has power to fecundate the divine idea that out of it
should come forth the virtues whicli have converted
and civilized our fathers, and founded Christian society.

4

74 DISCOUESES OF FATHER HYACINTHE.

In Tain Socrates had taught and died. Athens and
Rome still kept their ancient gods and their ancient
character. If we, this day, are living in a Christian
land, it is becanse the sons of Judah have come bring-
ing to us the treasure preserved through so many cen-
turies in the close, jealous, but beneficent casket of their
national independence.

LEG TURK FOURTH.

December 22, 18G7.

THE HIGHER INTERCOURSE BETWEEN
NATIONS.

Gextlemex : I am about to toucn upon one of the
grandest ideas of tlic liiglier politics. And I have a
perfect right to do it, if it were only by way of retalia-
tion ; for the idea itself touches upon the gravest ques-
tions of morality and religion.

I have been speaking thus far of the nation ; but
there are the nations. I am about to inquire whether
there are not bonds existing between them which unite
them into one universal society.

What was it that made men feel the need of some
l)ond superior to domestic society ? It was the multi-
tude of families. If human nature had been able to
limit itself to that grand primeval unity which consti-
tuted it one single family under the sceptre of Adam,
there would have been no occasion for civil society.
Now, the nations are many, as the families were ; con-
sequently, it would seem that they have need, for the
same reason, to have set up over them an arbitration
accepted by all, and so recover harmony without losing
liberty, in the bonds of a broader fellowship.

Is there, then, any higher fellowship among nations ;

76 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE.

and Avlnit is tlie nature of tlie bond that constitutes
it ? Is it a political bond ? Is it simply a moral
bond ? Is it a religious bond ? These are the three
aspects under which this important subject is to bo
considered.

I can hardly keep myself from a certain emotion as
I approach it. It brings back to me thoêe enthusiasms
of my early youth which I shared in common with my
fellows. The commonwealth of mankind appeared to
me then in the shadows of immature and undefined
speculation ; I had a poor enough conception of what
it is in itself, and what it may grow to be under the ac-
tion of Christianity ; and yet I felt my heart of hearts
answering to that conception with inexpressible yearn-
ings. At this day, thank God, I see it in that perfect
light which is poured u^wn earthly as well as upon
heavenly things by the Catholic synthesis. I believe
I love it better ; I want to serve it better ; and in this
light which does not mislead, I will attempt, Gentle-
men, to consider it with you.

Part First. — The PoJilical Bond.

And, first, is there any political bond adapted to form
among all the States of the globe a cosmopolitan com-
monwealth ? If no such bond exists at present, may
it perad venture exist in the future ?

Why not ? What is the State itself if not a political
bond between States less than itself?

Civil society is not so simple as it would seem to be
at first sight. It is composed of three concentric spheres
— three planes, one above another ; at the base, the
township; above that the province; at the top, the
State.

THE HIGIIEIl INTERCOUllSE BETWEEN NATIONS. 77

1. Tlie township is the startiiig-poiiit of thut woiidcr-
ful organization which, together, makes u]) civil society.
If I except tluit ideal and miraculous peoi)le, that Israel
which has anticipated the progre.<s of the centuries,
I find civil society nowhere in all the East. I lind
there lurd.ships, i^rincipalities, potentates, swaying over
the multitudes a sceptre under which are mingled, in
disproportionate and fantastic fashion, the authority of
the father over his family and the authority of the
master over his slaves. But the community, the free
association of fiimilies, that glorious germ of genuine
civilization, we do not find till we set foot on the soil
of the West, its native soil, and pause before the creative
race of the children of Japheth. Such are the demo-
cratic cities of Greece; such, especially, is- the civitas
of the Romans.

I am no panegyrist of the Roman law. On the con-
trary, I think that its excessive influence has been one
of the misfortunes of the Latin nations, and I prefer
to it, for more than one reason, the '' common law" of
the Germanic race. But no one can refuse to this legis-
lation the glory of having been the first to formulate
the principles of civil society ; and for my part, I sub-
scribe with all my heart to the eulogy pronounced on it
by the Apostolic Constitutions, that yenerable monu-
ment of the primitive Church : '* God has not chosen
that his justice should be manifested to us alone, but
that it should be resplendently 'displayed, also, in the
Roman laws."' For, as Saint Augustine adds : " In like
manner as God has spoken supernaturally by the pro-
phets, he has also spoken naturally by the Roman law-
givers. Lerfes Romanorum divinitus iky ora principum
emananint.'^

Civil society was so identified with Rome, that when

78 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE.

the deluge of barbarians had SAvcpt over tlie empire;
nothing remained of it but ruins. After that there
began to reappear, with better races and under novei
forms, mitigated withal by Christianity, that reign of
chieftaincies of which Asia is the cradle. Those in
wliom the government was vested were called lords. It
was the reign of the castle, tlic preponderance of the
domestic element over the civil. ... In what way did
life come back into civil society ? Under the floating
wrecks, the waves, the drifting sea-weeds of that ocean
of barbarians, the germ of the Roman municipality had
survived. "When the hour of Providence had struck,
this germ flourislied anew. It fructified in France, in
Italy, everywhere, under the dawning sun of tlie Middle
Age, under the vernal breath of modern civilization.
But there is -no need that I should recount here the
glorious history of the toicns.

[2. Such is the first spliere of civil society. But the towns are
many, and liave need to be united without losing their proper
existence. Hence the necessity of the 'province.']

The too little remembered history of our past bears
witness, and the actual practice of the free and pros-
perous nations of Europe confirms the testimony of
history, that ])etween those tAVo centres of national ac-
tivity, the restricted centre of the town and the im-
mense centre of the State, there is always Avantcd an
intermediate centre. Call it by wluit name you like. I
am satisfied witli the mime transmitted to us by his-
tory— Provincia, the province. Originally, no doubt, a
name of the vanquished, whether of the empire or of
the feudal power; but afterward a triumplial name,
the first and liveliest expression of a spirit of race, and
an historical tradition in the formation of new nations.

THE HIGHER INTERCOURSE BET\VEEN NATIONS. 79

I know that, thus speaking, I run against the preju-
dices of that revohitionary school which calls itself lib-
eral, but is anything else but that. I do not defy it,
but I am not afraid of it ; and in the name of truth,
of tlie interests of France, and tlie traditions of Europe,
in the name of the future as well as of the past, I re-
l)eat, IOC must have provifices. We must have interme-
diate centres, to react on the one hand against the di-
vision and anarchy of the towns, and on the other
against the centralization of the State. Let us then no
longer neglect the conditions of provincial life. Along-
side of the national language, let us have the originality
of their antique idiom, which we call so scornfully a
patois, the richness and simplicity of their ancient cos-
tumes, their simple and religious character, the guardian
of all domestic and patriotic virtues. Let us remember
that if the Church, without impairing the unity of
which she is so justly jealous, has been able, in all lands
and in every time, to tolerate and even encourage within
her pale the most amazing variety,* then national unity
has no more occasion to dread the free development of
provincial life.

[3. The State, the central and sovereign power, unites then the
provinces without confounding them, and so forms the third
bond of civil society.]

I admire the State, when it abides within its natural
limits. I praise it ; I am so content with it that I do
not care to look for anything further. Town needed
to be united to town. It was needful that, without
losing their independence and autonomy, the united
towns should become the province. And in turn, the

* Circumdata vaneiate .... circumamicta ranelatibus. (Pealra xlv. 9,
IJ.) Acta of Pius IX. relating to the Oriental Liturgies.

80 DISCOUKSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE.

province, looking about on its sister provinces, needed
to join bands "witli tbem and form tbat angnst circle
wbicli we call by tbc name of France. But bigber in
the scale tban France, I find, in tbe political order —
notbing — notbing !

In fact,, wbat could I find ? If I looked into tbe past,
I sbould find universal empire. If I looked into tbe
future — no, not tbe future — if I looked into Utopia, I
sbould find national confederation. No, no. Gentle-
men, neitber one nor tbe otber of tbese ; neitber uni-
versal empire nor confederation of nations, but France.

Universal empire I need not speak of. I bate to
tbink of it. I would ratber leave it to itself, in tbe bare
facts of bistory, from Xebucbadnezzar down to Cœsar
and bis modern imitators. Gory spectre tbat it is, it
seems to say, like Macbetb in Sbakspeare's tragedy,

**■ What hands are here ! Ha ! they pluck'out mine eyes !
Will all great Ncptune'-s ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand ?"

If universal empire is sucli a dismal nigbtmare,
national confederation is a barmless and laugbable
cbimera, not wortby tbe bonor of a refutation. There
exists, it is true, a confederation of tbe United States of
America. There has been talk, sometimes, in noble
but Utopian phrase, of the confederation of the United
States of Europe ; but no one dreams of the confedera-
tion of the United States of the globe. I pause here,
therefore, and conclude tliis first discussion with the
declaration tbat there neither has been in the past, nor
is to be in tbe future, any political body superior to
tlie nation.

And if, after liaving looked mauwaixl for Ibe evidence
of lliis fact, I look CJodward ior the uliimate reason of

THE mcaiER INTERCOURSE BETSVEEN NATIONS. 81

i(, I acknowledge tluit he has dealt "with the nations of
the cartli witli a higher respect than they have some-
times used toward tliemselves. He has wislied them to
he free and sovereign phe lias given them into no mor-
tal hands, hut only to his Son, when he said to him,
'' Ask of me, and I will give thee the nations for thine
inheritance, the uttermost parts of the earth for thy
possession.''*

The Word made flesh has asked of the Father. The
Word of righteousness and truth has received the king-
dom. The question is settled. The nations, liberated
by this Word, belong only to themselves, and God.

Part Second. — The Moral Bond.

[Having proved that tlie nations are not, among themselves,
in a state of political society, Father Hyacinthe proposes to sho^v
that they are united in natural society by moral bonds. The
idea of the " social compact" is as false for nations as for individ-
uals ; and it is of sovereign importance, in the present question,
not to confound the " state of nature" with the savage state.]

Before the foundation of civil societ}', individuals
were not in ^-'the state of nature," but in the state of
domestic society. It was the familiçs which, for lack
of some higher bond, dvrelt together in the state of
nature. And yet their relations were not left to the
control of violence and cunning — to the reign of barba-
rism. On the contrary, this vras the noble period of
the patriarchs. The various families, free l^'om the
trammels of social life and from the passions which it
engenders, pure and happy in their manners, grand, and
simple in their way of living, realized the golden age of
domestic society. • Xations, with respect to each other,
are in a situation analogous to that of families not yet

* Tèv.\n\ ii. 8.

82 DISCOUESES OF FATHER HYACINTHE.

subject to civil society. Tlieir relations arc subject to
the higher law of morality and the unwritten constitu-
tion of the law of nations. Consequently, they form
among themselves a real though invisible common-
wealth, which I will call the universal commonwealth
of international justice.

I have been telling you, lately, that there is such a
thing as justice for public life as well as for private
life — for society as well as for the individual. To-day I
complete the glorious survey ; I reach the highest point,
and declare that above that social justice which regu-
lates the relations between government and people, there
is an international justice presiding over the relations
between nation and nation.

God (as I was but just now saying) has treated the
nations with great honor, in that he has left them free :
he has treated them Avitli higher honor still, in that he
has subjected them to law. It was not exclusively for
the individual conscience, it was not only for the peo-
ple of Israel, that God dictated the Ten Commandments
to Moses ; it was for all mankind. 0 man, look upon
thy Lawgiver. Not now toward Israel, but toward
thee, he descends from the smoking top of Iloreb, the
two rays upon his brow, the two tables in his hand. It
is to every kindred and tongue that he proclaims the
everlasting law. It is to nations and sovereigns that
he says, " Ye shall not kill." Ye shall not make men's
lives the tools of your revenge and your ambition. Ye
shall not pour out their blood like water on the barren
furrows of your battle-fields. Ye sludl make no unjust
wars; and if war conies persistently knocking at the
door of your cabinets, ye shall ponder it long and
scrupulously in the scales of conscience. Ye shall
not kill.

THE HIGHER INTERCOURSE BETWEEN NATIONS. 83

FurtluT ; yc sluill not .steal. Ye ahiiW steul neitlior
kingdoms nor provinces. Wliiit is iorbiddcn to a pri-
vate individual is still more Ibrbidden to a nation or a
sovereign. W'liat would you tliiiik of a i)rivatc indi-
vidual who, linding his vineyard or his field too strait
for his wants or for his comibrt and convenience, should
seriously demand of his neighbor a rectification of fron-
tiers ? AVhat would you say of a private person who,
looking forth from the midst of his vast estate upon
some intruding angle of another's property, of ancient
date and venerable association, should say to the pro-
prietor, '* Your castle is the natural capital of my do-
main. If you don't give it to me, I'll take it, or I'll
have it taken ?'' " Ye shall not steal," says the Law
to governments as well as individuals, to nations as well
as mon arch s.

It adds, moreover, '' Yq shall not bear false witness
against your neighbor." Ye shall not lie through the
penetrating voice of the press, after ye have lied in the
secret whispers of diplomacy. Y^'e shall not pervert the
conscience of the people. Y^'e shall not make use of
calumny, in defiiult of force, against the rights of the
small and weak.

This is international justice. This is the sacred bond
which constitutes and sustains the commouAvealth of
nations.

Some day history will be written, I am sure, as it is
not written now, as it never has been written yet — for
under other forms the evils Avhich afflict us have afflicted
our fathers before us — history will learn, at last, to speak
the truth. It will say that such iniquities are not to
be condoned by success ; that not success, but justice is
the law of nations ; finally, that such acts as these are
not glory, but national robbery.

84 DISCOURSES OF FATHER IÎYACINTHE.

History, too, v/ill define better than it has been wont
to do the boundaries between civilization and barbarism.
I made a mistake, some time ago, speaking on this sub-
ject before another audience in Belgium. I attempted
to define these limits, looking for them too exclusively
from the religious point of view. Said I, " The Rubicon
wiiich one cannot cross without falling into barbarism
is baptism. The baptized nations (whether Catholic or
not, they are at least Christian) are the kernel of civili-
zation ; the unbaptized nations are the vast zone of
barbarism." ... But history will say that the reign
of civilization prevails throughout the whole domain of
earth which acknowledges the authority of that axiom
of international justice. Right makes Might. And as
for barbarism, its empire begins with the empire of that
other maxim, ]\Iight makes Right.

Part Third. — The llcliglous Bond.

[I. International law establishes between nations a society
which is real, but v/ithout positive organization. Father Hya-
cinthe affirms that the outward and visible bond which is want-
ing to this society may be supplied by the universal religious
society — in other words, by the Catholic Church.]

One does not easily lay off the sentiments of early
life. As for myself, I acknowledge myself faithful to
the dream of my boyhood. Even noAV I want to see
with my eyes and touch witli my heart tlie unity of
my race, organized and living on tlie earth. I fight
against the illusions of the humanitarians, but I love
and serve the great truth which they pervert.

[Father Hyacinthe observed thai just as domestic societies are
united, not by a ])ond of tlic same order with themselves, but
by the bond of the political order, so llie various political so-

THE HIGHER INTERCOURSE BETWEEN NATIONS. 85

cietics must seek their unity, not in a bond of like nutiuc, but
in the higher bond of the religious order. Universal religious
soeiety alone can realize the organic unit}- of the nations, -svithout
infringing or even threatening their legitimate autonomy.]

This universal society of souls and of nations is the
Catholic church. In evidence of this, I call to witness
its name, as illustrated by facts. Whereinsoever other re-
ligious communions are worthy of respect, I honor
them. Far from putting odium upon them, I liave
given ihem my hand — 1 give it still. . But they are
themselves the hrst to acknowledge — sometimes even to
claim it as a merit — that they have no pretension to
universality. Less absolute than we, they deem it a
duty to make terms with circumstances of time and
place, with the genius of races and the exigences of
governments. Some of therm — the unestablished
churches — appeal to individuals, or at most to families.
The others — State churches — seek to identify them-
selves with nations. Xone of them has the boldness
to proclaim itself the Church of Humanity, or to say,
like us, " Out of my pale, wilfully abandoned by one
who knows what he is doing and means it — out of my
pale there is no salvation."

Ah I I have found at last the bond of national unity,
the tie of the perfect organization of mankind upon the
earth! I grasp it in my trembling hands. This bond is
not political, and consequently, sooner or later, tyran-
nical. It is a spiritual and unarmed bond, the strength
of which proceeds from God and has its seat in tlie
souL The nations have nothing to fear from it, and
everything to hope.

When the immortal King of the Catholic churcli
appeared before Pilate, who represented the political
power of that time, the Roman governor anxiously in-

86 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE.

quired concerning liis title to royalty. "Art thou a
Kino-, then ?"' he asked. And Jesus answered, " Thou
sayest it ; I am a King." But he added, " My kingdom
is not of this "world." His kingdom, indeed, is in this
world, or rather it enters into it, but it comes to it from
above, and returns thither whence it came. It leaves
to Caîsar that which is Cœsar's — that is to say, the poli-
tics of this world. It claims for God that which is
God's — that is, the conservation of righteousness.

[II. HavlDg shown that the Catholic Church alone, Ijy virtue
of being a society at once universal and spiritual, is capable of
realizing the unity of nations, Father Hyacinthe inquired how
tliis work was accomplished by it. He answered, cliiefly in two
ways : 1, by becoming the higher and divine organ of national as
well as individual morality; 2, by creating, through the influence
of religion, common interests and sentiments in the different
peoples, and, so to speak, a universal country, which unites all
countries in itself without confounding them. It is thus that it
has realized that wonderful expression of Saint Paul, " that the
nations should be f(;llow-heirs, and of the same bod}^ and par-
takers of his promise in Christ by the gospel."* The nations are
more than copartners ; they are " concovporeaV — forming but one
bod}^ in Jesus Christ.

The limits of this report do not permit us to enter into the de-
velopment which Father Hyacinthe gave of these two positions.
"VYe sliall simply present the conclusion of this discussion, and of
tlie discourse itself]

Cosmopolitan society has two centres — each of them
a religious centre — Jerusalem and Rome : Jerusalem,
which has prepared everything; Rome, which is to
complete everything. Tliesc are those mysterious cities
of which the prophet says, in his profound and forcible
language, that they are like "' the navel of the ear(h."f
Separating from them, humanity forgets its own bcgin-

* Ephcsiand, ii. G. t Ezckiel, xxxviii. VI. See marginal trans'latiou.

THE niGIIER INTERCOURSE BETWEEN NATIONS. 87

liings, and makes schism wHli its })rincii)le of life and
unity. The miraele of the union of nali(»ns, like tliat
of the union of souls, has bei'U possible only in the
alliance of Jerusalem and Ivome.

The call of the Gospel and the Church is addressed
not only to souls, but to nations; as the very language
of the Scriptures implies — "the conversion of the na-
tions.''* Perhaps Christian thinkers have not suffi-
ciently pondered the fact of the blessing of all the
nations of the earth, promised to the seed of Abraham,
and fulfilled in the blood of Jesus."t

However this may be, at the hour when tliis promise
was about to be accomplished — Avhen the nations were
more than ever hungering and thirsting, not for the
Roman unity which was crushing them, but for that
better unity which they dimly discovered, not knowing
by what name to call it — there was at Cesarea a centu-
rion of the Italian school, named Cornelius, a devout
man, born in the darkness of paganism, but seeking
God in all the uprightness of his heart and mind.
While he was praying, an angel of the Lord drew near
to him and said, "' Cornelius, thy prayers and alms are
come up for a memorial before God. And now send
men to Joppa, and call for one Simon Peter, who is
lodging at the sea-side, at the house of one Simon, a
tanner. He shall tell thee what thou oughtest to do.''
And the centurion chose three trusty men, and dis-
patched them to this first pope of the universal Church,
whose utterance the angel from heaven had not ven-
tured to anticipate.

Simon Peter was hungry ; and while they were making
ready his repast, he was praying on the house-top. when

* Acts, XV. 3. " Gentiles" = " nations."
t Genesis, sxii. 13; xsvi. 4. Acts, lii. 25.

88 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE.

he fell into a tmnce. lie saw heaven opened, and as it
had been a great sheet knit at the four corners let down
to earth, wherein (strange sight !) were those unclean
animals which the law of Moses had forbidden to be
eaten — four-footed beasts, and creeping things, and
fowls of the air. And there came a voice to him,
" Eise, Peter; kill and eat." " Not so. Lord," cried the
zealous Jew, " for I have never eaten anything that is
common or unclean." And the voice spake unto him
again the second time, "What God hath cleansed, that
call not thou common." And three times this myste-
rious vessel was let down and received up again into
heaven. And when Peter had come forth from his
trance, the three men were standing before the gate;
and the Holy Spirit spoke to his inward soul, " Follow
them, nothing doubting, for I have sent them."*

Gentlemen, this vision has been continued from age
to age. It is the whole history of the Church and the
papacy. Like the first of their number, the Roman
pontiffs have beheld the nations, not now in the vessel
let down from heaven, but on the agitated soil of this
world. Here, the corrupted beasts of imperial Rome ;
there, the ferocious beasts of Scythia and Germany:
the former panting after pleasure, and filling the air
with their most beastly cry, " Panem atque circenses'' —
despotism, if you like, but give us our food and our
amusements ! the latter panting after carnage, craving
blood, and preparing vengeance for the detested empire.

The first look, perhaps, was one of horror ; the second,
one of love. The papacy rose up before these monsters
and slew tliem one by one. AV'itli tlie sword of the
word, it struck at tlic unclean i)rincii)le, in their bosom,
of tlic life of sin, selfishness, pride, and sensuality. And

* Act?, X. 1-.'J3.

THE HIGHER INTEIICOURSE BETWEEN NATIONS. 89

then it devoured them. Slowly but steadily, century
îil'ter century, it has been laboriously incorporating them
into Christ, into that great Christendom of Charlemagne
and Gregory VIL, from -which we are descended. And
des])ite the blasphemies of our blind and unthankful
age, it will prolong this splendid banquet of Christianity
and civilization. "Rise, Peter, kill and eat." Yea,
rise. 0 thou who art not only pontilT of the individual
conscience, and of the family hearth, but pontiffof all the
nations! Bishop of bishops, rise with all thy brethren !
Kise, 0 Catholic hierarchy! Rise, Church of man-
kind, kill and eat! Incorporate in God, in truth and
in righteousness, the nations once rebellious, now grate-
fully submissive !

And there shall come a day — never has it seemed
more remote than now to shallow minds, never to be-
lieving hearts has it appeared so near — a day when, the
mighty work achieved, the pontiff shall look forth upon
mankind, not with more of love, but with more of joy
than ever before, and say, My son ! And as with one
voice and one heart, mankind shall say, My father !

In that day the infallible promises of God shall have
met, in their accomplishment, the ceaseless aspirations
of man. Then unity shall be complete. There shall
be one fold and one shepherd. For this I look, and
am certain.

LECTURE FIFTH.

Decembek 29, 1867.

AVAE.

• My Lord ÂRcnBisnop, akd Gentlemen" : If I
glance backward at the way over whicli we have come,
I mark our starting-point on the line between domestic
society, the subject of our last year's lectures, and civil
society, Avhich we had proposed for our study this year.
After attempting to define the relations of the family
to the State, we have demonstrated the sacred character
of the twofold element which constitutes the nation —
Power, which is essentially divine, and the national
soul, which is essentially religious. Considering, then,
that nations, like families, arc many, we asked ourselves
whether there was not some bond by whicli they, in
their turn, w^ere united in a higher society ; and after
eliminating the political bond, as not adapted to this
work, we have paused with admiration before the fel-
lowship of nations constituted, at once, in the natural
order, by the law of nations — in the supernatural order
by the Catliolic Church.

To-day the course of reasoning brings me into the
presence of a fact not less frequent than terrible, which
seems the negation of national fellowship. I mean
War.

WAR. 91

Piiiiso, now, at the foot of tliis tree of death, which has
taken so mighty and vast a growth in the world. Let
lis dig down to its roots, and find how deep they grow.
Let us climl) its huge trunk, and reaeh upon itshranclies
tiiosc fatal but sometimes salutary fruits whicli the na-
tions may pluck therefrom.

In other words, Gentlemen, 1 will inquire with you,
in the first place, into the causes of war ; and in the
second place, I Avill attempt to penetrate its nature and
results.

Part Fikst.— 77^^ Orifjin of War.

