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 Jesus Christ : conferences delivered at 
 
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 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029375114 
 
JESUS CHRIST: 
 
 CONFERENCES 
 
 DELIVERED AT 
 
 n6tre DAME IN PARIS. 
 
 EEY. PERE LACORDAIRE, 
 
 OF THE ORDER 07 SAINT DOM1NIU. 
 
 Translated from the French, with the Authors Permission, 
 by A Tertiary of the same Order. 
 
 P O'SHEA, PUBLISHER, 
 
 45 WAEREN STREET. 
 
ffntero. ^cording to Act of Congress, in the year 1670, by 
 
 P. O SHEA, 
 oi "ne Office si the Librarian of Congress «t. vPasmtttui . 
 
]n Memoriak. 
 
 f- 
 
 JlCMK, yttAY 97TH, 18O4. 
 
 »p-h 
 
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 The subject of the following Conferences is 
 daily attracting increased attention in England 
 — so justly famed for her religious feeling and 
 strong sense, yet so distracted by divisions which 
 contradict the authority, the object, and the work 
 of Jesus Christ. Many minds that know not the 
 repose of divine faith, are — timidly perhaps, but 
 anxiously — watching this great question ; requir- 
 ing, not only to believe, but also and rightly, to 
 know why they should believe. 
 
 Humbly desiring to discharge a part of the 
 deep debt of gratitude which he owes to the au- 
 thor of these celebrated discourses, the translator 
 respectfully offers them to his well-beloved country 
 as a guide in her present religious confusion and 
 a support in her manifest and perplexing doubts, 
 hoping and believing that they will be to others 
 what they have been to him, namely, heralds of 
 that " glorious liberty " which is the ever-blessed 
 fruit of Catholic Christianity. 
 
 Whitsuntide, 1869. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 The Inner Life of Jesus Christ, 9 
 
 The Public Power of Jesus Christ, 50 
 
 The Foundation of the Reign of Jesus Christ, 82 
 
 The Perpetuity and Progress of the Reign of Jesus 
 
 Christ, 118 
 
 The Pre-existence of Jesus Christ, 153 
 
 The Efforts of Rationalism to Destroy the Life of Jesus 
 
 Christ, 193 
 
 The Efforts of Rationalism to Pervert the Life of Jesus 
 
 Christ, " 232 
 
 The Efforts of Rationalism to Explain the Life of Jesus 
 
 Christ 269 
 
CONFERENCES. 
 
 THE INNER LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 My Lord' — Gentlemen : 
 
 In demonstrating the divinity of Christianity 
 \ve have not taken our starting-point in the pro- 
 found depths of metaphysics or in the distant 
 regions of history, but in a living, palpable phe- 
 nomenon, which has been for ages before the 
 world ; we have analyzed this phenomenon, we 
 have shown you that under the intellectual, moral 
 and social points of view, the Catholic Church is 
 a phenomenon unique here below, and therefore 
 divine. For whatsoever is human is multiple, 
 since whatsoever men have been able to accom- 
 plish in a given time and place, other men are 
 able to accomplish in other times and places. 
 We have then changed the ordinary tactics — 
 instead of starting from the basis we have started 
 
 1 Monseioneur Affre, Archbishop of Paris. 
 
10 
 
 from the summit, instead of digging about the 
 foundations of the pyramid, we have examined 
 its apex and its crown, beginning by that which 
 is most visible, to return afterwards to that which 
 is most hidden, and which bears the whole mass. 
 A writer of our times has said : Christianity is 
 the greatest event which has passed in the world. 
 We have said otherwise, and perhaps better: 
 " Christianity is the greatest phenomenon which 
 has been naturalized in the world, the greatest 
 intellectual phenomenon, the greatest moral phe- 
 nomenon, the greatest social phenomenon," some- 
 thing unique, in a word, and, yet once more, 
 consequently divine. 
 
 But what is the primary cause of this phenom- 
 enon ? Every phenomenon has a cause. After 
 having examined its visible side, we should evi- 
 dently examine that which has produced the 
 spectacle, that which explains and supports it. 
 Who, then, has made the Catholic Church ? Who 
 has founded that society which rules minds by 
 certainty, regulates souls by the highest virtues, 
 blesses the human race by the new elements it 
 has given to civilization ? Who has formed, 
 under a hierarchy spiritual and unarmed, that 
 body wherein conviction, holiness, unity, univer 
 
11 
 
 sality, stability, and life, form a tissue of super 
 human and incontestable beauty? Who has de- 
 signed and produced it ? Is it time, or chance ? 
 Is it the work of many, or of one alone ? It is 
 but one, yes, one alone, a man, that is to say, 
 nothing; the word of a man, which is but a 
 passing breath. Behold the artist ! God has so 
 willed it, then, that the foundation of this great 
 work should be something resembling ourselves, 
 and that man, so weak, so vain, should, like 
 Atlas, bear heaven and earth upon his shoulders. 
 Who is this man ? What name does he bear on 
 the tongues and in the memorials of the human 
 race ? I have no need to tell you : his name 
 speaks and resounds of itself. Every man knows 
 it from love or hatred, and in naming Jesus 
 Christ I am but the remote echo of all ages and 
 all minds. Jesus Christ, then ! Jesus Christ ! 
 He is the artist ! It is he who founded that 
 Church whose ineffable architecture we have 
 contemplated together: I speak of the Church 
 under her present form, for the Church has ex- 
 isted upon earth from the day when God first 
 spake to man, and when man first responded from 
 his heart to God. 
 
 The artist found, gentlemen, it is needful to 
 
12 
 
 study his history, that we may be able to judge 
 whether the workman answers to the work, and 
 whether, after having seen that the work is 
 divine in itself, its divinity will receive confirma- 
 tion from the life of him who produced it. In 
 order to do this we must first learn where to seek 
 for the elements of that life. This difficulty is 
 not great. Like every man who appears at an 
 epoch which is historical and rendered famous 
 by his works, Jesus Christ has a history, a his- 
 tory which the Church and the world possess, and 
 which, surrounded by countless memorials, has 
 at the least the same authenticity as any other 
 history formed in the same countries, amidst the 
 same peoples and in the same times. As, then, 
 if I would study the lives of Brutus and Cassius, 
 I should calmly open Plutarch, I open the Gospel 
 to study Jesus Christ, and I do so with the same 
 composure. We will afterwards examine whether 
 I have erred in admitting this preliminary authen- 
 ticity ; I assume it now, being in possession of it, 
 subject to my returning to it by retracing our 
 steps at a future period, in order to verify the 
 documents and base them upon a degree of cer- 
 tainty worthy of the sacred object of our inves- 
 tigation. I take the Gospel, then, provisionally, 
 
13 
 
 for my historical title. You are free to make 
 what reserve you please as to its authenticity and 
 veracity ; it is a right which I do not dispute, as 
 I know you will also be just enough to respect 
 in the Gospel, at least provisionally, the faith of 
 twenty centuries, and the natural weight of that 
 which forms so conspicuous a part of the world's 
 history. 
 
 Lord Jesus, for ten years I have spoken of thy 
 Church to this auditory, yet, it is indeed of thee 
 that I have always spoken ; but now, and more 
 directly, I come to thyself — to those divine fea- 
 tures, which are the daily object of my contem- 
 plation — to thy sacred feet, which I have so often 
 kissed — to thy divine hands, which have so often 
 blessed me — to thy forehead, crowned with glory 
 and with thorns — -to that life whose sweetness I 
 have respired from my birth, which my youth 
 disregarded, which my manhood regained, which 
 my riper age adores and proclaims to every crea- 
 ture. O Father ! O Master ! O Friend ! O Jesus ! 
 second me now more than ever, since, being closer 
 to thee, it is meet that my hearers should perceive 
 it, and that the words which fall from my lips 
 should manifest the nearness of thy adorable 
 presence ! 
 
14 
 
 There are two lives — the outer life and the 
 inner life. The outer life would be nothing t\ ith- 
 out the inner life. The inner life is the support 
 of the other, and therefore, desiring to study the 
 life of Jesus Christ, I must begin by examining 
 his inner life. But what is this inner life ? It is 
 the converse between ourselves and ourselves. 
 Every man converses with himself, every man 
 speaks to himself, and that converse with him- 
 self is his inner life, as that which, from all eter- 
 nity, God makes with himself in the mystery of 
 his three divine persons is his inner life. Every 
 man, every intelligent being, holds this inner con- 
 verse with himself, which forms his real life. The 
 rest is but a semblance, when it is not the pro- 
 duce of that inner life. The inner life is the 
 whole man, and forms all the worth of man. 
 One is clothed in purple, and yet he is worthless, 
 because his converse with himself is that of a 
 worthless being ; and another passes along our 
 streets barefoot and in rags, who is a great man, 
 because his inner converse is that of a hero or a 
 saint. On the day of judgment we shall see this 
 changing being within and without, and the mys- 
 terious colloquy of each man being known, his 
 history will then begin. Now, we proceed as 
 
15 
 
 best we can from the outer to the inner life ; for, 
 if this gift of judging the inner by the outer life 
 had not been granted to us, if our outer life were 
 any other thing than a permanent transpiration 
 of our inner life, we should be but spectres to 
 each other, we should pass by without knowing 
 one another, as maskers who pass each other in 
 the night. Happily, and thanks to God, there 
 are orifices through which our inner life con- 
 stantly escapes, and the soul, like the blood, hath 
 its pores. The mouth is the chief and foremost 
 of these channels which lead the soul out of its 
 invisible sanctuary; it is by speech that man 
 communicates the secret converse which is his 
 real life. And although every man thus speaks 
 from within to without, there are men in whom 
 this manifestation of themselves is more espec- 
 ially called for, more needful, more authentic. 
 They are those who come before the world with 
 doctrines destined by them to become laws. For 
 the first question put to them is : Who are you ? 
 What say you of yourselves ? As the priests of 
 Jerusalem sent men to ask John the Baptist in 
 the desert : Tu qtjis es ? Quid dicis de teipso ? ' 
 First of all, since you are not a man like othei 
 
 ' St. John i. 22. 
 
16 
 
 men, tell us what you are, what you affirm of 
 yourself: Quid dicis de teipso? 
 
 And it is not a slight thing, gentlemen, to 
 force a man to say what he is, or what he believes 
 himself to be; for that supreme word of man, 
 that single expression which he utters of and 
 upon himself is decisive. It lays down the basis 
 upon which all judgment of him is to be formed. 
 From that moment all the acts of his life must 
 correspond to the answer given by him to the 
 question : Quid dicis de teipso ? And therefore 
 Jesus Christ, appearing amongst men to bring 
 them new laws, a new order of things, had to 
 submit to that necessity of declaring what he 
 was, and therewith to undergo the unfailing test 
 to which it subjected him. It was to his friends 
 and disciples that he had first to declare himself, 
 by telling them what he thought of himself. 
 What said he to them ? 
 
 One day, at Cesarsea Philippi, he asked his 
 disciples : " Whom do men say that I, the Son 
 of man, am ? And they said, some say, John the 
 Baptist, others Elias, others Jeremias, or one of 
 the prophets. Jesus saith to them : But whom 
 say ye that I am ? Simon Peter answered, and 
 Baid : Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living 
 
17 
 
 God." Jesus Christ, so far from rejecting these 
 words as blasphemous, accepted them as express- 
 ing a truth which filled him with delight, and he 
 said to Peter : " Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona, 
 for flesh and blood hath not revealed it to thee, 
 but my Father who is in heaven." And he then 
 added, as a reward for the faith of his disciple : 
 '' And I say unto thee, that thou art Peter, and 
 upon this rock I will build my Church ; and the 
 gates of hell shall not prevail against it." l 
 
 Jesus Christ then presented himself to his dis- 
 ciples as the Son of God — not as the Son of God 
 in the sense in which we are all sons of God, but 
 as the Son of God in its tnie and proper sense : 
 bad it been otherwise, he would not in so marked 
 a manner have manifested to his apostle the joy 
 he felt at his confession. Moreover, on other 
 occasions he spake, if possible, more clearly to 
 them. Philip said to him : " Lord, show us the 
 Father, and it is enough for us." Jesus Christ 
 grew indignant at his demand, and said to him : 
 " So long a time have I been with you, and you 
 have not known me ? Philip, he that seeth me, 
 seeth the Father also. How sayest thou, show 
 as the Father? Believe you not that I am in 
 
 ■St. Matt. xvi. 13-18. 
 
18 
 
 the Father, and the Father in me?" 1 And, at 
 another time, manifesting his divine filiation yet 
 more clearly, he said to one of his disciples who 
 still wavered : " God so loved the world as to 
 
 give his only-begotten Son He that be- 
 
 lieveth in him is not judged; but he that doth 
 not believe is already judged, because he be- 
 lieveth not in the name of the only-begotten Son 
 of God." ' Jesus Christ stood forth then as the 
 Son of God without equal or rival, and in so 
 strict a sense, that he was in his Father and his 
 Father in him, and that to see him was to see his 
 Father. 
 
 So much for friends and disciples. But, besides 
 friends and disciples, there is another tribunal 
 before which every new doctrine must appear, 
 namely, the tribunal of the people. After hav- 
 ing spoken in secret to the chosen ones, it becomes 
 needful to quit the chamber, to appear in public, 
 to speak to mankind of all ages and conditions, 
 to those who have not leaned upon the bosom 
 of the Master, who have not received the educa- 
 tion of friendship, who know not what is re- 
 quired of them, who oppose to the word of doc 
 trine a host of passions blended with as many 
 
 ' St. John xiv. 8-10. J Ibid iii. 16, 18. 
 
19 
 
 prejudices. Jesus Christ did this ; he heard the 
 murmurs of the crowd around him, and was un- 
 daunted before the account which he had to give 
 them of himself. '' How long," cried they to him, 
 " dost thou hold us in suspense ? If thou be the 
 Christ, tell us plainly. Jesus Christ answered 
 them : I speak to you, and you believe not ; the 
 works that I do in the name of my Father, they 
 give testimony of me." ' " I and the Father are 
 one." ' At that saying, which expressed all, the 
 Jews took up stones to stone him, and Jesus 
 said to them : " Many good works I have showed 
 you from my Father ; for which of these works 
 do you stone me ? The Jews answered him : 
 For a good work we stone thee not, but for 
 blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, 
 makest thyself God." 3 The language which 
 Jesus Christ held towards the people in order to 
 make known to them the origin and mission of 
 their new spiritual master, was, then, language 
 free from all constraint and obscurity. He fear- 
 lessly uttered to them that terrible phrase: "I 
 and my Father are one" — Ego et Pater unum 
 
 SUMUS. 
 
 But above the people — that confused mass 
 
 ' St. John x. 24, 25. "Ibid. 30. 'Ibid. 32, 83. 
 
20 
 
 whose voice is at the game time the voice of God 
 and the voice of nothingness ; above the people 
 — who form at the same time the highest and the 
 lowest authority — rises, with calm vigilance and 
 self-respect, the highest representation of right 
 and truth. Every nation possesses a supreme 
 magistracy which concentrates in itself the glory 
 and enlightenment of the country, and before it 
 every doctrine claiming to rule, either by doing 
 apparent or real violence to received traditions, 
 must at last appear. Jesus Christ could not 
 escape from this general law of the human order. 
 He is called before the council of the elders, the 
 priests, and the princes of Judea. After hearing 
 evidence more or less inconsistent, the high priest 
 at length resolves to place the question in its 
 true light : he stands up and addresses this 
 solemn charge to the accused : " I adjure thee 
 by the living God, that thou tell us if thou be 
 the Christ, the Son of God." ' Jesus Christ calmly 
 replies in two words : Ego sum — " I am ! " And 
 he immediately adds, in order to confirm his 
 avowal by the majesty of his language : " I am ; 
 and you shall see the Son of man sitting on the 
 right hand of the power of God, and coming 
 
 ' St. Matt. xxvi. 63. 
 
21 
 
 with the clouds of heaven. " ' Then the high 
 priest rends his garments. " What need we any 
 further witnesses ? " — he exclaims — " You have 
 heard the blasphemy. What think you?" * 
 And they all condemn him, as guilty, to death. 
 He is then brought before the Roman governor, 
 who, not finding good reasons for his condemna- 
 tion, wishes to release him ; but the princes of the 
 people persist : " We have a law," say they, " and 
 by that law he ought to die, because he made 
 himself the Son of God." 3 Pilate so fully com- 
 prehends this, that his Roman, and therefore reli- 
 gious, ear is all attention ; he draws Jesus Christ 
 aside, and timorously asks him whence he is: 
 Unde es tu ? ' Jesus Christ is silent ; he confirms 
 by his silence all that he is accused of having 
 said of himself, and what, in fact, he has said. 
 The people who witness his crucifixion under- 
 stand his condemnation in the sense in which 
 it was pronounced ; they insult him even in 
 death by these expressive derisions : " Vah, thou 
 that destroyest the temple, and in three days 
 dost rebuild it, save thy own self; if thou be the 
 Son of God, come down from the cross." ' And, 
 
 • St. Mark xiv. 62. » Ibid. 63, 64. 
 
 » St John xix. 7. « Ibid. 9. » St. Matt, xxvii. 40. 
 
22 
 
 when darkness covers the earth, when the rocks 
 are broken in pieces, when the veil of the temple 
 is rent in twain, and all Nature proclaims to 
 mankind that a great event is in action, the look- 
 ers on and the Roman centurion strike their 
 breasts, saying: "Indeed, this was the Son of 
 God ! " ' And the apostle St. John concludes his 
 gospel in these words : " These things are written 
 that you may believe that Jesus Christ was the 
 Son of God." ' 
 
 Thus, before his friends, before the people, be- 
 fore the magistracy, in his life, in his death, Jesus 
 Christ everywhere declares that he is the Son of 
 God, the only Son, a Son equal with his Father, 
 one with his Father, being in his Father, and his 
 Father in him. This is the testimony which he 
 renders of himself, his answer to that imperious 
 question : Quid dicis de teipso ? And what an 
 answer, gentlemen ! What ! a man, a creature 
 of flesh and blood, who has before him not only 
 the weaknesses of life, but those also of death; 
 a man ! and he dares to call himself God ! It is 
 the first time in all history. No historical per- 
 sonage, before or since, has set himself up as God. 
 Idolatry had numberless gods; but it had a 
 
 > St. Matt, xxvii. 54. • St. John xx. 31. 
 
23 
 
 supreme God, to whom none other was equal; 
 and when the most shameful flattery decreed 
 apotheosis to emperors convicted of every crime 
 by their lives and of complete nothingness by 
 their death, none saw in the incense offered to 
 their ashes anything but a poetical figure, a last 
 act of adulation rendered by bondage to tyranny. 
 Mahomet, come to replace the reign of idols, did 
 not call himself God, but a simple envoy of God. 
 And if we would go back beyond idolatry in 
 search of the most arrogant impostures, we shall 
 find even in the heart of India nothing but nar- 
 rations without consistency, ages without date, 
 a shapeless abyss, in which our vision will be 
 totally unable to discover any authentic mortal 
 bold enough to declare that he was God, formally 
 and distinctly, by these two ineffable words : Ego 
 sum. Man is not capable of uttering so bold a 
 falsehood, the improbability is too striking. 
 
 It is also and too manifestly useless, for what 
 would it profit ? What end could it serve a man 
 to call himself God ? Would he establish laws, 
 found an empire? It is a human ambition, and 
 I can well understand why he would not call 
 himself a philosopher, since any one versed in 
 history knows that whoever sets himself up as 
 
24 
 
 a philosopher is sure to remain alone upon bis 
 pedestal. A man, then, having great ambition 
 would never advance such pretensions. God is 
 the corner-stone of every lasting edifice. His 
 name, even when invoked by imposture, serves 
 as a solid cemeut ; and it was natural that before 
 and after others Jesus Christ should call himself 
 the envoy of God. Men have often accepted that 
 idea; they readily believe in the intervention of 
 the Divinity in human affairs, and their faith, 
 thus deceived in its application, is never deceived 
 as to the reality of a Providence eternally watch- 
 ful over their condition. Jesus Christ in calling 
 himself the man of God would have proclaimed 
 something probable and serviceable ; but the 
 very title of God, the apotheosis of himself by 
 himself, added nothing but difficulties to his en- 
 terprise. Thenceforth it became necessary that 
 in all his actions he should sustain the part of 
 the infinite, that even in his death he should 
 maintain proofs of his divine nature, and that his 
 tomb as well as eternity should bear witness for 
 him. Was this humanly possible ? 
 
 Add thereto a third consideration relative to 
 the state of religious belief among the Jews. 
 That people had in their law only one explicit 
 
25 
 
 dogma — all the others, although they possessed 
 them in their traditions, were, so to say, veiled 
 and obscure. The unity of God, graven at the 
 head of the tables of Sinai, was their chief dogma 
 the one that recalled and included all the others 
 such as the creation, the fall of man, the immor- 
 tality of the soul. To attack this, even remotely 
 was to attack Moses, Sinai, all the treasured me 
 morials of the children of Israel, all their customs 
 every object of their veneration. Now the name 
 of Jesus Christ as the Son of God, even without 
 destroying the divine unity, did not enter natur- 
 ally into the ears of this people, accustomed by 
 their lawgiver and their prophets to know only 
 the God who had brought them out of the land 
 of Egyyt, and who had so often said to them : 
 "I am the Lord thy God, thou shalt have no 
 other gods before me." ' 
 
 If, then, Jesus Christ falsely called himself 
 God, he needlessly created for himself unaccount- 
 able difficulties. 
 
 But let us pass on from these preliminary re- 
 flections, and see what account we have to render 
 of the life we are contemplating. Whatever 
 motives Jesus Christ might have had against 
 
 i Exodus xx. 2, 3. 
 
26 
 
 calling himself God, he did call himself God; 
 such is the fact. Before we examine whether 
 what he said was true, an intervening question 
 arises ; we have to learn whether in calling him- 
 self God he believed what he said. Between the 
 affirmation and the reality, between saying I am 
 God, and being God, stands the question of good 
 faith and sincerity. Did Jesus Christ believe in 
 his divinity ? Was he convinced of the truth of 
 that vital dogma which he laid down as the 
 basis of his teaching and for which he died? 
 Was he sincere, or — pardon the expression — was 
 he an impostor? We cannot advance a step 
 further in his life before we solve this doubt. 
 All mankind, without distinction of time, place, 
 nations, laws, or religions, is divided into two 
 ranks, the rank of impostors and that of sincere 
 men, in these each individual marks his own 
 place. The impostors have too often led the 
 sincere, but their reign sooner or later betrays 
 itself ; and sincerity in regard to man is a require- 
 ment which honors him ; to error, an aroma which 
 renders it less bitter ; to truth, a crown which is 
 the first object of our search. Let us then first 
 of all learn whether Jesus Christ wears this 
 crown, whether he is anointed with this aroma, 
 
27 
 
 whether he possesses this honor, without which 
 there is no honor. What think you ? Must we 
 place him with the impostors or with the sincere ? 
 Was he of those who have covered their ambi- 
 tion with the veil of hypocritical sanctity, or of 
 those who have preferred the honor of irreproach- 
 able language even to success, and who have 
 chosen for their device the motto of the Macca- 
 bees : MOEIAMTJR IN SIMPLICITATE NOSTRA ? Let 
 
 us die in our simplicity. 
 
 This is the great question. 
 
 It is answered by the character of the man, 
 and hence I may conclude that the cause is judged 
 in favor of Jesus Christ ; for no more venerable 
 form has dawned upon the horizon of history. 
 The simple course of time has placed him above 
 all, leaving nothing visible that can approach it. 
 By the consent of all — even of those who do not 
 believe in him — Jesus Christ is a good man, a 
 sage, an elect, an incomparable personage. He 
 has done such great, such holy things, that even 
 his enemies pay constant homage to his work 
 and to his person. 
 
 It is true that in the last century there was a 
 man who chose for his motto — designating Jesus 
 Christ — the words : Ecrasez Vinfarne ! — Crush the 
 
28 
 
 wretch ! But this phrase, gentlemen, had not 
 strength enough to pass the bounds of the century 
 in which it was uttered, it halted trembling on 
 the frontiers of our own ; and since then no human 
 voice, even among those which are not respected, 
 has dared to repeat that signal of impious revolt. 
 It has fallen back upon the tomb of him who 
 first uttered it, and there, after having been 
 judged by the posterity which has already fol- 
 lowed, it awaits the still more stern judgment of 
 posterity yet to come. 
 
 I may, then, stop here, since nothing is higher 
 than a universal judgment, and since all demon- 
 stration appears weak before a conclusion which 
 forms part of the common sense of mankind. 
 But I wish to afford you the gratification of an- 
 alyzing the character of Christ, and of examining 
 by what harmony of moral beauties that physi- 
 ognomy infinitely surpasses the most illustrious 
 forms which time has produced. 
 
 The human character is composed of three ele- 
 ments, namely, the intelligence — the seat of its 
 thoughts ; the heart — the seat of its feelings ; the 
 will — the seat of its resolutions. It is the fusion 
 of these three elements which, by its measure, 
 determines every moral type and fixes its value. 
 
29 
 
 We have no need to seek elsewhere the secret 
 of that perfection which we find in the hero of 
 the Gospel. Doubtless, for those who believe 
 him to be God, his divinity supports and shines 
 through the whole visible tissue; but without 
 changing anything of the nature of the soul any 
 more than of the body. Jesus Christ has nothing 
 in himself to constitute his physiognomy but 
 thoughts, feelings and" resolutions; but the har- 
 mony and blending of these form that peculiar 
 charm which it is now our purpose to examine. 
 
 I shall not mislead you, gentlemen, in saying 
 of his intelligence that in character and sign it 
 possesses that which we call the sublime. The 
 sublime is elevation, profundity and simplicity 
 blended together in a single trait. When the 
 aged Horace was told that his son had fled from 
 the combat which decided the supremacy between 
 Alba and Rome, and, seeing his indignation, they 
 asked him what his son should have done against 
 three, the old man replied : " He should have 
 died ! " This is a sublime exclamation ; it is the 
 cry of duty springing at once from a great soul, 
 and bearing us in a moment above all the weak- 
 nesses which plead within us against self-sacrifice. 
 Nothing is more simple, but nothing is higher 
 
30 
 
 or more profound. God has given to man the 
 faculty of reaching the sublime in his actions 
 and in his writings ; but these occasions are rare 
 and fugitive. The greatest men have been sub- 
 lime four or five times in their lives ; such was 
 Caesar saying to a boatman who brought him 
 through a tempest : " What fearest thou ? Thou 
 carriest Caesar ! " Simplicity is too often wanting 
 to the greatest actions, or, when they are simple, 
 they do not raise us sufficiently out of ourselves, 
 or they are not profound enough to give us suffi- 
 cient food for thought. It is the same with 
 our writings. It is not rare to find in them 
 harmony, grace, beauty, and, as it were, a flow- 
 ing stream which bears us along between sweet 
 and flowery banks. We are thus carried on 
 through whole pages. Suddenly, and as by 
 chance, a powerful emotion seizes upon us, and 
 seems to pierce even to our soul. The sublime 
 has appeared. But it is only an apparition ; and 
 this is why it draws us out of our natural state, 
 by producing within us a sudden and passing 
 shock. 
 
 It is not so in regard to Jesus Christ. His 
 actions and his language are stamped with a 
 continuous elevation, profundity and simplicity 
 
31 
 
 so that the sublime is, as it were, naturalized in 
 them, and no longer excites our wonder ; never 
 theless, its empire over the soul is undiminished. 
 For this reason, after so many famous master- 
 pieces of literature, the Gospel has remained 
 a unique book in the world- — a book acknowl- 
 edged to be above all imitation. " Blessed are 
 the poor in spirit," ' said Jesus Christ. What 
 can be more simple? And yet how sudden it 
 bears us away from earth ! The angel who 
 seized Habakkuk and carried him from his fields 
 to Babylon was not more rapid. Three simple 
 words suffice to change all our notions of beati- 
 tude, of the value of earthly things, of the 
 object and end of life — to bear us above worldly 
 cupidity, and cause us to hover joyfully, like 
 the eagle, above the kingdoms of the world. 
 " Blessed are the poor in spirit ! " These words 
 will resound throughout the world ; the soul, 
 having once heard them, will constantly recall 
 them, and never fail to find hidden in them a 
 powerful hand, ready to its rescue. Meditation, 
 in sounding their depths, will open treasures 
 of profundity, a new social economy destined to 
 change the relations of men with each other, 
 
 > St. Matt. v. 8. 
 
32 
 
 ennoble labor and suffering, abolish slavery, and 
 make a beneficial and holy profession even of 
 poverty. Such is the Gospel — that is to say, 
 Jesus Christ, from beginning to end; and that 
 sovereign intelligence cannot be better defined 
 than by saying that it had received from God 
 the gift of continuous sublimity. 
 
 Great minds generally exhaust their whole 
 power in their thoughts, and are unable to impart 
 more than a feeble and secondary action to their 
 hearts. This is especially remarkable in founders 
 of empires and doctrines — cold, haughty men, 
 masters of themselves, looking down upon man- 
 kind and urging them to and fro in their hidden 
 designs, as the wind waves a field of corn, ripe 
 and ready for the sickle. The conception of their 
 plans absorbs them; success corrupts them by 
 flattering their pride; reverse sours them, and 
 all things combine to make them scornful of 
 mankind, which is for them only as a pedestal, 
 erect or overthrown. Even if they do not fall so 
 ow in the degradation of the heart, they are not 
 permitted to raise their faculty of loving as high 
 as their faculty of thought. The piercing glance 
 of the eagle is not naturally given to the eye of 
 the dove. These distinctions are perceptible even 
 
33 
 
 in authors. Racine — pardon these comparisons 
 — is tender ; Corneille is much less so, because 
 his genius draws nearer to the sublime. We 
 feel in him something heroic and austere, like 
 those Romans of whom he said — 
 
 " Et je rends grace au ciel de n'etre pas Bomain 
 Pour eonserver eneor quelque chose d'humain." 
 
 Now, Jesus Christ, under this head, is an 
 ever-memorable exception, and far above success- 
 ful imitation, even by those who adopt him as 
 the master of their souls. He carried the power 
 of loving even to tenderness, and to a kind of 
 tenderness so new that it was needful to create 
 a name for it, and that it should form a distinct 
 species in the analysis of human feelings — I 
 mean the evangelic unction. Jesus Christ was 
 tender towards all men ; it was he who said of 
 them : " Whatsoever you shall do to the least of 
 these my brethren, you will have done it unto 
 me;" 1 an expression which introduced Christian 
 fraternity into the world, and which still daily 
 engenders love. He was tender towards sinners ; 
 he sat at meat with them, and, when doctrinal 
 pride reproached him for it, he replied : " I am 
 not come for those that are in health, but for 
 
 i St. Matt. xxv. 40. 
 
34 
 
 those that are sick/' ' Perceiving a publican who 
 has climbed up into a tree to see him pass by, he 
 says to him, " Zaccheus, make haste and come 
 down, for this day I must abide in thy house." * 
 A sinful woman approaches him, and ventures 
 even to anoint his feet with ointment, to the 
 great scandal of a large assembly ; he reassures 
 her by that immortal allocution : " Her sins, 
 which are many, are forgiven, because she has 
 loved much." 3 They bring before him a woman 
 taken in adultery, in order to force a judgment 
 from him, which by its very leniency may com- 
 promise him ; he answers : " He that is without 
 sin among you, let him cast the first stone at her." ' 
 He was tender towards his ungrateful and parri- 
 cidal country ; and, beholding its walls from afar, 
 he wept, saying : " Jerusalem ! .Jerusalem ! thou 
 that killest the prophets, and stonest them that 
 are sent unto thee, how often would I have gath- 
 ered together thy children, as the hen doth gather 
 her chickens under her wings, and thou wouldest 
 not ! " " He was so tender towards his friends as 
 to wash their feet, and to permit a very young 
 man to lean upon his breast on one of the most 
 
 > 8t. Matt. ix. 12. » St. Luke xix. 5. • Ibid. vli. 47. 
 
 • St. John viii. 7. • St. Matt, xxiii. 87. 
 
35 
 
 solemn occasions of his life. Even at his cruci 
 fixion he was tender towards his executioners, 
 and, lifting up his soul to his Father for them, 
 he said : " Father, forgive them, for they know 
 not what they they do." ' No earthly life shows 
 such a blending of light and love. Every word 
 of Jesus Christ is an expression of tenderness and 
 a sublime revelation ; at the same moment when 
 he opens the infinite to us by his look, he folds 
 us in his arms and presses us upon his bosom. 
 We soar away in thought, and are retained by 
 love. 
 
 And it must not be forgotten that the tender- 
 ness of Jesus Christ, although boundless, is of 
 spotless virginity. It is difficult for those who 
 have received a soul apt for love to hold that 
 precious gift within chaste limits ; it is the object 
 of a supreme struggle, in which one may be 
 sometimes tempted to regret the gift, or to desire 
 more liberty in its use. Jesus Christ seems to 
 know nothing of this, he bears his love in a vase 
 so pure, that the shadow even of doubt does not 
 approach his heart, and posterity, which for 
 eighteen centuries, has sought for faults in him, 
 has never, dared to utter a word of suspicion 
 
 > St Luke xxiii. 34. 
 
36 
 
 against his virtue. The character of his tender 
 ness is that of ineffable chastity. 
 
 There remains yet one thing, gentlemen, to 
 complete our estimation of the character of Jesus 
 Christ, and to enable us to judge, by his charac- 
 ter, of his sincerity. A sublime intelligence, a 
 tender heart, do not suffice to form a will capable 
 of great resolutions. The will is a distinct world, 
 where, notwithstanding our views and our feel- 
 ings, the helm is too often guided by a feeble 
 hand. The character of Jesus Christ on this 
 head is that of absolute certainty of himself. 
 None ever ventured upon a more difficult design ; 
 he claimed to be acknowledged as God, loved as 
 God, served as God, adored as God; it would 
 seem that the will should sometimes have 
 yielded under so heavy a load, and that at least 
 Jesus Christ should have employed all the hu- 
 man means capable of insuring the success of 
 such gigantic ambition. It is not so, gentlemen ; 
 Jesus Christ despised all human means, or rather 
 he abstained from employing any. 
 
 Politics rank among the highest of these. It 
 is the art of seizing the tendency of minds at a 
 given moment, of bringing together opinions and 
 interests which seek to be satisfied, of antici- 
 
37 
 
 pating the will of a people before they have a 
 clear consciousness of it themselves; of assuming, 
 by the help of circumstances, the post of their 
 natural representative, and of placing them upon 
 a course in which we shall be borne along with 
 them for half a century. Such is the art of poli- 
 tics — an illustrious art, which may be used for 
 good or evil, and which is the source of prosper- 
 ous and lamentable vicissitudes among nations. 
 Jesus Christ was admirably placed for becoming 
 the instrument of a revolution favorable to his 
 religious designs. The people from whom he had 
 sprung had lost, under the Roman yoke, the 
 remains of their ancient nationality ; hatred of 
 Rome was then at its height among them, and, 
 in the deserts and mountains of Judea, bands of 
 liberators were daily formed under the command 
 of some patriot, distinguished for his boldness 
 or some other characteristic. These movements 
 were seconded by celebrated prophecies, which 
 had long announced a chief and a saviour to the 
 Jewish people. The relation of these ideas and 
 interests to the new kingdom, the coming of 
 which Jesus Christ proclaimed, was evident. 
 Nevertheless, so far from conniving at and em- 
 ploying them, he trampled them under foot. In 
 
38 
 
 order to prove him, he is asked whether it is 
 needful to pay tribute to Caesar; he calls for a 
 piece of money, and, ou being told whose image 
 and superscription it bears, he calmly replies: 
 " Render then to Csesar that which is Caesar's, 
 and to God that which is God's." ' He goes still 
 further. He announces the temporal ruin of his 
 nation, he speaks against the temple — the object 
 of religious and patriotic veneration among the 
 Jews — and he openly predicts that there shall 
 not remain of it one, stone upon another ; there- 
 fore this charge was numbered amongst the accu- 
 sations brought against him before the supreme 
 magistracy. 
 
 His doctrine, so favorable to the people and to 
 the poor, was of a nature to obtain great popu- 
 larity for him : this is a powerful mainspring for 
 revolutions. In fact, he gained such an ascen- 
 dency over the people that they wished to elect 
 him King of Israel ; but he fled in order to avoid 
 that honor, and broke with his own hands an 
 instrument which great men would commonly 
 have valued as a gift and a sign from heaven. 
 
 Next to the art of politics comes power, one of 
 its adjuncts, but which may be considered with 
 
 ' St.. Matt. xxil. 21. 
 
39 
 
 out reference to the causes that generally com- 
 municate it. Jesus Christ had nothing so much 
 at heart as to prevent his disciples from trusting 
 to power and from exercising it. He sends them 
 forth, he says, like lambs ; he announces to them 
 all kinds of troubles, without giving them any 
 other help than patience, meekness and humility. 
 If, unmindful of his lessons, they would call 
 down fire from heaven, he reproaches them with 
 not yet knowing " of what spirit they are." ' At 
 the moment of his arrest, when he might have 
 defended himself, and an apostle drew the sword, 
 Jesus Christ says to him : " Put up thy sword 
 again into its sheath, for they who draw the 
 sword shall perish by the sword. " a Whilst the 
 authors of other doctrines seek a sanction from 
 victory — rashly forgetting that victory is variable 
 and conscience immutable — Jesus Christ chooses 
 the cross for his standard, and protests against 
 all triumph of power by the triumph of his cru- 
 cifixion. 
 
 He also despises science and philosophy — 
 those nobler and truer means of imparting con- 
 viction. He surrounds himself with fishermen 
 instead of savants, and, avoiding even the appear- 
 
 ' St. Luke ix. 55. " St. John xviii. 11. 
 
40 
 
 ance of a scientific and philosophical organization 
 of his doctrine, he teaches it by parables and 
 detached sentences. He leaves to his disciples 
 and to his church the future charge of blending 
 reasoning with them, and of ranging the whole 
 in order. 
 
 In fine, the most ordinary skill seems to be 
 unknown to him ; he makes of his death — of the 
 time when he should have received therefrom so 
 terrible a check to his divinity, and when he 
 would no longer be present to sustain his fol- 
 lowers — he makes, I say, of his death a snare for 
 the faith of his disciples, in promising them to 
 rise from the dead, and in leaving the confir- 
 mation of his whole life to that test, which, if he 
 were not fiod, could result only in a base fraud, 
 or a flagraut contradiction. 
 
 I know no other human means, gentlemen, of 
 founding anything here below, than those I have 
 just cited, namely, politics, power, science, phi- 
 losophy, skill. Jesus Christ abstained from em- 
 ploying any of these, and yet, confidence in 
 himself, absolute certainty of himself, never failed 
 him for a single hour or a single moment. This 
 very forbearing to employ any human means 
 proves to the highest evidence his inflexible reso 
 
41 
 
 lution, and the omnipotent energy of his will. 
 Nevertheless, nothing can be accomplished with- 
 out means, without instruments. What means 
 then — what instruments did Jesus Christ em- 
 ploy ? Ah ! gentlemen, what means ? Do you 
 not see what means % It was himself, his inner 
 force, the converse which he held with himself, 
 the sure possession of his essence. Men tremble 
 because they see themselves. Jesus Christ did 
 not tremble because he saw himself. He knew 
 that his very word was " the way, the truth, and 
 the life ; " ' he gave it to all who came, as the 
 husbandman sows corn ; the husbandman has no 
 more need of politics, power, science, philosophy, 
 or skill ; he has the corn, the earth, and the 
 heavens, he opens his hand and casts forth life. 
 And whilst human politics pursue their course, 
 whilst power struggles with power, whilst science 
 exhausts science, the philosophy of to-day buries 
 the philosophy of yesterday, and the skilful are 
 taken in their own nets ; the wheat fallen from 
 the hand of God into the hand of man, and from 
 the hand of man into the bosom of the earth, 
 vegetates, grows up, and ripens; it is gathered 
 in, eaten, and mankind lives ! So did Jesus 
 
 1 St. John xiv. 6. 
 
42 
 
 Christ ; so does every one who believes that he 
 holds the truth from God: he first lives by it, 
 then he sows it, and the world — " which is the 
 field " ' — the world lives by it in its due time. 
 
 We have then before us, gentlemen, the char- 
 acter of Jesus Christ, as the Gospel shows it to 
 us. With regard to his intelligence — continuous 
 sublimity ; with regard to his heart — chaste and 
 ineffable tenderness; with regard to his will — 
 absolute certainty of himself. Now this char- 
 acter is incompatible with the ignoble vice which 
 I no longer dare even to name, so far is it already 
 removed from your thoughts. Jesus Christ was 
 sincere because he was a sublime intelligence ; 
 he was sincere because his heart was open to men 
 as a sanctuary of tenderness and chastity; he 
 was sincere because he possessed absolute cer- 
 tainty of himself, because he had faith in his 
 doctrine, because he believed in himself. Jesus 
 Christ, like the Gospel — which is no other than 
 himself — Jesus Christ was sincerity itself, and the 
 invincible charm which is felt in contemplating 
 and in listening to him comes from the inmost 
 brightness of his physiognomy, by which he is 
 seen from without wholly as he is. 
 
 ' St. Matt. xiii. 88. 
 
