LECTURE II.

_LIFE WITHOUT G.o.d._

(At Geneva, 20th Nov. 1863.--At Lausanne, 13th Jan. 1864.)

GENTLEMEN,

I propose to examine to-day what are the consequences for human life of the total suppression of the idea of G.o.d. This suppression is the result of atheism properly so called: it is also the result of scepticism raised into a system. The soul which doubts, but which seeks, regrets, hopes, is not wholly separated from G.o.d. It gives Him a large share in its life, inasmuch as the desire which it feels to meet with Him, and the sadness which it experiences at not contemplating Him in a full light, become the princ.i.p.al facts of its existence. But doubt adopted as a doctrine realizes in its own way, equally with atheism properly so called, life without G.o.d, the mournful subject of our present study.

Having G.o.d, the spiritual life has a firm base and an invincible hope.

The vapors of earth may indeed for a moment obscure the sky. One while fogs hang about the ground; another while clouds send forth the thunder-bolt; but, above the regions of darkness and of tempest, the eye of faith contemplates the eternal azure in its unchanging calm. Life has its sorrows for all; but it is not only endurable, it is blessed, when in view of the instability of all things, in view of evil, of injustice, and of suffering, there can breathe from the depths of the soul to the eternal, the Holy One, the Comforter, those words of patience in life and of joy in death: _My G.o.d!_ Take G.o.d away, and life is decapitated.

Even this comparison is not sufficient; life, rather, becomes like to a man who should have lost at once both his head and his heart. The immense subject which opens before us falls into an easy and natural division: we will fix our attention successively upon the individual and upon society.

PART I.

_THE INDIVIDUAL._

Man thinks, he feels, and he wills: these are the three great functions of the spiritual life. Let us inquire what, without G.o.d, would become, first, of thought, which is the instrument of all knowledge; next; of the conscience, which is the law of the will; then of the heart, which is the organ of the feelings. We will begin with thought.

Let us go back to the origin of modern philosophy. The labors of Descartes will make us acquainted, under the form clearest for us, with a current of lofty thoughts which does honor to ancient civilization, and which has come down to us through the writings of Plato and St.

Augustine. We have seen that Descartes deceived himself, when he thought to separate himself altogether from tradition, and forgot the while how intimately men's minds are bound together in a common possession of truth. He was mistaken, because he confounded the idea, natural to the human mind, of an infinite reason, with the full idea of the Creator; so attributing to the efforts of his own philosophy that gift of truth which he had received from the Christian tradition. But, having so far recognized his error, listen now to this great man, and judge if he were again mistaken in those thoughts of his which I am about to reproduce to you.

Descartes strives hard to doubt of all things, persuaded that truth will resist his efforts, and come forth triumphant from the trial. He doubts of what he has heard in the schools: his masters may have led him into error. He doubts of the evidence of his senses: his senses deceive him in the visions of the night; what if he were always dreaming, and if his waking hours were but another sleep with other dreams! He will doubt even of the certainty of reason: what if the reason were a warped and broken instrument? Reason is only worth what its cause may be worth. If man is the child of chance, his thoughts may be vain. If man is the creature of a wicked and cunning being, the light of reason may be only an _ignis fatuus_ kindled by a malicious and mocking spirit. Here is a soul plunged in the lowest abysses of doubt; but it is a manly soul which seeks in doubt a trial for truth, and not a comfortable pillow on which slothfully to repose. How does Descartes upraise himself? By a thought known to every one, and which was already found in St.