L I w ill do for war, that law of death, what I hay.e
done for love, that law of life ; I will look for its first
root in the depth of the animal nature. They tell us,
now-a-days, in the name of science falsely so called, that
the historical origin of man w^as in the brute. Under
every error there is hid a truth ; and long before mod-
ern science, the Fathers of the Church had taught that
man should contemplate in the lower races not only the
diversified but faithful rough-drafts of his bodily or-
ganism, but the complete assemblage of the passions
of his soul. It is not without reason that the Creator
introduced man's appearance on the earth by the long
preceding appearance of the brute. Through all the
lapse of those "days" of Genesis, whicli undoubtedly
were ao:es and mvriads of a2:es, brute life was the neces-
sary preface to human life. It was written then by the
hand of God, and we are reading it to-da}'. Xow, if I
survey the series of those beings whicli might be called,
in the language of Francis of Assisi, " our inferior
In-ethren," everywhere among them I find war. In the
air and on the earth, everywhere death-groans, blood-

92 Discour.sEs of father hyacinthe.

shed, lacGrated flesh, and shattered bones. The silent
depths of ocean hide no different scene. AVar, then,
seems to be the very Uiw of the relations of being. If
I were to formnlate this law, I shonld do it thus : Life
is feeble and incapable of sclf-snstentation, and needs
aliment ; life has an overflowing fecnndity, and needs a
limii. God has appointed death to furnish both of
these. Some simple-minded Christians suppose that,
before the sin of Adam, the animals were free from
every ■ instinct of ferocity. St. Thomas Aquinas an-
swered all such long ago. Discord between animals is
not a consequence of sin, but a condition of nature.
This is that fierce, cruel breath — at once destructive and
conservative, conservative because destructive, and de-
structive because conservative — which breathes in the
very vitals of life. It is not sin, but God, that does all
this. It is he that has stretched the sway of death, and
with death of war, from one end of creation to the
other.

AYeary, noAV, with this spectacle of horror — for it is
horror, after all — let me lift my eyes toward that other
Avorld. ... I have been looking upon the lower world.
Let me look now into the world above, that world which
reason suspects to exist, which experience has never
reached, but of which revelation recounts the history
— the "^"orld of spirits. An endless chain of bodily ex-
istences stretches down below me. Above me, how is
it — since I am the microcosm, the centre and epitome
of the world ? May it not be that there is another chain
of spiritual existences, individuals and races, richer still
in their development ?

Ilailj angelic world ! Thou, at least, slialt present
the spectacle of peace! Tins is the world of truth:
truth is tlio creator of ordei-, and order is the creator

WAK. 93

oi' pL'ac<?. Sainl Aii^^nistinc luus dclincd peace to be tlie
**' tranquillity of order," IranquiUitas ordinis. Here
shall I iiiid the traiKpiillity of order majestically poised
in (hose regions of serenity and light.

Ah, uo, Gentlemen, no! The historian of the world
above tells ns quite another tale. He shows ns, if 1
might so express myself, the breath of the animal na-
ture rising toward the sky, and discord breaking out in
heaven. " I saw," says 8t. John the prophet, " and be-
hold a great red dragon"* of the hue of blood. This is
he of whom Jesus Christ declared that " he was a mur-
derer from the beginning."! It is the father of death
and the inventor of war. "And his tail drew the third
part of the stars of heaven ! . . . . And there was war in
lieaven. Michael and his angels fought against the
dragon ; and the dragon fought and his angels ;" and
Satan was vanquished and cast out into the earth.
This is no mere conflict of ideas — ideas of truth in
conflict with ideas of error. It is no mere conflict of
hearts, the inspiration of great souls answering against
the rebellion or defection of perverted ones. It is more
than this: it is force. Men speak of " force and matter,"
as if they were correlatives. It is a just expression,
force and matter; but here is another that is just too —
'• force and mind." In the mind of man, in the mind
of angels, there is more than thought, more than feel-
ing, more than volition : there is substantial energy —
force. And when force meets force, there is war. It is
not said of Satan that he was convinced, but that he
was "cast out."f

[Such is the extra-lniman origin of war. Father Hyacinthe
deemed it needful to go so f\irback,in order to explain its human
origin.]

* Revelation, xii. 3. t John, viii. 14.

X Kevelation, xU. 3-9.

9tl: DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE.

IL I come now to man. " Man," says Pascal, " is
neither angel nor brute;" but he is a sort of strange
mixture — if I were not speaking of God's work, I would
say, an odd mixture of brute and angel. In his lower
nature I perceive tlic instincts of the brute. That
conservative-destructive force which agitates the whole
animal kingdom is to be perceived in the veins of man,
and even in those regions of the soul which the scholas-
tic philosophy has so well described, in which tlie " con-
cupiscible appetite" and the ^'irascible appetite" are
sustained each by the other, and are sometimes fused
into one. Man, it is true, has received the gift of rea-
son, to control, repress, direct his passions. But see
how, bordering on one side on the passions of the brute,
he borders, on the other side, on the pride of the angel.
Cast out upon the earth, the fallen angel has come upon
the cradle of mankind and flooded it with his venom.
Thenceforth perverted, that reason which should have
governed everything for good ends has governed every-
thing for evil. Entering into alliance wàth gusty pas-
sions and with material forces, it has developed war to
proportions which otherwise it would. never have at-
tained.

Man is pre-eminently the warrior of creation — as the
Scripture calls him, '•' a mighty hunter before the Lord."
The same Scripture likens his whole life on the earth to
a warfare.

Fightings within himself! The brute and the angel
wage within us tliat conflict of which every man is
conscious, in which we escape the bondage of the senses
only to fall an easy prey to pride. Fightings in the
family ! Husband divided against wife, and father
against child, and a man's foes they of his own house-
hold. Cain leading his brother Abel into the field, and

WAR. 95

tlierc risinp^ up af^ainst liim, and slicdding for the first
time lliat blood Avliicli the afFri^dited earth sliall drink,
and for a\ liich it sliall never cease to cry for vengeance.
I'ightings between races, and througli all society. In
those early days of the world's inlancy "there were
giants in the earth," the ''mighty men'' of their time
and the "'men of renown;'' and their outrages were
washed away in the Avaters of the great flood, only to
reapi)ear in other forms on this globe, this field of ever-
lasting battle.

[III. From the very nature of the origin of war, one might
justh' conchide that it is likel}' to be perpetual in the bosom of
fallen humanity. The existence of war does not depend on cir-
cumstances external to human nature. It is not to be reckoned
among those imperfections of society which may be expected to
disappear in the progress of reason and morality. It is one of th
permanent effects of original sin.]

Universal peace, proceeding from the indelinitc de-
velopment of human nature, and from what people call
by a great name, used often without meaning — Prog-
ress— such universal peace is, then, a chimera. True,
it is a chimera of noble minds and generous hearts ; but
they have not taken into their calculation either Chris-
tianity or facts.

Speak to me of the progress towards x^eace, of ideas,
of morals, and even of the institutions of Christian
society, tending to render the chances of war more
and more difficult, and I can understand this lan-
guage, and applaud it. I do not belong to that school
of Catholics who make war to be a sort of divine idejil.
War is the ideal of sin, as I have just been saying — the
ideal of the brute and the devil. Peace, on the con-
trary, is the ideal of Christianity. But we do not reach
our ideal on earth, nor even approach it except in so

96 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE.

far as we follow tlic ways which lead to it. The Author
of peace — we have just been celebrating the festival of
his birth — we Christians, and perhaps you, rationalists,
may have done the same, in the involuntary recollec-
tion of your childish days, and the magic of the songs
of the Christmas night. "Unto us a child is born,-'
cries Isaiah, "and the government shall be upon his
shoulder, and his name shall be called the Prince of
Peace.''* Under his reign, the nations shall break their
swords, and beat them into ploughshares ; the garment
rolled in blood shall be for burning and fuel of fire.
Ah, Gentlemen, the proi-)het gives no promise that these
wonders shall be wrought by the old humanity. On
the contrary, they are promised through this new-born
child, young as that eternity frorii whence he comes,
and as that future whither he goes. " The Father of
the Age to come," which shall be far other than the
ages past, over his cradle the angels shall sing, " Glory
to God in the highest, peace on earth to men of good
will."f And over his oj^ened sepulchre, in the splendor
of his resurrection, himself, victor over death, the world,
and hell, shall say to his disciples, " Be not afraid ; my
peace I leave with you."

Part Secoxd. — The Nature and Effects of War,

[The nature of war being under consideration, Father H3M-
cinthe estahlishes, at the outset, a new application of that m3's-
tcrious dualism which governs the created world, and especially
the world as flxllen. There are two sorts of war, pagan war and
Christian war. Pagan war is force in the service of passion, from
the transports of revenge to the calculations of ambition. Chris-
tian war is force in the service of right, whether in protection of
one's own rights, or in the way of intervention in behalf of the
rights of others.]
♦ Isaiah, ix. 6. t Luke, ii. 11. Viil^jatc, " pax houiiiiibus bontu voluulatiB."

WAi:. 07

I. — Vagan War ; or Force in tlic Service af Passion.

I liave wished to avoid the subject of imi versai empire.
But it comes up again, to-day, at tlie heart of my sub-
ject, and I am comi)elled, now, to consider it.

Univorsîil empire involves ])agan war. Its instru-
nu'ut is the sword — tht.' sword of conquest, which never
says Enough, Ijeeause it is wielded by the fiercest and
tlie most cold-blooded of human passions, the passion
for domination. Xeljuchadnezzar, king of the Assyri-
ans, having defeated in battle his powerful neighbor the
king of the Medes, felt his heart lifted up in himself,
and swore In* his throne that he would extend his do-
minion fiir and wide. He summoned his councillors
and his captains, and held with them, in his palace,
what the Scripture has so well called " The mystery of
his counsek''* A policy like his has full need of mys-
tery. It shuns the light of day, and no wonder. For
the secret of Xebuchadnezzar is no longer a secret. It
has passed from empire to empire, from cal)inet to cabi-
net, and it is to-day the ol)ject of the scorn and indig-
nation of the whole world. "He declared that the
tliought of his heart was this : to subject the whole
earth to his sw^ay." The secret's out ! Mark it : that
proud but foolish thought — to rule the universe ! He
summons Holofernes, the captain of his host. '•' March,"
said he, ''against the nations of the West, especially
against those Avho have ventured to disobey my com-
mandments. Seize their strong cities, subdue their
kingdoms." Holofernes obeyed, and his innumerable
hosts spread like locusts over the face of tlie earth.
Everywhere they carried devastation and death, and the
terror of Nebuchadnezzar king of the Assyrians. But

* Jndith, ii. 2.
5

98 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE.

lo! in tlie midst of these nations of slaves, one of
those petty States on which men had looked down Avith
scorn, and in this petty State a little hamlet, hidden
among the hills of Palerstine, that had never heard of
the splendors of the great principalities of Asia ! In the
home of her fathers, in sackcloth and ashes, a young
widow was mourning her husband, and praying to her
God. Judith rises in the name of her imperilled coun-
try. Armed with her chaste beauty and her God-given
courage, she goes alone into the barbarian camp, and
returns not till she brings in her woman's hands — I had
almost said, her virgin hands — the tyrant's head, drip-
ping with blood.

All honor to little Judea! What pity, if it had be-
come a province of that Assyrian empire with which it
was related by so many ties of origin and speech ! With-
out Judea, we should be neither Frenchmen nor Chris-
tians, but only a fraction of the immense agglomeration
of nations that made up the Roman empire.

All honor to the little States ! They were consti-
tuted by the hand of God, and I hope in him that he
will not suffer them to be destroyed. His providence
presides in history, and has placed them between the
great States as the negation of universal empire, the
pacific obstacle to the shocks of their power, the plots
of their ambition.

The little States ! They are the representatives of
right in its most affecting form — right unarmed and
defenceless.

The little States! They are the radiating centres of
the most splendid civilization, from ilie cities of ancient
Greece, that gave us an ^schylus and a Sophocles, an
A.ristides and a Plato, down to those ]V})ublics of mod-
ern Italy to whicli wo owe the Revival of licarning.

WAR. liO

[This drc:im of universal eiiipiir, wliicli iiuulo Alcxniulcr weep
to think that the world had limits, while his ambition had none,
has taken, in later times, another form.]

AVe know thi' L-artli Ijottcr iiuw. "We know that its
L'xtent is too vast to submit to any single empire. But
there is a fancy, now-a-days, for dividing it into vast
zones, eaeli of wliicli represents ii Avorld. There is the
Sclavonic world, the Germanic world, the American
world, not to mention others. Now, within the limits
of each of these worlds, the effort is made to consolidate
the peoples by violently tearing asunder the sacred
bonds of history and treaties. Men appeal to the nat-
ural right of the race, and, if need be, to a higher mis-
sion, mysterious as fate. And while they are trying to
fuse together kingdoms and nations in the crucibles of
this novel alchemy, our pseudo-philosophers stand by
and cry out. Progress !

I say it is going backward toward the ages of bar-
barism. I come back to my book, my inspired Bible.
Daniel saw them — these giant empires — both in pro-
phecy and in history, and, like Saint Peter in his trance,
he beheld them in the form of beasts. '• In the first
year of Belshazzar. king of Babylon, Daniel had a
dream, and visions of his head upon his bed ; and he
wrote the dream, and told the sum of the matters."*
He saw mankind itnder its most natural image, a vast
and surging sea, and darkness was upon the face of it ;
'' and, behold, the four winds of heaven were in strife
upon the great sea.'' The prophet watched the storm,
and presently there emerged from the billows four mon-
strous beasts. The first was like a lion, and had wings,
whereby its wrath might rage from end to end of the
earth with the swiftness of an eagle. Anotlier was like

* Daniel, vii. 1.

100 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE.

a leopard ; it had four heads, and the four quarters of
the world bowed down before it. Then came the north-
ern bear, its jaws armed with a triple row of teeth, and
Daniel heard a voice saying, "Arise, devour much flesh."
And while the bear rose up to its hideous banquet,
there appeared behind it another monster, more ter-
rible and strange than all the rest. Its teeth and claws
were of iron. It did not eat, but mangled, and when
it had mangled with its bloody jaws, it stamped the
residue with its feet. Upon its brow it wore an ever-
growing horn, the t}q)e of brute force. And this horn,
tJie seat, likewise, of its spiritual pride, had eyes like
the eyes of man, and a blaspheming mouth speaking
great things against righteousness and against God.

Cease ! cease, ye gloomy visions ! I too have beheld
you with my own eyes, not in prophecy, but in history.

II. Christian War, or Force in flie Service of Right.

*-I beheld," continues Daniel (and this was Avritten
ages before the coming of Jesus Christ), " I beheld in
the night-vision, and behold with the clouds of heaven
came one like the Son of man, and drew near to the
Ancient of Days. And to him were given dominion and
glory and a kingdom, that all peo^ile, nations, and lan-
guages should serve him ; whose dominion is an ever-
lasting dominion, whicli sliall not pass away, and his
kingdom that Avhich shall not be destroyed."* On the
ruins of those empires of violence, the Redeemer has
come to })lant tliis new empire, under wliich all nations,
maintaining their independence, sluiU be, nevertheless,
one people of God. Tiiis is Christian civilization, or,
to use a more old-fashionod expression, this is Christcn-

* Daniel, vii. 1.}, 11.

WAH. lui

dom — an empire peaceful in its nature, since it is not
propagated by the swoi-d, l)u( whicli puts on its ^var-
rior's armor whenever it is needful to defend itself
against its enemies. The Son of man is the Prince of
jieace ; but yet, as the prophets beheld liim, there went
forth from Ix'tween his teeth a two-edged sword.

[It is this material sword which God has not committed to the
peacetul liands of the chiefs of his Church, l)ut \vhicli he has
iatrustcd to the civil powers — empires or republics. The only
mission of this sword is to defend riq;hteousness against violent
aggression. Father Hyacinthe inquires wlu^ it is spoken of as
a sword with two edges.]

It is because there are two sorts of attack npon Chris-
tian civilization — two forms of barbarism which menace
it from without and from within.

Every unjust aggression on the frontiers of a nation
is an act of barbarism. The nation, then, in the per-
son of those who represent and govern it, must have
power to draw the sword and smite the barbarian.
The rights of individuals may sometimes stand defence-
less under the oppression of the strong, and then it is
that there remains for justice its sublimest triumph —
martyrdom. Xot so with the rights of States. For
them it would not be moral heroism, it would be a crime
as well as a disgrace, to turn the left cheek when smit-
ten on the right. A great Italian patriot has said :
" Independence is to nations what modesty is to women.
What are all the other virtues worth, when this is
wanting ?''*

Within, there is another form of barbarism. Xot
that of the nation. The nation has no need to be de-

* Cesar Balbo, " Les Espérances de ritalie."

102 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE.

fended against itself. It is botli conservative and lib-
eral. Enthroned at all its firesides, there is bnt one
thing which it more abhors than foreign war, and that
is civil war. Bnt there have been in every age, and
they especially abonnd in evil times, a minority having
no concern with interests or dnties, and who, powerless
in the world of thought, are always ready to appeal to
violence. With this internal barbarism, so long as it
makes no aggressions, the sword has nothing to do. It
amounts to a principle with all free nations, that armed
force is not to interfere in matters of internal police ;
and among our neighbors, whose example I have had
such frequent occasion to cite, the constable carries for
his sole but sufficient badge of authority the wand of
the law. But when rebellion flies to arms, then the
nation, its prince at its head, must draw against it that
sword of which the apostle says that " the Power bear-
eth not the sword in vain, for he is the minister of
God to execute wrath on him that doeth evil.''*

[Such is the csseutially defensive chamcter of that Christian
war, in which force is cxchisively at the service of riglit. From
this, Father Hyacinthe infers the dignit}^ of the soklier's profes-
sion, and the grandeur of his mission in modem civilization.
He especially honored, in the army, that sentiment of hierarchy
and discipHne which tends, of late, to grow weaker in the rest of
the nation.]

I have never honored insult and insurrection with
the name of liberty. Liberty, in my view, is the dignity
of that man who bows to the authority of his own
conscience, and consequently to tlie law and the magis-
trate. No one is free until he has learned how to
obey. Now this grand spirit of obedience is becoming
lost among us, and we need the army to preserve it to

* Romans, xiii. 4.

WAiî. 103

us. It is not a cofllc of slaves, Gentlemen. These are
soldiers — French soldiers. They had a i)ret()rian guard
at Kome: in France we have never had other than
soldiers — soldiers who lind, in the sword by their side,
in the tlag above their head, the double lesson of obe-
dience and of honest pride.

[lu speaking of tho nature of war, Father Hyacinthe only very
slightly indicated its effects. These, he said, would of themselves
require an entire discourse. The immediate effects of it are
always destructive ; so that it must always be a maxim of na-
tional wisdom, " lie who makes two blades of grass grow where
only one grew before, has done more for mankind than the vic-
tor of a hundred battles." And yet Providence, accustomed to
bring good out of evil, has often placed in war the principle of
the moral regeneration of society.]

These are the terrible but incontestable benefits
which, in conclusion, I would indicate in a single word.
But, great God! what shall I say ? There are hours in
the life of nations when peace becomes a peril and
almost a scourge. Wealth is too often a fatal thing to
individuals, not because it is an evil, — on the contrar}^,
it is a great good ; but perverse man turns even good
into a curse, especially when this good smiles upon his
passions. Thus divine Wisdom has said, '• Blessed are
the poor! How hard is it for a rich man to enter the
kingdom of heaven!'' Peace, too, is a good yet more
excellent, and yet when nations abuse it, it may be as
fatal to them as wealth to the individual. Peace, in
deed, develops wealth, and sets it circulating through
the body of society. Then, with wealth, it develops
luxury, in private life as well as public, and especially
among women, with whom it puts on its most seductive
and "corrupting character. And all the time, as in a
splendid but infected sepulchre, the morals of the peo-

104 DISCOUESES OF FATHEIl HYACINTHE.

pie go on decaying in this terri])le calm — and with them
its understanding perishes also. I have sometimes com-
pared the sophist and the harlot : I must never do it
again in this pulpit, if I have any regard for rhetoric.
But I don't care for rhetoric ; I am resolved to lay bare
the wounds which society so obstinately hides. Yes ;
while luxury is consuming a nation's vitals, while in
the midst of increasins:^ dissoluteness the harlots lift
their shameless heads on every side, like worms upon
the corpse on which they feed, there rises up another
brood of corruption and death, which attacks, not the
heart, but the brain — it is the sophists, corrupters at
once of the public reason and of the language which is
its organ. They make their attack in succession on
the greatest words of that language — liberty, progress,
civilization, morality, and even God ; and in these sa-
cred vessels of speech, in place of the perfume of the
truth, they leave a deadly poison. They make it their
business to pervert all just ideas and suj^plant them by
vague and unreal abstractions. Then, amid these i)han-
toms that they are chasing in the void, and embracing
in the sweet delusion of a dream, as Orpheus embraced
Eurydice at the gates of hell, these demented souls
keej) crying out, " Facts ! facts ! leave theories to the
old folks ! give us facts and realities !''

Facts, forsooth ! AYell, here they are Î The enemy at
our gates, our honor insulted, our independence men-
aced ! If nothing less than this will serve to save us
from the toils of those wlio would drag us down to
ruin, then God will grant us this, for he loves us and will
save us from ourselves. Facts ! Ilere are facts which
sober us from our intoxication with abstractions, and
bring back the sense of reality — war! victory or death !
Tlie flag of France torn with shot, stained with blood,

WAii. 105

drooping in glorious Uitiers, 1)iit never receding! The
women of France rising indignant behind their lius-
bands and their sons, and driving l)eibre the scourge of
their righteous anger and disgust tliis rabble-rout of
harlots and sophists! Make way there for the Sister
of Charity, that conies to tend the wounded on the bat-
tle-lield! Make way for the Catholic priest, till now
neglected and despised, sneered at as a man of the
past, a man of foreign sympathies, when all the time
he is the nation's own man, for the present and the
past alike : he is at hand now with the consolations of
religion, comforting in his arms, cherishing with tears
and kisses those who ar« dying with no mother by their
side.

As those days draw nigh, as in the days of Israel's
calamity, men cry, Peace ! peace ! But the Lord, per-
haps, has said War ! The monarchs go about one to
another calling each other Brother, and then, as if they
doubted of it, saying it oyer again. The peoples do but
make echo to their kings. From the coasts of the At-
lantic to the shores of the Mediterranean, interests in
coalition protest against war, now l)y the dull silence of
business, now by the noisy complaints of working-men.
The talking men and the writing men come to the sup-
port of business interests in the name of ideas, and
onco more the whole world is crying Peace I And yet,
as under some overhanging storm, we seem to feel the
thunder in the air, so the people vaguely percei^'Ç in
their atmosphere that terrible gathering of electricity
which Jesus Christ has spoken of as " rumors of wars."

Son of Bethlehem ! Father of the Age to come !
Prince of peace ! 0 grant us that peace which is peace
indeed ! Scatter these rumors of wars, save each nation
by itself, regenerate France by her own children! So

106 DISCOURSES OF FATHEE HYACINTHE.

grand she is, even yet; so peaceful aiul so prosperous she
might be, if only left to her own true instincts!

But if it is too late — great CtocI, if, in thy wisdom,
thou hast otherwise decided, then bring back to us, upon
tlie battle-field, that faith which on the battle-field we
first received; that faith of Tolbiac which made as
great, but which it is sought to rayish from us. Pour
out in war the blood of our young men, too precious to
dry up in sterility, or be corrupted in the pleasures of
an unworthy peace. Leap from the scabbard, thou
sword of the Lord and of France, gladius Domini et Ge-
deonis, and do thy work! Do it speedily, and do it to
the end !

And then, " 0 thou sword of the Lord, put up thy-
self into thy scabbard : rest, and be still !"*

* Jeremiah, xlvii. G.

LEG TURK SIX TPI

Jaxuauy 5, 18G8.

CIVILIZATION.

My Loud ARcnBisiior, axd Gextlemex: The na-
tions constitute among themselves a higher common-
wealth so intimate and necessary, that Avar itself, with
all its discords and its horrors, does not suffice to de-
stroy it. But have they not also some work to do in
common, the fruit of tlie development of eacli, and the
mutual relations of all? To put this question is to
answer it; and that with the one word Civilization.

It is a vague word, I know, like all words that denote
general ideas. It is subject, consequently, to the most
diverse interpretations ; often, alas ! to the most mis-
chievous perversions. But is this a reason why we
should give up using it? Because it is a pleasure to
feeble or perverse minds to wither everything they touch,
must we leave them free to deflower a language and
corrupt at will its noblest words and its most legitimate
ideas ? I think not. Gentlemen ; and that is the reason
why I mean to liold on by that word civilization, and
why I undertake to define it.

Civilization seems to me to be in the body politic
what health is to the natural body— tlie result of a prac-
tical harmony between the organic functions and the
laws of life. For the same reason, barbarism seems

108 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE."

to me like a morl)id stiite, in uhich the eoiistitutioiial
principles of tlie social system are habitually neglected
and violated. I will define civilization, then, as the
state of a nation whose activity, regulated by justice, is
developed in the direction of material and moral welfare ;
or, in other words, as the practice of virtuous and pros-
perous nations.

Civilization is both complex and multiform — com-
plex, because it includes many elements ; multiform,
because it is realized in many different ways. So that,
from the start, we reject that invariable mould Avhicli a
certain school of publicists would fain impose on all the
races of mankind. One single form could not possibly
fit all lands and all ages, nor, in the same land and
age, all classes of society. In Europe, we have no ex-
clusive and inaccessible castes, but we have, and always
shall have, classes.

Now I distinguish between two leading forms of civ-
ilization, which I shall take as the heads of this dis-
course— one answering to the wants of the great ma-
jority of men, embracing the primitive and indispen-
sable elements of public order, and forming the vast
basis of the social pyramid ; the other, concentrating in
the hands of the comparatively few what I shall speak of
as the accessory forces of civilization, and displaying at
the summit of the social edifice a magnificence which,
though the property of the few, redounds none the less
to the advantage and the honor of all.