43 
 
 Granted, say you, Jesus Christ was sincere 
 What then ? So many others have also been sin- 
 cere ! Reflect a moment, gentlemen ; remember 
 that Jesus Christ, being sincere, believed what 
 he said. Now, he said that he was God; he de- 
 clared this to his disciples, to his friends, to the 
 people, to the supreme magistracy of his country ; 
 he was condemned, and he died for that affir- 
 mation ; therefore he believed that he was God. 
 But he could not believe this if he were not God, 
 because it is impossible to be deceived in such a 
 matter as that of consciousness of one's own per- 
 sonality, without being mad. Now, Jesus Christ 
 was not a madman, and he was sincere : then he 
 was God. Here, by an exception which belongs 
 to the very nature of the subject, the question 
 of sincerity blends with the question of reality. 
 And this is no new discovery, no vain idea of 
 my mind. Through ages past, gentlemen, the 
 Gospel, in proving to the minds of its attentive 
 readers the sincerity of its hero, convinced them 
 of his divinity without any other argument. 
 Whilst the Catholic Church, the daughter and 
 spouse of Jesus Christ, demonstrates the divinity 
 of her founder by the divinity of her own charac- 
 teristics, the Gospel, in another manner, proves to 
 
44 
 
 the children of the Church the divinity of him 
 who founded it. And this impression is common 
 to different ages — to the three ages of man — so 
 natural is it and so based upon truth. 
 
 At the age of twelve, in the first bloom of life, 
 we heard the Gospel read, we heard of Jesus 
 Christ; his works appeared to us most simple, 
 gentle and loving ; we believed in them in the 
 simplicity, the gentleness, the love of our young 
 souls. But that first impression too often fades 
 and vanishes ; reason grows strong with its real 
 rights; outward prejudices penetrate within us ; 
 inward passions are drawn forth by the sun of 
 our ripening years, and Jesus Christ falls grad- 
 ually from the altar whereupon our first adora- 
 tions had placed him. This time has its day. 
 Years pass over our bondage, up to the time 
 when reason, become more personal and more 
 powerful, makes us ashamed of our faith in 
 lessons without authority, and when our very 
 passions, enlightened by their domination, incite 
 us by lassitude to instincts of governance, of 
 duty, and of greater self-respect. This time is 
 hallowed amongst all others; it is the time when 
 we enter into order by liberty itself, by that 
 divine liberty of youth which Providence has 
 
45 
 
 prepared for us, and which no law can snatch 
 from us. If the Gospel then fall into our hands, 
 and we read it a second time, Jesus Christ often 
 touches us again, and with a mastery which we 
 no longer contest, because we yield it to him of 
 ourselves at an age when nothing any longei 
 pleads against him but passions judged and igno- 
 rance overcome. It is this second reading of the 
 ofospel, gentlemen, that we are now accomplish- 
 ing together. 
 
 There is a third, less fortunate than the two 
 former, because it is more tardy, but it brings to 
 Jesus Christ the homage of man in his maturity, 
 and has produced avowals worthy of eternal 
 remembrance. Whilst the eighteenth century 
 heaped insult upon the Son of God, in the very 
 midst of that school which attacked him there 
 vas a man who believed no more than the rest, a 
 man as celebrated as the rest — the most celebrated 
 amongst them, with one exception — and who 
 above them all was privileged with sincere im- 
 pulsions. God so willed it that his name might 
 not be left without a witness even amongst those 
 who labored to destroy his reign. That man, 
 then at the height of his glory, acquainted by his 
 studies with past ages, and by his life with the 
 
46 
 
 age of which he was an ornament, had to speak 
 of Jesus Christ in a profession of faith in which 
 he desired to sum up all the doubts and convic- 
 tions which his meditations on religious matters 
 had left in his mind. After having treated of 
 God in a worthy, although in a confused manner, 
 he came to the Gospel and Jesus Christ. There, 
 that soul floating between error and truth sud- 
 denly lost its hesitation, and with a hand firm as 
 a martyr's, forgetting his age and his works, the 
 philosopher wrote the page of a theologian — a 
 page which was to become the counterpoise of 
 the blasphemy : " Ecrasez l'infame ! " It con- 
 cluded by these words, which will resound 
 throughout Christendom until the last coming 
 of Christ: "If the life and death of Socrates be 
 those of a sage, the life and death of Jesus Christ 
 are those of a God." ' 
 
 It might well have been thought that the force 
 of that confession would never have been sur- 
 passed, whether in regard to the genius of the 
 man who wrote it, the authority of his unbelief, 
 the glory of his name, and the circumstances con- 
 nected with the age which received it ; but it 
 would have been an error. Another man, another 
 
 1 Rousseau, Emile. 
 
47 
 
 expression, another glory, another phase of unbe- 
 lief, another age, another avowal met, and were 
 greater altogether, if not in each separate part, 
 than those you have just heard. Our age com- 
 menced by a man who outstripped all his con- 
 temporaries, and whom we, who have followed, 
 have not equalled. A conqueror, a soldier, a 
 founder of empire, his name and his ideas are 
 still everywhere present. After having uncon- 
 sciously accomplished the work of God, he dis- 
 appeared, that work being done, and waned like 
 a setting sun in the deep waters of the ocean. 
 There, upon a barren rock, he loved to recall the 
 events of his own life ; and, from himself, going 
 back to others who had lived before him, and to 
 whom he had a right to compare himself, he could 
 not fail to perceive a form greater than his own 
 upon that illustrious stage whereon he took his 
 place. He often contemplated it ; misfortune 
 opens the soul to illuminations which in pros- 
 perity are unseen. That form constantly rose 
 before him — he was compelled to judge it. One 
 evening in the course of that long exile which 
 expiated past faults and lighted up the road to 
 the future, the fallen conqueror asked one of the 
 few companions of his captivity if he could tell 
 
48 
 
 him what Jesus Christ really was. The soldiei 
 begged to be excused ; he had beon too busy 
 during his sojourn in the world to think about 
 that question. " What ! " sorrowfully replied the 
 inquirer, " you have been baptized in the Catholic 
 Church, and you cannot tell me, even here upon 
 this rock which consumes us, what Jesus Christ 
 was ! Well, then, I will tell you ; " and, opening 
 the Gospel, not with his hands, but from a heart 
 filled by it, he compared Jesus Christ with him- 
 self and all the great characters of history; he 
 developed the different characteristics which dis- 
 tinguished Jesus Christ from all mankind ; and 
 after uttering a torrent of eloquence which no 
 Father of the Church would have disclaimed, 
 he ended with these words : " In fine, I know 
 men, and I say that Jesus Christ was not a 
 man ! " 
 
 These words, gentlemen, sum up all 1 would 
 say to you on the inner life of Jesus Christ, and 
 express the conclusion which, sooner or later, 
 every man arrives at who reads the Gospel with 
 just attention. You who are yet young have life 
 before you; you will see learned men, sages, 
 princes, and their ministers; you will witness 
 elevations and ruins ; sons of time time will ini- 
 
49 
 
 tiate you into the hidden things of man ; and 
 when you have learned them, when you know 
 the measure of what is human, some day, p3r- 
 haps, returning from those heights for which you 
 hoped, you will say also, " I know men, and I 
 say that Jesus Christ was not a man ! " 
 
 The day too will come, when upon the tomb 
 of her great captain, France will grave these 
 words, and they will shine there with more im 
 mortal lustre than the sun of the Pyramids and 
 A^sterlitz ! 
 
THE PUBLIC POWER OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 My Loed — Gentlemen, 
 
 Jesus Christ declared that he was God, and 
 by his character he proved the sincerity of that 
 declaration : therefore he was God. But ts this 
 all the proof of his divinity ? Doubtless the first 
 manifestation of beings endowed with intelligence 
 is their word, the affirmation which they give of 
 themselves ; doubtless, the expression of what 
 they are by their moral physiognomy, or charac 
 ter, is the second and natural manifestation of 
 the same beings : but is this all ? Is there noth- 
 ing beyond this? And even should this demon- 
 stration suffice as to the ordinary relations be- 
 tween men, will it be sufficient when it is a 
 question of intercourse between God and men % 
 Evidently not. For it requires a certain amount 
 of penetration, and time also, in order to judge a 
 character; a moral physiognomy is not fully dis- 
 closed in a single day, and when God appears, 
 gentlemen, when he deigns to come to us, it is 
 manifest that, at the first glance, there should be 
 
51 
 
 in his appearance something exclusive of doubt, 
 or discussion, or time, or even science, something 
 recognizable immediately by all ; something, in 
 a word, manifesting openly the public power of 
 God, and infallibly revealing his presence and 
 action. Even as there is a certain expression of 
 the majesty of temporal sovereignty, there should 
 be for God an eminent and adequate means, by 
 which, as soon as he appears, every intelligent 
 being, not in mad revolt against him, should 
 bend before him and exclaim : It is God ! What 
 is this mode of manifestation, which I have called 
 the public power of God ? In what does it con- 
 sist? Did Jesus Christ possess it? What ob- 
 jections does it raise, and how are they answered ? 
 Such, gentlemen, is the vast field we are about to 
 traverse to-day. 
 
 No being can manifest itself save by the ele- 
 ments contained within itself, and which consti- 
 tute its nature. Now all beings, of what kind 
 soever, contain but three elements, namely, sub- 
 stance, force, and law ; substance, which is their 
 centre of being ; force, which is their action ; law, 
 which is the measure of their action. If we cast 
 a glance upon the lowest in the scale of beings, 
 upon that which approaches nearest to nothing- 
 
52 
 
 ness, we shall find in it these three elements. 
 Thus the atom has a substance, something which 
 adheres, which holds its place, something which 
 we cannot analyze, but which we have called by 
 a mysterious name, signifying that which is under 
 and sustains what is above. The atom possesses 
 a resisting force : in order to displace it, a move- 
 ment, however slight it may be, is required, and 
 without that movement it remains stationary. It 
 possesses a cohesive force by which its parts hold 
 together, a force of affinity by which it attracts 
 other atoms to itself, for it is its vocation, as it is 
 yours, to increase. It possesses a force of passi- 
 bility by which it receives light, heat, and all 
 the fluids of which its obscure yet mysterious 
 and profound life has need. In fine, its substance 
 and its force are regulated by a law ; it is not 
 alone in the world, it is connected with other 
 beings, is subject to other influences, as its own 
 influence is exercised ; its action is measured, as 
 the action of others upon itself is measured. 
 Substance, force, law — all these are in an atom, 
 and all these are in God, who is the father of the 
 atom. God is the fulness of substance, the ful- 
 ness of force, the fulness of law; he is infinite 
 substance, absolute force, eternal law. He is yet 
 
53 
 
 more, he is the centre of all substances, their cre- 
 ator and preserver ; the centre of all forces, their 
 beginning and their end ; the centre of all laws, 
 their principle, their sanction, and their majesty. 
 As beings are thus formed, from the atom even 
 to God, every being is able to manifest itself in 
 a three-fold manner, namely, by its substance, by 
 its force, or by its law. By its substance, thus 
 bodies appear to us ; by its force, thus the soul 
 reveals itself to us ; by its law, thus the heavenly 
 bodies, even when invisible, are anticipated by 
 the astronomer through the general movement 
 that governs them, withholding or bearing them 
 away from our view. And consequently God 
 may manifest himself as substance, as force, and 
 as law ; as the centre of all substances, of all 
 forces, and of all laws. For if an atom possesses 
 the magnificent power of disclosing itself, if from 
 its very dust and nothingness it imposes itself 
 upon our vision, enters our academies, provokes 
 discussion, exhausts our learning for ages, how 
 much more should God possess the right and 
 power to disclose himself ! A being that does 
 not do this, is not. For the vocation of every 
 being, without exception, is to appear, to take a 
 field of action and to act in it : and as there is no 
 
54 
 
 action without manifestation, to appear is to live. 
 And as God is life, his sole work is evidently 
 his appearing, radiating, conquering ; in a word, 
 being in all what he is, namely, the king of sub- 
 stances, the king of forces, the king of laws. 
 
 It is true, he now hides his substance from us 
 men, and we may exclaim with the prophet : 
 " Verily, thou art a hidden God ! " ' But if he 
 withholds from us that direct vision of himself, 
 it is not from weakness or from envy, it is from 
 respect for our liberty and for the very inter- 
 course which he would hold with us. Had we 
 at once seen his substance, the overwhelming 
 splendor of that manifestation would have taken 
 from our soul all its freedom of action ; we should 
 have adored God in spite of ourselves, whilst the 
 adoration which God claims from us, and which 
 he has a right to claim, is an adoration of choice 
 and love, springing from our soul and reaching 
 to his own. It was needful then that God should 
 manifest himself without dazzling our vision and 
 making us the slaves of his beauty ; it was need- 
 ful that we should see him without seeing him, 
 that we should be sure of his presence without 
 being oppressed by it ; and this is why he has 
 
 1 Isaiah xlv. 15. 
 
55 
 
 hidden his substance from us whilst he leaves to 
 us his light, as the sun sometimes gathers clouds 
 to lessen his splendor, remaining still visible in 
 the midst of heaven. 
 
 If the manifestation of God by his substance 
 would have been too powerful for our liberty, 
 there was another reason against his manifesting 
 himself only by his law. The law of God is 
 truth, that is to say, the sum of all necessary and 
 possible relations, of all uncreated and creatable 
 relations. In revealing truth, God indeed reveals 
 himself to us, but under a form which permits us 
 easily to disregard him, because we detach truth 
 from the living source which bears it, and be- 
 cause we make of it, so to say, a creation, an idol 
 of our own mind ; or, being unable in certain 
 cases to hail it as the offspring of our own intel- 
 ligence, we rid ourselves of it as a stranger who 
 offends and contradicts us. Doubtless, God is 
 able to raise truth to the state of prophecy, by 
 announcing beforehand relations that will result 
 in the course of ages between events and empires 
 whose names do not yet exist ; but prophecy 
 needs time for its fulfilment and confirmation; 
 up to the latest moment it remains suspended 
 in history as a dream unworthy of our attention, 
 
56 
 
 and, were it to apply to events too near at hand, 
 it would lose force, wanting anteriority. There- 
 fore, even in the prophetic state, truth would be 
 insufficient as the instantaneous sia;n of the divine 
 presence. So that, whilst the manifestation of 
 God by his substance would be too powerful, 
 that which he gives to us by his law, or truth, 
 is too feeble to produce immediate conviction. 
 
 Force then remains to God, as a means of re- 
 vealing himself with a degree of splendor which 
 brings neither too much nor too little light. 
 
 But God possesses force itself, and can exercise 
 it in three different orders : in the physical order, 
 which includes all the kingdoms of nature ; in the 
 moral order, which includes whatever relates to 
 the soul; in the social order, which comprises 
 the soul and the body ranged under the laws of 
 unity. Now God, by Jesus Christ, has visibly 
 applied his force to the two last orders, that is 
 to say, to the soul and to society, as we have 
 shown in our preceding conferences in treating 
 of the virtues reserved to the action of Catholic 
 doctrine, and of the social effects produced by 
 that same doctrine, the offspring of Jesus Christ. 
 This sign, however, was insufficient to form at 
 once a halo of divinity for Jesus Christ, when on 
 
57 
 
 his first appearing among men, he had to present 
 his credentials to them in the name of the 
 Father, of whom he called himself the august 
 and only Son. The conversion of the soul, its 
 exaltation to the highest virtues, needs time, and 
 the co-operation of man himself; the foundation 
 of a visible society, endowed with privileges of 
 unity, universality, stability, holiness, needs yet 
 more time, and the co-operation of an innumer- 
 able multitude of men spread over the field of 
 ages and space. God does not create a society 
 in a day, he does not even so convert a soul; 
 and when perchance he works this last prodigy, 
 he who has been its object, and who has the 
 most steadfast consciousness thereof, does not 
 suddenly become a burning and a shining light, 
 enlightening the world with the splendor of his 
 virtue. Men hide the mystery of God, and keep 
 it long from the eyes of the world; like St. Paul, 
 they withdraw into the desert, and that desert — 
 were it even the busy throng — remains long in 
 presence of a transfigured soul before recognizing 
 in it the divine sign. 
 
 What remains then to God, gentlemen, as his 
 eminent mode of appearing, his own and inimit- 
 able sign, the public expression of his physiog- 
 3* 
 
58 
 
 nomy in space and time ? There remains to him 
 his physical force, or, in other words, his sover- 
 eignty over nature, a sovereignty which, in the 
 matter and order forming its field of action, 
 meets with no liberty to respect, no co-opera- 
 tion to solicit or wait for, but simply an im- 
 mense energy, whose instantaneous submission 
 announces the master of heaven and earth to 
 every man who is not afraid to encounter God. 
 The proper character of this sovereign act is that 
 it requires from the beholder neither study nor 
 science, nor any preparation requiring time or 
 distinction, but sincerity only. It is so foreign 
 to all human action that, at least, it confounds, 
 even when it does not produce conviction, so 
 that the rebel has no resource but silence against 
 the upright man who exclaims : Digitus Dei est 
 hic ! ' Therefore, human tongues, the mysterious 
 organs of truth, have given a singular name to 
 the act by which God exercises his sovereignty 
 over nature, and instantaneously manifests his 
 presence to men : they have called it a " miracle," 
 that is, the marvellous in the highest degree, the 
 act which constitutes the public power of God. 
 But does Jesus Christ bear upon his brow this 
 
 'Exodus viii. 19. 
 
59 
 
 sign of absolute force ? Did he work miracles ? 
 Did lie exercise the public power of God ? 
 
 One day John the Baptist sent his disciples to 
 ask him : " Art thou he that should come, or look 
 we for another ? " Jesus Christ answers them : 
 " Go, and tell John what you have heard and seen ; 
 the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are 
 cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead rise again, to 
 the poor the Gospel is preached." ' That is to 
 say, Jesus Christ, the man whom we have ac- 
 knowledged as the most admirable character 
 shown in history, was not afraid to give as proof 
 of his mission and divinity a whole series of 
 miraculous acts wrought by himself. And in- 
 deed, the Gospel, from beginning to end, is a 
 series of simple sayings which pierce to the very 
 centre of the soul, and of prodigious sayings 
 which agitate nature even to its foundations. 
 Vainly have men endeavored to separate these, 
 and see two works in one single work ; the 
 Gospel resists that analysis which pretends to 
 extract from it the moral substance and put 
 aside the miraculous substance, to take from the 
 worker of miracles the support of the sage, and 
 from the sage the support of the worker of mira- 
 
 • St. Luke vii. 20-33. 
 
GO 
 
 cles. Both of these remain firmly united against 
 the wily efforts of unbelief; the doctrine sup 
 ports the miracle, the miracle justifies the doc- 
 trine, and the Gospel circulates in the world 
 with an invincible character of unity, which per- 
 mits and obtains for Jesus Christ only absolute 
 hatred or complete adoration. 
 
 This unity is of itself a demonstration for all 
 who reflect seriously. Nevertheless, unbelief, 
 amazed at its powerlessness to divide Jesus 
 Christ, falls back upon itself, and anxiously ex- 
 claims : Is it then really true that Jesus Christ 
 gave sight to the blind, made the lame to walk, 
 cleansed the lepers, gave hearing to the deaf, 
 and life to the dead ? Is it true that he acted 
 as the master of nature, and that daily, before 
 the eyes of the people, in the light of heaven, his 
 creating hand proved that a divine virtue dwelt 
 in him ? Is there not a horrible falsehood en- 
 grafted upon the sincerity of that life ? 
 
 Gentlemen, the Gospel is from a period in his- 
 tory: it is a history. The miracles of Jesus 
 Christ were wrought in the public squares, be- 
 fore multitudes of all conditions, before numer- 
 ous and bitter enemies. They formed the basis 
 of a teaching which divided a whole country, 
 
61 
 
 and which soon divided the universe. If, not- 
 withstanding the character of truth which dis- 
 tinguishes the Gospel from all other books, you 
 suspect its testimony as the work of those who 
 believed in Jesus Christ, you cannot, by a con- 
 trary reason, suspect the recitals and impressions 
 of those who did not believe in the new master, 
 and who everywhere persecuted his disciples, his 
 doctrines, and even his name. A public discus- 
 sion was raised, a man called himself God ; he 
 died for having done so ; his nation, divided 
 upon his tomb, appealed from that blood, and 
 from his nation men appealed to that blood 
 shed, which on all sides found adorers. Now 
 publicity is a power which forces the enemies of 
 a cause to pronounce openly, and in spite of them 
 selves to concur in the authentic formation of a 
 history which they detest and would fain utterly 
 destroy. It is in vain ; publicity forces them, they 
 are compelled to speak, and even in calumnia 
 ting they are compelled to speak enough of truth 
 to save it for ever from perishing. This it is, 
 gentlemen, that saves history. Nothing in the 
 world is more hated and more feared ; the op- 
 pressors of nations and the oppressors of God 
 labor at nothing more vigorously than in endeav 
 
62 
 
 ormg to prevent toe existence of history ; they 
 silence the four winds of heaven against it, they 
 shut up their victim within the narrow and deep 
 walls of their dungeons ; they surround it with 
 cannon, lances, and all the instruments of menace 
 and fear; but publicity is stronger than any 
 empire; it bears along even those who hold it 
 in execration ; it constrains them to speak ; the 
 cannon turn, the lances fall, and history passes 
 on ! 
 
 So, gentlemen, has the history of the miracles 
 of Jesus Christ advanced. It has advanced by 
 his very enemies ; by the Pharisees who crucified 
 him, by the pagan rationalists who crucify his 
 memory. The deicidal Jews, in the face of pub- 
 licity filling the whole world, could not avoid 
 expressing their sentiments and opinions upon 
 the miraculous life of Christ ; they were com- 
 pelled to pronounce an affirmation or a denial, 
 and a denial they dared not pronounce, because 
 no one in the world can impose absolute false- 
 hood in regard to public facts after the world 
 has spoken. Absolute falsehood is no more pos- 
 sible in the order of history than is absolute 
 error in the order of speculation. The Jews 
 have perverted the miracles of Jesus Christ ; 
 
63 
 
 they have not denied them ; they have written 
 that Jesus Christ assumed in the temple the in- 
 communicable name of God, and that by that 
 sovereign name he commanded nature. This 
 explanation is deposited in the most grave monu- 
 ments of their tradition, and this is all they have 
 been able to do against the accusing memory of 
 Jesus Christ, against the blood which the whole 
 universe reproached, and still reproaches them 
 for shedding. But what more could they do ? 
 Publicity is master of men who have seen ; it 
 becomes changed into tradition upon their tomb, 
 and pursues them from age to age, from justice 
 to justice, even to their latest posterity. 
 
 The pagan rationalists came in their turn to 
 deal with the history of Jesus Christ. Doubtless 
 they had taken no part in his crucifixion, and it 
 was not his blood that alarmed them ; but, with 
 his blood, Jesus Christ had shed upon the world 
 a truth which condemned to nothingness the 
 wisdom of the wise ; coiild the wise of this world 
 forgive him ? They also then had to give a criti- 
 cal text of his life, and, in order to depreciate it, 
 they had to employ all the resources which the 
 traditions and discussions of their times afforded 
 them. What have they said of the miracles of 
 
64 
 
 Jesus Christ? What have Celsus, Porphyrius 
 Julian — names for ever illustrious, because from 
 the earliest Christian ages they have been the 
 heralds of the Son of God in the incomparable 
 offices of enmity — what have they said of him ? 
 Have they denied that Jesus Christ wrought 
 miraculous works in support of his doctrine? 
 No more than the Jews ; they have simply made 
 a skilful magician of him. Why a magician and 
 not a sage? What need was there of so strange 
 an expression ? It is because history was there. 
 It was possible to pervert the miraculous works 
 of Jesus Christ ; it was not possible to be silent 
 in regard to them. 
 
 It is then clear, gentlemen, by the very testi- 
 mony of the enemies of Jesus Christ, that his 
 preaching was accompanied by superhuman pro- 
 digies. But we must not separate these exterior 
 incentives to faith, strong as they are, from the 
 intimate character of the Gospel and Jesus Christ. 
 In an edifice all is bound together from the base 
 to the summit. If Jesus Christ was sincere, as 
 we have shown, if his nature was stamped with 
 the character of divine superiority, his sincerity 
 and his superiority call for confidence in his mir- 
 acles, as well as in the affirmations which he 
 
65 
 
 made of himself. If Jesus Christ did not speak 
 falsely in declaring that he was God, by a stronger 
 reason he did not lie in acting as God. For it is 
 more shameful, more contrary to sincerity to per- 
 form impostures, that is to say — pardon the ex- 
 pression, but by its force, that very expression 
 shows the scorn in which mankind holds impos- 
 ture — it is more shameful to be a juggler than a 
 knave. The knave deceives only by his speech, 
 the juggler adds thereto miserable manipulations 
 in order to dazzle the eyes of ignorant spectators. 
 It is a lie heaped upon a lie, an indignity upon 
 an indignity. And this is why human tongues 
 — so skilful in expressing scorn — have created 
 that odious name of juggler to mark all who 
 dare to employ illusion in aid of imposture. 
 
 The superiority of Jesus Christ is no less favor- 
 able to the reality of his miracles than his sin- 
 cerity. No grave and learned man will ever 
 employ juggles to support a doctrinal teaching. 
 For what is jugglery ? It is the use of a power 
 unknown to the science of the times in which it 
 is practised. But science will not be slow to 
 arrive at it ; absent for a moment, it is inevitable 
 in the course of mankind ; a day comes when it 
 rises radiant, and, casting back its investigating 
 
66 
 
 lustre upon the past, it judges, weighs, verifies 
 all, and, whilst it brings to the true works of 
 genius or of the Divinity their final consecration, 
 it reduces to dust the puerile practices which had 
 imposed upon the faith of untaught generations. 
 Therefore nothing great in the world has ever 
 been founded upon impostures of this kind ; 
 every work possessing any force or dignity, even 
 if not altogether free from falsehood, has gath- 
 ered its meed of stability from something ancient 
 and true. Mahomet is a memorable example of 
 this. Author of a religious revolution in a coun- 
 try unenlightened by science, he employed every 
 human means to insure success, but he did not 
 employ jugglery, because it is not a human 
 means. I have recently read through the Koran. 
 Every twenty pages Mahomet touches the ques- 
 tion of miracles; he objects, or he is reproached 
 with not performing them ; never does he once 
 venture to say that he had performed or ever 
 would perform them ; he constantly eludes the 
 question. He invokes Abraham, Moses, all the 
 patriarchs ; an event in his life when God pro- 
 tected him ; a victory which had crowned his 
 arms and justified his doctrine ; he loudly affirms 
 that God is God, and that Mahomet is his pro- 
 
67 
 
 phet; this is all. And this scorn of miserable 
 imposture, this respect for general ideas in re- 
 gard to Providence and traditional memorials, is 
 not an insignificant mark of his skill, and even 
 of his genius. 
 
 And we are to believe that Jesus Christ, the 
 author of the Gospel, stooped to the most un- 
 worthy imitations of the omnipotence of God, 
 that he passed the time of his public mission 
 in deceiving the eyes of his contemporaries by 
 phantoms as despicable as they are powerless ! 
 We are to believe that such miserable trickery 
 could have obtained the greatest success of faith 
 which the human race has ever wrought ! It is 
 not possible. Common sense as well as history 
 condemns such a supposition. The public life 
 of Jesus Christ answers to his inner life, and his 
 inner life confirms his public life. He declared 
 himself to be God, he was believed to be God, 
 he acted as God, and precisely because that posi- 
 tion is one of marvellous strength men have been 
 forced to try their greatest efforts against it ; his- 
 tory and common sense speaking too loudly in 
 favor of Jesus Christ, it was needful to have re- 
 course to metaphysics and physics in order to 
 snatch from his hands at least the sceptre of 
 
68 
 
 miracles. Let as see whether they have suo 
 ceeded. 
 
 Two things are advanced against him. First, 
 Jesus Christ wrought no miracles, because it is im- 
 possible. Secondly, his working miracles is of no 
 importance, since everybody can work them, every- 
 body has wrought them, everybody works them. 
 
 First, Jesus Christ wrought no miracles be- 
 cause it is impossible. And why ? Because 
 nature is subject to general laws, which make 
 of its body a perfect and harmonious unity where 
 each part answers to all, so that if one single 
 point were violated the whole would at once 
 perish. Orc'lor, ev;;n when it comes from God, 
 is not an arbitrary thing able to destroy or 
 change itself at will ; order necessarily excludes 
 disorder, and no greater disorder can be con- 
 ceived in nature than that sovereign action which 
 would possess the faculty of destroying its laws 
 and its constitution. Miracles are impossible 
 under these two heads ; impossible as disorder, 
 impossible, because a partial violation of nature 
 would be its total destruction. 
 
 That is to say, gentlemen, that it is impossible 
 for God to manifest himself by the single act 
 which publicly and instantaneously announces 
 
69 
 
 his presence, by the act of sovereignty. Whilst 
 the lowest in the scale of being has the right to 
 appear in the bosom of nature by the exercise of 
 its proper force ; whilst the grain of sand, called 
 into the crucible of the chemist, answers to his 
 interrogations by characteristic signs which range 
 it in the registers of science, to God alone it 
 should be denied to manifest his force in the per- 
 sonal measure that distinguishes him and makes 
 him a separate being ! Not only should God 
 not have manifested himself, but it must be for 
 ever impossible for him to manifest himself, in 
 virtue even of the order of which he is the crea- 
 tor. To act, is to live ; to appear, is to live ; to 
 communicate, is to live ; but God can no longer 
 act, appear, communicate himself; that is denied 
 to him. Banished to the profound depths of his 
 silent and obscure eternity, if we interrogate 
 him, if we supplicate him, if we cry to him, he 
 can only say to us — supposing, however, that he 
 is able to answer us : " What would you have ? 
 I have made laws ! Ask of the sun and the stars, 
 ask of the sea and the sand upon its shores ; as 
 for me, my condition is fixed, I am nothing but 
 repose, and the contemplative servant of the 
 works of my hands ! " 
 
70' 
 
 Ah ! gentlemen, it is not thus that the whole 
 human race has hitherto understood God. Men 
 have understood him as a free and sovereign 
 being ; and, even if they have not always had a 
 correct knowledge of his nature, they have at 
 least never refused to him power and goodness. 
 In all times and places, sure of these two attri- 
 butes of their heavenly Father, they have offered 
 up their ever fervent prayer to him ; they have 
 asked all from him, and daily, upon their bended 
 knees, they ask him to enlighten their minds, to 
 give them uprightness of heart, health of body, to 
 preserve them from scourges, to give them vic- 
 tory in war, prosperity in peace, the satisfaction 
 of every want in every state and condition. 
 
 There is perhaps some poor woman here who 
 hardly understands what I say. This morning 
 she knelt by the bedside of her sick child; and, 
 forsaken by all, without bread for the day, she 
 clasped her hands and called to him who ripens 
 the corn and creates charity. " O Lord," said 
 she, " come to my help ; O Lord, make haste to 
 help me ! " And even whilst I speak, number- 
 less voices are lifted up towards God from all 
 parts of the earth to ask from him things in 
 which nature alone can do nothing, and in which 
 
71 
 
 those souls are persuaded that God can do all. 
 "Who then is deceived here % Is it the metaphy- 
 sician, or the human race ? And how has nature 
 taught us to despise nature in order to trust in 
 God ? For it is not science that teaches us to 
 pray, we pray in spite of science ; and as there 
 is nothing here below but science, nature and 
 God ; if we pray in spite of science, it must be 
 nature or God that teaches us to pray, and to 
 believe with all our heart in the miracles of 
 divine power and goodness. After this, whether 
 nature become disorganized or not, or even if it 
 must, perish whenever the finger of God touches 
 it, it is assuredly the very least concern to us. 
 Nevertheless, out of respect for certain minds, I 
 will show that miracles do no violence to the 
 natural order. 
 
 Nature, as I have already said, possesses three 
 elements ; namely, substances, forces, and laws. 
 Substances are essentially variable ; they change 
 their form, their weight, combining and separa- 
 ting at each moment. Forces bear the same 
 character; they increase and diminish, cohere, 
 accumulate, or separate. They have nothing im- 
 mutable but the mathematical laws, which at 
 the same time govern forces and substances, and 
 
7 -J 
 
 whence the order of the universe proceeds. The 
 mobility of forces and substances spreads move- 
 ment and life in nature ; the immutability of 
 mathematical laws maintains there an order 
 which never fails. Without the first of these all 
 would be lifeless ; without the second all would 
 be chaos. This established, what does God do 
 when he works a miracle? Does he touch the 
 principle of universal order, which is the mathe- 
 matical law { By no means. The mathematical 
 law appertains to the region of ideas — that is to 
 say, to the region of the eternal and the absolute; 
 God can do nothing here, for it is himself. But 
 he acts upon substances and upon forces — upon 
 substances which are created, upon forces which 
 have their root in his supreme will. Like our- 
 selves, who, V>eing subject to the general combi- 
 nations of nature, nevertheless draw from our in- 
 terior vitality movements which are in appear- 
 ance contrary to the laws of weight, God acts 
 upon the universe as we act upon our bodies. 
 He applies somewhere the force needful to pro- 
 duce there an unusual movement : it is a miracle, 
 because God alone, in the infinite fount of his 
 will — which is the centre of all created and pos- 
 sible foi-ces — is able to draw forth sufficient ele- 
 
73 
 
 ments to act suddenly to this degree. If it 
 please him to stop the sun — to use a common 
 expression — he opposes to its projective force a 
 force which counterbalances it, and which, by 
 virtue even of the mathematical law, produces 
 repose. It is not more difficult for him to stop 
 the whole movement of the uni verse. 
 
 It is the same with all other miracles ; it is a 
 question of force, the use of which, so far from 
 doing violence to the physical order— which in- 
 deed would be of little moment — returns to it 
 of its own accord, and, moreover, maintains upon 
 earth the moral and religious order, without 
 which the physical order would not exist. 
 
 This objection answered, gentlemen, let us pro- 
 ceed to examine the second. We are told that 
 miracles prove nothing, because all doctrines 
 have miracles in their favor, and because, by the 
 help of a certain occult science, it is easy to per- 
 form them. 
 
 I boldly deny that any historical doctrine, that 
 is, any doctrine founded in the full light of his- 
 tory by men authentically known, possesses mir- 
 aculous works for its basis. At the present 
 time, we have no example of it ; no one, before 
 our eyes, among so many instructors of the 
 4 
 
74 
 
 human race whom we see around us, has as yet 
 dared to promise us the exercise of a power 
 superior to the ordinary power which we dispose 
 of. No one of our contemporaries has appeared 
 in public giving sight to the blind and raising 
 the dead to life. Extravagance has reached 
 ideas and style only, it has not gone beyond. 
 Returning from the present age back to Jesus 
 Christ, we find no one, amongst the innumerable 
 multitude of celebrated heresiarchs, who has 
 been able to boast that he could command nature 
 and place the inspirations of his rebellious pride 
 under the protection of miracles. Mahomet, at 
 the same time heretic and unbeliever, did not 
 attempt it any more than the others : this I have 
 already said, and the Koran will more fully 
 prove it to any one who will take the pains to 
 read that plagiarism of the Bible made by a 
 student of rhetoric at Mecca. Beyond Jesus 
 Christ, in the ages claimed by history, what re- 
 mains, if we put aside Moses and the prophets — 
 that is, the very ancestors of Jesus Christ \ Shall 
 we notice certain strange facts connected with 
 Greece and Rome? Shall we speak of that 
 augur, who, says Livy, cut a stone with a razor ; 
 or of that Vestal who drew along a vessel by 
 
75 
 
 her girdle, or even of the blind man cured by 
 Vespasian ? These facts, whatever they may be, 
 are isolated and belong to no doctrine ; they 
 have provoked no discussion in the world, and 
 have established nothing ; they are not doctrinal 
 facts. Now we are treating of miracles which 
 have founded religious doctrines — the only mir- 
 acles worthy of consideration ; for it is evident 
 that if God manifests himself by acts of sover- 
 eignty, it must be for some great cause, worthy 
 of himself and worthy of us, that is to say, for a 
 cause which affects the eternal destinies of the 
 whole human race. This places- out of the ques- 
 tion altogether all isolated facts, such as those 
 related in the life of Apollonius of Thyana. 
 
 This personage is of the first century of the 
 Christian era, and his life was written at a much 
 later period by an Alexandrine philosopher called 
 Philostratus, who designed to make of it a rival 
 to the Gospel, and of Apollonius himself the 
 counterpart of Jesus Christ. A most singular 
 physiognomy is here presented to us, but that is 
 all. What has Apollonius of Thyana accom- 
 plished in regard to doctrine? Where are his 
 writings, his social works, the traces of his pas- 
 sage upon earth ? He died on the morrow of his 
 
76 
 
 life. Instead of certain equivocal facts, had he 
 removed mountains during his life, it would but 
 have been a literary curiosity, an accident, a 
 man, nothing. 
 
 Where then shall we look for doctrines founded 
 in the light of history upon miraculous events ? 
 Where in the historical world is there another 
 omnipotence than that of Jesus Christ ? Where 
 do we find other miracles than his and those of 
 the saints who have chosen him for their master, 
 and who have derived from him the power to con- 
 tinue what he had begun ? Nothing appears 
 upon the horizon ; Jesus Christ alone remains., 
 and his enemies, eternally attacking him, are 
 able to bring against him nothing but doubts, 
 and not a single fact equal or even analogous to 
 him. 
 
 But do there not at least exist in nature cer- 
 tain occult forces which have since been made 
 known to us, and which Jesus Christ might have 
 employed ! I will name, gentlemen, the occult 
 forces alluded to, and I will do so without any 
 hesitation ; they are called magnetic forces. 
 And I might easily disembarrass myself of them, 
 since science does not yet recognize them, and 
 even proscribes them. Nevertheless T choose 
 
i I 
 
 rather to obey my conscience than science. You 
 invoke then the magnetic forces ; I believe in 
 them sincerely, firmly ; I believe that their 
 effects have been proved, although in a manner 
 which is as yet incomplete, and probably will 
 ever remain so, by instructed, sincere, and even 
 by Christian men ; I believe that these effect*, 
 in the great generality of cases, are purely natu- 
 ral ; I believe that their secret has never been 
 lost to the world, that it has been transmitted 
 from age to age, that it has occasioned a multi- 
 tude of mysterious actions whose trace is easily 
 distinguished, and that it has now only left the 
 shade of hidden transmissions because this age 
 has borne upon its brow the sign of publicity. 
 I believe all this. Yes, gentlemen, by a divine 
 preparation against the pride of materialism, by 
 an insult to science, which dates from a more re- 
 mote epoch than we can reach, God has willed 
 that there should be irregular forces in nature 
 not reducible to precise formulae, almost beyond 
 the reach of scientific verification. He has so 
 willed it, in order to prove to men who slumber 
 in the darkness of the senses, that even indepen- 
 dently of religion, there remained within us rays 
 of a higher order, fearful gleams cast upon the 
 
78 
 
 invisible world, a kind of crater by which our 
 soul, freed for a moment from the terrible bonds 
 of the body, flies away into spaces which it can- 
 not fathom, from whence it brings back no re- 
 membrance, but which give it a sufficient warn- 
 ing that the present order hides a future order 
 before which ours is but nothingness. 
 
 All this I believe is true ; but it is also true 
 that these obscure forces are confined within 
 limits which show no sovereignty over the natu- 
 ral order. Plunged into a factitious sleep man 
 sees through opaque bodies at certain distances ; 
 he names remedies for soothing and even for 
 healing the diseases of the body ; he seems to 
 know things that he knew not, and that he for- 
 gets on the instant of his waking ; by his will 
 he exercises great empire over those with whom 
 he is in magnetic communication ; all this is dif- 
 ficult, painful, mixed up with uncertainty and 
 prostration. It is a phenomenon of vision much 
 more than of operation, a phenomenon which be- 
 longs to the prophetic and not to the miraculous 
 order. A sudden cure, an evident act of sover- 
 eignty, has nowhere been witnessed. Even in 
 the prophetic order, nothing is more pitiful. 
 
 It would seem that this extraordinary vision 
 
7y 
 
 should at least reveal to us something of that 
 future which may be called the present future. 
 It does nothing of this. What has magnetism 
 foretold during the last fifty years ? Let it tell 
 us, not what will happen in a thousand years, 
 not what will happen the day after to-morrow 
 even, but what will happen to-morrow morning. 
 All those who dispose of our destinies are living, 
 they speak, they write, they alarm our suscepti- 
 bility; but let them show us the certain result 
 of their action in a single public matter. Alas ! 
 magnetism, which was to change the world, has 
 not even been able to become an agent of police ; 
 it strikes the imagination as much by its sterility 
 as by its singularity. It is not a principle, it is 
 a ruin. Thus, on the desolate banks of the 
 Euphrates, in the place where Babylon once 
 stood and where that famous tower was begun 
 which, to speak like Bossuet, was to bear even 
 to heaven the testimony of the antique power of 
 man, the traveller finds ruins blasted by the 
 thunderbolt, and almost superhuman in their 
 magnitude. He stoops, and eagerly gathers up 
 a fragment of brick ; he discovers characters 
 upon it which belong, doubtless, to the primitive 
 writing of the human race; but vain are his 
 
80 
 
 efforts to deciphei them, the sacred fragment 
 falls back again from his hands upon the colos- 
 sus calcined by fire : it is nothing now but a 
 broken tile, which even curiosity despises. 
 
 I look around, gentlemen. I see nothing 
 more : Jesus Christ is alone. 
 