Augustine: "_Cogito, ergo sum_. I think, therefore I am." Deceive me who will; if I am deceived, I exist. Here is a certainty protected from all a.s.sault: I am. But what a poor certainty is this! What does it avail me to have rescued my existence from the abysses of universal doubt, if above the deep waters which have swallowed up all belief floats only this naked and mortifying truth: I am; but I exist only perhaps to be the sport of errors without end. The first step therefore taken by the philosopher would be a fruitless one if it were not followed by a second. An eye is open, and says: I see; but it must have a warrant that the light by which it sees is not a fantastic brightness. No, replies Descartes; reason sees a true light; and this is how he proves it: I am, I know myself; that is certain. I know myself as a limited and imperfect being; that again is certain. I conceive then infinity and perfection; that is not less certain; for I should not have the idea of a limit if I did not conceive of infinity, and the word _imperfect_ would have no meaning for me, if I could not imagine perfection, of which imperfection is but the negation. Starting from this point, the philosopher proves by a series of reasonings that the conception of perfection by our minds demonstrates the real existence of that perfection: G.o.d is. He adds, that the existence of G.o.d is more certain than the most certain of all the theorems of geometry. You will observe, Gentlemen, that the man who speaks in this way is one of the greatest geometricians that ever lived.

He has found G.o.d, he has found the light. Reason does not deceive, when it is faithful to its own laws: the senses do not deceive, when they are exercised according to the rules of the understanding. Error is a malady; it is not the radical condition of our nature; it is not without limits and without remedy, for the final cause of our being is G.o.d, that is to say truth and goodness.

From everlasting G.o.d was true, For ever good and just will be,

says one of our old psalms. Faith in the veracity of G.o.d--such is the ground of the a.s.surance of believers; such is also the foundation on which has been raised the greatest of modern philosophies. Without the knowledge of G.o.d and faith in his goodness, man remains plunged in irremediable doubt, possessing only this single, poor, and frightful certainty: I am; and I exist perhaps only to be eternally deceived.

But, it has been said, and it needed no great cleverness to say it--What a strange way is this of reasoning! Here is a man who first proves that G.o.d is, by means of his reason; and then proves that his reason is good because G.o.d is. His reason demonstrates G.o.d to him, and G.o.d demonstrates his reason to him: it is an argument of which any schoolboy can at once see the fallacy; it is manifestly a vicious circle. This has been said again and again by persons who have neglected a sufficiently simple consideration. The error is apparently a gross one; is it not likely that the argument has been misunderstood? Ought we not to look very closely at it, before declaring that one of the most lucid minds that have ever appeared in the world left at the basis of his doctrine a fault of logic which any schoolboy can discover? Self-sufficient levity of spirit is not the best means of penetrating the thought of leading minds; and it very often happens to us to fail of understanding because we have failed in respect.

Let us examine with serious attention, not the very words of Descartes, as an historian might do, but the course of thought of which Descartes is one of the most ill.u.s.trious representatives.

To recognize in the reason traces of G.o.d, and to show that in faith in G.o.d consists the only warrant of the reason, is not to argue in a vicious circle, because, in this way of proceeding, what we are employed in is not reasoning, but a.n.a.lysis; we are establishing a fact in order to ascertain what that fact implies and supposes. This fact is the natural faith which man has in his own reason, when his reason reveals to him the immediate light of evidence, or the mediate light of certainty. Now, when man confides in his reason, it is not in his individual reason that he confides, for he has no doubt that what is evident for him is so also for others. If, tossed by a tempest, he were thrown upon an island of savages, he would not think that those savages, when they came to reflect, would be able to discover that the axioms of our geometry are false, or to make elements of logic which would contradict our own. We believe in a general reason, everywhere and always the same, and in which the reason of each individual partic.i.p.ates. We believe therefore that there is a principle of truth which exists in itself, a reason which is eternal and everywhere present; in other words, we believe in G.o.d considered as the source of the universal intelligence. To believe in one's reason, is to believe in G.o.d, in this sense: the fact of the confidence which we place in our own faculty of thought, supposes a concealed faith in eternal truth. This is the a.n.a.lysis of which I was speaking. It is a circle if you please, but it is a circle of light, outside of which there is, as we shall see by and by, nothing but darkness and hard contradictions.

You deny the existence of G.o.d. On what ground do you rest this denial?

On the ground of your reason. You believe then that your reason is good, you believe it very good, since you do not hesitate to trust it, while you undertake to prove false the fundamental instincts of human nature.

