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THE FAMILY 
 
 AND OTHER DISCOURSES, 
 
 BY 
 
 FATHER HTAOIIfTHE. 
 
By the same Pxi"blishiers. 
 
 DISCOURSES ON VARIOUS OCCASIONS, 
 
 BY THE REVEREND 
 
 FATHEE HYACINTHE. 
 
 TRANSLATED RY 
 
 L. W. BACON. 
 
 With a Biographical Sketch, and a Portrait on Steel 
 12mo, cloth, $1.25 
 
THE FAMILY 
 
 AND 
 
 THE CHURCH. 
 
 Advent Conferences of Notre-Dame, Paris, 
 
 1866-7, 1868-9. 
 
 BY THE REVEREND 
 
 FATHEK HYACINTHE, 
 
 Late Superior of the Barefooted Carmelites of FarU. 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 LEONARD WOOLSEY BACON. 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY JOHN BIGELOW, ESQ. 
 
 Late Minister of the United States at the Court of France. 
 
 NEW YORK : 
 G. P. PUTNAM & SON, 
 
 LONDON: S. LOW, SON & MARSTON. 
 1870. 
 
^4. 
 
 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870, 
 
 By G. p. PUTNAM & SON, 
 
 In the Clerk's Ofllce of the District Court of the United States for the 
 
 Southern District of New York. 
 
 Edition Authorized by Father Hyacikthe. 
 
 Stereotyped by Littlk, Renkie k Co., pruss of 
 
 645 and 047 Broadway, N. Y. Thk New York Printing Company, 
 
 £1, 83, and 85 Centre St., N. Y. 
 
PEEFAOE. 
 
 The two volumes of Father Hyacinthe's Discourses, 
 of which this is the second, contain, together, with one 
 insignificant exception, everything that has been writ- 
 ten or revised by him for publication. 
 
 In addition, we give herewith the rough and unre- 
 vised reports of his last series of " Conferences" at Notre 
 Dame, on The Church. In reading them no small regret 
 will be felt at finding them evidently so incomplete. 
 But containing as they do their author's doctrine of the 
 Church, and especially his enunciation of that doctrine 
 of " the soul of the Church," which has been remarked 
 as one of the chief characteristics of his preaching, they 
 could ill have been spared from this volume. 
 
 It would be an interesting study to discover wherein 
 this Catholic doctrine of " the soul of the Church," as 
 enunciated by Father Hyacinthe in Rome and Paris, 
 with the approval of the highest dignitaries of his 
 Church, differs from that doctrine of " the Church in- 
 visible" which is cherished by evangelical theologians 
 of various schools; certainly, not in the declaration 
 that there is no salvation outside of the visible Roman 
 
b PEEFACE. 
 
 Churcli for one who clearly recognizes the duty of enter- 
 ing therein. Doubtless all sincere theology would 
 declare that there was no salvation for any man in the 
 way of the wilful disobedience of his own conscience. 
 But when Father Hyacinthe, obeying the voice of an 
 honest conscience, went sorrowfully forth into excom- 
 munication from the Church which he had passionately 
 loved, and illustriously served, he set forth, wdth an 
 emphasis to which not even Ms eloquence could have 
 attained, the necessary corollary of his doctrine, to wit : 
 that there is no salvation in the Roman Church for one 
 who clearly recognizes the duty of leaving it. 
 
 It is a great pleasure to the editor of this volume to 
 prefix to it an Introduction from the distinguished pen 
 of Mr. Bigelow. 
 
 The authorization which Father Hyacinthe has con- 
 ceded to Mr. Putnam's edition of his works, should not 
 be understood as making him in any degree responsible 
 for the work of the translator and editor. 
 
 Leoj^ard Woolsey Bacojs". 
 
 Nbw England Church, Brooklyn, 
 January, 1870. 
 
 K. B. — It appears, from the blunders of one of the critics of the 
 former volume of Father Hyacinthe's Discourses, to be necessary 
 to reiterate the statement prefixed to that volume, that the Notre 
 Dame Conferences are translated from incomplete short-hand 
 reports ; and to inform, not readers, but those who criticise with- 
 out reading, that the passages within brackets contain the French 
 editor's summary of the portions of the argument omitted, and 
 not the translator's comments on the portions presented. 
 
TABLE OF CONTEE'TS. 
 
 Page. 
 INTRODUCTION 9 
 
 THE FAMILY— Six Lectures in Notre Dame, 1866-7 53 
 
 Lecture First — Domestic Society in the General 
 
 Scheme of Human Society 53 
 
 The Bonds of Society 56 
 
 The Forms of Society 61 
 
 Relative Importance of Domestic Society 64 
 
 Lecture Second — Conjugal Society the Foundation of 
 
 Domestic Society 70 
 
 Conjugal Society as related to God the Creator 71 
 
 Conjugal Society as related to God the Redeemer.. 82 
 
 Lecture Third — Corraption of Conjugal Society by 
 
 the Immorality of the present day 93 
 
 Corruption of Conjugal Society in its Essence 93 
 
 Violation of the Law of Marriage 98 
 
 Violation of Marriage in its supernatural consecra- 
 tion as a Sacrament 103 
 
 Lecture Fourth — Fatherhood ; 106 
 
 As a means of the Reproduction of the Individual. . 108 
 As a means of the Propagation of the Species 115 
 
 Lecture Fifth — Family Education 135 
 
 The Agents of Education 136 
 
 The Laws of Education 136 
 
 Lecture Sixth — Home 145 
 
 Possession of the Home ... 146 
 
 Transmission of the Home 151 
 
 Occupation of the Home 158 
 
8 TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 • Page. 
 THE CHURCH— Six Lectures in Notre Dame, 1868-9. ... 165 
 Lecture First— The Church under its most Univer- 
 sal Aspect 165 
 
 Lecture Second — The Church of the Patriarchs 179 
 
 Lecture Third — The Church in the Family 193 
 
 Lecture Fourth — The National Church of the Jews. 209 
 
 Lecture Fifth — The Jewish Church in its relations to 
 
 the Christian Church 225 
 
 Lecture Sixth — Conflict between the Letter and the 
 
 Spirit in the Jewish Church 244 
 
 SPEECH on the Education of the Working-Classes, deliv- 
 ered at the Catholic Congress of Malines, September 
 6,1867 263 
 
 MEMORIAL LETTER on Bishop Baudry 289 
 
 APPENDIX.— Pastoral Letter of Bishop Dupanloup, on 
 the Proposed Definition of the Dogma of Papal In- 
 fallibility 293 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 FATHER HYACINTHE AND HIS CHURCH * 
 
 Ok the 18th day of October last, the Superior of the 
 Monastery of Barefooted Carmelites, in Paris, was 
 landed from a French steamer upon the wharf at New 
 York. Instead of wearing the usual garb of his order, 
 however, he was clothed in the ordinary dress of a 
 private gentleman; instead of availing himself of the 
 hospitality provided in most large cities for the religious 
 mendicant orders, he drove with his baggage directly to 
 one of our popular hotels. His arrival was promptly 
 telegraphed to the extremities of the continent ; it was 
 the subject of comment in every newspaper in our land. 
 Every source of information was ransacked for details 
 of his life ; his hotel was thronged ; he was interviewed 
 by reporters; he was deluged with invitations; shop- 
 windows and illustrated journals were radiant with 
 his portrait; the mails were loaded with expressions of 
 interest and sympathy for him ; in fact, Pius IX. him- 
 self, if he had executed the purpose at one time attribu- 
 ted to him, of taking refuge in the United States, could 
 hardly have produced a greater sensation. 
 
 The name of the monk, whose extraordinary reception 
 among us contrasts so widely with that usually given to 
 
 ♦ From Putnam's Magazine for January, 1870. 
 
10 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 monastic yisitors, is Charles Loyson, to which was 
 added that of Brother Hyacinthe, by the religious order 
 of which he had taken the vows. Father Hyacinthe — 
 for it is by that name that he is now known to the 
 world — is a French gentleman about forty-two years of 
 age, a graduate of the Theological Seminary of St. Sul- 
 pice ; for the past four or five years the favorite pulpit 
 orator of Paris, and in his form, carriage, and general 
 appearance, bearing a singular resemblance to the first 
 Napoleon. But it is not for any of these distinctions 
 that his name is now on every tongue, and his praises 
 are echoing from continent to continent. 
 
 The day Father Hyacinthe left Paris, he renounced 
 the position he held as Superior of the Convent of Car- 
 melites, and laid aside the garb of his order without 
 permission; thus provoking the solemn penalties of 
 excommunication from his Church, that he might the 
 more efi"ectually vindicate the rights of conscience and 
 the " liberty of prophesying. " 
 
 It was this daring protest of the most illustrious ora- 
 tor of the Latin communion against the growing pre- 
 tensions of the Papacy, that has awakened in this 
 country a degree of interest, not easily exaggerated, in 
 the person and history of its author. 
 
 Of the origin and history of the rupture between 
 Father Hyacinthe and his Church but little is generally 
 known. Till his departure for the United States was 
 telegraphed from France, his name had rarely been 
 heard outside of his own religious communion, and the 
 impression naturally prevails that some sudden misun- 
 derstanding had resulted in an explosion, the immediate 
 effects of which have become familiar to the public. 
 This is a mistake. The antagonism between Father 
 Hyacinthe and the Papal government, or its ultramon- 
 
INTRODUCTION. 11 
 
 tane section, has been developing for years, thougli 
 hitherto successfully concealed from the secular public. 
 Nor have the real grounds of their differences yet trans- 
 pired. About all that is known of them is, that his 
 Catholicism is broader than that of Eome, and that he 
 prefers to defy the thunders of Rome to those of his 
 own conscience. 
 
 We feel, therefore, that we cannot render a more 
 acceptable service to the public than to give a brief 
 history of a religious dissension which, in view of the 
 approaching Council, threatens to take serious propor- 
 tions, and which can hardly fail, in any event, to pro- 
 duce a profound impression upon the Latin Church. 
 
 In the summer of 1864, Father Hyacinthe was invited 
 to deliver an address before a club of young people or- 
 ganized under the name of the Cercle Catliolique, or 
 Catholic Club, at Paris, corresponding to some extent 
 with our Young Men^s Christian Association. He ac- 
 cepted their invitation, and in the course of an address, 
 conceived in fullest sympathy with the progressive 
 thought of his age, he referred to the first French revo- 
 lution in the following terms : 
 
 " 1789 est un fait accompli, et s'il n'etait pas, 11 faudrait raccom- 
 plir."* 
 
 As Father Hyacinthe was already as well known for 
 what was regarded by a certain class of his co-religion- 
 ists as his too comprehensive Christian charity as for his 
 eloquence, this phrase aroused a great deal of feeling in 
 Paris ; he was violently attacked by the Monde, an organ 
 of the Ultramontanists, and a cabal was speedily organ- 
 ized to limit the infection of his dangerous eloquence as 
 
 * "1789 18 an accomplished fact; and if it were not, it would be necessary to 
 accomplish it." 
 
12 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 much as possible by destroying liis influence.* It c^id 
 not, however, succeed in poisoning the mind of the 
 Archbishop of Paris, who, regardless of their remon- 
 strances, invited Father Hyacinthe to preach the Con- 
 ferences of Advent that year at Notre-Dame. This pul- 
 pit for years, I might say centuries, has been reserved 
 for the most popular orator in the Galhcan Church. 
 Several attempts had been made to revive these confer- 
 ences since the death of Lacordaire, but they had proved 
 unsuccessful. None of the preachers designated for that 
 duty since the decease of the famous Dominican had 
 come up to the traditional standard. They preached, 
 but they failed to attract hearers. Some discourses de- 
 livered by Father Hyacinthe during the summer imme- 
 diately previous, led the Archbishop to hope that he, if 
 any one, could revive the ancient glories of Notre-Dame. 
 Nor was he destined to be disappointed. Their success 
 was complete, though the Monde did not see fit to an- 
 nounce them. They fixed his position as the worthy 
 successor, not only of Lacordaire, but of any of his pre- 
 decessors in that famous temple. 
 
 It was at these conferences that the writer first saw 
 Father Hyacinthe. The solemn old cathedral was 
 crowded with all that was socially most distinguished 
 in Paris, and hundreds hung around the doors, unable 
 to gain admission, but seeking to catch a casual 
 
 * It will possibly astonish some of those censors of Father Hyacinthe to be 
 reminded of the following avowal made by Thiers in the Corps Legislatif in 
 1845: 
 
 " Wherever an absolute Government ceases to exist in Europe, whenever a 
 new liberty is bom, France loses an enemy and gains a friend. Understand 
 me well. I am of the party of the Revolution, as well in France as in Europe. 
 I desire that the Government of the Revolution rest in the hands of moderate 
 men. I will do what I can to continue it there. But if this Government shall 
 pass into the hands of men less moderate, of ardent men, even radicals, I 
 shall not abandon my cause for that. I shall always be of the party of the 
 Revolution." 
 
INTRODUCTION. 13 
 
 phrase as it fell from the burning lips of the hermit- 
 preacher. 
 
 The following entry, made in the writer's diary imme- 
 diately after, will give an idea of the impression left 
 upon the mind of a foreigner and a Protestant, whom cu- 
 riosity, mainly, had brought under the magical influ- 
 ence of his eloquence. 
 
 ^nday. — Went to hear Father Hyacintlie, the Caraielite, at 
 Notre-Dame. Paid a franc for my seat ; Berryer sat just in front 
 of me. Great crowd. The speaker middle-sized, plump, round- 
 faced, well-conditioned man, with the faculty of kindling from 
 his subject until he gets into a blaze of eloquence. His move- 
 ment is exceedingly graceful — as perfect as possible. I would go 
 to hear him again, if I had a chance. The Archbishop was 
 present, and after the sermon was finished, left his seat below, 
 mounted the pulpit, and made a short speech and pronounced 
 the benediction." 
 
 La France, a semi-official journal of the Government, 
 and one of the organs of the Galilean Church in Paris, 
 gave a brief account of this conference, which closed as 
 follows : 
 
 '* When Father Hyacinthe had 'descended from the pulpit, 
 where we hope he will soon reappear, Monsignor the Archbishop 
 of Paris took his place, and addressed the immense audience, an 
 allocution admirable for its noble thoughts and Christian views. 
 He at first thanked and congratulated the young and brilliant or- 
 ator who had so early placed himself in the ranks of the great 
 masters of speech, and confirmed his teachings with all his au- 
 thority as a bishop and his charity as a pastor. 
 
 " The effect produced by this unexpected discourse was great, 
 and the crowd dispersed profoundly impressed." 
 
 To measure the importance of the Archbishop's 
 presence and remarks on this occasion, it is necessary 
 to know something of the relations then subsisting 
 
14 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 between the Frencli or Gallican and Ultramontane 
 Catholics. 
 
 It will be remembered that when the famous popular 
 demonstrations were made in Europe, in 1848, the Pope 
 gave them his sympathies, and popular meetings were 
 held all over the United States to hail the omen. That 
 tendency was followed by a violent reaction, and since 
 then the Roman Church, under the counsels of the 
 Jesuits, has been striving in every possible way to cen- 
 tralize its power in the hands of the nominal head of 
 the Church. Its first trial of strength on a large scale 
 was made in the proclamation of the Pope, in 1854, 
 without the aid of any council, of the Immaculate Con- 
 ception of the Virgin Mary as a dogma of the Church. 
 The audacity of this proceeding shocked large bodies 
 of French and German Catholics, and provoked many 
 publications designed to throw doubt upon the validity 
 of the new dogma. The leading liberal Catholics of 
 France were astonished, and many were alarmed ; but 
 Rome was to them too important an ally in the warfare 
 they were waging with the Imperial Government, to 
 contest the growth of an authority which, in view of 
 their pressing exigencies, they were disposed to increase 
 rather than diminish. They therefore quietly accepted 
 the dogma, but they became only the more zealous 
 in their efforts to liberalize the Church and recon- 
 cile it with the civilizing tendencies of the age. These 
 very efforts tended to divide them as a class more and 
 more from the Ultramontanists. To give power and 
 organization to the reactionary influence, the Liberals, 
 prominent among whom were the Archbishop of Paris, 
 the Bishop of Orleans, the Count de Montalembert, 
 Bordas Dumoulin, Arnaud de Ariege, the Prince de 
 Broglie, A. Cochin, Falloux, and, during their lives, 
 
INTRODUCTION. 15 
 
 Lammenais, Lacordaire, and Ozanam, with the Avenir 
 and later the Revue Correspondant, for their organs in 
 the press, held a sort of Liberal Catholic Congress at 
 Malines, in August of the year 1863, at which they gave 
 formal expression to their distinctive sentiments and 
 aspirations. It was at this Congress that the Count de 
 Montalembert made two speeches, which were widely 
 circulated in France as a faithful reflection of the feel- 
 ings of the Congress. A paragraph or two from these 
 discourses will disclose at once the spirit and significance 
 of this movement. 
 