 Perhaps, however, you may yet say to me : If 
 Jesus Christ wrought miracles during his life, 
 and even in the early days of the Church, why 
 does he do so no longer ? Why ? Alas, gentle- 
 men, he works miracles every day, but you do 
 not see them. He works them with less profu- 
 sion, because the moral and social miracle, the 
 miracle which needed time, is wrought, and be- 
 fore your eyes. When Jesus Christ laid the 
 foundations of his Church, it was needful for him 
 to obtain faith in a work then commencing ; now 
 it is formed, although not yet finished : you be- 
 hold it, you touch it, you compare it, you meas- 
 ure it, you judge whether it is a human work. 
 Why should God be prodigal of miracles to those 
 who do not see the miracle ? Why, for instance, 
 should I lead you to the mountains of the Tyrol, 
 to see prodigies which a hundred thousand of 
 your contemporaries have witnessed there during 
 the last fifteen years ? Why should I pick up a 
 
81 
 
 stone in the quarry when the Church is built '( 
 The monument of God is standing, every power 
 has touched it, every science has scrutinized it, 
 every blasphemy has cursed it ; examine it well, 
 it is there before you. Between earth and 
 heaven, as says the Comte de Maistre, it has been 
 suspended these eighteen centuries ; if you do 
 not see it what would you see ? In a celebrated 
 parable Jesus Christ speaks of a certain rich man 
 who said to Abraham : Send some one from the 
 dead to my brethren. And Abraham answers: 
 " If they hear not Moses and the prophets, 
 neither will they believe, though one rose from 
 the dead." ' The Church is Moses, the Church is 
 all the prophets, the Church is the living mira- 
 cle : he who sees not the living, how should he 
 see the dead ? 
 
 1 St. Luke xvi. 81. 
 
 4* 
 
THE FOUNDATION OF THE REIGN OF JESUS 
 CHRIST. 
 
 My Lord — Gentlemen, 
 
 We have seen that in his public as well as in 
 his inner life, Jesus Christ lived as God. But to 
 live is only the first act of life, the second act of 
 life is that of outliving ourselves. For all life 
 has an object, and it is the accomplishment of 
 that object which judges the life. Consequently, 
 it is not enough for me to have proved to you 
 even with the highest evidence that the inner 
 life of Jesus Christ, and his public life, possessed 
 a divine character; for if that life has not at- 
 tained its object, if it has left no traces, whatever 
 else we may think of it, it has been vain. It is 
 needful then that Jesus Christ, alter having 
 lived as God, should have perpetuated himself 
 as God ; if he has not done this, all the conclu- 
 sion we should be able to draw from that dis- 
 proportion between his life and the effects of his 
 life, would be that he was the most magnificent 
 and the most inexplicable nothing that the 
 
83 
 
 world has ever seen. But what had Jesus Christ 
 to do in order to pepetuate himself as God ? He 
 had to fulfil the object of his life, such as he had 
 publicly announced and represented it, which 
 was to found here below the kingdom of God. 
 " After John was put in prison," says the evan- 
 gelist St. Mark, " Jesus came into Galilee, preach- 
 ing the gospel of the kingdom of God, and say- 
 ing : The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of 
 God is at hand : repent ye and believe the gos- 
 pel." ' And, sending forth his disciples to take 
 their part in the apostolate, he thus set forth 
 their mission : " Into whatsoever city ye enter, 
 and they receive you, eat such things as are set 
 before you, and heal the sick that are therein, 
 and say to them : The kingdom of God is come 
 nigh unto you. But into whatsoever city ye 
 shall enter, and they receive you not, go your 
 ways into the streets of the same, and say : Even 
 the very dust of your city which cleaveth to us do 
 we wipe off against you; yet know this, that the 
 kingdom of God is come nigh unto you." ! And 
 what was this kingdom of God preached by 
 Jesus Christ, as being the object of his coming 
 upon earth ? It was himself, inasmuch as that he 
 
 1 St. Mark i. 14, 15. a St. Luke x. 8-11. 
 
84 
 
 was to be recognized as God, loved as God, 
 adored as God, the founder and chief of an 
 universal society, of which his divinity was to be 
 the corner-stone through faith, love and adora- 
 tion. I ask you, gentlemen, is this work accom- 
 plished ? Has Jesus Christ, living and dead, 
 .bunded here below a kingdom of which he is the 
 God ? Has he founded the kingdom of souls ? 
 Is he amongst us the one and only king of souls ? 
 I no longer need to demonstrate this ; during ten 
 years I have shown its marvels to you ; and had 
 I not done so, this spiritual kingdom is before 
 your eyes, many among you are its members and 
 its subjects, it is a thing that speaks of itself and 
 is above all demonstration. Yes, there exists in 
 the world — in this world of mire and change — 
 a kingdom of souls wherein God is worshipped 
 in spirit and in truth, where men wrestle with 
 flesh and blood and pride ; where nothing re- 
 sembles what is elsewhere to be found, and 
 of which Jesus Christ is the author, the chief, 
 the king, the God. And as the angel of the 
 Apocalypse, on beholding the last triumph of 
 that dominion, proclaimed its glory beforehand 
 by that unparalleled expression uttered be- 
 fore astonished worlds: Factum est — "It is 
 
SO 
 
 done ! " ' so, henceforth, as a disciple of Jesus 
 Christ, a son of this kingdom, an adorer of the 
 king of souls, I say also to you : Factum est — It 
 is done ! 
 
 This fact is then no longer in question between 
 us ; it is proved, it is palpable, it is here before 
 us, and I may thus conclude : '' After having 
 lived as God, Jesus Christ has perpetuated him- 
 self as God." But it may not be unprofitable to 
 show you how greatly this work surpasses all 
 created power ; and I will endeavor to do this 
 by exposing to you the double difficulty which 
 Jesus Christ had to overcome. I will call one of 
 these the inner difficulty, and the other the pub- 
 lic difficulty ; their explanation will occupy the 
 hour which God now permits me to devote to 
 you. 
 
 The first condition of the kingdom of souls 
 ,and of its establishment was that of obtaining 
 faith in its founder, that is to say, that Jesus 
 Christ should become for an innumerable multi- 
 tude of men the rule of all their thoughts, and 
 that, renouncing themselves in regard to their 
 most necessary and most profound attribute — 
 which is their own judgment — they should 
 
 1 Apocalypse xi. 15. 
 
86 
 
 accept that of Jesus Christ as their own, even to 
 the point of being able to say with St. Paul : " I 
 live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. " ' Not, 
 gentlemen, that Jesus Christ required from us 
 the sacrifice of our reason iu order to establish 
 his reign by faith, for he is himself reason, and it 
 is he who gives us ours by a reflection of his 
 own, as it is expressly written in the Gospel of 
 St. John. But he had to require from us the 
 sacrifice of our own judgment, which is a very 
 different thing from the sacrifice of our reason. 
 In fact, reason does not exist in us in its pure 
 state ; were it so, enlightened as we should be 
 by a single and an undivided light, we should 
 advance in the most perfect unanimity. Instead 
 of this, although participating in reason, one and 
 universal, without which we should not be intel- 
 ligent beings, we mix up with it weaknesses, 
 obscurities, habits, resolutions, numberless mys- 
 terious circumvallations which bar up its great 
 outlets, lessen its light, and make of our reason 
 that limited and personal thing which we call 
 private judgment. It is this judgment, the 
 result of our servitude and liberty, which divides 
 men in the house of their common mother, and 
 
 1 Gal. ii. 30 
 
87 
 
 hinders them from founding here below, by 
 themselves, the holy republic of truth. We 
 cleave, in fact, to our own judgment in a two- 
 fold manner; because it is based upon reason, 
 and nothing is more just than to hold to reason ; 
 and we cleave to it still more, perhaps, by that 
 individuality which distinguishes us, and which 
 is made up of the innumerable impressions 
 which the ebb and flow of the intelligence have 
 deposited in us from the day when we first exer- 
 cised that admirable faculty of seeing, hearing, 
 judging, reasoning and feeling. Now, by the 
 faith in Jesus Christ, necessary to the constitu- 
 tion of the kingdom of souls, we must abdicate 
 that personal judgment which is so natural and 
 so dear to us ; we must found our reason in the 
 superior reason of Christ, we must break in 
 pieces the personal mould — more or less false 
 and narrow— which makes us what we are, and 
 enter into the wide and deep mould whence the 
 gospel has come, and which is the very mind of 
 Jesus Christ. 
 
 This sacrifice, gentlemen, is infinitely painful 
 co us, because, in order to tear us from ourselves, 
 it touches the root of our spiritual being. It is 
 still more painful under another head. Not only 
 
88 
 
 do we cleave to ourselves as nature and liberty 
 have made us, but we strive also to impose our- 
 selves upon others, to become their models, their 
 masters, and to create a kingdom of minds in 
 order to govern them. In whatever degree mail 
 may have received from heaven an elevated 
 mind, this is his propensity ; in the mental order, 
 as in all the orders of action, the will of man is 
 to reign. If he be favored by what is called 
 birth, or fortune, or power, his will is to be 
 supreme in them ; in fine, if he be gifted in the 
 intellectual order, he thirsts to govern minds. 
 This last royalty is the most courted of all, and 
 its most absolute sovereigns are not satisfied if 
 they do not bring all minds into subjection to 
 their own. When therefore Jesus Christ requires 
 from us the sacrifice of our judgment to his 
 supreme reason, he requires from us the abdica- 
 tion of the royalty which we have most at heart, 
 he enters into a conspiracy, the object of which 
 is to humble us before the most rightful throne 
 to which we could aspire. For what sovereignty 
 is more lawful than the sovereignty of the mind 
 — that gift which does not come to us from 
 chance, or election, or the efforts of others, but 
 from our own selves, from what is sown in us by 
 
89 
 
 nature and cultivated by us ? And in proportion 
 as we possess this, whether by science or philos- 
 ophy, so are we the more incensed against that 
 usurper called Christ, who pretends to nothing 
 less than to set up his mind in the place of our 
 own, than to cause us to think his thoughts and 
 speak his words. This, gentlemen, is the secret 
 of that aversion which so many learned men and 
 philosophers feel towards Jesus Christ ; they are 
 men who will not submit to be dethroned ; and, 
 naturally, they are in the right. 
 
 Nevertheless it has been necessary that, for 
 eighteen centuries, all of us, whoever we may be, 
 who are the children of Christ, should consent to 
 be dethroned, to become little, to be taught, not 
 only during our childhood, but throughout our 
 lives ; and, laden with years and honors, having 
 governed men otherwise than by the mind, in 
 our last moments, when about to appear before 
 God, we have again been required to abdicate 
 that reign of the judgment, so dear to pride, in 
 order to repose in Jesus Christ as little children, 
 and charge him to bear us in his blessed hands 
 to the throne of that pure and eternal reason, 
 who is God his Father. 
 
 None other upon earth, gentlemen, none other, 
 
90 
 
 has obtained that supreme dictatorship of the 
 understanding. Tyrants have oppressed human 
 thought by hindering its manifestation, they 
 have never governed it ; it eludes all the devices 
 of the most subtle rule. Sages have formed 
 schools, but ephemeral schools, whose laws have 
 been disowned even by their disciples. Should 
 we wonder thereat ? The disciple of the sage is 
 a man like himself ; he idolizes the idea of the 
 master until the day comes when his own idea, 
 ripe for an act of legitimate ingratitude, enables 
 him to attain to the honors of teaching, and 
 mark his place in the history of the unstable 
 dynasties of human knowledge. The religious 
 sects, although standing upon more solid ground, 
 have, however, met with no better success. 
 Heresy leaves us our own judgment, Protestant- 
 ism leaves us our own judgment ; all these doc- 
 trines, so far from enchaining faith, have had for 
 object its emancipation. Even Mahometanism, 
 like idolatry beforehand, was unable to consti- 
 tute a doctrinal authority, and consequently it 
 leaves its followers to the chance of their per- 
 sonal direction. All, save Christ, either leave to 
 us or restore to us our judgment, and here lies 
 the eternal charm of error. What do we now 
 
91 
 
 hear around us? What does the present age 
 uncertain of its course, and almost alike inca 
 pable of boldness in evil and in good, demand 
 of Christ with supplication ? Is it not to slacken 
 the bonds of his rule, to retrench certain articles 
 of the ancient Christian constitution, to revise 
 the primitive pact of the Gospel, to sign, in fine, 
 a compromise between time and eternity \ But 
 Christ smiles at those frail desires which do not 
 spring from entire obedience to his adorable 
 reason ; between him and ourselves, nothing can 
 exist but himself or ourselves, the abdication of 
 our own judgment, or the reign of our own judg- 
 ment : between these we have to choose. 
 
 It is not even enough for Jesus Christ to set 
 up his judgment in place of our own ; as king of 
 our minds, he is as yet only at the beginning of 
 his ambition ; he requires more than our minds, 
 he requires our hearts, he requires affection. 
 And what affection, great God ? A love which 
 is the fulness of human love, and before which 
 all history of love is as nothing. And that you 
 may judge of what a prodigy this is, let us 
 examine closely the difficulty which we ourselves 
 find in exciting love during our lives. 
 
 Hardly has the flower of sentiment germina- 
 
92 
 
 ted within us before we seek in the companions 
 of our youth sympathies which seize upon our 
 hearts, and draw them forth from their dear and 
 lonely solitude. Thence, in the history of all 
 generous lives, come those youthful times, those 
 early remembrances which none other will ever 
 efface, and which, even in extreme old age, leave 
 in our souls a perfume of the past. Yet, not- 
 withstanding the strength of these young ties, 
 the simple course of time suspends their pro- 
 gress : our eyes, in growing stronger, become less 
 sensible to the beauties of our age, something no 
 longer of childhood delivers us from that first 
 charm which perhaps none will ever equal, but 
 which no longer suffices for us. Affection cools 
 into grave and virile confidence, and our soul, 
 having mounted a step upon the cycle of life, 
 needs a new attraction, which, in filling it, brings 
 it into subjection. Shall I pronounce its name ? 
 And why not? There are two things before 
 which, by the help of God, I will never shrink, 
 namely, duty and necessity. It is needful in my 
 discourse that I should pronounce the name, too 
 much profaned, of the second sentiment of man ; 
 I name it then, and I say, that man rising from 
 youth to manhood, needs an attraction capable 
 
93 
 
 at the same time of satisfying his youth and his 
 strength, his need of renovation and of future. 
 God has prepared for him love; which, if it be 
 true, that is to say pure, should complete the 
 education of his life and render him worthy of 
 having a posterity. But, O weakness of our 
 nature ! the cares of manhood soon furrow* our 
 brow, and its wrinkles stamp upon it a worthy 
 testimony to thought ; what more do we need ? 
 Henceforth, incapable of obtaining the inter- 
 change of an infatuation already appeased for 
 us, and which no longer possesses illusions 
 enough for its own nourishment, we rest in an 
 attachment more calm, more serene, still possess- 
 ing its charm, but which no longer merits to be 
 compared to the ardor of that passion w r hich I 
 have just called by its proper name. 
 
 All the resources of the soul are not, however, 
 yet exhausted ; as the offspring of eternal love, 
 the genius of its source inspires it even unto the 
 end. With the first shadow of age, the senti- 
 ment of paternity descends into our heart, and 
 takes possession of the void left there by its 
 former affections. It is not a state of decadency 
 — beware of thinking so ; after the regard of 
 God upon the world, nothing is more beautiful 
 
94 
 
 than the regard of the aged upon the young, so 
 pure is it, so tender, so disinterested, and it 
 marks in our life the very point of perfection 
 and of the highest likeness to God. The body 
 declines with age, the mind perhaps also, but not 
 the soul whereby we love. Paternity is as supe- 
 rior to love as love itself is superior to affection. 
 Paternity is the crown of life. It would be full 
 and stainless love, if from the child to the father 
 there were the same equal return as from friend 
 to friend, from the wife to the husband. But it 
 is not so. When we were children we were 
 loved more than we loved, and, having grown 
 old, we also love more than we are loved. We 
 must not complain of it. Your children take 
 the very road upon which you have passed 
 before them, the road of affection, the road of 
 love — eager courses which do not permit them 
 to reward that gray-haired passion which we call 
 paternity. It is the honor of man to find again 
 in his children the ingratitude which he showed 
 to his fathers, and thus to end, like God, by a 
 disinterested sentiment. 
 
 But it is nevertheless true that, although pur- 
 suing love all our lives, we never obtain it save 
 in an imperfect manner, and which wounds our 
 
95 
 
 hearts. And even had we obtained it during 
 life, what would remain of it to us after death ? 
 I know that fond prayers may follow us beyond 
 this world, that our names may still be pro- 
 nounced in pious remembrance ; but soon heaven 
 and earth will have advanced another step ; 
 then comes oblivion, silence dwells upon us, the 
 ethereal breeze of love passes over our tomb no 
 more. It is gone, it is gone forever; and such is 
 the history of man in regard to love. 
 
 I am wrong, gentlemen ; there is a man whose 
 tomb is guarded by love, there is a man whose 
 sepulchre is not only glorious, as a prophet de- 
 clared, but whose sepulchre is loved. There is a 
 man whose ashes, after eighteen centuries, have 
 not grown cold ; who daily lives again in the 
 thoughts of an innumerable multitude of men; 
 who is visited in his cradle by shepherds and by 
 kings, who vie with each other in bringing to 
 him gold and frankincense and myrrh. There is 
 a man whose steps are unweariedly retrodden by 
 a large portion of mankind, and who, although 
 no longer present, is followed by that throng in 
 all the scenes of his bygone pilgrimage, upon 
 the knees of his mother, by the borders of the 
 lakes, to the tops of the mountains, in the by- 
 
96 
 
 ways of the valleys, under the shade of the 
 olive-trees, in the still solitude of the deserts. 
 There is a man, dead and buried, whose sleep 
 and whose awaking have ever eager watchers, 
 whose every word still vibrates and produces 
 more than love, produces virtues fructifying in 
 love. There is a man, who eighteen centuries 
 ago was nailed to the gibbet, and whom millions 
 of adorers daily detach from this throne of his 
 suffering, and kneeling before him, prostrating 
 themselves as low as they can without shame, 
 there, upon the earth, they kiss his bleeding feet 
 with unspeakable ardor. There is a man who 
 was scourged, killed, crucified, whom an ineffa- 
 ble passion raises from death and infamy, and 
 exalts to the glory of love unfailing which finds 
 in him peace, honor, joy, and even ecstacy. 
 There is a man pursued in his sufferings and in 
 his tomb by undying hatred, and who, demand- 
 ing apostles and martyrs from all posterity, finds 
 apostles and martyrs in all generations. There 
 is a man, in fine, and one only, who has founded 
 his love upon earth, and that man is thyself, O 
 Jesus ! who hast been pleased to baptize me, to 
 anoint me, to consecrate me in thy love, and 
 whose name alone now opens my very heart, and 
 
97 
 
 draws from it those accents which overpower me 
 and raise me above myself. 
 
 But among great men who are loved ? Among 
 warriors ? Is it Alexander ? Caesar ? Charle 
 magne ? Among sages ? Aristotle ? or Plato ? 
 Who is loved among great men ? Who ? Name 
 me even one ; name me a single man who has 
 died and left love upon his tomb. Mahomet is 
 venerated by Mussulmans ; he is not loved. No 
 feeling of love has ever touched the heart of a 
 Mussulman repeating his maxim : " God is God, 
 and Mahomet is his prophet." One man alone 
 has gathered from all ages a love which never 
 fails ; Jesus Christ is the sovereign lord of hearts 
 as he is of minds, and by a grace confirmatory of 
 that which belongs only to him, he has given to 
 his saints also the privilege of producing in men 
 a pious and faithful remembrance. 
 
 Yet even this is not all ; the kingdom of souls 
 is not yet established. Jesus Christ, being God, 
 should not be satisfied with steadfast faith and 
 immortal love, he must exact adoration. Adora- 
 tion is the annihilation of one's self before a 
 superior being, and this sentiment, gentlemen, is 
 not a stranger to us. It lies, like all the others, 
 in the very depth of our nature, and plays a 
 5 
 
98 
 
 more important part there than you are perhaps 
 aware of. Let us not disguise this truth from 
 ourselves; all of us, more or less, desire to be 
 adored. It is this innate thirst for adoration 
 which has produced every tyranny. You some- 
 times wonder that a prince should weave to- 
 gether numberless intrigues in order to emanci- 
 pate himself from human and divine laws ; that 
 he should add violence to cunning, shed streams 
 of blood and march onward to the execration of 
 mankind ; you ask yourselves why he does this 
 Ah ! gentlemen, for the very natural object of 
 being adored, of seeing every thought subject to 
 his own, every will in conformity to his Avill, 
 every right, every duty, emanating from him, and 
 even the bodies of men bent like slaves before 
 his mortal body. Such is the depth of our heart, 
 as was Satan's. But by a counterpoise due to 
 that frightful malady of pride, we can only 
 desire adoration for ourselves by abhorring the 
 adoration of others. Thence springs the execra- 
 tion that follows despotism. Mankind, abased 
 by a power despising all law, concentrates its 
 secret indignation within itself, awaits the inev- 
 itable day of the despot's weakness, and, when 
 that day comes, it turns upon and tramples 
 
99 
 
 under foot the vile creature who had disdained 
 it even to demanding incense from it. A great 
 orator once said to a celebrated tribune : " Thei'e 
 is but one step from the Capitol to the Tarpeian 
 rock."' I shall say with as much truth, although 
 in less grand expression : There is but one step 
 from the altar to the common sewer. Whoso- 
 ever has been adored will sooner or later be 
 hurled by the hand of the people from the lofty 
 summit of divine majesty usurped, to the execra- 
 tion of eternal opprobrium. Such do we find 
 history — that power charged with the promulga- 
 tion of the judgments of Grod upon the pride of 
 man. 
 
 In spite of history, however, Jesus Christ is 
 adored. A man, mortal and dead, he has ob- 
 tained adoration which still endures, and of 
 which the world offers no other example. What 
 emperor has held his temples and his statues* 
 What has become of all that population of gods 
 created by adulation ? Their dust even no 
 longer exists, and the surviving remembrance of 
 them serves but to excite our wonder at the 
 extravagance of men and the justice of God. 
 Jesus Christ alone remains standing upon his 
 altars, not in a corner of the world, but over the 
 
100 
 
 whole earth, and among nations celebrated by 
 the cultivation of the mind. The greatest mon 
 uments of art shelter his sacred images, the 
 most magnificent ceremonies assemble the people 
 under the influence of his name ; poetry, music, 
 painting, sculpture, exhaust their resources to pro- 
 claim his glory and to offer him incense worthy 
 of the adoration which ages have consecrated 
 to him. And yet, upon what throne do they 
 adore him ? Upon a cross ! Upon a cross ? They 
 adore him under the mean appearances of bread 
 and wine ! Here, thought becomes altogether 
 confounded. It would seem that this man has 
 taken delight in abusing his strange power, and 
 in insulting mankind by prostrating them in 
 wonder before the most vain shadows. Having 
 by his crucifixion descended lower than death, 
 he made even of ignominy the throne of his 
 divinity ; and, not satisfied with this triumph, he 
 willed that we should acknowledge his supreme 
 essence and his eternal life by an adoration 
 which is a startling contradiction to our senses ! 
 Can such success in such daring be in any way 
 understood ? 
 
 It is true many have endeavored to overthrow 
 his altars ; but their powerlessness has but 
 
101 
 
 served to confirm his glory. At each outrage 
 he has seemed to grow greater ; genius has pro- 
 tected him against genius, science against sci- 
 ence, empire against empire ; whatever arms 
 have been uplifted against him he has made his 
 own; and, when apparently vanquished, the 
 world has still beheld him calm, serene, master, 
 adored ! 
 
 Thus has he founded the kingdom of souls by 
 a faith which costs us the sacrifice of our own 
 judgment, by a love which exceeds all love, by 
 an adoration which we have given to him alone ; 
 a triple mystery of a force which reveals his 
 divinity to us, and which will yet more clearly 
 reveal it when we shall have taken account of 
 the public difficulty that stood in the way of 
 the establishment of this supernatural kingdom. 
 
 The place was filled, gentlemen, when Jesus 
 Christ came into the world ; the place was filled 
 because it is never void. Even had he pretended 
 to establish between himself and us secret rela- 
 tions only, a kind of obscure worship, this de- 
 sign would sooner or later have encountered 
 fears and jealousies, manifested by public oppo- 
 sition. But Jesus Christ was far from desiring 
 to hide his reign; he had said: "That which 
 
102 
 
 you hear in the ear, preach ye upon the house> 
 tops,'" and he himself, the enemy of all myste- 
 rious initiation, had constantly spoken and acted 
 before the eyes of the multitude and the authori- 
 ties. He willed a visible reign, a social consti- 
 tution of his doctrine, a recognized priesthood, 
 temples, laws, rights ; and consequently it was 
 inevitable that he should find in his way the 
 religious and political establishment which pre- 
 ceded him. That establishment had two names : 
 it was called idolatry, and the Roman empire. 
 Idolatry was the worship that assembled the 
 universe under one and the same religious form ; 
 the Roman empire was the power that governed 
 all known mankind, or nearly so. The one and 
 the other were incompatible with the establish- 
 ment of the reign of Jesus Christ, and that reign 
 could only begin by abolishing idolatry as a false 
 religion, and by modifying the Roman empire so 
 as to fit it for the laws promulgated by the 
 Gospel. 
 
 You have, perhaps, hitherto considered idola- 
 try as a religious organization easy to over- 
 throw ; you have greatly deceived yourselves. 
 Of all the forms of worship that have taken 
 
 » St. Matt. x. 27. 
 
103 
 
 possession of man, none, save Christianity, has 
 possessed more extent and solidity than idolatry. 
 This is because it fully satisfied the three great 
 passions of man. What are these three pas- 
 sions? The first, and perhaps it will surprise 
 you, the first is the religious passion, the want 
 of intercourse with God. Yes, gentlemen, the 
 religious passion precedes all others, even the 
 passion of sensuality. For sensuality touches only 
 the senses which are fragile, which soon become 
 exhausted, which tire of themselves ; whilst the 
 religious want, a sort of divine hunger, has its 
 source in the most profound depths of our being, 
 and gathers nourishment there from all those 
 miseries which excite in us a continuous distaste 
 for the present life. Even pride comes but after 
 it; however active it maj' be, it is subject here 
 below to too many humiliations not to second 
 and bear before itself in our soul a better and a 
 gentler sentiment, that which draws us near to 
 God, and causes us to seek our own dignity in 
 his greatness. Religion is the first and oldest 
 friend of man ; even when he wounds it, he still 
 respects and cultivates secret intimacies with it. 
 Let not the state of our country, gentlemen, 
 deceive us on this point ; do not think because 
 
104 
 
 there are some millions of men around us who 
 are besotted in practical atheism, that this is the 
 natural condition of the human race. It is the 
 result of extraordinary circumstances, and not- 
 withstanding the irreligion of some of her chil- 
 dren, this same France has never, for a single 
 day, ceased to bear in her glorious womb a mul- 
 titude of souls who serve God ardently, and 
 honor their faith by works known throughout 
 the world. 
 
 Now, idolatry, in spite of its slight doctrinal 
 character, gave satisfaction to the religious want ; 
 it had temples, altars, a priesthood, sacrifices, 
 prayers, public and pompous ceremonies, a very 
 great station in the world, and the shreds of its 
 mythology still contained sufficient remembrance 
 of God to keep the soul from fasting and with- 
 out food. 
 
 But it must not be forgotten that idolatry in 
 giving satisfaction to the elevated inclinations 
 of our nature did not disdain the most abject 
 and, abundantly dispensed sacred nourishment to 
 them. A most profound and subtle art had 
 blended together God and matter, religion and 
 sensuality, causing grave thoughts and shameful 
 solicitations to descend from the same altars. 
 
105 
 
 The idolator had all in his gods; whatever he 
 willed, heaven obeyed his desires. What a mas- 
 terpiece, had heaven in its turn been obeyed ! 
 In addition, the third passion of man, the pride 
 of domination, found also in this worship, which 
 was erudite by its very degradation, an ample 
 satisfaction. Idolatry was not distinct from the 
 empire ; the prince, the senate, or the people, 
 conferred the sacerdotal magistracy, named the 
 pontiffs, regulated the ceremonies, took pleasure 
 in covering the robe of their consuls with the 
 mantle of their gods. Religion was country 
 also. The fasces and the altars were seen ad- 
 vancing together before the republic ; the fasces, 
 the symbol of its justice and power ; the altars, 
 the symbol of that mysterious alliance which 
 united the destinies of the state to the very des- 
 tinies of the gods. 
 
 No, you will never adequately represent to 
 yourselves the force of that institution. Ah ! 
 if a pagan ceremony were to rise up again before 
 you ; if you could see all Rome mounting to the 
 temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, that concourse of 
 people, those legions, that senate, all those patri- 
 otic memorials mounting with them, and all 
 together bearing to the gods the new victory of 
 5* 
 
106 
 
 Rome ! If you could hear the silence and the 
 sound of unanimity, that hum of all the passions 
 convinced of their rights and satisfied with their 
 triumph, pride as well as sensuality, sensuality 
 as well as religion, the elevated and the abject, 
 heaven and earth, all at once, all in a single day 
 and in a single action : if you had seen and 
 heard this, you, perhaps, yielding to that total 
 intoxication of the human faculties, would for a 
 moment have bowed the head, and adored in 
 the hands of Rome the antique gods of the 
 world ! 
 
 However, they were not to be adored, they 
 were to be destroyed, such was the order of Jesus 
 Christ. They were to be destroyed throughout 
 the world, since the whole world was subject to 
 idolatry. And what was to replace it ? A man, 
 humbled even to the punishment of slaves; a 
 man, come from a country upon which the 
 Romans showered floods of ridicule with oppres- 
 sion ; a Jew, and a Jew crucified ! This is what 
 the fishermen of Judea brought to Rome, to the 
 Capitol, to replace the statue of Jupiter Capi- 
 tolinus ! Judge, then ! Here was ignominy 
 instead of greatness, penance and mortification 
 instead of sensuality. Penance and mortifica- 
 
107 
 
 tion; what words! After eighteen centuries of 
 naturalization, I hardly dare to pronounce them 
 before you, without disguising them to your ears, 
 which have nevertheless been nourished by the 
 language of the Gospel ; and it was necessary to 
 reveal these to the Romans ! It was necessary 
 to say to them : We bring you a religion all pure 
 and holy, founded upon the immolation of the 
 body by chastity, and not only by chastity, which 
 is only a simple retrenchment, but by the direct 
 hatred of the senses. We come, with the scourge 
 in our hands, to teach you to treat your body as 
 a slave, because it is the slave of the most vile 
 inclinations, and because you can only deliver 
 your souls from it by keeping it in the respect 
 and chastisement of obedience. It was necessary 
 to say these things to a people puffed up by 
 seven centuries of arrogance and domination, 
 plunged in sensuality as well as in pride, and 
 accustomed to find in their gods, which were to 
 be destroyed, the justification of their pompous 
 ignominy. But Jesus Christ had so ordered it ; 
 all that was said, believed, adopted, and the 
 reign of idols fell before the reign of the cross, 
 in spite of the Roman empire. 
 
 The Roman empire and idolatry were as one ; 
 
108 
 
 but it was not less inimical to the Christian es 
 tablishment on another hand. That empire had 
 been founded slowly by the prudence and sta- 
 bility of its councils, the courage of its armies, 
 the abnegation of its chiefs, until, having become 
 master of the world, it bent under the very 
 weight of its greatness, and lost in corruption 
 all the public liberties which had formed its 
 glory and its welfare. Nothing of this remained 
 when Jesus Christ came into the world, save a 
 few already dishonored symbols, and when he 
 died the empire had passed from Augustus to 
 Tiberius by a decadency which foreshadowed 
 Nero. The orators' tribune was mute, the people 
 consoled themselves for the loss of the Forum 
 with a crust of bread thrown to them; the sen- 
 ate, mangled and decimated in its last illustrious 
 men, opposed to despotism only the promptitude 
 of an obedience which sometimes even wearied 
 the insolent caprice of the master. A single 
 man was all, and that man could hurl with im- 
 punity any defiance to servitude. One day, it 
 pleased him to assemble the senate, that is to 
 say, the relics of all the great Roman families, 
 the descendants of those conscript fathers who 
 had borne war and liberty so proudly within 
 
109 
 
 the folds of their togse; it pleased him to call 
 them together to deliberate about the composi- 
 tion of a fish sauce ! I thank you, gentlemen, 
 for refraining from laughter ; this is the greatest 
 insult which has ever been offered to human 
 nature in the person of the greatest political 
 body it has ever produced. God permitted it, 
 gentlemen, in order to teach us how low man 
 falls by the corruption of riches and apostacy 
 from liberty, that guardian of all rights and of 
 all duties. Such, then, was Rome when Jesus 
 Christ sent his disciples to convert her to him- 
 self, and such was with Rome the whole universe. 
 Mistress of the world, after having enchained 
 nations to her greatness she held them enchained 
 to her humiliations ; and for the first time in the 
 history of the human race liberty had no longer 
 an asylum upon earth. 
 
 I say, for the first time. Until then, by a 
 providence worthy of all our thanksgivings, God 
 had so provided that there was always some free 
 land where virtue and truth could defend them- 
 selves against the designs of the stronger. 
 Whilst the east was fertile in tyrannies, Egypt 
 possessed institutions worthy of esteem, and 
 judged her kings after their death ; Greece de- 
 
no 
 
 fended her tribune against the ambition of the 
 kings of Persia ; Rome protected her citizens by 
 laws which surrounded their lives with many 
 sacred ramparts. If from ancient we pass to 
 modern times, we shall find there the same care 
 of Providence in not permitting despotism to 
 reign everywhere at the same time. The pres- 
 ent world is divided into three zones, the zone of 
 unlimited tyranny which has nothing to envy 
 from the most cruel histories of the past, an 
 intermediate zone where some action is still per- 
 mitted to thought and to faith ; and, in fine, that 
 generous western zone of which we form a part, 
 those great kingdoms of France, England, the 
 United States of America, Spain, where rights 
 and duties have guarantees ; where men speak, 
 write, discuss ; where, whilst power oppresses 
 the majesty of God and man in distant regions, 
 we defend it before the world, and we defend it 
 without glory, because nothing in that ofiice 
 menaces either our heads or our honor ! 
 
 A unique moment arrived when, with a map 
 of the world open before you, you would have 
 sought in vain for a mountain or a desert to 
 shelter the heart of Cato of Utica, and when 
 Cato of Utica thought it necessary to ask from 
 
Ill 
 
 death that liberty which no spot upon earth 
 could any longer give to him. At that unique 
 and terrible moment, Jesus Christ sent his apos- 
 tles to announce the Gospel to every creature, 
 and to found in their faith, love, and adoration, 
 the kingdom of souls and of truth. 
 
 Let us see what this kingdom was to the 
 Roman empire. 
 
 First, it was the liberty of the soul. Jesus 
 Christ claimed the soul; he claimed that it 
 should be free to know him, to love him, to 
 adore him, to pray to him, to unite with him. 
 He did not admit that any other than himself 
 had right over the soul, and above all the right 
 of hindering the soul from communicating with 
 him. Yet much more ; Jesus Christ claimed the 
 public union of souls in his service ; he knew 
 nothing of secrecy ; he demanded a patent and 
 social worship. The liberty of the soul im- 
 plied the right to found material and spiritual 
 churches, to assemble, to pray together, to hear 
 in common the Word of God, that substantial 
 food of the soul which is its daily bread, and 
 of which it can be deprived only by an act of 
 sacrilegious homicide. The liberty of the soul 
 implied the right of practising together all the 
 
112 
 
 ceremonies of public worship, of receiving the 
 sacraments of eternal life, of living together by 
 the Gospel and Jesus Christ. None upon earth 
 possessed any longer the government of sacred 
 things but the anointed of the Lord — the elect 
 souls — initiated into a larger faith and love, 
 tested by the successors of the apostles, sancti- 
 fied by ordination. All the rest, princes and 
 peoples, were excluded from the administration 
 of the body and blood of Jesus Christ, that di- 
 vine centre of the kingdom of souls, and which 
 it was not meet to deliver to dogs, according 
 to the forcible expression of the most gentle 
 Gospel. 
 
 But as the soul is the basis of man, by crea- 
 ting the liberty of the soul, Jesus Christ, at the 
 same time, created the liberty of man. The 
 Gospel, as the regulator of the rights and duties 
 of all, rose to the power of a universal charter, 
 which became the measure of all legitimate 
 authority, and which, in hallowing it, preserved 
 it from the excesses into which human power 
 had everywhere fallen. On this account, the 
 kingdom of souls was absolutely the very oppo- 
 site of the Roman empire, and it was impossible 
 to imagine a more complete antagonism. The 
 
113 
 
 Roman empire was universal servitude; the 
 kingdom of souls, universal liberty. Between 
 them it was a question of being or not being. 
 The struggle was inevitable ; it was to be a 
 deadly struggle. 
 
 Now, what force did the kingdom of souls 
 dispose of against that empire covered with 
 legions ? None. The Forum ? It was no more. 
 The senate ? It was no more. The people ? 
 They were no more. Eloquence ? It was no 
 more. Thought ? It was no more. Was it at 
 least permitted to the first Christians whom the 
 Gospel had raised up in the world to gather one 
 against a hundred thousand for the combat ? 
 No, that was not permitted to them. What 
 then was their strength ? The same that Jesus 
 Christ had before them. They had to confess 
 his name and then to die, to die to-day, to- 
 morrow, the day after, to die one after another, 
 that is to say, to vanquish servitude by the 
 peaceful exercise of the liberty of the soul ; to 
 vanquish force, not by force, but by virtue. It 
 had been said to them : If for three centuries 
 you can boldly say — "I believe in God the 
 Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, 
 and in Jesus Christ, his only Son our Lord, who 
 
114 
 
 was born of the Virgin Mary, was dead, and is 
 risen again ; " if for three centuries you can say 
 this openly, and die daily after having declared 
 it, in three centuries you shall be masters, that is 
 to say, free. 
 
 And this was done. 
 
 And this was done in spite of the fury of the 
 Koman empire converting the universe into a 
 headsman, and losing its terrified reason in the 
 emptiness of its cruelties. I will say no more of 
 the martyrs; they conquered, as the whole world 
 knows. And this kingdom of souls founded by 
 their blood, this kingdom of souls which was to 
 destroy idolatry, and which has destroyed it, 
 which was to overthrow the Roman empire, and 
 which has overthrown it in all that was false 
 and unjust in it ; where did this kingdom of 
 souls set up its capital ? In Rome ! The seat of 
 virtue was placed in the seat of power; the seat 
 of liberty in the seat of bondage ; in the seat of 
 shameful idols the seat of the cross of Jesus 
 Christ; in the seat whence the orders of Nero 
 issued to the world, the seat of the disarmed and 
 aged pastor, who, in the name of Jesus Christ, 
 whose vicar he is, spreads throughout the world 
 purity, peace, and blessing. O triumph of faith 
 
115 
 
 and love ! O spectacle which enraptures man 
 above himself by showing him what he can do 
 for good with the help of God ! My own eyes 
 have seen that land, the liberator of souls, that 
 soil formed of the ashes and blood of martyrs ; 
 and why should I not recur to remembrances 
 which will confirm my words in re-invigorating 
 my life ? 
 
 One day, then, my heart all trembling with 
 emotion, I entered by the Flaminian gate that 
 famous city which had conquered the world by 
 her arms and governed it by her laws. I hurried 
 to the Capitol ; but the temple of Jupiter Capi- 
 tolinus no longer crowned its heroic summit. I 
 descended to the Forum ; the orator's tribune 
 was broken down, and the voices of herdsmen 
 had succeeded to the voices of Cicero and Hor- 
 tensius. I mounted the steep paths of the 
 Palatine : the Caesars were gone, and they had 
 not even left a praetorian at the entry to ask the 
 name of the inquisitive stranger. Whilst I was 
 pondering those mighty ruins, through the azure 
 of the Italian sky, I perceived in the distance a 
 temple whose dome appeared to cover all the 
 present grandeurs of that city upon whose dust 
 I trod. I advanced towards it, and there, upon a 
 
116 
 
 vast and magnificent space, I found Europe as- 
 sembled in the persons of her ambassadors, her 
 poets, her artists, her pilgrims — a throng diverse 
 in origin, but united, it seemed, in common and 
 earnest expectation. I also waited, when in the 
 distance before me an old man advanced, borne 
 in a chair above the crowd, bareheaded and 
 holding in his two hands, under the form of 
 mysterious bread, that man of Judaea aforetime 
 crucified. Every head bent before him, tears 
 flowed in silent adoration, and upon no visage 
 did I see the protestation of doubt, or the 
 shadow of a feeling which was not, at least, 
 respectful. Whilst I also adored my Master and 
 my King, the immortal King of souls, sharing in 
 the triumph, without seeking to express it even 
 to myself, the obelisk of granite standing in our 
 midst sang for us all, silent and enraptured, the 
 hymn of God victorious : Christ us vincit, Cheis- 
 
 TUS EEGNAT, ChEISTUS IMPERAT, ChRISTUS AB OMNI 
 
 malo plebem suam libeeat ! And, lest an 
 enemy should have been found in that multi- 
 tude, it answered itself by another celebrated 
 hymn, which warned us to fly from the lion of 
 Judah if we would not adore him in his victory. 
 After many years, which have already whitened 
 
117 
 
 my brow, 1 repeat to you those threats and those 
 songs of joy; happy are you if you do not fly, 
 but if, drawing nearer, you repeat with us all, 
 children of Christ and members of his kingdom : 
 Christus vincit, Christds regnat, Christus im- 
 perat, Christus ab omni malo plebem suam 
 
 LIBEBAT ! 
 