Part First. — TJic Essential Laws of Civilization

[Father 113-ac.inlhc proves that, in its primitive and essential
form, civilization results from the fulfilment of three great laws :
the law of love in the family, the law of la1)or in the field, the
law of prayer in the temple.]

CIVJLI/ATION. 109

I. The Law of Love in the Family.

I luivc spoken before now about love in tlie family —
quite too mucli about it, some people say. I am only
sorry that I have not said more. To exhibit the indis-
soluble union between love and the family is the noblest
and most needed task that any earnest man, and espe-
cially any priest, can set himself. For my })art, I have
never been able to put myself into the position of those
theologians, witli neither heart nor genius, who ignore
this great sentiment of the human soul, and are afraid,
ap])arently, to pollute their lips by uttering its name.
I make bold to declare that it is such men as these
who have unconsciously prepared the way for the dy-
nasty of those conscienceless writers who, separating,
after their fiishion, passion from duty, extol love with-
out comprehending its true dignity, and inflict upon it
that supreme outrage of confounding it with caprice
and lust. Except when it fixes its undivided gaze on
heaven, and becomes virginity, love cannot blossom, save
in the sanctuary of home, with that twofold bloom, so
beautiful and yet so serious and lu)ly — inarriage aiid
pîirentage.

However, I have no occasion, just now, to recur to
this important subject. I will only observe, that in all
prosperous nations public life is subordinate to private
life. This is true not only in this sense, that the >State,
having îox its mission to protect the rights of the
family, holds toward it the relation of means to end,
and that the means is necessarily subordinate to the
end ; but in this higher sense, that the citizens them-
selves concentrate in their homes the noblest of their
activities, convinced that, as the best and worthiest
service to humanity is attained by serving it in one's

110 DISCOUKSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE.

own country, so one may best serve and love his coun-
try in his family. Tlicre, most of all, is plaj^ed the
drama of human life, intense and ravishing as the best
passions of the heart, grave as duty, active as the pur-
suit of interest (Avliich is itself a duty), calm and recol-
lected as study and prayer. It is, therefore, to impel
any people in a direction full of falsehood and i)eril,
to hold exclusively, or even principally, before it the
prospects of the political career. Doubtless the life of
a great nation is at the polls and in the legislature, but
far more than this, it is at tlie fireside. Where shall we
find philosophers to teach us tliis— authors and artists
to depict it — where, above all, the men to live it ? Ah !
look beyond the Alps, at our little neighbor, Switzer-
land, home of toilsome industry and of the household,
of simjde, honest, happy life ! — home, too, of free, tra-
ditional democracy ! x\nd here, poor French democracy,
despising the family, despising religion, here thou art
lying yet, after eighty years, crying, helpless, in thy
bloody swaddling clothes !

II. The Law of Lahor in the Field,

[Coming to tliis law of labor, so closely related to tlie law of
the family, Fatlier Hyacinthe remarked that it is peculiar to the
human race. Generally speaking, the brute, left to himself, does
no labor ; while man from his very creation was under the glori-
ous necessity of work. " The Lord God placed him in the garden
of Eden to dress it and to keep it."* By the great mass of men this
toil is exercised by the hands and upon matter, and, more partic-
ularly still, in the tillage of the ground. " In the sweat of his
face, he is to cat bread."]]

Agriculture, then, is one of the chief laws of civiliza-
tion. And considering that at tliis very hour wliile I

♦Genesis, ii. 15. + Ibid., iii. 19.

CIVILIZATION. Ill

am speakin,2,\ a national ceivniuny is taking place in
honor of it,* I mtiy ])C allowed to insist upon its impor-
tance, so ot'Lcn overlooked. I Avonld never separate the
interests of religion from those of my own country. I
know there are those who consider this combination
dangerous, or at least unsuitaljle. To me, it is tiie sim-
ple duty of a Christian and a citizen.

Agriculture, I say, is the chief and primitive element
of civilization ; and this for three reasons. First, be-
cause by cftecting the transition from nomadic to settled
life, it becomes the starting-point of civil society. Sec-
ondly, because it yields the great product of civilization
in the material order, the necessary basis of the spirit-
ual order — bread. Finally, because it holds the popula-
tion to their most appropriate residence, out of the city,
and in tlie country.

1. Agriculture the starting-point of civil society.

Before the tillage of the earth commences, men live in
wandering tribes of hunters, or more commonly shep-
herds. These are not savages, as I have already shown.
We have dwelt with admiration on their way of living
on the lofty table-lands of Asia, the region of rich pas-
turage, as if we looked upon it in the pages of Genesis,
under the tents of Abraham and Isaac and Jacol). But
neither are they civilized, in the sense in which we are
now^ using the word, for they have no civil organization.
It is the tillage of the earth which halts the wanderer,
and holds him to the meadow, the wood, the valley, by
whose riches or beauty he has been charmed. He
pitches his tent, plants his landmarks, and establishes
between himself and the soil that settled alliance of
which are born at once two great, and in their turn pro-

* The distribution of prizes for agriculture at the Universal Exposition
of 1S67.

112 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE.

lilîc facts,, — the orgaDization of property, and the organ-
ization of labor. Property existed before; the family
owned its tent and all it contained. Labor also existed
before; the shepherds tended their flocks. But neither
labor nor property were organized. From the hour this
organization begins, it takes cognizance of interests, and
so of rights. For it is the peculiar glory of man, that
for him, underneath every interest, there lies a right.
From this coming together of all interests and all rights,
there grows up the necessity, more and more keenly felt,
of a common arbiter, a central sovereign power, in a
word, of civil society.

3. Agriculture the bread-producing power.

Modern science analyzes bread, and shows us marvel-
lous things; but it has not seen nor told the half.*
But it has shown us how the corn, that foster-father
of nations, goes seeking through the soil, by potent and
infallible instinct, the imperceptible traces of the ele-
ments necessary for our bodies, — the phosphorus, for
example, essential to our bones; and then concentrates
it into the rich and generous grain, — grain, the earth's
milk for man, as milk is the mother's bread for her
child — the royal aliment of the civilized nations! I
am well aware that it is not such universally, l)ut it is
among the causes which have contributed to place us
of Occidental Christendom in the highest grade of
civilization.

Bread, the food of the body, is in one sense the food
of the soul. Boast yourselves as you may, ye men of
thought ; for all that, your intellect would go out into
nothingness but for the blood flowing to the brain, like
oil in the lamp, actually keeping ali^e tluut flam'"» of

* See the remarkable '• Rapport strr les commerces dn blc, de la favliie et du
pain,'" by M. Le Play. Quarto ; Paris, L'GO.

CIVILIZATION. 11:3

tliuugliL which ilhiniinuU'S and wariu.s llir world, if, ahis !
it do not dcstroy it. It is i'wnn bread tluit tlie blood
derives its best juices, so that the development of
genius as well as of wealth is traceable to its origin in a
grain of wheat.

All life is in the bread — material life, as in its sul)-
stance; intellectual life, as in its instrument; religious
life, as in its symbol. And to behold the crow^ning
glory of the bread, we must lollow it to the Catholic
altar, where, in the hands of Christ, by the most amaz-
ing of all m3'steries, it becomes the eternal food of the
soul, and the august centre of the religion of the human
race — ''the bread of God, which givetli life unto the
World."**

3. Agriculture as holding civilization to the arena of
its best achievements — country life.

I have no disposition to be unjust toward the city. I
would not speak of cities, with the poet, as '' the sties
of nations.'"! And I do not look, with him, for their
disappearance in the course of time. Whatever the vice
and wretchedness which they hide, or which they engen-
der, cities are the necessary and glorious centres of
national life. But they are exceptional centres. The
real scene prepared by Providence for the social activi-
ties of man, is not in the city, but in the country.
There, are gathered, with a sort of prodigality, the con-
ditions most fiivorable to the health, both of body and
of soul. There, the laboring population realize most
readily the prolific wedlock of happiness and virtue;
while the upper classes, themselves kept free from cor-
ruption, find opportunity of exercising, on a vast scale,
that benign iniluence of fortune and education which
should be their highest delight, as it is their holiest

* Johu, vi. 33. t M. de Lamartiue.

114: DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE.

duty. The cibsentecism of tlie ricli, forerunner of the
absenteeism of the peasantry, was the beginning of our
phigues. Their only remedy will l)e to revive, under
such new forms as may suit the present state of society,
the traditions of the cottage and tlie manor-house. We
shall never be effectually decentralized, until this con-
viction is carried into the minds, and still more into
the hearts of men. The best dwelling-place for man is
not in capitals, nor even in provincial cities, but in the
country. Whenever I see, in any nation, the setting
of a current against nature, the tide of population run-
ning in a fatal direction, the blood of the body politic
all determining toward the head, I look with dread for
the result. I have no applause for these factitious splen-
dors, and I cry out, like Henry HI., in the presence of
what was, even then, the overgrown metropolis, that
" Paris is too big a head for France to carry."

III. TliG Law of Frayer in the Temjue.

The law of tlie family and the law of labor yield their
rich delights only at cost of many sacrifices. And to
these, men would not long submit, but for the help of
religion. The law of prayer, binding in itself, is more
])inding in view of these two other laws, the fulfilment
of which it secures.

I like facts ; especially the sort of facts in which we
find at once i)oetry, morality, and utility. Permit me,
tlien, to refer once more to the example of that little
population of Basques, on whose frontiers I passed my
childliood. Thanks to their isolated dwellings, their
old traditionary freedom, larger and more practical than
our modern liberties, thanks es])ecially to their inlier-
ited morality and religion, the lîasques, in a mountain

CIVILTZATION. 115

coiHitrv, liltk' siiKod ior tillairt', liuvc realized tlic ideal
of rural life. Uiidci- that Jiiscayan sky, the murkiest
Fky of Si)aiu, they ])ri'sent the rare spectacle of a coii-
teuted aud ha[)[)y people, disdaiuiu;^ wealth, but never
l<nt)win_u' ])Overty. So jx-rfect is the security whicli
[trevails ainong them, that the cattle and crops lie in the
tic'lds without fear of robbers, bein^i; (as some one finely
says) under <i-uard of the J'j'g-hth Commandment.

[Father Hyacinthe insisted at leni^th ou the observance of tlic
Lord's Day, as the realization of the social law of prayer. The
Lord's Day kept by tlie coiintrj^-people in worship and festivity,
in the double sanctuary of church and home, is the badge of
civilization. On the contrary, in our great cities, the Sabbath
violated with labor and blasphemy, and the Monday given over
to drunken festivit}', are symptoms of the most abject barba-
rism.]

I cannot refrain, here, from calling your attention to
a contrast whicli is, at the same time, a harmony. This
city, which has so many claims to be called illustrious,
which, in so many respects, is at the head of the civil-
ized Avorld, has always acknowledged as its jiatron saint
a humble country-girl, the shepherdess Genevieve.
Through all the vicissitudes of the centuries, the heart of
Paris has been constant to her ; and even now, each day,
about her shrine, the high and the lowly come together
^^■ith common devotion and a common trust. They
remember how she brought the boats np the Seine to
feed Paris in the famine ; how, with prophetic instinct,
she distinguished among the incoming torrents of the
barbarians, those that could do nothing but destroy
from those that might restore; how, by the puissance
of her prayer, she drove back the Huns, with Attila,
toward Asia, and brought back the Franks, with Clovis,
to baptism and civilization. She who wrought these

11 G DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE.

mighty works was but a country-girl, but she was not
a barbarian; and it is most just and lit that she pre-
sides at Paris over the destinies of France and civili-
zation.

Part Secoxd. — The Higher CiviUzation.

[Father Hyacinthe proposed to show three things : the fact of
a higher civiUzation ; the right of such a civilization to exist; the
dangers attending it.]

I. TJte Fad of a Iliglicr Civilization.

The two laws of the family and of worship are the
same at the bottom of society and at the top. Not so
with the law of labor. Labor is not wholly for the
hands. There comes a day when, entering on the vast
fields of mind, it seeks to till them, in their turn, and
sow them with the seed of science. Science, at that
stage of development at which it is worthy of the name,
is not an absolute necessity of human nature. If man
knows his own soul and God, love and duty, labor and
death, he knows the ansAver to those supreme questions
which are put to him by consciousness within and by
the world without. But none the less is science the
indispensable luxury of great civilizations. It is devel-
oped in two principal directions, the contemplative and
the active.

Contemplative science — what is there that it has not
included in its scope? It has scrutinized the invisible,
weighed the imponderable, decomposed the molecule,
in the laboratories of its physics and its chemistry.
Queen of tlie inorganic world, it is extending its con-
quests, day Ijy day, by means of ])hysiology, into the
organic world; and, laying hands upon life itself in the
currents of blood which it iiitcrroii-ates and directs at

CIVILIZATION. 117

will, it seeks to penetnite those uwful secrets which we
liave been Ciirrviug about Avith us in our own bodies,
without daring to exj^lore tlicin. Its realm extends
even to higher spheres than tliis. It takes to itself the
name of i)hilosophy, and hovers aloft in the regions of
the soul, and above the soul it studies the ideas which
enlighten it. îind, far above the ideas, (Jod who gives
them light. Yes I to start from the atom, to go mount-
ing upward, Ijy the blood, by the ideas, by God himself,
up to the very topmost height of things, never pausing
until, like the dazed eagle, it hangs poised with eye
lixed u})on the sun — this is the career of science I
All! 1 could lift up a lamentation that should not
be comforted, were humanity to be bereft of these
sublime audacities, of the ravishment of these prolific

And yet this is not all Science, as I have just hinted,
is a prolific mother. She cannot remain cloistered in
the sanctuary of contemplation, like a virgin in her
calm and luminous beauty. She comes back into the
sphere of material activity ; she is wedded to productive
toil, and they are the parents of power and riches. Into
the hands of the laborer from the plough she puts im-
plements and methods that are akin to the miraculous,
and bids him Go, subdue the world, and transform it.
And — as in these Titanic wars that are led by genius
and waited on by fortune, each day is marked by some
resplendent victory — so discovery succeeds discovery,
each surpassing that which went before, and science
applied by industry impels society from triumph on to
triumph, toward a future which they do but just dimly
descry, and the prospect of which at once enraptures
and dismays.

And then over the stalwart and naked shoulders of

118 DISCOUESES OF FATHER HYACINTHE.

this positive civilization -wliicli controls and operates
material forces, lo ! Art draAVS nigh to tling its starry
and imperial robe — all the glories of painting, sculp-
ture, and architecture— all the harmonies of music and
of poetry, falling from heaven, like a transfiguration,
upon tlie stir and din of human toil.

II. The BifjM of the Higher Civilization to Exist.

[This civilization is not only a foot, but a right and a duty—
the right of man's royalty over nature — the duty of God's vice-
gerent over the creation. It is the fulfilment of the primitive
command, " Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth and
subdue it." *

Father Hyacinthe remarked that in order to facilitate the fulfil-
ment of this command by Christian nations, divine Providence
has developed in them the faculty of production and that of ab-
straction to a degree utterly unknown to pagan societ}^

That civilization which is founded on self-denial and renunci-
ation of the world, has achieved the highest success, in private
and public fortune. It is by seeking, first and exclusively, the
kingdom of God and his righteousness, that man has been
brought into possession of the world.

As to the faculty of abstraction, in which science properly so
called originates, it is undoubtedly an appanage of the European
race. But it has received its full development only under the in-
fluence of Christianity. IIow vast the difi'erence between the
heathen and the Christian reason! — between the scientific genius
of ancient Greece, and that of the doctors of the Church, and of
the Cîhristian philosophers !]

III. The Dangers of the Higher Cirilization.

[The experience of every age assures us that nations are but too
easily drawn into the abuse of wealth and science; or rather
that such abuses are inevitable, in the absence of an energetic and
sustained struggle against the ctfects of original sin. From these
abuses, when they become multiplied, results that twofold cor-

♦ Clencai»», i. 28.

CIVILIZATION. 119

riiption to -whifli Fallu-r Ilyacintlic h;is iilrcady aniinfidvcrtc»!,
and ■which is growing upon us more and more — the corruption
of morals, and the corruption of the reason itself J

"We liad in France, at tlie beginning of this century, a
great school of Transcendental philosophy, which, un-
happily incomplete on some points, erroneous on others,
is none the less the lasting honor of a country of which
it failed to be the salvation. It relegated to the eigh-
teenth century those materialist or simply sensualist
doctrines the wretched and unwholesome traditions of
which it refused to propagate, so that no one would have
guessed, at that time, how speedily they w^ould be com-
ing back upon us. But victorious over materialism,
inheriting, in part at least, the traditions of Plato, it
thought itself in a position to dispense with the Chris-
tian revelation. It ignored the realities of the moral
and religious life, and perverting ideas as others had
perverted facts, it left behind it unfaithful, and yet per-
haps logical disciples, who returned, by paths which
itself had opened for them, to this very skepticism and
materialism, the disgrace of Avhich does, at this hour,
weigh heavier than ever on the mind of France. A hid-
eous intellecttial barbarism, for which, for my part, I
blush before Europe, and more yet before the future,
and against which I can never protest often enough nor
forcibly enough ! It is not only the divine AYord made
flesh whose history and doctrine they blaspheme; it is
the httman AVord itself that they would smother in those
first lights which preside at once over the reason of phi-
losophers and the common sense of the people. God is
no longer a personal being. Under that conception he
served to sup})ly the craving of former ages. To-day he
is an idea of the mind, a law of the universe, an abstrac-
tion. Free agencvis a hallucination of the consciousness:

120 DISCOUllSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE.

man is not free, even when lie thinks himself so, for he
always acts nnder the fatal pressure of motives. The
difference between right and wrong varies with individ-
uals as well as with periods and climates; it depends
upon the varying points of view at which we stand, and
in fact is nothing but an optical illusion !

I pause before these pernicious steeps, down which,
from the very height of civilization, a nation, at least
the upper classes of a nation, may go plunging into a
barbarism infinitely deeper and more hopeless tlian that
of rude and simple nations.

0, better far the peasantry, or (as our Democracy
in its lofty and insolent language affects to call them),
the " ignorant country-folks !" To them I turn in search
of that the loss of which nothing can make good — the
divine gift of common sense and good morals!

[From the perils of the higher civilization, Fiither Hyacinthe
draws an important and unanticipated conclusion — that religion
is even more needful to the rich than to the poor ; to the groat
than to the masses.

Religion, furthermore, is not only the conservative force in
human society in its present condition ; still more is it the pro-
phecy of its future. Man is a being too full of mysteries to end his
career with the achievements of this earthly existence. Civiliza-
tion is the expression of an ideal too grand to be realized, com-
pletely and absolutely, short of the commonwealth of eternity.
This ultimate condition of things is that of which Cicero had a
presentiment, Miien lie declared " this universal world one gen-
eral conunonwealth of gods and men." Universus hie mimdi.'^
11 lia civitas communis dconun afque homininn.'^' It is that which
the prophets have contemplated under the image of the new
Jerusalem, city of God, beginning on the earth, but completed
only in heaven. "Behold the tabernacle of God witli men, and
he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God
himself shall be with them, and be their God."f]

* Dc I.opil.ufi, i., vii. t RcTclaiion, xxi. 8.

CIVILIZATION. 121

The expectation of iliis highesi lile is ex])ro6Séd in
one of tlie noblest and most misapprehended institutions
of the Catholic churcli. Now tliat I liave contcmphiti'd
civilization under its various forms, suffer me to disen-
gage from my poor person the snl)limit y of the monastic
state, and to greet in the true monk, not some dead fos-
sil of the un returning past, but the boldest and most
farsighted forerunner of the ultimate future. He is
the man who, without despising what there is of grand
and noble in this Avorld, loving it, on the contrary, and
keei)ing heart of hope for all its interests, warms with
ejithusiasm for a loftier form of goodness that is yet to
come, but which is brought nigh to him by faith. He
looks fiir beyond these most solid realities, to the bold-
est and most splendid Utopias, and ever, as humanity
grows impatient of its voyage, and longs to land ere it
has reached the port, he seems to point forward to some
invisible shore, and say, "Xot yet ! not yet!"

In the life of Saint Benedict written by-vSaint Gre-
gory the Great — historian worthy of his hero — it is
reported that one night, just before the hour of those
holy hymns which exhale from the cloister in the midst
of silence and darkness, the man of God was gazing upon
heaven through the window of his cell. A mystical
light shoue round about him, and the whole world was
brought before him, as if it had been gathered up into
one ray of sunlight. " He saw it," says the inscription
which is read to this day in the tower in which he dwelt
on Monte Cassino, *"' he saw it, and scorned it."' Lispc.rit
et de.yjc.cit. This world which was his handiwork —
his, the patriarch of the Monks of the "West, patriarch
I might say of European civilization — when he saw it
lifted clear of the obsctirities of time, into the light of the
everlasting Sun, how petty and poor a world he found it!

G

122 DISCOUESES OF FATHER HYACINTHE.

Gentlemen, let us act like liim. We are about to
separate for one year more ; let us pledge each other
that we will toil with more intelligence and devotion
than ever at the task of civilization in Europe, and first
of all in France. To this let us apply our strength.
On this let us expend our days and nights ! But, in
proportion as we shall accomplish this work, let us con-
template it in a light that comes fi-om higher than itself,
and higher than ourselves, in the divine radiance of the
future. " Inspexit et despexitP Let us love it as being
the forerunner of the Future; let us scorn it as that
which the Future shall so far excel.

SERMON

Ox xnE OCCASION 01' THE Profession or Catholic
Faith, and the First Communion, of a converted
Protestant American Lady.

I will eiug of the mercies of the Lord forever.'"— Psalm Isxxix. 1.

My Sister in Jesus Christ : It is from you that I
have received the text and the subject of this exhorta-
tion. Overflowing with gratitude to Him who has
called you out of darkness into his marvellous light,
you have asked me to forget' this audience, to think
only of yourself and God, and to speak only of his
loving-kindness whicli has heen manifested in every
event of 3'our life. I consent to your request ; tind con-
sidering your life in the three divisions by which time
is measured, in simple truth and the devout confidence
of an overflowing heart, I will endeavor to speak of the
designs of God in 3'our past, 3'our present, and your
future. The history of Christian souls is the most
wonderful and yet the most occult of all histories.
The outward events which agitate society have their
inner meaning and ultimate reason only in this ; and
when we shall come to read it in its completeness in the
book of life, in the light of eternity, we shall find in it
the irrefutable justification of the providence of God
over human affairs, and the true title of the nobility of
our race, in the blood and the mercy of Christ. " We
shall sing of the mercies of the Lord forever."

124 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE.

I. And first, Madam, what are these mercies of your
past life ? And, that we may understand it better, what
have you been, yourself, hitherto ? I feel some embar-
rassment in answering my question. Born, as you
were, in the midst of heresy, you were no heretic. No,
thank God, you were no heretic, and nothing sliall force
me to apply to you that cruel — that justly cruel name,
against which all my knowledge of j'our past makes
protest. Saint Augustine, one of the most exact and
rigid of the teachers of Christian antiquity, refuses,
in more than one of his works, to include among here-
tics those who, born without the visible pale of the
Catholic Church, have kept the sincere love of truth in
their liearts, and are ready to follow it in all its mani-
festations and requirements.* Wliat constitutes heresy
is that spirit of pride, of revolt and schism which broke
out in heaven when Satan, dividing the angels of light,
tried to reconstruct, in his own fashion, the everlasting
truth of God, and to remodel God's work in the world :
it is the wrathful breath of this archangel's nostrils
with which he would inspire those who, in like malig-
nant spirit, should carry on his work from- age to age.
Meek and lowly of heart, you have never been inspired
by that spirit. You were not, then, a heretic.

But what were you, then ? I was talking one day
with one of your most distinguished fellow-countrymen,
a Protestant by birth, now a Catholic and a priest ;t
and under the impulse of that earnest in([uisitiveness

* "(^iii Hontcntiani Hiiam, qnamvis fabam atciuc pcrvcrsani, nulla pertiiiaci
auiinoHitate (U'fciKliiiit, pncsortiin qiiaiii non audacia pni'^uniptionis piuo
pepererunt, ecd a scductis atqne in ciToreni lapsls parontibiirt accepcrunt,
quaerunt autem cauta pollicitudine veiitatcni, corrigl parati, duin invcncriut,
neqiiaquam sunt inter hœreticos reindandi:'— letter XLIII., Edition of the
Benedictines of Saint Ma>ir.

t The Reverend Father llcckcr, I'oimder and Superior of tlic Congregation
of Suiut I'aul.

PROFESSION OF THE CATHOLIC FAITH. 1'25

which tlie liistory of souls always awakens in me, I
asked him this same question, " What were you?" '• I
(lid not belong to any Protestant communion," he re-
plied; "I was baptized in the church of my parents,
but I never shared their faith/' '-'Were you a Nation-
alist, then?" I said. '' Xo," he smilingly answered;
"in the United States we know nothing of that mental
malady of the Europeans." I blushed, and was silent a
moment, and then begged for an explanation, when he
made me this grand reply : '*' I was a natural man, seek-
ing the truth with my whole mind and heart."

Xow, Madam, this is just what you were : a noble
womanly nature, seeking the truth in love, and love in
the truth ; more than that, you were a Christian — yes,
a Catholic.