But you would not venture to say that this reason which you believe in with a faith so firm is your own separate reason merely, your personal and exclusive property. You believe in the universal reason; you believe in G.o.d, considered at least as the source of the understanding. The man therefore who denies G.o.d, affirms Him in a certain sense at the same time that he denies Him. He denies Him in his words, in the external form of his thought; he affirms Him in reality, as the Supreme Intelligence, by the very trust which he places in his own thought. Our understanding is only the reflected ray of the Divine verity. Therefore it is that Descartes, as soon as he has laid the first foundations of his system, interrupts the chain of his reasonings to trace these lines: "Here I think it highly meet to pause for a while in contemplation of this all-perfect G.o.d, to ponder deliberately his marvellous attributes, to consider, admire, and adore the incomparable beauty of that immense light, at least so far as the strength of my mind, which remains in a manner dazzled by it, shall allow me to do so."[19] Thus it is that while descending into the depths of the understanding, the philosopher who is supposed to be absorbed in pure abstractions, discovers all at once a sublime brightness, and exclaims with the ancient patriarch: "The LORD is in this place, and I knew it not!"[20] G.o.d is everywhere; He is in the heights of heaven, He is in the depths of thought. Remember those celebrated words of Lord Chancellor Bacon: "A little knowledge inclineth the mind to atheism, but a further acquaintance therewith bringeth it back to religion."

G.o.d is not demonstrated, in the ordinary sense which we attach to the word demonstrate;[21] He is pointed out[22] as the source of all light.

The attempt to demonstrate G.o.d as anything else is demonstrated, by descending, that is, from higher principles until the object in view is arrived at--this attempt implies a contradiction. G.o.d is in fact the first principle, the foundation of all principles, the principle beyond which there is nothing. We may describe the process by which the human mind rises to this supreme idea; but to wish to demonstrate G.o.d by mounting higher than Himself in order to look for a point of departure--this is literally to wish to light up the sun. If the sun of intelligences is extinguished, reason sets out on its way vaguely enlightened still with the remains of the light which it has reflected; but it is not long ere it is stumbling in darkness. Then it is that--be not deceived about it!--the doubts which Descartes called up by an act of his own will do in good earnest invade the soul. We possess a natural certainty, which does not suppose a clear view of G.o.d; we reason without thinking distinctly of the principles on which we reason, just as, when we are in a hurry, we take the shortest cut without thinking of the axiom of geometry which prescribes the straight line. But if we pa.s.s from the natural order of our thoughts into the domain of science, if we ask--what is it which guarantees to me the value of my reason? then the question is put, and many perish in the pa.s.sage which separates natural faith from the domain of science,--that dangerous pa.s.sage where doubt spreads out its perfidious fogs and its deceitful marshes. The moment the question is started of the worth of reason, and all the schools of scepticism do start it, our answer must be--_G.o.d_; and we must find light in this answer, or see thought invaded in its totality by an irremediable doubt. Then men come to ask themselves if all be not a lie; and they speak of the universal vanity, without making the reserve of Ecclesiastes.[23] There are more souls ill of this malady than are supposed to be so. Many begin by setting up proudly against G.o.d what they call the rights of reason, and by and by we see this reason, which has revolted against its Principle, vacillate, doubt of itself, and at last, losing itself in a bitter irony, wrap itself, with all beside, in the shroud of a universal scorn.

Without G.o.d reason is extinguished. What, in like case, will happen to the conscience? The conscience is a reality. I will say willingly in the style of the prophets: Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, ere I deny conscience, and disparage the sacred name of duty! Yes, conscience is a reality; but G.o.d is in it: He it is who gives to it its necessary basis and its indispensable support. The conscience is the august voice of the Master of the universe. G.o.d has given us the light of the understanding that we may see and comprehend some portions of the works which He has created without us: a work there is for which He would have us to be fellow-workers with Him. The heaven of stars is a spectacle for the eyes of the body, a grander spectacle still for the contemplation of the mind which has understood their wondrous mechanism.