THE PERPETUITY AND PROGRESS OF THE 
 REIGN OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 My Lord — Gentlemen, 
 
 According to his design and according to Ms 
 declaration, Jesus Christ established upon earth 
 the kingdom of God, the kingdom of souls ; he 
 established it, notwithstanding the difficulty of 
 reigning over men by faith, love, and adoration, 
 and notwithstanding the public difficulty which 
 the state of political and religious society then 
 presented to him. But, gentlemen, to enable us 
 to affirm that Jesus Christ has outlived himself 
 as God, is it enough that his work is stamped 
 with a character which can be only divine ? No ; 
 for although his success was prodigious, regard- 
 ing it at the point where we left it, namely, at 
 the accession of Constantine, yet it is the lot of 
 every power that makes its appearance here 
 below to have its struggle and its triumph — a 
 struggle and a triumph, I grant, not all of the 
 same measure, but which have, at least, this in 
 common, that they appear, contend, and reach a 
 
119 
 
 favorable moment, which will be called success. 
 What is more difficult and more necessary for the 
 confirmation of victory is to resist victory itself. 
 A celebrated diplomatist has said : " Time is the 
 great enemy." Has Jesus Christ then overcome 
 the great enemy ? After idolatry, after the Ro- 
 man empire, has he overcome that other power 
 which is but eternity disguised, the power of 
 time ? At the end of a more or less prosperous 
 career, has he not, like all the rest, felt that icy 
 hand, which sooner or later dishonors the great- 
 est events, and hurls the most stable dynasties 
 from their throne ? Is he not visibly struck by 
 that slowly advancing thunderbolt which spares 
 nothing ? Such is the question which now claims 
 our attention. In a word, I am about to lay be- 
 fore you the balance-sheet of Jesus Christ, and I 
 invite you to examine it. 
 
 Why is time the great enemy ? Because, gen- 
 tlemen, it is endowed with a double power, the 
 power of destroying and of building up. What 
 was it that overthrew those primitive empires of 
 Assyria and Chaldea ? It was time. What 
 overthrew that empire of Cyrus, vainly raised up 
 again by Alexander ? It was time. What over- 
 threw that empire, increased by the ruins of all 
 
120 
 
 the others, and which we should rather call the 
 world than an empire, the Roman world ? It 
 was time. "What overthrew all those republics 
 of the middle ages whose vestiges, surviving in 
 marbles and paintings, we so much admire? It 
 was time. And, on another hand, what has built 
 up those new kingdoms whose sons we are, the 
 kingdoms of the Franks, the Germans, the Anglo- 
 Saxons, and the rest ( It is the same hand, skil- 
 ful in creating after having destroyed, and which, 
 from the very dust where it has revelled with so 
 much pride, draws forth substance, order, and 
 solidity. Time destroys with one hand and 
 rebuilds with the other, enemy alike to both, 
 since the edifice it raises up does but sink deeper 
 the edifice it overthrows, for, with time, to found 
 is also to destroy. 
 
 Nevertheless, gentlemen, let us not halt at 
 those splendid images, which only reveal to us 
 the inimical power of time by outward appear- 
 ances. Let us endeavor to unveil its secret by 
 analysis, in order that, having learned whence 
 time derives its double power of destruction and 
 edification, we may consider whether Jesus Christ 
 has not been subject to the exercise of that for- 
 midable action, and why he alone has been able 
 
121 
 
 to escape from it, should we at length prove that 
 he has escaped from it. 
 
 The action of time results from five causes, the 
 first of which is novelty. Time is always young, 
 and yet it ages all things. Each of its steps 
 is the advance of dawn, but it leaves darkness 
 and night behind. Restless child of eternity, it 
 borrows unfading youth there, but has no power 
 to communicate it, save but for a moment, to the 
 things measured by its course. It passes, it 
 sheds life ; but that life of to-day soon becomes 
 that of yesterday, of the day before, of bygone 
 times, a remembrance, a relic of the past, and 
 yet time is not impoverished ; it is ever fertile 
 and young, causing the new to follow the old. 
 Now, the new possesses a charm which seduces 
 the mind as well as the senses, and which ena- 
 bles doctrines bearing its impress easily to pre- 
 vail against doctrines become superannuated by 
 the simple fact of their duration. Remark what 
 happens around us. As soon as a man is able to 
 give a new form to ideas, and appropriate them 
 to the course of time, he inevitably has disciples. 
 Why ? Because he has said something which 
 had not been said before, or had been forgotten. 
 We have the passion for novelty in ideas as in 
 6 
 
122 
 
 all the rest, and it is not difficult to understand 
 why it is so. Predestinated as we are to enjoy 
 the infinite, the infinite is our want, and we pur- 
 sue it everywhere. Now, novelty is the only 
 thing here below which gives us some sensation 
 of the infinite. As soon as we have considered 
 an object, we say : It is enough. Who will turn 
 the page ? Novelty turns it, and in turning it, 
 disguises its feebleness to our intelligence by a 
 false gleam of progress, which enchants us. 
 
 Above all others, gentlemen, Jesus Christ had 
 to fear this inclination of our souls, which arms 
 time with a power so dangerous to doctrinal ster- 
 ility. However merciful the Gospel may be, it 
 was not to bend to the inconstancy of our 
 mind ; " Heaven and earth shall pass away," said 
 Jesus Christ, " but my words shall not pass 
 away." ' It was to traverse all ages, losing daily 
 the force of its novelty without losing any of its 
 precept, or rather, like God, who, said Saint Au- 
 gustin, is beauty ever ancient and ever new, the 
 evangelic word was to infuse into its progres- 
 sive antiquity a youthfulness which should 
 charm the heart of all new generations. 
 
 This first advantage obtained over time, a 
 
 > St. Matt. xxiv. 35. 
 
123 
 
 second remained to be gained. The second 
 power of time is in experience, that is to say, 
 in the revelation that results from the applica- 
 tion of doctrines to the positive life of mankind. 
 Every doctrine is a body of laws, which is of 
 value only in so much as it is considered to con- 
 tain true relations of beings ; it is like the crea- 
 tion of a world. As long as that creation re- 
 mains in the mind in the state of pure concep- 
 tion, we may be deceived as to its real merits, 
 because it is difficult to judge a great assemblage 
 of ideas ; but it is no longer so when, entering 
 into the domain of reality, they are required to 
 found or to maintain a positive order; experi- 
 ence infallibly manifests -their weakness or their 
 falsity; for a false or powerless law is incapable 
 of establishing durable relations, and as a house 
 based upon false mathematical principles fa]ls to 
 the ground, so no order whatever could subsist 
 based upon ideas wanting the equilibrium of 
 truth. 
 
 Now, who had ever more reason to fear this 
 terrible test of experience than Jesus Christ ? 
 For, with the Gospel, he had not placed in the 
 world a society confined within the narrow 
 limits of a race and a country, but a universal 
 
124 
 
 society, wherein every soul, wheresoever born, 
 could claim the rights of citizenship ; and conse- 
 quently, if the Gospel were false, its ruin should 
 have been as great as the universe, and as rapid 
 as time, acting at once upon numberless places 
 and minds. 
 
 The third power of time is in corruption. 
 Everything, having reached a certain point of 
 prosperity, decays, because as soon as man is 
 master he wills to enjoy, and because the inevi- 
 table result of enjoyment is that decomposition 
 of the soul and body which we call corruption. 
 The history of all successes is the history of 
 Hannibal at Capua. Men grow listless and for- 
 getful, they think themselves secure, they become 
 intoxicated with success ; the slow poison of ease 
 relaxes all the springs of their activity ; and the 
 being who is nothing save by activity, falls little 
 by little into the shame of slumbering effemi- 
 nacy. Nimrod begins, Sardanapalus ends. It is 
 the high road of great fortunes ; labor and vir- 
 tue form them, enjoyments annihilate even their 
 last traces. Religion, even more than any other 
 empire, is subject to this great law, and above 
 all the Church, or the religion of Jesus Christ, 
 was firmly chained to it. For the blood of the 
 
125 
 
 cross had given her life; having sprung from the 
 crucifixion of a God, she could not fail, in the 
 days of her prosperity, to remember the cruel 
 humiliations of her cradle. And, on another 
 hand, the temptations which her triumph pre- 
 pared for her were far to surpass any tempta- 
 tions until then known. She was to see the 
 kings of the earth at her feet, to issue orders 
 from one end of the world to the other, to be- 
 hold ages bending before her teaching and her 
 action, to cover the earth with sumptuous mon- 
 uments, and see it become a tributary to all the 
 wants of unlimited power and glory; and under 
 the weight of such success, reaching even to 
 heaven, to preserve upon her brow, as in her 
 heart, the sign of penance and humility. Or, if 
 in one of the long days of her life she was about 
 to yield, and to feel the attack of corruption, 
 from that very corruption she was to resuscitate 
 her life, not another life — as we see in nature— 
 but her own life ; and, like the eagle of Scrip- 
 ture, recovering the charm of her youth, soar 
 aloft with outstretched wings, invigorated and 
 renewed by her very poverty and by the shed- 
 ding of her own blood. 
 
 The fourth power of time is chance, that is to 
 
126 
 
 say, certain conjunctures which do not blend with 
 anything that genius is able to combine and fore- 
 see, and which suddenly overthrow the most 
 ably concerted designs. History is full of these. 
 Human prudence makes shipwreck upon shoals 
 imperceptible to the keenest eye. It is the 
 grain of sand of which Pascal speaks, which 
 one morning threw Cromwell into disorder, and 
 destroyed plans destined to change the face of 
 Europe. 
 
 You sometimes wonder, perhaps, at a certain 
 equilibrium visible in the world, and which 
 keeps the strong from destroying the weak at 
 will. "Why have those great empires not yet 
 crushed the small neighboring states ? It is be- 
 cause those great empires have Cromwell's grain 
 of sand against them. At the very moment 
 when their combinations are ready to succeed 
 and bring about the destruction of all rights 
 upon earth, the obscure son of some peasant, in 
 the corner of a hut, sharpens his knife on a 
 broken millstone ; at the noise of war he dons 
 his cap, slips his knife into his girdle, and goes 
 out to see something of what is passing between 
 Providence and the kings of the earth. The 
 smoke of powder opens his eyes; the sight of 
 
127 
 
 blood elates him ; God makes him the instru- 
 ment of a brilliant action ; behold him a great 
 captain ; empires recede a step before him ; that 
 knife, that peasant, is chance. 
 
 Judge now how much of this Jesus Christ has 
 had to encounter in the course of a reign of 
 eighteen hundred years. Consult simply the 
 history of the papacy, and see what a slender 
 thread has held the destinies of that throne, 
 always surrounded by enemies, yet always en- 
 during. It has constantly had to contend against 
 the most skilful combinations ; but what is still 
 more terrible is that conspiracy of chance, that 
 enemy which might at any time have destroyed 
 it, and which, strange to say, has always re- 
 spected it. 
 
 The fifth power of time is war. No earthly 
 power can avoid combat ; it necessarily has ene- 
 mies, not only on account of its faults and abuses, 
 but by the simple fact of its existence. To exist 
 is to combat, because to exist is to take from the 
 common seat of life a part of the substance des- 
 tined for all; and if this be true of the most 
 feeble being, how much more so must it be of 
 an assemblage of beings raised to the state of 
 power! Therefore Jesus Christ declared "that 
 
128 
 
 he came not to send peace, but war," ' a terrible 
 war, and upon a scale so vast as to astound our 
 imagination. For it is the war of the spirit 
 against the flesh and of the flesh against the 
 spirit, that is to say, of the two elements which 
 constitute man, neither of which can ever com- 
 pletely vanquish the other. "When the body is 
 victorious the soul struggles against it, and when 
 the soul is the stronger the body watches for the 
 moment when its yoke may be broken. But this 
 internal struggle does not cease here, it neces- 
 sarily produces a war as general as it is deeply 
 seated. Souls unite with souls, and bodies with 
 bodies ; it is the union of bodies against the 
 union of souls which forms the great war of man- 
 kind. Jesus Christ at the head of one army, and 
 Satan at the head of the other; the army of the 
 passions, pride, sensuality, hatred, on one side ; 
 the army of the spirit, humility, chastity, obedi- 
 ence, mortification, charity, on the other. All 
 these are in action in the formidable regions of 
 the finite and the infinite, in the depths of God, 
 of the soul, and of the senses, amidst a thousand 
 secondary causes which add to the gloom and 
 the chances of the struggle ; and if Jesus Christ 
 
 > St. Matt. x. 84. 
 
129 
 
 be God, he must in the end be victorious, his 
 form remaining unchangeable, although continu- 
 ally insulted, upon the venerable summit of time 
 and things. 
 
 Has it been so, gentlemen ? Can we testify of 
 Jesus Christ that he has been more powerful 
 than novelty, than experience, than corruption, 
 than chance, than war, than all these causes 
 banded together against him during a course of 
 aighteen centuries \ Can we do this ? 
 
 Yes, gentlemen, I can do this ; I can even show 
 you three degrees in this triumph of Jesus Christ 
 over time. For, in the first place, he lives, his 
 work is before you ; although it has undergone 
 more or less of attack in that long pilgrimage 
 under the rebel hand of time, it is nevertheless 
 still before you. It remains surrounded by suffi- 
 cient glory to attract all eyes, and to be still the 
 object of veneration to which there is no rival, 
 as nothing is comparable to the hatred of the 
 enemies who have not accepted in its temporal 
 duration the proof of its origin in the very bosom 
 of eternity. But this is not all. Not only is 
 Jesus Christ living in his Church and his Church 
 in him, but, since the Christian era, no religious 
 establishment has been founded in the world of 
 6* 
 
130 
 
 which Jesus Christ has not been the basis and 
 the bond of union. 
 
 The first in the order of time is Islamism. 
 Now, the basis of Islamism, as Grotius long ago 
 remarked, is entirely biblical. It is Abraham, 
 Isaac, Jacob ; it is Moses, Mount Sinai, the Jew- 
 ish people in the most memorable events of its 
 history; it is Jesus Christ himself, come after the 
 prophets and greater than they. At each page 
 of the Koran, Mahomet inscribes a recital drawn 
 from Christian antiquities or makes some allu- 
 sion to them. Why is this? Why is it that, 
 aspiring to the honor of founding a religion, 
 Mahomet did not base it entirely upon himself? 
 Why, gentlemen ? Because he could not. Man 
 can no more build in the air in the order of 
 spirits than in the order of bodies; he must 
 however find a basis. Now, according to the 
 expression of Fontenelle, " the Christian religion 
 is the only religion which possesses proofs," and 
 wherever it has appeared with the authority of 
 its history, error must take its support and be 
 grafted into that mighty trunk which alone 
 throws out its roots in antiquity. Mahomet lived 
 in an age and in a land already impregnated with 
 the sap of Christianity ; he touched Abyssinia, a 
 
131 
 
 great seat of Christendom, Egypt, a metropoli- 
 tan church, Judaea, where all the great Christian 
 mysteries were accomplished ; the blood of his 
 people remounted with omnipotent celebrity to 
 the blood of Abraham ; he could only, in such 
 conditions, found a heresy, or, if you prefer it, 
 establish himself upon Jesus Christ by an infi- 
 delity which still rendered immense homage to 
 him. This is why Mussulmans have always per- 
 mitted Christians to live in their territory r and 
 adore Jesus Christ, not from toleration resulting 
 from fear, but from respect for the common tradi- 
 tions of the two religions and the formal recom- 
 mendations of the Koran. There has been a 
 struggle for supremacy between Mussulmans and 
 Christians; but there has been no persecution, 
 properly so called, of Christians by Mussulmans. 
 Ishmael reclaimed only his right of primogeni- 
 ture over Isaac. And this, gentlemen, explains 
 to you the strange spectacle which Constanti- 
 nople now presents to us, where, although the 
 penalty of death is decreed against any Christian 
 who should convert a Mussulman, Christians of 
 every communion have nevertheless full liberty 
 to exercise their worship, even publicly. 
 
 After Islamism came the Greek schism. Now 
 
132 
 
 the Greek schism is the whole Catholic Church 
 save two points — the supremacy of the sovereign 
 Pontiff and the procession of the Holy Ghost. 
 All the rest, dogmas, morals, sacraments, hie- 
 rarchy, customs, have been preserved by the de 
 scendants of Photius. They have rejected the 
 vicar of Jesus Christ, but they have not rejected 
 Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the object of their 
 faith, their love, and their adoration, the corner- 
 stone of their religious edifice. 
 
 It is the same, although in a minor degree, 
 with Protestantism. Protestantism has denied 
 the Church, but not Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ 
 remains the doctor and king of souls, and even 
 for a great number of Protestants he is still the 
 only Son of God, worthy as such of supreme 
 adoration. 
 
 No other religious establishment has been 
 raised up in the world since the Christian era. 
 Brahminism and Buddhism were anterior to 
 Jesus Christ ; and if some movement was visible 
 in the last of these at a nearer epoch, it was 
 owing to the intercourse between Christians and 
 the distant regions of India and Tartary. Thus, 
 in the mountains of Thibet, since our celebrated 
 embassies of the middle ages, a puerile imitation 
 
133 
 
 of the papacy has been witnessed. Jesus Christ 
 no sooner dawned upon the world than his light 
 caused the clouds of false religions to recede ; 
 many have entirely disappeared, and none has 
 been formed but upon his name and history. 
 He has become the trunk of error as well as of 
 truth, and whoever totally denies him opens an 
 abyss for himself where nothing but death will 
 ever fructify. His tomb is now the centre of the 
 religious world ; Mussulmans, Greeks, Protest- 
 ants, Catholics, guard it. All gathered together 
 from the four winds of heaven, as;ree to vener- 
 ate the inanimate stone upon which the mangled 
 body of Christ for three days and nights reposed. 
 A hundred battles have been fought around it ; 
 the destinies of the world have a score of times 
 changed their aspect there ; but defeat or victory 
 has ever borne to it the homage of nations, and 
 so many struggles have but served to glorify that 
 fragile tomb where all come to prostrate them- 
 selves. If Catholics alone had guarded it, it 
 would have been an ordinary protection, like all 
 the rest that is measured by the sword ; it was 
 more fitting to the designs of God that Jerusalem 
 "should be trodden under foot of nations," 1 as 
 
 1 Isaiah v 5. 
 
x34 
 
 the Gospel had foretold, and that the Holy 
 Sepulchre, held up by a thousand hands, should 
 appear amidst all the events as the indicative 
 sign that no religious establishment is thence- 
 forth possible save on condition of participating 
 in Christ by something at least of his blood, his 
 doctrine, and his memory. 
 
 Time, gentlemen, will bring you new proofs of 
 this. You will see the fading away of the mis- 
 erable vestiges of religions without foundation 
 as the civilization advances of which Jesus Christ 
 is the creator and the head. Fable cannot keep 
 ground against history, antiquity empty against 
 antiquity filled, the vague against the certain, 
 death against life. Jesus Christ pursues his 
 course even by the very unfaithfulness which 
 pride brings to him ; he makes use of schisms 
 and heresies as of tainted water which still con- 
 tains him for a multitude of souls armed against 
 poison by the simplicity of ignorance and good 
 faith. But at the same time — and this is his 
 third triumph over time — he maintains incor- 
 ruptible and above all his true Church, the Cath- 
 olic, Apostolic, Roman Church. He ensures to 
 her even a numerical superiority; for Islamism 
 counts but a hundred millions of followers, the 
 
135 
 
 Greek schism sixty millions, Protestantism a like 
 number, whilst the Catholic Church holds a hun- 
 dred and sixty millions of souls subject to her gov- 
 ernment. Hierarchical superiority; for neither 
 Islamism, nor the Greek schism, nor Protestant- 
 ism has been able to create a papacy. Superi- 
 ority of independence ; for no spiritual commu- 
 nity has been ab.le to preserve inviolable the 
 sanctuary of the soul, save the Catholic Church, 
 which, by constantly giving her inexhaustible, 
 blood for that cause, has kept her teaching and 
 her action free from the yoke, and has merited 
 the honor of being here below the bulwark of 
 right and the virgin soil of holy liberty. 
 
 I shall not enlarge further, gentlemen, upon 
 the marks of the true Church of Jesus Christ. 
 I have already done this, and I hastily refer to 
 it now only to demonstrate the sovereign provi- 
 dence by which Jesus Christ has maintained 
 them on the brow of his Church against all 
 the efforts of time. 
 
 Thus then a threefold perpetuity is acquired 
 for Jesus Christ from the scrutiny to which we 
 have subjected him ; perpetuity of life, perpe- 
 tuity of exclusive irradiation of life, perpetuity 
 of superiority in life. 
 
136 
 
 But you may reply : This is not questioned. 
 Jesus Christ has lived ; he has infused his life 
 into all religious establishments which have 
 come after him, and he has even maintained his 
 Church above all the rest. Yet do you not now 
 perceive signs of decadency in his work ? Have 
 not a multitude of souls emancipated themselves 
 from his rule ? And when signs of decrepitude 
 begin to appear, may we not foresee a near and 
 an inevitable dissolution ? 
 
 This may be your idea, gentlemen ; mine is 
 that Jesus Christ is at the apogee of his glory 
 and power; and this, with the help of God, I 
 shall now proceed to show you. 
 
 Three things constitute power, and the progress 
 of these three things constitutes the progress of 
 power, namely, the territorial state, the numeri- 
 cal state, and the moral state. Now, I affirm 
 that, under this threefold relation, Jesus Christ 
 has never attained a higher point than that at 
 which we at present contemplate him. 
 
 In the first place, what was the territorial 
 state of Jesus Christ under Constantine? It was 
 nearly included even in the boundaries of the em- 
 pire, between the Rhine, the Euphrates and the 
 Atlas. If it passed beyond, that addition was 
 
Jn/r 
 Ol 
 
 compensated for by the many parts of the empire 
 of which the Gospel held but an imperfect and 
 uncertain possession. But what do you now see ? 
 It is true Jesus Christ has lost some of his 
 former territories, now occupied by Mussulmans; 
 although it must be remarked that Christians 
 exist upon the whole surface of the Islamic soil, 
 and that Islamism itself recognizes Jesus Christ 
 and his ancestors. But turn your eyes to the 
 west, to the east, to the north, to the south, and 
 in every direction of the globe you will find the 
 conquering steps of the Saviour. He has crossed 
 the Rhine ; he has subjected Germany, Poland, 
 all the Russias, the three kingdoms of Great 
 Britain, and has borne even to the pole, across 
 the mountains and ices of Sweden, the sun of 
 his dominion. The Atlantic Ocean opened be 
 fore him ; he has passed the Cape of Good Hope, 
 has joined to the sceptre of his children that 
 famous peninsula of India, which from antiquity 
 was looked upon as the reservoir of all the treas- 
 ures of nature. He has founded establishments 
 along the coast of Africa, and rejoined by the 
 Red Sea his old possessions of Abyssinia. He 
 has made the tour of the two Americas, and 
 from one pole to the other, ranging them under 
 
138 
 
 his laws, he has raised up together republics 
 missions, and bishoprics. He has retaken Spain 
 from Mahomet, and everywhere shaken the terri- 
 tory of Islam. But yesterday, again, when the 
 chief of the house of Bourbon was descending 
 from the throne and aboiit to carry his noble old 
 age into exile, we saw Jesus Christ, by the arm 
 of the old Frank king who thus wrote his testa- 
 ment among us, conquer two kingdoms from infi- 
 delity, the kingdoms of Greece and Algeria. 
 Still more recently, China has opened to him her 
 ports, which had so long been shut ; New Hol- 
 land becomes peopled under the shadow of his 
 cross ; the islands of Oceania transform their 
 savage inhabitants into humble and meek adorers 
 of his Gospel. There are no longer any seas, or 
 solitudes, or mountains, or inaccessible places 
 where Jesus Christ does not hoist the bold stand- 
 ards of his children blended with his own. 
 
 Return now back to Constantine ; weigh the 
 Christian world of that epoch with the Christian 
 world of the present time, and judge of the ter- 
 ritorial progress which Jesus Christ has made. 
 
 It is the same with the numerical state. I said 
 just now that the Catholic Church counts a hun- 
 dred and sixty millions of children, the Greek 
 
139 
 
 schism sixty millions, Protestantism sixty mil 
 lions more. This is a total of two hundred and 
 eighty millions of men who acknowledge Jesus 
 Christ for their Saviour and their spiritual head. 
 Doubtless, there are some among these who do 
 not bear his yoke from clear and positive convic- 
 tion; but the Christian's life must be judged as 
 a whole, and especially at the hour of death. 
 Among the many who think themselves unbeliev- 
 ers there are few who resist Christ to the last, 
 and who do not ask him to forgive their errors 
 much more than their apostacy. Their soul, 
 moreover, was formed by the Gospel, and it is 
 still their nourishment even when they think 
 they despise it. The numerical state of Jesus 
 Christ was never more flourishing, and it daily 
 tends to increase by the development of Chris- 
 tian populations. Whilst the Mahometan races 
 become impoverished and the remains of the 
 idolatrous nations vegetate in their immobility, 
 the Christian blood, blessed by God, prospers 
 beyond measure, and continual emigrations carry 
 its superabundance into distant lands, and with 
 it the precious seeds of faith. 
 
 If you perceive a disproportion between the 
 territory and the population of Jesus Christ, it 
 
liO 
 
 is easy to be explained. The power of Chris- 
 tians grows yet faster than their blood ; they 
 conquer and govern space with a handful of men, 
 and their genius fills it long before their pos- 
 terity. I do not think this observation is preju- 
 dicial to Jesus Christ. But there is another 
 which you certainly expect from me, and which 
 I also expect from you. Whatever may be the 
 state, say you, of the territorial and numerical 
 progress of Jesus Christ — a phenomenon which 
 may be explained by the ascendancy of the 
 Christian races — you cannot deny the invasion 
 and progress of unbelief in the very midst of 
 Christianity. If Jesus Christ has overthrown 
 the religions which were before his own, unbe- 
 lief, more powerful than he, overthrows in its 
 turn the work which he had built up, and over- 
 throws it with still more terrible effects, since it 
 is doubt and negation which take the place of 
 faith. Like those lands exhausted by a sub- 
 stance that has devoured all their sap, and which 
 can no longer produce anything, the land over 
 which Christ has passed is a land cursed, it no 
 longer produces anything but doubt and nega- 
 tion. Thus we advance to a state worse than 
 any of which mankind has been the witness and 
 
141 
 
 the victim. Like that conqueror who caused 
 Jerusalem to be razed and salt to be cast upon 
 its ruins, Christ has exhausted the convictions of 
 the human race, and cast upon its intelligence 
 the salt of absolute unbelief. Woe to us, doubt- 
 less, woe to us who can no longer believe ! But 
 to whom do we owe that incapacity, if not to 
 the tyranny of Christ, who has not been power- 
 ful enough to bend forever our minds to his 
 dogmas, and who is powerful enough to keep us 
 from ever holding any other faith than his own >. 
 I grant, gentlemen, that after seventeen centu- 
 ries during which Jesus Christ was not denied, 
 he was at length denied in the last century ; he 
 is denied even now. But so far from that acci- 
 dent menacing the work of Christ, it derives a 
 glory therefrom, which it will be easy for you to 
 recognize and appreciate. Three countries formed 
 the seat of the total revolt against Jesus Christ 
 — England, France and Germany. As to Eng- 
 land, unbelief has long ago ceased to possess any 
 power or renown there. If your ears are atten- 
 tive to the echoes of the British Parliament, that 
 highest of all expression of national opinions, 
 you will not have heard, since the birth of the 
 present century, a single word of insult or men- 
 
142 
 
 ace to Christ. England has emancipated Catho- 
 lics ; she has recalled to the tribune of her Par- 
 liament the proscribed voices of the defenders of 
 the papacy; she has opened her fields to the 
 labor of monks, and her schools to the learning 
 of the Roman clergy. The old walls of Oxford 
 have heard the most celebrated doctors of An- 
 glicanism speaking of Jesus Christ like the 
 ancient Church, they have witnessed the retreat 
 of many who have passed from the rostrum to 
 the humble cell, there to recite the office after 
 the manner of the religious orders, and to pray 
 at the foot of a crucifix for the return of their soul 
 and of their country to the old faith of the Anglo- 
 Saxons. Catholic churches, and even cathedrals, 
 have risen up full of splendor from the land of 
 proscription, and Jesus Christ has marched tri- 
 umphantly with his bishops and priests in the 
 very places where stones and the sword had pur- 
 sued him. In fine, England is won back from 
 unbelief, she who was the first to shelter it under 
 the protection of her nobles and her men of 
 genius. 
 
 If we turn next to France, doubtless we shall 
 not find there in the same fulness the signs of a 
 return to faith. Yet none of you, knowing the 
 
143 
 
 history of the past and the present, would com 
 pare the two positions. In the last century, 
 unbelief was absolute mistress of minds, alone it 
 guided the pen and spoke with eloquence ; its 
 boohs were public events, its great men ranked 
 with the old families of the monarchy, and held 
 familiar intercourse with all the kings of Europe ; 
 a flagrant and an overwhelming conspiracy hurled 
 to heaven every insult against Jesus Christ. Is 
 it so now, gentlemen ? Has not Jesus Christ his 
 writers, his orators, his party, his youth, his glory, 
 among us ? And if unbelief still exists, do we 
 not well know how to make it bend before us, 
 and how to march on in the strength of our 
 souls against its now decrepit successes and its 
 ill-judged expectations? We do, gentlemen ; the 
 watchword of the faith in all its most militant 
 action comes from France ; our missionaries, our 
 sisters of charity, our brothers of the Christian 
 schools, bear it to the ends of the world, and 
 whoever loves Jesus Christ upon earth keeps his 
 hand upon our heart to feel there the pulsations 
 of faith, and to thank the God who strikes and 
 who heals. 
 
 I shall say nothing of Germany ; she remains, 
 doubtless, although with certain modifications, 
 
144 
 
 the seat of the war against Jesus Christ. Our up 
 believers go there to seek the arms which the 
 genius of France refuses to them yet more and 
 more ; but the fall is great, and the thunder that 
 comes from the clouds of the Rhine is not destined 
 to produce such effects as that double voice of 
 England and France, whose future alliance in 
 favor of the Church and Jesus Christ the great 
 Comte de Maistre has long ago foretold. 
 
 However, gentlemen, let us not be content with 
 proving by facts the progressive decrease of the 
 forces of unbelief; let us endeavor to trace its 
 causes in order to draw conclusions which may 
 embrace the future as well as the past. 
 
 God, then, seeing the darkness of men's minds, 
 has caused three suns to rise slowly upon the 
 horizon of the Church : the sun of history, the 
 sun of science, and the sun of liberty. History 
 was ill-understood ; great research, aided by great 
 social revolutions, has enlightened its sombre 
 mysteries, and Jesus Christ, calumniated in the 
 works of his Church, has retaken in the realities 
 of the world a place which men willed to dis- 
 honor. Whilst history returned to him by the 
 labors of Protestants and unbelievers, as much as 
 by those of Catholics, science did not serve him 
 
145 
 
 with a lesser return of justice and fidelity. Did 
 it dig in the bowels of the earth, it found again 
 there the first page of Moses ; did it descend to 
 the foundations of the temples and monuments 
 of Egypt, it found there the points of junction 
 between Egyptian history and the history of the 
 people of God ; did it succeed in deciphering the 
 language of hieroglyphics, those signs, recalled 
 to the vigor of their expression, bore testimony 
 to the newness of the world, compromised by the 
 calculations of astronomy ; did it discover and 
 bring to light ruins and inscriptions, those ruins 
 and those inscriptions spoke for us ; nature inter- 
 rogated in every sense, gave back a Christian 
 note from all its pores, as if it had been created 
 or charmed by Jesus Christ. 
 
 Liberty also has rendered us signal services. 
 It has loosened the bonds with which unbelief 
 had bound the Church by the hand of kings, 
 and permitted Jesus Christ to resume the sceptre 
 of speech, too long enfeebled from respect which 
 was no longer merited. 
 
 Unbelief has, however, received a heavier 
 
 blow than all these. For the causes I have just 
 
 enumerated act only in the higher ranks of the 
 
 world; they do not strike at the lif.irt <>;-" the 
 
 7 
 
14(3 
 
 human race, and that central shock is necessary 
 to all extended action. The centre of the world 
 the heart of the human race, is the people. The 
 people then should have had a sign against unbe- 
 lief, and that sign was given to them in order 
 that nothing might be wanting to the causes of 
 salvation which God prepares for us. What 
 sign then was given to the people ? What sign, 
 gentlemen ? It is this : the soul and the body 
 of the people have gained nothing from unbelief, 
 and they know it. The people had a God in 
 heaven ; when the earth, so sparing towards 
 them, overtasked their strength, they clasped 
 their hands, and in looking upwards and in 
 appealing to God from their very wretchedness, 
 they felt dignity and consolation reaching to 
 them. The people had a God, not only in 
 heaven, but nearer to them, a God who had 
 become man and was poor, who was born in a 
 stable, whose body had been laid upon straw, 
 and who had suffered in this life more than they. 
 The people had a God, not in heaven only, not 
 only in the flesh and in poverty, but they had a 
 God upon the same cross which they themselves 
 bear, and when they beheld themselves with 
 their two arms extended in their suffering, they 
 
J47 
 
 found on their right hand their God who was 
 crucified for them, and who bore them company. 
 The people had a, God, not only in heaven, not 
 only in their flesh, in their poverty, and in their 
 own cross, but they had a God living in the 
 Church to teach, to protect, and to console them ; 
 they had a God living in their priest to receive 
 the oppressive secrets of their hearts ; they had 
 a God living in the sister of charity to bind up 
 their wounded limbs when they could no longer 
 serve them, and to honor their souls in the mis- 
 eries of their bodies. The people had a God in 
 heaven and upon earth : you have taken away 
 from them the God of heaven, and you have not 
 preserved for them the God of earth. What then 
 did you give them in his stead ? What other 
 God have you made for them ? Ah ! I am wrong, 
 for God you have given them doubt, and for god- 
 dess negation ! You said to them : " Perhaps ! " 
 And finding that too much, you spoke again with 
 authority, and said : No ! Why should they com- 
 plain ? There is no longer any God, or Christ, or 
 Gospel, or Church ; but you remain to them, and 
 with you the worms which brought them into the 
 world, and the worms which will prey upon their 
 dead bodies. Is not this enough to satisfy a soul ? 
 
148 
 
 Perhaps, unable to bear the sight of that mer 
 ciless spoliation wrought by your hands, you will 
 turn to the bodies of the people and boast of 
 what they owe to you, for the temporal well- 
 being which you have procured for them in 
 exchange for what they have lost. Ah ! I ex- 
 pected as much from you ! The bodies of the 
 people ! But listen to the sounds which rise 
 from Manchester, Birmingham, Flanders, the cry, 
 not of poverty and want— they are the words 
 and things of bygone times — but the cry of pau- 
 perism ; that is to say, the cry of distress having 
 reached the state of system and power, and rising, 
 by an unexpected malediction, from the very de- 
 velopment of wealth itself. The political econ- 
 omy of unbelief has been destroyed by facts upon 
 every seat of human enterprise and activity ; it 
 still struggles against these results, as terrible as 
 they were unbooked for; but it is the hydra-of 
 Lerne against the arm of Hercules ; the blow 
 which it has received is a mortal blow because it 
 has been dealt by the hand of the people ! 
 
 In a word, the bodies and the souls of the 
 people have gained nothing from unbelief, and 
 the people know it. 
 
 But if you have done nothing as yet for the 
 
141) 
 
 souls and bodies of the people, perhaps it is to 
 come, perhaps you will some day set up a doc- 
 trine in the place of the doctrine of Christ ! 1 
 must deprive you of that last hope ; and without 
 even trusting to the nothingness of your past 
 efforts, I must show you that it is impossible for 
 you to found a doctrine. In fact, unbelief rests 
 upon two general principles, of which this is the 
 first : man should not believe in man, because 
 one man is as good as another, and his most pre- 
 cious treasure is the independence of his mind. 
 Your second principle is : man should not be- 
 lieve in God, because God does not speak to man. 
 But if man ought neither to believe in God nor 
 in man, in whom then should he believe ? Your 
 answer is : in himself, and in himself alone. 
 Now wherever men believe only in themselves, 
 there are no disciples ; where there are no disci- 
 ples, there is no master ; where there is no mas- 
 ter, there is no unity ; where there is no unity, 
 there is no doctrine. You would not then found 
 a doctrine, even had you a thousand years multi- 
 plied by another thousand before you. If you 
 quit the principles of unbelief, at that very mo- 
 ment you fall back upon Jesus Christ, the only 
 possible master for whosoever acknowledges an 
 
150 
 
 authority, because without him there is nothing 
 which holds together upon any foundation. 
 
 But after all let us admit that you may found 
 a doctrine. Even should you succeed it would 
 not be sufficient to dethrone Jesus Christ ; your 
 doctrine must be more perfect than that of Jesus 
 Christ. Now listen to what I have just experi- 
 enced. Three months ago I read for your sake 
 the author who in this age seems to have had the 
 distinction of writing against Jesus Christ with 
 the greatest boldness, if not with the greatest 
 ability, I mean Dr. Strauss. After having, with 
 heated forehead, waded through four large vol- 
 umes of transcendental weariness, as the Grer- 
 mans say, I reached, at length, the last chapter, 
 entitled Conclusion. There Dr. Strauss, starting 
 from the idea that Jesus Christ is completely 
 vanquished, asks himself whether some man, 
 capable of equalling and even of surpassing Jesus 
 Christ, will not appear upon the empty stage of 
 mankind. That question asked, a kind of tardy 
 and eloquent justice seizes upon the author, and, 
 in a page which I read again more than once, the 
 only one in which the soul makes itself felt, he 
 declares that it is not probable that any man 
 will ever be able to equal Jesus Christ, but he 
 
151 
 
 is absolutely certain that no man will ever sur 
 pass him. 
 
 Such is the conclusion. 
 
 To sum up, gentlemen, I find in Jesus Christ a 
 threefold perpetuity : perpetuity in his life, per- 
 petuity in the exclusive irradiation of his life, 
 perpetuity in the superiority of his life. I also 
 find in him a threefold progress : progress in the 
 territorial state, progress in the numerical state, 
 progress in the moral state. Jesus Christ has 
 then overcome time ; he has overcome the great 
 enemy, and, beholding him upon the summit of 
 ages in all the serenity of his imperturbable 
 youth, I remember what Saint Paul said of him 
 in another sense : " Christ risen from the dead, 
 dieth no more." ' Once he descended into the 
 tomb ; but the human race, for whom he died, 
 bent towards him, and, raising him up with a 
 love which has never grown cold, bears him in its 
 hands, risen again to life. Behold him, gentle- 
 men, examine him well, he lives ! Look again, 
 he dieth no more, he is young, he is King, he is 
 God ! He lived as God, he has outlived himself 
 as God ; to-morrow I will show you that he pre- 
 existed as God. Nothing will then be wanting 
 
 » Rom. vi. 9. 
 
152 
 
 to that threefold act of life — living, surviving, 
 pre-existing; nothing will be found in him which 
 is not stamped with the seal of divinity, and 
 which hinders me from proclaiming with the sov. 
 ereignty of certainty that other expression of 
 Saint Paul : " Jesus Christ was yesterday, he is 
 to-day, and the same forever ! " ' 
 
 > Heb. xlii. 8. 
 
THE PRE-EXISTENCE OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 My Lokd — Gentlemen, 
 
 All life is not yet comprised in living -and 
 in outliving that life ; the third act of life, which 
 is the first in the order of time, is that of pre- 
 existence. Every being, save God, pre-exists in 
 its germ, and man in particular pre-exists in his 
 ancestors. No one appears here below whose 
 reign has not been prepared long beforehand ; 
 and the more important the destiny designed for 
 him by Providence, the more important also is 
 the preparatory action of his ancestors. Jesus 
 Christ, as man, should therefore have pre-existed 
 after the manner of men; and, inasmuch as he 
 was greater than all men by his destiny, he 
 should also have pre-existed in a manner pecu- 
 liar to himself alone. I remark then, in the first 
 place, that alone amongst all the great names, he 
 possesses an authentic genealogy which remounts 
 from him even to the father of the human race, 
 and that he is thus, undoubtedly, the first gentle- 
 man in the world. It is but little, I grant, and 
 7* 
 
154 
 
 therefore his pre-existence should not be limited 
 to this alone. 
 
 Ancestry, we have said, is proportionate to 
 posterity. Whosoever has no ancestry will have 
 no posterity, and this explains to you the weak- 
 ness of doctrines which unceasingly appear and 
 disappear before you. They begin in the man 
 who advances them, and, beginning with him, 
 they die with him. As soon as a man without 
 antecedents in his teaching, a man, the last who 
 has sprung up in this world, dares to bring to 
 mankind doctrines which he calls new, that 
 single word is the foreboding of his powerless- 
 ness and the expression of his condemnation. 
 For if the doctrines claimed by him as his own 
 possessed any importance, they would inevitably 
 have pre-existed him, he would at most be but 
 their renovator ; to say that an important thing 
 begins in one's self, is to take nothingness for 
 starting point, for horizon, and for end. 
 
 But if ancestry be proportionate to posterity, 
 it follows that Jesus Christ must have pre-existed 
 in his ancestors with incomparable greatness. 
 And, to speak more precisely, since Jesus Christ 
 has had for his posterity the most important 
 social and religious work of the times which 
 
155 
 
 have followed him, he should also have had for 
 his ancestry the most important social and reli- 
 gious work of the times which preceded him. 
 The Catholic Church being the fruit of his com- 
 ing, we must find before his coming something 
 that worthily prepares the Catholic Church, and 
 that comprises Jesus Christ between a past and 
 a future — doubtless not of equal proportions, but 
 so balanced that that which preceded him was 
 beyond all comparison with the rest, as well as 
 that which followed him. The Jewish people, 
 gentlemen, fulfil these conditions. The Jewish 
 people was the most important social and reli- 
 gious work of the times preceding Jesus Christ, 
 as the Catholic Church is the most important 
 social and religious work of later times ; and, as 
 Jesus Christ is the soul of the Catholic Church, in 
 which his life is perpetuated, so he was the soul 
 of the Jewish people in whom he pre-existed. I 
 must explain this double proposition to you, and 
 so succeed in surrounding the sacred head of 
 Christ with all the promulgatory rays of his di- 
 vinity. 
 