 " Of all the liberties of which up to this time I have undertaken 
 the defence, the liberty of conscience is in my eyes the most pre- 
 cious, the most sacred, the most legitimate, the most necessary. 
 I have loved, I have served all the liberties, but I honor myself 
 more than all for having been the soldier of this. Again to-day, 
 after so many years, so many contests, and so many defeats, I 
 cannot speak of it without emotion. * * * Yet I must ad- 
 mit that this enthusiastic devotion for religious liberty which 
 animates me, is not general among the Catholics. They desire 
 liberty for themselves, and in this there is no great merit. In 
 general, everybody wishes all sorts of freedom for himself. But 
 religious freedom in itself; freedom of conscience to every one ; 
 that freedom of worship which is contested and resisted, that it 
 is which disquiets and alarms many of us. 
 
 " I am, then, for freedom of conscience, in the interest of 
 Catholicism, without reserves or hesitation. I accept freely all 
 its consequences, all which public morals do not reprove and 
 which equity demands. This conducts me to a delicate but 
 necessary question. I will meet it boldly. Can one to-day de- 
 mand liberty for truth — that is, for himself (for every one acting 
 in good faith thinks he has the truth) — and refuse it to error (that 
 is, to those who do not think as we do) ? 
 
 " I answer boldly. No. Here I feel, indeed, incedo per ignes. 
 So I hasten to add again that I have no pretension to give more 
 than my individual opinion. I bow to all the texts, all the 
 canons which may be cited. I will not contest or discuss any of 
 
16 INTRODUCTION, 
 
 them. But I cannot trample under foot to-day the conviction 
 which rules in my heart and conscience. I declare, then, that I 
 experience an invincible horror for all those punishments and 
 violences visited upon humanity, under the pretext of serving or 
 defending religion. The fires of persecution, lighted by Catholic 
 hands, shock me as much as the scaffold on which Protestants 
 have immolated so many martyrs. The gag in the mouth of any 
 one preaching his belief with a pure heart, I feel as if it were be- 
 tween my own teeth, and I shudder with the pain of it. The 
 Spanish inquisition saying to the heretic, * The truth, or death,' 
 is as odious to me as the French terrorist saying to my grand- 
 father, * Liberty, fraternity, or death.' No one has the right to 
 subject the human conscience to such hideous alternatives." 
 
 These were new doctrines to come from any large 
 body of eminent and representative Catholics. They 
 were regarded as deliberately hostile to the Jesuits, 
 and generally unfriendly to ultramontane Catholicism. 
 These proceedings had barely time to get to Eome, 
 when Europe resounded wdth the famous Encyclical 
 Letter and Syllabus of 1864, which was a formal pro- 
 test from Eome against pretty much everything that 
 had been accomplished for the social and political im- 
 provement of the human race since the dark ages. 
 
 The following paragraph from this famous document 
 leaves no doubt that it was designed as a formal rebuke 
 of, as well as reply to, the Congress of Malines. 
 
 " You are not ignorant, venerable brothers, that there are not 
 wanting men in our day who, applying to civil society the impi- 
 ous and absurd principle of naturalism, as they call it, dare to 
 teach ' that the perfection of government and civil progress re- 
 quire that human society be constituted and governed without 
 taking any more account of religion than if it did not exist, or at 
 least without distinguishing between the true and the false.' Be- 
 sides, contrary to the doctrine of the Scriptures, of the Church 
 and the holy fathers, they do not fear to affirm that ' the best 
 government is that which recognizes no objection in itself to re- 
 
INTEODUCTION. 17 
 
 press, by legal penalties, the violators of the Catholic faith, except 
 when necessary to maintain social order.' Parting from this ab- 
 solutely false idea of social government, they do not hesitate to 
 favor this erroneous opinion, fatal to the Catholic Church and to 
 the safety of souls, characterized by our predecessor of happy 
 memory, Gregory XVI., as a delirium, * that the freedom of con- 
 science and of religious worship is the proper right of every man, 
 which ought to be proclaimed by law, and secured in every well- 
 constituted State, and that citizens have a right to the fullest free- 
 dom in expressing their opinions, whatever they may be, by 
 printing or otherwise, without any limitation from civil or eccle- 
 siastical authority.' Now, in sustaining these rash aflSrmations, 
 they do not think nor consider that they preach the freedom of 
 perdition, and that if it be permitted to human opinions to con- 
 test everything, men will not be wanting who will dare resist the 
 truth, and place their confidence in the verbiage of human wis- 
 dom, a pernicious vanity which faith and Christian wisdom 
 ought to carefully avoid, according to the teaching of our Lord." 
 
 Attached to the Encyclical Letter was a Syllabus, or 
 list of popular errors upon which the Pope wished 
 specially to place the seal of his condemnation. We 
 will quote a few of these proscribed errors ; a few will 
 suffice, for from them the rest may be inferred — as with 
 a telescope all objects may be seen within its range by 
 simply changing its direction. 
 
 " Every man is free to embrace and profess the religion which 
 he shall regard as true, according to the light of his own reason." 
 
 The reader will please not forget that the propositions 
 we are citing are condemned, not approved, by the Syl- 
 labus. 
 
 " The Church has no right to employ force. 
 
 " The Church should be separated from the State, and the 
 State from the Church. 
 
 " In our time, it is not useful that the Catholic religion be con- 
 sidered the only religion of the State, to the exclusion of other 
 modes of religious worship. 
 
18 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 " In some Catholic countries, the law has wisely provided that 
 foreigners coming there to settle should enjoy the public exercise 
 of their religion. 
 
 " It is false that the freedom of all religious worship propagates 
 the pestilence of indifference. 
 
 " The Eoman pontiff can and should put himself in harmony 
 with progress, with liberalism, and with modem civilization." 
 
 The appearance of this extraordinary proclamation 
 from Rome was, of course, hailed with jubilant enthu- 
 siasm by the Jesuits and the Ultramontanists. "It 
 was their hour and the power of darkness." The Pope 
 had come to the support of their favorite doctrines with 
 the consecrated weapon of his Infallibility, and the 
 apologists of Passive Obedience and of the Inquisition 
 were proclaimed to have most correctly "divined the pol- 
 icy of the Church. 
 
 It was in the heat of this contest between the liberal 
 Catholics of France and the Ultramontanists, that 
 Father Hyacinthe vindicated the Revolution of 1789, 
 and was invited to preach the Conferences of Advent at 
 Notre-Dame. 
 
 We have already spoken of the efforts made at this 
 time to bring his teachings under discipline at Rome. 
 
 To disarm his adversaries, or to neutralize their influ- 
 ence, he was sent for by the General of his order to 
 come to Rome, in 1865, under the pretext of assisting 
 at the beatification fetes of a Carmelite Nun of the name 
 of Marie des Anges. He was then for the first time pre- 
 sented to the Pope, by whom he was received with the 
 greatest kindness, and so far from being censured, or 
 even questioned, was treated with special consideration. 
 
 Meantime the war went on, modified more or less by 
 the various exigencies of the Papacy on the one hand, 
 and of the liberal Catholics on the other, until 1868, 
 
INTRODUCTION. 19 
 
 when Father Hyacinthe was again sent for to come to 
 Eome, ostensibly to preach the Conferences for Lent in 
 the church of St. Louis of France, but really to coun- 
 teract by his presence, if possible, the prejudices which 
 the Ultramontanists were still sedulously propagating 
 against him. His subject for these conferences was 
 "The Church," which he treated in a most compre- 
 hensive and liberal spirit, and with scant respect for 
 mere sectarian distinctions. He sought to trace the 
 plan of a universal church which should conciliate 
 God's children in all Christian communions, while he 
 specially denounced the Pharisaism which in our Lord's 
 time was constantly seeking to entrap Him in His 
 words, as it is now seeking to entrap His disciples. 
 
 His success was something marvellous ; it was almost, 
 if not quite, unprecedented. He was received on this 
 visit, also, in the kindest manner by the Pope, who tes- 
 tified his pontifical affability by a most gracious pun 
 upon his name. He called him ^^ Hyacinthe, fieur et 
 pierre precieuse" 
 
 Father Hyacinthe left Rome again, triumphing, it 
 may be, over his enemies, but with impressions of the 
 Holy City and government painfully unsettled. Like 
 Luther when he returned from his first visit to Eome, 
 he felt as if he were awakening from a painful dream. 
 He had not found the dignitaries there assembled to 
 receive the oracles of God, as exempt from human in- 
 firmities as he had been educated to believe them. He 
 encountered ignorance often where he looked for wis- 
 dom, intolerance where he expected charity and broth- 
 erly love; double-dealing, selfishness, and worldly- 
 mindedness where ingenuousness and devotion to the 
 Church, to humanity, and to God were promised. With 
 all his success, he left Rome more troubled in mind 
 
20 INTEODUCTION. 
 
 than when, almost in the character of a criminal, and 
 uncertain of the reception that awaited him, he set out 
 for the Eternal City. Suspicions had been planted 
 there which reacted upon many of the most pleasing 
 and endeared associations of his life. 
 
 In December of 1868 he was again inyited to preach 
 the conferences at Notre-Dame. He treated of the 
 same subject, "The Church," which had been the 
 theme of his conferences at Eome, and from substan- 
 tially the same point of yiew. His portrait of what he 
 regarded as the true idea of a Universal Christian 
 Church, contrasted so broadly with the Church of the 
 Ency clique and the Syllabus of 1864, that it greatly in- 
 creased the irritation of the Ultramontanists, which was 
 aggravated to exasperation by the closing discourse on 
 Pharisaism, the aim of which could not be mistaken. The 
 Archbishop of Paris listened also to this discourse, and 
 at its close made a public acknowledgment to the orator. 
 
 The following extract from a despatch of Cardinal 
 Bernis, when French Minister to Eome, addressed to 
 the Minister of Foreign Affairs, in 1779, is calculated 
 to leave the impression that Pharisaism, in the eyes of 
 French Catholics, is a chronic vice with the Ultra- 
 montanists, and that that phrase in the mouth of 
 Father Hyacinthe had a traditional significance, which 
 is almost necessary to account for the bitterness which, 
 in this instance, it will be found to have engendered : 
 
 *' They tMnk, at Rome," he writes, " that the Catholic Courts 
 do but their duty when they favor the Court of Rome, and that 
 they fail of their duty when they do not blindly everything it pre- 
 tends to have the right to decide. The habit of seeing these 
 things does not prevent my being often revolted by it. I have 
 not to reproach myself with not having expostulated upon the 
 subject on more than one occasion, hut tJie evil is incurable. I 
 
INTRODUCTION. 21 
 
 content myself, therefore, with making the best of a country 
 where Pharisaism^ if I may permit myself to use such a term, 
 prevails more than anywhere else." 
 
 While descending, as it were, from the pulpit of N'otre- 
 Dame, on the occasion to which we have just referred, 
 Father Hyacinthe received a summons to repair at once 
 to Rome, to explain a letter which had recently appeared 
 over his signature in an Italian Eeview, and which was 
 reported to have filled the heart of the Holy Father 
 with a degree of wrath generally supposed to be un- 
 known to celestial minds. And what offence, what 
 crime, could have been committed to have provoked the 
 Pope to such a humiliating, such a degrading procedure 
 against the most popular preacher in the Church, at the 
 very moment when the lofty aisles of Notre-Dame were 
 yet ringing with his matchless eloquence ? 
 
 "We will explain as briefly as possible. In one of the 
 Paris Clubs, Father Hyacinthe had been accused by a 
 popular orator of having invoked the aid of canister- 
 shot against atheists and free-thinkers. Though noth- 
 ing was farther from the thoughts or character of the 
 preacher, he thought it his duty to reply to the charge, 
 in a letter which was read at the next meeting of {he 
 Club. In the course of this letter he said : 
 
 " I did not think it was necessary to separate my cause from 
 that of certain Catholics who, without appealing to canister, yet 
 mourn the loss of the Inquisition and the Dragonnades. They 
 have taken care to separate themselves from me by attacks of 
 which I have been the target since the beginning of my ministiy, 
 and which assail, I admit, the most deliberate and unshakable 
 convictions of my reason and of my conscience." 
 
 This letter was bitterly assailed by the ultramontane 
 press, and provoked a second reprimand from the Gen- 
 
22 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 eral of his order.* It was followed shortly by another, 
 written privately to the editor of la Revisia Universale^ 
 of Genoa, accompanying a religious discourse, designed 
 for the columns of the Keview. The Revista Universale 
 is a liberal Catholic periodical, monthly, we believe, be- 
 longing to the same order, doctrinally speaking, as the 
 Correspo7idant of Paris. It is edited by a personal 
 friend of Father Hyacinthe, the Marquis Salvago, who 
 is also a Member of the Chamber of Deputies ; and it 
 numbers among its contributors such men as Caesar 
 Cantu, the historian, Audisio, a learned professor at 
 Kome, and other equally renowned and equally unsus- 
 pected Catholics. The Marquis wrote for permission to 
 publish the private note with the discourse. Permission 
 was given. The letter in question had been written 
 just at the breaking out of the recent Spanish revolu- 
 tion, and when all the ultramontane press were firing 
 the hearts of the faithful to rally them to the rescue of 
 the Church, imperilled in the sacred person of the most 
 Catholic Queen Isabella. In this note he said : 
 
 " The old political organization of Catholicism in Europe is 
 tumbling over on all sides in blood, or, what is worse, into the 
 mire, and it is to these crumbling and shameful fragments that 
 they would bind the future of the Church." 
 
 Ill-disposed persons persuaded the Pope that this was 
 an allusion to the declining fortunes of his temporal 
 power, and Monsignor Nardi, Uditore di Rota, had given 
 the letter that interpretation, in a communication to 
 the Osservatore Cattolico of Milan. 
 
 His Holiness accepted the interpretation without hes- 
 itation or inquiry. "He says we are fallen into the 
 
 * Allusion to this is made by the General, in his letter of September 26, 
 threatening Father Hyacinthe with excommunication in case he did not re- 
 turn to his convent within ten days. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 23 
 
 mire, ' nella fanga,^ " cried out the Pope, to one of his 
 court. He was excessively irritated, and directed orders 
 to be sent at once through the State Department to 
 Father Hyacinthe, to explain his letter in the next 
 number of the Revista. " The soul of the Holy Father," 
 they wrote to him from Rome, " is filled with bitter- 
 ness." 
 
 Father Hyacinthe had no difficulty in washing his 
 hands of whatever was oflensiye in the letter which had 
 so disturbed the peace of his ecclesiastical sovereign, and 
 showed, in a brief communication to the Mevista, that 
 his previous note had no reference whatever to the tem- 
 poral power of the Pope. But while vindicating him- 
 self from this gratuitous accusation, he took occasion to 
 remind the Pope of his fallibility in a way to leave a far 
 more grievous wound than the imaginary attack upon 
 his temporal authority had occasioned. He said that 
 Austria Concorditaire had fallen in blood at Sadowa, 
 and that absolutist and intolerant Spain had fallen into 
 the mire with the government of Isabella II. ; that to 
 bind the interests of the Church to any of these ex- 
 piring regimes was to bind them to impotent and dis- 
 honored ruins. He then dwelt upon the liberal and 
 reforming spirit of the first years of Pius IX., and cited 
 the following striking passage from the letter of the 
 Pope himself in 1848 to the Emperor of Austria, to per- 
 suade him to yield to the Italian aspirations for national 
 unity. 
 
 " Let it not be disagreeable to the generous German nation that 
 we invite it to lay aside all hatred, and to convert into useful rela- 
 tions of friendly neighborhood a domination which would be nei- 
 ther noble nor prosperous if it rested solely upon the sword. 
 
 *' So have we confidence that the nation justly proud of its own 
 nationality will not commit its honor to bloody attempts against 
 
24 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 the Italian nation, but will rather make it a point to recognize her 
 nobly for a sister, — since both are daughters veiy near to our 
 heart, — each content to dwell within her natural frontiers with 
 honorable ti'eaties, and the Lord's blessing." 
 
 This letter committed the unpardonable fault of repro- 
 ducing an epoch and acts which the Holy Father wished 
 consigned to oblivion. It irritated him beyond meas- 
 ure. When, soon after this letter appeared, the General 
 of the Carmelites at Eome asked the Papal blessing for 
 his order, the Pope is said to have replied, " Yes, for all 
 your order, but not for Father Hyacinthe." 
 
 It was in this frame of mind that the letter was con- 
 ceived which summoned Pather Hyacinthe to Eome in 
 January, 1869. 
 
 Father Hyacinthe did not choose to comply with this 
 summons at once. He assigned as reasons for defer- 
 ring his visit, that he was fatigued with the conferences 
 which he had just concluded, that his health had suffered 
 from the rigors and privations of conventual life,* that 
 he had certain engagements in France to fulfil, that the 
 season was unfavorable to travelling, etc. With one or 
 another of these reasons he excused himself from going 
 to Rome, though repeatedly urged to come, and even 
 threatened, if he longer delayed, with expulsion from 
 his order, and prohibition from preaching or saying the 
 mass. Independent of the reasons he assigned for this 
 delay, there were others which it requires no very lively 
 imagination to suppose were operating upon his mind. 
 He was doubtless unwilling to reveal to the public the 
 full force of the indignity put upon him by the Papal 
 summons, as he would have done by obeying it promptly. 
 