There is a fundamental distinction, without which it
is not possible to deal justly by the communions sep-
arated from the Catholic Church and the members of
those communions. Every religious system contains
within itself two opposite elements: the negative ele-
ment, which makes it a schism, and most commonly a
heresy; and the positive element, which preserves for it
a greater or less share in the ancient heritage of Chris-
tianity. Xot only distinct but hostile, they are very
near to each other, even in their conflicts : darkness and
light, life and death, mingle without being confounded,
and there results from it all what I would call the deep
and intricate mystery of the life of error. For my part,
I do not render to error the undeserved honor of sui3-
posing it able to live of its own life, breathe by its own
breath, and nourish with its own substance souls which
are not without virtues, and nations not without great-
ness !

Protestantism, as such, is that negative clement which

126 DISCOURSES OF FATHEK HYACINTHE.

you have renounced, and to v.'lncli, with the Catholic
Church, you have said. Anathema. But Protestantism
has not been the only thing in your past religious life :
by the side of its negations have been its athrmations,
and, like a savory fruit enclosed in a bitter husk, you
have been in possession of Christianity from j^our
cradle.

Before coming to us, you were a Christian by baptism
validly received ; and when the hand of the minister
sprinkled the water on your brow with those words of
eternal life, " I baptize thee in the name of the Father,
and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost," it was Jesus
Christ himself who baptized you. " The hand is noth-
ing,'' says iSaint Augustine; "be it Peters or Paul's,
the hand is nothing — it is Christ that baptizes." It was
Christ who betrothed you, wlio received your faith and
pledged to you his own. The depth of your moral
nature, that sacred part of noble souls which instinc-
tively shrinks from error, the Word has consecrated to
himself, that he "might present it to himself as a
chaste virgin,"* reserving it for heaven.

You were a Christian, also, by the Gospel, as well as
by baptism. The Bible was the book of your childhood,
and you learned from it the secrets of this divine faith
which belongs to every age, because it comes from eter-
nity, with the accents of that Anglo-Saxon tongue which
belongs to every land, because it prevails throughout the
world by virtue of its civilizing force. The free exer-
cise of private judgment, under the spirit of which you
have grown uj), is, doubtless, the source of numberless
errors; but — thank God again for tliis — besides the
Protestant principle, there is also tlie Christian prin-
ciple among Protestants; 1)csides privalo judgment,

* 2 Corinthhius, xi. 2.

PROFESSION OF THE CATIKjLIC FAITH. 127

there is the action of the sui)eriuituriil grace received
ill baptism, and of that mysterious influence of which
Saint Paul speaks when he says, " Wc have the mind of
Christ,''* and of which Saint John said, " Ye liave an
unction from tlie Holy One, and ye know all things/'f
When we read over again together that Gospel which
separated our ancestors, I was pleasantly surprised, at
every page, to find that we understood it in the same
sense, and that, consequently, when you read it outside
of the Church, you did not read it without the spirit
of the Church.

Finally, my child, besides Baptism and the Holy
Scriptures, the sacrament and the book, you had Prayer ;
an inward thing, invisible, unspeakable, and yet real
above all things besides ; and pre-eminently the language
of the soul to God, and of God to the soul, the direct
and personal communion of the humblest Christian
with his Pathcr in heaven.

What was it, then, that you lacked? I remember
"what you once said to me, when you were still a Pro-
testant : " You, a monk, and I, a Puritan, are yet of the
same blood royal !" You spoke truly. Xot because you
were a Puritan, but because, although a Puritan, you
were a Christian, were w^e two of the same divine and
royal stock. Y^ou were, like me, a child of the family,
but, one stormy night, imprudent hands had carried
your cradle far away from your Father's home: that
home, although its form had faded from your vision,
and your lips had forgotten how to speak its name, you
have nevertheless been yearning after with tears and
cries, and with every impulse of your soul. What you
needed, my daughter, was to find it again, to weep upon

♦ a Corinthians, xi. 2. 1 1 John, ii. 20.

128 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE.

its tliresliold, to embrace its ancient walls, and dwell
therein forever.

Yon fonnd it, at last, in that temple of Saint Peter,
the most vast and splendid ever reared by man to his
God, bnt whose noblest grandeur, after all, to believing
eyes, is this, that it images the universal brotherhood
of the children of God npon the earth, " that he should
gather together in one the children of God that were
scattered abroad."* Coming from that great dispersion
of souls, which is the work of man in Protestantism,
you could contemplate their highest unity, which is the
Avork of God in Catholicism. Suddenly thrilled to the
depth of your soul, you looked around (I do but repeat
your own touching story) — you looked around 3'ou for
a pi'iest of your own tongue, not to confess to — for you
did not then know the need of that — but to tell your
joy in having at last found a dwelling-place of the soul,
that home so dear to your race, and more necessary in
the religious than in the domestic life : " This is my rest
forever : here will I dwell ; for I have desired it."f

IL I have attempted to recount your past, and to
show how God's loving-kindness has been preparing
you, by his far-reaching hand, for the wonders of the
present. What is this wondrous thing? It is your
mystical marriage with Jesus Christ, by communion
with his real l)ody and blood in the sacrament of his
true Churcli. Betrothed to God in baptism, you become
his spouse in the Eucharist. " Blessed are they which
are called unto the marriage supper of {\\q. Laml)."-|

It is not without a tender significance that you liave
chosen this 14th of July to consummate this solemn act.
This day is the anniversary of your marriage — that mar-

• John, xi. T)'l. t r^alm cxxxii. 11. % llcvelalion, xix. 9.

PnOFESSION OF TIIK CATIIOUC rAIllI. 120

riage wliich lias been sundered by death. Still youii;2f,
and the mother of a fatherless child, you miaht; have
contracted new tics that "would have given a father to
your little one, and to yourself a husband. You have
decided otherwise. You have made your entrance into
the Catholic Church tlie epoch of a great transformation
in your spiritual life, and liavc desired, on this day so
full of loving and sorrowful memories, to lay your suf-
fering hand in the hand of the crucified Spouse, never
again to be withdrawn.

How beautiful appears that Spouse of Calvary, in his
blood and through your tears, and how truly is he made
for you, my daughter ! It is not only '•' Patience smiling
at grief,"* it is Love transported with sorrow and re-
posing in death. I remember the day when first I saw
you in the parlor of my humble convent: you wore
already on your bosom a Catholic crucifix, and your
eyes, full of light and tears, glanced from time to time
toward that other cross on the wall which looked down
upon our meeting, with an expression that revealed
your whole soul — all it still lacked — all it already fore-
saw.

I do not wish to overstate anything ; above all, I
would give no offence to any man. But may I not say
that the orbit wherein Protestant piety ordinarily moves
is the divine, rather than God himself? It is conscience
with its steely temper, at once evangelical and personal ;
it is reverence for truth, the instinctive love for moral
and religious things. I call all this the divine, not
God ; it is the glorious rays of the sun, not its dazzling
disk. Where is the upspringing of the soul to the living
God? ^^My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God:
when shall I come and appear before God ?"f "Where is

* Shakspeare. t Psalm slii. '2.

130 DISCOURSES OP FATHER HYACINTHE.

the liabitmil communion of the heart and life with the
"Word made flesli ? — the tears shed, like the ^lagdalene's,
upon his feet ? — tlie licad bowed, like John's, npon his
breast? — all that Avhich the '^Imitation of Jesus Clirisf*
calls so well '"the familiar friendship of Jesus?" Where,
to express it in a single word, is that Real Presence
which flows from the sacrament as from a hidden
spring, like a river of peace, upon the true Catholic, all
the day long, gladdening and fertilizing all his life ?

This Immanuel — God with us — awaited you in our
church, and in that sacrament w^hich so powerfully
attracted you, even wiien you but half believed it. In
your own worship, as in the ancient synagogue, you
found naught but t^-^^es and shadows; they spoke to
you of reality, but did not contain it ; they awakened
your thirst, but did not quench it: weak and empty
rudiments, which have no longer the right to exist,
since the veil of the temi3le has been rent asunder, and
eternal realities been revealed. " Old things are passed
away; behold, all things are become new."* Ah!
blessed art thou, to have been led to the nuptial cham-
ber of the Lamb !

And 5'et, my daughter, if Christ has enticed your
heart (it is the prophet's own w^ord, "0 Lord, thou
enticed me and I was enticed ; thou art stronger than I,
and hast prevailed"!), he has respected all the rights of
your reason and free will. You have weighed long in
the balance of your judgment what you luive resolved,
what you are about to accomplish. I must do you the
justice to say that you have been scrupulous in reflec-
tion, and maturely deliberate in the fulfilment of your

* 2 ('orinthiuiiH, v. 17.

t .Icremiah, xx. 7. The expression of the common Eii^'lish version Is
Lindly jusfillfd by the Uebrew test— Tk.

PROFESSION OF THE CATHOLIC FAITH. 131

design : — so mucli liiive you leuivd k-si iliis great re-
ligious act should bear any other character than pf-r-
sonal conviction ; so strongly have you persisted in
avoiding any shadow of human influence from without,
or any shadow of the influence of imagination or senti-
ment within !

It is thus that Jesus Christ has sought you for him-
self. Spouse of love, he is, at the same time, the Spouse
of truth and of freedom ; and this is why, when he draws
souls to himself, he never beguiles nor compels them.
He is the eternal AV^ord, begotten of the reason of the
Father, born in the outflow of his infinite splendor; he
remembers his origin, and when he comes to us, it is
not under cover of our darkness, but in the sincerity of
his light. And because he is Truth, he is Liberty: he
bows with respect* before the liberty of the soul, his
image and offspring, and unlearns the language of com-
mand to employ none but that of prayer. "Open to
me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undellled,'' he
says in tlie sacred Song ; " for my head is filled with dew,
and my locks with the drops of the niglit."t " Behold,''
he says in the Revelation, "I stand at the door and
knock ; if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I
will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he
with me.'']: He does not force an entrance, into the
heart, but he enters if it is opened to him. 0 rapturous
words, which show that with God love has the same
delicacy as with man! True love respects as well as
loves, and will accept its triumph only at the hands of
our free choice.

But is this all ? Liberty is not sufficient to this jeal-
ous love : there must be struggle and sacrifice. What

* Wisdom, xii. 18. t Solomon's Song, v, 2. t Revelation, iii. 20.

132 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE.

were the cruel conilicts whicli reiuleivtl your choice,
though free, so difficult and piiiufnl? I may not an-
swer this. Family, friends, countr}^ — I have seen these
sacred wounds too near to dare to touch them. I will
only say that I never knew, till now, how much it costs
the most completely settled mind, and the will most
firmly resolved, to leave the religion of mother and of
native laiid !

Ah! why, on the noble soil of the United States,
must our church be still — I do not say unknown — but
despised by so many souls? Would to God that it
were simply unknown ! A new apostle might then go
to invoke upon those shores that "unknown God"
whom Paul invoked before the Areopagus, that Church
wliich they love in the ideal without knowing it in the
reality ; /and, free from prejudices, thoughtful America
would receive it better than frivolous Athens. But
they think they know us, and they see us through such
a cloud of evil report, that our name excites nothing
but disgust and hatred. How long shall these age-long
misunderstandings endure ? and when shall God at
last command the division-wall to be thrown down ? It
certainly depends upon ourselves to prepare for that
longed-for day by drawing nearer to each other; — not,
certainly, by making doctrinal concessions, which would
be sinful if they were not ciiimerical, but by tlie aban-
donment of our mutual prejudices in tlie ])resence of
facts better understood, and by the formai ion of those
kindly relations in which esteem and charity might
even now unite those whom difference of belief still
separates. As for myself, this is my most ardent wish ;
and the more I come to appreciate the condition of re-
ligious affairs in this country, ilie more living and
urgent necessity this question assumes. Since, then,

PROFESSION OF THE CATHOLIC FAITH. 133

"the time is come that jiulgmont must l)f'<,nji at the
house of God,"* let us, Rouian Catliolics, karn liow to
give the example : let us ])oklly arise and reach out a
lo3\al hand to our si-parated but well-beloved brethren.

But what am I saying? have not you, yourself,
Madam, in coming to us, first surmounted obstacles
which I could not recount? You have overcome them
by the sweat of your brow and the blood of 3'our soul ;
for, as Saint Augustine so truly says, "tliere is a blood
of the soul," and this you have poured out. You have
pushed aside witli your heroic hands, like the daughter
of Zion, the hewn rocks with which you were enclosed,f
you have made straight your paths, and have come
hither.

Let me welcome you with your own words, in which
you expressed but a few days since the inspiration which
was your strength : " My love, my beautiful one, calls me :
I know his voice, and weak and trembling as I am, I
come to Uim.'"'

III. Let us end our song of the mercies of the Lord to
your soul. Betrothed by baptism even in the midst of
your involuntary errors, espoused by the Eucharist in
the integrity of Catholic faith and charity, how can you
complete the cycle of supernatural love and consummate
your life therein, except by becoming a mother in tlie
apostleship?

The Lord was speaking to the multitude one day,
when he Avas told his mother and brethren were without,
desiring to speak with him. Glancing about him with
that inspired look of his, he exclaimed : '' Who is my
mother, and who are my brethren ?'' Then stretching
his hand over the trembling multitude, he said, "Behold
my mother and my brethren ! For whosoever shall do

* 1 Peter, iv. 17. t Lamentations, iii. 9.

134 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE.

the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is
my brother, and sister, and mother."* Saint Gregory
the Great, explaining this teaching of the Master in
one of his homilies,! found some difficulty in this word,
"my mother.-' AVe are without doubt his brethren and
sisters, in that we fulfil his Father's will ; but how can
any being other than Mary be called his " mother ?"
But the great pope remarks immediately, that whenever
one soul, by word or example or any spiritual influence
whatsoever, produces and develops in another soul the
Word of God, the actual and living Truth and Right-
eousness and Love, in one word, Jesus Christ (for Je-
sus Christ is all these), it becomes, with a higher reality
than that of maternal conception, the mother of Jesus in
that soul, and the mother of that soul in Jesus.

And now. Madam, God, if I mistake not, reserves for
you some chosen part in this gift of spiritual mother-
hood. There are beloved ones of whom I may not speak,
— respect and emotion forbid me ; but you shall be their
mother in Jesus, their mother in the integrity of their
liberty, as you were his spouse in the fulness of your
own. Then there are other souls, numberless and with-
out name, at least to our feeble thought, who are count-
ed and inscribed in the book of the divine election, and
wiiom the mysterious power of your apostlcship will
gather from the four winds of lieaven. For not in vain
the Lord has spoken : " Many shall come from the East
and from the West, and shall sit down with Abraham,
and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kiugdom of heaven ; but
the children of the kingdom shall ])e cast out into outer
darkness." | Yes, many born, like you, in heresy with-
out having been heretics, ignorant without having been
guilty, shall hasten to the feast of Catholic truth, to the

• Matthew, xii. 49, 50. t Ilomil. iii. in Evanj?. î Matthew, viii. 11, 12.

PROFESSION OF THE CATITOLIf FAITH. 135

joys of recovered unity; Aviiile, alas! many of us wlio,
zealous for tlie letter, have used it to stiile the spirit,
shall peradventure iind themselves shut out from the
kingdom of Ood, the fruits Avhereof thcv did nut hring
forth.*

Go then, as a missionary of peace and light, to tlie
land whicli awaits you, the country whose moral future,
by an especial design of Providence, is almost entirely in
the hands of its women. You will have no occasion to
regret the absence of that opportunity of public preach-
ing from which your sex excludes you. You will speak
in tlie modest and persuasive eloquence of conversation,
you will speak by your person and your noble life, at
once free and submissive, humble and jet proud, austere
and tolerant, currying the love of God to the highest
aspirations, and the love of your neighbor to the gentlest
condescension.

But I wish to define more particularly the special
character of your apostleship. Telling me the story of
your soul, with its hates and loves, you said, " I have
hated three things — slavery, the Catholic Church, and
immorality." Of these three hates but one remains.
Slavery no longer exists ; God has effiiced this mark of
Cain from the brow of your people with the baptism of
blood. And when you came to know the Catholic
Church, you changed your hatred into love. You have
espoused her in order to struggle more effectively with
her against this last enemy. Now, in the firm founda-
tion of its dogmas replacing the quicksand whereon
your uncertain feet have been treading, in the richness
of its sacraments substituted for the barrenness of your
w'orship, under the direction of its hierarchy, and in
the strength of its unity, you will combat the double

* Matthew, xxi. 43.

136 DISCOUESES OF FATHER HYACINTHE.

immorality ^vhicli dishonors ns: tliat immorality of the
mind which is called rationalism in Europe, and in
America, infidelity — two diseases, unlike, it is true, but
equally mortal ; and that immorality of the heart which
corrupts the senses as the former corrupts the thought !
These two immoralities are sisters; one assaults the
chastity of the faith, the other, the chastity of love;
and both have found in woman an especial enemy. To
the serpent which crawls on its belly and eats the dust,
the Lord has said from the beginning, in pointing to
woman, that ideal being sprung from the heart of man,
" I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and
between thy seed and her seed; she shall bruise thy
head, and thou shalt bruise his heel."'*

NoAV behold tliat woman blessed among women !
Mary, the young wife, Mary the young mother, passing
through the hill-country of Judea, to visit her kins-
woman stricken in years, and hopeless as it seemed in
sterility. She carries in her womb the infinite burden
of the ^Yord, but her step is light as truth and love. In
an ecstasy of holy transport^ she greets Elizabeth, who
feels, at her aj^iproach, the germ of life quicken within
her. " And whence is this to me, that the mother of
my Lord should come to me ?" The children were yet
mute, but their mothers prophesy — Elizabetli before
John the Baptist, Mary before Jesus Christ. '' Already,"
to use the language of St. Ambrose, '' already some faint
movements toward man's salvation begin to make tliem-
selves felt,"t ii^id because sin had commenced by woman,
by woman, also, regeneration is to begin.

And now I seem to see the Christian Avonian, es-
poused of Jesus and his mother, drawing near to this

* Genesis, iii. 15. The Vulgate here varies from the orii^inal.— T«.
t " Scrpunt eniiii jajn tontaincnta ealutis humaiKP." In Luc.

riiOFESSION OF THE CATHOLIC FAITH. lc»7

generation, that lias f^ro^vn old like Eli/abet h in sorrow
and barrenness. The obstacles which have balUed us
will be no hindrance before lur. ]n the insi)irations of
her love, she will drink in a laiili and hope which too
often have been wantin^^ to us. lîisiuf^, like Mary, to
the heights of peace, walking in the footsteps of the
dawn and of the spring-tide, she will sound in the ears
of the men of this century that language of the lieart
in which we recognize the presence of the Lord. ''For
lo, as soon as the voice of thy salutation sounded in
mine ears, the babe leaped in my womb for joy."*

'•' Kise, 0 captive daughter of Zion, loose thyself from
the bands of thy neck! IIow beautiful upon the moun-
tains are the feet of her that publisheth peace, that
bringeth glad tidings of salvation, that saith, The Lord
shall reign !"t

* Luke. i. 4.4. t Isaiah, lii. 2, 7

SERMON

In behalf of the Victims of the South Amerioax
Earthquake,

Preached at the Church of La Madeleine, Paris, March 11, 1869.

'• O Lord, I have heard thy voice, aud was afraid ; ... in wratli remember
mercy."— IIab.xkkik, iii. 2.

Beethrex: This voice of God in his judgments has
burst upon our ears with unAvonted force. Aud yet it
would seem that, after a hipse of seven montlis, the
sound should have begun to die away. At an epoch
when events are crowding one upon another, swift
and multiform as never before, in a city as marvellous
as tlie age itself, in which all the echoes of the world
come to resound, as in a universal centre, am I not
quite behind time in speaking of tlie South American
disasters? On the contrary, this is the very time to
speak. It is not till now that those people are fairly
Avaking up from the first shock of their calamity, reck-
oning up their losses, one by one, and looking about
them for the means of relief. And for ourselves, too,
this is the time for sober meditation and for Christian
thought. For at the first tidings of the disaster, under
the influence of those generous feelings that belong to
human nature — may I not say, especially to the nature
of Frenchmen ? — we, too, were stunned by the an-
nouncement.

Let us pause, brethren,, in the presence of death and

140 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE.

in the presence of God, in the presence of his transient
severity and his everlasting loving-kindness ; and that
we may the better be prepared to shed onr tears over so
many graves, our balm over so many wounds, let us
fortify ourselves, both in reason and in heart, with holy
thoughts of the Christian faith. Others have busied
themselves — and rightly, for it was their special mission
— in seeking the reason of the calamity in the combina-
tion of physical causes. It is for us, Avithout ignoring
the laws of nature, to go deeper, even to the law^s of
God. " I will enter into the strength of the Lord God :
I will remember nothing, save thy righteousness."* But
the righteousness of God is big with mercy, like those
threatening clouds which carry beneath their thunder-
bolts the treasures of the rain and the fruitfulness of all
the land.f

" I have heard thy voice, and was afraid. In wrath
remember mercy."

Eighteousness in the chastisement of sin, mercy in
the trial of virtue, these are the true aspects under
which I would consider with you the earthquake which
in the month of August, 18G8, desolated two great
countries of South America, Ecuador and Peru.

I. T]ie chastisement of sin.

Chastisement, sin, justice ! What have these Avords to
do in presence of a grief which they insult, but cannot
explain ? Is it worth while for the priest to go back to
the superstition of former ages, now condemned beyond
appeal by the reason of the scholar and the conscience

* Psalm Ixxi. ](J. See the Vul;;ate vcrsiou.
t See a familiar hymu ol'Cowper:

" Tlie clouds ye so much dread
Are 1)1;^ with mercy, and shall hreak
In blcssiiii^e on your head."— Tr.

THK SOUTH AMERICAN EARTIIQUAKKS. Ill

of the honest man? No, cries modern science; ilio
world is not tlic plaything of capricious Avills ! Every-
thing, on tlie contrary, hears tlie majestic impress of
the universality and immulaV)ility of la\v. It is not,
then, to (îod, hut to nature, tliat we must go fur tlie
reason of tliesc physical catastrophes, once called judg-
ments of Cod. Let us penetrate deeper into the causes
of them Î Some day, perhaps, Ave sliall he ahle to con-
trol their elTects !

Science is right, hrethren ; tlie world does not l)elong
to miracle, but to law. Only let ns leave law in jmsses-
sion of its own exalted seat ! Let ns not confound it,
like Epicurus, Avith the combinations of a lucky chance,
nor, like Zcno, with the exigences of a blind necessity.
Be it what it is, that supreme thought wliich creates
order because it has first conceived it — which respects
itself in respecting its work, and which limits its inii-
nite power only by its infinite wisdom and infinite
goodness! Then, in every sphere of existence, the ma-
terial as well as the spiritual, the grand definition of
the reign of God will be, that it is the reign of laws!

But these laws, it will perhaps be said, so far as they
refer to the subject which now engages our attention,
are natural laws, not moral laws. Admittins: that thev
stand related to God the Creator in their origin, never-
theless they do not cease to be, in his intentions as well
as their own nature, related to the exercise of his justice
and the chastisement of sin.

IIow long, forsooth, has the kingdom of God been
divided on this cpiestion against itself? IIoav long has
duality been the highest expression of supreme one-
ness ? Doubtless suffering and death, in the inferior
races, are older than the sin of Adam, and stand in no
direct connection with the moral svstem. Without

142 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE.

doubt, the convulsions of nature have preceded the
existence of man : we find tlieii* marks on the crust of
the earth, so often fitted up for the residence of life,
and, in turn, so often torji to ruins. They constitute
that Genesis of science, in appearance so contrary, in
reality so conformed to the Genesis of the Bible. But
when Adam appeared, born at once of the ruddy clay
and of the breath of God, the earth kept silence before
him: the sacred tie that binds together the physical
and moral laws was drawn fost in his consciousness.
Therein, perfect innocence and perfect happiness had
stricken covenant, and amid the peace of Eden was
heard only the song of nature at rest with man* and
God in a sabbath which bade fair to be eternal. This
sabbath-day — how came it to an end ? How came na-
ture to be in revolt against its King ? IIoav was death
with its attendant plagues able to intrude into this upper
world from which it had been Avarned away ? '' By one
man sin entered into the world, and death by sin.''*
You have heard the stern language of Saint Paul, you
have recognized the cardinal doctrine of original sin.
It is, then, simply a matter of logical consistency — it is
simply following out the Bible to its conclusions — when,
notwithstanding those laws of science which are mis-
takenly offered in evidence against us, we persist in
seeing, in the evils which rest in common upon all our
race, in the disasters which smite individuals or isolated
countries, the various applications of one constant law
of the moral system — that death is the })iinishment
of sin.

But what ! If it is possible for science to tolerate
these strange doctrines, under pretence that they are
out of its province, is it possible for conscience to sub-

* liomans, v. 12.

THE SOUTH AMERICAN EARTHQUAKES. 113

scribe tu thcin i" Does it not ivvult iiiid lit'i iij) its in-
dignant protest? Had Ecuador and Peru a lar.i^er
share in the sin of Adam, that they Avere mulcted in so
vast a forfeit ? Had they tilled up the measure of their
debt by more multitudinous transgressions and iuovq
crying sins? And in these mourning countries, must
I point out to you, in each of these twenty thousand
sufferers, instead of the unfortunate victim of an acci-
dent, a criminal marked for vengeance ?