 That the Jewish people was the greatest social 
 and religious work of antiquity, I shall not, I 
 think, have much difficulty in proving. Let us 
 
156 
 
 begin by its superiority in the social point of view, 
 Legislation is the highest element of the life of a 
 people, and, in legislation, the first point to con- 
 sider is the constitution of the law itself. Now 
 the Hebrew law possesses two characters which 
 belong to it alone, and which place it beyond all 
 comparison, they are universality and immutabil- 
 ity. It has for its basis something universal, 
 namely, the general relations of man with God 
 and with mankind. The tables of Sinai, which 
 form its prologue and its fundamental page, exist 
 even now as the most memorable expression of all 
 the great duties ; and the Catholic Church, even 
 after the promulgation of the Gospel, has not been 
 able to substitute in place of the Decalogue any- 
 thing which she has judged worthy to set it aside. 
 Those ten decrees form the basis of Christian mor- 
 als, as they formed the basis of Hebrew morals. 
 In the second place, the Jewish law, although 
 including the whole political, civil, criminal, com- 
 mercial, judicial, and even ceremonial order — 
 things essentially variable in their nature — was 
 endowed with an immutability of which there is 
 no other example in any legislation whatsoever. 
 In Moses the legislative power of the Hebrews 
 began and ended. Whilst every human society 
 
157 
 
 has in its centre a permanent legislative power 
 which retrenches, adds, corrects, according to times 
 and necessities, and an exceptional legislative 
 power, which goes so far as to reform even the 
 constitution itself, affected by the change of hal >its 
 and customs, the Jewish people, from Moses, re- 
 mained contented in regard to law, with a simple 
 regulating faculty. The hand that had graven the 
 tables of Sinai and penned that vast legislation 
 comprised in the Pentateuch was strong enough 
 permanently to consolidate a whole nation, how 
 long soever it might endure ; and three thousand 
 years passed over his work have never once borne 
 to it the slightest contradiction. Above all others, 
 gentlemen, after the last fifty years of our history, 
 we can appreciate the superhuman genius of such 
 a foundation. 
 
 The constitution of authority in legislature fol- 
 lows in importance the constitution of law; for 
 authority is the living guardian of the dead text 
 of law. Now, what was the constitution of 
 authority among the Hebrews? It has been 
 often said, if I mistake not, that it was theocratic ; 
 this is an error. From the earliest times, Moses 
 and Aaron divided the power ; one was the mili- 
 tary and civil chief, the other the religious chief, 
 
158 
 
 and that distinction between the temporal and 
 spiritual order — deeply traced by the double me- 
 morial of the legislator and the pontiff — con- 
 tinues throughout the whole history of the Jew- 
 ish people, notwithstanding the accidental gather- 
 ing of the whole authority in one and the same 
 hand. If the pontificate and the supreme judica- 
 ture blend together in Samuel, they become sep- 
 arated in the times of David and the kings ; if 
 they are found united after the captivity, they sep- 
 arated again before Jesus Christ. The Hebraic 
 community, like the Catholic community, was 
 based upon the distinction between the spiritual 
 and the temporal powers, a distinction without 
 which a nation would neither be able to preserve 
 truth nor liberty. Truth, because being of a 
 higher order, it could not keep its place under a 
 sceptre transmitted by purely human means ; lib- 
 erty, because all the social and regular forces, 
 being concentred under the sceptre of one single 
 mind and one single action, it becomes impossible 
 for any one to defend his feeble personality against 
 the omnipotent personality of the State. The peo- 
 ple, crushed under the Aveight of such a formidable 
 unity, would doubtless writhe like the giant under 
 the weight of Etna; but their force, not being 
 
159 
 
 united under a stable and recognized organization, 
 their efforts would result only in futile shocks, by 
 which, if they succeeded in overthrowing the order 
 that weighed upon them, their very victory would 
 still cost them their liberty, for to destroy order is 
 also to destroy liberty. By the division of power 
 into two branches, not opposed to each other — not 
 even rivals, so much do their attributes differ — 
 opinion obtains a pacific support against force, 
 right against oppression, and society, notwithstand- 
 ing its vicissitudes, being united without violence, 
 duly performs its office for time and for eternity. 
 
 However, this admirable order has nowhere 
 been able to establish itself, save among the Jew- 
 ish people and in nations entirely Christian, that 
 is to say, Catholic. Everywhere else, the State 
 has not failed to absorb the whole of human na- 
 ture in its rapacious unity. And this, gentlemen, 
 should not excite our wonder : the spiritual power, 
 being by its very essence a disarmed power, God 
 alone is able to communicate to it the inner force 
 which it needs peacefully to resist the temporal 
 power. Where God is not, intrigue, baseness, fear, 
 soon bend mind to matter ; and the spiritual or- 
 der, should it still exist, remains but a miserable 
 phantom, to which the State leaves a reed for seep- 
 
160 
 
 tre, contempt for protection, and a little gold for 
 pay. Inasmuch, then, as the Jewish people, as 
 well as the Catholic nations, possessed the prerog- 
 ative of a true spiritual power, it is stamped with 
 a character of pre-eminence, which no other people 
 can dispute with it in the times anterior to Christ. 
 The constitution of family was not less remark- 
 able in the Jewish people than the constitution 
 of law and authority. The individuals whose 
 union forms families, and whom we may call 
 domestic individuals, namely, the father, the 
 mother, the child, and the servant, stood there in 
 relations full of order and equity. Moses, it is 
 true, did not formally substitute the unity of the 
 conjugal tie in place of eastern polygamy ; but 
 he instilled the practice of it by establishing the 
 faculty of repudiation for certain cases, by for- 
 bidding the future kings of Israel to have a 
 great number of wives, like the princes of the 
 East, and in supposing but once only in his 
 whole legislation that a man may have two 
 wives. Thus, save a few examples noticed in 
 the course of Scripture, the Hebraic family 
 appears to us, under this head, in a state analo- 
 gous to that of the Christian family. The unity 
 of marriage was a custom among them. Thu 
 
161 
 
 authority of the father over the child was great, 
 without extending to that right over life and 
 death which too often made an executioner's 
 office of paternity among the ancients. The ser- 
 vant belonged to the family by virtue of a volun- 
 tary agreement ; no Hebrew could be the slave 
 of another Hebrew ; and even engagements for 
 perpetual service were permitted by law only 
 after a trial of seven years. The stranger alone, 
 by right of conquest, was liable to slavery, 
 properly so called ; and even this bondage, kept 
 within certain limits, was far from producing 
 that contempt and that abuse of man which we 
 remark among the peoples anterior to Jesus 
 Christ. All the Jewish families were ranged in 
 twelve tribes, corresponding to the twelve patri- 
 archs, sons of Jacob, and forming of the nation 
 twelve great families, united in the bond of the 
 same blood, and so much the more strongly, as it 
 flowed from the same father by twelve perfectly 
 recognizable sources. Nothing in antiquity is 
 comparable to this constitution of the Hebraic 
 family. 
 
 It is the same in regard to the bases upon 
 which the system of proprietorship rested among 
 them. Houses and lands could only lie alienated 
 
162 
 
 for a lapse of forty-nine years. After that, they 
 returned to their former possessor or to his heirs. 
 The object of this singular arrangement was to 
 prevent the rain of families and the too great 
 inequality of fortunes, without hindering, how- 
 ever, the necessary movement of commerce and 
 industry. The rich man bought of the unfortu- 
 nate or erring man the whole or a part of his 
 patrimony, and enjoyed possession of it for half 
 a century; but the son or grandson of the 
 despoiled proprietor cherished in his heart the 
 hope of returning again to the roof of his ances- 
 tors. By a second and no less remarkable regu- 
 lation, the fields could not be cultivated more 
 than six years in seven; they rested the seventh 
 year, and all the fruit which they bore naturally 
 in a land covered with vines and olive trees be- 
 longed to the poor, as their share in the common 
 patrimony of Israel. 
 
 Such was, in the most fundamental matters, that 
 celebrated legislation of Moses, the invulnerable 
 stability of which time has respected, and which 
 has placed that great man at the head of all those 
 who have had the rare distinction of giving laws 
 to nations. 
 
 But legislation is only the first element of the 
 
163 
 
 life of a people; art is the second. Legislation 
 classes a people in the order of acts, art determines 
 its rank in the order of ideas and of their expres- 
 sion. The greater the idea the greater is the visi- 
 ble monument it raises up, and which causes it to 
 subsist even after it has perished in the mind that 
 conceived it. Now the monument of Hebraic 
 ideas is a book which forms part of the book of 
 books, a book which forms the preface to the Gos- 
 pel, and which in that illustrious vicinity obtains 
 respect as the finished pedestal of a faultless statue. 
 As history, the Hebrew Bible precedes all histories 
 by its antiquity, continuity, and authenticity; 
 alone it mounts to the cradle of the human race, 
 and lays down the first stone of the whole edifice 
 of the past. As a juridical compilation, it is with- 
 out equal in any of the collections containing the 
 laws of great communities. As moral philosophy, 
 it opposes its books of wisdom to all the maxims 
 of the most renowned sages, and a presence of God 
 is felt in them which elevates the soul above the 
 natural reach of reason. As poesy, it contains the 
 hymns of David and the prophets, repeated aftei 
 two or three thousand years by all the echoes of 
 the Christian world, and become creators of a Ian 
 guage which has passed into all human tongues 
 
164 
 
 for lauding and blessing God. Other peoples 
 have had historians, jurisconsults, sages, poets, but 
 which are their own, and form, as it were, a sepa- 
 rate glory ; the Jewish people has been the histo- 
 rian, the jurisconsult, the sage, the poet of man- 
 kind. 
 
 Its territory also answered to that great place 
 which we behold it occupying. For the support 
 and nourishment of its body, it had received a land 
 equally illustrious with its legislation and its art. 
 Cast a glance upon a map of the world, and you 
 will quickly perceive there a point which forms 
 the centre of Asia, Africa, and Europe; which, 
 washed by the waves of the Mediterranean, 
 touches by them those healthy and genial cli- 
 mates where in the plenitude of human activity 
 the hardy race of Japhet exercises its energy; 
 whilst, on another hand, the River Euphrates and 
 the Gulf of the Red Sea open to its inhabitants 
 the routes of the Indian Ocean, permitting them 
 to seek under the equatorial zones those fabulous 
 riches which Solomon explored, which Alexander 
 desired to see, which the Romans coveted, which 
 the Middle Ages discovered anew, which the Brit- 
 ish power now guards with such supreme jealousy. 
 In close vicinity also to that favored point of the 
 
105 
 
 globe, you will perceive Memphis, the Nile, the 
 Pyramids, and those sublime deserts which to the 
 present time have rebelled against the most cour- 
 ageous curiosity, so that its boundaries having 
 gates open to all, had them also closed against all. 
 There, as at an inevitable rendezvous indicated by 
 nature and God, all the conquerors have appeared. 
 The primitive monarchies of Assur and Chaldsea 
 unceasingly sent there their generals. Alexander 
 was halted there before Tyre, and went to read 
 in Jerusalem the history of his triumphs writ- 
 ten beforehand, like those of Cyrus; his succes 
 sors contested desperately for this remnant of his 
 crown ; the Romans took possession of it ; all the 
 chivalry of the Middle Ages pressed there during 
 two hundred years ; Napoleon caused a gleam of 
 his sword to shine upon its sands; in fine, but 
 yesterday the last thunder of European cannon 
 awakened the old echoes of that proud land ; and 
 the discerning finger of those who observe tht 
 future points to it as the future battle-ground foi 
 the combats reserved to our descendants. You 
 have named Syria, gentlemen, and with it the ter 
 ritory given to the Jewish people as the temporal 
 complement of those magnificent graces which 
 they had received in the mental order. 
 
166 
 
 Nevertheless, gentlemen, a people is not yet fully 
 known when we know its territory, its art, and its 
 legislation ; it is necessary also to know its history. 
 The history of a people is the course of its acts for 
 the preservation of its laws, ideas, customs, terri 
 tory, all, in fine, that constitutes its proper life and 
 civilization. The more magnificent its endowments 
 the more is it accountable towards God and man 
 for the devotedness shown by it in defence of the 
 gifts which are not only its personal patrimony, 
 but which form part of the general dotation of 
 mankind, and enter into the plans by which 
 Providence cond ucts all things to their end. And, 
 according as a people acquits itself well or ill of 
 this great task, it marks in history its degree of 
 shame or renown. What, gentlemen, has formed 
 the dignity of our history ? It is that having 
 received from God a territory which is the heart 
 of Europe, we have held it under faithful guar- 
 dianship for fourteen hundred years, permitting 
 none but ourselves to settle between the Alps 
 and the Pyrenees ; it is that having among all 
 the barbarous nations received the nrstfruits of 
 the Catholic faith, we have preserved it to the 
 end, neither permitting this, the elder kingdom 
 of Christendom, to be entirely corrupted by 
 
167 
 
 heresy nor overcome by doubt ; it is that having 
 received, in fine, the most ancient and the most 
 free monarchy of Europe, we have preserved in 
 a happy balance, although it has been often 
 troubled, the double spirit of authority and lib- 
 erty, being equally incapable of supporting an- 
 archy or absolute power. We have, in a word, 
 preserved in the body of Europe a land of faith, 
 order, and liberty. 
 
 The Jewish people had yet greater duties, 
 and a more perilous position imposed upon it. 
 Feeble in number, and cast upon a part of the 
 world which by its position tempted all the 
 neighboring empires, it had to protect against 
 them, with its independence, laws and traditions 
 upon which the destinies of the world depended. 
 No people entrusted with a more precious charge, 
 in more favorable conditions, has shown such 
 remarkable and persevering magnanimity in de- 
 fending it. Not to see this would be an act of 
 blindness, not to acknowledge it an act of in- 
 gratitude. Nineveh, Babylon, Memphis, by turns, 
 and sometimes together, conspired for the destruc- 
 tion of that handful of Israelites; innumerable 
 armies, led by powerful kings, invaded their 
 territory, and laid siege to their capital ; often 
 
168 
 
 victorious, they often purchased their glory at 
 the cost of cruel reverses. Ten of their tribes, 
 carried into captivity, have disappeared from 
 history : the two others afterwards followed the 
 same road of exile from whence nations never 
 return. But seventy years of adversity far from 
 their country did not weary the hearts of the 
 captives ; by science and beauty they penetrated 
 into the palaces of kings, and governed their 
 conquerors. Cyrus delivers them, Alexander 
 visits them, and when, in the heart of Asia, a 
 new and a more terrible persecution brings into 
 their temple the desolation of impiety, they raise 
 up in their midst, to save their country and reli 
 gion, that race of the Maccabees whose, name has 
 become for peoples oppressed by stronger than 
 themselves the very name of courage and right. 
 And this heroic spectacle, gentlemen, lasted fif- 
 teen hundred years! For fifteen hundred con- 
 secutive years Israel held her place against the 
 great empires of the world ; and when at length 
 Rome had surmounted all and subjected all, 
 when the whole earth had kept silence before 
 her for more than a century, Israel still struggled 
 in the mountains and valleys of Judaea for the 
 remnants of her liberty. Rome was forced to 
 
169 
 
 send her legions and her captains against such 
 memorable perseverance, and Jerusalem, yet once 
 more besieged, sent up to heaven, in an implaca- 
 ble defence, the last generous cry which the 
 Romans were destined to hear. 
 
 Was it ended, gentlemen ? Did not this people, 
 without territory and without princes, wander to 
 die in obscurity upon the vast surface over which 
 the still timid will of their conquerors had scat- 
 tered it? For any other, indeed, the hour of 
 death would have come. But the Israelites remem- 
 bered the days of their captivity, when they hung 
 their harps upon the willows of Babylon, because 
 they could not sing the songs of Sion in a strange 
 land ; as they had then carried their laws and tra- 
 ditions with them to be their eternal principle of 
 life, they again bore them over the whole earth. 
 They demanded their subsistence from labor, their 
 dignity from the memorials of their ancestors, their 
 consolation from the God who had brought thein 
 out of Egypt by Moses, out of Chaldsea by Cyrus, 
 and who was able, when he willed, to bring them 
 back again to that Jerusalem already raised from 
 its ruins, and become the object of the combats of 
 all Christendom. This people, whom their founder 
 called a hard people, and who in fact opposed to 
 8 
 
170 
 
 adversity a soul of granite, this people still lives — 
 lives everywhere. Disinherited from their coun- 
 try, the children of Israel have sought in commerce 
 that moveable wealth which may be hidden more 
 quickly than persecution advances ; and we now 
 see kings tributaries to their activity, unblushingly 
 recurring to the venerated purse of some Hebrew 
 for the accomplishment of their designs and the ag- 
 grandisement of their glory. Yet once more, Israel 
 lives ; she has lived for seventeen centuries with- 
 out chief, without temple, without territory, often 
 persecuted, but preserving, as in Jerusalem, her 
 antique and immoveable ideas, and having in ad- 
 dition that unique glory of subsisting from an 
 inner force sustained by nothing from without, 
 and which nourishes itself at the mysterious altar 
 of a superhuman past. Do you not see that she 
 defies you ? That alone among nations she counts 
 four thousand years of duration ? That nothing 
 prognosticates the end of such a scandal against 
 the nature of things ? Dig out her tomb if you 
 can ; set your surest seal upon it ; place your 
 guards around it : she will but laugh at you and 
 rise again, proving to you yet once more that she 
 lives of a spirit which you have not, and that 
 matter can do nought against spirit. 
 
171 
 
 1 have the right to conclude, gentlemen, that 
 the Jewish people, under the social point of view, 
 is the most important monument of the times an- 
 terior to Christ. It is not less so under the relig- 
 ious point of view ; and here I shall need but very 
 short observations. 
 
 For, remark that whilst all nations were plunged 
 in the darkness of idolatry, Greeks, Eomans, As- 
 syrians, Egyptians, that little people adored one 
 only God ; and antiquity spake with wonder of 
 the empty temple of Jerusalem, because it did not 
 see God represented there by any image capable 
 of impressing the senses — not that such represen- 
 tation is an evil in itself, as long as it does not 
 touch the true character of the Divinity ; but the 
 Hebrews had such a horror of idols that they pre- 
 ferred, according to the order of their legislator, 
 to leave God in their temple in his total invisi- 
 bility rather than expose their faith to the impres- 
 sive charm of some striking representation. For 
 idolatry not only attacked them from without, it 
 seized upon their heart, and they often fell 1 >efore 
 it. But, notwithstanding this double temptation, 
 they never failed to return to that God of their 
 fathers of whom they were the sole adorers. 
 
 By the dogma of creation they had an idea of 
 
172 
 
 him which always completely separated them from 
 idolaters. These rendered no account to them- 
 selves of the existence of the universe, or if they 
 sought to penetrate its secret, they willingly be- 
 lieved it to be contemporary with their gods, giv- 
 ing to them at most some secondary action upon 
 universal substance. The Jews had quite another 
 doctrine, expressed from the first sign of their 
 sacred Scriptures by that astounding phrase : " In 
 the beginning God created the heavens and the 
 earth." ' Had they possessed but that single doc- 
 trinal expression, they would have been richer in 
 knowledge of God than all the schools and all 
 the religions of antiquity. In a word, the Jew- 
 ish people was the only people before Jesus 
 Christ which had a clear notion of the Divinity, 
 and which rendered to him a worship free from the 
 puerile dreams of the imagination and the taint 
 of shameless sensuality. I may then conclude 
 that in the religious, as in the social point of 
 view, the Hebrew nation was the most important 
 monument of the times anterior to Jesus Christ. 
 
 I add that Jesus Christ was the soul of that 
 nation, and pre-existed in it by a life which we 
 are about to verify. 
 
 » Gen. 1. 1. 
 
173 
 
 I ought to have grown weary, gentlemen, of 
 pointing out to you the peculiarities of the Jews. 
 There is one, however, which surpasses all the 
 rest, and of which I have as yet said nothing. T 
 mean the Messianic idea which circulated in their 
 veins as their purest blood, and without which it 
 is impossible to explain either their faith or their 
 destinies. The Messianic idea is composed of 
 four elements. Under its influence, the Jews 
 believed, in the first place, that the one God and 
 Creator adored by them would some day become 
 the God of the whole earth. In addition, the)* 
 believed that that revolution would be brought 
 about by a single man called the Messiah, the 
 Holy One, the Just, the Saviour, the Desired 
 of nations. They believed that this man would 
 be a Jew of the tribe of Judah and of the house 
 of David. They believed, in fine, that this 
 predestinated man would suffer and die in order 
 to accomplish the work of transformation with 
 which Providence had charged him. 
 
 That such was their faith it is easy for us to 
 learn even of themselves, since they still live, 
 and since, notwithstanding four thousand years 
 of expectation which, in their eyes, has not been 
 realized, they have never ceased to render un 
 
174 
 
 shaken testimony to the hopes of their ancestors. 
 But, gentlemen, let us not he content with their 
 present testimony; let us open the monuments 
 of their history, and follow the progress of the 
 Messianic idea through the principal phases that 
 mark the development of the nation itself, such as 
 its birth, its formation into a people, the point of 
 its maturity, its decadency, its captivity, and its 
 restoration at the foot of the second temple, raised 
 up by Zorababel. 
 
 Behold us in the fields of Chaldsea with Abra- 
 ham ; we are about to hear the first words, which 
 formed, as it were, the seed of the Hebrew race. 
 Observe, gentlemen, that we are not now examin- 
 ing whether these words are true, whether they 
 were from God ; we have now simply to show the 
 idea which the Jewish people had of themselves, 
 and of their mission here below. Whether they 
 deceived themselves in this idea is another ques- 
 tion, to be judged afterwards. 
 
 God, then, according to the Hebrew monu- 
 ments, says to Abraham : " Go forth out of thy 
 country, and from thy kindred, and out of thy 
 father's house, and come into the land which I 
 will show thee ; and I will make of thee a great 
 nation, and I will bless thee, and magnify thy 
 
175 
 
 name, and thou shalt be blessed. I will bless 
 them that bless thee, and curse them that curse 
 thee, and in thee shall all the kindred of the 
 earth be blessed." ' Thus, at the same moment, 
 and in an inseparable manner, two thousand 
 years before Jesus Christ, the Jewish people ap- 
 peared in the world, and therewith the Messianic 
 idea — the idea that Israel was the depositary of 
 a blessing which was to spread over the whole 
 universe. 
 
 Abraham goes forth from Ckaldsea, and settles 
 in the land promised to his posterity. He waits 
 there even to an advanced old age for the son to 
 whom he is to transmit the Messianic heritage ; 
 that son is given to him ; and when the child has 
 attained all the graces of youth, God calls upon 
 the patriarch to offer him in sacrifice upon a 
 mysterious mountain. With unshaken faith in 
 the wisdom and goodness of God, the old man 
 raises his hand upon his only and well-beloved 
 son, and he hears that second declaration, 
 stronger and more distinct than the first : " By 
 my own self have I sworn, saith the Lord, be- 
 cause thou hast done this thing, and hast not 
 spared thy only-begotten son for my sake ; I will 
 
 - Gen. xii. 1-8. 
 
176 
 
 bless thee, and I will multiply thy seed as the 
 stars of heaven, and as the sand that is by the 
 sea shore : thy seed shall possess the gates of 
 their enemies, and in thy seed shall all the na- 
 tions of the earth be blessed." ' An oath is 
 added to the force of the promise; and it is 
 more clearly indicated that the Messianic bene- 
 diction should spread over the whole human 
 race, not by Abraham himself, but by his pos- 
 terity. 
 
 Isaac, the son of Abraham, hears the same 
 promise and the same prophecy : they are re- 
 peated to Jacob, the son of Isaac. The three first 
 Hebrew generations, thus confirmed in the hope 
 of the Messiah, spread out in twelve patriarchs, 
 fathers of twelve tribes ; and Jacob, about to die, 
 assembles them around his bed to close the first 
 Messianic age by a solemn prophecy, which sums 
 up the preceding ones, giving, at the same time, 
 additional precision to them. Surrounded then, 
 by his twelve children, he announces to each of 
 them, by some characteristic traits, what will be 
 his lot in the future. Having arrived at Judah, 
 he says these memorable words to him: " Judah, 
 thee shall thy brethren praise : thy hands shall 
 
 i Gen. xxii. 16-18. 
 
177 
 
 be on the necks of thy enemies ; the sons of thy 
 father shall bow down to thee. Judah is a lion's 
 whelp : to the prey, my son, thou art gone up ; 
 resting thou hast couched as a lion, and as a 
 lioness : who shall rouse him ? The sceptre shall 
 not be taken away from Judah, nor a ruler from 
 his thigh, till he come that is to be sent, and he 
 shall be the expectation of nations." ' Thus, at 
 the moment when the patriarchal inheritance 
 becomes subdivided into twelve branches, the 
 branch from which the Messiah is to be born is 
 designated; it is to be that of Judah ; and the 
 day predestined for the appearance of the Messiah 
 is marked by a sign which posterity will easily 
 recognize. 
 
 The blood of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is 
 henceforth fertile ; it multiplies in a land which 
 has given it hospitality ; and having soon become 
 an object of fear and jealousy, it passes from exile 
 to bondage, in order to serve in tribulation an 
 apprenticeship necessary to its high destinies. 
 Its enemies think to destroy, they do but 
 strengthen it. The Israelites are a people. 
 Moses brings them out of Egypt, and leads them 
 across the desert to the foot of Sinai, from whence 
 
 " Gen. xlix. 8-10. 
 8* 
 
178 
 
 come the laws which are to govern them. Fol- 
 low, gentlemen, follow that marvellous march of 
 so great a people ; the eyes of your childhood 
 formerly gazed upon its wonders, look at them 
 again with the thought of riper years. From en- 
 campment to encampment the children of Israel 
 arrive before Jordan, to the frontiers of that ter 
 ritory inhabited by their first ancestors, and the 
 possession of which is promised to their posterity. 
 There they meet a whole people in arms await- 
 ing those adventurers who despoiled Egypt, and 
 whose march has resounded from the desert even 
 to the hills of Judoea. Moab has ranged her bat- 
 talions, she has raised her altars, convoked her 
 chiefs ; the children of Israel are afoot, with their 
 wives, their children, their soldiers, their Levites, 
 bearing, hidden under the skins of animals, the 
 tabernacle of the God who has just spoken to 
 them from Sinai. A man of the East advances be- 
 tween the two peoples. " Balac," says he, " Balac, 
 king of the Moabites, hath brought me from 
 Aram, from the mountains of the east: Come, 
 said he, and curse Jacob ; make haste and detest 
 Israel. How shall I curse him whom God hath 
 not cursed ? By what means shall I detest him 
 whom the Lord detesteth not ? I shall see him 
 
179 
 
 from the top of the rocks, and shall consider him 
 from the hills. This people shall dwell alone, 
 and shall not be reckoned among the nations. 
 Who can count the dust of Jacob, and know the 
 number of the stock of Israel?'" These unex- 
 pected blessings alarm Moab ; the prophet is 
 implored to change his language ; if he will not 
 curse, they pray him at least not to bless. Thrice 
 Balaam opens his mouth; thrice he blesses the 
 conquering people before him ; and at last the 
 Messianic prophecy escapes from him as in spite 
 of himself: "I shall see him, but not now : I shall 
 behold him, but not near. A star shall rise out 
 of Jacob, and a sceptre shall spring up from 
 Israel, and shall strike the chiefs of Moab, and 
 shall waste the children of Seth. . . . Alas ! who 
 shall live when God shall do these things ? They 
 shall come in galleys from Italy, they shall 
 overcome the Assyrians, and shall waste the 
 Hebrews, and at last they themselves also shall 
 perish." * 
 
 Observe again, gentlemen, that we are not now 
 examining whether Balaam was or was not a 
 prophet, but simply showing the course of the 
 Messianic idea in the historical life of the Jewish 
 
 > Numb, xxiii. 7-10. » Ibid. xxiv. 17, 23, 24. 
 
180 
 
 people. You see this idea taking here a new de 
 velopment; it is no longer a patriarch of Israel 
 who announces the coming of the Messiah, and the 
 establishment of his reign over all the children 
 of Seth, that is to say of Adam, but a stranger. 
 And he marts the circumstances of his coming 
 with most strange perspicacity, since he even desig- 
 nates the domination of the Romans over the East 
 and over the Jewish people as the precursory sign 
 of the Messiah's appearance. 
 
 David and Solomon mark the highest point of 
 the Hebrew monarchy, and with them commence 
 the national and religious hymns known by the 
 name of psalms. Sung in the temple of Jerusa- 
 lem on the great feast days, they publicly ex- 
 pressed the inner feeling, the hopes and desires of 
 the whole nation. Now it is easy to recognize 
 here the Messianic idea disclosing itself on all oc- 
 casions in the soul of poet and people. On read- 
 ing them you will remark passages such as this : 
 " All the ends of the earth shall remember and 
 shall be converted to the Lord : and all the kin- 
 dreds of the Gentiles shall adore in his sight, for 
 the kingdom is the Lord's; and he shall have 
 dominion over the nations. All the fat ones 
 of the earth have eaten, and have adored : all 
 
x81 
 
 they that go down to the earth shall fall before 
 him." ' 
 
 Later also, at the approach of the decadency 
 and captivity — seven hundred years, however, 
 before Jesus Christ — the Messianic idea assumed 
 in Isaiah a clearness and an abundance of expres- 
 sion which it is impossible to render to you, since 
 I should weary you by the number and length of 
 the passages I should have to cite. It is he who 
 sees the Messiah springing from the race of Jesse, 
 the father of David, and who at the same time 
 describes, as if from Calvary or the Vatican, the 
 glory of the sufferings and triumphs of Jesus 
 Christ. "Arise, arise, put on thy strength, O 
 Sion; put on the garments of thy glory, O Jeru- 
 salem, the city of the holy One : for henceforth 
 the uncircumcised and unclean shall no more pass 
 through thee." 2 " How beautiful upon the moun- 
 tains are the feet of him that bringeth good 
 tidings, and that preacheth peace: of him that 
 showeth forth good, that preacheth salvation, that 
 saith to Sion: Thy God shall reign!'" "The 
 Lord hath prepared his holy arm in the sight of 
 all the Gentiles, and all the ends of the earth 
 shall see the salvation of our God." * " Behold 
 
 > Ps. xxi. 28-30. * Is lii. 1. > Ibid. 7. < Ibid. 10. 
 
18a 
 
 my servant shall understand, he shall be exalted 
 and extolled, and he shall be exceeding high. 
 As many have been astonished at thee so shall 
 his visage be inglorious among men, and his form 
 among the sons of men. He shall sprinkle many 
 nations. Kings shall shut their mouth at him : 
 for they to whom it was not told of him have 
 seen, and they that heard not have beheld." ' 
 And immediately after, Isaiah begins the descrip- 
 tion of the sufferings and ignominies of Calvary, 
 which he completes in twelve consecutive verses. 
 Then he continues resuming his hymns of tri- 
 umph : " He that hath made thee shall rule over 
 thee, the Lord of hosts is his name ; and thy 
 Redeemer, the holy One of Israel, shall be called 
 the God of all the earth." ■ 
 
 But it is at Babylon, during the captivity, six 
 hundred years before Jesus Christ, that the Mes- 
 sianic idea becomes invested with a form which 
 attains to mathematical clearness and precision. 
 Must I recall to you the prophecy of Daniel? 
 Listen then to it : " Seventy weeks are short- 
 ened upon thy people, and upon the holy city, 
 that transgression may be finished, and sin may 
 have an end, and everlasting justice may be 
 
 • Is. lii. 18-15. « Ibid. Hv. 5. 
 
183 
 
 brought, and vision and prophecy may be fulfil- 
 led, and the Saint of saints be anointed. Know 
 thou therefore and take notice that from the 
 going forth of the word to build up Jerusalem 
 again unto Christ the Prince, there shall be seven 
 weeks and sixty-two weeks : and the street shall 
 be built again, and the walls in the straitness of 
 times. And after sixty-two weeks Christ shall 
 be slain : and the people that shall deny him 
 shall not be his. And a people with their leader 
 that shall come shall destroy the city and the 
 sanctuary : and the end thereof shall be waste, 
 and after the end of the war the appointed deso- 
 lation. And he shall confirm the covenant with 
 many, in one week : and in the half of the week 
 the victim and the sacrifice shall fail: and there 
 shall be in the temple the abomination of deso- 
 lation : and the desolation shall continue even to 
 the consummation, and to the end." ' 
 
 I do not stop, gentlemen, to examine the strik- 
 ing features of this discourse, which resembles less 
 a vision of the future than a narration of the past. 
 The course of my subject bears me on and brings 
 me to the foot of the second temple, to hear, five 
 hundred years before Jesus Christ, those last 
 
 ■ Dan. ix. 34-27. 
 
184 
 
 words of the prophet Aggeus : " Yet one little 
 while, and I will move the heaven, and the earth, 
 ' and the sea, and the dry land, and I will move all 
 nations : and the Desired of all nations shall come : 
 and I will fill this house with glory, saith the Lord 
 of hosts. . . . Great shall be the glory of this last 
 house more than of the first, and in this place will 
 I give peace." ' 
 
 What continuity, gentlemen, through so many 
 eventful centuries ! What fidelity to one and the 
 same idea from so many men separated by ages ! 
 But the Messianic idea was not even confined 
 to the special tradition of the Jewish people; it 
 passed over Jordan, the Euphrates, the Indus, the 
 Mediterranean, all the oceans, and, borne upon 
 the invisible wings of Providence, it penetrated 
 all the most diverse and most distant nations, to 
 create among them a uniform hope and a univer- 
 sal remembrance. Confucius, at the eastern ex 
 tremity of Asia, spoke of a saint who, he said. 
 was the true saint, and who would appear in the 
 West. Virgil, translating into verse the oracles 
 of the Cumsean Sibyl, announced to the Augustan 
 age the coming of a mysterious child, a son of 
 Jupiter, destined to banish from the world the 
 
 Aggeas ii. 7-10. 
 
185 
 
 vestiges of iniquity, and to commence an order 
 of things as great as new. Tacitus, on the reign 
 of Vespasian, thus expresses himself: "It was a 
 widely-spread belief that, according to ancient 
 sacerdotal writings, at that very epoch, the East 
 should prevail, and that men come from Judaea 
 should seize the government of things." The ra- 
 tionalists of the eighteenth century, constrained 
 by evidence, have often avowed that unanimity of 
 the Messianic expectation. Voltaire said: "From 
 time immemorial it was a maxim among the 
 Indians and the Chinese that the sage would 
 come from the West ; Europe, on the contrary, 
 declared that the sage would come from the 
 East." 1 Volney said: "The sacred and myth- 
 ological traditions of former times had spread 
 throughout Asia the belief in a great mediator 
 who was to come, a final judge, a future saviour, 
 king, God, conqueror and legislator, who would 
 bring back again the golden age upon earth and 
 deliver men from the empire of evil." a Boulan- 
 ger, under a still more general form, confessed 
 that all nations held " an expectation of that na- 
 ture;" and he adds this astounding phrase : that 
 
 • " Additions a 1' Histoire Generate," page 15. 
 
 * " Les Ruinee," page 228. 
 
186 
 
 the East may be said to be " the pole of the hope 
 of all nations" * It is the very saying of Jacob 
 on his death-bed. 
 
 It is then certain, gentlemen, that the Messianic 
 idea was the life of the Jewish people during the 
 course of the two thousand years which preceded 
 Jesus Christ, and that idea was held among all 
 the nations of the earth with such unanimity, that 
 it is not even possible to account for it by the 
 communications of the Hebrews Math the Gen- 
 tiles, but it is necessary to suppose a diffusion of 
 that idea even anterior to Abraham. And that 
 Messianic idea, so extraordinary in its universal- 
 ity, its progress, its perseverance, and its preci- 
 sion, is it at length fulfilled ? Yes, it is fulfilled ; 
 the one God, creator of the Hebraic Bible, has 
 become the God of nearly all the earth ; and the 
 very nations that have not yet accepted him ren- 
 der homage to him by a certain number of adorers 
 whom Providence elects from their midst. And 
 who has accomplished this incredible revolution ? 
 One single man, Christ. And whence came this 
 man, Christ? He was a Jew, of the tribe of 
 Judah, of the house of David. And how has he 
 accomplished this prodigiotis social and religious 
 
 * "Recherclies sur 1' Origine du Despotisme oriental," section x. 
 
187 
 
 revolution ? By suffering and dying, as David, 
 Isaiah, Daniel, had foretold. 
 
 And now, gentlemen, what think you of it? 
 Here are two parallel and corresponding facts, 
 both certain, both of colossal proportion, one 
 which lasted two thousand years before Jesus 
 Christ, the other which has lasted eighteen hun- 
 dred years since Jesus Christ; one which an- 
 nounces a great revolution, and a revolution im- 
 possible to foresee, the other which is its accom- 
 plishment, both having Jesus Christ for principle, 
 for end, and for bond of union. Yet once more, 
 what think you of it ? Are you bold enough to 
 deny it ? But what would you deny ? The ex- 
 istence of the Messianic idea ? It is in the Jewish 
 people, still living, in all the continuous monu- 
 ments of its history, in the universal traditions 
 of the human race, in the most positive avowals 
 of the most profound unbelief. Would you deny 
 the anteriority of the prophetic details? The 
 Jews, who crucified Jesus Christ, and who have a 
 national and traditional interest in depriving him 
 of the proofs of his divinity, declare to you that 
 their Scriptures were formerly what they are now, 
 and for additional certainty, two hundred and 
 fifty years .before Jesus Christ, under Ptolemy 
 
188 
 
 Philadelphus, king of Egypt, all the Old Testa 
 ment, translated into Greek, fell into the posses- 
 sion of the Greek world, the Roman world, and 
 the whole civilized world. Would you turn to 
 the other pole of the question, and deny the ac- 
 complishment of the Messianic idea ? The Catho- 
 lic Church, the offspring of that idea, is before 
 your eyes — she has baptized you. Would you 
 stand upon the point of junction of those two 
 formidable events ? Would you deny that Jesus 
 Christ has verified the Messianic idea in his per- 
 son, that he was a Jew, of the tribe of Judah, of 
 the house of David, and the founder of the Catho- 
 lic Church upon the double ruin of the synagogue 
 and idolatry? The two interested parties — and 
 they are irreconcilable enemies — confess all this. 
 The Jew affirms it, and the Christian affirms it. 
 Would you say that this juncture of colossal 
 events at the precise point of Jesus Christ is the 
 result of chance ? Were it even so, chance is but 
 a brief and fortuitous accident — its definition ex 
 eludes the idea of continuity ; there is no chance 
 of two thousand years' duration and of eighteen 
 centuries added thereto. In fine, would you say 
 that it is the result of a long conspiracy, by which 
 the ambitious and theological Jewish people sought 
 
189 
 
 to create for itself a great existence i What ! a 
 conspiracy lasting two thousand years founded 
 upon a chief whom sixty generations had to wait 
 for, and whom it was necessary to create after 
 having so patiently waited for him ! Alas ! it is 
 no easy matter to conspire in favor of a living 
 man ; what must it be to conspire in favor of a 
 man who does not exist, and who, it is supposed, 
 will be born at an indefinite epoch ! And re- 
 mark that when that man came, the Jews cruci- 
 fied him — doubtless because his crucifixion formed 
 part of the conspiracy. Observe also that they 
 denied him after as well as before the crucifixion 
 — doubtless in order to secure the final success of 
 the conspiracy and all the success of ambition and 
 theology which they expected therefrom ! 
 
 Gentlemen, when God works there is nothing 
 to be done against him. The proportions of the 
 work of Christ in the times which preceded him 
 are yet more striking than all the divine propor- 
 tions of his life and his after-life. For, in fine, 
 when a man lives, he is a power, he has an 
 action ; it is possible to conceive that certain cir- 
 cumstances may have favored a man of rare 
 genius, and have given him great ascendancy 
 over his contemporaries Even after death there 
 
190 
 
 remain friends, disciples, the remembrance of an 
 existence which was real, and consequently a sur- 
 viving means of action. But what are we able 
 to do upon that which precedes us, upon the 
 past ? Who among us, however eminent he may 
 be, is able to make an ancestor for himself? 
 Who among us, desiring to found a doctrine, is 
 able to create for himself an avant-garde of gen- 
 erations already faithful to a teaching which had 
 not yet been heard ? Who among us will pre- 
 sent his doctrinal ancestry to the world, if he be 
 not truly the son of a doctrine anterior to him- 
 self ? Ah ! the past is a land closed against us ; 
 the past is not even a place wherein God can act, 
 unless he act there beforehand and by way of 
 preparation. Had Jesus Christ been like one of 
 us, fallen without a providential pre-existence 
 between the past and the future, he would in 
 vain have demanded from history accomplished 
 and closed a pedestal which would bear him 
 back twenty centuries beyond his cradle. In- 
 stead of this, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, 
 Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, a whole people, 
 the human race itself, came to meet and salute 
 him in the arms of the aged Simeon, exclaiming 
 in the name of al . the past, of which he is the 
 
191 
 
 last representative : " Now lettest thou thy ser 
 vant depart, O Lord, according to thy word, in 
 peace. Because mine eyes have seen thy salva- 
 tion, which thou hast prepared before the face of 
 all people : a light to lighten the Gentiles, and 
 the glory of thy people Israel." ' 
 
 We have reached the summit, gentlemen ; 
 Jesus Christ appears before us as the moving 
 principle of the past as well as of the future, the 
 soul of the times which preceded him as well 
 as of the times which follow him. He appears 
 before us in his ancestry, upheld by the Jewish 
 people, the most important social and religious 
 monument of ancient times ; and in his posterity, 
 upheld by the Catholic Church, the greatest social 
 and religious work of modern times. He ap- 
 pears before us, holding in his left hand the Old 
 Testament, the greatest book of the times which 
 preceded him, and in his right hand the Gospel, 
 the greatest book of the times which come after 
 him. And yet, so preceded, and so followed, he 
 is still greater in himself than his ancestors and 
 his posterity, than the patriarchs and the proph- 
 ets, than the apostles and the martyrs. Sup- 
 ported by all that is most illustrious before and 
 
 i St. Luke ii. 29-32. 
 