We admire them; but if the stars failed to attract our admiration, no one of them on that account would cease to trace its...o...b..t. There is another heaven, a heaven of loving stars and free, the sight of which is one day to fill us with rapture, and the realization of which is to be the work of our love and of our will. Before we contemplate it we must make it; this is our high and awful privilege. The plan of the spiritual heavens is deposited in the soul, and the utterances of the conscience reveal it to the will. It is a law of justice and of love. This law is evermore violated, because it is proposed to liberty, and liberty rebels: it subsists evermore, because it is the work of the Almighty.

Humanity, in its strange destiny, has never ceased to outrage the rule which it acknowledges, and to p.r.o.nounce upon its own acts a ceaseless condemnation. The laws which are investigated by the physical sciences are the plan of the Creator realized in nature: the law proposed to liberty is the plan of the Creator to be realized by the community of minds. Such is the explanation of the conscience: G.o.d is its solid foundation.

Duty and G.o.d, morality and religion, are inseparable principles; all the efforts of a false philosophy have never succeeded, and never will succeed, in disjoining them. Men will never be prevented from believing that G.o.d is holy, and that His will is binding upon them: they will never be prevented from believing that holiness is divine, and that the will of G.o.d reveals itself in the admonitions of the conscience.

Therefore the progress of religion and the progress of morality are closely united; the morality of a people depends above all on the idea which it forms to itself of G.o.d. The conscience, in fact, at the same time that it is real and permanent in its bases, is variable in the degrees of its light. It is enlightened or obscured, according as the man's religious conceptions are pure or corrupted; and, on the other hand, when the religious worship is degraded beyond a certain limit by error and the pa.s.sions, the conscience protests, and by its protest purifies the religious conceptions. It has often been said, that in the onward march of humanity, morality is separated from faith, and comes at last to rest upon its own bases. It is a notion of the eighteenth century, which, although its root has been cut, is still throwing out shoots in our time. The attempt has been made to support this theory by the great name of Socrates. It is affirmed that the sage of Athens, breaking the bond which connects the earth with heaven, separated duty from its primitive source. Listen: Placed in the alternative of either renouncing his mission or dying, it is thus that Socrates addresses his judges: "Athenians, I honor you and I love you, but I will obey the Deity rather than you. My whole occupation is to persuade you, young and old, that before the care of the body and of riches, before every other care, is that of the soul and of its improvement. Know that this it is which the Deity prescribes to me, and I am persuaded that there can be nothing more advantageous to the republic than my zeal to fulfil the behest of the Deity."[24] Does the man who speaks in this way appear to you to have wished to break the link which connects morality with religion? He separates himself from the established religion; he pursues with his biting raillery shameful objects of worship; his conscience protests. But, while it protests, it attaches itself immediately to a higher and holier idea of that G.o.d, of whose perfections the sage of Athens had succeeded in obtaining a glimpse.

G.o.d then is the explanation of the conscience: He is moreover its support. It has need in sooth to be supported,--that voice which speaks within us; because it is unceasingly contradicted and denied. The spectacle which the world presents is not an edifying one; the facts which are taking place on the earth are not all of a nature to maintain the steadfastness of the moral feeling. Let us imagine an example, a striking example, such as it would be easy to find realized on a small scale in more commonplace events. A peaceable population, menaced in its most sacred rights, has taken up arms in the simplest and most legitimate self-defence. I do not allow my thoughts to rest upon the soldiers who are advancing to oppress it--mere instruments as they are in the hands of their leaders--but upon the leaders themselves. One of these, without the least necessity, with a calculating coolness, to which he sacrifices all the feelings of a man, or under the sway of one of those ferocious instincts which at times gain the mastery over the soul, gives up a town, a village, to all the horrors of slaughter, pillage, and fire. The blood of the victims will scarcely, perhaps, have grown cold, the last gleams of the fire will not yet be extinct, when this man shall be receiving the praises of his superiors. Men will laud the bravery and daring of his exploit; his sovereign will place upon his breast a brilliant cross, the august sign of the world's redemption; he will return to his country amidst the acclamations of the mult.i.tude, and drink in with delight the shouts of triumph which greet him as he moves on his way. For such things as these, is there to be no penalty but troublesome recollections which may sometimes be banished, and a few timid protests soon hushed by the loud voice of success? Verily there are perpetrated beneath the sun acts which cry aloud for vengeance. Have you never felt it--that mighty cry--rising from your own bosom, at the sight of some odious crime, or on reading such and such a page of history? And it must be so; it must be that the cry for vengeance will rise, until the soul has learnt to transform imprecation into prayer, and the desire for justice into supplication for the guilty. But if, in the presence of crime, we were forced to believe that there will never be either vengeance or pardon, the mainspring of the moral life would be broken, and humanity would at length exclaim, like Brutus in the plains of Philippi:--"Virtue! thou art but a name!"