^[ay God deliver me from such excess of fanaticism
and cruelty !

**' Think ye," said our divine Master, '' that those
eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and slew
them, were sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusa-
lem? I tell ye, Xay; but, except ye repent, ye shall alf
likewise perish."* Guilt is universal : so, also, will
punishment be, at least in the future life, unless peni-
tence should avert it before the hour of justice comes.
But the thunderbolts which, in this life, from time to
time break through the sheltering clouds of loving-
kindness, do not always smite the guiltiest, do not
necessarily spare the most innocent. AVhy, then, do
they smite at all, since they do but obey His voice who
sendeth forth the lightnings that they may go upon his
errands, and, returning, answer. Here we are?f Why?
I don't know, brethren ; I don't know : and nobody else
knows any better than I do.

An inscrutable Providence presides over the distribu-
tion of the judgments of God in the regions of space and
time. " His judgments," says the psalm, " are a great
deep ; "| and it was on the verge of this deep that one
gazed down from the third heaven, and, as if with swim-
ming brain, cried out, '* 0 the dej)fh /"§

* Luke, xiii. i. 5. t Job, xsxviii. 35. t T^alm xxxvi. 6. § Romans, xi. 33.

144 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE.

We talk of a sin, and of sins. The word of God an-
swers back to us and speaks of the sin, the one sin, the
sin of the world. "Behold the Laml) of God, that
takcth away the sin of the world!"*' Our foults are
not sejiarable and independent ; there is not one of them
but has somcwliat to do — is, somehow, mysteriously im-
plicated— witli tlie transgressions of the race; just as, in
its turn, the collective weight of human guilt lies on
each several conscience, and oppresses and burdens it
from the cradle upwards. Doubtless conscience is an
individual matter. It bears its own personal responsi-
bility. As the prophet says, "The righteousness of the
righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the
wicked shall be upon him."t But face to face ^\\t\\ this
individual conscience, there appears a universal — if I
may use the word — a humanitarian conscience. Over
against the responsil)ility proper to each, is set the re-
sponsibility common to all. Our moral nature is full of
these antinomies which distract it without destroying it,
because they are harmonized in a higher unity. It re-
sponds at once to the God of Ezekiel, who declares that
the son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, nor the
father the iniquity of the son ',X and to the God of Moses,
who glories in visiting the sins of the fathers upon their
children to the third and fourth generation.§

Solidarity — the universal community of interests ! It
is the great law which positive science establishes cvery-
wliere in nature, — which a generous statesmanship de-
mands everywhere in society. AVhy might it not be,
under forms more mysterious, but not less real, the law
of the moral and religious world?

In this way, Avithout having recourse to any narrow
or obsolete ideas, we explain the great Bible doctrine of

• John, i. 29. t Ezckicl, xviii. 20. % U)id. § Nnrabcrs, xiv. 18.

THE hOUTil AMKKIL'AN KAKTliy LAKES. 1-lj

the unity of mankind in the apostasy and in the atone-
ment. Tlierc is something more tlum the man, there is
humanity ; — humanity, -wliieli falls as one in Adam, and
in everyone of the sons of Adam; humanity that is
lifte'd up as one in Jesus Christ, ami in every one of the
brethren of Jesus Christ. "\\'heres(-)ever falls the stroke
of supreme justiee, what individual or what eountry so-
ever it nuiy smite, it punishes and redeems, at once, the
"whole race of man in each one of its victims — each a
victim of wrath, marked beforehand for punishment,
if lie be more guilty; each a victim of propitiation, of-
fering himself for expiation, if he be more innocent, or
rather, if he be less impure.

^lay I venture — not to sound unfathomable righteous-
ness, but to lean trembling over the brink of that abyss ?
May I venture vaguely to inquire, so far as it is possible
to the timid and uncertain thought of mortal man,*
what is the special crime that could deserve the punish-
ment of which I am this day speaking?

I would not give olFence to any, whether God or man ;
but something urges me on. I am a European, as their
fathers were, of Latin race and Catholic religion. I feel
myself constrained to confess their crime as if it v.-ere
my own.

There was of old, in that land, a strange empire that
seemed still to retain something of the splendors of the
king of day, from which it conceived itself to have sprung.
Absolute as the sun himself in power, and exercising it
only for the happiness of their subjects, the Children of
the Sun presented the rare spectacle of a beneficent des-
potism. Eare sjiectacle, indeed, and I thank God for it.

* "Fcr what man could know tho counsel of God? Or who could Uiink
what is the will of God ? For the thoughts of mortals are timid, and our foro-
çi'rbr ic uncertain." Book of Wisdom, ix. 13, 14.

146 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE.

for it Avoiilcl be sad enoiigli if history were to jnstify the
fatal and cowardly instinct which drags nations into
the arms of despotism ! However that may be, the Incas
had breathed into their government the spirit of religion
under the noblest and sweetest form that the worship of
nature could possibly assume. They looked upon that
orb of which tlie Psalmist has sung as the tabernacle
JehoA'ah,* and not daring to raise their homage to the
invisible God, whom they nevertheless acknowledged,!
they hailed witli joyful adoration the dazzling symbol of
his power and goodness — the Sun ! Under the influence
of this paternal absolutism and these ennobling super-
stitions, a civilization was moulded, far inferior to ours,
I need not say, but far superior to that of the other
countries of America, especially of the Mexican empire.
It was a stock all ready to be grafted with the divine
scion of Christianity.

At this very time — for all things are Avoven into the
designs of Providence and the woof of humanity — Eu-
rope Avas ready for a Avork hitherto unknoAvn. God had
been preparing her for it for fifteen centuries. From
the beginning, he had sent forth to her from Zion his
Bible and his Church, by the hand of his greatest
apostles ; he had renewed the youth of lier races by the
blood of the Barbarians, of her languages by the theol-
ogy of the Greek and Latin fathers ; he had fashioned
her institutions under the discipline, sometimes mild,
sometimes harsh, of the Eoman pontiffs. As the hour
drcAv near, he shoAvered lavishly upon her the discoveries
of genius — the compass to guide lier across the seas,
printing to multiply and immortalize her thought, the

* Psalm xix. 4.

t The Peruvians, like po many other of the Indian raco!>, recognized a Su-
preme Being, Creator and Ilulcr of the Universe They reared no tcmplo

to thlR invipihlo Bc'wg.—Prescott, Ilhlori/ of the Conquest of Pm^u.

TUE SOUTH AMEKICAN EARTHQUAKES. 1-17

cannon to overcome the resistance of matter and bar-
barism. And at last, setting at lier head Christopher
Columbus, tliat inspired captain, as if to found tliere a
new mankind, he i)rought her to a new world.

The two worlds had met. The two mankinds were
coming near each other — that which awaited, and that
wliich brought Jesus Christ.

But, great God ! what do I behold? After premedi-
tated massacres to which the history of crime affords no
parallel, I behold .... but I cannot speak of it. Pools
of blood through Avhicli are crawling unarmed and de-
fenceless men ; depths of mire in which women — moth-
ers and maids alike — are groaning; deep mines down
which slaves descend, far from the light of that sun
which they love, farther still from that Christ which
they have been driven to hate! And above all these
horrors of carnage, debauchery, cupidity — 0 abomina-
tion of desolation standing in the holy place ! — the cross
of Jesus Christ serving them as a pretext, and covering
them with its shadow I

* * * ÏÎC *

It is said that during the recent horrible catastrophe
which has fallen upon these countries, in the burying-
ground of one of those ruined cities,* men saw the
mummied corpses of the Indians torn from their graves
by the shocks of earthquake and the wash of the sea.
It seemed as if they had risen up with a sort of ghastly
joy to witness the just, though tardy vengeance that
had come upon the children of their oppressors I
ÎÏÎ * * ^ *

Enough, brethren, enough. Let us speak no more
of vengeance ! If there be vengeance here, it is God's
vengeance, and we can but adore in silence. '' The
wrath of man worketli not the righteousness of God."t

* The city of Iqmquc. t Jame?, i. 20.

148 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE.

Let US heap no more reproiicli on the great soul of the
Spanish people, nor forget that tliis was not the only
guilty race — that almost everywhere the white men,
unworthy of their great trust, were oppressors, not
liberators. The other great colonizing race of the
American continent — the Anglo-Saxon — was this more
humane and equitable at the North than the Spanish
race at the South ? Has it not crowded off the Indians
into the wilderness? Has it not, with slow, inexoral)le
perseverance, prosecuted the work of their entire ex-
tinction ?

Just at this moment a message reaches us by the
transatlantic cable. It is the language of that man
who was the sword in the work in which Abraham
Lincoln was the will, and who seems impatient to dis-
charge his country's debt toward all men — red as well as
black. His language is brief and unimpassioned as the
coolest common sense — inflexible as conscience and
honor :

" The proper treatment of the original occupants of
this land, the Indians, is one deserving of careful study.
I will favor any course toward them which tends to
their civilization, Christianization, and ultimate citi-
zenship."

And he adds these words, which are a most just state-
ment of the policy of the Gospel, and, I venture to hope,
of the policy of the future :

" In regard to foreign policy, I would deal with na-
tions as equitable law rc({uires individuals to deal with
each other."*

Such language as this, Ecuador has no need to use.
Long since, it carried it into its practice. Nobly un-
faitliful to tlie Iradilions of IMzurro and the early con-

♦ Frcbidcut Graiil't^ Iiiaiigurnl, ■March 1, 18(i0.

THE SOUTH AMEIUi'AN KAHTIhjU.VKES. Ill)

qucrors, it has repudiated slavery; daily, the sweat of
the European meets and mingles with that of the Indian
in the same furrow ; often, there arc even formed be-
tween the two races those conjugal alliances which ele-
vate one Avithout depressing the other, and which pre-
pare the way for the great unity of the future. But if
Avords be needed, in the presence of such facts, there are
those of the Liberator, cl Libcrtado)\ as they call the
illustrious Bolivar: ''Popular education should be the
earliest care of a Coiigress. The two poles of a republic"
[what / would say is — the two poles of any free coun-
try] '*are morality and light. ^.lorality and light are
our prime necessities.""

Let these noble words, and the acts which followed
them, wipe out forever the recollections which I have
been compelled to recall ! Else, 0 future age, more glo-
rious even than the present ! Be lifted up, thou cross of
Christ, so many a time profaned, over the manses of a
chaste and devoted clergy, over convents of poor and
laborious recluses, over schools taught by pious and
learned masters ; and shedding wide thy blessings over
these reconciled populations, stand, the monument of a
harder and a holier work than the punishment of crime
— its re})aratiou I

IL Tlie Trial of Virtue. God's judgments, brethren,
are not only, — not even chiefly — punishments ; in a far
higher sense they are trials. It is not well for man too
long to drooi") the head before them ; let him rather rise
up, at once with humility and with pride, to resume his
toil, and recommence his conllict. Man is both work-
man and soldier ; workman in a mightv toil, soldier in

* " La educacion popular debe ser el cuidado primogenito de un conjjresso.
Jloral y luces son los poloa de una republica ; moral y luces son nuestras pri-
meras necessidadcs.'"— The Words of the Liberator to the Congress of Angostura.

150 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE.

a mighty conflict. It is not in a chance ^vay, for an
easy-going, objectless existence, that he is placed in tlie
world. For ns Christians, at least, men of a serious,
practical, spiritual philosophy, there is such a thing as
final causes. We believe in them with a profound faith,
and even a holy pride. AVe cannot be so cheaply satis-
fied as other men. AVe need and must have a great ob-
ject, Avorthy of ourselves and God. But what shall it
be? On an earth once trodden by the feet of Christ,
amid the course of ages that are illuminated from his
cross, is there for the soul of man and for all the race,
any other object than God's salvation? "Ye receive,"
says the apostle Peter, " the end of your faith, the sal-
vation of your souls." *

Salvation of souls ! But how ? For the vast majori-
ty— almost the entire mass of men, salvation is not
achieved in the deserts and in ecstatic visions, but in the
midst of societ}^ It is realized by faithfulness to the
duties of family and civil life, to all those holy obliga-
tions which bind us to our fellow-men ; by the practical
eftbrt of a life which turns heavenward in prayer for light
and strength, and tlien turns back to earth in labor for
wealth, and liberty, and above all for righteousness.
" For God," says the inspired book, " has formed man, in
his wisdom to have dominion over the creation which
he had made, and order the earth in equity and right-
eousness." t Understood in this sense, cleared of that
narrow aiul exclusive conception which has been fastened
on it by a false mysticism, so far is the salvation of the
individual from being isolated from tlie salvation of the
race, that it is well-nigh coiifouiuled with it. The tem-
poral conquest of the earth, in that noble sense which I
have just explained, is found to be the condition of the

♦ Peter, i. 9. + Wisdom, is. 2, 3.

THE SOUTH AMERICAN EARTHQUAKES. 151

eternal conquest of licaven, — or rallier, earth and iK-avcn
do but form one kingdom of God. It is tlu* apocalyptic
city, descend in^ç from heaven and resting on the earth
and reconciling into one the interests of this life and of
the life to come, ^vhich becomes the centre of universal
history, the common dwelling-place of Cod and men.
'*!, John, saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, descending
out of heaven from God, like a bride adorned for her
husband. And I heard a great voice out of heaven say-
ing, Behold tlie tabernacle of God is with men, and he
will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and
he shall be with them and be their God I''*

This royal city descends from heaven ; and yet each
day the hand of man is building it njoon the earth.
The effort which it requires is so laborious, and so bit-
terly opposed, that there is need at once of workmen and
of soldiers. As in those troubled days when Xehemiah,
despite the hostility of the surrounding tribes, rebuilt
the walls of the old Jerusalem, so we must wear at once
tlie cuirass and the workman's apron, and handle the
trowel with which to build the wall, while we bear the
sword with which to repel the enemy.f

We arc beset by a triple foe. A threefold barbarism
is making incessant attacks on that work of civilization
— both man's and God's — whicli is prosecuted in time,
to be completed in eternity : — the barbarism of infernal
spirits, the barbarism of men of error and mischief, the
l>arl)arism of nature in revolt against its Lord.

Of infernal spirits I have no occasion to speak; — not
that I fear the sneers of incredulity, but because this
matter does not relate to my subject. AVe know Avell
enough, from another teacher, that our wrestling is
"not against flesh and blood" — against visible man;

* Revelation, xxi. 2, 3. + Xehemiali, iv. 16, 17.

152 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE.

but against tliat higher power of sin and error which
dwells in the moral atmosphere we breathe, in the
heaven of our loftiest thoughts, our purest affections —
'' against spiritual wickedness in heavenly places,"*
which there transforms itself into an " angel of light.''f
Neither have I aught to say concerning that barbarism
of the unbelieving nations which surrounds the civiliza-
tion of Europe as with a dense atmosphere into which
its light has not yet been able to penetrate ; nor of that
other barbarism which our society bears within it, in its
morals, its sciences, its institutions, and which realizes
the ancient maxim, " Opfimi cujusque pcssima co)T2q^-
fio" — the worst of all corruptions is the corruption of
the most perfect organizaticwi.

But this planet itself, on which the work of our great
race is wrought, would almost seem less to have been
made for us than to have been made against us. From
its strange infimcy, an incandescent mass or an abyss
of liquid fire, a huge firebrand hurtling through space
or dashing out its confused waves into the darkness, it
has seemed the enemy of life in every form. Then
during those six days — God's days, not man's, and there-
fore not to be measured — for " a thousand years in his
sight are ])ut as yesterday''J: — it has, with convulsive
pangs of labor, produced, and again destroyed, huge
forms of being, plants or animals, "which never could
have subsisted in the same atmosphere with ourselves.
Finally, after all these cataclysms, when that strip of
earth habitable for man had emerged — I say nothing
of the vast deserts which dispute our occupancy of it,
nor of the frozen regions Avhicli consume it at the poles,
nur of the heats that blaze along its tropical shores —
I find it so scanty in its leiigtli, in its breadth — I was

• Epliesian-', vi. 1*i. t •_' Corintliiaiis, xi. 11. * Pnalni xc. 4.

THE SOUTH AMERICAN EAllTHQUAKES. 153

about to say, so scanty in i(s accommodations — tluit it
Bccms to me less like a peaceful and permanent dwell-
ing, than a frail ship beaten by the storms of three oceans
— the sea of waters round about, the sea of air above, the
sea of lire underneath ! Once already it has foundered
in the waves; may it not, peradventure, be sometime
swallowed up in the flames ? For "' the day of the Lord
shall come as a thief in the night, in the which the
heavens shall pa.-ss away with a great noise, and the
elements shall melt with fervent heat; the earth also,
and the works that are therein, shall be l)urned up."'*

AVas this calamity the presage of that day? And
must I needs repeat the fearful story of it in your ears ?
See those happy populations, on the evening of one of
their most cherished festivals, the Assumption of the
Virgin, their well-beloved patron-saint. While for the
Mother of Christ the shadows of death are shot tlirough
with beams of happiness and radiant life, for them life
itself is on the point of changing suddenly to death.
Their beds are made their tombs ; their cities, in a mo-
ment, are transformed to ruins. Convulsed with internal
fires, the earth reels like a drunkard in his cups; the
sea rears itself in sudden rage, and leaps upon the shore,
flinging the ships in wild wreck among the crumbling
houses.

See them now, these decimated families, camping out
in tents, hiding in caves, houseless and homeless, and
without the implements of labor ! Look upon it, that
nation in mourning, its cities overthrown, its harbors
choked with sand, its roads obstructed, its country rav-
aged, plunged in misery I This I call their trial — a trial
rather than a pnnishment ; an occasion for religious
resignation, but at the same time of manly energy ; a

* 5 Peter, iii. 10.

154 DiscouKSEs or father hyacinthe.

life-nnd-dcatli struggle with the powers of nature, in
wliich man, overcome at first, and always the Aveaker
party, triumphs at last, ])y force of intelligence and
bravery and virtue !

It is our trial, too, brethren — the trial of our charity.
I have spoken of the solidarity of mankind in sin and in
punishment. I have done so with hesitation, almost
with violence to my own feelings, so that I might come
at this nobler solidarity of the world in love. The love
that is in Christ Jesns binds together not individuals
alone, but nations. It cannot rest save in the grand
unity of the human family. Ah ! how fain was I, also,
to rest, before my task was done, at that vital point
where meet, at last, after so many a conflict, the spirit
of my church and the spirit of my age ! Xeed was for
me to set forth in my words, what you are about to set
forth in action, the doctrine taught nigh two thousand
years ago by the apostle to the Gentiles, which now, at
last, is just beginning to come to the comprehension of
mankind. '^ By revelation," says he, " there has been
made known to me a mystery which in other ages was
not made known to the children of men." What is
this mystery which Saint Paul calls ''the mystery of
Christ ?" " That the nations should be fellow-heirs and
concorporeal'- — 0 sublime barbarism of speech I — ''of
one body, one humanity, sharers together in the prom-
ises of God in Christ Jesus by the Gospel."* Hence-
forth, then, there is no longer stranger nor foreigner in
mankind such as the Gospel conceives it, such as some
day the Gospel will make it. Henceforth there shall be
no more sea, nor intervening mountains, to keep asun-
der the nations, but mutual love and mutual helpful-
ness in the advancement of their common work.

* JEphcHiaui?, Hi. 3-G.

THE SOUTH AMERICAN EARTHQUAKES. 155

Xcvcrthclcss, lot mo add, sinco I am si)eakinf;: as a
Fronclnnan to Fiviiclimon, tliat tlio populations of Ecua-
dor ami Poru liavo more special claims on our 8ymi)a-
thy and assistance. Like us, they are both by blood
and by language of the Latin stock. Like us, they
belong to the Catholic church. Amid the mingling of
races, their blood, like ours, has been kept 'vvith a purer
pedigree. Our languages grow together out of the illus-
trious stock of ancient Rome, and are derived through
That from the speech of Homer and Plato, the finest,
2)erhaps, the most philosophical and melodious, that
ever ennobled human lips. They have abode -with us
in the old religious ediilce, in that Catholic church
■which guards amid its ruins, with the grandest tradi-
tions of the past, the grandest hopes of the future. Ah,
well I know — and many a time have I groaned within
myself to think of it — these nations of the Latin race
and of the Catholic religion have been of late the most
grievously tried of all! Kot only l)y intestine fires, by
the quaking of the earth, by the inrushing of the sea.
Look with impartial eye,with the fearless serenity of truth,
with that assurance of faith which fears not to accept the
revelations of experience, and then tell me — where is it
that the moral foundations qnake most violently ? Where
does the current of a formidable electricity give the
severest, the most incessant shocks to republics as well
as monarchies ? Among the Latin races ; among the
Catholic nations. Yes, by some inscrutable design of
Providence, they, more than others, have had to ''drink
of the cup deep and large;"* they have wet their lips
more deeply in the chalice in which are mingled ''the
wine, the lightning, and the spirit of the storm;'' and
they have become possessed with the madness of the

* Ezekiel. ixiii. 32.

156 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE.

drunkard. It is not a dccxidence, as some have said;
it is a crisis, and the violence of it bears witness, not
only to the potency of the poison which consumes them,
but to the strength of vitality which is to save them.
If these races could perish, there would liave been an
end of them three centuries ago. Nay, the hour is
at hand ! '' Awake I awake Î Stand up, 0 Jerusalem,
which hast drunk at the hand of the Lord the cup of
his fury! thou hast drunken the dregs of the cup of
trembling, and wrung them out!"* .... "when thou
shalt have taken forth the precious from the vile, thou
shalt be as the mouth of Jehovah himsellV'f

0 Frenclimen, Catholics, let us come to the rescue of
our Spanish- American brethren ! In their material
trials, let us help them with our gold ; in their moral
trials, with our heart and soul.

And you, to whatever blood and Avhatever faith you
belong— all you who have come hither to this feast of
charity, my friends, my brethren, forget the things that
divide us, and think only of the things that unite us.
As we join hands for the relief of this great calamity,
let us labor to speed on the day of the Lord. 0 blessed
day, when, in the vast and irresistil)le movement that is
bringing men together and mingling them in every part
of the world, all races shall flow together in one race,
and all religions shall be transtigured, and shall em-
brace each other in that religion which is free from all
error, rich in all truth — in Catholic Christianity.
"There sliall })e one flock and one shepherd,''^ — one
humanity in one Church, with one Christ, and under
one God !

• Isaiuh, li. 17. t Jeremiah, xv. V.l X Jolm, x. 9.

LETTER,

PRKFrXF.D TO "TlIE SELECT WORKS OF ClIARLES
LOYSON."

[Charles Loyson, uncle to Father Hyacinthe, was a i)ui)il of the
Ecole Normale, and was regarded b}' liis schoohnates, Cousin and
JoulTroy, and by his iUustrious contemporaries, Guizot, Koyer-
Colhird, ]Maine de Biran, and de Serre, as the most remarkable
youn;^ man of the generation which came into public life about
that very critical and hopeful era of French history, the year 1817.
A man of Avide versatility, and generous sympathies with the in-
terests of human liberty and of the Christian faith, he was at once
poet, oratoi', and statesman. Ills name shone for a brief time
with rare brilliancy, and was then suddenly extinguished in
death.

Fifty 3'ears afterward, a gentleman who was much interested
in the historj' of the province of Brittany, the native province of
the Loyson famil}--, felt moved, in part by an honorable local pride,
to rescue from oblivion the history of so bright though brief a
career of one of his fellow-citizens, by compiling a volume of his
works in prose and verse. The volume was prefaced with criti-
cal notices from the distinguished pens of MM. Patin and Sainte
Beuve, and with tluî following Letter to the Editor by Fatlicr
Hyacinthe.

In a brief review of this memorial volume, JM. Augustin Cochin,
known to multitudes of Americans by his constant and most in-
telligent vindication of our national cause before his own countr}--
men, remarks thus concerning the deceased poet :

" Let us not spend too much pity on the unknown orator, the
forgotten author, the poet whose song was broken off b}' death,
but whose memory now, let us hope, is about to be revived in the
hearts of new readers. Ilis life was not long, but it was lived at

l08 DISCOUESES OF FATHER HYACINTHE.

a great period. His writings are not many, but they arc in behalf
of noble interests. His friends -were not numerous, but they are
among the best and greatest men of liis country. And after the lapse
of lifly years, he has critics like Patin and Sainte Beuvc to commem-
orate his genius, and an heir of his own name like Father Hya-
cinthe to eulogize his character and soul. We need not pity him !"]

To M. Emile Ckimaud.

I assure yon, Sir, that I have not forgotten that sum-
mer evening of which you remind me in such poetic
language. I remember especially the amiaVjle and gen-
erous enthnsiH.sm with Avhich you kindly consented to
aid my brother and myself in a work whicli was both a
family duty and a dream of our childhood. The provin-
cial spirit, which is born and dies with the family spirit,
and to the revival of which you have so nobly devoted
your literary activity, had already endeared to you the
memory of the scholar of Beaupréau, the son of Brittany
and Vendée, afterward the friend and counsellor of the
ministers and supporters of the Eestoration in its best
days. You have been willing to love his memory the
better for our sake, and to devote yourself to making
liim known, which is, I do not fear to say, to make him
beloved. I thank you for it, from the bottom of my
iieart.