 * He did not taste meat for the ten years he was attached to the convent, 
 except when discharging duties outside. Then he had the privilege of living 
 as others lived. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 25 
 
 The effect would have been in every way as prejudicial 
 to the Church as to himself. It might be, too, that the 
 insensibility exhibited by the Pope for his feelings and 
 position in the Church, might extend to his person, for 
 in Eome prisons and graves as well as the churches yawn 
 at the behest of his Holiness. ' 
 
 In the course of his journey to Rome, Father Ilya- 
 cinthe passed through Florence. There he saw some 
 of the Italian deputies, and especially M. Massari, the 
 friend and posthumous editor of Gioberti. He also 
 attended the session of the Chamber, always, of course, 
 in his monkish dress, when the new Menabrea ministry 
 was installed. A Carmelite monk fellowshipping with 
 Italian liberals at Florence was not an event to escape 
 notice or animadversion. He was rated for it very 
 severely by VUnita Cattolica and other ultramontane 
 organs. He reached Rome at the Feast of Pentecost, 
 and on the very day that the papers arrived announcing 
 and denouncing his visit to the Italian Chamber of 
 Deputies. Though sensible that his visit to Florence 
 was not likely to increase the cordiality of his reception 
 at the Vatican, he lost no time in applying for an audi- 
 ence. It was granted without delay, which, for a person 
 under discipline, was unusual. This was his first sur- 
 prise. On entering the papal presence, his countenance 
 wore a respectful but sad expression, as became a man 
 who had been treated with injustice and was conscious 
 of the rectitude of his motives. The Pope extended his 
 hand to him. As the Apostle refused to profit by the 
 open doors to escape from the prison to which he had 
 been unjustly condemned, so the Father declined the 
 extended hand until he had kneeled and kiss,ed the 
 foot of the Pope, after the usual custom of the faithful. 
 He then rose, and with his hands folded beneath his 
 
 2 
 
26 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 scapulary, stood silent. After a moment's stillness on 
 both sides, the Pope asked why he had come to Rome. 
 Father Hyacinthe made no reply, for he knew that his 
 questioner had no more need than he of the informa- 
 tion. The Pope resumed, " I told your General that I 
 iv^ished to speak to you, but you were occupied and 
 unable to come." 
 
 Father H. " Very Holy Father, I was not only occu- 
 pied, but suffering in health." 
 
 The Pope. " You haye written some things lacking 
 prudence and good sense, but I forget now what they 
 are." 
 
 Father H. "Very Holy Father, it is very possible 
 that I haye written things wanting in prudence and 
 good sense, but if I haye, it has not been my intention 
 to do so." 
 
 The Pope. "It was in an Italian journal; one of 
 those journals which are striving to reconcile Jesus 
 Christ with Belial." 
 
 Father H. " I have never written but for one Italian 
 Review, La Revista Universale, of Genoa, but it is my 
 duty to say to your Holiness, in reference to my letters 
 in that print, that my enemies have attributed to me 
 not only the opposite of my thoughts, but the opposite 
 of my language. Monsignor Nardi has calumniated 
 me." 
 
 The last words were repeated in Italian and empha- 
 sized with respectful firmness. The Pope resumed with 
 affability, " Then why did you not set yourself right in 
 the same Review ?" 
 
 Father H. " I did so, and in the same Review." 
 
 The Pope. " Ah ! yes, but you have reproduced a 
 letter of the Pope to the Emperor of Austria. That 
 was ill-timed." 
 
INTBODUCTION. 27 
 
 Father H. "Very Holy Father, I believed I was 
 doing honor to your Holiness. It is often affirmed that 
 the Pope is the enemy of Italy ; I have wished to show 
 by his own words that while he condemns its faults, he 
 loves the nation." 
 
 His Holiness was not insensible to the compliment 
 latent in this reply, and appeared perfectly satisfied 
 with the Father's explanation. He detained him in 
 conversation for a full half-hour longer, and with a 
 degree of affability and freedom which Father Hya- 
 cinthe had never experienced at any previous interview. 
 They talked of the religious and political situation, of 
 the approaching Council, of the temporal power, and es- 
 pecially of the Emperor and of the Archbishop of Paris, 
 both of whom, though in different ways, have contrived 
 to give the Holy Father not a little concern of mind. 
 
 The Pope gave Father Hyacinthe some prudential 
 counsel in the most general terms, and having special 
 reference to the gravity of the situation of the Church, 
 but uttered not a syllable of censure upon his preaching 
 or conduct. He did not ask him to withdraw a word 
 he had spoken, or to undo anything he had done, nor 
 did he impose upon him any sort of prohibition whatso- 
 ever. 
 
 While speaking of the temporal power, his Holiness 
 observed that he only insisted upon it as a principle of 
 justice, and added: "Ambition is not a motive with 
 Popes." 
 
 Father Hyacinthe profited by this remark to bring 
 back the conversation, become too general, to his own 
 affairs, and said : 
 
 " If the Holy Father will excuse my referring to how- 
 ever remote a resemblance between us, I may say also 
 that ambition is not the motive which inspires me. I 
 
28 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 became priest and recluse only to serve God and His 
 Church, and to save souls ; now they are trying to de- 
 stroy my usefulness by poisoning the ears of your Holi- 
 ness and of the Catholics in France with calumnies. I 
 have for enemies, very Holy Father, the friends of 
 M. Veuillot and the enemies of the Archbishop of 
 Paris." 
 
 To this the Pope oddly enough answered: "If the 
 Archbishop finds his position so delicate, and thinks it 
 necessary to show so much caution in his relations with 
 the Government, why do you not take counsel from 
 some of the other bishops of France ?" 
 
 The Father made no reply : there was but one thing 
 to say, but that was unnecessary and would have been 
 direspectful : " Why did you name him Archbishop of 
 Paris ?" 
 
 The Pope then blessed the Father very affectionately, 
 saying: "I bless you, dear Hyacinthe, that you may 
 never say what they accuse you of having said, and 
 which you affirm that you never said." 
 
 Thus terminated the Father's third and last visit to 
 the great Catholic metropolis. Each time he had gone 
 there as an offender under discipline, and each time he 
 left without a word of censure for the past or of instruc- 
 tion for the future. The cordiality and homage which 
 awaited him from the court when the character of his 
 reception had transpired, was proportioned to the cold- 
 ness and reserve with which he had been received on 
 his arrival. He was congratulated upon the great vic- 
 tory he had achieved, and the triumph that awaited 
 him. Ambitious prelates flocked around him to testify 
 their gratification with his success, and for the moment 
 he was the lion of Rome. He did not, however, tarry 
 long to enjoy his victory — for to him it was no victory. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 29 
 
 It was an elaborate outrage. He was summoned to 
 Rome in a way which only the gravest offence could 
 justify ; his usefulness in the Church and his standing 
 with the world were gravely compromised. He reached 
 Rome_ under the condemnation of his brethren, and 
 though confident in his innocence, he naturally ex- 
 pected a serious investigation of charges plausible as 
 well as serious in their character. He waits upon the 
 Pope, who has or pretends to have forgotten what he 
 came for; who accepts unhesitatingly an explanation 
 of the offending letter, which a simple perusal would 
 have -rendered superfluous; he utters no word of re- 
 buke ; he asks him to retract nothing he has ever writ- 
 ten or said; he prescribes no restrictions upon his 
 future conduct, and closes with a peculiarly disingenu- 
 ous effort to sow dissension between him and his Arch- 
 bishop. 
 
 Father Hyacinthe set out for home, scarcely conscious 
 himself, probably, of the change which the third visit 
 to Rome had wrought in him. He had begun to learn 
 with how little wisdom his Church was governed, and 
 to ask himself if this is the sort of men whom it is pro- 
 posed by a Universal Council to proclaim infallible ? Is 
 this the sort of statesmen whose temporal power and 
 sovereignty are essential to the independence of the 
 Church and to the protection of the holy Catholic 
 religion ? 
 
 A few days after the Father's return to Paris, M. 
 Veuillot, in the Univers, pretended to give an account 
 of what had passed between him and the Pope, present- 
 ing it, of course, in a point of view anything but advan- 
 tageous to the monk. His article provoked the follow- 
 ing reply from Father Hyacinthe, bearing date the 8th 
 of June last : 
 
30 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 " Sir : Too faithful to the practices of a certain press calling 
 itself Catholic, you presume to divine what passed between the 
 Holy Father and myself, on ground where neither delicacy nor 
 self-respect permit me to follow you. 
 
 " It is very true that in consequence of attacks from a religious 
 party which I am honored in having for adversaries, I have been 
 summoned to Rome by the Holy Father; but it is no less true^ 
 that I was received by him with a goodness altogether paternal, 
 and that I have not been required to retract a single word of 
 what I have either written or spoken. 
 
 " This reply once made, whatever insinuations my public 
 speech or private conduct may expose me to in the future, you 
 will permit me to consult as well my taste as my dignity by 
 maintaining silence. 
 
 " Receive, Sir, the assurance of such sentiments as I owe you, 
 in the charity of our Lord Jesus Christ." 
 
 A few days after this note appeared in Paris, the 
 following note appeared in the form of a communica- 
 tion in V Osservafore Romano, an " officious" print, pub- 
 lished in Rome. 
 
 Let us premise that the Convent of which Father 
 Hyacinthe was Superior is situated at Passy, formerly a 
 suburb, but now a part of the city of Paris, and also the 
 site of a renowned asylum for the insane. 
 
 " From Passy, a place near Paris, renowned for its hospitals, 
 and where mental diseases are healed with success, a French 
 barefooted Carmelite writes to a Catholic journal a letter, the 
 contents of which are not entirely in conformity with the truth." 
 
 This offensive paragraph was attributed to the Pope 
 himself, both in the office of the Univers, and at the 
 papal legation at Paris, and was the theme of a triumph- 
 ant article in the ultramontane organ. The editor did 
 not scruple to apply to it the words of St. Augustin : 
 
INTRODUCTION. 31 
 
 " Roma loouta Qst, sausa finita est" Kome has spoken ; 
 the case is finished. 
 
 On the 10th of July, Father Hyacinthe was invited 
 to address the Peace Society of Paris, and accepted the 
 invitation. In his discourse were two paragraphs con- 
 ceived in that large and comprehensive Christian charity 
 which had already so often provoked the secret or open 
 censures of the Jesuits and ultramontane Catholics. 
 
 " For my part," he said, " I bring to tlie Peace movement tTie 
 gospel ; not that gospel dreamed of by sectaries of eveiy age — as 
 narrow as their own hearts and minds — but my own gospel, re- 
 ceived by me from the Church and from Jesus Christ ; a gospel 
 which claims authority over everything and excludes nothing — 
 \8ensatio7i\ — which reiterates and fulfils the word of the Master, 
 ' he that is not against us is for us,' and which, instead of reject- 
 ing the hand stretched out to it, marches forward to the van of 
 all just ideas and all honest souls," [Applause.] 
 
 Farther on, he made the concession which brought 
 upon him the formal censure of his General, and may, 
 therefore, be regarded as the proximate cause of his 
 quitting his Convent. He said : 
 
 " To banish w^ar, to say to it what the Lord says to death — ' O 
 death, I will be thy death' — we must make exterminating war on 
 sin — sin of society as well as of the individual — sin of peoples as 
 well as of kings. We must record and expound to the world, 
 which does not understand them as yet, those two great books of 
 public and private morality, the book of the synagogue, written 
 by Moses with the fires of Sinai, and transmitted by the prophets 
 to the Christian Church ; and our own book, the book of grace, 
 which upholds and fulfils the law, the gospel of the Son of God. 
 The decalogue of Moses, and the gospel of Jesus Christ ! — the 
 decalogue, which speaks of righteousness, while showing at the 
 height of righteousness the fruit of charity ; the gospel, which 
 speaks of charity, while showing in the roots of charity the sap 
 of righteousness. This is what we need to affirm by word and 
 
32 . INTRODUCTION. 
 
 by example, what we need to glorify before peoples and kings 
 alike ! [Prolonged applause.^ 
 
 " Thank you for this applause ! It comes from your hearts, 
 and it is intended for these divine books ! In the name of these 
 two books, I accept it. I accept it also in the name of those 
 sincere men who group themselves about these books, in Europe 
 and America. It is a most palpable fact that there is no room in 
 the daylight of the civilized world except for these three religious 
 communions — Catholicism, Protestantism, and Judaism !" {^Re- 
 newed applause.'] 
 
 The concession of the privileges of salvation and 
 grace to the Jews, not to speak of Protestants, was the 
 coup de grdce to ultramontane forbearance. 
 
 The phrase in reference to the three religions, which 
 was vehemently applauded, was immediately perverted 
 by the Univers, and made the pretext for violent and 
 prolonged attacks. They represented the preacher as 
 saying that there were three religions equally accept- 
 able in the sight of God, or at least three religions 
 equally entitled to be taught to men ; whereas, he had 
 simply announced the fact, so honorable to the Bible, 
 that the three religious societies which recognized its 
 authority, the Jewish, the Catholic, and the Protestant, 
 are the only ones upon which the sun of civilization 
 shines. 
 
 This discourse produced a profound sensation at 
 Rome, and brought promptly from the General of his 
 order the following letter, dated July 22, 1869, not only 
 reflecting upon the tendency of his past teachings, but 
 strictly prohibiting him from meddling with any of the 
 ' questions agitated among Catholics : 
 
 THE SUPEKIOR-GENEBAL TO THE MONK. 
 
 " Rome, July 23, 18G9. 
 " My Very Rev. Fathek Hyacinthe : I have received your 
 letter of the 9th inst., and in a short time after the speech which 
 
INTKODUCTION. 33 
 
 you delivered at the Peace League. I have not, happily, found 
 in that speech the heterodox phrase attributed to you. It must 
 be said, however, that it contains some vague propositions, ad- 
 mitting of unfortunate interpretations, and that such a speech 
 does not come well from a monk. The habit of the Carmelite 
 was certainly there no longer in its place. My reverend father 
 and dear friend, you know the great interest I have always taken 
 in you. From the commencement of your sermons at Notre- 
 Dame de Paris, I have earnestly exhorted you not to identify 
 yourself with questions in dispute among Catholics, and on which 
 all were not agreed ; because, from the moment you attach your- 
 self ostensibly to one side, your ministry becomes more or less 
 unfruitful with the other. Now, it is patent that you have made 
 no account of the intimation of your father and superior, as last 
 year you wrote a letter to a Club in Paris, in which you freely 
 disclosed your opinions in favor of a party, having little wisdom, 
 and in opposition with the sentiments of the Holy Father, the 
 episcopacy, and the clergy in general. I was alarmed, as were 
 also the French clergy. I wrote to you immediately, to enable 
 you to see the false path you had entered on, in order to stop 
 you. But in vain, for some months after you authorized from 
 yourself a periodical review in Genoa to publish another letter, 
 that has been the cause of so much vexation to you and me. 
 Lastly, during your last sojourn at Rome I made you serious ob- 
 servations and even rather strong reproaches on the false position 
 you were placed in, on account of your imprudence ; but you 
 had scarcely arrived in Paris when you published, under your 
 own signature, a letter deplored by all, even by your friends. 
 
 *' Lately, your presence and speech at the Peace League have 
 caused as great scandal in Catholic Europe as happened about 
 six years ago on the occasion of your speech at a meeting in 
 Paris. You have, beyond doubt, given some reason for such re- 
 criminations by some bold, obscure, and imprudent phrases. 
 
 " I have done all that I could up to the present to defend and 
 save you. To-day I must think of the interests and honor of our 
 holy order, which, unknown to yourself, you compromise. 
 
 *' You write me from Paris, November 19, 1868 : * I avoid mix- 
 ing the Paris Convent and the Order of Mount Carmel with these 
 matters.' Let me say to you, my dear father, that this is an illu- 
 sion. You are a monk, and bound to your superiors by solemn 
 
34 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 vows. We have to answer for you before God and man, and 
 consequently have to take the same measures in your regard as 
 in that of other monks, when your conduct is prejudicial to your 
 soul and our Order. ^ 
 
 "Already, in France, Belgium, and even here, some of the 
 bishops, clergy, and faithful are blaming the superiors of our 
 Order for not taking certain measures in your regard, and it is 
 concluded that there is no authority in our congregation, or that 
 it shares in your opinions and course of action. I do not certainly 
 regret the course I have followed, up to the present, in regard to 
 you ; but matters are arrived at such a point that I would com- 
 promise my conscience and the entire Order if I do not take 
 more efficacious measures in this matter than I have done in the 
 past. Consider, therefore, dear and reverend father, that you are 
 a monk, that you have made solemn vows, and that by the vow 
 of obedience you are bound to your superiors by a lien as strong 
 as that which binds the ordinary priest to his bishop. I can, 
 therefore, no longer tolerate your continuing to compromise the 
 entire Order by your speeches or writings, no more than I can tol- 
 erate our holy habit appearing at meetings that are not in har- 
 mony with our profession as Barefooted Carmelites. Therefore, 
 in the interest of your soul and of our holy Order, I order you 
 formally, by this present, not in the future to print any letters or 
 speech; to speak outside the churches; to be present at the 
 Chambers; to take no part in the Peace League, or any other 
 meeting which has not an exclusively Catholic and religious 
 object. I hope you will obey with docility, and even with love. 
 