The conscience is a reality; but its voice is troublesome, and the captious arguments which go to deny its value find support in the evil tendencies of our nature. If it has no faith in eternal justice it runs the risk of being blunted by contact with the world. So doubt takes place, doubt still deeper and more agonizing than that which bears upon the processes of the understanding. The questions which arise are such as these:--"This voice of duty--whence comes it? and what would it have?

May not conscience be a prejudice, the result of education and of habit?

It has little power, it seems, for it is braved with impunity. Many say that it is a fact.i.tious power from which one comes at last to deliver one's self by resisting it. Am I not the dupe of an illusion? I am losing joys which others allow themselves. Barriers encompa.s.s me on every hand, for there are for me prohibited actions, unwholesome beauties, culpable feelings. Others are free, and make a larger use of life in all directions. What if I too made trial of liberty!" Here lies the temptation. When the soul aspires to become larger than conscience and more tolerant than duty, it is not far from a fall. The honest woman will be tempted to repine at the liberty of the courtesan, and the man who is bound by his word will become capable of looking with envy on the liberty of the liar. Then come terrible experiences which teach at length that the unbinding of the pa.s.sions is the hardest of slaveries, and that, in the struggle between inclination and duty, it is liberty which oppresses and law which sets free. Happy then is he who, feeling himself to be sinking in gloomy waters, cries to that G.o.d who is able to rescue him from the abyss, and strengthens his shaken conscience by replacing it on its solid foundation. "G.o.d speaks and reigns. All rebellion is transient in its nature; justice will at length be done.

Justice may be slow in the eyes of the creature of a day, seeing that He who shall dispense it has eternity at his disposal." But if G.o.d be not a refuge for us from men and from the world, if, when we see all that is pa.s.sing around us, we cannot cast a look beyond and above the earth, men may lose their faith in duty. And this faith is lost in fact. If there are not dead consciences, there are consciences at any rate singularly sunk in sleep. There are men for whom goodness, truth, justice, honor, seem to be a coinage of which they make use because it is current, but without for themselves attaching to it any value. These pieces of money have no longer in their eyes any visible impression, because the conception of the almighty and just G.o.d is the impression which determines duty and guarantees its value.