It is not for me to decide whether this funeral monu-
ment, raised by our common care, sliall have a perma-
nent right to stand in the field of glory ; but those of the
younger generation, whose symi)athetic and pious atten-
tion it will attract, will surely lind in it examples and
lessons wortljy of their study. Glory is ])erhaps the
Ijest of Innnan idols, but, aftiT all, it is only an idol:
our ambition should be to leave Ix-hind us tiie lesson of
truth, the examjjle of goodness.

LETTER ON CHARLES LOYSON. loO

The first lesson and exanii)le set Ijefore ns in these
pages, is that of an enlightened as well as ardent devo-
tion to literatnre, and particularly in that -which is the
liighest form of human thought and sentiment — poetry.
The question has heen often asked, in our day, whether
the reason of the existence of this form of literature had
not ceased in view of the severe and positive require-
ments of the spirit of the age; — whether the function
of poetry was not about to terminate with that of reli-
gion, to which in many ways it is so near akin, and
which it has served, more than once, as a most noble
interpreter. This question, already agitated in his time,
is discussed by Charles Loyson, and he concludes with
the conviction that whatever there is in the heart of man
that relates to the sense of the infinite, is permanent;
while, at the same time, he points out with rare sagacity,
the changes rendered indispensable in literature by the
march of time. lie is doubtless wrong when he banishes
poetry from the realm of nature, which he mistakenly
conceives to have been disenchanted by modern science
and industry: he is right when he opens to it the inner
world of the soul and the unexplored regions of our
spiritual nature. He is wrong again when he condemns
as a critic what he has excellently practised as a poet —
tlie description of common life, the charm of domestic
details, and the household muse from whose inspiration
the irreat novelists of Eno;land and America, of late
years, have derived results so rich in incident and so
lofty in their moral tone; but he is grandly in the right
Avhen, rejecting with scorn the old mythological ma-
chinery, the object even at this time of superstitious re-
spect, he demands in all things the substitution of truth
for conventionality, and gives in these terms a sort of
prelude to whatever is legitimate and necessary in the

160 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE.

revolution accomplished by the romantic school. " The
first poets," he wrote, *' were philosophers ; hereafter the
philosophers are to be poets." This is almost identical
with the definition which our Lamartine has given of
the poetry of the future: "It will be reason i)i song."
If I were not afraid of perpetrating a pleonasm, I would
add that it will be, especially, morality and religion in
song, and I would name as the subjects of its immortal
trilogy — subjects ever true and ever fresh — the temple,
the home, the State.

If the poet can sing of the State, why not serve the
State ? Devotion to the muse, however, has been
esteemed not quite compatible with the struggles in
which political life involves us, and perhaps with the
qualities it demands in us. It was reserved for our age
to break down the walls which have too long separated
the different lines of human thought and action. Of
this, Charles Loyson was a forerunner ; he could be at
the same time publicist and poet, and I cannot venture
to say in which of the two careers he was best fitted to
excel. At any rate, he acquired at once, and in a higli
degree, the esteem and contideiice of such men as M. de
Serre, Royer-Collard, Guizot; and at twenty-nine years
of age he already held rank and authority among tlie
writers who adorned that stormy, but glorious and
fruitful iuauguration of the liberal monarchy of 1814.
AVhat especially impresses and charms me in him, is his
horror of party spirit. In presence of the social antag-
onism whicli had survived our late misfortunes and was
preparing new ones, that clear-seeing mind, that patri-
otic and generous lieart. saw no hope of salvation except
in tlie (jn'((l /xirlij of France, as Fatlier (îratry so well
calls it; a party which — thank God! — lias never needed
to be created, but which then lacked, as it does to-day.

LF/lTKll (JN CIIAliLKS I.OYSON. 101

a sufficient i\'i)resontu[ioii ami infliionce in public life.
Witlial, I should not "wish to iiK'ntify niy.sdt ahs<jlutcly
"Nvith the policy Avhich iny uncle followed. Jle could
not luive «guessed what jnisiiuderstandings and dangers
"would spring from the Charter of 181-1. But accepting
tlie political establishment of which that was the basis,
he endeavored to maintain in their independence and
in their harmony, on lln' one hand authority, the safe-
guard of liberty as Avell as of order, and liberty, which
is, its very self, an inviolable and sacred authority. For
this reason, without scrupling for his ycnith, Avithout
hesitating before the talent and renown of his powerful
adversaries, he attacks at the same time, and not with-
out success, absolutism in the person of M. de Bonald,
and ultra-liberalism in that of M. Benjamin Constant :
the steady middle course of reason and practical good
sense, to which it seems as if experience must bring us
back at last !

And now. Sir, shall I say what most touches me in
the works as in the life of mv uncle ? — what I recojznize
in him as far above poet or statesman, or, better still,
"what I find in both author and citizen, as the sap in the
tree, the soul in the body? You have placed at the
front of our dear volume the Avords which his illustrious
friend, Victor Cousin, uttered over his coffin: "Thine
has been a pure life and a Christian death. I must
needs remember that this is the only eulogy thy pious
modesty would suffer." I have before me a letter writ-
ten by the Abbé de Frayssinous to the young poet's
mother a few days after his death, which begins thus :
'•' It was my office, dear jMadani, to attend upon your son
Charles in the illness which terminated in his death.
I feel bound to say, for your comfort, that I was well
pleased with the state of his mind, and that everything

162 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE.

leads me to believe that God has received him in mercy."
It was to tlie hands of M. de Frayssinous that he com-
mitted that translation of Tibnllns, sacrificed by him to
no vain scruple of conscience, but to a faith at once
enlightened and profound ; — a translation which would
have won him literary glory, but which would have
done the wrong of introducing into Christian literature
what is out of place anywhere else tlian among the
heathen.

The secret of such a life and such a death, is to be
looked for in his cradle. A child of the people— of that
people which lias ever been faithful to sound and genu-
ine popular traditions and instincts, he has himself
shown us the double sanctuary of his education in his
father's house and the parish churcli.

** The humble shop where thirty years they toiled
In poverty, to earn our daily breach""^
* ^- * * w -K- * *

" O sacred place ! With waxen light in hand,
The mystic sign of innocence and love,
Hither we children came when welcomed first
By the old pastor's venerable lips,
Unto the heavenly banquet." s|

But in order to come at a more intimate personal
knowledge of his Christian fiiith, founded, as all true
Christian faith is, on living demonstration rather than
on discussions and tlieories, wo must read a touching

* Voilù l"hiiin1)le atelier où mes pauvres parents
Pour nourrir leur famille, ont travaillé trente ans.

*******
Voi:?-tu ce lieu sacré ? C'est là qu'un cierge on main,
Signe mystérieux d'amour et d'innocence,
Pour la première fois au celeste festin,
Un pasteur vénérable accueillit notre enfance.

Lifi ^'ouvtnhs de r Enfance.

LETTER ON CHARLES LOYSON. 1G3

poem addressed to liis brother, wliicli is entitled "The
Service for tlie Dead, and a Visit to tlic Country
C'hureliyard at (var liirth-place/' It is a genuine out-
hurst of fraternal firling, and allhoup^h Avritten in
most elegant verse, shows the utter self-forgetfulness
of a heart that has abandoned itself to the scene before
it, and to the presentiment of approaching death. Amid
these funereal forms, there comes into view the fiirui-e
of a most sweet and Christian woman, an apparition
from heaven, which the grave does but too speedily
hide away from the childish vision, but which lingers
still in memory to be the light of a whole lifetime. She
was a peasant-woman of lirittany, his maternal grand-
mother, my own great-grandmother, who had already
left the world Avhen I entered it, but the charm of
whose life was impressed upon my childhood, through
the long stories, full of sober feeling, that my brother
used to tell me.

*' I see her still, devout and dilii^cnt,
In her old corner hy the spacious lioartli,
Where the dull fire flung out its flickering light,
From dawn to eve, spinning, and pra3'ing God."*

A simple but exalted spirit, a strong, though gentle
soul, that had passed through the storm of the revolu-
tion with her light in her hand, or rather in her heart,
without suflering it either to flicker or die out, Mad-
ame Lesuc — permit my pen this once to rest upon her
name — had bequeathed to her children far more than
fortune or title ; honest and vigorous blood, the fiiith of
the Gospel, the virtues of family and Christian life.

* Toujours je crois la voir, pieuse et cîilijrcnte,
Près du lart^e foyer où brille un humble feu,
De raube jusqu'au soir filant et priant Dieu.

164 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE.

" Seeds of salvation, motherly ^vords and tones,
Spring up, and cover all my life with fruit!
To her whose hand first sowed you in my heart,
I pledge undying gratitude and love,"-'

I pause at this aspiration, which was my uncle's
and is mine, and close, with no small emotion, the
story of that religious festival which took place in the
depth of a country province, at Château Gontier, sixty
years ago, and which I meet again, celehrated with so
much of solemnity and of popular interest in this capi-
tal, which may sometimes appear to forget its God,
but never its dead. These hells of the second of Novem-
ber have tears on their brazen cheeks, and sobs in their
tones; but as I listen to them, even while I write these
lines, I seem to hear in them the echo of tlie voice of
Patmos :

"I heard a voice from heaven, saying unto me: write.
Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord. Yea, saith
the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors, and
their works do follow them."

Brother Hyacinthe,

Barefooted Carmelite.
Paris, Xovcml3er 2, 18G8.
[All-Souls Day.]

* Salutaires leçons, préceptes maternels,
Croissez, et de vos fruits couvrez ma vie entière t
A celle dont la main vous sema la première.

Mou cœur a cousacré dos regrets immortels.

APPENDIX

IMEX AND PARTIES

IN THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IX FRANCE,

JfST BKFORE THE Œci'MENICAL COUNCIL, 1809.

[The following is part of an Article by the lîev. Edward de Prcssen?é, in the
licvue Chrétienne for September and October, 1809. The author of it is the
foremost man of French Protestantism— a man of aclinowlcdgcd fairness and
ability, and held in hii;h esteem by his fellow-citizens of the Roman Catholic
fiith.]

* " ■* It is important to bear in mind all along-, that avc ai'e
only just passed the coup (T état of December, when, with some-
thing of an explosion, a division took place in the Catholic camp.
We have first a very original figure among the superior clergy ;
it is ^Monseigneur Dupanloup, bishop of Orleans. I know that
for some years past he has been pardoned many of his old offences
at Rome, in consideration of the impetuosity of liis defence of
the temporal power of the Pope. Always impetuous, of an effer-
vescent temperament, with a quick, lively pen, he is a sort of Bo-
hemian bishop, with a decided talent for controversy. The
author of several approved works on education, he owes his rep-
utation above all to his talent as a controversialist always in the
breach. He has taken open issue with the Univers — seemingly, at
first, on a merely literary question. A certain Abbé Gaume, since
bishop, had taken it into his head to oppose classical studies.

166 APPENDIX.

under the signature of Ver Rongeur. ]\I. Dupanloup, a man of
culture, a prelate destined to become a member of the Académie
Française, stigmatized tliis barbarous obscurantism, Avliich, with-
al, is no part of the Roman traditions. lie has always taken
sides with political liberty, so long as people refrained from the
indiscretion of claiming it for Rome. We shall sec shortly that
the bishop of Orleans has verged very closely upon the party of
violence, in the struggles of these last years. He is called some-
thing of a Gallican. It is pretty hard to see in what his Gallican-
ism consists. The Abbe Cœur, bishop of Troj'cs, since dead,
Monseigneur Sibour, archbishop of Paris, who was struck by the
dagger of an assassin at the very moment when he had instituted
a prosecution against the Univers for its extravagant polemics,
were men of like tendency.

Three men have especiall}' made their mark in the Liberal-
Catholic party First, the two old disciples of Lamennais, the
Abbé Lacordaire and M. de Monlalembert. The lirst had revived
the festivals of high eloquence under the vault of Notre Damo.
It was all very well to hold him in suspicion and at some distance
on account of his association with Lamennais ; but no sooner
had he uttered his voice in the little chapel of Stanislas college,
than his superb eloquence rang through Paris after such a foshiou,
that there was nothing else to be done, in spite of the monstrous
outcries of bigotry, but to put him into the pulpit of the metropoli-
tan church. Every precaution was taken. He was required to
communicate in advance the plans of his discourses, but onco
abandoned to the passion of his inspiration, the torrent carried
everything before it, and they looked in vain, the next day, in tho
archbishop's chancery, to detect in the fieiy improvisation of tho
orator any trace of the plan that had been submitted and approved.
He skirted along perilous gulfs without ever falling into them;
but the spirit which animated liim was altogether mo;k'ru and
liberal.

His favorite enterprise of reviving the Dominican Order in
France, is well known. But his white monk's robe made only
one more contrast with his wholly unclerical manner of think-

DE TRESSENSÉ ON MEN AND PAiniKS. 1G7

ing and speaking, llis lectures nt Notre Dame Avere open to
serious criticism — the reasoning often bordered closely ujion
sophistry — more than once the logic is fanciful, and after all the
essential elements of Catholic doctrine are ])reserved by him.
]>ut a glow of generous feeling pervades his whole discourse.
Now and then it breaks out, and then the su])dued, entranced
audience feels that electric thrill which is the sign of true elo-
cpience. On the very surface of his discourse there is always to
be recognized an ardent love of liberty. On the day following
the coup (Vétat, he expressed himself with such energy in a ser-
mon preached at Paris, that all the pulpits of the city were thence-
forth closed to the illustrious Dominican. His voice was never
afterward heard, except in the addresses delivered at his recep-
tion into the Académie Française.

Since his death, whicli occurred in 18G1, the public have been
admitted to the secrets of his interior life. This brilliant orator,
whose words stirred men's minds, sometimes, like those of a trib-
une of the people, was, in reality, a true monk in point of auster-
it}'. He subjected himself in secret to unheard-of macerations,
which unciuestionably shortened his life. He craved humiliation
and suffering, and did not shrink before an asceticism which
could hardly have been surpassed by a Hindoo fakcer. In his
heart of hearts, Lacordairc suffered intensely from the inward
struggle between the convictions of his youth, which responded
to his deepest instincts, and his sincere but forced submission to
the papacy. He profoundly felt that the spirit is above the
letter, and that the inspirations which came forth from Rome
were not those which animated either his soul or his speech.

jM. de ]Montalembert was the worthy rival and the fliithful
friend of the great Dominican preacher.

By nature more excitable and impressible, he had more diffi-
culty in ridding himself of the powerful ties which bound him
to Lamennais; but then, for a time, the rupture was more radical.
There has even been one phase in which he seemed to prefer the
church above libert}-. It was during the violent reaction which
followed the revolution of 1848. The attitude which he held on

168 ArrENDix.

the eve of the events of 18dl, was not consistent with his previ-
ous record. Horror of demagogisni inclined liini for the moment
toward Cesarism ; but how grandly has he recovered himself
from this defection ! With what magnificent eloquence he has
launched his thunderbolts against absolutism and all its props,
most of all against those which were nearest to himself, and
which dishonored Catholicism by their unworthy alliance ! A
sincere Christian, always impassioned and vehement, he has re-
turned to his true flag, and we shall sec with what courage he
has known how to flout it in the face of the most obstinate pre-
judices. The Anglo-Saxon race has no more enthusiastic or
enlightened admirer than this Catholic nobleman.

The third leader of the Liberal-Catholic" party in 1852 was a
young professor of the Sorbonne, M. Frédéric Ozanam, snatched
away from a most brilliant career by consumption before he was
forty j'cars of age. lie had the unspeakable advantage of being
in constant relation with the youth of the university by means of
his course of instruction in foreign literature, rich, as it was, in
research and eloquence. At the same time, he was one of the
founders of the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul, — a society of
laymen, designed for the visitation of the poor, and also to form
among young Catholics a bond of active charity. Ozanam united
the finest endowments of intellect with admirable piety. Already
sick and emaciated, he was seen climbing the staircases of tene-
ment houses to carry to the poor both material aid and words of
.sympathy. Owing to his influence, the association had rapidly
increased, and from the start was animated by the purest charity.
Ozanam possessed all the most generous passions of youth, and,
foremost of all, the love of liberty. He, too, dreamed of l)ringing
about an alliance between his most cherished belief in humanity
and his religious faith. This thought was the very soul of his
teaching, which achieved a very distinguished success at the
Sorbonne by the soundness of its erudition, and the somewhat
feverish brilliancy of an eloquence which was wearing away his
life. He used some expressions of extraordinary boldness, such
as this : " There are some persons who believe in their God only

DE niESSENSÉ ON MEN AND TAKTIES. IGD

when he walks m a purple robe." — " No, no," said he at another
time, " I do not believe that fire has ever had power to conquer
an idea, however false and detestable it mii^ht be."

Nothiiiî; can be more touching than the resii^naliou of M. O/a-
nani, when he found that he must give up in early manhood all
that gave life its value — the purest domestic happiness, a most
noble and useful career, a most brilliant future. I know nothing
more admirable tliaii the story of his death, as told by Father
Lacordaire.

Among the men holding the same views, we may mention the
Prince de Broglie, the illustrious representative of one of the
most distinguished families in France. Grandson of Madame de
StUel, son of that Duke de Broglie who was one of the purest and
strongest types of the liberal and Christian statesman, the inflex-
ible upholder of justice, M. A. de Broglie has nobl}' sustained this
formidable inheritance. An eminent historian of the Church of
the fourth century, his talent is never more conspicuous than in
religious or political controvei-sy. lie brings to that work a lofty
irony which gives to his eloquence a singularly incisive character.
It is evident that he has not breathed the stormy atmosphere of
the school of Lamennais. Liberty has come to him as an undis-
puted heir-loom. lie lays claim to it with less of passion, and
sometimes with less of breadth than M. de Montalembert, but,
withal, is not in the least liable to the reproach of any political
inconsistency.

As for the liberalism of M. dc Falloux, he holds it neither by
family tradition, nor through the Lamennaisian apostolical suc-
cession. By nature, by association, he belongs to the purest le-
gitimism, lie wrote the life of Pius V., the Inquisitor, and
declared in that book that tolerance is the virtue of the unbeliev-
ing ages. We should hardly look, then, to find in him a liberal
from conviction. Nevertheless, after the coujy d'état, he made a
clean broach with absolutist Catholicism, and took rank among the
defenders of public liberty. The Correspondant, a monthly mag-
azine, has become the organ of this great Liberal- Catholic party,
and its remarkable success is due to him.

8

170 APPENDIX.

We must not forget the very interesting group of the new
French Oratory, revived by Father Gratry, the amiable and sym-
pathetic defender of modern Christianity, who mixes up a little
too much the differential calculus with moral demonstration, but
who is always eloquent, lofty, broad, deeply enamored of liberty,
though too indulgent toward the Jesuit order ; a liberal nature,
desirous of reconciling the irreconcilable in theory and practice.

Let us single out again, outside of and above these two distinct
parties, an eminent man, M. Arnaud de l'Ariége, who has repre-
sented democratic ideas in our republican meetings with admirable
ability, associating tlieni with profoundly Christian convictions.
Already at this time, he had far outgone the liberal party of the
Catholic Church in openly demanding the complete separation of
Church and State, as a first condition of the highest development^
of the individual by a truly personal faith.

Gallicanism, properly so called, was revived several years ago,
forming a third party, insignificant in point of numbers, but
which counted some very distinguished adherents. The Abbé
Guettée, a learned historian of the Church of France, had sought
to find in national traditions some firm ground for resistance to
Ultramontanisni. His heavy and awkw\ardly-written book was
a well-furnished arsenal against Rome. To the same party be-
longed no less decidedly an eminent theologian, the Abbé Maret,
professor of theology in the faculty of Paris, known ly his works
of solid value against pantheism and against the traditionalist
school, as it is called, which, in order better to establish the
authority of the Church, overturned all rational foundations of the
truth in man. Tlie Abbé Maret, although an orthodox Catholic,
was opposed to the exaggerated pretensions of the papacy, and
showed himself more concerned about the ancient rights of the
Church of France than the Abbé Lacordaire, with whom, never-
theless, he united in starting "The New Era" {L'Ere Nouvelle),
in 1848. The Holy See has never forgiven him this spirit of
independence, for it has shown a very ill grace in confirming his
nomination to a l)ishopric " in parUbus:'' It was pretended tliat he
was growing deaf. And, in point of fact, he did seem to be a little

DE rKESSENSÉ ON MEN AND PARTIES. 171

haiLl of hearing uhcn called upou to listen to instructions from
the court of Rome. This was in their eyes an incurable malady.
But that wing of the Gallican party which was most openly ac-
cused and most distinctively liberal, was shut up within the nar-
row attic of a hermit-philosopher, ^r. Bordas Dcmoulin, known
by his admirable philosophic works upon Descartes. "With his
disciple, M. Iluet, he constituted the entire school ; but it made
up for its numerical feebleness by the indomitable energy, tho
courageous i^iith of its head. ]M. Bordas Dcmoulin lived in re-
tirement and poverty, not willing in any way to compromise his
ju-oud independence, uttering imprecations like an indignant
prophet against the humiliation of the Church, and declaring em-
phatically that all was over with her if she failed to ally herself
openly with democracy. He insisted above all upon her duty of
breaking off all connection with temporal powers, in order to
begin again with a wooden cross in her bauds and a word of lib-
erty on her lips, the conquest of a world wdiich is slipping out
of her hold. M. Bordas Dcmoulin has developed these great
thoughts in his book on " The Constituent Powers of the Church"
{Des Poucoirs constituants de V Eglise), in which he has set forth
his whole system. ]\I. Iluet has given these ideas greater pub-
licity by means of short and sprightly papers anunated by the
same stern and liberal spirit. The school of M. Bordas Dcmou-
lin will certainly always be considered one of the most interest-
ing and honorable manifestations of the time.

Such Avas the situation of minds in the Catholic Church of
France on the morrow of the coup cVétat of December, and in
part under the influence of those gloomy events. ^Yc are ac-
ciuainted now with its principal parties, and the men who play
a controlling part in them. "We are prepared to understand the
troubles and conflicts which are to be provoked, in coming years,
by the decisions into which the court of lîome has allowed itself
to be drawn.

The first of these decisions was the proclamation of the dogma
of the Immaculate Conception, in 1804. It is altogether unneces-
Baiy to emphasize the gravity of this audacious stroke of tlie

172 APPENDIX.

papacy. However important in itself might be the doctrinal de-
cision which would promote beyond measure the tendency toward
Mariohitry, the fact that it had dared to promulgate a dogma
without the sanction of a council, was the most dangerous and
insolent of the innovations of ultra montanisin. Never had
anything been seen like it. Always in the past there had been
reserved to the Church, regularly represented, the important right
of the definition of doctrine. But nothing could be more unlike
a regular council than the consultation by letter of the principal
bishops, and the hasty meeting of a certain number of them at
Rome. In another age, less ignorant than ours in a religious
point of view, so daring an attempt of the papacy would have
set fire to the four corners of the earth ; or rather, the fear of pub-
lic opinion would have put any such project out of the question.
The Qcsit (the centre of the Jesuit order) at Rome well knew that
it need have no fear of making any considerable disturbance in
men's minds by an attempt which nevertheless surpassed every-
thing of the sort which had ever before been seen. The rejoicing
was immense in the camp of the fanatical adherents of the Pope.
The party of the Univers climl^cd the Capitoline and intoned the
^' JSinic dimittisy It had, in truth, seen the dawn of the day so
glorious for that party, of the absolute subjugation of the Church.
The most liberal wing of the ultra montanists had no scruple in
receiving the new dogma with acclamations. The Correspomlant
joined in chorus with the Univers, and the Abbé Gratry outdid
all others in exalting the Immaculate Conception of ]\Lny. It
was only the old Gallicanism that felt itself struck to the heart.
The men eminent by position whom it counted within its ranks
confined themselves to silent lamentations; but we know how
l)itter and melancholy were those days to many among them.
^DI. Bordas Demoulin and Iluet uttered an energetic protest.'
In a book entitled "An Essay upon Catholic Reformation" {E.ssai
«ur la reforme catholique), they showed how ancient tradition
had l)ecu trodden under foot l)y the Jesuits of Rome. *' Wliat a
crime," cried M. Iluct, " to throw itself across the path of this
perpetual succession of truth ! Above all, what a crime ou the

DK rJlKSSENSK ON MEN AND PARTIES. 173

part of those ^vhosc prime mission it is to teach the truth — who
li;vve solemnly sworn to ilefend it !" These courar^eous opponents
have no hesitation in chari,nni; the new dogma with heresy. " As
it inchules," say they, " all corruptions, so it leads inevitably to
the demand tor radical and complete reformation. The time
allows neither comi)romisc nor delay. When open attack made
upon the revelation of God is manifest, submission is not obe-
dience, but apostasy, and renunciation of the Christian faith."
]\Dr. Bordas Demoulin and Iluct said aloud what was thou;,dit
or muttered by many othere.