192 
 
 after him, his personal physiognomy still stands 
 out from this sublime scene, and, by outshining 
 that which seemed above all, reveals to us the 
 God who has neither model nor equal. There- 
 fore, in presence of this triple sign of divinity — 
 before, during, and after — in ancestry, in posterity, 
 and even during life, let us stand up, gentlemen, 
 let us all stand up together, whoever we may be, 
 believers and unbelievers. Let us stand up, be- 
 lievers, with feelings of respect, admiration, faith, 
 love, for a God who has revealed himself to us 
 with so much evidence, and who has chosen us 
 among men to be the depositaries of that splen- 
 did manifestation of his truth ! And you who 
 do not believe stand up also, but with fear and 
 trembling, as men who are but as nothing with 
 their power and their reasoning, before facts 
 which fill all ages, and which are in themselves 
 so full of the power and majesty of God ! 
 
THE EFFORTS OF RATIONALISM TO DESTROY 
 THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 My Lord — Gentlemen, 
 
 Jesus Cheist lived as God, he has outlived 
 himself as God, he pre-existed as God ; he pre- 
 existed in the Jewish people, he has expressed 
 his life in the Gospel, he has outlived that life in 
 the Church ; and it is this triple circle of his 
 manifestation that has rendered his divinity tri- 
 umphant here below. As soon as the human 
 race possessed full consciousness of this, it be- 
 came, so to say, overwhelmed by such a demon- 
 stration, and from Theodosius to Louis XIV. — 
 for the space of thirteen hundred years — discus- 
 sion seemed impossible against Christ — in this 
 sense at least, that all yielded to him, or accepted 
 him as their foundation. But, this time having 
 passed, rationalism, which had been dethroned by 
 Jesus Christ, attempted to claim again the empire 
 it had lost ; it thought that, as ages had covered 
 all that formidable edifice with their billows, 
 some chances were possible in favor of doubt and 
 
194 
 
 negation, and that the eighteenth century of the 
 Christian era could be called upon to render will- 
 ing reprisals and new judgments against a doc- 
 trine grown old by time. Rationalism thus found 
 itself again in presence of Jesus Christ, standing 
 himself between the Catholic Church and the 
 Jewish people, as between the right and left 
 wings of truth ; and a triple war was planned, in 
 order to overthrow the work whose building up 
 was in past times accomplished in spite of the 
 powerless efforts which were now to be renewed. 
 The Jewish people was described as a vile, an ig- 
 noble, an odious race, unworthy of any credit or 
 respect; the Catholic Church as an instrument of 
 misery for the people, of bondage for the intelli- 
 gence, of subjection for nations and kings. I 
 have defended the Church before you, gentlemen, 
 for many long years ; yesterday, I restored the 
 true physiognomy of the Jewish people ; I shall 
 not return to either of these during these discus- 
 sions. Jesus Christ calls me to-day into the very 
 heart of the combat of which he is the object and 
 the chief. The Jewish people was composed of 
 men, and so is also the Catholic Church ; and, 
 however great men may be, they are not alto- 
 gether exempt, even when bearing in their hearts 
 
1«J5 
 
 the Spirit of God, from some failing and some 
 infirmity; it is not so with Christ. Miraculous 
 in his perfection, he does not suffer, as the Gospel 
 shows him, any human doubt; and if he really 
 stands upon that faultless pedestal, it is vain for 
 rationalism to fulminate, on the right hand and 
 on the left, its powerless thunder against him. 
 Christ, impassible in the centre of Catholic truth, 
 shelters all under his impregnable divinity. It 
 was, then, necessary to destroy Jesus Christ, either 
 by annihilating his life, by perverting it, or at least 
 by explaining it away. This has been attempted, 
 gentlemen ; and the exposition of this triple effort 
 will terminate our conferences for this year. Let 
 us commence with the most decisive of the three 
 — that which had for its object the annihilation 
 of the life of Christ. 
 
 Is Christ a chimera or a reality ? Does he be- 
 long to fable or to history ? This is the question. 
 It may astonish you, gentlemen, and yet it is se- 
 rious ; for clever men have boldly denied the ex- 
 istence of Jesus Christ ; and others, without ven- 
 turing to this extreme audacity, have sought at 
 least to weaken the certainty of his life, and art- 
 fully to lessen its historical splendor. It becomes 
 necessary, then, to place, or rather to maintain, 
 
196 
 
 Jesus Christ in history ; and to this end we must 
 first of all learn the nature and the laws of his- 
 tory; for as long as we are unacquainted with 
 them, it will be impossible for us to decide 
 whether Jesus Christ is or is not a historical per- 
 sonage. I proceed, then, to treat of history ; we 
 shall afterwards see whether Christ is present in 
 it or absent from it. 
 
 Man lives in time, that is to say, in a singular 
 element, which causes him at the same time to 
 live and to die ; he advances between a past 
 which is no more and a future yet to come ; and 
 if he did not possess the faculty of concentrating 
 in himself these three states of his existence, he 
 would be but incessantly coming into the world 
 without ever attaining to the possession of life. 
 For hardly would he have made a step in ad- 
 vance before forgetfulness would have obliter- 
 ated its traces, and thus he would be constantly 
 before himself like a vapor rising from the earth 
 and vanishing away. Against this terrible power 
 of time, God has given him memory, by which 
 man lives in the past as well as in the present ; 
 so that resuscitating his ancient days at pleasure, 
 he beholds himself in the plenitude of his person- 
 ality, like an edifice whose stones have been 
 
!;»; 
 
 placed successively but which the eye surveys 
 and perceives entire. Now the memory that suf- 
 fices for the life of a single man is not sufficient 
 for mankind ; whilst man is one, with a memory 
 subsisting as long as himself, mankind is multi- 
 ple, and its memory expires with each generation, 
 or at most but little of it is transmitted to the 
 future generation. The father tells the son what 
 he has seen, the son relates it to the grandson, 
 but at each stage remembrance grows more ob- 
 scure, and little by little the light of that tradi- 
 tion brightens only the distant heights of the 
 most important events. It ends, however, by 
 becoming defaced ; its lines grow confused to the 
 eyes of a posterity continually retreating before 
 them ; and if God did not intervene to bring help 
 to the human race losing all traces of itself, we 
 should be living in an eternal state of infancy, 
 between a past about which we are untaught and 
 a future entirely unknown to us. Experience, the 
 source of all progress, would constantly be want- 
 ing. Neither truth nor error, neither good nor evil 
 would be known, save by a puerile combat recom- 
 mencing always at the same point — a spectacle un- 
 worthy of man, unworthy of God — where truth 
 and good, having no adequate field of action, 
 
198 
 
 would never be able to display their characters 
 of stability and immortality. God, who, by mem- 
 ory, had provided for the progressive identity of 
 man, should evidently have provided also for the. 
 continuous perpetuity of the human race by a 
 memory conformable to the destinies of this vast 
 body, that is to say, by a united, a universal, a 
 certain memory, capable of giving to mankind 
 complete consciousness of its works from the be- 
 ginning to the end. In so speaking, gentlemen, 
 I have defined history. 
 
 History is the life of mankind present to itself, 
 as our life is present to us ; history is the memory 
 of the world. But what difficulties lie in the 
 way of its formation ! God lights a torch in our 
 intelligence which enlightens our past, because he 
 is our intelligence itself, one and indivisible ; but 
 how is the human race, multiple and divided, to 
 be endowed with a similar light? How is an 
 immortal memory to be given to the human race 
 which dies daily ? An immutable memory to 
 that which is but change? A certain memory to 
 that which doubts so easily about all that it does 
 not see? God provided for this in giving us 
 writing. By means of writing, a thing once said 
 may be always heard, a spectacle once witnessed" 
 
199 
 
 may be always visible ; writing seizes the pas- 
 sing wave and renders it eternal. This is already 
 immortality and immutability, but it is not yet 
 certainty. For the false can be written as well 
 as the true. A thing may indeed be written, 
 but who will guarantee its truth to us? A man 
 two thousand years ago writes a book, wherein 
 he relates things which he says he witnessed : 
 who will prove to us that he speaks the truth, 
 and that a fable has not reached us under the 
 seeming garb of history? Evidently, writing 
 alone does not answer to this question ; history 
 begins with it, but it is not history in all its ele- 
 ments. History, if there be any, should com- 
 mand our minds with the same authority as the 
 other powers which have received a mission to 
 govern them. As there is a moral force in the 
 world which does not permit us to say it is law- 
 ful for the child to kill his father, a mathematical 
 force which does not permit us to build a house 
 upon a plan without equilibrium, so also there 
 should exist in the world a historical force which 
 would not permit us to say to history : Thou hast 
 spoken falsely. If this force exist not, there is 
 no history. 
 
 "What are, then, the conditions of history ; or 
 
200 
 
 rather what are the conditions of a historical 
 writing ? For writing is the fundamental, per- 
 sisting, substantial element of history. Without 
 writing, there remains to us nothing but tradi- 
 tion more or less confused ; but as writing may- 
 deceive, it is needful that we should know the 
 conditions which elevate writing to the state of 
 historical writing, that is to say, to the state of 
 authentic, certain, infallible, true writing. These 
 conditions are three in number. 
 
 In the first place, writing must be public. All 
 that is secret is without authority; every myste- 
 rious document is valueless because it has not 
 been verified. Nothing of this is powerful but 
 by public verification. The people form the only 
 notary capable of certifying their own history, 
 because they form the assemblage of all ages, of 
 all ideas, of all interests, and because a popular 
 conspiracy formed to lie to posterity is even im- 
 possible to conceive. A man fabricates error ; a 
 people has too many diverse ideas and passions 
 to be able to combine together to deceive future 
 generations. Moreover a people never stands 
 alone; it exists among contemporary peoples 
 whose history is blended with its own, and even 
 were it capable of unanimous falsification, it 
 
201 
 
 would inevitably call forth the protestation of 
 the very age under whose eyes it would have in- 
 augurated its conspiracy. 
 
 The second condition of writing, in order for 
 it to attain to the state of history, is that it must 
 bear upon public events. Every fact that is not 
 public does not belong to the domain of history, 
 for the reason I have just given ; for who has 
 witnessed a fact that is not public? a single 
 man, three men if you will, but history cannot 
 be based upon the testimony either of a single 
 man, or of three men ; this is not history, it is 
 only memory. Memory bears upon private facts, 
 whilst history bears upon public events. For 
 example, that Louis XIV. conquered Flanders, 
 Alsace, Lorraine, that he joined these provinces 
 to the kingdom of France, first by force of arms, 
 then by treaties, is history ; these are events 
 which interested France and all the nations of 
 Europe, and which had a hundred millions of 
 men for spectators. But that Louis XIV. in his 
 chamber at Versailles said something in presence 
 of M. le Due de Saint Simon, which is related 
 in the works of that talented person, is nothing 
 more than memory. Doubtless this secondary 
 element enters largely into the formation of the 
 
202 
 
 annals of the human race, because we should not 
 be satisfied with recitals wherein only the main 
 features of historical architecture would be visi- 
 ble; we are attracted more even by the private 
 details than by the general movements of the 
 world : they approach nearer to our personal ex- 
 istence, and cause the most eminent personages 
 of past times to descend even to us. Moreover, 
 although destitute of the solemn certainty of 
 history, they are not always without a grave 
 sanction, although of an inferior order ; private 
 acts become interwoven with public acts ; numer- 
 ous concurring witnesses establishes each other's 
 statements ; and the whole advances in a manner 
 not too unequal. Nevertheless, as soon as abso- 
 lute historical certainty is aspired to, it is neces- 
 sary to separate the two elements, and to give to 
 the former, by that separation, all its force and 
 all its lustre. 
 
 The third condition necessary to raise writing 
 to the state of history, is that the events should 
 blend together and form a public and general 
 web. Nothing is isolated in the events of this 
 world ; they are connected with each other by a 
 chain of succession similar to that which unites 
 ideas in the logical tissue of a discourse. History 
 
203 
 
 should reproduce that continuous generation in 
 such a manner that all the facts it relates should 
 enter naturally into the course of things of which 
 the progressive whole constitutes the life of the 
 human race. A solitary fact is not a historical 
 fact; it has no real place, it floats in air. Still 
 much less should we give this name to a fact 
 which cannot take its place in the general web of 
 history without deranging its whole economy; 
 this is the infallible sign of imposture. The force 
 of history, like the force of every other real order 
 is in its completeness and unity. When a man 
 stands alone, he is nothing ; when a fact stands 
 alone, it is nothing. But let a man enter into 
 association with others, they form a family, a 
 people, the whole human race. And, in like 
 manner, when a fact enters into historical associa- 
 tion with others, and not with others only, but 
 with all the rest, let it become necessary to the 
 general web of history, so that history cannot be 
 constructed without that fact, then it possesses 
 not only the force of a historical fact, but the 
 force of all history; we must accept it or deny 
 the entire life of the human race. 
 
 The three elements of history are, then, public 
 writing, public events, public web of events ; and 
 
204 
 
 when these three elements are united, I affirm 
 that history exists, and that it cannot be resisted 
 without resisting the very force of common sense. 
 In effect, gentlemen, for history to be false in this 
 case see what must be possible : that a man, no 
 matter who, relating in public events of a public 
 nature, those events supposed to be false must be 
 received as true, and, notwithstanding their falsity, 
 be interwoven in the general web of history. Now 
 this is altogether impossible, and nothing is more 
 easy than to prove it to you. Allow me only one 
 supposition. I suppose that to-morrow morning 
 it may please me to publish a work the substance 
 of which I thus sum up. On the 1st of January, 
 1847, France declared war against the three great 
 continental powers of Europe. The object of this 
 war was to re-establish the rights of nations and 
 faith in treaties compromised by acts of violence. 
 The hostile armies met on the plains of Mayence. 
 France had six hundred thousand men under 
 aims, the enemy had a million. The battle lasted 
 ten consecutive days; on the morning of the 
 tenth day the French were victorious. The, pleni- 
 potentiaries of Europe assembled at Mayence, 
 and signed a treaty which put an end to the wai 
 by a new partition of the European continent. 
 
205 
 
 1 ask you, gentlemen, do you believe that this 
 political romance would have any chance of im- 
 posing upon posterity ? Is it not manifest that 
 France would treat it with the deepest scorn ? If 
 France accepted it, is it not manifest that the 
 whole of Europe would hold it up to public de- 
 rision? And if, by an act of universal folly, 
 France and Europe consented to invest it with 
 an absurd authority, is it not manifest that it 
 would be found impossible to introduce it into 
 the web of history, since the state of all contem- 
 porary affairs, and, consequently, of all future 
 affairs, would be in contradiction with that pre- 
 tended war and that fictitious treaty ? To sus- 
 tain falsehood, perpetual falsehood is necessary ; 
 and the conspiracy of a single moment against 
 truth would require a conspiracy continued to 
 the end of the world. The impossibility of such 
 a concurrence and of such perseverance in a uni- 
 versal imposture is not only a moral impossibility, 
 but a metaphysical and an absolute impossibility. 
 
 Now, gentlemen, to whatever epoch in the his- 
 tory of mankind we may turn, that impossibility 
 would be the same. In all times and places, pub- 
 lic writing describing public events which natur- 
 ally range themselves in the general course of 
 
206 
 
 history would be authentic and true, because in 
 all times and places it would have been impossible 
 under such circumstances to deceive the human 
 race in regard to its own life, or to persuade it to 
 deceive itself without object and against all rea- 
 son. And — mark it well, gentlemen — history 
 once existing, time has not the privilege of lessen- 
 ing its force ; so far from lessening, it confirms it. 
 I say, first, that it does not lessen its force ; and as 
 proof I propose this to you : Think of Caesar, then 
 think of Louis XIV., and ask yourselves whether 
 the historical certainty of Louis XIV. and the 
 historical certainty of Caesar differ in the slightest 
 degree in your mind. Evidently, they do not 
 differ; and yet seventeen centuries separate Louis 
 XIV. from Caesar. But those seventeen centuries 
 vanish from your thought by the electrical glance 
 which suddenly carries it from the one to the 
 other, and causes it to perceive not only that 
 the historical basis of Caesar is the same as the 
 historical basis of Louis XIV., but also that 
 in doubting in regard to the first it would be 
 needful to doubt the second, since without Caesar 
 history would lose all its connection, and there- 
 with the principal cause of its reality. I say 
 still more, I say that time confirms, instead of 
 
207 
 
 lessening the certainty of history. And why so 1 
 Because time at every step unfolds the historical 
 canvas, and because each point of history entering 
 into participation with the united force of the 
 whole, the more that force increases by the reper- 
 cussion of events upon each other, the more each 
 particular point becomes settled, sustained and 
 extended. Thus, Moses has been consolidated by 
 Jesus Christ ; for although Moses wrote publicly 
 on public events, the web of h istory was short in 
 his time, and wanted breadth ; and when Jesus 
 Christ took his place there, his presence lighted 
 up the Mosaic past, as the Christian future had in 
 its turn to reflect back again even to Jesus Christ. 
 Whence it follows that we do not advance a 
 step in the present time without again bearing 
 to Moses the glory of a new confirmation, because 
 in all that we do he supports us, and we in our 
 turn explain all that he has done. The thread 
 of history unceasingly goes and returns from the 
 past to the future, from the future to the past ; 
 and that which we see with our eyes will be 
 more clear to our posterity than it is to us, be- 
 cause upon the canvas which represents us they 
 will complete designs which have not yet left the 
 hands of the workmen. Like a building that 
 
208 
 
 covers its foundations, so is history ; as land that 
 grows firm by being trodden upon, so also is his 
 tory under the footsteps of generations. In a 
 word, time, which seemed the greatest enemy of 
 history, as soon as history is founded, protects 
 and consolidates it. 
 
 But does history exist? Is all that we have 
 just said anything but a magnificent speculation ? 
 Does the human race know its own life 1 Is there 
 in the world a history of the world \ This, gen- 
 tlemen, is to ask if there exist public writings 
 containing a long web of public events; now 
 these writings and this web of events are before 
 your eyes. Mankind learns its primitive life by 
 certain fundamental traditions collected in due 
 time and confirmed by their universality; it 
 learns its subsequent life from Moses by an 
 unbroken history which advanced in constant 
 development. From Moses to Herodotus is the 
 dawn of history; from Herodotus to Tacitus its 
 morning ; Tacitus is its noon, and that noonday 
 still lasts. It is even become more striking for 
 the last three centuries, through a celebrated in- 
 vention which has greatly increased the publicity 
 and immortality of writing. As God had given 
 writing to our fathers when tradition was in dan 
 
209 
 
 ger of growing obscure, he gave printing to them 
 when writing itself was also menaced with be- 
 coming forgotten and confused from the supera- 
 bundance of documents. Printing saved history 
 fifteen hundred years after Jesus Christ, as writing 
 saved tradition fifteen hundred years before him. 
 
 Such being the case, gentlemen, and history 
 having existed for thirty centuries, it remains to 
 be seen whether Jesus Christ does or does not 
 form a part of history. I affirm that he is in his- 
 tory, and that none other in the world holds in it 
 a place more important or more certain than his 
 own. 
 
 What have I to do, gentlemen, in order to prove 
 this? Evidently three things: I have to show 
 that the life of Jesus Christ is contained in a pub- 
 lic writing, that it is a tissue of public events, 
 and that it enters naturally into the public web 
 of history. 
 
 Now the life of Jesus Christ is contained in the 
 Gospels, and the Gospels form a public writing; 
 this is my first proposition. But you at once ask 
 me where I find the proof that the Gospels form a 
 public writing. Is it not, say you, in the Gospels 
 themselves \ And do you not thus prove the 
 question by another question ? Gentlemen, if the 
 
210 
 
 Gospels commenced or formed the whole of his- 
 tory it would, perhaps, be difficult to reply to 
 you ; but you have not, I think, so soon forgotten 
 that history existed before Jesus Christ ; and God, 
 who willed to give us the certainty of the exist- 
 ence and works of his Son, had apparently pre- 
 pared the ground upon which we were one day to 
 meet him. That ground is history; and at the 
 time in which the life of Jesus Christ is placed, 
 that is to say about the time of Augustus, history 
 held a position in the world which did not de- 
 pend upon us. It is not Catholics who make his- 
 tory; it is made without us and against us. It 
 was in the hands of our enemies, and if we then 
 began the history of the Church, that of the world 
 continued its course upon a plan which was not 
 ours, and in which no power was reserved to us. 
 Now this is the history that I invoke to establish 
 the publicity of the Gospels ; and first of all I 
 rest upon an observation which I consider fun- 
 damental ; the Gospels, I say, were public writ- 
 ings, because they belonged to a public doctrinal 
 society. 
 
 That the first Christians formed a doctrinal 
 society is clear of itself; that that society was 
 public is also beyond doubt ; nevertheless it is 
 
211 
 
 necessary to establish this in the most positive 
 manner, for it is the groundwork of the whole 
 matter. It can indeed be conceived that a few 
 men, secretly united, and preaching a secret doc- 
 trine, may have been able secretly to prepare a 
 mysterious book, which had not been subject to 
 any investigation, and which was spread from 
 hand to hand, gaining authority with time. But 
 if the Christian community was from the very 
 first public; if, from the morrow of the death of 
 Christ, his Apostles appeared in the public places 
 of Judsea, and soon after in the public places of 
 the Roman empire, provoking, not an occult war, 
 but a visible and notorious struggle ; if they said 
 boldly to the Jews : " Jesus of Nazareth, a man 
 approved of God among you, by miracles and 
 wonders and signs, which God did by him in the 
 midst of you, as you also know ; this same being 
 delivered up, by the determinate counsel and 
 foreknowledge of God, you, by the hands of 
 wicked men, have crucified and slain. Whom 
 God hath raised up ; " ' if, being dragged before 
 all the tribunals of the empire, when asked who 
 they were, they answered : "We are Christians 
 that is to say, the children of Christ, who has 
 
 > Acts ii. 23-34. 
 
212 
 
 been put to death, but whom the arm of God — 
 more powerful than all the conspiracies of men — 
 has raised from his tomb, and elevated to be for 
 ever the head and chief of all nations; if they 
 said this, if it be certain that they said this — cer- 
 tain, not only from our writings, but from writ- 
 ings derived from strangers, from our enemies, by 
 a multitude of documents — I shall have the right 
 to conclude that the Christian society, at its be- 
 ginning, was a public society, and that, differing 
 from so many things formed in secret — because 
 they have no faith in their strength and legitimacy 
 — the Catholic Church began in publicity, as she 
 has continued in publicity. 
 
 Let us come to the proof, and hear Tacitus, the 
 most celebrated of historians — Tacitus, charged 
 by God to grave in history the certificate of the 
 birth and death of his only Son Jesus Christ. 
 Twenty-seven years after that great drama of Cal- 
 vary, Nero was pleased to burn Eome ; and to 
 hide the horror of that abominable action, he 
 caused to be seized, says Tacitus, an " immense 
 multitude of men" — estgens multitudo. Who 
 were those men ? Tacitus defines them : they 
 were men " whom the common people called 
 Christians" — qttos vulgus christianos apella- 
 
213 
 
 bat. Remark this word vulgus; twenty-seven 
 years after the death of Christ the name of his 
 disciples was common in Rome, the capital of the 
 world. But what were Christians ? Tacitus 
 tells us : " the author of this name was Christ " — 
 auctoe nomiwis iiujus Christus. You hear, gen- 
 tlemen, you hear ; and the date of this text, which 
 has never been contested by any one, is authen- 
 tic ; it is marked by the burning of Rome, in 
 the year 64 of the Christian era, that is to say, 
 twenty-seven years after the death of Jesus Christ. 
 But is this all ? No ; you will hear more, you 
 will hear the Apostles' Creed, written by the pen 
 and with the ink of Tacitus. The historian had 
 to say who Christ was ; he continues, then : 
 "They derived their name and origin from Christ, 
 who, in the reign of Tiberius, had suffered death 
 by the sentence of the procurator Pontius Pilate " 
 
 AUCTOR NOMINTS HUJDS ChBISTUS, QUI, TlBEEIO 
 
 IMPEBITANTE, PEE PEOCURATOREM PoNTIUM PlLA- 
 
 ttjm supplicio affectus erat. Once more, is it 
 Tacitus who speaks, or is it the Apostles' Creed ? 
 The Apostles' Creed says : Qui passus est sub 
 Pontio Pilato ; Tacitus says : Qui pee procura- 
 torem Pontium Pilatum supplicio affectus 
 erat. It is indeed Tacitus — a stranger, a pao-an, 
 
214 
 
 a man who, in writing these things in indestruct- 
 ible memorials, did not even know what he said. 
 And what said he of the Christians, of that 
 immense multitude whom the common people 
 called Christians ? He said this of them, in the 
 same text : " For a while this dire superstition was 
 checked ; but it again burst forth, and not only 
 spread itself over Judaea, the first seat of this 
 evil, but even in Eome " — -eepkessaque in vrm- 
 
 SENS EXITIALIS SUPEESTITIO EUESUS EBUMPEBAT, 
 NON MODO PEE JlJDiEAM OBIGINEM HUJUS MALI, 
 
 sed pee Uebem etiam. What a text, gentle- 
 men ! what precision ! what matter in two lines ! 
 Twenty-seven years, then, after the death of 
 Christ, the Christians formed an immense multi- 
 tude in Eome, they were commonly known by 
 their true name ; even before this epoch they had 
 already been repressed by public authority, but 
 that repression did not hinder them from spread- 
 ing with such power, that Tacitus calls it an 
 irruption ; they appeared before the tribunals, 
 and there bore testimony to their faith ; for 
 Tacitus adds that they were seized " upon their 
 own avowal" — peimo cobeepti qui fatebantue. 
 They were " odious to all " — -iptvisos : and their 
 morals differed so much from general morals 
 
215 
 
 that, according to the remark of the historian 
 " they were less convicted of the crime of revolt 
 than of hatred of the human kind " — haud per- 
 
 INDE IN CRIMINE INCENDII, QUAM 0DI0 HUMANI GEN- 
 
 eeis convicti sunt." And Tacitus knew all this : 
 he knew the life of Jesus Christ ; he knew 
 Pontius Pilate ; the drama of Calvary was pres- 
 ent to him. 
 
 Would you have another proof of the public 
 life of Christians from the very origin of Chris- 
 tianity ? God and history will not refuse it to 
 you. In the year 98 of the Christian era — sixty- 
 one years after the death of Jesus Christ — Trajan 
 mounts the throne ; and history brings us a letter 
 of one of his proconsuls on the subject of the 
 Christians, the proconsul of Bithynia and Pontus, 
 Pliny the Younger, a celebrated man. For, ob 
 serve, gentlemen, when God wills to write his 
 tory, he is not unskilful in choosing his historians 
 We have just heard Tacitus ; let us now hear 
 Pliny the Younger, in an official letter to Trajan 
 He writes to the emperor to consult him about the 
 measures to be taken against Christians ; for, says 
 he, " I have never had to deal with cases of this 
 kind, and I know not what it is the custom to 
 
 '"Annals," book 15. 
 
216 
 
 pursue and punish in them, or in what degree. I 
 have no little difficulty in ascertaining whether it 
 is needful to take account of difference of age or 
 to be indifferent to it ; whether pardon is to be 
 granted on repentance, or whether it is useless to 
 cease to be a Christian after having once pro- 
 fessed Christianity ; whether it is the name which 
 is to be pursued, even when exempt from crime, 
 or the crime attached to the name." What ques- 
 tions, gentlemen, for an able and good man ! A 
 name criminal ! Crimes attached to a name ! 
 But what could he do \ Pliny found in his way 
 customs already inveterate against a society of 
 men in open struggle with the Roman empire ; 
 and we perceive, even in the absurd things which 
 he says, a desire to be as lenient as possible with- 
 out offending the emperor. His letter ends with 
 the remark, " that a great number of persons of 
 every age, rank, and sex were compromised, and 
 that others would be ; that not only the cities, 
 but the towns and villages, were overrun with 
 that contagious superstition ; that, in fine, the 
 deserted temples, and the sacred ceremonies 
 which had for a long time been interrupted, began 
 to revive, in consequence of the measures taken 
 against the Christians." 
 
217 
 
 This picture, gentlemen, joined to that of Taci 
 tus, leaves no doubt upon the capital point before 
 us, namely, that from the origin of Christianity, 
 the Christians lived in a publicly-constituted soci- 
 ety. And, moreover, the very result obtained by 
 them in the short space of three centuries is a su- 
 perabundant proof of it. At the end of three cen- 
 turies, the Christians were masters of the Roman 
 empire ; they bore to the throne the first Caesar 
 who embraced their faith, and, not content with 
 this prodigy of their power, they said to Constan- 
 tine: Withdraw to the Bosphorus, for here, in 
 Rome, the chair of St. Peter, the fisherman of Gal- 
 lilee, must be placed. And Constantine, from in- 
 stinctive obedience to that unexpressed command 
 of Providence, withdrew, and so bore, even to the 
 borders of the Euxine, a proof, still subsisting, of 
 the social mission of Jesus Christ. Now, gentle- 
 men, no secret society has ever been capable of 
 such success. All that begins in secret is accom- 
 plished in secret. "When men speak to you of 
 a secret society, it is as if they told you that 
 nothing had formed an association. Doubtless 
 these secret conspiracies may work secretly, shake 
 the foundations of states, prepare the day of ruins ; 
 but they never attain to a regulated and public 
 10 
 
218 
 
 life. All that begins in darkness is struck with 
 incapacity to live in open air and in open day. 
 Therefore the attainment of empire by the Chris- 
 tian society, under Constantine, is of itself a suf- 
 ficient proof that the Christian work was a con- 
 stantly public work. 
 
 But if the first Christians formed a public 
 society, and at the same time a doctrinal society, 
 it necessarily follows that their writings were 
 public. Endeavor to conceive a public doctrinal 
 society which hides its writings ; you will never 
 succeed. For how would it be public, if it did not 
 boldly proclaim what it believed, and how would 
 it proclaim what it believed, if it secreted its writ- 
 ings, and those even which formed the foundation 
 of its faith ? Although the Gospels may not have 
 been written on the very instant after the death 
 and resurrection of Jesus Christ, they were pub- 
 lished over the whole world by the preaching of 
 the Apostles, and when they appeared succes- 
 sively, the young and living tradition became 
 blended with them in one and the same authentic- 
 ity. A contest of nearly three hundred years 
 began upon the very text of the Gospels between 
 Catholics on one hand, and heretics and philoso- 
 phers on the other. This contest has left very 
 
219 
 
 numerous monuments. We see, then, Celsus and 
 Porphyry following step by step upon the Gos- 
 pels, the life of the Saviour. They do not dispute 
 their publicity or their authenticity. Heretics do 
 something more. Not only do they discuss upon 
 the text consecrated by the adhesion of the Church, 
 but they fabricate for themselves apocryphal Gos- 
 pels to oppose them to the approved Gospels, so 
 true is it that the whole discussion bore upon those 
 fundamental texts. They were simple enough to 
 make for themselves an arm against us of apocry- 
 phal Gospels, that is to say, to invoke against 
 Jesus Christ books wherein the principal myste 
 ries of his life and death were recognized, and 
 where the very alteration of certain passages 
 served but to prove so much the more the truth 
 of the whole. It is very natural that great pub- 
 licity should call forth counterfeits ; this is even 
 the greatest sign of success. Every idea, every 
 style, every fashion that succeeds, raises up a cloud 
 of imitators or speculators. But what is that to 
 the man or to the thing which is the object of 
 such effort ? At least, it is not publicity which 
 suffers from it ; now, the publicity of the life of 
 Jesus Christ by the Gospels and the primitive 
 Christian books is precisely the point that I de 
 
220 
 
 sired to establish, and I do not think you wil] 
 require more from me. 
 
 The life of Jesus Christ was, from the first, sur 
 rounded by immense publicity. His disciples, 
 from the first, formed a public society ; their pro 
 fession of faith, their writings filled all the tribu 
 nals and all the schools of the earth ; and finally 
 in three centuries, the emperor was publicly Chris 
 tian, and the vicar of Jesus Christ was publicly 
 seated in Rome. All this is as certain in profane 
 history as in Christian history. This first point is 
 gained. 
 
 As to the events which compose the very life 
 of Jesus Christ, their nature is also that of mani- 
 fest and striking publicity. What was in ques- 
 tion ? "Was it a philosopher teaching certain dis- 
 ciples under a porch or in a garden ? Was it but 
 a Socrates, however celebrated he may be? No; 
 it was a question of a man, the founder of a new 
 religion, a thing that touched all — traditions, laws, 
 customs, sentiments, even the most sacred inter- 
 ests ; it was of a man the founder of an exclusive 
 religion, and who designed nothing less than the 
 overthrow of all existing religious and sacerdotal 
 bodies; it was of a man working, it was said, 
 in public unheard-of miracles, and accompanied 
 
221 
 
 everywhere by an innumerable multitude, at- 
 tracted by his works and his doctrine ; it was of 
 a man called before the supreme tribunal of his 
 country, condemned, put to death, and afterwards, 
 it was said, raised again from the dead, and who 
 sent his disciples to the moral conquest of the 
 world ; it was of a man having succeeded in rais- 
 ing up an unshaken faith in the hearts of a multi- 
 tude of men of all nations, and become, by his 
 name alone, the rallying-point of a new society. 
 If ever there were public events, assuredly they 
 were these. 
 
 And these events, which contradicted all the 
 past life of the human race — which must, conse- 
 quently, if they were false, have been rejected 
 from the general web of history by an invincible 
 impossibility of ever forming a part therein — have 
 they or have they not taken their place in that 
 rigorous chain of the human life during three 
 thousand years ? They have done more than this, 
 gentlemen ; without them history is an incompre- 
 hensible enigma. What, indeed, is the principal 
 question of history, from Moses to Pius IX., those 
 two extreme terms of the. world's annals ? Is it 
 the rise and fall of the empires of Assyria, the 
 Trojan war, the conquests of Alexander, the for 
 
222 
 
 tunes of the Romans, the rise of modern nations,, 
 the discovery of America, the progress of science 
 and history in modern times ? No ; none of these 
 questions, however vast they may be, is the prin- 
 cipal question of history, the one that embraces 
 the totality of the three thousand years that live 
 in the memory of mankind. The principal ques- 
 tion, because it contains all, the past, the present, 
 and the future, is this : the world having lived in 
 idolatry in the times before Augustus, how has it 
 become Christian since his time? These are the 
 two sides that divide all history, the side of anti- 
 quity, and the side of later ages ; the one idola- 
 ter, plunged into the most licentious materialism ; 
 the other Christian, purified at the sources of a 
 complete spirituality. In the ancient world the 
 flesh publicly prevailed over the spirit; in the 
 present, the spirit publicly prevails over the flesh. 
 "What has caused this? Who has produced a 
 change so great and so general in extent between 
 the two periods of mankind ? Who has so greatly 
 modified the human form and the course of his- 
 tory? Your fathers adored idols ; you, their pos- 
 terity, descended from them by a corrupted blood, 
 you adore Jesus Christ. Your fathers were ma- 
 terialists even in their worship ; you are spirit 
 
223 
 
 ualists even in your passions. Your fathers 
 denied all that you believe; you deny all that 
 they believed. Again I ask what is the reason 
 of this ? There are no events without causes in 
 history, any more than there is movement without 
 a motive power in mathematics. What is the 
 historical cause which converted the idolatrous 
 world into the Christian world, which gave Char- 
 lemagne as a successor to Nero ? You are com- 
 pelled to know or at least to seek it. We Catho- 
 lics say that this prodigious change corresponds 
 to the appearance upon earth of a man who called 
 himself the Son of God, sent to take away the 
 sins of the world — who preached humility, purity _ 
 penance, gentleness, peace ; who lived piously 
 among the poor and lowly ; who died on a cross, 
 with his arms extended over us to bless us ; who 
 left us his teaching and his example in the Gos- 
 pel ; and who, having thus touched the souls of 
 many, subdued their pride and corrected their 
 senses, has left in them a tranquil joy so marvel- 
 lous that its perfume has spread to the ends of 
 the world, and has won even sensuality. We say 
 this. Yes, a man, a single man, has founded the 
 empire of Christians upon the ruins of the idola- 
 trous empire ; and we do not marvel thereat, be- 
 
224 
 
 cause we have remarked in history that all good 
 as well as all evil invariably springs from a single 
 principle, from a man, the depositary of the hid- 
 den force of the demon, or of the invisible force 
 of God. We say this, and we base our declara- 
 tion upon uninterrupted monuments which begin 
 with Moses and reach to us ; we appeal also to a 
 publicity of thirty-two consecutive centuries; we 
 join together the Jewish people, Jesus Christ, the 
 Catholic Church, or rather we do not join these, 
 they appear before us closely linked together in a 
 course of things sustained the one by the other ; 
 we appeal, in fine, to the whole web of history, 
 and in the name of that immense monument 
 which it is absolutely necessary to admit and to 
 explain, we say to you : Jesus Christ is the su- 
 preme expression of history, he is its key and its 
 revelation. Not only does he form a part of 
 history, he has taken his place in it in the midst 
 of all its events, without difficulty and without 
 effort, but history is not possible without him. 
 Endeavor, in following the line of these monu- 
 ments, to pass from the ancient to the new world, 
 and to explain to yourselves how, without Jesus 
 Christ, the Pope has replaced the Caesars at the 
 Vatican. Is it possible to do this? And if a 
 
225 
 
 gleam of good faith remain in the depths of 
 your soul, will you not be compelled to say 
 with us : Yes, it is in Christ on Calvary, in that 
 blood which was shed, that the renovation of the 
 human race began. 
 
 Therefore, gentlemen, before our epoch, none 
 dared to deny the historical reality of Jesus Christ, 
 not one. Before you, long before you, Jesus 
 Christ had enemies, for before you pride existed, 
 and pride is the chief enemy of Jesus Christ. Be- 
 fore you, Jesus Christ had enemies, for before you 
 sensuality existed, and sensuality is the second 
 enemy of Jesus Christ. Before you, Jesus Christ 
 had enemies, for before you egotism existed, and 
 egotism is the third enemy of Jesus Christ. And 
 yet, when he appeared for the first time, when he 
 came with his cross to sap your pride, to insult 
 your senses, to drag down your egotism to the 
 very dust, what was said to him? Pride, sensu- 
 ality, egotism, had then, as now, able men in their 
 service — Celsus, Porphyry, all the Alexandrian 
 school, and the lovers of this life, and the throng 
 of courtiers, ever ready to find in truth a secret 
 enemy to power. What said they of Christ? 
 They pursued him by putting his followers to 
 death; by deriding his life; by disputing his 
 10* 
 
226 
 
 dogmas; by oppression called to the help of a 
 cause which betrayed liberty; but their books, 
 subsisting in a thousand remains by the aid of 
 printing — which I just now called the salvation 
 of history — their books confirm him; not one of 
 them has denied the reality of the life of Jesus 
 Christ. You alone, coming eighteen centuries 
 after, and thinking that time, which confirms his- 
 tory, is its destroyer, you have dared to battle 
 against the very light of the sun, hoping that 
 every negation is at least a shadow, and that 
 human folly, seeking a refuge against the severity 
 of Jesus Christ, would accept of any arm as a de 
 fence, and of any shield as a protection. You 
 have deceived yourselves. History subsists in 
 spite of negation, as the heart of man subsists in 
 spite of the debauchery of the senses ; and Jesus 
 Christ remains under the shelter of unexampled 
 publicity, and of a necessity to which there is no 
 counterpoise, upon the summit of history. 
 
 Nevertheless, as a last hope you say to me : If 
 it were a question of human events only, such as 
 those of which the ordinary annals of nations are 
 composed, it is manifest that the life of Jesus 
 Christ contained in the Gospels would be beyond 
 all discussion. But in that life it is a question of 
 
227 
 
 events which bear no comparison with those we 
 habitually witness. It is a question of a God 
 who made himself man, who died and rose again ; 
 how is it possible for us to admit such strange 
 things upon a mass of human evidence ? For, in 
 fine, public writings, public events, the public and 
 general web of history, all this assemblage of 
 proofs is purely human ; and it is upon this mor- 
 tal foundation that you base a history where all 
 is superhuman. The base must evidently sink 
 under such a weight. 
 
 Gentlemen, I do not undervalue the force of 
 that objection. Yes ; I understand that when it 
 is a question of the history of a God it needs 
 another pen than that which traces the history of 
 the greatest man in the world ; this is true. But 
 I also believe that God has solved this objection 
 by creating for his only Son, Jesus Christ, a his- 
 tory which is not human, that is to say, which, in 
 its proportions, is so much above the nothingness 
 of man, that the ordinary power of history would 
 evidently not have sufficed for it. Where indeed 
 will you find such connection as that of the Jew- 
 ish people, Jesus Christ, and the Catholic Church ? 
 Where is there anything to be compared with it ? 
 And, moreover — without returning to what haa 
 
228 
 
 already been said — where amongst all the histo 
 ries known to you, do you find any which for 
 three centuries had witnesses who gave to it the 
 testimony of their blood? Where are the wit- 
 nesses who have given their lives iu favor of the 
 authenticity of the greatest men or the greatest 
 events ? Who died to certify the history of Alex- 
 ander ? Who died to certify the history of Caesar ? 
 Who ? No one. No one in the world has ever 
 shed his blood to add another degree of evidence 
 to the historical certainty of anything whatever. 
 Men leave history to take its course. But to form 
 it with their blood, to cement historical testimony 
 with human blood for three centuries, is what has 
 never been witnessed, save on the part of Chris- 
 tians for Jesus Christ. We were interrogated 
 during three centuries, and asked to declare who 
 we were ; we answered : Christians. They then 
 said to us : Blaspheme the name of Christ ; and 
 we replied : We are Christians. They put us to 
 death for this in frightful tortures ; and in the 
 hands of our executioners our last sigh exhaled, 
 as a balm for the dying and a testimony for the 
 living to all eternity, the name of Jesus Christ. 
 We did not die for opinions, but for realities — 
 the very name of rr artyrs proves it ; and Pascal 
 
229 
 
 has well said : " I believe in witnesses who give 
 the testimony of their blood." And although 
 there may be presumption in attempting to sp"e*k 
 better than Pascal, I shall however say something 
 better : I believe in the human race dying for its 
 faith. 
 