When the necessary alliance of moral order with religious thought is denied, the reality of conscience is opposed to what are called theological hypotheses always open to discussion. It is seen well enough that men may doubt of G.o.d, but it is supposed to be impossible to doubt of conscience. This is an illusion of generous minds. Those who would keep this illusion must not open the pages of the history of philosophy where the negation of duty does not occupy less s.p.a.ce than the negation of G.o.d; they must not cast their eyes too much about them; they must also take care not to open the most widely circulated books, and the most fashionable periodicals: otherwise, as we shall see, they would not be long in finding out that this morality which they would fain have superior to all attacks, is perhaps what of all things is most attacked now-a-days, and that that conscience which it is impossible to deny is in fact the object of denials the most audacious on the part of a few of the present favorites of fame. The voice of duty is heard no doubt even when G.o.d does not come distinctly into mind; but when the questions are clearly put, if G.o.d is denied, conscience grows dim, and comes at last to be extinguished. This obscuration does not take place all at once: the potter's wheel goes on turning for a while, says an old Hindoo poem, after that the foot of the artisan is withdrawn from it. But the darkening takes place gradually with time: such at least is the general rule. There are exceptional men who seem to escape this law, and to bear in their bosom a G.o.d veiled from their own consciousness. Such men may be found, and even in considerable numbers, in a time like ours, when doubt is, in many cases, a prejudice which current opinion deposits on the surface of minds without penetrating them deeply. There are men all whose convictions have fallen into ruins, while their conscience continues standing like an isolated column, sole remaining witness of a demolished building. The meeting with these heroes of virtue inspires a mingled feeling of astonishment and respect. They are verily miracles of that divine goodness of which they are unable to p.r.o.nounce the name. If there is a man on earth who ought to fall on both knees and shed burning tears of grat.i.tude, it is the man who believes himself an atheist, and who has received from Providence so keen a taste for what is n.o.ble and pure, so strong an aversion for evil, that his sense of duty remains firm even when it has lost all its supports. But the exception does not make the rule; and that which is realized in the case of a few is not realized long, and for all. You know those crusts of snow which are formed over the _creva.s.ses_ of our glaciers. These slight bridges are able to bear one person who remains suspended over the abyss, but let several attempt to pa.s.s together,--the frail support gives way, and the rash adventurers fall together into the gulf. Such is the destiny of those schools of philosophy in which the notion of G.o.d disappears, and of those civilizations in which the sense of G.o.d is extinguished; they fall into dark regions where the light of goodness shines no longer.

After the mind and conscience, it remains for us to speak of the heart.

Man, an intelligent and free being, has in his reason an instrument of knowledge, and in his conscience a rule for his will. But man is not sufficient for himself, and cannot live upon his own resources. If you inquire what the word heart expresses, in its most general acceptation, you will find that it always expresses a tendency of the soul to look, out of itself, in things or persons, for the support and nourishment of its individual life. Does the question concern the relations of man with his fellows? The heart is the organ of communication of one soul with another, for receiving, or for giving, or for giving and receiving at the same time, in the enjoyment of the blessing of a mutual affection.

The heart is in each of us what those marks are upon the scattered stones of a building in course of construction which indicate that they are to be united one to another. The philosopher suffices for himself, the stoics used to say; the heart is the negation of this haughty maxim.

From the heart proceeds love, that son of abundance and of poverty, to speak with Plato, that needy one ever on the search for his lost heritage. Love has wings, said again the wisdom of the Greeks, wings which essay to carry him ever higher. Let us extricate the thought which is involved in these graceful figures: Our desires have no limits, and indefinite desires can be satisfied only by meeting with an infinite Being who can be an inexhaustible source of happiness, an eternal object of love. "Our heart is made for love," said Saint Augustine, the great Christian disciple of Plato: "therefore it is unquiet till it finds repose in G.o.d." From this unrest proceed all our miseries. Men do not always succeed in contenting themselves with a petty prosaic happiness, a dull and paltry well-being, and in stifling the while the grand instincts of our nature. If then the heart lives, and fails of its due object; if it does not meet with the supreme term of its repose, its indefinite aspirations attach themselves to objects which cannot satisfy them, and thence arise stupendous aberrations. With some, it is the pursuit of sensual gratifications; they rush with a kind of fury into the pa.s.sions of their lower nature. With others it is the ardent pursuit of riches, power, fame,--feelings which are always crying more: More!

and never: Enough. And the after-taste from the fruitless search after happiness in the paths of ambition and vanity is not less bitter perhaps than the after-taste from sensual enjoyments. Listen to the confession of a man whose works, full as they are of beauties, are disfigured by so many impure allusions, that the author appears to have indulged, more than most others, in the giddy follies and culpable pleasures of life:

If, tired of mocking dreams, my restless heart Returns to take its fill of waking joy, Full soon I loathe the pleasures which impart No true delight, but kill me, while they cloy.[25]