The most energetic protest was that of an old priest, the xVbbc
Laborde, a man universally respected, who, on the announcement
of what was preparing at Ivome, started for the centre of Catho-
licity, imagining, in his simplicity, that the voice of truth would
get a hearing among the princes of the Church, even though ite
mouthpiece were only a humble country vicar. He carried to
the Pope a brief and forcible paper, entitled " The Belief in the
Immaculate Conception cannot become a Dogma of Faith" {La
croi/ance â V IinmacuKû Conception ne peut devenir un dogme de
foi). The stor}' is well worth reading, of the persecutions to
which he was subjected by the papal police. Hunted as a crimi-
nal, he w^as at last shipped for France by violence, and returned
thither to die on a hospital pallet, where, with his dying hand,
he finished a last protest against the new errors. It is a light
thing that the righteous man's complaint is unheeded on the
earth— it has been heard in heaven ; and the sentence pronounced
by him on his deathbed against the usurpations of the papacy, is
confirmed by God himself: it shall not be annulled.

Political events, in their swit\ progress, have come up to involve
the internal crisis of Catholicism in singular complications. The
gravest of these events was the war in Italy, which prostrated in
the Peninsula the power of Austria, the natural protector of the
papacy. The latter, speedily bereft of some of its fairest prov-
inces, menaced in the possession of the rest, that were still strug-
gling under its yoke, naturally took the most violent attitude
toward the new kingdom of Italy, \Thich it had openly exc»m-

174 APPENDIX.

municatcd. The old-stj'le politics tûok on, in its 03-0?, a character
of actual sanctil}' as being the only thing that gave an}^ promise
of maintaining the temporal power. This explains the fact that
after the Italian war in 1859, reactionar}^ principles found more
favor than ever at Eome, and that hatred of civil and religious
liberty were there carried to the point of actual fanaticism. Abso-
lutism of all sorts is the bulwark of the temporal power of the
Pope, which can be maintained on no other ground.

It is easy now for us to understand in what way the Holy See
has been led to the Encyclical of December, 18G4, and the aj-ipended
" Syllabus." It certainl}^ would never have let itself be dragged
into these acts of unmitigated follj^, unless it had believed itself to
be in a state of permanent aggressive war. Every advance of
liberty seemed to it to knock one stone out of the wall behind
which it is defending its political sovereignty. Accordingly it
runs a-tilt against it, as a mortal enem}', even when liberalism
shows itself most careful not to hurt it, and halts before the tem-
poral power, as if it had come to a reserved region wdiicli must be
an exception to all the general principles of modern society. The
Correspondant has had some little experience of this. The Pope
is in the right about it. The logic of events will not always stop
short just where we would like to have it. With the best dispo-
sition in the world to stop half-wa}"- in the argument, we don't
more than half succeed. It is not possible to advocate the cause
of liberty at Paris and oppose it at Rome. We cannot go on sa}'-
ing " true this side the Alps, false the other side." Liberal
Catholicism, wiiether it will or no, is listed in the grand crusade
against pontifical absolutism, and in the long siege which will end
with throwing down the wall of this European China. These
considerations explain the internal conflicts of Catholicism, and
the condemnations which have been obtained against its most
illustrious champions. It is because, witli all their attempts to
disguise or defend the abuses of the temporal papacy, they are
doing it less good, than they are damaging it by their general ad-
vocacy of liberty.

Nevertheless, the Catholics of the Correspondant do not spare

DE PRESSENSÉ ON MEN AND PARTIES. 175

thcir streiii^th in llio dcfi-iiro of tlu' t(Miii>or;il power. Instead of
being content -with inflietini; on the It;ili:in administrations the
reproaches that have been justly deserved by their tortuous and
often Machiavellian policy, they liavc poured out their sjïlccn on
Italy itself, simply on the ,i!;round that it had laid hands on the
property of the Lord's anointed. In their journals, they turned
against it their most impassioned polemics, without once being
willing to consider what mischief it had suffered from that papal
power which had been the everlasting hindrance to its enfran-
chisement, and which never ceased to wish it every possible an-
noyance. When ]\[. de Cavour accepted as his own motto one
of the finest expressions of ]Moulalembert, " A free Church in a
free State," the Liberal-Catholic party were almost ready to cry
out. Blasphemy ! Orators, journalists, bishops, all vied with each
other in denouncing the Italian nation, and insulting its aspira-
tions. It was a question l)ctween the Bishop of Orleans and his
colleague of Poitiers, which should do most to roll Ital}' in the
mud, and to magnify the beauty, the gentleness, the liberality of
the pontifical government. The Correapondant party did more
than devote its pen to the cause of tlie temporal power; it fur-
nished to it its most illustrious sword in the person of General
Lamoricière, the vanquished of Castelfidardo. There was only
one solitary voice in the Catholic camp that did not join in chorus
Avith the defenders of the priest-king. This was the voice of !M.
Arnaud de l'Ariége, who published in 180S a book entitled ItaJy,
in which he protested, in the name of religion, against this fatal
confounding of faith and politics. We cannot refrain from citing
from it the following fragment, which, in the midst of the theo-
cratic fever, vindicates the honor and the tradition of Christian
spirituality.

" Whenever, at any point in the civiliz.ed world, a grave attack
is aimed at the rights of conscience, all consciences feel the bond
of common interest, and there breaks forth at once a universal
protest.

"Let but a Jewish child, at Rome, be snatched from its family
by fanatical priests, and every friend of justice, Balioualist, or

176 APPENDIX.

Protestant, or Catholic, forgets his religious party in thinking of
the rights of the outraged flither. Let dissenting Christians in
Spain he condemned by the secular courts for their acts of wor-
ship, and the Universal Israelite Alliance lifts up, in fovor of its
Christian brethren, the most noble and touching remonstrances.

" Is Rome alone, in this concert of civilized nations, to be want-
ing to its mission ? "When libert}^ is the tirst need of the age — a
need so imperative that even those who curse it at the bottom of
their hearts are compelled to assume the disguise of it — when it
is the star toward whicli are turned the eyes of the oppressed of
the whole earth, is the temporal lîome of the popes to remain the
insurmountable obstacle to it? This state of things, which holds
Italy and all Christendom in check, is a vast misfortune, and
almost a defiance flung by the spirit of the past before the aspira-
tions of the civilized world.

" No event, therefore, occurring in Europe, can be sutïïcient to
justify us in losing sight of this great interest, which overtops all
others in importance. Keep it ever before the people — eveiy
liberal conquest will be precarious, every solution will be incom-
plete, so long as the knot is not fairly cut at Rome by the aboli-
tion of the temporal papacy. For years past, therefore, we have
made this our Belenda Carthago.

" Furthermore, every institution has got to be tested by liberty.
The obstinacy of the Catholic clergy, in clinging to a political
basis, convinces only too many of the men of liberal sentiments
that the Church has no other foundation, and that when this
foundation fails, the whole structure will tumble at once."

Such language as this could not but be displeasing at Rome :
bnt then, on the other hand, the papal power was bound to show
its gratitude to those eminent men who had undertaken to be its
champious. But it accoi'ded this cordially and unreservedl}^ only
to those who had served it exactly according to its mind, and had
understood distinctly that the cause of the papal poAver was iden-
tical with the cause of absolutism. It dreaded the support of
liberal Catholics, because it perceived clearly enough that the
breath which animated them was not its own spirit, and that it
was the same breath which had first roused Italy, and then sus-
tained her in opposition to Rome. It understood clearly that it
is not possible long to eulogize civil liberty, and, above all, liberty

DE PRESSENSÉ ON MEN' AND PARTir.S. 177

of ron!=rienrc, in ail countries, antl proscribe thcni ut ono solitary
point in the universe. Thus the instinct of self-preservation ren-
dered it more perepicacious and loj^ical than those pious kni^^hts of
Catholic liberalism, who, buminj^ with incompatible ardors, do-
voted themselves at once to the temporal power of the Pope and
to liberty. It was inevitable but that this misunderstanding;
should be speedily cleared up, and nothing tended more to pre-
cipitate an open rupture between the parties, than the grand liberal
manifestation that took place at the Catholic congress of ^lalines,
in August, 18G3. It was the former disciple of Lamennais, ^[. de
^Montalembcrt, who took the initiative, with accents which strik-
ingly recalled that fiery old man, the editor of the Avenir. Every-
body ought to read, entire, his two speeches of August 21 and 23,
18G3. They were afterward printed as a pamphlet, and are a
splendidly eloquent summary of all the principles of liberal Catholi-
cism without forgetting its inconsistencies. In these impassioned
harangues, Montalembert reclaims his share in the estate be-
queathed by Cavour, and develops anew the ftimous motto, "A free
Church in a free State." He starts, to be sure, with making his
disclaimers. He calls that illustrious minister who was the
founder of Italian unity, a great criminal. He labors with no
small trouble to show how his ideas of the perfect independence
of the church are capable of being reconciled with the Roman
theocracy, and how (to use the standard phrase) the two powers
have to be united at Rome, in order that they may be separated
everywhere else. But all these concessions, which he makes with
perfect sincerity, only give the stronger emphasis to his energetic
enforcement of the claims of liberty. He declares boldly that he
has no tears for past institutions — that the church must resolutely
turn its back upon the old order of things, and fall in, 103'ally,
with the great liberties of modern times — the li1)ert)^ of universal
suffrage, of association, of the press, and of worship. In order to
clear up all misunderstanding, the great orator devotes his whole
speech to this last liberty. Let him speak for himself ^Ye shall
see, a little further on, what importance this passage has in iho
histor}' of contemporar}'- Catholicism :

178 APPENDIX.

" Of fill the liberties which I have undertaken to defend, the
most precious, in my view, the most sacred, the most legitimate,
the most necessary, is liberty of conscience. I have loved
and served all forms of human liberty ; but I claim the special
honor of having been a champion of this. Even now, after so
many a struggle, and so many a defeat, I cannot speak of it with-
out unwonted emotion. Yes, we are bound to love and serve
all liberties, but among them all, the tenderest respect, the most
absolute devotion is due to religious liberty ; for this it is which
soars in regions the loftiest and purest, and at the same time, the
most vast. Its domain stretches from the depths of the individ-
ual conscience to the most splendid manifestations of national life.
Tliis alone illuminates two lives and two worlds: the life of the
soul as well as of the bod}" ; heaven as well as earth. This, alone,
is of equal importance to all men without exception — poor and
rich, strong and weak, people and kings, the least of our little
ones, and the intellect of a Newton or a Leibnitz.

" And yet — most strange and grievous thing ! — it is this liberty,
the most delicate, tlic most exposed of all, which one cannot
handle without crushing it — it is this which, everywhere pro-
claimed in theory, is almost everywhere, in fact, least understood,
least respected, least protected from a thousand rude or treacher-
ous attacks, too often unnoticed or unpunished.

" I must confess that this enthusiastic devotion of nine to re-
ligious liberty, is not general among Catholics. They are very
fond of it for themselves — which is no great merit. Generally
speaking, everybody likes every sort of liberty for himself. But
religious libert}" for its own sake, the liberty of other men's con-
sciences, the liberty of worship which men denounce and repudi-
ate— this is what disturbs and enrages many of us.

" I go for liberty of conscience, in the interest of Catholicism,
without reservation and without hesitation. I frankly accept all
those consequences of it which equity requires and public moral-
it}^ does not forbid. This brings me to a delicate but essential
question, I come to it without circumlocution, because in all dis-
cussions of this sort, I have always found the importance of
meeting in advance the very natural and often very sincere anxi-
ety which obtains among the enemies of the liberty of Catholics.
Are we at liberty, now-a-days, to demand liberty for the truth —
that is, for ourselves (for every honest man believes what he holds
to be the truth), and refuse it to error— that is, to persons who
differ from us ?

DE PRERSENSi: ON MEN AND PARTIES. 179

" I answer fliitly — no. 1 uni well aware thai I am treadinc:,
here, on dangerous ground. Inccdo per igncx. I liastcn, accord-
ingly, to repeat that I make no pretence to express anythuig
more than an individual opinion, 1 bow bef<jre all the texts and
all the canons that will be quoted against me. I shall neither
dispute tliem nor discuss them. But I cannot crush out the con-
viction of my conscience and heart. I cannot do otherwise than
express it, now that I have read, for twelve j-ears past, those
essays on the restoration of men and things to a perfect state,
which nobody, when I was a young man — at least no Catholic —
ever thought of defending. I declare, therefore, that I feci an
invincible horror at all punishments and all violences inflicted
on mankind under pretence of serving or defending religion.
The fagots lighted by the Jiands of Catholics, arc as horrible to
me as the scaffolds on which Protestants have immolated so
many mart3'rs. [Sensation and applause] The gag in the mouth
of any sincere preacher of his own faith, I feel as if it were be-
tween my own lips, and it makes me shudder with distress.
[Henewcd sensation.] The Spanish inquisitor, saying to the here-
tic, " The truth, or death," is as odious to me as th(^ French ter-
rorist saying to my grandfather, " Liberty and fraternity, or
death." [Shouts of applause.] The human conscience has the
right to demand that none of these hideous alternatives shall ever
be imposed on it." [Reneired appjlaui^e.]

Such language as this certainly left nothing to be desired in
point of precision. Received with enthusiasm in the Liberal-
Catholic party (although it must have appeared cxtrn.vagant to
some of them), in the opposite party it waked np a lively indig-
nation, especially in the burning centre of Roman Jesuitism;
for M. de ]Montalembert had laid an audacious hand on the fun-
damental principles of that powerful bod\', and on the ver}- basis
of their private teaching. We are compelled to believe that it
■was just after the congress of Halines, and as a sequel to all tlie
protests and denunciations to which that congress gave rise, that
the Encyclical of December 8th, 1864, was prepared. Read it
without prejudice, giving its words their natural sense, and it is
not possible to help seeing in it the clearest refutation of all that
Montalembert had declared, with a generous piLssion, on the
platform of the congress :

180 APPENDIX.

" Ye arc not ignorant, venerable brethren, that there are not
M'anting, at this day, men who, applying to civil society the im-
pious and absurd principle of natumlwn, as they call it, make
bold to teach that the perfection of government and the progress
of States demand that society be constituted and governed with-
out taking any more account of religion than if there were no
such thing, or at least without making any discrimination be
îween the true religion and the false. Furthermore, contrary to
ihe doctrine of the Scripture, the Church, and the holy Fathers,
they do not hesitate to declare that the best government is that
in which no obligation is recognized in the authorities to repress
by legal penalties the violators of the Catholic faith, except so
far as the interests of the public peace demand. Setting out with
this absolutely false conception of government, they do not stick
at encouraging that erroneous opinion, fotal to the Catholic
Church, and to the salvation of souls, which our predecessor,
Gregory XVI., of happy memory, characterized as a dc'Iinu?7i, that
liberty of conscience and of worship is a right which belongs to
every man, and which ought to be proclaimed by law, and pro-
tected in every well-constituted State; and that citizens have a
right to the' full liberty of manifesting their opinions, whether
it may be by speech, by printing, or otherwise, without any
power of restriction on the part either of the ecclesiastical or of
the civil authority. Now in maintaining these rash declarations,
they neither think nor consider that tliey are preaching the lib-
ert}' of perdition, and tliat if it is always permitted to human
opinions to dispute everything, there will never be wanting those
who will dare to resist the truth, and put confidence in the words
of man's reason — a most mischievous vanity which Christian
faith and wisdom must carefully avoid, according to the instruc-
tion of our Lord Jesus Christ himself

"And since wherever religion is banished from civil societ3\ and
the doctrine and authority of the divine revelation rejected, the
true notion even of human justice and duty becomes obscured
and lost, and material force takes the place of true justice and law-
ful right, it is precisel}'' on this account that certain men, making
no account of the most settled principles of sound reason, dare to
proclaim that the will of the people, manifested by what they call
public opinion, or in some other waj', constitutes the supreme law,
independent of all right, divine and hu.man, and that in political
affairs, established facts, by tlie veiy fa(;t of their being estaljlished,
have the force of right.

DE TRESSENSK ON MKX AND PARTIES. 181

*' Now, who tlocs not sec, ayIio does not feci distinctly, that So-
ciet}', -witlulrawn from the laws of religion and true righteousness,
can have no other object than that of heaping up riches, and in
all its doings will follow no other law than the indomitable desire
to satisfy its passions and serve its interests? Therefore, men of
this sort persecute with cruel hatred the religious orders, making
no account of the immense services which they have rendered to
religion, society, and literature. They cry out against them, say-
ing that they have no legitimate reason for existing, and thus
they become the echo of the calumnies of heretics. In cfTect, as
it was very wisely said by Pius VII., our predecessor of happy
incmor}', ' the abolition of the religious orders is a blow at tlio
liberty of publicly practising the gospel teachings ; it is a blow at
a manner of life recommended by tlie CIrh-cIi as conformed to the
apostles' doctrine ; finally, it is a blow at those illustrious founders
whom we venerate at the altar, and who did not establish these
orders except by the inspiration of God !'

" They go farther yet, and declare in tlieir impiety that it is
necessary to take away from the faithful and the Church the right
of doing alms publicly in the name of Christian charit}', and to
abolish the law which forbids servile labor on certain days in
order to make room for divine worship : and this under the most
false pretext that this right and this law are inconsistent with the
principles of sound public economy.

" Not content with banishing religion from society, they would
fain exclude it even from the bosom of the family. Teaching and
professing the fatal error of communism and socialism, they
affirm that domestic society, or the flunilj-, has the ground of its
existence purel}^ in civil law; and consequenth^ that all the rights
of parents over children, and especially the right to insti'uct and
educate, are derived from the civil law and dependent on it.
With these men of falsehood, the principal object of these impious
maxims and these machinations, is to withdraw completely from
the salutary doctrine and intluence of the Cliurch the instruction
and education of 3'outh, in order to defile and deprave, by the
most pernicious errors, and by every sort of vice, the tender and
flexible soul of the 3'oung. In elfect, all those who have under-
taken tlie overthrow of religious and social order, and to bring to
naught all laws, divine and human, have always and above all
combined their plans, their actions, and their clForts, for the de-
ception and perversion of the youth, because, as we have already

182 APPENDIX.

iudicated, tlic}^ put all their hope in the corruption of the rising
generation.

" Neglect not, also, to teach that ro3'al power is conferred, not
only for the government of this world, but, above all, for the
protection of the Church ; and that nothing can be more for the
advantage and glory of chief magistrates and kings than to con-
form themselves to the words which our most wise and courage-
ous predecessor, St. Felix, wrote to the Emperor Zeno, that he
sliould leave the Church free to govern itself by its own laws, and

sulfer no man to interfere witli its liberty It is unquestionably

for tlieir interest, in all matters that concern the things of God,
carefully to follow the order which he has laid down, and to set
the royal will below, and not above, tlie will of the priests of
Christ." t

Among the propositions condemned hy \\\c '' Syllahus" which
follows the Encyclical are the following :

" That every man is free to embrace and profess that religion
which he regards as true, according to the light of his reason."

" IV. 24. That the Church has not the power of using force ;
that she has no power, direct or indirect."

" 54. That the Church ought to be separated from tlie State,
and the State from the Church."

" 74. That matrimonial cases belong to the jurisdiction of the
civil State."

" 77. That, in our times, it is no longer expedient that the
Catholic religion should be considered as the only religion of the
State, to the exclusion of all other religions.

" 78. That accordingly, in some Catholic countries, it has very
properly been provided by law that immigrants should enjoy the
public exercise of their respective religions.

" 79. That it is false that civil liberty granted to all religions
propagates the plague of indilfercntism.

" 80. That the Koman pontiff can and ought to be reconciled
and come into liarmony with progress, liberalism, and modern
civilization."

These are (don't mistake it) not the things approved, but the
things condemned.

Now, let us consider the effect of tliis document on the three
parties of Catholicism in France — ab:4olutist ultnimontanism,

DE PKESSENSK ON MEN AND rARTIES. 183

liberal ultramontanism, and Gallirnnism in its various shades
more or loss distinctly marked. There is no need of inquiring
concernin:^ the first party. Its answer is known beforehand. Its
shouts had all the insolence of triumph and rcvenc^e. The two
newspapers, the. Univers and the Monde, abused without stint the
advantage they had gained. They saw the sacred shield of in-
fallibility stretched out over their favorite doctrines, and over
that whole system of civil and religions tyranny which they never
tired of preaching up. The Head of the Churcli, in fact, declared
that they alone had truly known his mind, and that the apolo-
gists of the Inquisition and the dragonnades were the real organs
of eternal truth.

The second party, the liberal Catholicism of the Correspondant,
at first bent its head ])efore the storm, all the time inwardly gnaw-
ing at its bonds. The pontifical condemnation struck it fairly
between the eyes. It is enough to put the Encyclical alongside
of the manifesto of l\l. de Montalembert at Malincs. Either hu-
man language has ceased to be the equivalent of the thoughts it
undertakes to express, or the contradiction between these two
documents is just as clear as it could be. The Correspondant party
ought to have continued its attitude of silence. After all, an en-
cyclical is not a dogma ; it tolerates a mental reservation. Un-
luckily the bishop of Orleans did not see his wa}' to practise the
part of piiidence, which was also the part of dignity. Vexed at
seeing what a handle the enemies of the Church Avcre making of
the Encj'clical, he wrote a pamphlet to show that it was all right,
til at wliat the holy father had been condemning was license, not
liberty. With a diversion from the main question which showed
no little smartness, the fiery prelate began with dashing head first
into political controversy, discussing in an excited way the con-
vention of September 15, 18G-1, between France and Italy, accord-
ing to which, the French occupation of Rome was to be promptly
ended. After firing hot shot against a treaty which he deemed a
treason, he approached the Encyclical, and went into a thousand
subtleties of interpretation to show that there was a hidden mean-
ing, and a reasonable one, in the holy father's anathemas. It was

184 APPENDIX.

sewing new cloth on the old gfirment of the Vatican, and making
the rent worse, as the Gospel said. No ingenuity of interpreta-
tion conld hide the deplorable cxplicitness of the text. All his
nice distinctions could not prevent the vrorld from seeing that the
blow was aimed directly against my lord of Orleans and his
friends. Evcrybodj' knew that his party had moved heaven and
earth to prevent the Encyclical from coming out. To undertake,
at this time of day, to show that it had been got up expressly to
please them, was one of those bold manoeuvres which demand
such an excessive amount of dexterity that they become actually
clumsy. Montalembei't was careful enough to keep out of this
track. He kept quiet for awhile, and then went on and developed
exactl}^ the same thoughts and sentiments as in the past, just
as if the Encyclical had never appeared. One may see how in-
corrigible he was, by reading those fine pages which he devoted
to the American war, and w^hich gave him the opportunity of i-e-
newing his homage to the great Anglo-Saxon race, and to political
and religious liberty. O impotence of official authority in tlu^
sphere of intellect and morals ! tlie very men who most respect
it, treat it as if it had no existence !

For all this, the Encyclical troubled a great many honest con-
sciences. We have a most remarkable proof of this in a book
which the Correspondant did not venture to announce, although
it was written by one of its contributors, I\I. de Mctz-Noblat, an
earnest Catholic, a broad and elevated mind, w^ho exerts a great
influence in the v/ell-known group of liberals at Nancj^ The
title of the book is " Church and State." It is a collection of
articles on the great question of the relation between the temporal
and the spiritual powers. The author inclines perceptibly toward
separation, without pronouncing a perfectly decided opinion. He
winds up his book with a very grave declaration, which is more
than a simple exi)ression of liis ideas— it is the very trouble of
his conscience, which he reveals to us, in view of the follies of the
Ptoman Cinia. He is aware that he is not speaking only for him-
self, but thatiiis troubles and misgivings are shared by all those

DE PRESSENSÉ ON MEN AND PARTIES. 185

Ciilholics wlio dcH line to sell out their most earnest eonvietions.
Hence the importance of this noble and loyal protest :

" What arc the resources of that cohort of zealots who are
laboring to realize, sooner or later, the subordination of the tem-
poral power to the spiritual, and the indirect reign of the Church
over the nations ? If they attempt to carry their point l)y main
force, they will fall at the first step upon insurmountable obsta-
cles. Can they overcome them to-day ? No. They are not able
to hold the very ground they already occupy. Well ; the daj'
after a dogmatic decision, the obstacles will be greater yet; and
they will have fewer allies, fewer auxiliaries, fewer soldiers, per-
haps: the}' will be more watched, more hampered, more attacked.
From that time, their best weapon will be cunning. They will
find themselves reduced (it is so, from this day forth) to demand-
ing liberty for the Church in the name of justice, in the name of
equal rights — hiding their inner thoughts and ulterior intentions.
They will have to conceal their object, in order to accomplish it.
Vain subtlet}-- ! They will onl}' lose honor, without achieving suc-
cess. The trick is discovered. By the hundred tongues of the
press it will be exposed and balHcd. This is already the way
witli it, in some measure. How will it be, when no man shall be
able to say, ' I am a Catliolic, and nevertheless I do not aspire to
establish the domination of the Church over the State V

" To weaken the cause of the liberty of the Church, to
strengthen the camp of its adversaries — such would infallibly be
the consequences of erecting into dogmas those opinions to which
the Encyclical, Quanta cura, restores, we cannot disguise it, a
part of the authority Avhich they had lost. Let us hope that
things will go no further, and that an obligatory definition will
not aggravate the embarrassments of a situation already sufii-
ciently difficult."