 Shall I give you another sign which shows the 
 elevation of Jesus Christ, in history, above all 
 history? Tell me which amongst the ancient 
 peoples of the world, the most celebrated in your __ 
 eyes, has left guardians upon his tomb to protect 
 its history? Where are the survivors of the 
 Assyrians, the Medes, the Greeks, the Romans ? 
 Where are they ? What defunct people renders 
 testimony to its life ? One alone, the Jewish 
 people, at the same time dead and living, a relic 
 of the ancient world in the new, and a self-ac- 
 cusing witness in favor of Christ — by the Jews 
 crucified. God has preserved them for us as an 
 irreproachable witness ; I produce them, they 
 are there. Behold them ! The blood is in their 
 hands. And we also, Catholics, we, the Church, 
 we are by their side, we speak with them and as 
 loudly as they. As a living and a universal soci- 
 ety Ave bear, in the wounds of our martyrs, the 
 blood shed by us to render testimony to the his- 
 
230 
 
 tory of Jesus Christ ; and on their side, as a soci 
 ety, living also, universal also, the Jewish people 
 bear blood which is not their own, but which is 
 not less eloquent than ours. There are two wit- 
 nesses here, and two streams of blood. Behold 
 them ! Look on the right hand and on the left of 
 Christ, behold the people who crucified him, be- 
 hold the people who sprang from his cross. They 
 both speak the same thing to you, both, during 
 eighteen centuries, suffer a martyrdom which is 
 not the same, but which has the same source, both 
 are enemies — they meet but in one single thing, 
 Jesus Christ ! Ah ! you would defy God ! Learn 
 that when man defies God, his Providence inevit- 
 ably prepares an answer for him, and you have 
 just heard, on the subject of Jesus Christ, the 
 answer he has given to you. 
 
 I conclude, gentlemen : to deny the historical 
 reality of the life of Jesus Christ is an act of 
 folly, an act of desperation. And you wonder 
 perhaps why this has been done, directly or indi- 
 rectly, with or without precaution. It is, because 
 the historical reality of Jesus Christ once admit 
 ted, or taken for granted, the sentiment of his 
 divinity begins to shine in the mind, and it is 
 difficult not to yield more or less. It was nee- 
 
231 
 
 essary to gather clouds around an existence so 
 remarkable, connected, moreover, with so many 
 things which are remarkable also. Were the 
 result of negation only to call forth proof of the 
 fact, it would already have provoked discussion, 
 and discussion is of value on unattackable ground ; 
 its prestige seems to be thereby lessened. It is 
 better, in fine, to attempt something than to re- 
 main inactive. Then, hatred blinds, it renders 
 the vision insensible to the clearest evidence ; 
 and, in this sense, it was fitting that the historical 
 reality of Jesus Christ should be attacked, as 
 a proof of the intellectual diminution of those 
 who become his enemies. Truth gains by the 
 attacks of the mind as by those of the body ; 
 and, tranquil in the inaccessible eyrie where God 
 has placed her, sure of herself, however she may 
 be attacked, she can say to man, imitating a cele- 
 brated line : 
 
 "Contest, if thou canst ; and if thou dar'st, consent!" 
 
THE EFFORTS OF RATIONALISM TO PERVERT 
 THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 My Lord — Gentlemen, 
 
 In our last conference I proved to you the his- 
 torical reality of Jesus Christ. But what is it to 
 have proved to you the historical reality of Jesus 
 Christ? Does it mean that a man called Jesus 
 Christ undoubtedly lived at a certain epoch? If 
 we have proved but this we shall have proved 
 nothing, for a name is nothing. To prove the 
 historical reality of a personage is to prove the 
 reality of the living type which constitutes that 
 personage. Thus, when I name Caesar, I do not 
 name an indifferent person, I name the Roman 
 who, before Augustus, conquered and governed 
 the Gauls, who, recalled by the Senate, passed 
 the Rubicon, assumed the dictatorship, and at last 
 fell under the daggers of a band of conspira- 
 tors. So, also, when I name Jesus Christ, I name 
 him who, in the time of Tiberius, preached a reli- 
 gious doctrine in Judsea, supported his preaching 
 
233 
 
 by acts, about which you reserve your judgment, 
 but which were at least extraordinary, who was 
 surrounded by disciples, and, after a condemna- 
 tion followed by his death, was presented to 
 the whole world as living, and who, in fine, 
 founded that hierarchy, that dogma, that worship, 
 that Catholic Church, which we see still living 
 before our eyes. And to have proved the histori- 
 cal reality of Jesus Christ is to have proved the 
 reality of this type whose leading features I have 
 just traced. 
 
 I have done more, gentlemen ; I have at the 
 same time proved the authenticity of the Gos- 
 pels. For a book is authentic when it is histori- 
 cal ; and I have shown that the Gospels possess all 
 the characters of history, that is to say, that they 
 were public writings, containing public events 
 adapted to the general and public web of the an- 
 nals of the human race. This is its great authen- 
 ticity. There is another, secondary and of little 
 importance, which consists in knowing the pre- 
 cise date of a book and the exact name of its 
 author. I place it below the former, because a 
 book may have a certain date and a certain 
 author without possessing any historical value, 
 whilst a historical book bears with itself the date 
 
234 
 
 and the course of things authentically promul 
 gated by invincible publicity. The Gospels are 
 authentic in both "ways, but as the first and great 
 authenticity is of itself sufficient, I have confined 
 myself chiefly to establishing it. 
 
 Perhaps in listening to me, gentlemen, you have 
 asked yourselves whom I was addressing, why I 
 took so much pains about a thing which did not 
 seem to be contested. In this you would have 
 deceived yourselves. Not only in a celebrated 
 work on the " Origin of all Religions " has Dupuis 
 denied the historical reality of Jesus Christ, but 
 so also in some degree does every unbeliever, en- 
 deavoring to raise up clouds between his mind 
 and that formidable figure of the Son of God 
 manifest in the flesh. Hence it is that you hear 
 it so blandly and so falsely repeated that no con- 
 temporary testimony, out of the Christian school, 
 attests the presence of Jesus Christ upon the stage 
 of history. Hence it is that the famous text of 
 Flavius Josephus on the life and death of Christ 
 has been made the object of so much suspicion. 
 There are no unbelievers whom the historical cer- 
 tainty of the early times of Christianity does not 
 disturb and importune, and who do not set a high 
 value upon the slightest doubt in regard to it. 
 
235 
 
 It was necessary then to take away this conso- 
 lation from them — the more so, gentlemen, as in 
 demonstrating to you the divinity of Jesus Christ 
 I had previously supposed the authenticity of his 
 person and history, and because if I had not re- 
 traced my steps in order definitely to establish this, 
 the whole edifice of my demonstration would have 
 rested upon a gratuitous hypothesis. Let us to- 
 day complete the substitution of the reality for the 
 hypothesis by treating of another effort of ration- 
 alism, no longer to destroy the life of Jesus Christ, 
 but to pervert it. For, after having said or sug- 
 gested that the life of Christ was a fable, ration- 
 alism itself perceived that it was too much to ask 
 of human credulity; it feared the all-powerful 
 light of common sense ; and at the beginning of 
 this century, not in England, not in France, but 
 in Germany, a new system has been developed. 
 The life of Christ, they say, is not a fable, but a 
 myth. What is a myth ? Is the life of Christ a 
 myth? Such is, gentlemen, the object of this con- 
 ference and of your attention. 
 
 Let us first clearly understand the causes which 
 have kept rationalism from sanctioning, by its 
 adhesion, the historical reality of Jesus Christ. 
 Assuredly there remain many questions to solve, 
 
236 
 
 even when it is admitted that Jesus Christ lived, 
 that his history is authentic, that publicity sheds 
 the clearest light upon the origins of Christianity 
 and Christendom. Yet, gentlemen, when we have 
 advanced thus far, we immediately find ourselves 
 before a very simple dilemma : either Jesus Christ 
 and his apostles were sincere, or they were impos- 
 tors; to say they were sincere is in the main to 
 admit the divinity of their work ; for, the reality 
 of the life of Christ being established on the one 
 hand, and the sincerity of their work being ad- 
 mitted on the other, we cannot, before the nature 
 and the course of events which form its tissue, 
 avoid this conclusion : Jesus Christ is God. If, 
 on the contrary, it is afiirmed that Jesus Christ 
 and his apostles were impostors, the position is 
 one which the mind will hardly accept. And 
 why ? Because all that belongs to Jesus Christ, 
 all the apostles, all the martyrs, manifest the sin- 
 cerity of man in its highest degree ; because God 
 has placed in the person of Jesus Christ, in the 
 life of his apostles, in the death of his martyrs, a 
 character of truthfulness which leaves no room for 
 the supposition that all that beautiful history, for 
 three whole centuries, is nothing but a mass of 
 imposture steeped in blood. Moreover, Christi- 
 
237 
 
 anity is now sincere ; it is impossible to accuse 
 of falsehood the multitude of civilized men who 
 believe in Jesus Christ, who profess to have the 
 daily demonstration of his divinity, who say that, 
 even independently of the Gospel history, the 
 action alone of Christ upon them manifests its 
 all-powerful reality ; and it is the thesis of a cele 
 brated German, who, having made the historical 
 void around him, and inwardly verifying to his 
 mind the influence of the Saviour of men, said 
 to Germany : But I who live, who feel, who 
 think, I live with Jesus Christ, I feel with Jesus 
 Christ, I think with Jesus Christ ; he raises me 
 above myself, he purifies me, he gives me that 
 which nothing in this world has ever given me; 
 he is then more than myself, more than the 
 world, more than the soul, he is God. Yes, we are 
 sincere, and if all Christians do not prove their 
 sincerity by their virtues, many of them at least 
 render to Jesus Christ this testimony of their 
 faith. Will you dare to charge them with hypoc- 
 risy? Will you dare to insult the hearts and 
 actions of so great a number of men bound to 
 you by so many ties ? Hypocrites ! And why ? 
 With what object? What pleasure is there in 
 being chaste from hypocrisy ? What a strange 
 
238 
 
 design, and what a strange salary for such a sacri 
 fice ! We are then sincere, and we are able to 
 say of Jesns Christ, the spouse of our souls, that 
 which Pauline said of Polyeuctes, and with the 
 same feeling : 
 
 " My spouse in dying has left me his light, 
 I see, I know, I believe !" 
 
 But if Christianity is now sincere, how is it possi- 
 ble that, from the highest of all imposture, namely, 
 that of assuming the name of God, this torrent, 
 this sea of sincerity, should have spread its bays 
 and horizons even to us, to the very centre of ex- 
 isting mankind ? An impure cause cannot pro- 
 duce a pure effect, and if Christianity is now 
 sincere, it was so yesterday, the day before, in the 
 days of its youth, it was so in Jesus Christ, in the 
 first heart whence it issued to fire our own and 
 render it true. Or, if you deny the consequence 
 under that form, recognize at least in Jesus Christ, 
 in his apostles and martyrs, signs of sincerity still 
 greater even than those of Christianity in the 
 present time, and learn why unbelief needs to 
 reject from history the primitive times of Chris- 
 tianity — fearing lest, having once given admission 
 to them, they would too readily attain the crown 
 
239 
 
 of incontestable divinity. Yes, our ancestors, the 
 unbelievers of France, showed the necessary bold- 
 ness ; they placed the question in its true light, 
 and whosoever does not follow them, at all risk 
 and peril, is a coward or an infant in the order of 
 negation. Our fathers, here as elsewhere, ad- 
 vanced straight to the heart of things ; with the 
 native intrepidity of their minds, they compre- 
 hended that it was needful to deny all or to admit 
 all. I laud them for it, for, after all, when men 
 love error it is better to steer in it like Columbus 
 than like those timid barks which fear to brave 
 the ocean, and break up on the very edge of the 
 shore. By advancing boldly, the end is sooner 
 reached, and the very mind which pursued error 
 has thus greater chances of entering in full sail 
 into the harbor of truth. 
 
 German genius is not, it seems, endowed with 
 this advantage of brightness and rapidity. It is 
 this genius which has created the theory of the 
 myth, around which it has hovered for fifty years. 
 But what is a myth ? Sweep away the vaulted 
 roof of this cathedral, and gaze upon that other 
 vault of which Pascal said : "The eternal silence 
 of that unknown space terrifies me." Beyond the 
 luminaries which your eye easily discovers there 
 
240 
 
 as it were on the extreme frontier of space, you 
 will still perceive an array of unknown stars. 
 Are they the result of vision deceived by dis- 
 tance ? Have they a total subsistence ? Or rather 
 is the cause of their apparition at the same time 
 an optical illusion and a certain reality ? So will 
 it be if, instead of exploring the profound regions 
 of the firmament, you cast a prying glance upon 
 the frontiers of antiquity. You will find there 
 recitals which will trouble your mind, uncertain 
 whether to reject or to admit them. I take Pro- 
 metheus, for example. You all know the story 
 of Prometheus — that daring man who stole fire 
 from heaven, and whom Jupiter, in punishment 
 for so great a sacrilege, caused to be chained to a 
 rock, where his liver is devoured by a vulture. 
 Antiquity was full of this story, upon which 
 JEschylus formed one of the most remarkable 
 tragedies of the Greek stage. What in fact was 
 Prometheus ? Was it a pure fable ? It is very 
 difficult to think so, gentlemen ; man always 
 founds the objects of his belief upon some reality, 
 and when these objects have a universal character 
 it is not logical to treat them with absolute dis- 
 dain. But, on another hand, would you range 
 the story of Prometheus in history? This is 
 
241 
 
 equally impossible. How can we admit that a 
 man stole fire from heaven, that God chained him 
 to a rock, and that his liver, never diminishing, 
 was ever preyed upon there by an insatiable vul- 
 ture ? We are here evidently between fable and 
 history. An event relative to the religious desti- 
 nies of the human race occurred in the depths of 
 primordial ages ; the people carried its remembran- 
 ces in their emigrations ; but as the shadow of 
 the past deepened upon the world the true phy- 
 siognomy of that antique tragedy lost its clear- 
 ness; imagination came to the help of memory, 
 and Prometheus chained to his rock became the 
 popular expression of a great crime followed by a 
 great expiation. This is a myth. A myth is a 
 fact transfigured by an idea ; and the frontiers of 
 antiquity — I repeat the expression — appear to us 
 as it were guarded by a legion of myths, which 
 are all adulterated expressions of certain truths. 
 Such being the case, says Dr. Strauss — one of 
 the most celebrated members of the mythic school 
 — why should not Jesus Christ be a myth ? Why 
 should not the Gospels be a collection of myths, 
 that is to say, of real facts transfigured by ideas ? 
 Let us see if this be not possible; and, in the 
 second place, if it be not real. 
 11 
 
242 
 
 That it is possible, in the first place, analogy 
 leaves us hardly room for doubt. Is there a reli- 
 gion, whether idolatry, or Brahminisni or Budd- 
 hism, which subsists otherwise than by a vast as- 
 semblage of facts and ideas adulterated the one by 
 the other ? If you deny this, Christians, you will 
 inflict a heavy blow upon yourselves. For you 
 would thereby affirm that mankind is so wanting 
 in common sense as to be capable of adoring for 
 centuries fables devoid of every kind of founda- 
 tion, traditional or ideal. Evidently you cannot 
 deny it ; you must admit, under pain of wounding 
 your own selves, that wherever men have bent the 
 knee with some universality and perpetuity they 
 have had before them facts incrusted in concep- 
 tions. But if this be the general phenomenon, 
 why may not Christianity have been produced 
 under the empire of the same law ? Doubtless 
 Christians adore realities; Jesus Christ is a real- 
 ity ; but with the course of time and the fascin- 
 ation of a preconceived idea, as in all occasions 
 of like nature, the primordial fact, although cer- 
 tain, has undergone modifications in the idea of its 
 adorers which take it from pure history and range 
 it in the category of myths. That Jesus Christ 
 has not undergone so complete a transformation 
 
243 
 
 as the more distant events of remote antiquity, 
 may be readily granted ; but the degree of more 
 or less is a secondary question only ; and it never- 
 theless remains that the person of Christ and the 
 Christian event are comprised in the general law 
 which links to the myth all known religions. 
 
 So much the less is this to be doubted, as the 
 publication of the Gospels is not contemporary 
 with Jesus Christ. From the very avowal of 
 Christians, many years of tradition and preaching 
 preceded the era of the evangelical writings; and, 
 if we come to exact criticism, we shall not be able 
 to place the assured reign of the New Testament 
 before the middle of the second century. What 
 a space left to the imagination and to faith for 
 transforming Jesus Christ ! 
 
 It is especially worthy of remark that this 
 transformation was so much the more easy, as the 
 Messianic idea pre-existed Jesus Christ. Long 
 before he appeared, that idea flowed in the veins 
 of the Jewish people ; a vast number of men, at- 
 tentive to the voice of the prophets, looked for 
 the Messiah who was to come ; and after Christ 
 had attributed this mission to himself, it was nat- 
 ural that all its features should be applied to him. 
 The Messianic idea was the mould in which, for 
 
244 
 
 three centuries, the myth, of Jesus Christ was 
 formed. Jesus Christ had, so to say, but to leave 
 things to their own course, and when he died his 
 life entered of itself, like matter in fusion, into 
 the mould of the Messianic idea, whence at length 
 it came forth such as it now is before the aston- 
 ished eyes of generations. 
 
 Analogy, the time, the preconceived idea of the 
 Messiah, all these circumstances lead to the con 
 elusion that Christianity may have been formed 
 like all the religions of antiquity, by the princi 
 pie of mythical transfiguration. But a closer ex 
 amination will lead us far beyond that conclusion 
 and cause us to perceive in the New Testament 
 all the characters of an accomplished myth. 
 
 In the first place, the life of Jesus Christ, as 
 related in the Gospels, is stamped with a charac- 
 ter of continuous marvel. From the angel who 
 announced his conception in the womb of the 
 Virgin Mary, up to his resurrection and ascen- 
 sion, not a single event in the whole of that ex- 
 istence is conformable with the course of nature. 
 Every word developes a prodigy, every step is a 
 miracle, and the miracle seems constantly strug- 
 gling to surpass itself and to confound the last 
 hopes of reason. Now, the marvellous is pre- 
 
'245 
 
 cisely the inseparable companion of the myth, 
 and its seat is the same. Where, in fact, do we 
 find the marvellous? Is it before our eyes — near 
 to us, in the modern world ? Never. All that 
 we see is simple and natural : general laws, 
 whence proceeds a constant order, governing the 
 world which is before us ; God does not act in it 
 by any sudden and capricious intervention, but 
 he leaves to secondary causes their indissoluble 
 succession. Where then do we find the marvel- 
 lous? There even where we find the myth — in 
 antiquity. Antiquity is the seat of the one and 
 the other ; and the myth itself is revealed to us 
 only by the presence of the marvellous. For if 
 nothing were marvellous in antiquity, all would 
 be history. But what then is it that distin- 
 guishes the marvellous in regard to Jesus Christ 
 from the marvellous elsewhere ? In himself, noth- 
 ing ; as to place, nothing still, since that place is 
 antiquity. Why, then, may we ask, do you di- 
 vide antiquity in twain, and call one false and 
 the other true? Why reject in the myth that 
 which was marvellous before Jesus Christ, and 
 raise to the rank of history the marvellous which 
 is contemporary with him? Reason seizes no 
 motive for this distinction, if it be not that you 
 
246 
 
 call the time of Jesus Christ a historical period, 
 in opposition to other epochs which you call fabu- 
 lous. But the marvellous is the very character 
 that distinguishes fabulous from historical ages ; 
 for, without this, where would be the principle 
 of their distinction ? 
 
 In the second place, it is manifest, on the first 
 reading of the Gospels, that they present no 
 chronological suite, nothing which announces his- 
 tory, but that they are simple materials collected 
 in minds at hazard, without the slightest attempt 
 having been made to give them any appearance 
 of harmony. All is in confusion aud contradic- 
 tion there. Dr. Strauss has had but to read and 
 let his pen run freely, to form four volumes of the 
 inconceivable blunders of which they are fulL 
 And we must not blame the evangelists for this ; 
 it is the very proof of their sincerity. They took 
 the myth as they found it, vague, indefinite, con- 
 tradictory — like all that comes from the gloomy 
 confluence of facts and ideas. More than a cen- 
 tury had passed over the life of Jesus Christ ; 
 shreds of that life had been carried from the east 
 to the west, under the impression of sentiments 
 and ideas of diverse origins ; and, although the 
 type possessed some unity because of the Messi- 
 
247 
 
 anic form which was the primitive starting-point, 
 it was nevertheless impossible for the final elabo- 
 ration of so many elements not to bear visible 
 marks of disagreement and variety. 
 
 Such, gentlemen, is the reasoning of the mythic 
 school. I believe I have not hidden any of its 
 force from you ; I do not like to depreciate the 
 enemies of truth. Why should I? Were I to 
 succeed for a moment in abusing your penetration 
 and memory, on returning to your homes a glance 
 at the work of Dr. Strauss would reveal to you 
 my want of sincerity, and the cause I defend, for 
 the half-hour it may have gained, would have lost 
 a century in your minds. No, gentlemen, it is less 
 than a duty, it is a pleasure to be sincere when 
 we have truth on our side ; and if the arguments 
 of the mythic school have wanted force in passing 
 by my mouth, it is because, after three months 
 devoted to the study of them, it is not possible 
 for me to impart to them more attractiveness and 
 more authority. Do not, however, deceive your- 
 selves; the work is as skilful as it could be. 
 You perceive that the historical reality of Jesus 
 Christ is no longer denied ; they no longer rush 
 to their destruction against the very constitution 
 of history ; and yet Jesus Christ, although remain- 
 
248 
 
 ing as a reality, is disarmed of the power of that 
 position. On another hand, it is no longer neces- 
 sary to combat the impression of sincerity which 
 results from his life and that of his disciples. 
 That sincerity is admitted. Jesus Christ believed 
 in himself, and men believed in him. They be- 
 lieved in him before Caesar, they believe in him 
 before incredulity. Your fathers gave their blood 
 for realities and ideas ; you do the same. Only 
 you do not properly understand them ; and it is 
 permitted, it is honorable, it is glorious, to live 
 and die for things which we do not properly un- 
 derstand. 
 
 Gentlemen, I believe this exposition is suffi- 
 cient. I will now meet this great engine of Ger- 
 manic warfare. 
 
 Shall I deny the existence of myths ? No, gen- 
 tlemen ; the myth appears to me historically as 
 of all things in the world the most veritable. I 
 admit that man, left to tradition during a long 
 course of ages, ends by no longer clearly perceiv- 
 ing the limit and the primitive text of events. 
 Like a picture before which the spectator con- 
 stantly retreats, the human race retreats before 
 the past; and however attentively it may be 
 watched, at length it becomes obscure. The im- 
 
249 
 
 agination, however, dwelling upon this now dis- 
 tant scene, adds new features to it, the idea gov- 
 erns the fact, and something is produced which is 
 neither history nor fable, but that which we eall 
 a myth. Mythology is the assemblage of all the 
 creations of the human mind between the gloom 
 and the light of antiquity. For, remark where is 
 the theatre of myths. It is antiquity, or rather it 
 is tradition abandoned alone to the course of 
 mankind, which bears it along in advancing and 
 pressing onward. The seat of the myth is in pure 
 tradition. But wherever writing appears, wher 
 ever there is a fixed recital, wherever the indelible 
 record is placed before the eyes of generations, at 
 that moment the mythic power of man vanishes. 
 For then the reality remains before him in its 
 true proportions, it remains in command of his 
 imagination, and a thousand years can do no 
 more against it than a single day. Never, since 
 the time of Herodotus and Tacitus, has any one 
 shown you myths in history. Has Charlemagne 
 become a myth after a thousand years ? Clovis 
 after thirteen hundred years? Augustus, Caesar, 
 in retreating into the past, have they assumed any 
 mythical appearance ? No ; the most distant 
 point where the modern historian seeks to dis- 
 11* 
 
250 
 
 cover the myth is, for example, the beginning of 
 Rome, Romulus and Remus. And why? Be- 
 cause although they approached writing, although 
 it existed before them in other countries, it had 
 not yet received the guardianship of Roman his- 
 tory. But, as soon as writing exists, as soon as it 
 seizes the general web of history, the mythical 
 mould is from that moment broken. 
 
 Now, Jesus Christ does not belong to the reign 
 of tradition, but to the reign of writing. He was 
 born at a period when writing was fully estab- 
 lished, in a land where it was impossible for the 
 myth to take root and grow. Providence had 
 foreseen all and prepared all beforehand ; and if 
 you have sometimes wondered why Jesus Christ 
 came so late, you now see a reason for it. He 
 came so late not to be in antiquity, to have his 
 place in the centre of writing ; for he does not 
 stand first there ; he was careful to provide 
 against being so placed ; fifteen hundred years 
 preceded him, and if you count only from Hero- 
 dotus, five hundred years preceded him. There- 
 fore he is modern, and even should the world last 
 for numberless ages, as by means of writing all is 
 present, since at a glance and with the rapidity 
 of lightning we survey the whole chain of history, 
 
251 
 
 Jesus Christ is ever new, standing in the full 
 reality of the events which compose the known 
 and certain life of the human race. 
 
 I might stop here, gentlemen; for you see 
 clearly that the mythic engine is overthrown, 
 since the fundamental condition of the myth, 
 which is the absence of writing, is wanting in 
 regard to Jesus Christ. Dr. Strauss himself ex- 
 pressly admits that the myth is not possible with 
 writing, therefore he endeavors to strip Jesus 
 Christ of the scriptural character by placing at as 
 remote a period as possible the publication of the 
 Gospels. "We shall soon see the weakness of that 
 resource, if you will permit me to follow step by 
 step the trace of his reasoning. 
 
 Analogy, says he, is against Jesus Christ, since 
 the myth is the basis of all known religions. 
 This I deny. The myth is the basis of all the 
 religions of antiquity, save the Mosaic, because all 
 those religions plunged their roots in a tradition 
 of which writing had not fixed the shadows, and 
 so rendered deflections impossible. But writing 
 having appeared, even the false religions, such as 
 that of Mahomet, have taken a historical con- 
 sistency which manifestly separates them from 
 the priesthoods and corrupted dogmas of antiq 
 
252 
 
 uity. The difference is clear. This is why we 
 Christians, and you who fight against Christianity, 
 never think of combating Mahomet by making a 
 myth of his person, and of the Koran a mythical 
 compilation. The force of writing, under the em- 
 pire of which he lived, interdicts to us even the 
 thought of such chimerical temerity. We are 
 constrained to avow that he is a real personage, 
 that he wrote or dictated the Koran, organized 
 Islamism ; and our sole resource against his pre- 
 tensions in regard to us is to treat him as an im- 
 postor, to say boldly to him : Thou hast lied ! 
 But here the difficulty is greater, the success 
 much more costly ; and this is why rationalism 
 disputes with so much art the powerful reality of 
 Christ. However this may be, the analogy which 
 is invoked to spread over him the clouds of 
 the myth is an analogy without foundation. A 
 great line of demarcation separates into two 
 hemispheres all known religions — the mythic 
 hemisphere and the real hemisphere ; the former 
 contains all the religions formed in primitive 
 times under the empire of floating traditions, the 
 latter contains the true or false religions which 
 writing has enchained in a settled history and 
 dogma. To reject the former, it suffices to oppose 
 
253 
 
 to them their mythical nature; to reject the lat- 
 ter, it is necessary to enter into the discussion 
 of their historical, intellectual, moral, and social 
 value. 
 
 It is true that the scriptural character of Jesus 
 Christ is contested, but how \ Because, say they, 
 it is impossible to prove that the promulgation 
 of the Gospels took place before the year 150 of 
 the Christian era, whence it follows that the type 
 of Christ floated, during more than a century, at 
 the mercy of tradition. Suppose, gentlemen, that 
 I admit this; suppose that I admit that our Gos- 
 pels did not appear before the year 150. Bear 
 in mind that before 150 writing existed elsewhere 
 than in the Christian school ; it existed among 
 the Jews, the Greeks, the Romans ; over the 
 whole space upon which the question of Chris- 
 tianity was disputed; history was founded by 
 the publicity and immutability of the monuments. 
 Before 150, Jesus Christ, dead and risen again, 
 was announced in all the synagogues that covered 
 the surface of the Roman world, and even beyond 
 it ; he was publicly announced in the palace of 
 the Caesars, and in the pretorium of all the pro- 
 consuls. Before 150, I have cited Tacitus and 
 Pliny the Younger, who attest that it was so. 
 
254 
 
 That preaching, those testimonies, those discus- 
 sions, that struggle, that blood, all was public, 
 was written ; it was not a dead tradition left to 
 the chances of time and imagination during a 
 thousand years of indifference and peace. At the 
 same moment men gave their teaching and their 
 life; and three communities together, supremely 
 interested in what was passing — the Christian 
 community, the Jewish, and the Roman — met 
 upon the battle-field, the traditional limit of 
 which you circumscribe within the period of lit- 
 tle more than a century. What ! those Jews to 
 whom it was said : You have killed Jesus Christ ; 
 those princes and those presidents whose orders 
 were trampled under foot in the name of Jesus 
 Christ ; not one of them perceived that it was all 
 only a myth in the state of formation ? No ; all 
 was steeped in blood, and consequently in reality ; 
 all was in discussion, and consequently in the 
 strength and glory of publicity, which is the foun- 
 dation of all history. It matters little then what 
 date the Gospels bear, for history supports the 
 Gospels. If they did not appear before a hundred 
 and twenty years after Jesus Christ, they existed 
 before they appeared, they lived in the mouth of 
 the apostles, in the blood of the martyrs, in the 
 
255 
 
 hatred of the world, in the breasts of millions of 
 men who confessed Jesus Christ dead and risen 
 again ! What a pitiable resource, gentlemen, 
 what weakness ! To compare a religion whose 
 origin is so public and militant, and whose tradi- 
 tion could have preceded writing only a hundred 
 and twenty years, to those religions without his- 
 tory, plunged for two thousand years in the still 
 waters of a ti'adition which was confided to no 
 one, and for which no one ever gave a drop of his 
 blood ! 
 
 I hardly need to tell you, gentlemen, that we 
 do not accept the date which they attempt to 
 assign to the promulgation of the Gospels. The 
 Gospels are public writings, containing public 
 facts which enter into the public web of history ; 
 they bear the names of three apostles, and of a 
 celebrated disciple, who were public men in a 
 public society ; now, it is impossible that such an 
 attribution, under such circumstances, should be 
 contrary to truth. The mathematical laws of 
 publicity do not permit it. The Gospels are 
 apostles; they possess the value of their testi- 
 mony, and the date of their life, that is to say, 
 the date of a contemporary life, and the value of 
 a contemporary testimony. This detail of au- 
 
256 
 
 thenticity blends itself with the general authen 
 ticity of the Christian origin, and is not separable 
 therefrom. Judge yet once more of the relation 
 existing between such monuments and the ob- 
 scure myths emerging from the silent and dark 
 abyss of remote antiquity. 
 
 In vain, in order to place Jesus Christ in a 
 more remote period than his time, have they had 
 recourse to the Messianic idea which prepared 
 his coming. In the first place, the Messianic was 
 not a myth ; it appertained to a scriptural peo- 
 ple, a people who wrote and who were written 
 about ; and the Messianic idea itself was a part 
 of their writing. The idea and the fact were 
 fixed. But even had Messianism primitively been 
 a myth, it could no longer preserve that char- 
 acter in its application to Jesus Christ. For 
 that application to Jesus Christ was modern ; 
 it took place at a scriptural and public epoch, 
 and, consequently, whatever it may have been in 
 the past, the myth disappeared in the broad day 
 of Jesus Christ and his age. The real question 
 extinguished the chimerical question. 
 
 There remain, gentlemen, the mythic characters 
 which they pretend to discover in the very history 
 of Jesus Christ. The first of these characters is 
 
257 
 
 the marvellous. The marvellous, say they, is the 
 mythic character, properly so called ; wherever it 
 shows itself history disappears ; for a miracle be- 
 ing impossible in itself, every narration contain- 
 ing it would evidently not be historical. There- 
 fore, says Dr. Strauss, I overthrow your dogma- 
 tism by this single expression : The Gospel is a 
 tissue of miracles, now miracles are impossible, 
 their history is then impossible also, and conse- 
 quently that history does not exist. It can be 
 but a myth. 
 
 Whether a miracle be impossible or not, is a 
 metaphysical question of which I have already 
 treated, and to which I shall not return. But, at 
 least, it is a question. You rationalists do not 
 admit the possibility of the sovereign action of 
 God in this world ; we Christians admit that pos- 
 sibility. Now, we are men like yourselves, intel- 
 ligent beings like yourselves ; if you are numer- 
 ous, we are more so than you ; if you are learned, 
 we are as learned as you. And whilst you deny 
 the possibility of a miracle, we daily ask God to 
 perform miracles, being fully persuaded that he 
 thus manifests his power and goodness towards 
 us, even in the present day. We go further, Ave 
 do not comprehend the idea of God without the 
 
258 
 
 idea of a sovereignty able to manifest itself by 
 the omnipotence of its action ; so that, for us, the 
 negation of the possibility of the miracle is the 
 negation of the very idea of God. God, accord- 
 ing to us, is miraculous in his nature ; and if his- 
 tory ceases by miracles, we think that God ceases 
 without them. You see that an abyss separates 
 these two sentiments. What follows? It follows 
 that the possibility of miracles is a question ; and 
 consequently to determine the reality of history 
 by the presence or absence of miracles, is but to 
 decide one question by another question — a mode 
 of proceeding which is contrary to the rules of 
 logic and common sense. What ! documents are 
 authentic, they are linked together and form a 
 visible and continuous order, they blend with 
 the whole course of the public life of mankind, 
 they are irrefragable, certain, sacred, it is an act 
 of folly to assail them ; but the finger of God is 
 seen in them, that power which created the world 
 • — -and that is enough, history has disappeared ! 
 You will not ask me, gentlemen, even supposing 
 that miracles may be problematical in themselves, 
 to deny the certain because of the uncertain. We 
 Christians admit the uncertain on the faith of the 
 certain : each has his own logic. 
 
259 
 
 Nevertheless, say they, the marvellous is the only 
 character that distinguishes fable from history. 
 It is not so, gentlemen ; the line of demarcation be 
 tween history and fable. lies elsewhere; it lies in 
 the difference between things without continuity 
 and without any public monuments, and things 
 which possess continuity, and are firmly based on 
 all sides upon publicity. I have already said 
 this ; I shall not repeat it. 
 
 Is Dr. Strauss more fortunate in that which 
 forms the basis of his work — the exposure of in- 
 numerable mistakes and contradictions of our 
 evangelists ? I think not. I have read his work 
 with attention and labor, and I did so in this 
 manner. After having studied a paragraph — - 
 always a very long one — and there are a hundred 
 and forty-nine of them, filling four volumes, I 
 closed the book in order to recover a little from 
 fatigue and from a kind of involuntary terror 
 caused by the abundance of erudition. Then, 
 opening the Gospel — which I kissed respectfully 
 — I read the texts under discussion, to see if by 
 the simple aid of ordinary literature, and without 
 the help of any commentators, I could not succeed 
 in unravelling the difficulty. With the exception 
 of three or four passages, I have never required 
 
260 
 
 more than ten minutes to dissipate the charm of 
 vain knowledge, and to smile within myself at 
 the powerlessness to which God has condemned 
 error. I cannot, gentlemen, pass in review before 
 you all that legion of texts distorted by rational- 
 ism ; I will limit myself to two examples taken at 
 hazard. 
 
 Saint Luke, having to narrate the birth of 
 Jesus Christ at Bethlehem, away from the country 
 of his parents, writes in these terms : " And it 
 came to pass that in those days there went out 
 a decree from Caesar Augustus, that the whole 
 world should be enrolled ; this enrolling was first 
 made by Cyrinus the governor of Syria." Upon 
 this Dr. Strauss, after having first shown very 
 learnedly that the enrolling was not possible, 
 opens the " Judaical Antiquities" of Flavius Jose- 
 phus, and shows by a formal text that Cyrinus 
 did not govern Syria until ten years after the 
 birth of Jesus Christ. Judge what a triumph this 
 was ! Now, how was this difficulty to be solved ? 
 You think, perhaps, that we shall have to change 
 a word or a letter ? No ; it is less than that. 
 You all know the value of an accent in the Greek 
 language; change then an accent, and see what 
 will be the meaning of the evangelist : " And it 
 
261 
 
 came to pass that in those days there went out a 
 decree from Caesar Augustus that the whole world 
 should be enrolled ; this is the same first enrolling 
 which was made by Cyrinus the governor of 
 Syria." That is to say, that the order having 
 been given to number the Roman empire, and the 
 execution of that order having been commenced, 
 it was not however accomplished until ten years 
 after, under Cyrinus the governor of Syria. And 
 if the sacred historian makes mention of the name 
 of Cyrinus, it is precisely to give an authentic 
 character to his declaration ; for had he been con- 
 tent with saying : " There went out a decree from 
 Caesar Augustus that the whole world should be 
 enrolled," it might have been said that the enroll- 
 ing did not take place at the time of the birth 
 of Christ. He anticipated the objection then by 
 saying: "this is the same first enrolling which 
 was made by Cyrinus the governor of Syria." 
 
 Here is another example : It is said, in regard 
 to the resurrection of our Lord, that the holy 
 women went to the tomb, according to St. Mark, 
 the sun being then risen, and according to St. 
 John, when it was yet dark. Dr. Strauss notices 
 this contradiction amongst a great number which 
 he pretends to discover in the event of the resur 
 
2C2 
 
 rection — and he does not fail to turn them to 
 account. But how shall we solve this terrible 
 difficulty ? It suffices to comprehend that when 
 a distance is to be reached early in the morning it 
 is possible to start before sunrise, and to arrive 
 at daybreak. 
 
 I assure you, gentlemen, that, save a very few 
 passages, nothing has caused me any greater 
 trouble. So that after the work had often left 
 my hands from weariness, my hands fell from me 
 again when I thought that this was learning, Ger- 
 man learning — that learning in whose name they 
 pomponsly defy Catholic preachers and writers, 
 saying to us : You speak of Christ and the Gos- 
 pel — you cite them; but you are behind your 
 age, Germany has now destroyed Christ and the 
 Gospel ; she has examined them by the light of 
 criticism, and all that is nothing but a shadow, a 
 dream, a myth ! 
 
 Let us leave this triumph to pride ; and with 
 our sounder sense let us seek why the history of 
 Jesus Christ lends itself to the attacks which I 
 have just pointed out to you. Had Providence 
 so willed it, Jesus Christ would have had but one 
 single historian, conducting from one end to the 
 other the thread of his life with a chronological 
 
263 
 
 clearness which would have given to each part 
 its true place, and have raised the whole above 
 any possible discussion. But Providence did not 
 so will it. Providence desired that the Gospel 
 should be the work of several men differing in 
 age, in genius, in style, and in judgment, and not 
 one of whom should collect under his pen all the 
 materials of the life of Christ, but only simple 
 fragments, the very choice of which was arbi- 
 trary. The idea of God in this was to make of 
 the biography of his Son a miracle of intimate 
 truth which the most vulgar eye might discern 
 and which was to be found in no other life of 
 any man whatever. Indeed, from the first glance, 
 the multiplicity of the Gospels is striking, not 
 only from the title-page, which bears different 
 names, but from the reflection of their personal 
 nature in each of the Gospels. We see and feel 
 that St. Matthew, St. Mark, St. Luke, St. John, 
 are different souls, and that each traces in his 
 own manner the likeness of his beloved Master, 
 without taking the least account of what his 
 neighbor is doing, or even of what the continuity 
 of chronology requires. Thence an arbitrary 
 choice of fragments, a default of connection, ap- 
 parent contradictions, details omitted by one and 
 
264 
 
 related by another, a multitude of varieties of 
 which men render no account to themselves. 
 This is true. And yet in these four evangelists 
 there is the same portraiture of Christ, the same 
 sublimity, the same tenderness, the same force, 
 the same language, the same accent, the same 
 supreme singularity of physiognomy. Open St. 
 Matthew, the publican, or St. John, the young 
 man, chaste and contemplative ; choose whatever 
 passage you will in the one or in the other, differ- 
 ent alike in matter and expression, and speak it 
 before a thousand men assembled together, all 
 will raise their heads ; they recognize Jesus Christ. 
 And the more the exterior disagreement of the 
 Gospels is shown, the more that intimate agree- 
 ment whence the moral unity of Christ springs 
 will become a proof of their fidelity. If they 
 unanimously represent so well the inimitable fea- 
 tures of Christ, it is because he was before their 
 eyes; they saw him such as he was and such as 
 they were not able to forget him. They saw him 
 with their senses, with their hearts, with the ex- 
 actitude of a love which was to give its blood; 
 they are at the same time witnesses, painters, and 
 martyrs. That sitting of God before man has 
 been witnessed only once, and this is why there 
 
265 
 
 is but one Gospel, although there were four evan 
 gelists. 
 