 " Now let me speak to you with an open heart, as a father to 
 his son. I see you entered on an extremely dangerous path, 
 which, despite your present intentions, may conduct you where 
 to-day you may deplore to arrive. Arrest yourself, then, my dear 
 son; hear the voice of your father and friend, who speaks to you 
 with a heart broken with sorrow. With this view, you would 
 do well to retire to one of the convents in the Province of Avig- 
 non, there to repose yourself, and perform the retreat which I 
 dispensed you from last year on account of your duties. 
 Meditate in solitude on the great truths of religion — not to preach 
 them, but for the profit of your soul. Ask light from heaven, 
 with a contrite and humble heart. Address yourself to the Holy 
 Virgin, to our father Saint Joseph, and to our seraphic mother 
 
INTRODUCTION. 35 
 
 St. Theresa. A father can well address these words to his son, 
 although he be a great orator. It is a very serious question for 
 you, and for us all. I pray to the Saviour that He may deign to 
 accord you his light and grace. I recommend myself to your 
 prayers, and give you my benediction, and I am your very 
 humble servant, 
 
 "Fr. Dominique de Saint Joseph, . 
 " Superior- OeneraV^ 
 
 This letter, in its tone and purpose,- was so entirely at 
 variance with the sentiments of almost paternal benev- 
 olence theretofore uniformly manifested by the General 
 to Father Hyacinthe, that it was obvious that he was 
 acting under a pressure which he could not resist. 
 Hence the curious inconsistencies of it as a measure of 
 discipline. Though forbidden to print any letters or 
 speeches ; to speak outside the churches ; to be present 
 at the deliberations of the Legislative Chambers ; or to 
 take part in any public meeting except for some ex- 
 clusively Catholic object, he was privileged to retain his 
 high rank in his Order; to hold on to his position 
 as superior of the Convent at Paris ; to remain one of 
 the four Members of the Council of the Province ; and 
 to continue to preach, as usual, at Notre-Dame. Of 
 these privileges, however. Father Hyacinthe did not 
 think it his duty to avail himself. The letter he had 
 received was, as he believed, a blow aimed by the Jesu- 
 its, through him, at the vitals of the Christian Church. 
 It proved to him that in the present state of the 
 Catholic Church, and especially under the rule of 
 monastic discipline, the Evangelical Word was not free. 
 It gave him an occasion, by which he deemed it his 
 duty to profit, " to protest as a Christian and a priest 
 against those doctrines and practices which call them- 
 selves Roman but are not Christian." 
 
36 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 On the 20tli of September, Father Hyacinthe ad- 
 dressed the following reply to his General at Rome; 
 and on the same day he abandoned his Convent and 
 the garb of his Order, thereby protesting, by act as well 
 as by speech, against the abuse of ecclesiastical power, 
 of which he felt that he was the victim. 
 
 To THE Reverend the General of the Order op Bare- 
 footed Carmelites, Rome. 
 
 Very Beverend Father : During the five years of my ministiy 
 at Notre-Dame, Paris, notwithstanding the open attacks and 
 secret misrepresentations of which I have been the object, your 
 confidence and esteem have never for a moment failed me. I 
 retain numerous testimonials of this, written by your own hand, 
 and which relate as well to my preaching as to myself. What- 
 ever may occur, I shall keep this in grateful remembrance. 
 
 To-day, however, by a sudden shift, the cause of which I do 
 not look for in your heart, but in the intrigues of a party omnip- 
 otent at Rome, you find fault with what you have encouraged, 
 blame what you have approved, and demand that I shall make 
 use of such language, or preserve such a silence, as would no 
 longer be the entire and loyal expression of my conscience. 
 
 I do not hesitate a moment. With speech falsified by an order 
 from my superior, or mutilated by enforced utterances, I could 
 not again enter the pulpit of Notre-Dame. I express my regrets 
 for this to the intelligent and courageous bishop, who placed me 
 and has maintained me in it against the ill-will of the men of 
 whom I have just been speaking. I express my regrets for it to 
 the imposing audience which there surrounded me with its atten- 
 tion, its sympathies—I had almost said, with its friendship. I 
 should be worthy neither of the audience, nor of the bishop, nor 
 of my conscience, nor of God, if I could consent to play such a 
 part in their presence. 
 
 I withdraw at the same time from the convent in which I 
 dwell, and which, in the new circumstances which have befallen 
 me, has become to me a prison of the soul. In acting thus I am 
 not unfaithful to my vows. I have promised monastic obedi- 
 ence — but within the limits of an honest conscience, and of the 
 
INTKODUCTION. 37 
 
 dignity of my person and ministry. I have promised it under 
 favor of that higher law of justice, the "royal law of liberty," 
 •which is, according to the apostle James, the proper law of the 
 Christian. 
 
 It was the most untrammelled enjoyment of this holy liberty 
 that I came to seek in the cloister, now more than ten years ago, 
 under the impulse of an enthusiasm pure from all worldly calcu- 
 lation — I dare not add, free from all youthful illusion. If, in 
 return for my sacrifices, I to-day am offered chains, it is not 
 merely my right, it is my duty to reject them. 
 
 This is a solemn hour. The Church is passing through one of 
 the most violent crises — one of the darkest and most decisive — 
 of its earthly existence. For the first time in three hundred 
 years, an (Ecumenical Council is not only summoned, but de- 
 clared necessary. These are the expressions of the Holy Father. 
 It is not at such a moment that a preacher of the gospel, were he 
 the least of all, can consent to hold his peace, like the " dumb 
 dogs" of Israel — treacherous guardians, whom the prophet re- 
 proaches because they could not bark. Canes muti, non valentes 
 latrare. 
 
 The saints are never dumb. I am not one of them, but I nev- 
 ertheless know that I am come of that stock— ^Z// sanctorum su- 
 mus — and it has ever been my ambition to place my steps, my 
 tears, and, if need were, my blood, in the footprints where they 
 have left theirs. 
 
 I lift up, then, before the Holy Father and before the Council, 
 my protest as a Christian and a priest against those doctrines and 
 practices which call themselves Roman, but are not Christian, 
 and which, making encroachments ever bolder and more deadly, 
 tend to change the constitution of the Church, the substance as 
 well as the form of its teaching, and even the spirit of its piety: 
 I protest against the divorce, not less impious than mad, which 
 men are struggling to accomplish between the Church, which is 
 our mother for eternity, and the society of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury, whose sons we are for time, and toward which we have 
 also both duties and afiFections. I protest against that opposition, 
 more radical and frightful yet, which sets itself against human 
 nature, attacked and revolted by these false teachers in its most 
 indestructible and holiest aspirations. I protest above all against 
 the sacrilegious perversion of the Gospel of the Son of God him- 
 
38 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 self, the spirit and the letter of which, alike, are trodden under 
 foot by the Pharisaism of the new law. 
 
 It is my most profound conviction, that if France in particular, 
 and the Latin races in general, are delivered over to anarchy, 
 social, moral, and religious, the principal cause of it is to be 
 found — not, certainly, in Catholicism itself— but in the way in 
 which Catholicism has for a long time past been understood and • 
 practised. 
 
 I appeal to the Council now about to assemble, to seek reme- 
 dies for our excessive evils, and to apply them alike with energy 
 and gentleness. But if fears which I am loth to share, should 
 come to be realized — if that august assembly should have no 
 more of liberty in its deliberations than it has already in its prep- 
 aration — if, in one word, it should be robbed of the characteristic 
 essential to an (Ecumenical Council — I would cry to God and 
 men to demand another, really assembled in the Holy Spirit, not 
 in the spirit of party — really representing the Church universal, 
 not the silence of some and the constraint of others. " For the 
 hurt of the daughter of my people am I hurt. I am black. As- 
 tonishment hath taken hold on me. Is there no balm in Gilead — 
 is there no physician there ? Why then is not the health of the 
 daughter of my people recovered ?" — Jeremiah, viii. 21, 22. 
 
 And, finally, I appeal to Thy tribunal, O Lord Jesus ! Ad tuinn, 
 Domine Jesu, tribunal appello. It is in Thy presence that I write 
 these lines ; it is at Thy feet, after having prayed much, pon- 
 dered much, suffered much, and waited long — it is at Thy feet 
 that I subscribe them. 1 have this confidence concerning them, 
 that, however men may condemn them upon earth, Thou wilt 
 approve them in heaven. Living or dying, this is enough 
 for me. 
 
 BROTHER HYACINTHE, 
 
 Superior of the Barefooted Canndites 
 of Paris, Second Definitor of the 
 Order in tJie Province.of Avignon. 
 Paris : Passt, September 20, 18G9. 
 
 This thrilling protest was promptl}^ followed by 
 another letter from the General at Rome, threatening 
 him, if he did not return to his convent in ten days, 
 with a privation of all his dignities in the order of Oar- 
 
INTR0DUC5TI0N. 39 
 
 melites; with the major excommunication, which, by 
 the way, he had ipso facto incurred on quitting the 
 convent without the authority of his superiors; and 
 with the note of infamy, which is the severest penalty, 
 we believe, that the Church has the power to inflict 
 upon non-resident offenders. This letter ran as follows : 
 
 Rome, Sept. 26. 
 Reverend Father : Your letter of the 20tli only reached me 
 yesterday. You will easily imagine how deeply it afflicted me, 
 and with what bitterness it filled my soul. I was far from ex- 
 pecting you to fall to such a depth. Therefore my heart bleeds 
 with grief, and is filled with an immense pity for you, and I raise 
 my humble supplications to the God of all Mercies that he may 
 enlighten you, pardon you, and lead you back from that deplo- 
 rable and fatal path on which you have entered. It is very true, 
 my reverend father, that during the last five years, in spite of my 
 personal opinions, which are in general contrary to yours on 
 many religious questions, as I have more than once expressed to 
 you — in spite of the counsels I have given to you on several 
 occasions relative to your preachings, and to which, excepting in 
 the case of your Lent sermons at Rome, you paid but little atten- 
 tion, so long as you did not openly depart from the limits im- 
 posed by Christian prudence on a priest, and especially on a 
 monk, I always manifested toward you sentiments of esteem and 
 friendship, and encouraged you in your preachings. But if that 
 is true, so also is it that from the moment in which I perceived 
 that you were beginning to go beyond those limits, I was forced 
 to begin on my side to express to you my fears, and to mark to 
 you my dissatisfaction. You must remember, my reverend 
 father, that I did so especially last year about the month of Octo- 
 ber, when passing through France, relative to a letter addressed 
 by you to a Club in Paris. I then explained to you what annoy- 
 ance that waiting had caused me. Your letters published in Italy 
 were also very painful to me, and also drew on you from me ob- 
 servations and reproaches when you last visited Rome. Lastly, 
 your presence and speech at the Ligue de la Paix filled up the 
 measure of my apprehensions and my grief, and forced me to 
 write to you the letter of the 22d of July last, by which I formally 
 
40 ' INTRODUCTION. 
 
 ordered you in future not to print any letter or speecli, to speak 
 in public elsewhere than in the churches, to be present in the 
 Chambers, or to take part in the Ligue de la Paix or any other 
 meetings the object of which was not exclusively Catholic and 
 religious. My prohibition, as you see, did not in the least refer to 
 your sermons in the pulpit. On the contrary, I desired you in 
 future to devote solely and entirely your talents and your elo- 
 quence to teachings in the Church. Consequently it was with 
 painful surprise that I read in your letter that " you could not 
 reascend the pulpit at Notre-Dame with language perverted by 
 dictation or mutilated by reticence." You must be aware, rever- 
 end father, that I have never forbidden you to preach, that I 
 have never given you any order or imposed any restriction on 
 your teachings. I only took the liberty of giviug to you some 
 counsels, and of addressing to you some observations, especially 
 on the subject of your last lectures, as in my quality of Superior 
 it was my right and my duty to do. You were, consequently, as 
 free to continue your preachings at Paris or elsewhere as in pre- 
 ceding years, before my letter of 22d July last, and if you have 
 resolved not to reappear in the pulpit of Notre-Dame de Paris, it 
 is voluntary and of your own free will, and not by virtue of 
 measures adopted by me toward you. Your letter of the 20th 
 announces to me that you are about to leave your monastery in 
 Paris. I learn, indeed, by the journals and by private letters that 
 you have cast otf your gown without any ecclesiastical authoriza- 
 tion. If the fact is unfortunately true, I would remark to you, my 
 reverend father, that the monk who quits his monastery and the 
 dress of his Order without the regular permission from the com- 
 petent authority, is considered as a real apostate, and is conse- 
 quently liable to the canonical penalties mentioned in Cap. Peri- 
 culoso. The punishment is, as you are aware, the greater excom- 
 munication, latcB sententicB ; and, according to our rules, confirmed 
 by the Holy See, part iii., chap, xxxv., No. 12, those who leave 
 the community without authorization incur the greater excom- 
 munication ipso facto and the note of infamy. Qui a congregatione 
 recedunt prceter apostasiam, ipso facto excommunicatio/iem et inf amice 
 notam incurrunt. As your Superior, and in accordance with the 
 prescriptions of the Apostolic decrees, which order me to employ 
 even censure to bring you back to the bosom of the Order you 
 have so deplorably abandoned, I am under the necessity of calling 
 
INTRODUCTION. 41 
 
 on you to return to the monastery in Paris wliich you liave 
 quitted within ten days from the date of the present letter; ob- 
 serving to you that if you do not obey this order within the time 
 stated, you will be deprived canonically of all the charges you 
 hold in the Order of Barefooted Carmelite Monks, and will re- 
 main under the censure established by the common law and by 
 our rules. May you, my reverend father, listen to our voice and 
 to the cry of your conscience ; may you promptly and seriously 
 descend within yourself, see the depth of your fall, and by a heroic 
 resolution manfully recover yourself, repair the great scandal you 
 have caused, and by that means console the Church, your mother, 
 you have so much afflicted. That is the most sincere and ardent 
 desire of my heart ; it is also that which your afflicted friends, 
 and myself, your father, ask w^ith all the fervor of our souls of 
 God Almighty — of God, so full of mercy and goodness. 
 
 Brothek Dominique, 
 
 of St. Joseph. 
 
 Of the same date with the preceding letter from the 
 General of the Carmelites is the following letter ad- 
 dressed to Father Hyacinthe by Dupanloup, Bishop of 
 Orleans, his friend and the friend of his friends in 
 France : 
 
 " Orleans, Sept. 25, 1869. 
 " My Dear Colleague : The very moment I learnt from Paris 
 what you were upon the point of doing, I endeavored, as you 
 know, to save you at all costs from what could not but be for you 
 a great fault and a great misfortnne, as well as a profound sorrow 
 for the Church; that very moment, at night, I sent your old 
 schoolfellow and friend to stop you if possible. But it was too 
 late; the scandal had been consummated, and henceforth you 
 can measure by the grief of all the friends of the Church, and the 
 joy of all her enemies, the evil you have done. I can only pray 
 to God now, and implore you to stop upon the brink you have 
 reached, which leads to abysses the troubled eye of your soul has 
 not seen. You have suffered — I know it ; but allow me to say it, 
 Father Lacordaire and Father Ravignan suffered, I know, more 
 than you, and they rose higher in patience and strength, through 
 
42 INTBODUCnON. 
 
 love of the Churcli and Jesus Christ. How was it you did not 
 feel the wrong you were doing the Church, your mother, by these 
 accusations, and the wrong you are doing Jesus Christ by placing 
 yourself as you do alone before Him in contempt of His Church ? 
 But I would fain hope, and I do hope, that it will only be a mo- 
 mentary aberration. Return among us ; after causing the Catholic 
 world this sorrow, give it a great consolation and a great example. 
 Go and throw yourself at the feet of the Holy Father. His arms 
 will be open to you, and in clasping you to his paternal heart he 
 will restore to you the peace of your conscience and the honor 
 of your life. Accept from him who was your Bishop, and who 
 will never cease to love you, this testimony and these counsels 
 of a true and religious affection. 
 
 "Felix, Bishop of Orleans." 
 
 To this letter Father Hyacinthe replied as follows : 
 
 " MoNSEiGNEUR : I am much affected by the sentiment which 
 has dictated the letter you have done me the honor to write, and 
 I am very grateful for the prayers which you make on my behalf; 
 but I can accept neither the reproaches nor the counsels which 
 you address to me. That which you call the commission of a 
 great fault, I regard as the fulfilment of a grand duty. Accept, 
 Monseigneur, the most respectful sentiments, with which I re- 
 main, in Jesus Christ and in His Church, your veiy humble and 
 obedient servant, 
 
 "Frere Hyacinthe. 
 
 ''Paris, Sept. 26, 1869." 
 