Here are the accents of a true confession. These are moreover truths of daily experience. I have seen--and which of you could not render similar testimony?--I have seen the sick man, deprived of all the ordinary avocations and amus.e.m.e.nts of life, and with pain for his constant companion, I have seen him find joy in the thought of his G.o.d, and feeding, without satiety, on this bread of contentment. I have seen the face of the blind lighted up by a living faith, and radiant with a light of peace, for him sweeter and brighter than the rays of the sun. But where G.o.d is wanting, and all connection is broken with the source of joy, there you shall see the richest of the rich, the most prosperous among the ambitious, the man of fame whose renown is most widely extended,--you shall see these men carrying the heavy burden of discontent. Their brow, unillumined by the celestial ray, is furrowed by the lines of sadness. If you meet them in a moment of candor, these rich, ambitious, and famous men will tell you with a sigh: "All this does not satisfy; we are but pursuing chimeras." Still they continue to run after these chimeras. They cry Vanity! Vanity! and they do not cease to pursue vanity. They flee from themselves: if they retired within themselves, they would find there ennui, inexorable ennui, which is but the sense of that place which G.o.d should fill left void in the depth of the soul. For the deceived heart, life becomes a bitter comedy. Those who do not succeed in blinding themselves by the dust of thoughtless folly, end oftentimes by wrapping themselves in disdain as with a cloak; they seek a sad and solitary satisfaction in the greatness of their contempt for life. But neither does this satisfy: disdain is not a beverage, and contempt is not food.

Such are the destinies of the heart, to which G.o.d is wanting. But I hope, Gentlemen, that you have here some remonstrances to offer. I have just spoken of the pleasures of sense, of pride, of vanity, and I have made no allusion to those affections in which the heart manifests its highest qualities. Shall we forget the joys of pure love? the domestic hearth? friendship? country? Do not fear that, having given myself up to a fit of misanthropy, I am come hither to blaspheme the true happinesses of life. But do the affections of earth offer us sufficient guarantees? We have need of the infinite to answer to the immensity of our desires; in the presence of those we love, have we no need of the Eternal that we may lean our hearts on Him? Will not all human love become a source of torment, if we have no faith in the love of Him who will stamp holy affections with the seal of His own eternity?

A single question will suffice to enlighten us on this head. Do you know the feeling of anxiety? We all know it, though in different degrees.

Epidemical disease may appear. The cholera has started on its course; it has left the interior of Asia, and is approaching. The report is current that neighboring cities have begun to feel its ravages. Those we love--in a month, in a week, where will they be? War is declared. We hear of preparations for death; the sovereigns of Europe apply themselves to calculations which seem to portend torrents of blood. If war breaks out, that brother, that son, who will have to take up arms, that daughter who will one day perhaps find herself at the mercy of an unbridled soldiery----. But let us not look for examples so far away.

Have you no dear one in a distant land of whom you are expecting tidings? And those who are near you! To-morrow, to-day, now perhaps, while you are listening to me, a fatal malady is discovering its first symptoms----. Have you received the hard lessons of death? If you see children playing, full of ruddy and joyous health, does it happen to none of you to think of another child, once the joy of your fireside, now lying beneath the sod? Does it never happen to you, by a sinister presentiment, to see features you love to gaze on convulsed with agony or pale in death? And yet you must either see the death of your beloved ones, or they must lay you in the earth; for every life ends with the tomb, and we do but walk over graves. When the soul has been thus wounded by anxiety, for this poisoned wound there is one remedy, but only one: "G.o.d reigns!" Nothing happens without the permission of His goodness. And of all those who are dear to us, we can say: "Father, to Thy hands I commit them." If we are without this trust, we shall only escape torment by levity. Without G.o.d our mind is sick; our conscience and our heart are sick also, and in a way more grievous still.

FOOTNOTES:

[19] _Meditation troisieme_, at the end.

[20] Gen. xxviii. 16.

[21] _Demontrer_.

[22] "_On le montre_."

[23] "Vanity of vanities; all is vanity.... Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear G.o.d, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man." (Eccles. i. and xii.)