 And what soul is insensible to this ? What 
 soul will not one day forget science at the feet of 
 Jesus Christ, represented by his apostles? To 
 close this subject, listen to the words of a French- 
 man, which will console you for the frenzies of 
 that learning which the Gospel has not disarmed. 
 They are those of a man whose judgment upon 
 Jesus Christ I have already cited to you, and they 
 express in clear and forcible language the impres- 
 sion which the reading of the Gospel leaves in 
 the mind of the profane as well as in that of the 
 Christian : " Shall we say that the Gospel history 
 is a pure invention ? My friend, men do not 
 invent in this way, and the acts of Socrates, 
 which no one doubts, are less fully proved than 
 those of Jesus Christ. In truth, it is to push 
 aside the difficulty without destroying it ; it 
 would be much more inconceivable that several 
 men together should have fabricated that book 
 than that only one should have furnished the 
 subjects of it. The Jewish authors would never 
 have acquired that tone or that morality; and 
 the Gospel possesses characters of truth so great, 
 so striking, so perfectly inimitable, that the in- 
 12 
 
266 
 
 ventor of it would be more marvellous than the 
 hero!" 
 
 This is French language and French genius. 
 And therefore you should not be surprised at 
 returning to Christ after having quitted him 
 The lucidity of our national intelligence sustains 
 within you the light of grace, and causes you like 
 giants to cross those thorny abysses of science, but 
 of a science which braves the soul. Be faithful 
 to this double gift which bears you towards God ; 
 judge of the power of Jesus Christ by the efforts, 
 so contradictory and so vain, of his adversaries ; 
 and permit me to recall to you in terminating this 
 discourse a celebrated trait which paints that 
 power, and the eloquent prophecy which fifteen 
 centuries have confirmed. 
 
 When the Emperor Julian attacked Christianity 
 by that stratagem of war and violence which bears 
 his name, and, absent from the empire, had gone 
 to seek in battles the consecration of a power and 
 popularity which he thought would achieve the 
 ruin of Jesus Christ, one of his familiars, the rhe- 
 tor Libanius, on meeting a Christian, asked him 
 derisively and with all the insolence of assured 
 success, what the Galilean was doing ; the Chris 
 tian answered : He is making a coffin. Some 
 
267 
 
 time afterwards Libanius pronounced the funeral 
 oration of Julian over his mutilated body and his 
 vanished power. What the Galilean was then 
 doing, gentlemen, he does always, whatever may 
 be the arm and the pride men may oppose to his 
 cross. It would require much time to deduce 
 all the famous examples of this ; but we possess 
 some which touch us closely, and by which Jesus 
 Christ, at the extremity of ages, has confirmed to 
 us the nothingness of his enemies. Thus, when 
 Voltaire rubbed his hands with joy, towards the 
 close of his life, saying to his followers : " In 
 twenty years, God will see fine sport ;" the Gali- 
 lean prepared a coffin : it was that of the French 
 monarchy. Thus, when a power of another order, 
 but sprung, in some degree, from the same, held 
 the Sovereign Pontiff in a captivity which threat- 
 ened the fall at least of the temporal power of 
 the vicar of Jesus Christ, the Galilean prepared a 
 coffin: it was that of St. Helena. And now, on 
 seeing Germany agitated by the convulsions of 
 unregulated science, of which you have just wit- 
 nessed so lamentable a production, we may say 
 with as much certainty as hope : The Galilean 
 prepares a coffin, and it is that of rationalism. 
 And you all, sons of this age, ill-instructed by the 
 
268 
 
 miseries of past errors, and who seek out of Jesua 
 Christ the way, the truth, and the life, the Gali- 
 lean prepares a coffin for you ; and it is that of 
 all your most cherished conceptions. And so will 
 it ever be, the Galilean ever working but two 
 things, living of himself, or either by blood, ob- 
 livion, or shame, entombing all that is not of him. 
 
THE EFFORTS OF RATIONALISM TO EXPLAIN 
 THE LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 My Lobd — Gentlemen, 
 
 Rationalism has then made but vain efforts tc 
 destroy and to pervert the life of Jesus Christ. 
 Jesus Christ is not dethroned ; the power of his- 
 tory protects and upholds him against all these 
 attacks. Therefore rationalism has been forced 
 to attempt a last and supreme effort to explain at 
 least that life which it was unable either to de- 
 stroy or to dishonor. We Catholics explain the 
 life of Christ, we explain the success he has 
 obtained — the greatest of all success, that of pro- 
 ducing in minds the rational certainty of faith ; 
 in the soul, holiness by humility, chastity, and 
 charity ; in the world a spiritual community, one, 
 universal, and perpetual — we explain it by that 
 single expression : Jesus Christ is the Son of God. 
 But if it be not so explained ; if it be supposed 
 that Christ is but a man, it is nevertheless neces 
 sary to give a reason for that greatest success 
 ever obtained, which is his own. Now, as after 
 
270 
 
 the power of God there remains only the power 
 of man, if Jesus Christ did not act by the power 
 of God, he acted by the power of man. But tho 
 power of man in its results being manifestly 
 inferior to that which Jesus Christ has accom- 
 plished, it follows that we must seek in man a 
 certain root of power which, in rare cases, may 
 suddenly appear and explain what Christ was and 
 what he has accomplished. That is to say, that 
 Jesus Christ, not being the Son of God, nor, as he 
 himself said, the Son of man, he is the Son of 
 mankind, the illustrious .production of that silent 
 and progressive action which is the life of man- 
 kind, and which, on certain solemn occasions, 
 buds forth, so to say, blossoms, produces an extra- 
 ordinary being, and surrounds him with a halo 
 which all who come after him will confirm, up to 
 the time when mankind, ever pregnant with the 
 future, feels that it is imperfectly represented by 
 the heroic and sovereign being it has produced, 
 and at length salutes him with a last mark of 
 respect, brings him down to the level of earthly 
 things, and says to him : Adieu. 
 
 I shall devote our last conference of this yeai 
 to the refutation of this system. This done, all 
 that belongs to the constitution and character, 
 
271 
 
 alike of the Church and of Christ, having beeD 
 manifested to you in our teaching, it will only 
 remain for us to enter upon the doctrine itself of 
 the Church and of Christ, in order to present it 
 to you in all the fulness of its harmony; after 
 which we shall have but to repose, you, gentle 
 men, from your attention, and I from the happi- 
 ness of having taught you so long. 
 
 Three things have to be explained in the life 
 and success of Jesus Christ : his doctrine whicn 
 appears to surpass all others, the faith which the 
 world has given to that doctrine, and, thirdly, the 
 union of that doctrine and faith in a body hierar- 
 chically constituted, which is the Church. This 
 triple phenomenon, it is said, is easily explained 
 by the general state of doctrines, minds, and 
 nations, at the time when Jesus Christ appeared. 
 First, by the general state of doctrines. That of 
 Jesus Christ is ordinarily considered to be a new 
 doctrine, unknown, creative, as something which 
 had neither root nor model in the past ; this, as 
 rationalism says, is a very palpable error. The 
 human race has never been without doctrine ; it 
 is a necessary part of its life. That some simple- 
 con satisfied in the debauch of pride and of the 
 senses may pass through the world without troub 
 
272 
 
 ling himself about doctrine, as a grain of dust 
 carried along by the unstable wind passes and 
 disappears, no one will deny. But mankind has 
 other desires and other destinies. Mankind re- 
 quires to know, to seek, to render account to 
 itself of itself and of the universe, to possess a 
 faith ; and never, in reality, has it lived without 
 that spiritual element. As men dig the earth 
 that bears them, as they scan the sky that covers 
 them, so they unceasingly labor upon the fertile 
 soil of doctrines, in order to draw from them an 
 aliment which they deem divine. This working 
 is not less active in itself than that which is 
 external and scientific, and they form together a 
 tissue of unwearied action. Now there were 
 three principal theatres of this action before 
 Jesus Christ, the East, the "West, and Judaea, 
 which was the connecting link between the two 
 others. 
 
 The East preserved doctrine under this form : 
 that man had fallen, that he needed an expiation 
 to return to a better condition — an expiation 
 which, from cycle to cycle, favored mysterious in- 
 carnations of God. The eastern incarnation, its 
 expiation, its metempsychosis or trial, nothing is 
 more famous than these in the history of doc 
 
273 
 
 trines ; and it will suffice to place these terms be- 
 fore your minds for you to perceive in a single 
 moment, on penetrating to the heart of Judaea, 
 this order of ideas still existing. In the West, a 
 work of another nature had been accomplished. 
 Under the reign of free discussion, it more effect- 
 ually stripped itself of past myths ; it sought wis- 
 dom, founded less upon tradition than upon the 
 decisions of pure reason ; and Plato was the most 
 memorable instrument of these explorations of 
 the human mind. He comprehended that God 
 was in communication with man, not only by 
 corrupted or lost traditions, but by the perpetual 
 effusion of his Verb or Word within us, the Di- 
 vine Word, the eternal Logos, absolute reason — 
 of which our reason and our word are the trans- 
 parent image, so that in contemplating his own 
 ideas, man beheld, as in a mirror, the very ideas 
 that are in God, and form there the first Word. 
 And this theory of the manifestation of God by 
 his Word, of which the word of man is but the 
 diminutive and the reflection, had become the 
 most elevated point of the doctrines of Greece 
 and of the West. The Jewish people, on their 
 part, had maintained, with extraordinary fidelity, 
 the dogma of the unity of God, that of the creation 
 12* 
 
274 
 
 and in addition a certain hope of the fundamental 
 unity of man, which should eventually be restored 
 as it existed in the original family. 
 
 This was evidently the general state of doctrines 
 at the time of Christ, and these doctrines, long 
 isolated, each in its place, had at length met 
 together after the conquests of Alexander and 
 the invasions of Rome reaching to Asia. The 
 East, the West, Judsea, and with them the Brah- 
 mins, the prophets, the sibyls, the sages, all the 
 documents, and all the efforts of the past had, as 
 it were, met together by common accord before 
 the throne of Augustus, on the day when he 
 closed upon the world the prophetic gates of the 
 temple of war. At that moment Jesus Christ 
 was born. Endowed with a genius answering to 
 the marvellous circumstances of his age, he saw 
 with a sure glance the confluence of doctrines ; 
 in that confluence he unravelled more than one 
 fortuitous junction, he discovered there the germs 
 of deeply-seated unity, and imagined that by 
 giving satisfaction to all, by engrafting the East 
 upon the West, the West and the East upon the 
 Hebraic trunk, he should attain to a doctrine 
 which would at least captivate a great multitude 
 of minds in the divers parts of the world. He 
 
■J<o 
 
 laid down as a foundation the eastern dogma of 
 the fall, and declared that he himself, the last in 
 carnation, superior to all that had preceded him, 
 had come definitively to expiate the fault of the 
 human race, and to restore to men with their 
 native purity all their birthrights. Next, as the 
 eastern incarnation was dishonored by too many 
 fabulous elements, he based the idea of his own 
 incarnation upon that "Word of Plato, who had 
 detached the communication between God and 
 man from the traditional myth, in order to reduce 
 it to a permanent communication of ideas in the 
 very seat of the understanding. He declared 
 that he was the Word of God, the reason of God, 
 the one who, by his nature, enlightened every 
 man coining into the world ; and who, by the 
 effective presence of his personality, by the exte- 
 rior lights of his teaching, brought to the mind a 
 more complete vision of truth. The Divine Word 
 Avas thenceforth in presence of the human word ; 
 the image had but to look upon the model, the 
 consequence had but to consult the principle, and 
 from that confronting of within to without, of 
 light to light, the supreme enlightenment of the 
 human race would come. Plato thus became 
 allied to the Brahmins of India, the West to the 
 
276 
 
 East ; and, in fine, to give satisfaction to the He- 
 braic ideas, Jesus Christ not only proclaimed him- 
 self the Messiah, he also accepted the dogmas of 
 the unity of God and of the creation, which were 
 inscribed in the first pages of the Bible, and 
 which were the special patrimony of the Hebrew 
 people. 
 
 Such was, gentlemen, according to rationalism, 
 the theme of Jesus Christ, the mode of the forma- 
 tion of his doctrine, and the efficient cause of his 
 doctrinal success. He was not creator, but elec- 
 tric ; his success was not a success of creation, but 
 of fusion. Before seeking to discover how far 
 this is confirmed by comparing the Christian doc- 
 trines with the doctrines of antiquity, let us first 
 see how Jesus Christ declared himself. Did he 
 declare himself as a creator ? Did he say : I am 
 the inventor of truth ? No, gentlemen, he said 
 " I am the truth." ' He said : " I am not come to 
 destroy the law, but to fulfil it ; " a which means : 
 I am the truth of all times and places ; I am that 
 truth which was in the bosom of the Father; 
 which appeared to the first man in the innocence 
 of the terrestrial paradise ; which the patriarchs, 
 his successors, knew; which Noah on quitting 
 
 ' St. John xiv. 6. ' St. Matthew v. 17. 
 
277 
 
 the ark received and promulgated afresh ; which 
 Abraham, in the fields of Chaldasa and Syria, saw 
 and heard ; which Moses, at the foot of Sinai, re- 
 ceived, graven by the hand of God. I am that 
 truth which is the first and the last, and which 
 no man has ever been able totally to set aside. 
 Behold, gentlemen, what Jesus Christ said of him- 
 self, and what the Church still says of him daily. 
 He did not seek, nor do we seek for him a suc- 
 cess of creation ; we have never pretended that 
 Christianity commenced with the appearance of 
 Christ under Augustus. To have given it a char- 
 acter of novelty would have been to ruin Chris- 
 tianity. From the first day of the world, from 
 the first word of God, from the first Divine ray 
 which shone in our soul, it was Christ who acted, 
 who spake, and who revealed himself; and that 
 revelation spread over the whole earth with the 
 dispersion of the primordial branches of the hu- 
 man race. 
 
 However, by the side of this phenomenon of 
 the primitive and universal propagation of Chris- 
 tianity, we must remark that there grew up an- 
 other of a very different character. I mean the 
 progressive adulteration and corruption of Chris- 
 tianity by forgetfulness, reasoning, and unbelief. 
 
278 
 
 So that Jesus Christ, although not new, brought 
 into the world something which the world no 
 longer knew save by ill-defined hopes and disfig 
 ured recollections. And, to begin by the East ; 
 it is true, the East had preserved the idea of the 
 fall, of expiation, of the divine intervention for the 
 restoration of man — no one will contest it ; but 
 the East had stifled that idea between two ab 
 surdities, namely, pantheism and metempsychosis 
 the one and the other affirming that the puiifica> 
 tion of man had for object and for effect the re 
 turn of man to the very substance of the Divin 
 ity, from whence he had sprung, and that after 
 cycles of trials, more or less prolonged, the final 
 state of mankind would be that of the eternal and 
 absolute repose of complete deification. Now, did 
 Jesus Christ admit this doctrine ? Did he com- 
 promise with the East in regard to pantheism or 
 metempsychosis ? No, he taught the very op- 
 posite ; he said to us: You are but nothingness 
 which has responded to the creating power of 
 God; and your destiny, although great, is not to 
 attain to God by confounding your substance 
 with him, but by simple vision. You will one 
 day see him, if you have believed in him ; you 
 will possess him present, if you have loved him 
 
279 
 
 absent; but your nature and your personality 
 will subsist before him. Pantheism bears you 
 alike too high and too low — too high in promis- 
 ing you that you are one in substance with God ; 
 too low in taking from you your proper nature 
 and your principle of distinction. Your place and 
 truth are not there. God and man are forever 
 two ; two in their essence ; two in their person- 
 ality ; two in their love, for God made man from 
 love ; and if man correspond to that love which 
 sought him the first, that same love will eternally 
 reward him. If, on the contrary, man be unfaith- 
 ful and ungrateful, that love will reject him eter- 
 nally. 
 
 I ask you, gentlemen, was this the eastern dog- 
 ma, or was it not rather its destruction ? 
 
 And as to the West, they speak of Plato. But, 
 in the first place, was Plato the whole West? 
 Did he resume the West in himself? Did not 
 Aristotle, Epicurus, Zeno, Pyrrho, exist by the 
 same title, and did not their doctrines share with 
 those of the Academy the empire of minds ? 
 You say that Plato was the highest expression 
 of western wisdom ; let us not contest it, and in 
 seeing what he thought, let us see what Jesus 
 Christ owed to him. In the metaphysical order, 
 
280 
 
 Plato believed in the eternity of matter and of 
 chaos, placing the world in presence of God as a 
 substance inferior, but parallel and uncreated ; 
 in the moral order, he denied the existence of 
 free-will, and affirmed in proper terms that no 
 one was voluntarily bad, because the principle of 
 all evil is an indeliberate error of the mind. 
 Dualism and fatalism, such is that Plato so much 
 admired — whom I have lauded myself, whom I 
 shall still praise, a man admirable indeed, who, 
 being plunged like all the others in the faint 
 and almost extinguished light of antiquity, caught 
 here and there glimpses of the shadow of truth, 
 and made plaintive cries to it, as if he had be- 
 held it; but being unable to seize it, had thrown 
 again over his desires and his regrets that royal 
 vestment which has become the charm of his 
 thoughts, the beauty of his discourse, and the 
 majesty of his renown. No sage ever equalled 
 him in the invocation of truth, none foresaw its 
 future more clearly, none ever tinged the twi- 
 light of error with a halo more gorgeous or bet- 
 ter formed to solace the soul for wedding but 
 a dream. But to make him an ancestor of Jesus 
 Christ, and the tie by which the Gospel attached 
 the West to itself, is to expect too much from his 
 
281 
 
 glory. Jesus Christ denied the Platonic dualism 
 and fatalism, as he also denied the pantheism and 
 metempsychosis of India; and if he called him- 
 self the Word, the Son of God, that expression 
 sprang from a mystery which, to Plato, was un- 
 known — the mystery of a triple personality in 
 the substance, one and indivisible, of God. 
 
 The Jews, in their turn, although possessors of 
 primitive Christianity and the expectation of the 
 Messiah, had corrupted this deposit in their ideas, 
 by making of Christian truth — which is the pat- 
 rimony of all — their own special heritage, by sub- 
 stituting the idea of the law for the idea of faith 
 Moses for Christ, the personal for the universal 
 This is what St. Paul reproaches them with in the 
 Epistle to the Romans, where he takes so much 
 pains to explain to them the inferiority of the law 
 to faith ; how Christ was the principle of salva- 
 tion from the time of Abraham, and how the 
 works of the law, understood and performed with- 
 out Jesus Christ, were a cause of death. The 
 Jews rebelled against that forcible teaching ; al- 
 ready steeped in the liberating blood, and even 
 in communion with it, they persisted in venerating 
 the idol which raised their national pride to the 
 rank of a duty and a virtue, and persuaded them- 
 
282 
 
 selves that Judaism was to subjugate the uni 
 verse. In the Christian sense, this was true ; in 
 the sense in which they held it, it was false. 
 Jesus Christ had then to combat Judaea as well 
 as the East and the West. And if you would 
 see yet more clearly that Christian doctrine was 
 not a success of fusion, but a success of contradic- 
 tion — of contradiction to the East, to the West, to 
 the Hebrew people — you have but to study pan- 
 theism as the East has preserved it, Judaism as 
 the remnant of Israel still understands it, and Pla- 
 tonism as it has been resuscitated before our eyes. 
 Pantheism lives in India. India is now, as in 
 past times, its land of predilection, it lives there 
 under the same forms and in the same doctrines 
 as in the time of Jesus Christ. Now, no coun- 
 try, no system, has offered more resistance to the 
 Christian apostolate. For three centuries the 
 great Indian peninsula has been open to us ; 
 many European nations have together and suc- 
 cessively governed it. England is now its mis- 
 tress; we hold it by our missionaries as by our 
 arms under the grasp of our domination, and no- 
 where, not even in that China which is closed to 
 us, has the action of Jesus Christ been less re- 
 warded with success. Brahminism has resisted 
 
283 
 
 example as well as discussion; it has been like 
 granite against truth, like a thing incompatible 
 with another thing, and which rejects it so much 
 the more as it approaches nearer. Many reasons 
 have been given for this, such as the rule of caste, 
 and the aversion resulting therefrom for our prin- 
 ciples of equality. It may be also that on account 
 of the many traditions it has preserved on the fall 
 and reparation, Brahminism has been less sensible 
 to the mystery of redemption by the blood of 
 Jesus Christ, as we see men in whom the posses- 
 sion of a certain measure of truth serves as an ob- 
 stacle to the acquisition of the rest. The honest 
 man is often in this state, gentlemen, when he has 
 the misfortune not to be a Christian ; his probity 
 keeps him from God, whilst the unworthy sinner, 
 looking upon himself, sees nothing within that 
 raises an illusion for him. This is why Jesus 
 Christ said: "Those women whom you call lost 
 will go into the kingdom of heaven before you." ' 
 They are, in fact, nearer to good by being far from 
 it ; they touch the feet of Jesus Christ by humil- 
 iation; and when we are at the feet of Jesus 
 Christ we are very near to his heart. So perhaps 
 is it with nations that have lost all truth ; they 
 
 > St. Matt. xxl. 81. 
 
284 
 
 feel the need of regaining it, whilst those whc 
 still preserve vestiges of truth, grow proud with 
 the little they have, scorning to desire and seek 
 that which they have not. Be that as it may, 
 Indian pantheism has not changed; it is now 
 what it was in the Augustan age ; and whatever 
 may have been the cause of its insensibility to- 
 wards Jesus Christ, it no less proves to us how 
 chimerical is the idea of that fusion of doctrines 
 by which it is desired to explain the formation 
 of the Christian dogma. 
 
 The spectacle of Judaism as it lives before us 
 leads us to the same conclusion. And as to Pla- 
 tonism, God has permitted it to resuscitate in our 
 time, so that on witnessing it in action we may be 
 able to judge of its doctrinal sympathy for Jesus 
 Christ. You all know to what school I allude ; 
 you know how that school has restored Platonic 
 dualism to honor, by rejecting from its philosophy 
 the fundamental dogma of the creation of the 
 world by God, and you know also how it treats 
 the rest of Christianity. In contemporary litera- 
 ture we have no more avowed enemies than the 
 friends of Plato. Whether then we regard pan- 
 theism, Judaism, or Platonism — all three subsist- 
 ing before us as in the time of Jesus Christ — it is 
 
285 
 
 easy for us to judge that Christianity was not the 
 result of a fusion between the doctrines of the an- 
 cient world, but a work of renovation and of con- 
 tradiction. The Gospel has renewed all, because 
 all had been forgotten ; it has contradicted all, 
 because all had been denied or disfigured ; it has 
 had all doctrines for adversaries, because it has 
 disavowed and rejected all. And as it was afore- 
 time, so it is now. The dogmatic intolerance of 
 which it is accused defines its nature and proves 
 its originality. 
 
 But the success of Jesus Christ was not only 
 realized in the powerful and aboriginal formation 
 of his doctrine ; it was also a success of faith. A 
 doctrine is as nothing as long as it has not taken 
 possession of minds by faith, which gives it life 
 and action. How did the ancient world believe 
 in Jesus Christ ? How did the men of the East 
 and the West, the learned or the unlearned, and, 
 in fine, the great nations, abdicate the teaching 
 they had received from the past, in order to be- 
 come the disciples of a Jew crucified in Jerusalem? 
 Rationalism explains it thus: At the epoch of 
 Augustus the human mind was weary. On the 
 one hand, it no longer accepted idolatry, which 
 was the popular form of ancient doctrines : and 
 
286 
 
 on the other, philosophy having founded nothing, 
 a double lassitude of the intelligence ensued — 
 lassitude as to public religion, and lassitude as to 
 the poAverless efforts of philosophy. Men wan- 
 dered in the void and at hazard, invoking a new 
 faith. Jesus Christ came ; he inaugurated before 
 the world, fatigued and ready to receive it, an 
 affirmation which did but slight violence to gen- 
 eral opinion ; he was listened to, men wanted to 
 believe, and they believed in him. 
 
 For my part, gentlemen, I have no belief in this 
 genesis of the Christian faith. When an epoch 
 has lost faith it is not so easy to give it back 
 again, and we have some proof of this before our 
 eyes. Rationalism, in such times, invades all 
 hearts, and rationalism is never convinced of its 
 impotency, or weary of itself. If four or five cen- 
 turies of useless efforts before Jesus Christ had 
 discouraged it, it should now, when it counts 
 eighteen centuries more of vain endeavors, be on 
 the eve of abdicating its pretensions. Does it, I 
 ask you, even dream of so doing ? Do we not see 
 it more affirmative, more arrogant, more sure of 
 itself than ever ? So will it be a thousand years 
 hence. A thousand years hence our posterity 
 will see masters who will ascend the rostrum and 
 
287 
 
 say to them with imperturbable self-possession . 
 Gentlemen, we are about to create philosophy, or 
 at least, if we have not that honor, we touch the 
 fortunate epoch which will place the crowning 
 stone upon its edifice. Such is rationalism. No 
 experience has wearied or will ever weary it of 
 itself; it rises anew from its ashes, or rather, it 
 neither lives nor dies, but is a credulous infant 
 who aspires to maturity without ever once leav- 
 ing its cradle. Let us not wonder thereat ; it 
 takes its starting-point in a principle which ex- 
 cludes life, because it excludes faith ; and yet 
 faith will destroy it. It has but the choice of 
 death ; and it naturally prefers that which leaves 
 to it the appearance of being something, were it 
 but a doubt and a negation. Rationalism is in- 
 corrigible because to correct itself it must cease 
 to exist. 
 
 To admit then that the general state of minds, 
 in the Augustan age, was a state of void and 
 lassitude, is by no means to explain the propa- 
 gation of the Christian faith then accomplished 
 with so much power and rapidity. But I do not 
 admit that such was, under Augustus, the general 
 state of minds. Doubtless idolatry had become 
 an object of contempt to a great number of en- 
 
288 
 
 lightened men, but the people did not despise it. 
 The popular mind sympathized with idolatry, 
 which more than ever included all the recollec- 
 tions which the multitude adored and all the 
 spectacles they needed. The political spirit 
 favored that tendency ; it supported idolatry as a 
 State necessity. And when Jesus Christ came to 
 ask from Rome that right of citizenship which 
 she had refused to none of the gods she had van- 
 quished, it was easy to see what was the state of 
 the popular and political spirit upon this head. 
 Do we not know what answer she gave to him ? 
 Do we not know who replied to the martyrs of 
 Christ, in the amphitheatres, by insults and cries 
 of death ? Whilst the emperors and the procon- 
 suls gave sentence against them in the name of 
 the political spirit, the people issued theirs also 
 in the form and power peculiar to them. The 
 empire shed the blood, the people called for it ; 
 and, after having obtained it, they threw it at the 
 face of Christ. And, behind the empire and the 
 people, rationalism, forming the rear-guard of 
 idolatry, eagerly fed its pen from the sources of 
 error. Those Platonists, so puffed up with their 
 spiritualism, were seen tearing up the Gospel 
 page by page, perverting its meaning, and launch 
 
281) 
 
 ing forth their maledictions against it ; they were 
 seen parading their affection for Jupiter and all 
 the old gods, writing genealogies for them, conse- 
 crating a new philosophy, bearing offerings to 
 them ; nothing was left untried, neither science, 
 nor sarcasm, nor energy, nothing that could be 
 turned into an outrage or an argument against 
 Christianity. Is this what they call the lassitude 
 of minds? Is this the tacit conjuration of the 
 times in favor of Christ? Ah! when at length 
 he had won the faith of the world, and when the 
 successors of his apostles appeared at Nicea, their 
 mutilated visages showed whether they came from 
 peace or war, whether they had been favored 
 or persecuted, whether the popular spirit, the 
 political spirit, the rationalist spirit, had or had 
 not been their servitors, and what was the real 
 value of those systems invented after the fact, 
 by which the life of the patient is explained by 
 the tyrant who caused his death. Julian, at 
 least, said what was true : " Galilean, thou hast 
 conquered ! " 
 
 Here we find again, in regard to the formation 
 of the Christian dogma, not the principle of fu- 
 sion, but the principle of contradiction. Jesus 
 Christ contradicted all minds as he contradicted 
 13 
 
290 
 
 all doctrines, he conquered all minds as he con 
 quered all doctrines : such is the truth. 
 
 It was not, however, enough for him to found 
 a doctrine and obtain faith ; it was not enough 
 to found a doctrine in contradicting all other doc- 
 trines, to found a spirit of faith in contradicting 
 every other spirit. He had in addition to found 
 a Church, that is to say, a society of men living 
 by that doctrine and faith. Rationalism, in order 
 to explain his success, invokes here the general 
 state of nations. It says that in the time of 
 Augustus a double want was felt, namely, a want 
 of liberty and unity. The nations one after an 
 other had borne the yoke of the Romans ; and, 
 stripped of their independence, victims of the in- 
 creasing rapacity of the proconsuls, they marked 
 the progress of Roman corruption, watching, like 
 all who were in bondage, for that hour of weak- 
 ness which inevitably follows prosperity when it 
 is without limit or counterpoise. That hour ad- 
 vanced rapidly; Jesus Christ came also, at the 
 same time, at the precise moment. And what 
 brought he ? The elevation of the lowly, in the 
 idea of a common origin and a holy brotherhood ; 
 strength to the weak, to women, to children, in 
 the idea of a new domestic right ; help to op- 
 
291 
 
 pressed peoples, in the idea of a universal repub 
 lie founded by God himself and governed bj 
 him. What could be more attractive, more sure 
 of success ? When then Jesus Christ appeared, 
 and when from the heart of Judaea the very air 
 had borne even to the ends of the world his 
 emancipating word, with what a thrill of sacred 
 hope must the world have stood up and watched ! 
 What wonder if women, children, those who 
 toiled, the slaves, the poor, the despised of every 
 kind and of every country, went forth to meet 
 him, cast their garments under his feet, cut down 
 branches from the trees and strewed them in his 
 way, not once only, when he entered into Jerusa- 
 lem on the eve of his death, but even after his 
 death, unwilling to believe he was dead, and cry- 
 ing to his disciples as to him : " Hosanna to the 
 Son of David ! Blessed is he that cometh in 
 the name of the Lord." ' That hosanna was the 
 cry of deliverance, the response to him who had 
 heard the groanings of men ; and from whereso- 
 ever he came, whatsoever name he took, whatso- 
 ever his race or his design, man or God, it was 
 impossible for him not to be accepted as he pre- 
 sented himself. What it matters to the prisoner 
 
 ' St. Matt. xxi. 9. 
 
292 
 
 set free, whence liberty comes to Mm ? To th< 
 miserable, to the oppressed, whence the deliverei 
 comes ? 
 
 " Who saves his country is inspired from heaven ! " 
 I grant, gentlemen, that these ideas are full of 
 charm ; it touches us to think that when nations 
 are slaves and corrupted, they aspire to their 
 emancipation. But, alas ! history pronounces an- 
 other judgment than the heart of man. We learn 
 from history that nations fallen into servitude do 
 not desire liberty. As the apostate from truth 
 inveighs against truth, so the apostate from lib- 
 erty, the nation which has lost it by its fault — 
 and it is always lost by its own fault, by taking 
 the heart of a slave — that nation no longer as- 
 pires to regain it. It suffers, it is degraded ; but 
 to feel its misfortune and to reconquer the treas- 
 ure it has lost requires the heart of the free man ; 
 that heart it has no longer. It loves the wages 
 of servitude, and dreads the duties of liberty, es- 
 pecially of that which it has lost, and which is to 
 be purchased at such a price. It would have to 
 despise even its very life, to be ready to throw it 
 to the winds, so that some slight lesson might be 
 learned from its death, and that its last sigh, even 
 remotely, might serve to bring about deliverance 
 
•2Vi 
 
 and honor. The enslaved nation knows not this 
 heroism, and perhaps despises it. You have proofs 
 of this, gentlemen, elsewhere even than in history ; 
 and passing over the continent of Europe, I will 
 take you at once to the shores of Africa. Observe 
 the negro there. You send your squadrons to 
 protect his liberty against the conspiracy of the 
 slave-dealer ; doubtless you do well ; it is perhaps 
 a duty, it is certainly an honor. Biit are you 
 simple enough to believe that you will prevent 
 this traffic ? Wherever man wills to sell himself, 
 he finds buyers ; wherever hearts of slaves meet 
 together, they form masters, even when they do 
 not find them already prepared. As long us the 
 negro will sell the flesh and blood of his country- 
 man, all the stpiadrons of the civilized world will 
 not lift him from the consequences of that horri- 
 ble baseness of heart ; and it is the same, more or 
 less, with all nations bent under the yoke of serv- 
 itude and corruption. They seek no deliverance, 
 but the price only of their soul and body ; and 
 they are sufficiently recompensed for the abjection 
 of slavery by the abjection of vice. This was the 
 state of the Roman world. Jesus Christ, it is 
 true, brought them liberty, but with virtue and 
 by virtue. The cost was too great for them ; they 
 
294 
 
 Ad not accept it. Even after the Church was 
 founded, the empire continued in decadency ; it 
 fell from Diocletian to the eunuchs of Constanti- 
 nople; and when the West, renewed by the bar- 
 barians, willed to go to its help, even to the very 
 centre of the East, when it armed all its chivalry 
 to save it, that wretched people extended to the 
 Latin hand only a hand incapable of sincerity. 
 They treasonably rejected the blood given to it, 
 fearing the too near approach of men who knew 
 how to wield the sword and to devote themselves. 
 Jesus Christ may well found a Church, but not 
 regenerate an empire. He formed free souls in 
 forming pious souls, whom he drew to himself 
 from the midst of the general corruption ; but the 
 nations did not answer to his call, as nations, in 
 order to manifest that his work was not the result 
 of political circumstances in which the course of 
 things had led mankind. He had against him 
 the passion of servitude, instead of having in his 
 favor the want of emancipation. And such is 
 still the state of his Church here below. Al- 
 though favorable to all the legitimate rights 
 which together form the honor and liberty of na- 
 tions, she unceasingly raises up against herself 
 the instincts of servitude, under the very name 
 
295 
 
 of liberty. They ask license from her, and pro- 
 pose to her oppression : it is the cry of nature in 
 all times. In refusing both of these, now as here- 
 tofore, she doubtless responds to the real wants 
 of mankind; but she responds to them after the 
 manner of God, by a force which imposes itself 
 and by a blessing whose glory none but the bene- 
 factor can claim. 
 
 It is the same in regard to unity. I do not 
 deny that the Roman empire, by subjecting many 
 diverse peoples under a common administration, 
 had spread in minds the idea of a vast social or- 
 ganization. But that idea, in the degree in which 
 it existed, did not pass over the very limited cir- 
 cle of a purely political domination. They did 
 not perceive, even in the depths of that unity, the 
 idea that the human race was a single being or a 
 single body. By unity, they understood that one 
 single nation became master of the others ; one 
 Caesar, the Caesar of the world ; but of the spirit- 
 ual unity of souls by faith, hope, and charity, 
 under a single visible chief, the representative 
 and vicar of God, they had not even the most con- 
 fused notion. As soon as the universal Church 
 had advanced a step in the world, and had thus 
 revealed this secret of her destiny, it gave rise 
 
■2M 
 
 only to an immense fear, the enduring repercus- 
 sion of which she still feels. The passion of na- 
 tionality is as strong now against the Church as 
 it was eighteen centuries ago ; and those even 
 who aspire to the social unity of the human race 
 cannot endure the idea of the Christian republic, 
 other than as a figure or a pattern which they use 
 to represent their own conception. What philos- 
 opher or what statesman dreams of unity in the 
 Christian sense, save to fear and detest it? You 
 see, gentlemen, that in examining facts, not only 
 ancient but present, we arrive at the same conclu- 
 sion, namely, that the principle of the success of 
 Jesus Christ, whether in regard to the formation 
 of his doctrine, or to the propagation of his faith 
 or the establishment of his Church, was not a 
 principle of fusion, but a principle of contradic- 
 tion. As he had contradicted all doctrines by 
 his own, all minds by his own, he has contradicted 
 all nations by his Church, that is to say, he has 
 braved and still braves, in the perpetuity of his 
 work, all the combined forces of mankind. 
 
 Let us go further, gentlemen, and seek the su- 
 preme cause of that contradiction. Let us seek 
 why Jesus Christ contradicts all and is contra- 
 dicted by all- -too often even by those who pos- 
 
297 
 
 sess his faith, who belong to his Church, who eat 
 his flesh and drink his blood. The cause of this 
 is not in the region of the mind ; rationalism de- 
 ceives itself in seeking there the explanation of 
 the Christian mystery. Jesus Christ advances 
 beyond the intelligence, he reaches even the soul, 
 which is the centre of all, and demands from it 
 the sacrifice of its most cherished inclinations, in 
 order to convert it from evil to good, from pride 
 to humility, from sensuality to chastity, from en- 
 joyment to mortification, from egotism to charity, 
 from corruption to holiness. And man opposes 
 thereto an obstinate resistance; he arms against 
 Jesus Christ his reason, his heart, the world, the 
 human race, heaven and earth ; and even when 
 vanquished by the sense of his misery and by 
 the tested gentleness of the yoke of the Gospel, 
 he does not cease to feel within himself, even to 
 his last moment, a possibility and a secret desire 
 to revolt. Here the whole secret lies. And if 
 you would understand how difficult is the tri- 
 umph of Jesus Christ, I propose to you, not the 
 conversion of the world, but of one single man. 
 I ask you, princes of nations, you who command 
 by intelligence, wealth, or power, I ask you to 
 make a man humble and chaste, a penitent, a soul 
 
 13* 
 
298 
 
 who judges his pride and his senses, who despises 
 himself, who hates himself, who struggles against 
 himself, and either as proof or as the means of 
 his conversion, humbly avows the errors of his 
 life. I ask but this from you. Can you accom- 
 plish it? Have you ever done so? Ah! if a 
 king, radiant in the majesty of the throne, were 
 to call you into his cabinet, and press you to con- 
 fess your faults at his feet, you would say to him : 
 Sire, I would rather confess them to the man who 
 makes shoes for my feet ! If the most famous 
 philosopher of his age were to use all his elo- 
 quence to persuade you to kneel and confess your 
 sins to him, you would not deign even to turn 
 away from laughing in his face. Pardon these 
 expressions, gentlemen, they would be ill-placed 
 on other occasions; here, they are but just and 
 grave. And yet, what kings, philosophers, and 
 nations are unable to obtain, a poor priest, a man 
 unknown, the most obscure among men, daily ac- 
 complishes in the name of Jesus Christ. He sees 
 souls touched by their misery, coming to seek him 
 who knows them not, and avow to him in all sin- 
 cerity the degradations of their passions. It is 
 the door by which men enter into Jesus Christ, 
 by which they repose in him, by which the 
 
299 
 
 Church herself enters ; for the Church is but the 
 world penitent ; and that single word reveals to 
 you the whole miracle of her foundation and per- 
 petuity, as it will also explain to you the force of 
 active and passive contradiction which is in Jesus 
 Christ. Jesus Christ contradicts all doctrines, 
 because his doctrine is holy and the world is 
 corrupt ; he contradicts every spirit, because his 
 spirit is holy and the world is corrupt ; he con- 
 tradicts all nations, because his Church is holy 
 and the world is corrupt ; and for the same 
 reason the world contradicts the doctrines, the 
 spirit, and the Church of Jesus Christ. 
 
 It was then with justice, in a certain sense, that 
 in the first proceedings directed against Christians, 
 by the orders of Nero, they were convicted, ac- 
 cording to Tacitus, of" hatred against the human 
 race." They hated, in fact, all that the world es- 
 teemed ; they pursued all its ideas and all its 
 affections, in order to destroy them utterly ; and 
 although they did this from love for the world, 
 the world was not bound to understand and 
 thank them for it. Even charity, so new was it, 
 clothed herself in hostile colors, and the death of 
 Jesus Christ upon the cross — that masterpiece of 
 love — appeared rather like an insult than devot- 
 
300 
 
 edness. All was contradiction, because all was 
 God ; and in order to prove that nothing of this 
 was of man, Jesus Christ was for ever to be rec- 
 ognized by this sign, according as it was said of 
 him at the moment of his first appearing among 
 men : " This child is set up for a sign which shall 
 be contradicted." ' And he himself, recalling the 
 prophecies, said to his enemies : " The stone which 
 the builders rejected has become the corner-stone; 
 the Lord hath done this, and it is wonderful in 
 our eyes." ' The prophecy is still accomplished 
 daily; princes, nations, savants, sages, the skil- 
 ful, the builders, in fine, reject the stone ; they 
 declare it to be unfit or worn out by time ; they 
 will accept it no longer ; and yet it is still " the 
 corner-stone, and it is wonderful in our eyes." It 
 supports all, although it is rejected by all; it 
 possesses the double character of necessity and 
 impossibility. Recognize here, gentlemen, a strug- 
 gle between two unequal wills — the will of man 
 which revolts, and the will of God which causes 
 itself to be obeyed by man, in man, and in spite 
 of man. And you Christians, sons of this work 
 wherein God gives you so favored a place, learn 
 the need of constant suffering, of not triumphing 
 
 » St. Luke ii. 84. a St. Matt. xxi. 43. 
 
301 
 
 by triumph, that Jesus Christ may not be accused 
 of owing something to man, but of triumphing 
 upon the cross, so that your victory may be of 
 God, and that you may be able, now and hence- 
 forth, to repeat those words which, after so many 
 other signs witnessed by you, express the highest 
 sign of the divinity of Jesus Christ : "The stone 
 which the builders rejected has become the corner- 
 stone ; the Lord hath done this, and it is wonder- 
 ful in our eyes ! "