 The ten days' limit prescribed for his return to the 
 convent expired on the 9th of October. On that day 
 Father Hyacinthe embarked on board the steamer Pe- 
 reire for New York. 
 
 On the 18th of that month the heads of the Order 
 held a meeting at Rome, and pronounced the following 
 sentence upon their insubordinate brother : 
 
 " The term fixed by the Rev. Father, the General in Chief of 
 the Barefooted Carmelites, for Father Hyacinthe, of the Immacu- 
 
INTEODUCTION. 4B 
 
 late Conception, provincial definer, Superior of the House in Paris, 
 to return to said convent, having expired — having examined the 
 papers and authentic proofs that said Fatlier Hyacinthe has not 
 yet returned to his convent, the superior authority of the Order, 
 by decree dated October 18, 1869, has deposed Father Hyacinthe 
 of the Immaculate Conception from all the charges with which 
 he was invested by the Order, declaring him besides attainted by 
 his apostasy, and under the major excommunication, as well as 
 all other censures and ecclesiastical penalties denounced by the 
 common law and by the Constitution of the Order against apos- 
 tates." 
 
 Such is an imperfect outline of the processes by which 
 one of the most gifted and meritorious officers of the 
 Latin Church has been provoked to revolt against his 
 ecclesiastical superiors, and deliberately incur the se- 
 verest penalties which are reserved for such insubordi- 
 nation. To lis it seems incredible that any of the acts 
 imputed to him by his enemies should have exposed him 
 to the censure, still less to the persecutions, of any soci- 
 ety of professing Cliristians. Let us recapitulate them : 
 
 1. In one of his discourses he treated the Eevolution 
 of 1789 as a political and social necessity. 
 
 2. In another he denounced Pharisaism as in the 
 Church, as Jesus Christ had done before him. 
 
 3. In defending himself from an aspersion upon his 
 charity toward persons having different religious views 
 from his, he intimated that there were Catholics who 
 mourned the disappearance of the Inquisition and the 
 Dragonnades, a statement fully confirmed by the Ency- 
 clical letter of 1864. 
 
 4. In a private note to a friend, he stated that the 
 Catholics who were trying to identify the fortunes of the 
 Church with those of a disreputable woman who had 
 been just expelled from the throne of Spain, were drag- 
 ging the Church through blood and mire. 
 
44 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 5. He quoted a letter written by the Pope in 1848 
 to tlie Emperor of Austria, which favored Italian 
 unity. 
 
 6. He proclaimed that Jews and Protestants, as well 
 as Catholics, came within the pale of an enlightened 
 Christian charity. 
 
 7. He always preached a religion in sympathy with 
 the progressive tendencies of modern civilization. 
 
 8. Finally, he persisted in being the friend of the Arch- 
 bishop of Paris, and refused to place himself under the 
 direction of any bishop of another diocese. 
 
 We make no account of his abandoning his convent 
 and disobeying the order of his General to return, for 
 those acts were the logical consequences of the prior 
 offences, if the Church will persist in regarding as of- 
 fences the acts which ultimated in the interdict from 
 Eome of July 22. There is no doubt that he violated 
 the laws of his Church in quitting his convent without 
 permission, and that he exposed himself to the penalties 
 which have been visited upon him by the executive offi- 
 cers of his Order. His Church provides a mode of pro- 
 cedure for the secularization of priests desiring to re- 
 nounce their monastic vows, but Father Hyacinthe did 
 not choose to avail himself of it. He declined to recog- 
 nize an authority which, as he thought, had been abused 
 in his person, which was degrading the priesthood, cor- 
 rupting the hierarchy, and sapping the vital forces of 
 the Church. He thought it his duty to stand to the 
 faith he had conscientiously espoused, and which he 
 believed Evangelical, rather than succumb to what he 
 regarded as organized error and pharisaical oppression. 
 It was the duty of some one to challenge the wolf which 
 in sheep's clothing was devouring the faithful. He nat- 
 urally enough concluded that there was no fitter person 
 
INTRODUCTION. 45 
 
 than himself to do it. Nor in this case was he mis- 
 taken. His piety; his well-known devotion to the 
 Church; his eminent gifts of speech, which promised 
 him every possible distinction that Eome can confer, 
 and which therefore protect his motives from degrading 
 suspicions, all seemed to conspire to make his the voice 
 that should cry " in the wilderness, to prepare the way 
 of the Lord and make his paths straight." 
 
 Since Luther, there has been no such signal revolt 
 against the authority of the Romish Hierarchy. Fene- 
 lon professed doctrines which Louis XIV. compelled the 
 Pope and his Cardinals to condemn. Though Fenelon 
 defended his Maximes up to the last hour of the delibera- 
 tions at Rome with unrelenting earnestness, the mo- 
 ment Rome spoke, though by a bare majority of the 
 Cardinals, he succumbed and publicly denounced his 
 book from the pulpit of his own cathedral. Lammenais 
 revolted against the abuses of the Papal Government, 
 but unhappily his religion had the Church, not the 
 Bible, for its base, and he wandered away into rational- 
 ism and unbelief. 
 
 Lacordaire hovered all his life on the borders of the 
 Church, forever preaching a broader Christianity than 
 was tolerated at Rome, always tormented with the re- 
 straints imposed upon his tongue and conscience by his 
 ecclesiastical Superior, and always in a state of mental 
 and moral insubordination to the Papal hierarchy. But 
 Lacordaire had not the physical health nor animal force 
 necessary to brave the consequences of an open revolt. 
 He was constitutionally timid; his monastic life had 
 gradually incapacitated him for comprehending the vast 
 resources for such a contest, which the living world 
 around him, with the Divine blessing, would have sup- 
 plied, and he succumbed to the rigors of ecclesiastical 
 
46 INTKODUCTION. 
 
 discipline and to disease, induced, no doubt, by his in- 
 ability to live the complete life for which he had been 
 created. He fell a prey to a sort of dry-rot, which 
 fastens, sooner or later, upon all who commit their 
 consciences to the keeping of fellow-sinners, who seek 
 to escape sin by fleeing from temptation rather than by 
 fighting and overcoming it, and who fancy that the best 
 way of keeping the commandments is to spend all one's 
 time in reciting them. 
 
 The eloquent Bishop of Orleans is also one of these 
 representative men, too earnest and enlightened a Chris- 
 tian to accept the perverse follies of the Syllabus ; but 
 instead of taking his stand against it, he set himself to 
 work, as soon as it appeared, to prove that it meant 
 something very different from what it said, and that, 
 instead of being in conflict, it was in harmony with the 
 doctrines proclaimed at Malines. This disingenuous 
 plea for the Papal Government was attributed by his 
 partisans to his worthy desire to avoid dissensions in 
 the Church. He preferred to see it a prey to error 
 rather than to schism — to surrender the shepherd's 
 crook to the wolf than to have the flock scattered by 
 learning their peril. 
 
 The consequence is that this gifted and admirable 
 prelate, instead of remaining what his genius designed 
 him to be, a controlling power in the Church of Christ, 
 has by degrees parted with his birthright, and is now 
 the reluctant but unresisting instrument of a devasta- 
 ting Ultramontanism. Like Lammenais and Lacor- 
 daire and Fenelon, he has not proved equal to his op- 
 portunities. Like them, "he rejected the command- 
 ments of God that he might keep the traditions of the 
 elders." Like them, too, he has always been toiling for 
 
INTRODUCTION. 17 
 
 reforms, but Eccomplishing none, because lie had more 
 
 faith in the Church than in Providence. " He made 
 
 « 
 
 flesh his arm." 
 
 It was not so with Luther. Thus far it has not been 
 so with Father Hyacinthe. "Will he, too, fall by the 
 way, or is he to share the reward reseryed for those who 
 endure unto the end ? 
 
 Father Hyacinthe, it is believed, has thus far fol- 
 lowed his convictions faithfully. When his conscience 
 told him distinctly that Roman theology was not infal- 
 lible theology, he refused to accept it as such ; when 
 his conscience told him that the temporal power of the 
 Pope was maintained at the expense of his legitimate 
 spiritual influence, that it was an element of weaknesk. 
 rather than of strength to the Church of Christ, he re- 
 fused any longer to countenance or defend it. When 
 he found pontifical allocutions and the canons of coun- 
 cils usurping the place and authority of the Bible in 
 the Church, he chose to stay with the Bible rather than 
 go with its papal substitute. In this firm faith in God 
 and the right, in this bold rejection of all compromises 
 with the priesthood of error, he alone of all the illustri- 
 ous reformers of Catholicism since Luther holds an 
 apostolic attitude. Will he maintain it ? 
 
 To surrender deliberately and voluntarily the most 
 cherished affections of one's heart is a fearful trial for 
 any man. Few are equal to it. With Father Hyacinthe 
 the Church of Rome had represented all that was most 
 pure and lovely on earth. His life had been spent in 
 decorating it with imaginary charms. To his youthful 
 vision it was the New Jerusalem coming down from 
 God out of heaven, with walls of jasper, gates of 
 pearl, and streets of gold. He finally awoke from his 
 
48 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 illusion, and found that temptation and sin reap their 
 harvests at Eome as regularly as elsewhere, and that 
 " God alone is great." 
 
 Father Hyacinthe has no quarrel with the Catholic 
 Church, but with its abuses. He wisely thinks that its 
 maladies, like those of the human system, are to be 
 cured from within and not from without; that the 
 remedy must be applied to the heart, not to the skin. 
 He does not, therefore, intend to abandon his Church, 
 but to labor for it. He wisely declines to take refuge 
 in any other religious organization, for he knows that 
 the vices of which he complains in his Church belong 
 to the universal human heart, and in one shape or 
 another are likely to present themselves in all denomi- 
 nations. He has, therefore, given the world to under- 
 stand that what capacities of usefulness remain to him, 
 will be consecrated to the purification and edification of 
 the Church in which he was reared, and which he 
 thinks has enjoyed, and continues to enjoy, at least as 
 much of God's favor as any other. 
 
 Naturalists tell us that the sparrow abandons eggs 
 which she discovers have been handled, and refuses to 
 give life to offspring which she feels herself too weak 
 to protect. The eagle, on the other hand, confident in 
 her strength, fights for her off'spring; and if one is 
 ravished from her nest, she cherishes the rest of her 
 brood only the more tenderly. The soi-disant liberal 
 Catholics of Europe since Luther, like the sparrow, take 
 counsel of their weakness, and as reformers have be- 
 gotten nothing ; have abandoned their convictions, as 
 it were, in the egg. On the other hand. Father Hya- 
 cinthe, like the eagle, confiding in that sort of strength 
 which renders the feeblest arm invincible, is ready to 
 
INTRODUCTION. 49 
 
 light ill defence of liis convictions, and, with the bless- 
 ing of God, proposes to do what he can to deliver the 
 Church from its enemies, and open its doors again, 
 as in the beginning, to all who make the love of 
 God and their neighbors the rule of their lives. Will 
 he, in shooting the arrow of God's deliverance, "smite 
 the ground five or six times," or like the King Joash, 
 for want of faith, will he smite only three times, and 
 stop? 
 
 Note by the Editor. — Since the foregoing was written, the Bishop 
 of Orleans has thrown some doubt over the entire justice of pla- 
 cing him in the category of reformers who accomplish nothing, 
 by a remarkable letter he has just addressed to the clergy of his 
 diocese, in relation to the attempt making to have the infallibility 
 of the Pope proclaimed by the approaching Council, as a dogma 
 of the Church. It bears so directly upon, if it does not owe its 
 existence to the exemplary revolt of Father Hyacinthe, that we 
 have deemed it our duty to lay it before our readers in the Ap- 
 pendix. 
 
 The Encyclical of 1864, entitled ''Quanta Cura" with its 
 accompanying " Syllabus" of propositions denounced and con- 
 demned by the authority of the Pope, may be found in Apple 
 ton's Annual Cyclopaedia for 1864 
 
THE FAMILY. 
 
THE NOTKE-DAME LECTURES, 
 
 ADVENT, 1866. 
 
 THE FAMILY. 
 
 LECTRUE FIRST. 
 
 December 2, 1866. 
 
 Domestic Society in the General Scheme oi 
 Human Society. 
 
 My Lord Archbishop and Gentlemen : It is 
 characteristic of the questions of the present day, thai 
 they have a tendency to pass out of the domain of ideaa 
 into that of facts. Doubtless this has always been the 
 instinct of the truth ; but neyer has that instinct been 
 so potent and so urgent as now. As we come down — 
 or up, if you like it better — into the domain of facta 
 (for I hardly know whether to speak of it as an ascent 
 or as a descent when we pass from speculation to prac- 
 tice) — call it what you please, when we make our en- 
 trance into the realm of facts, the idea of modern days, 
 be it true or false, is not limited, in its application, to 
 the individual fact. It spreads out over the social fact 
 
 At the beginning of these Conferences, two years ago, 
 I strove to bring to your notice, as the central point of 
 
54 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 the religious controversy of the hour, the question of 
 the personality of God. It was not the infallibility of 
 the Church, it was not the divinity of Christ, or, at 
 leasfc, it was not the Church, nor Christ, except as these 
 may be considered as the affirmation or negation of the 
 personality of God. That was the theoretical question ; 
 it occupied us for a year. But the theoretical ques- 
 tion was followed by its practical corollary, and that 
 corollary (which we studied last year) was morality, 
 human or divine ; morality, at the same time free and 
 subject, or morality independent of God, and, there- 
 fore, fallen — "independent morality, ^^ a doctrine most 
 weak in a scientific point of view and in the field of 
 logical debate, but most potent in the domain of facts, 
 because it is a radical doctrine, and because it is the 
 only practical means of finally emancipating men's 
 consciences, and of "exorcising," as some one calls it, 
 " the ghost of the absolute." 
 
 Such, then, is the practical conclusion of the religious 
 question as it affects the individual. But, as I have said, 
 the affairs of the individual bring us to the affairs of 
 society, and so in our last Conference we were led to 
 remark, as the conclusion from the doctrine of the 
 personality of God, and the doctrine of right and 
 wrong, as founded upon God — the Sovereignty of God 
 over Society. 
 
 This is the subject to which we come this year, the 
 examination of which I propose to continue from year 
 to year, unless something in outward circumstances or 
 in the progress of my own thoughts (which I wish to 
 preserve as free as your own) should occur to derange 
 this plan, which I propose, but to which I do not bind 
 myself. 
 
 This year, I intend to talk to you about the relations 
 
THE FAMILY. 65 
 
 between religion and domestic society — the first and most 
 necessary of all forms of human society. 
 
 I should have to apologize for recurring, in this pul- 
 pit, to a subject which has been already treated here 
 with a superiority and ardor which no one can have 
 forgotten ; but the family is one of those inexhaustible 
 subjects on which there is- always something left to 
 glean, even after the best of harvesters. 
 
 I would only notify you, gentlemen, that the work 
 which I mean to undertake ia rather that of exposition 
 than of controversy. I will not refute, point by point, 
 everything that has been said against the Christian 
 constitution of the family. I shall do this only as I 
 may be brought to it by the current of my thought or 
 speech. I prefer, in general, to set before you, in its 
 completeness, its simplicity, its grandeur, what the 
 family is when organized according to the Christian 
 conception, under the sovereignty of the Father who is 
 in Heaven and the father who is on the earth. This 
 exposition, of itself— if I am not too far below my task — 
 will be the best of refutations. 
 
 At this very moment all eyes are turned toward that 
 centre of the kingdom and visible sovereignty of God 
 upon earth — Rome! If I were undertaking a contro- 
 versy against those who are talking so bravely every day 
 of how religious questions have lost their power of in- 
 teresting and exciting the m.en of our time, I should 
 ask the secret of this grand and solemn expectation, 
 and the reason why so much terror is prevailing along- 
 side of so much hope — why there is so much bitterness 
 and so much love at once. But it is not controversy 
 that I have undertaken. I do not wish to put to the 
 question either men or things. I would only collect 
 my thoughts and compose my heart, before commencing, 
 
56 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 in that sense of responsibility which weighs upon the 
 preacher of the gospel at this hour. And I would stay 
 myself, by this thought and this heart, on that ever- 
 lasting throne which is all the more immovable by so 
 much as it is the more assailed, and all the nearer to its 
 triumph by so much as it seems nearer its ruin. 
 
 My lord archbishop, there come to my mind the sim- 
 ple and noble words which you once said to me : " The 
 Episcopacy is a chain which winds round the globe." 
 That which I now salute, in your own beloved and 
 honored person, is the whole episcopate — it is its chief, 
 the bishop of bishops, and the father of fathers. There- 
 fore it was, that, just now, as I bowed my head for that 
 benediction which is no vain ceremony (there are no vain 
 ceremonies in God's church) — the benediction of light, 
 wisdom, and power — I was thrilled with a twofold rev- 
 erence and tenderness ; first because it is from yourself, 
 my lord, and because, at the same time, it is from 
 him. 
 