The effect of the Encyclical was very considerable in tlie G;d-
lican division of the Church. All the eminent men who belonged
to it were wounded to the heart; but their characteristic doctrine
of the non-infallibility of the Holy Father, so long as he speaks in
his own name, suflered them to consider the Encyclical as a mere
Roman manifesto, deplorable enough, no doubt, but not binding
on the conscience. But it would have been very desirable to

186 APPENDIX.

have this distinction set forth Avith a good deal of emphasis, in
order to neutralize the unhappy effect of these pontifical declara-
tions ; for the effect of them had been immense. The French
government had liit upon a notable plan for giving them the ut-
most possible notoriet}', which was, to prohibit the official pub-
lication of them, on the ground that the}' conflicted with the
rights of the nation. This interdict, coming after the press, with
its thousand voices, had scattered the Encyclical in every direc-
tion, served only to interest liberal sentiment in favor of a docu-
ment b}' which that sentiment was condemned in the most frantic
strain. The State, by putting its big hand into this business, took
the surest means of turning it into a muddle and a quibble.

To one of the most eminent representatives of liberal Gallican-
ism the Encyclical was the last drop in a fall cup. 51. Huet,
who had stood alone in the breach since the deatli of ]\I. Bordas
Demoulin, had had no small troublé in keeping up any sort of
concord between his bold liberalism and the Catholic Church.
This concord became wholl}^ impossible when the Pope had
openly quarrelled with modern society with a frankness and au-
dacity which surpassed everj^thiug of the sort that had thus far
been seen. Unfortunately, M. Huet suffered the reaction to
which he gave himself up, to cany him beyond Christianity
itself, and enlisted into the ranks of the enemies of revelation,
as may be easily seen by that deeply interesting book in which
he recounts the histor}^ of his course of thought, under the title,
" The Religious Revolution of the Nineteenth Centur}'."

" Our age has known only one Catliolic who could be called
liberal, in the sense in which this title is given to the modern
reformers of Protestantism and Judaism. This Catholic was
Bordas. He was a man to resist the successors of Peter face to
face. He conceived the bold design, over the ruins of existing
aljuses, of restoring to the various orders of the Church, -the laity
iufluded, the i)rimitive Christian liberty. But the event has only
to.) well proved that Bordas was living after his time. He ought
to have been born in the sixteenth century. He died a Catholic
in name : in reality he was the truest and most thorough Pro-
testant of his age.

DE PRESSKNSÉ ON MEN AND TARTIES. 187

" Three events of iinniensc weight and senile have marked tlie
reign of Pius IX., and have given over Catholicism irretrievably
to ultramontane domination : the definition of the dogma of the
Immaculate Conception in 1854, the Austrian concordat of 185."),
iind the Encyclical of 18(»t. These acts shut up Catholicism in
a circle from which there is no es(,-ape.

" We are not now discussing theology ; we are giving the his-
tory of a religious movement. In this view, the proclamation
of the Immaculate Conception seems to us the most important
fact in the annals of Catholicism for more than a centur}'. Noth-
ing but ab.solute inditferencc as to the result, or the absolute
certainty of success among our contemporaries, could have caused
the event to pass almost without notice. Nevertheless, let us re-
member the date of the eighth of December, 18'>4. It marks the
advent of a new Catholicism, which we may term ultra-Catholi-
cism, from which the spirit of the age and modern societ}' can
hope for neither truce nor mercy.

" As to the manner of proceeding, care was taken that the rival
power to the papacy, the episcopacy, should find itself not only
nullified but vilitied — which is the most irreparable sort of de-
struction. They had an eye to this when the}^ invited to Rome
two hundred bishops. All deliberation was forbidden them, and
there they stood by, dumb and smiling, at the most solemn act
of Catholic life, the definition of a dogma. From that hour they
descended from the authority of pastors to the level of the flock,
and the everlasting ambition of Rome was satisfied. The iulal-
libility of the Pope, which France had run aground for centuries,
was under full headway amid the applauses of the Catholic
world. The theocracy of Gregory VII. was revived with greater
authority. The doctrinal and political consequences of it have
not been slow in follovriug, and the future will completely de-
velop them.

" I know there arc worthy members of the clergy who blame,
and groan, and hope in secret. But is it possible for Catholicism
to go backward V At the point where it is now fighting, the
Church has, so to speak, bui-ncd its boats. All hope of reforma-
tion is lost.

" The teeming movement of modern life is sundering itself
from the old counter-revwlutionary Church, frozen stiff by ultra-
montane dogma. In that Church superstition is spreading wide
its reign, having no congenial ally but the subtleties of scholas-
tic and rabbinic science. Bordas predicted v.hat would be the

188 APPENDIX,

f\Ue of Catholicism if it should persist in reconstructing itself. It
will be found, lie said, to degenerate into paganism. The pro-
phecy is coming true. The Neo-Catholicism or Marianism has
made itself dogmatically incompatible with scientific progress, as
well as with political and social progress. Loosing itself from
the enlightened classes, it will become the religion of the coun-
try people, where it will die out like the first Roman paganism.
Some choice spirits, beguiled by prejudices of habit or educa-
tion, some old-fashioned metaphysicians may still take shelter
under the shadow of the old sanctuary ; for the masses, the
springs of intellectual and moral life are dried up in that quarter.
The reign of Pius IX. will mark the fatal date of the last deca-
dence."

Such was the effect of the Encyclical upon one honest and
earnest man. There is weighty instruction in it. M. Huet has
just been taken away from his multitude of friends, attended by
their most affectionate respect ; for one had only to know him,
to admire his firm love of justice and liberty.

It seems as if the giddy infatuation which drove the papacy to
this act of folly, had at one moment infected the whole Catholic
church of France. In the year 1868, it undertook the most de-
plorable campaign — the best adapted to multiply defections like
that of M. Huet. The Peter the Hermit of this crusade was the
indefatigable Bishop of Orleans, whose zeal is truly formidable —
to his friends. The occasion of these new attacks upon the sys-
tem of public education, was a very innocent innovation on the
part of the Minister of Public Instruction, who, in order to en-
courage the education of girls, brought within their reach, in the
principal cities of France, excellent courses of instruction by the
professors of our Lyceums. There is really nothing so very ter-
rible in such an arrangement. jMothers arc free to send or not to
send their daughters to these Lectures, which, withal, are abso-
lutely neutral in a religious point of view. But the Church docs
not so understand it. It regards female education as its own
property — its private estate. To interfere with it, it regards as an
actual attack upon itself, an odious usurpation of power. This
is what Monseigneur Dupanloup felt profoundly. So he mulii-

Dr. ri;r:.ssF.NsÉ on mkn and tarties. 189

plic'd païuplilct upon pamphlet, to denounce the foul conspiracy
for giviuL,^ secular instruction to girls, who ou;;ht, as he expresscfl
it, to be reared in the lap of the Church. His ciy of alarm was
heard. The edicts of his colleagues followed upon liis call, like
those pasteboard monks Avhieb go tumbling one over another, as
soon as 3'ou tip over the first in the row. Nothing can be drearier
than all this prelatical prose, that struts groaning along in its big
sleeves, with most elegiac lamentations. Unhapi)ily this melan-
choly literature generally relieves its insipid commonplaces with
now and then a denunciation, and calculates to make the lovers
of liberty pay the expense of its tears. It can't allord to cry for
nothing.

Very soon the particular question widens out. It is not only
the instruction of girls which is on trial, but the whole sj'stem
of public instruction, both higher and lower. A vast movement
for petitioning the government has been organized, all along un-
der the impulse of the Bishop of Orleans, who has touched off the
train by his pamphlet on The Alarms of the Bishops, in which he
passes in review all the S3-mptoms of materialism which alarm
him m the instruction of our faculties. Only, b}- a strange inad-
vertence, he opens a petition for liberty of instruction, with a
demand that the State shall exercise its supervision and repres-
sion against such free associations a.>a are guilty of not suiting
him. This is the everlasting quibble of the Catholic party.
When it talks of liberty, we know that it means nobod^'^s liberty
but its own, and that it desires the suppression of other people's
liberty. The claw has pricked through the fur quite too often to
give us a moment's doubt over its liberal assurances. Have we
not seen how it has snatched the lirst opportunity to secure to its
own advantage a monopoly of public education ? "\Yc should be
perfectly agreed with it, if it frankly demanded entire liberty of
instruction in all its stages. "We are more and more convinced
that although the State ought to encourage to the utmost the
dissemination of learning, it docs not belong to it to do the teach-
ing; for the moment it begins to teach it has to have a doctrine,
philosophical, religious, or political, and then we have a Stat«

190 APPENDIX.

religion, a State philosophy, a State history'. "VVe are as niiicli
concerued as any one at the encroachments of materialism in
education ; but it belongs to liberty alone to cure the ills of lib-
erty. Away with all monopolies, and we shall then have no
more privileges for any sects. This is all we ask. But the
Catholic party wants something very different. It wants to shut
the mouths of its opponents, and use the State for a sort of
armed servant. Not content with demanding civil repression in
the very petition in which it calls for liberty of instruction, it gets
up other petitions against popular libraries, which it Muants to
pick over and expurgate after its own notion ; for, according to M.
Dupanloup, those arc sophists who, like M. Jules Simon, declare
that God docs not need to be protected by law. Here we see
the tip of the ear of this bastard liberalism : and a very dull ear
it is; for it has not been able to hear the rules of these libraries,
which gave the lie to its accusations in the courts which would
fain suspend from their jurisdiction. It reminds us of the ridi-
cule that was heaped, last year, on a certain Dr. Machelard, who
made loud and formal complaint to the Senate of some abomina-
ble things which he declared that he had heard. The next day
it was discovered that this faithful witness was as deaf as a post,
and had heard nothing but his own suspicions.

Nothing could have been better contrived for the dishonor of
religion than the debate excited in the Senate b}^ the famous
petition of the fathers of families. To begin with, the Senate is
very conservative toward everything but religion. The bench
of cardinals is all very fine to look at, but is a somewhat feebly
apostolic body. Doubtless it has had a great deal of experience,
such as may be acquired in the service of three or four succes-
Bivc forms of government, but such as does not seem to agree
comfortably with a great deal of zeal for tlie failh. Any relig-
ious cause, Protestant or Catholic, carried to the Senate, is sure
to cut a sorry ligure. The field-marshals who assert the Divinity
of Christ while twirling their moustaches or handling their
sword-hilts, produce effects rather comic than edifying. As to

DK rRKSSENSÉ ON MEN AND PARTIES. 101

the cardinals, I appeal to their speeches. Are there many en-
lightened friends of religion -who -would not ha\'e given sonic-
tiling if they never had been delivered ? The sole result of these
debates in the Senate against materialism and in favor of the
true faiih, has been to give M. Sainte-Beuve a chance, in his
fcpirited way, to fly out the flag of free philosophy, and to get
the laugh on his side — an easy success in the face of such a
blundering enemy. The ^Minister of Public Instruction confined
himself to a timid plea of extenuating circumstances, without
one moment rising to the discussion of principles. In fact, he
could not do this, for he had no more wish for genuine liberty
than his antagonists. lie only wanted to get the adoption of a
resolution that would not aflcct the situation.

Nothing remained of all these debates, but irritation and mis-
understanding. The anti-religious reaction, alone, found advan-
tage in them. This was the fine conclusion of the grand cam-
paign commenced by my Lord Bishop of Orleans, at a moment
when the Encyclical was enough to discredit Catholicism, and
therefore Christianit}- ; for in this free-thinking country, Chris-
tianity is always confounded Avith its best known form.

This deplorable campaign of petition to the Sonate against
public education ought not to shut our eyes to the real state of
things, which is, all along, a deep division in the midst of French
Catholicism. This division manifests itself especially at Paris.
On one side are the religious orders — the Jesuit houses which
have been considerably multiplied in the course of these few
years, thanks to their unciuestionable success in teaching, and
cspeciall}' in fitting students for the great military schools of the
government. Around the Church of St. Genevieve there is quite
a little world of zealous, facile, religious folk — a sort of Roman
colony in the midst of Paris, keeping up here the ultramontane
and absolutist traditions. At its head are certain monsiynori like
:Mgr. de Ségur, e.x-chamberlaiu to the Pope, who for a long time
played the part of a sort of legate, corresponding directly with
the Vatican, and giving information as to the doctrine of his

192 APPENDIX.

ecclesiastical superiors. This disorder has been slopped ; the
Archbishop of Paris no Ioniser tolerates this inquisition of a sub-
altern. He has likewise enforced his ri^ht to enter the Jesuit
institutions, who were disposed to withdraw from his control.

The party of the zelanti finds powerful support in the Fau-
bourg St. Germain, among the grand families of the legitimist
aristocracy. The contrary tendency is very powerful at Paris.
The facidty of theology, with its learned dean, Monseigneur
Maret, bishop of Sura, belongs to it. We find the same tendency
at the archbishop's palace. IMonseigneur Darbry is one of the
most learned and enlightened of the clergy of the present day.
His fine and expressive face bears the seal of distinction and of
austerity. He seems consumed by inward fires. His piety is
full of impulse, and nothing can be more touching than his allo-
cutions. All ultramontane exaggerations he holds in horror.
He has a passionate love for France and her greatness, and
groans over the follies which are bringing on a conflict between
religion in the future and the spirit of the age. Unfortunately,
he is disposed to rely too much on the civil power. He is not
satisfied with showing it great deference — he must make it his
next friend> His discourse on the occasion of the first com-
munion of the young prince quite exceeded the measure of
official respect for the government. This is one side of the old-
fashioned Gallicanism whicli will have to be abandoned at all
costs, for religion is more hurt by this attitude of dependence
Ihan it is helped bjMhe finest apologetic defences. We express
this regret with entire frankness, on the very account of the sym-
\rA{\\y we feel for a bishop so well dis])osed to resist the current
of uKramonlano follies. He has had much to sufl'cr from the
suspicions and the attacks of which he has been the object on the
part of the zelanti. It is well understood that he is in no good
odor at Rome. His personal distinction and eloquence clear up
t'.iese prejudices, whenever he can ])lead Ids own cause before
the Pope; but as soon ns his back is turned, his detractors get
the upper hand again. In reality, there is a fundamental and

DE riŒSSKXSÉ ON MF.N AND PARTir.S. 103

radical inf(Mni):ilil)ility between lus party and that of his ene-
iiîios.

The arclihislioji has brounlit to Paris, or at least has allowf.-d
to grow up about hiui, a ])o<ly of yc^ung clcrtr.v, leanied, enlight-
rncd, li])cral, who would uivc promiso of a nol)le future yet for
the Church f)f France, if the contrar}' current wore not so slronir,
and were not favored every day by the highest ecclesiastical
authority.

The boldest step of the Arclilnshop of Paris has been to place;
in the pulpit of Notre Dame Father Hyacintiik, on whom the
mantle of Lacordaire has fallen, and who has restored under the
vault of the old basilica the grandest days of religious eloquence.

Father Hyacinthe brings to his preaching a generous inspira-
tion, a fiery ardor, which has made him at once a power, and a
power <jf liberty. Born of a literary family, trained in solid
classical studies, he entered at an earl}' age into holy ordei-s, and
became a Barefooted Carmelite. ]Sren recognized in him, at the
outset, the gift of speech in a degree of eminence which placed
him in the first rank of oratoi-s. His first appearance at Notre
Dame was a trimnph. The crowds that gather to hear him, stand
waiting for tAvo hours before the time. IJe seems to send over
them a breath that lifts them like the waves of the sea. His face
is open and intelligent; his voice is sympathetic; he seems ever
to be lifted by the movement of his own thought and heart, and
at his best moments he has a power of fascination which is abso-
lutely incomparable. The imagination of Father Hyacinthe is
beautiful and grand; but it is never more brilliant than when he
reproduces the sublime scenes of the scriptural East. Hitherto
he has approached only such general subjects as The Personal
Cod, Independent ^lorality, Civil Society, Religious Societ}-. "We
are in haste to see him deal with the more direct questions of the
religious life which lead directly to the feet of Jesus Christ. The
most remarkable thing about his preaching is an admirable liV)-
erality with which he recognizes and greets true piety outside of
his own Church.

194 APPENDIX.

Another trait of his preaching is, that it is as little sacerdotal as
l)ossible. He boldly claims the practice of the universal priest-
hood in the sanctuary of the family. He declares that the father
and the mother must exercise the domestic priesthood, and that
the great woe of the Church of our da}' is, that the people of God
have abdicated this august charge.

We cite the following fragment from his last winter's confer-
ence against Pharisaism.

"Pharisaism, then, in its deepest aspect, is religious blind-
ness:— the blindness of priests who are put in trust with the let-
ter, and who think that the less they explain it, the safer they
keep it; a blindness which relates to every point of the sacred de-
posit ; blindness in dogma— the predominance of formula over
truth; blindness in morals — the predominance of outward works
over inward righteousness; blindness in worsjiip — the predomi-
nance of outward rites over religious feeling.

" Blindness in dogma. The Pharisees taught the truth. 'The
Scribes and Pharisees sit in Moses' seat,' said Christ; 'believe
what they say, but do not what they do.' There is no revealed
idea brought to light and quickening the world, but that there is
a word to hold it. Lucerna verbum tnnm. Domine. The Lord's
light is in a lamp. But if the word closes itself together, and
shuts up the idea as in a narrow and jealous prison, — if it darkens
it, stifles it, — that is Pharisaism. This is what the apostle Paul
called keeping the truth — but keeping it i^risoner in unrighteous-
ness. This is the thing Avhich extorted from the gentle lips of
the Saviour Jesus that terrible anathema, Yd' tohis ! ' Ye have
taken away the key of knowledge ; ye enter not in yourselves,
and them that are entering in, ye hinder. AVoe unto you !'

" In morals, it is outward works — the multiplicity of human
practices, piled up, a miserable and tyrannical burden on the
conscience, making it forget, in unwholesome dreams, that it is an
honest man's, a Christian's conscience. Tlie Pharisees said to
Jesus Christ, ' Why do not thy disciples wash tlu'ir hands before
eating, according to the tradition of tiic Elders V And the Sa-
viour answered them, ' Why do ye trample under foot the com-
mandments of God, to keep the commandments of men?'

" But tliere remains no more religious feeling, when the heart
is bendinLT under tlie weight of outward observances. ' Ah,' said

DE riîESSENSÉ ON MEN AND PARTI TS. VJT)

the Lord, ' well did Isni:ih ]iropliesy of you, sayin.c;: Tliis jx-opln
honoreth me -with lips and liaiids, but their heart is far from me.'

*' Get ye behind me, ye men of the letter! Get ye behind me,
yc foes of the human race ! Adirrmntur omnihuH homlitihnx^ :is
St. Paul saiil : ' they arc contrary lo all men.' And thou. Lord
Jesus, arise, my Saviour and my God, — thou who in all thy ,i;en-
tle life wast but twice in anu^er ! — Jesus had no wrath ai^ainst poor
sinners. He sat at their ta])le, and when the adulterous woman
fell at his feet, blushini^ with shame and weepin:; with remorse,
he lifted her, and bade her Go in peace and sin no more. lie had
no an_ii:er aqainst heretics and schismatics ; he sat upon Jacob's
well, beside the Samaritan woman, and announced to her, with
the salvation which is of the Jews, the worship which is in spirit
and in truth. But twice was Jesus angry : once, scourge in hand,
against those who sold the things of God in the temple; and
once, anathema in mouth, against those who perverted the things
of God in the law.

" Arise, then, gentle Lamb, in tin' pacific wrath, against the
enemies of all men, and the real enemies of the kingdom of God —
arise, and drive them from the temple !

" Thus it was that the S3'nagogue iicrished, and the Christian
Church arose.

" We arc about to separate, Gentlemen, for one more year.
Suffer me, at this moment, to entreat you to unite with me in an
act of consecration to this kingdom of God — this Church, whose
outer courts wc have trodden together. Christianity is not a
thing of to-day nor of yesterday. It is not only of the historical
epoch of Jesus Christ and the apostles : it is of David, of Moses,
of Abraham — it is of Adam, the father, king, pontifl', of us all.
Li this one religion, then — this CJiurch, whose form may change,
but whose foundation abideth unchangeable — ah! Gentlemen,
and — suffer me this word, for it is in my heart — friends, brothers,
let us consecrate ourselves, as did the prophets, to the love and
service of tlie kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is formally
constituted in Christianil}', in the Church Catholic, Apostolic, and
Koman ; but this Church, as I was but just now saying, must
ever go on changing from form to form, from glory to glory —
i ransformamur daritatc in claritatem — until, with all the race of
man, it shall have attained the stature of the perfect man in Jesus
Christ.

196 APPENDIX.

"Yes, Genllcmcn, let us love the cliiircli in every man, and
every man in the church. What matters his condition ? Rich
or poor, ignorant or learned, omnibus debitor sum, I am debtor to
every man, says St. Paul. What matters his nationality ? French-
man or foreigner, Greek or barbarian, omnibus debitor sum, I
answer with Saint Paul, — I am debtor alike to barbarism and
to civilization. In one sense, what matters it that we may love
the man, what is his religion ? If he be not a son of the Catholic
church according to the bod}' — tlie outward unity, perhaps he is
— I hope he is — according to the soul — the invisible unity. If he
be not a son of the Catholic church according to the soul, nor
according to the body — according to the spirit, nor according to
tlie letter — at least he is such in the preparation of God's coun-
sels. If he have not the baptismal water on his brow, I am
grieved; but nevertheless I behold there the blood of Jesus
Christ; for Christ has died for every man, opening to the whole
world his great arms on the cross! The world belongs to Jesus
Christ, and therefore the Avorld belongs to the church, if not
actually, at least potentially. Let me, then, love every man ; and
you also, with me, love every man, not only in himself, not only
in his narrow and earthly individuality, but in the great Christian
community, the great divine community which invites us all."

The soul of a great orator is like an iEolian harp, not inert, but
quivering with intelligence and sensitiveness, vibrating with every
breeze that blows about it. The conferences of Father Ilyacin the
are more than an isolated manifestation ; they reveal a condition
of the public mind in the midst of which they are uttered. Fur-
thermore, the rage they excite, the vast disdain which the Uni-
vers affects to cast upon them, add still more to wlia^, we may
call their barometncal value. The Abbé Loyson, bro*,her of the
preacher of Notre Dame, brings to the chair of morals in the
theological ficulty at Paris, a very clear and highly respected
liberalism.*

It is true that Father Hyacinthe is succeeded in tlic pulpit of

* This article, altliough published in Octobci-, ISGO, wa? written considerably
before the protest of Father Hyacinthe, and the letter of E.\communication of
hip General,

DE PRESSEXSÉ ON MEN AND PAIITIES. 197

Notre Diinic l»y Father Felix, who preaches there re.u^ularly diir-
iu;;; Lent. Fatlier Felix is the voiee of Jesuitism, a thin, i)ene-
trating voice, hut not deficient in flexibility. lie puts at the
service of the Roman doctrine a clear, precise mind, trained to
sophistry, capable of taking many an agreeable turn in one di-
rection or another, but always bringing up, at last, with the same
genuflexions before the authorit}' of the Pope. Last year he gave
two lectures against Protestantism full of gall and injustice, re-
producing all the old calumnies. Certainly there is a great con-
trast between such preaching and tlie generous accents of Father
Hyacinthe; but this contrast is characteristie of the Catholicism
of the period.

"We should have been glad to open here the chapter of Catholic
piety. It would be a very interesting study to trace, in this re-
gion of practical life, the two currents which have been conflict-
ing before our eyes in the domain of thought and of the Church.
We should liave some admirable figures to introduce upon the
scene, like some of those, for instance, which are depicted in
one of the most afTecting books of the day, " A Sister's Story"
{Les Récits cViine JSœuj'), hy ^ladame Craven ; the beautifully
poetic figure of Eugénie de Guérin and that young Catholic theo-
logian the Abbé Péreyvc, lately evoked before us l)y Abbé Gra-
try, and certainly one of the noblest types of a deep and fer-
vent Christian piety. On the other hand, we should see these
■waters, so pure at the mountain springs, becoming altered, viti-
ated, and mingled, in the plain, with the most abject supersti-
tions, such as the pretended miracles of the Virgin of La Sal-
lette and the Virgin of Lourdes— ridiculous but lucrative prodi-
gies, worth}- of the charlatan priests of the last days of pagan-
ism. We should have to dwell on the development of a new-
worship, just now in great vogue — the adoration of St. Josei>h —
which is growing every day, as witness a whole literature of silly
devotional writings. Here is something not to be overlooked by
those who seek to understand the Catholicism of the present day.
In this interesting studv, we should have for guide an excellent

198 APPENDIX.

work, '' The Spirit and the Letter of True Piety" {Sur Ve/^prit et
la lettre de la vraie piété), by one of the most distinguished youup:
priests of the Paris cleriry, Abbé IMichaud, who protests energet-
ically against all tlie abuses of the reviving Phai-isaisra — against
pvciything which enervates and materializes true religion. But
this subject is too important a one to be lightly touched upon.
AYe have only wished to show that the divisions among Catho-
lics are really general and universal, and that they relate to prac-
tice as well as to theory.

THE EKD.

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