 Part First. — The Bonds of Society, 
 
 I approach then, gentlemen, the religious side of social 
 questions. But before treating of any particular form 
 of society, I must define the meaning of society in gen- 
 eral. It is not precisely the family, neither is it the na- 
 tion, it is not even the church — it is simply society ! I 
 find myself in the presence of a great idea ; one of those 
 ideas which carry the greatest power and fascination 
 in this century, and, since I belong in this century my- 
 self, I must needs add, one of those ideas which have 
 been the passion of my youth, and which are to be the 
 passion of my riper years. It is the idea of humanity, 
 the fellowship of all men with all men, of all nations 
 with all nations, of mankind with itself. I salute, then, 
 
THE FAMILY. 57 
 
 universal society, I salute humanity — not only in my 
 own behalf, but in behalf of every one of you. 
 
 [The speaker, considering this natural and universal society of 
 the human race, to which every man belongs by the law of his 
 existence, and apart from any consent or refusal of his will, first 
 propounds this question : " What is it whicli thus unites man to 
 his kind ?" His answer to this question is briefly summed up as 
 follows :] 
 
 It is a triple bond — a physical bond, an intellectual 
 bond, and a moral bond — blood, reason, virtue. 
 
 1st, Individual men are joined together in a natural 
 and universal society by the bond of a common origin — 
 blood. 
 
 Human personality has its seat in the soul, but its 
 base in the body ; and in the view of science, as well 
 as of revelation, " the life is in the blood."* 
 
 If we believed in the materialistic school, the blood, 
 in man, would be a matter of purely physical trans- 
 mission, as in the brute, in whose exalted image they are 
 disposed to make us, since they will no longer allow that 
 we are the image of God. But it is not so : there is a 
 certain moral quality in the blood of man, and when it 
 has passed into our veins from two hearts joined to- 
 gether in love, it has created the bonds of society. 
 
 It has created the family ^ that holy thing unknown to 
 the inferior races. 
 
 It has created the country, the nation — in the normal 
 constitution of which it fulfils so great a part. 
 
 And above the family and the country, including both 
 the one and the other, as the genus contains the species, 
 blood has created humanity; for in spite of that science 
 which calls itself humaiiitari^n and positive, but is nei- 
 
 f lieviticus, xvii. 14, 
 
 8* 
 
58 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 ther, it is by a common blood that humanity comes to 
 be one single race. " God hath made of one blood all 
 nations of men, to dwell on all the face of the earth."* 
 
 2. Individual men are joined together in natural and 
 universal society by the bond of common reason. 
 
 If there is a physical bond between all men, there is 
 also a metaphysical one. If it is one and. the same 
 blood of Adam that courses in the veins of our body, 
 so it is one and the same ray of light, one and the same 
 reason that irradiates our soul. Doubtless reason is an 
 individual matter, as regards our possession of it : it is 
 individual as regards the good or bad use which we 
 make of it ; but it is impersonal in the object it reveals 
 to us — truth — and in the laws it imposes on us. Now, 
 this impersonal reason, the reflection in each indi- 
 vidual intellect of God's own word, is invariable. 
 " Truth this side of the Pyrenees, error the other side," 
 said Pascal. Doubtless there are varying forms of the 
 one invariable truth, which change on one side of the 
 mountains or the other. There are garments of truth 
 that grow old and are laid aside, and must be renewed 
 with the generations and the ages. But the body of the 
 truth remains always the same, ever fresh and pure and 
 beautiful. Invariable, the reason which enlightens me 
 is also universal. Your axiom is my axiom, my law 
 your law. I know, in advance of all experience, that 
 man, wherever I may meet him, will have the same first 
 principles as myself, because he is illumined with the 
 same light: "The Word was the true Light, which 
 lighteth every man that cometh into the world."! By 
 reason, then, as well as by blood, there exists a natural 
 and universal fellowship which we call humanity. 
 
 3. Individual men, finally, are united in a natural and 
 
 * Acts, xvil. 26 t John, i. 9. 
 
THE FAMILY. 5'9 
 
 universal fellowship by the bond of one and the same 
 virtue. 
 
 No little reproach has been cast upon Christianity for 
 practising personal yirtue, and neglecting social virtue 
 — of seeking the salvation of individuals, and not con- 
 cerning itself with the salvation of humanity. It is 
 true, we are the party of the personal idea, of individual 
 virtue, of individual salvation. We claim that man is 
 responsible before everything, for good or for evil, to his 
 own conscience. We say that he ought to do the good and 
 shun the evil, apart from the advantage which will ac- 
 crue from it to humanity. " Seek first the kingdom of 
 God, the personal God, and His righteousness;" and 
 then the good of the country, the good of the human 
 race, " will be added unto you f yes, added, as a clear 
 gratuity, but it is a gift which does not come in any 
 other way, and which springs necessarily from the per- 
 sonal idea itself 
 
 What is it, in fact, that is necessary in order that I 
 may practise individual virtue and achieve my indi- 
 vidual salvation? I must obey two great command- 
 ments — ^justice and love. Kow these two laws, which 
 maintain the distinction of persons, create at the same 
 time between them a tie more near and sacred than 
 those of reason and blood. In fact, what is justice, if 
 not a mutual care and fulfilment, among men, of their 
 rights and duties ? What is love, if it is not the gift of 
 more than another's due, the claiming of less than one's 
 own right ; a gift not only outward but inward ; a gift 
 from the very person itself ; the gift of each to all ; the 
 love of the human race ? 
 
 Men, then, are bound to men by a threefold cord that 
 cannot be broken — blood, reason, virtue. 
 
 The social state is not, then, a state of degeneracy, as 
 
60 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 Rousseau had dreamed .... and so above the society of 
 home, above civil society, above religious society, there is 
 universal society — the human race. 
 
 And here, for one moment, on these heights I pause. 
 It is good for us to be here. sublime, radiant 
 heights ! Heathen antiquity had caught a glimpse of 
 you in its dawning twilight ; but it was for Christianity 
 alone to reveal you, and if the philosophy of this age has 
 followed in her train, it may try in vain to banish her 
 and cast her down from thence. It can only sit at her 
 feet as her disciple. 
 
 One glance more, Gentlemen, at these heights, before 
 we leave them. These are true Christian heights — 
 these summits to which the idea of humanity has at- 
 tained — Christian in the original light which lightens 
 them: "he hath made of one blood all nations," to 
 populate this orb of earth — Christian in the last light 
 on which they look, and which is none other than God 
 himself. 
 
 "Father," said the true Redeemer cf the human race, 
 and, therefore, its sole effectual organizer, the Lord 
 JesiiS Christ, " Father, grant that they may be one, even 
 as we are one."* This is our title to the possession of 
 these mountain heights : — Adam, at the beginning, with 
 the fountain-head of his blood; God at the end, with 
 the splendor of his glory; and in the midst humanity. 
 " All ye are brethren," said Christ, " for one -is your 
 Father, which is in heaven."f 
 
 that with one bound 1 might rise to loftier sum- 
 mits still! Is there not, far away in those higher re- 
 gions, whither some of the men of this generation refuse 
 to look — is there not a reasonable nature, a nature 
 wholly one, wholly indivisible, and yet manifold in per- 
 
 * John, xvil. 23. + Matthew, xxiii. 8, 9. 
 
THE FAMILY. 61 
 
 sonality, fellowship of God with God, of Father with 
 Son, of Father and Son with Holy Spirit ? holy com- 
 monwealth of eternity, mysterious state wherein the 
 three Persons dwell in equal majesty, in complete dis- 
 tinctness, in perfect unity! God! Thou art the pro- 
 totype of men, and therefore it is that Thou hast made 
 us at the same time one in our nature and manifold in 
 our persons; profoundly distinct and yet profoundly 
 one ; by nature free, by nature equal ; obedient to no 
 commands but such as have their origin in Thee, and 
 venerating, under these borrowed earthly majesties of the 
 Family, the State, and the Church, naught but that sole 
 and supreme majesty which is in Thee. 
 
 Paet SECOiiiJ).—TJie Forms of Society/. 
 
 [Having considered human society in its general aspects, and 
 the bonds by which men are joined together in a natural and 
 universal solidarity, the speaker proceeds to examine the princi- 
 pal forms which society assumes, which are three in number: 
 the family, or domestic society ; the nation, or civil society ; the 
 church, or religious society.] 
 
 1. The Family. 
 
 This is the first form of society in order of time, and 
 I might almost say — for in one sense it is true — in order 
 of importance. Domestic society, the natural fellow- 
 ship of man with man, is at the root of the two other 
 forms of society, which could not exist without this, 
 and for which, for a long time at least, it was a substi- 
 tute. 
 
 Man, on coming into the world, is confronted by two 
 most mysterious and mighty laws — the law of the sexes 
 and the law of death ; the one divides him in his own 
 nature, the other limits him in his brief career. See, 
 
62 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 now, how man, in tlie progress of the sublime and sa- 
 cred drama of the family, shall get the victory over this 
 twofold enemy. 
 
 In the married life, man finds in his companion that 
 complement of himself — that better part of his thought 
 and of his love which had been wanting to him. " It 
 is not good for man to be alone ; — the twain shall be 
 one flesh."* In the relation of father, he outlives him- 
 self in the offspring of his body and his heart, in the 
 heir of his blood and his traditions; and through his 
 children he enjoys a sort of earnest of immortality in 
 this world. Thus human life finds itself to be organ- 
 ized in domestic society. 
 
 For ages, man knew no other society than this. The 
 father was at once king and priest; civil society and 
 religious society were absorbed in the family. I open 
 humanity's grand book, the Bible : it commences with 
 the history of the family, from the cradles of Eden to 
 the tents of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob ; and of all the 
 pages of human records, this is without controversy the 
 sweetest and most sublime. 
 
 Even at the present day, if we listen to the charming 
 tales of travellers, we learn that it is still the family 
 that reigns on the lofty table-lands of Asia, among 
 those vast steppes which have been most fitly called 
 " the hive of nations." When the civilized nations have 
 found themselves, by the very excess of civilization, 
 carried down into incurable decline and barbarism, 
 God sounds toward the desert that hiss of which the 
 prophet speaks;! and forthwith from the depths of 
 those solitudes, behold, there troop forth upon their 
 fiery steeds young populations, strong and proud, 
 grown lusty with the milk of their wild herds, and 
 
 ♦ Genesis, ii. 18, 24. t Isaiah, vii. 18. 
 
THE FAMILY. 68 
 
 bearing behind tliem, on the croups of their horses, their 
 faithful families, their roving homes. Whatever their 
 names — Huns, Tartars, or Mongolians — it matters not. 
 They are coming to bask in that immortal sunlight of 
 Christianity which awaits them, and to create new civi- 
 lizations on the ruined fragments of the old. Now 
 these people, as travellers who have visited them attest, 
 have no civil organization, and only a rude sort of re- 
 ligion : but they have the family ; and far away in those 
 providential climes, the family preserves a stock, full of 
 youthful vigor and of the promise of the future. 
 
 2. The Nation. 
 
 The second form of society, not natural, but artificial, 
 since it is man's own creation, is civil society. 
 
 When families become multiplied, there arise various 
 and opposing interests, manifold and conflicting rights. 
 As in the case of the herdsmen of Abraham and Lot, 
 when there was a strife between them,* it becomes 
 necessary to separate on the face of the earth, or else to 
 establish a common and permanent arbitration. What- 
 ever may have been the historical origin of civil soci- 
 ety — an origin which must have varied more or less 
 with circumstances of place and time — this is the phil- 
 osophical notion of them, and the idea which constitutes 
 and characterizes them : it is an understanding among 
 the heads of families, representing the domestic societies 
 over which they preside, to establish a common govern- 
 ment, under some form or other — a government which 
 is doubtless their own creation, but which is conse- 
 crated by the fact that God is the father of all order 
 and all power. The object of this government is not to 
 suppress or to create individual or family rights, but to 
 regulate the manner of exercising all rights ; to extend 
 
 * Genesis, xiii. 
 
64 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 over them the protection of justice, and if necessary, 
 the protection of the sword, against all attack, whether 
 from without or from within. 
 
 3. The Church, 
 
 When the human race had attained that culminating 
 point of the ages which St^Paul has called ''the fulness 
 of time" * religious society in its perfect form was or- 
 ganized. 
 
 Domestic among the patriarchs, nationaJ among the 
 Jews, the Church was extended over the whole human 
 race by Christ, and became Catholic. By right all 
 nations belong to this Church ; and it is our right to 
 hope that after many struggles, after centuries, perhaps, 
 the fact will fully correspond to the right, " For there 
 is neither Jew nor Gentile," says St. Paul, "neither 
 Greek nor Barbarian, neither bond nor free ; but ye are 
 all one in Christ Jesus."f 
 
 Such are the three principal forms of human society. 
 
 Part Third. — Relative Importance of Domestic Society, 
 
 [Under this third head, in concluding the Lecture, the speaker 
 considered domestic society in its relation to civil and religious 
 society. He insisted especially upon this subject as one of imme- 
 diate importance at the present time. 
 
 1. As respects civil and political society, what is the 
 great question of the day ? I hesitate to pronounce in 
 this pulpit a word exposed to so many perils and per- 
 '•v^rsions; but I must deal sincerely with language as 
 well as with ideas, and I cannot but reply. Democracy. 
 The great question of the time which affects all noble 
 minds and generous hearts, is democracy, that is, in the 
 
 ♦ Galatians, iv. 4 ; Ephesians, i. 10. t Romans, x. 12 ; Galatians, iii. 28. 
 
THE FAMILY. 6^ 
 
 honest, liberal, legitimate meaning of the word, the ex- 
 tension of civil and political liberties, the fullest par- 
 ticipation of all citizens in the management of public 
 affairs, and, as far as possible in this poor land and 
 this unhappy planet, the goyernment of the country by 
 the country. This is the worthy meaning of the word 
 democracy. Now I ask myself, why does democracy 
 remain so often a dream that will not be realized — 
 why ? It is because men do not remember to establish 
 it on the foundation of the family. 
 
 There are two formidable shoals, on the right and the 
 left, which must be avoided if we would settle the con- 
 stitution of liberty in order, and of order in liberty. 
 These two shoals are individualism and centralization. 
 
 Individualism — it is a good thing and a holy! It 
 is the origin of personality — that which makes me free, 
 which makes me worthy and noble, if I will but show 
 myself a man. Centralization — this, too, is a good 
 thing — a necessary thing, always, because it is the crea- 
 tor and conserver of nations ; but especially necessary 
 in our grand modern unities, which need, in order to 
 save them from dissolution, a mighty central power. 
 But there is an excess of individualism, which we call 
 anarchy, and there is an excess of centralization, which 
 we call despotism. And whenever the constitution of 
 liberty does not rest upon the family, it goes driving 
 upon anarchy, and then, falling back from Charybdis 
 upon Scylla, it is dashed to pieces against despotism. 
 Yes, you shall have individualism — a fine sight, indeed ! 
 a nation ground to atoms, without cohesion, without 
 settled authority, without the family ; nothing but indi- 
 viduals unattached, the fine dust of a social desert ; in- 
 capable, henceforth, of being built into anything ; capa- 
 ble only of being caught up and whirled aloft in some 
 
66 DISCOUKSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 whirlwind, to be let fall, anon, in pools of mire, or in 
 clots of gore. Such is anarchy. 
 
 And when society, frightened at such a work as this, 
 shrinks backward, it comes upon absolute centralization 
 — whether it be vested in the hands of one man or of 
 many ; whether it be a republic or a monarchy — that, 
 after all, is of little consequence — it is only a question 
 of form and words ; in either case, society will inevit- 
 ably come out, if it proceeds in this direction, on the 
 absorption of all the living forces of a nation in one 
 abnormal centre, the establishment of the most terrible 
 despotism our race has known ! These are the two shoals ! 
 
 Show me families worthy the name — true domestic 
 commonwealths, father and mother, king and minister, 
 enthroned together in the midst of the circle of their 
 children, talking to them of ancestors, of honor, of 
 duty, and being hearkened to — commanding in respect, 
 and still more in love, and being obeyed ; show me a 
 father, king in his own house, and so much the more 
 free in the world without, as he is authoritative in the 
 world within ; show me homes like these, and I will show 
 you republics ! The genuine free citizen is the father, 
 respected and obeyed at home. It is out of such sturdy 
 materials as this that lasting social order can be built. 
 
 2. In religious society, what is the pending question 
 which is now disturbing and dividing us ? It is the 
 question how best to repress the two most terrible 
 scourges of our time — skepticism and immorality. 
 What can we do in France and in the greater part of 
 Europe ? what can we do in the nineteenth century — I 
 do not say to refute and confound theoretically, but 
 practically and efiiciently to repress these two enemies 
 of God and man — skepticism and. immorality ? 
 
 There are two schools of opinion amongst us Oatho- 
 
THE FAMILY. 67 
 
 lies. One, very liberal, comes forward and says : " No 
 compulsion ! absolute liberty ! The Church is mighty, 
 because it is truth and love. Let it speak and act, let it 
 teach and suffer, let it pour forth the sweet savor of its 
 prayers toward heaven and the sweet savor of its sacra- 
 ments toward the earth, and it will triumph without 
 the aid of any secular arm !" This school, as I was say- 
 ing, is very liberal ; but when it pushes things to these 
 extremes, it becomes chimerical. 
 
 The other school — whose language and attitude, I am 
 sorry to say, too often repel those who feel as I do, but 
 which nevertheless plants itself on great truths — tells 
 us : " Truth, charity, these are all very well, but you are in 
 a fallen world. Man is evil through the inheritance of 
 original sin. In the faculties of the individual, and even 
 in the forces of society that are engrafted on the indi- 
 vidual man, there is a chronic rebellion against the 
 reign of truth, justice, and charity. Alongside the force 
 of moral suasion we need a force of coercion — we need 
 the sword ; and as the hand of the Church cannot bear 
 the sword, it must needs lean upon the secular arm !" 
 
 Such are these two schools, in the plainness of their 
 language, and the inmost depth of their thoughts. Each 
 of them has a certain share of truth, and each its share 
 of error. 
 
 [Father Hyacinthe proceeds to demonstrate with the second of 
 these schools the abiding consequences of original sin in the man 
 and in humanity, and concludes upon the necessity of severe 
 discipline, and of a power of education and coercion to struggle 
 effectively against these rebellions of the instinct of evil. 
 
 Then he remarks, with the former, that through the combination 
 of a multitude of facts and laws, which have forever outgrown 
 the control of man, and which would seem to have been arranged 
 by a providential plan, the modem conscience in the sphere of re- 
 ligion has been emancipated from the tutelage of civil authority. 
 
b» DISCOUESES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 In the lands and ages when such a state of things prevails in the 
 conscience and in society, what is to be the secular arm of the 
 Church? "What power shall wield the coercive force which 
 henceforth the State is neither willing nor able to exercise ? It is 
 to be the authority of the parent.] 
 
 In every household strongly, Christianly organized, 
 the father is, in some sense, the secular arm of Chris- 
 tianity. He exercises the educational and restraining 
 power. For he believes not only, like the free-thinker, 
 in the right of advising his child, but in the duty of 
 enforcing morality, and since morality is inseparable 
 from religion, in the duty of enforcing religion. He it is, 
 the father of the family, who having had the power of 
 bequeathing to his son his blood, and with his blood the 
 traditions of his family, has also the power of bequeath- 
 ing to him the inheritance of his soul, and of constitu- 
 ting him a believer like himself. It is on him that the 
 duty devolves of putting out of the way skeptical or im- 
 moral books ; of excluding from the family corrupting 
 conversations ; of moulding by precept, and, when neces- 
 sary, by punishment, the young barbarian, the little 
 savage bequeathed to him by original sin, who can be- 
 come a civilized being and a Christian, only by under- 
 going this troublous baptism. 
 
 The whole world, at this moment, is anxiously ques- 
 tioning the future. The old Europe is falling to 
 pieces. "What is it that shall constitute the new? I 
 answer. The Family. 
 
 Surely, in a country like this, that has been a warlike 
 country from the days of Clovis down, and which never 
 can be otherwise, I cannot at this hour disregard the 
 importance of armies. And albeit the principal force 
 of armies, however men may forget it, is a moral and 
 spiritual force — the soldier's patriotism, his bravery, 
 
THE FAMILY. 63 
 
 discipline, devotion, everything which goes to make the 
 hero ; yet I am far from denying the might of modern 
 inventions applied to war — and, nevertheless, I say that 
 the ultimate future of the world does not belong to 
 armies ! The lasting, acceptable, fruitful victories are 
 not those of the needle-gun and the rifled cannon! 
 The future of Europe and the world belongs to those 
 nations which best learn to practise the principles of 
 right, the nations least infested with sophists and har- 
 lots, and most enriched with numerous, industrious, and 
 Christian families. 
 
LECTURE SECOND, 
 December 9, 1866. 
 
 CONJUGAL SOCIETY THE FOUNDATIOIST OF 
 DOMESTIC SOCIETY. 
 
 GEKTLEMEiq" : Haying to speak this year on domestic 
 society, we have enlarged our scope and included the 
 whole scheme of human society. The family has ap- 
 peared to us under a double aspect. First, in its general 
 and primitive sense, this word has revealed to us the tie 
 of blood which unites all mankind : in this view, the 
 family is nothing less than the universal form of hu- 
 man society. According to the Catholic doctrine, in fact, 
 human society, the great total of humanity, constitutes 
 one family of brethren, having a Father in heaven, even 
 God, and a father on earth, the man, Adam. Then, 
 restricting this appellation of family to that group of 
 human beings which is properly so called, that sacred 
 group living under the same roof, sitting at the same 
 table, receiving light and warmth at the same fireside, 
 we said : " The family, in this second point of view, is 
 one of the three forms in which mankind is organized 
 in this world — domestic society, civil society, and re- 
 ligious society. And it is in the family, in domestic 
 society, that at all times, and especially in our own 
 times, the solution of the great questions of civil and 
 religious society is contained." 
 
 Such is a brief abstract of our last lecture. 
 
 The subject to which we come to-day, is the first ele- 
 ment of domestic society, in other words, conjugal society. 
 
CONJUGAL SOCIETY. 71 
 
 Domestic society is the basis of the human race, but 
 it is itself based on conjugal society. And because 
 conjugal society is not only an idea, one of the grand- 
 est of the thoughts of God, but a fact, one of the 
 grandest facts of humanity, we will examine it in the 
 order of time and in the light of the two great acts 
 which make and divide the centuries — the act of crea- 
 tion and the act of redemption. Conjugal society, 
 then, in the light of creation, and of redemj^tion, as 
 related to the Creator and to the Renewer, is the sub- 
 ject which is to engage our attention. 
 
 It is a great, a difficult, a delicate subject, I know ; 
 I do not approach it without fear ; but I am to speak in 
 your presence. Gentlemen, and I count in advance upon 
 the inspiration that is to come to me from you. And 
 then, if I must needs tell all my thoughts, I am to 
 speak in the solemnity of the Immaculate Conception 
 of the Virgin Mary ; under the light of that dogma, the 
 foundations of which are as old as Christianity itself, 
 but its formula young as our own generation. Thence 
 I await that pure and steadfast light which shall give 
 me the wisdom and the courage to speak with freedom, 
 and at the same time with reserve. 
 
 Part First. — Conjugal Society in the Light of Creation, 
 or as related to God the Creator. 
 
 1st. [Father Hyacinthe begins by seeking in the law of sex the 
 first principles of conjugal society.] 
 
 God, we are told in the book of Genesis, " created man 
 in his own image." * And then follows this astounding 
 expression, "male and female created he them.^f 
 
 " In the likeness of God !" But for my part I see in 
 
 * Genepis, i. 27. ^ Ibid. 
 
72 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 this, at first glance, only the likeness of an inferior life ; 
 for this mysterious law of sex does not, after all, belong 
 exclusively to humanity; it reigns throughout animated 
 nature in its whole extent ; it reigns there, but does not 
 create the family. In the physical system, in which I 
 shall first consider it — since, as St. Paul says, "that 
 is first which is natural, and afterward that which is 
 spiritual"* — in the physical system, even among men, 
 this law is powerless to create conjugal society In 
 its grandeur and tenderness, in its purity and dignity. 
 Its legitimate and necessary object is the reproduction 
 of the individual, the propagation of the species. But 
 look closely ! In this point of view the two partners, in 
 relation to each other, are two means of parentage, they 
 are not two ends. Now the requirement of the law of 
 personal life — the dignity of a human being — is this : 
 that in relation to his fellow-beings he should be an end, 
 and not a means — that he should be esteemed, desired, 
 loved, for his own sake. 
 
 Ah ! do you know. Gentlemen, do you know why, in 
 every land and every age, the harlot has been the object 
 of such profound contempt ? It is because she is a hu- 
 man being who has forgotten her human dignity ; it ia 
 because she has scorned, outraged in herself the grand 
 majesty of the human person ; and because, -discrowned 
 of the glory of being an end, she has consented to the 
 shame of being a means, the toy of caprice and the in- 
 strument of lust! For that cause there has fallen upon 
 her a mantle of shame, a garment of ignominy which 
 can never be removed. 
 
 Suffer me now to say, that if the Christian woman 
 were nothing but a means of the propagation of mankind 
 
 ♦ 1 Corinthiane, xv. 46. 
 
CONJUGAL SOCIETY. 73 
 
 — if she were only a mother, Iiot a wife, she would be a 
 right noble instrument, an instrument consecrated to 
 parentage, but, after all, nothing but the means to an 
 end. That must not be ! That might do for heathens, 
 who saw in woman nothing but a necessary evil of the 
 state ! And this is what the boasted marriage of Greece 
 and Kome amounted to, a marriage which, in the better 
 days, was chaste indeed, but never noble and holy. The 
 woman was loyed for her children's sake, never for her 
 own. 
 
 [Father Hyacinthe shows then how the law of sex, brought into 
 relation with the moral system, and transformed into a law of 
 souls, is the starting-point of conjugal society.] 
 
 Love ! this is the word which we must have courage 
 to pronounce, if we would express the essence of the 
 conjugal relation, its inmost principle and law. I 
 know well that this word is exposed to the sneers of 
 skepticism, which knows no greater chimera — next to 
 God — than love. I know, too — wretched, miserable 
 fact! — that it wakens involuntarily in the mind the 
 recollection of numberless abuses and unequalled dese- 
 crations. But what matter the abuses ! What matters 
 the shame of the sinner! Thank God, my heart has 
 remained pure, my reason has continued sound, and, 
 preacher of the Gospel as I am, teacher of the under- 
 standing and heart of man, it is my right, my duty, to 
 speak of love. Yes, love. And if our morals are going 
 to ruin, if the basis of the family is undermined, if 
 domestic society leans and totters like a ruined edifice, 
 it is because men have forgotten to put love at the 
 foundation of the house, the love of two beings who 
 love each other in honor, in respect, in holiness. 
 
 Let me open my old Bible. I am a Bible man, and I 
 
74 DISCOUESES OF FATHEK HYACINTHE. 
 
 do not blusli to declare it "before this generation. I open 
 the book at the first page. It is an unstained page, for 
 sin had not yet existed — a page all filled with love and 
 conjugal society. I have led you, Gentlemen, before 
 now, to this cradle of our race, called Eden ; I am going 
 to take you back to it to-day. It is not, believe me, a 
 caprice of my imagination, or a captivation of my heart, 
 but a sober, serious conviction, that therein lie the 
 secrets of humanity. I believe that the final solutions 
 of things have been set by God in their primordial 
 principles. I turn again, as I have said, to Eden : I 
 turn to it again, on that first day of the world, when 
 God founded the marriage state. It is the first day of 
 the world of mankind. There had been other days, 
 ages perhaps, the cycles of geology; but now, at last, 
 the world of human life begins, in all the freshness of 
 its dawn. how fresh the breezes that breathe over 
 every thing ! - how pure and glorious the light that 
 shines upon this paradise of earth, this abiding-place 
 of holy pleasures ! Lo, man comes forth the latest born 
 of this long series of beings, which is summed up in 
 himself, and over whom he holds imperial sway ! Hail, 
 man, thou king of the creation ! Hail, great Adam, 
 father of the human race ! 
 
 He looks through all the infinite scale of nature, 
 through all the gradations of being; his gaze pene- 
 trates their inmost parts, and his speech expresses 
 their qualities, for "he calls them all by their own 
 names."* His language is rich, his mind luminous, 
 but his heart was unawakened; "there was not found 
 an help-meet for him."f I know not whether upon 
 that serene majestic brow of Adam there came the 
 
 * Genesis, ii. 20. " Appellavit nominibus euis." t Ibid. 
 
^ CONJUGAL SOCIETY. 75 
 
 shadow of a cloud; or whether, from some inner re- 
 cess of his heart, unknown even to himself, there was 
 breathed a complaint. I know only that God spake 
 these words in a mystery : " It is not good that the man 
 should be alone."* A strange thing ! God, so well- 
 pleased hitherto ; God, who had gloried in each of his 
 works, and had said: "It is good."f God, who had 
 gloried in the completed whole, and had said : " Behold 
 it is very good."| JSTow, in the presence of his master- 
 piece, like an artist who has failed to reproduce his 
 ideal, turns away, and says: "It is not good! — It is not 
 good that man should be alone !" 
 
 To the work then, great Artist ! For thy image, thy 
 likeness upon earth must not remain unfinished. It is 
 God made visible in the world : endow it with all his 
 beauty and majesty ! And the Artist takes up again his 
 brush to retouch the canvas; he seizes his chisel to 
 shape again the marble. Bending ovei* the form of 
 Adam, the Lord pierces his side. Adam had fallen into 
 a sleep — into no common sleep, but into a trance, the 
 first and sublimest of prophetic trances. He was to 
 be not merely passive, but conscious and active, con- 
 senting inw^ardly, in the light of prophecy, to that 
 which was wrought upon him from without. Adam 
 slept in ecstasy, he waked in prophecy; he saw the 
 wound that had been opened in his flesh — this rib that 
 had been separated from next his heart, all warm and 
 pure from contact with that abode of love and inno- 
 cence — and in that rib the marvellous structure of 
 woman. "God builded the rib into a woman."§ A 
 biblical expression, full of marvels, and full also of in- 
 struction — marking the structure on which the master 
 architect had exhausted his art — the visible structure of 
 
 ♦ Genesis, ii. 18. t lb. i. 10. t lb. i. 31. § lb. ii. 22 (margin). 
 
76 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 that body in which shines the highest beauty, the in- 
 visible structure of that soul in which the highest good- 
 ness breathes, the complete structure of that person in 
 which the highest dignity resides! All honor, all 
 honor to the highest work of God, all ye whosoever 
 have not forgotten what it is to honor any thing here 
 in this world. 
 
 And when Adam awoke, he no longer spoke, he sang ! 
 his lips unclosed in grace and sanctity, and from his 
 heart came forth these words : 
 
 " Now is this bone of my bones, 
 And flesh of my flesh. 
 And Woman shall she be called, 
 For she was taken out of man. 
 Therefore shall man leave father and mother, 
 And cleave unto his wife, 
 And they twain shall be one flesh."* 
 
 Thus speaks the Bible ; that ancient book of ancient 
 wisdom, that virgin page, which tells me nothing of 
 mother, everything of icife! Man is suffering, or 
 about to suffer, from loneliness : God creates for him 
 society, and, best of all, conjugal society. There is no 
 reference to anything else in the sacred narrative. It 
 is not till after the fall that the woman receives a dis- 
 tinctive name: — "Eve, the mother of all living."! 
 Hitherto she was called by the one name common to 
 the pair, which indicated the perfect unity which love 
 creates between a true husband and true wife. "He 
 called their name Adam, in the day when they were 
 created."! 
 
 Thus, then. Gentlemen, in the view of the Bible, and 
 in the view of the reason and heart which speak to 
 
 ♦ Genesis, ii. 23, 24. t lb. iii. 20. X lb. v. 2. 
 
CONJUGAL SOCIETY. 77 
 
 lis ill the Bible, conjugal society is a society of perfect 
 love ; and if I were called upon to define it, I should 
 not define it by its extrinsic end, important as it is — the 
 procreation of offspring — but by its i^itrinsic and essen- 
 tial end, which consists in perfect union. I should define 
 it : " the fullest, closest, holiest union that can exist be- 
 tween two human beings." Such is marriage. As such 
 Tertullian and St. Augustine understood it. As such the 
 Eoman law itself defined it, far in advance, in this re- 
 spect, of the ideas and morals of the time: — Conjunc- 
 tio maris et femincB, conso7'tium omnis vitcB, divini et 
 humani juris communicatio : " the union of male and 
 female, the partnership of the whole life, the fellow- 
 ship of rights divine and human." Admirable defi- 
 nition to address to all our skeptics, and even to many 
 Christians ! Marriage is not only the mere union of 
 man and wife, but a partnership of the entire life ; it is 
 not only a fellowship in human things, but also in 
 divine — divini et humani juris. 
 
 It is enough to say that marriage presupposes and 
 includes, by the fact that it exceeds them, all other 
 unions that can exist between two human creatures. 
 Start with that simple good- will which the countenance 
 of man can kindle in the eye of his fellow-man, and 
 ascend the long chain of hearts' affections up to the 
 closest friendship, that friendship which has been tested 
 in turn by happiness and misfortune, and which neither 
 life nor death can sunder, and I will tell you : " These 
 are but steps that lead to conjugal love ; these are but 
 strands of that cord which shall bind two persons into 
 one single life : Consortium omnis vitce. The love of 
 husband and wife, such as God would have it, is the 
 grand perfection of friendship. It is the latest flower, 
 the most exquisite, most brilliant, and most fragrant 
 
78 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 flower in the paradise of the heart ; it is the consum- 
 mate fruit, the richest and sweetest fruit of that great 
 faculty of love — the most vast, the deepest, the most 
 inexhaustible of all the faculties of our soul; a real 
 tree of life or of death, according to the use we make 
 of it. It is the highest expression of love in this 
 world!" 
 
 How many points, alas ! I must pass by, with a mere 
 glance ! If time, if your strength and my own would 
 permit, how many things would I have to say here ! 
 
 3d. [Father Hyacinthe indicates harmony and subordination as 
 the two conditions of perfect love — conditions which are so rare- 
 ly found in mere friendship.] 
 
 • 
 
 "When man associates with man, Gentlemen, he brings 
 to him what he had already — not what he lacked. But 
 man and woman are two halves of the same soul, which 
 mutually complement each other. Man is reason, en- 
 ergy of thought and will. Has not my master, St. 
 Paul, said, "the husband is the head of the wife?" 
 "As God is the head of the man," says the energetic 
 apostle, "so is man the head of the woman,"* and 
 woman should think in that head, and be inspired with 
 that manly and kingly wisdom. In like manner, we 
 are told in the book of Genesis, that woman is the heart 
 of man. Look into your rent heart, son of Adam ! 
 it lacks in tenderness, it lacks in a certain delicacy and 
 depth, which you will never find, except in Eve, in your 
 mother, your sister, or your wife. Man is the head of 
 the woman — woman is the heart of man ; this is liar- 
 mony, the first moral requisite of their perfect love. 
 
 This is the proper place to remark, that there ought to 
 
 * Ephesians, v. 23. 
 
CONJUGAL SOCIETY. 79 
 
 be, between husband and wife truly worthy the names 
 in their best meaning, a community of moral and re- 
 ligious conscience. The disregard of this cardinal point 
 is one of the greatest mistakes in marriage at the pres- 
 ent time. A celebrated statesman of the last century, 
 Turgot, used to say: "We need to have marriage 
 preached to us — and true marriage." Now, true mar- 
 riage cannot be that superficial union of two existences, 
 which do not touch each other by their deepest sides — 
 by the moral and religious life. In this grave question, 
 Gentlemen, the truth lies in extremes. Either it is in 
 the believer, who says to his wife, " Together let us trust 
 and love and worship the God of our fathers and our 
 children, the God of Bethlehem and Calvary ;" or else 
 it must be in the logical and consistent skeptic, the 
 hard-headed political economist, who says to his part- 
 ner, " I will have only one conscience between thee and 
 me ; no priest to bless our couch, no priest to conse- 
 crate our child, no priest to pray and weep over our 
 grave !" There is a genuine marriage. Gentlemen ; 
 faith, or its negation, in one and the same morality and 
 religion I Harmony is the head thinking in the heart, 
 the heart inspired from the head ! 
 
 But, alas ! this great division of the family has en- 
 tered into society as well. We are two Frances in 
 France, and I might almost say, two Europes in Eu- 
 rope, — a manly but skeptical France, which does not 
 think with its heart, which clings to an abstract and 
 unbelieving science, which woman — and rightly enough 
 — will have none of: and then a feminine and believing 
 France, the better France, the France that is our salva- 
 tion, but which has no longer a higher thought with 
 which to stay and illuminate its love. Here you see 
 our social evil, and at the same time our domestic evil. 
 
80 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 So much for Harmony in the marriage relation. I 
 have spoken also of Subordination. Friendship im- 
 plies equality ; it makes equals even when it does not 
 find them : Amicitia pares tnvenit aut facit. But this 
 is not true of that grand friendship which we call love. 
 Love demands subordination — it implies, even in the 
 moral system, an active principle and a passive princi- 
 ple. Of two beings loving each other, one will love the 
 more in the way of sacrifice — will give up more largely 
 and more freely, or at least in another form — will be- 
 come thus the joy and glory of the being beloved. 
 
 Now this aflectionate surrender of self, which cannot 
 be realized from man to man, is naturally realized 
 from woman to man. Woman, indeed, the complete 
 equal of man in her soul, and all that pertains to her 
 personal rights and dignity, is not his equal in sex and 
 in the position assigned to her in civil and domestic so- 
 ciety. " The man was not created for the woman, but 
 the woman for the man,"* says St. Paul. Man was 
 alone, and he was sad ; God gave to him this mysterious 
 and sublime counterpart, which is for him, which be- 
 longs to him, and I had almost said, which is himself : 
 " She shall be called woman, because she was taken out 
 of man."t And St. Paul says again, "the woman is the 
 glory of the man :" J man has radiated this glory from 
 himself, and looks upon and loves himself in this sweet 
 and luminous atmosphere. 
 
 I know that sophists are preaching the equality of the 
 sexes. But the heart of woman cries out as loudly as 
 the reason of man against an error destructive of the 
 family. What woman wants, what Christianity wants, 
 is the equality of souls, the equality of persons, in the 
 same rights and the same duties, equality in chastity, 
 
 • 1 CorinthianB, xi. 9. t Genesis, ii. 23. $ 1 Corinthians, xi. 7. 
 
CONJUGAL SOCIETY. 81 
 
 equality in fidelity and love. " The laws of Oassar are 
 one thing," exclaimed St. Jerome in his sharp and en- 
 ergetic language, "the laws of Christ are another 
 thing!" Amongst us. Christians, what we forbid to 
 women, we do not allow to men. As respects any one 
 and the same duty, obedience is of equal obligation upon 
 both. 
 
 4tli. [Having pointed out these two conditions of perfect love, 
 harmony and subordination^ which render conjugal society so in- 
 timate, the speaker recognizes the linal seal of its union in the 
 child, that third person in the terrestrial trinity. He concludes as 
 follows :] 
 
 Lord, my God! it is but just now I proclaimed 
 Thee, in the exaltation of my thought and of my heart, 
 the type of human society^as one in thy nature, and 
 manifold in thy persons ; we ourselves, also, manifold in 
 in our persons, and one in our blood, in our reason and 
 in our moral unity. I proclaimed Thee, my God ! as 
 the type of the great fellowship of mankind! I hail 
 Thee now, I venerate and I adore Thee as the especial 
 type of the society of home. 
 
 Yes, the Lord is God, he is the Father, and within 
 himself is his own glory ; for " the Word is the glory of 
 God." He thinks of his glorious Word, in substance 
 and in person, his beautiful and living Reason, his Son. 
 He contemplates his Word, and in this meditation, from 
 the two, the Father and the Word, proceedeth the Holy 
 Spirit — that is, love — love in substance and in person. 
 And the Father and the AYord abide in it ! The cycle 
 of divine life is consummated. God is complete, God is 
 blessed. And there are three that bear witness in 
 heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Spirit ; and these 
 three are one ! 
 
 4* 
 
82 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 IN'ow there are three also that bear witness on earth. 
 Man is not satisfied with his own solitary personality ; 
 he also must have his glory; and, like God, he must 
 have his word, his beautiful reason made yisible, his 
 sweet and strong conscience to surround him with its 
 clear, pure light. And with this blessed image, called, 
 like the Word, " the express image of his person," the 
 stainless mirror of his beauty; with her he begets his 
 son, a third self — a third term common to the husband 
 and the wife, in which their love becomes incarnate, 
 and fixes itself, and abides. The cycle of human life is 
 accomplished. Like God in heaven, so man is com- 
 plete and blessed on the earth, and there are three that 
 bear witness — the father, and the vvife, and the child ; 
 and these three agree in one. 
 
 Part Second. — Conjugal Society in the Light of Re- 
 depiption, or before God the Reviewer, 
 
 But over the splendors of Eden sin has cast its bale- 
 ful shadoV)^ Woman has fallen, love is profaned, 
 marriage is debased! And when the lledeemer had 
 descended into this world that the Creator had made — 
 one day, Jesus was in the Temple at Jerusalem, and 
 the Pharisees of the old law brought unto him a blush- 
 ing, trembling woman, a woman taken in adultery: 
 "Master," said they, "Moses in the law commanded us, 
 that such should be stoned ; but what sayest thou ?"* 
 This woman was not only a woman ; but woman, man, 
 all conjugal society, degenerate, guilty, corrupt! There 
 she was, upon her knees, veiled with her hair and 
 bathed in tears — on her knees in misery. And Jesus 
 spake not, but "stooped down and with his finger 
 
 * John, viil. 4, 5. 
 
CONJUGAL SOCIETY. 83 
 
 wrote upon the ground, as though he heard them not." 
 He wrote the gospel of mercy and regeneration ; and 
 to those Pharisees, those scribes, who were clamoring 
 for punishment — stoning — execution — ^* Jesus lifted 
 himself up, and said, ' He that is without sin among 
 you, let him first cast a stone at her !' And again he 
 stooped down and wrote upon the ground." And when 
 all had gone out, says the Evangelist St. John, begin- 
 ning at the eldest, the bald heads and white hairs — 
 when the men without mercy or pity had gone out, 
 there were none left but these two, face to face ; Jesus, 
 writing upon the ground, and the woman in her blushes 
 and her tears — the Son of the Virgin and the adulteress : 
 "Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the 
 midst ;" or to use the words of St. Augustine, " Great 
 misery and great mercy:" mag7ia miseria, et magna 
 misericordia. 
 
 1st. Jesus has rebuked the corruptions of love, but 
 he has not rebuked love; he has not despaired of love, 
 nor of conjugal society. Far from that, he has looked 
 into the face of love with that eye, at once Virgin and 
 Divine; he has taken it into those hands of his that 
 were lacerated on the cross and bathed with the blood 
 of redemption ; and of that love so long desecrated he 
 has constituted one of the sacraments of the Church, 
 one of the seven columns which bear up the spiritual 
 world. "This is a great sacrament," says St. Paul; 
 " but I speak concerning Christ and the Church."* And 
 the Council of Trent assures us that it is this natural 
 and human love — naturalem ilium amorem — which Jesus 
 has purified and consecrated in the sacrament of mar- 
 riage. How great the work ! in which Jesus has not 
 only followed the counsels of his mercy : he was the 
 
 * Ephesians, v. 32. " Sacramentum hoc magnum Q^X,''''-^Yvlqate. 
 
84 DISCOUESES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 Word, and he has followed the counsels of eternal 
 reason. 
 
 In fact, if we consider loye as it is in nature, we 
 discern in it a profoundly religious side. If we observe 
 love as it is in a state of sin, we discern in it a side 
 profoundly idolatrous ; and it is because of these two 
 sides, the religious and idolatrous, the side of nature 
 and of sin, that it was just, or at least it was meet for 
 the Divine Word to rescue natural love, and make of it 
 that holy and thrice sacred thing, a sacrament. 
 
 Love is religious in its nature ; our ancestors under- 
 stood it better than we — those haughty Germans — be- 
 neath the immemorial forests that sheltered their valor 
 and their virtues. Tacitus, who found consolation in 
 them for the hopeless degeneracy of Eome under the 
 Caesars, remarked : " The Germans believe there is 
 something divine in w^oman :" inesse quid divinum. 
 The Germans were right. There is in woman, as we 
 have said, the reflection of God; and consequently, in 
 the love she inspires, when it is the outgoing of a 
 heart profound by nature and pure of life, there is 
 something that is religious. 
 
 Yes, love is naturally a religious sentiment, and I 
 shall need nothing but this argument — this fact — for it 
 is a fact — to confound all the positivists and materi- 
 alists of our generation. What ! you say that man can- 
 not get free from the finite through his reason ? I tell 
 you that he escapes from it not only through his reason, 
 but also through his heart! What! you say that man 
 is nothing but matter, that his life is bounded by a 
 cradle full of tears and a grave full of worms, and that 
 pent up in this brief and sad existence, he is only capa- 
 ble of thinking of matter and loving matter? I tell 
 you, Nay; ye blasphemers of human nature! Nay, ye 
 
CONJUGAL SOCIETY. 85 
 
 sophists of the nineteenth century ! Nay, ye corrupters 
 of my noble France, my grand human society, my 
 glorious modern civilization ! Nay, it is not true ! 
 Man goes forth from the finite, he emerges fi'om matter 
 through his reason, because he thinks of God; and 
 through his heart, because he loves his mother, because 
 he loves his sister, and because he cherishes his wife ! 
 
 There is, then, something divine in woman, some- 
 thing sacred in love ; and for that reason I add, some- 
 thing idolatrous in its profanations. 
 
 It is these perversions of the sentiment of love that 
 have given rise to one of the least studied and yet most 
 notable facts of the ancient religions — the idolatry of 
 woman, or idolatry through woman. I do not dwell 
 upon it, but there are great revelations to be found here 
 for one who studies the human heart. As to the mod- 
 ern paganism which tends to grow up among us, it 
 feels too powerfully the influence of Christianity, even 
 while combating it, to reach that excess of positive 
 and avowed idolatry. But the passion of which I speak 
 assumes each day, in ideas as well as in facts, the char- 
 acteristics of a moral idolatry. I might cite a certain 
 book written with unquestionable talent and with no 
 less unquestionable conviction, in my opinion, in which 
 the worship of ivoman and the religion of love are sub- 
 stituted for the worship of the true God and the reli- 
 gion of Christ. But what am I saying ! I might re- 
 call an odious but needful recollection, a recent infamous 
 page of our history, which meets, now-a-days, with 
 apologists, hardly with imitators. Remember the time 
 when the French people repudiated the God of France, 
 the God of Clotilde and of Cloris — the time when the 
 worship of Reason was preached to a nation that had 
 broken loose from faith ! Well, reason was too cold 
 
86 DISCOUESES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 and abstract, and in its place there was set up upon this 
 altar the spectacle of a live woman ! The professed 
 idolatry of the ancient world and the practical idolatry 
 of the modern world have both exalted love and woman ; 
 and have both debased, humiliated, almost annihilated 
 them. Love is no longer love, but lust ; and woman is 
 the idol or the priestess of this hideous worship I 
 
 [The naturally religious tendency of love uncorrupted and the 
 idolatrous tendency of corrupt love are, according to Father Hya- 
 cinthe, two distant and obscure preparations for the elevation of 
 conjugal love to the rank of a sacrament. Love was a vague 
 religion of the heart ; it was good to exalt it and to fonnulate it. 
 Love was an idolatry^ and an unclean idolatry at that ; it was 
 good to enlighten and purify it. Christ has constituted the union 
 of two Christian lives into a sacrament.] 
 
 2d. But what is a sacrament ? 
 
 The catechism, that book which is too little known, 
 but which contains the solutions of all our moral and 
 religious questions, tells us that a sacrament is a sign 
 which expresses and a force which operates the grace 
 of God. The union of husband and wife is then a sign 
 and a force in the sacrament of Christ ; a sign which 
 expresses and a force which operates the supernatural 
 grace of Christian love. 
 
 I am in haste to close ; but what wonders might we 
 yet discover in this new significance which Jesus has 
 given to love ! The love of husband and wife, in itself 
 so great and holy, has become the symbol and the image 
 of the love of Christ and his Church ! Jesus has loved 
 the race of man ; the Word of God drew near to us, not 
 as father to child, not as friend to friend, but as husband 
 to wife. The Lord, so say our sacred books, has loved 
 the souls of men ; the Lord, continue their inspired 
 
CONJUGAL SOCIETY. 87 
 
 pages, has loved the nations; — he has loved souls and 
 united them to himself in the invisible unity of his 
 Church ; he loved the nations and united them in the 
 visible structure, in the corporate unity of this same' 
 Church. The oneness of God's love with our souls ; 
 the oneness of God's love with the nations — with all 
 humanity, — God descending to the bosom of the im- 
 maculate Virgin, and there espousing human nature, 
 my blood and my flesh ; — God, the immolated and glori- 
 ous spouse, lifted up upon the bloody and fruit-bearing 
 branches of the cross, and there espousing all genera- 
 tions regenerated by him in his sacrifice ; this is the 
 type of Christian marriage! The love of God and 
 man is the marvellous theme of the Song of Songs. All 
 the ancient East — the monuments of India, in particu- 
 lar, attest it — all the ancient East has recognized in the 
 union of man and wife a poetic and religious image of 
 the union of God with the soul 
 
 Such are the lofty thoughts which should reign in the 
 hearts of Christians when they are joined together in 
 the sacrament of holy wedlock. This man is a Christ 
 upon the earth ! that woman is a daughter of God, a 
 sister of Jesus Christ! Both of them were ransomed 
 on Calvary, baptized in the sacred water, fed with an- 
 gels' food, refreshed from the altar-cups. They are wor- 
 thy to love God each in the other — they are worthy, 
 in that communion of souls which is accomplished in 
 the sacrament of marriage, to give their God to one an- 
 other, when they give their hearts ! 
 
 To enjoy a soul, in the ordinary huniftln way, is of itself 
 sublime ! to enjoy an immortal thought, to enjoy a heart 
 tender and strong, a heart loving and chaste, is almost 
 divine ! What, then, must it be to enjoy a soul in a way 
 that is really divine ? to possess in common with that 
 
88 DISCOUESES OF FATHEE HYACINTHE. 
 
 soul all the most marvellous, the deepest and most ex- 
 quisite things that the grace of Christ has wrought upon 
 its thought and affections ; if so be this mystery, of God 
 received and held within that soul, is delivered by it 
 to that beloved one from whom it has henceforth no 
 secret ? Such, nevertheless, is Christian marriage ! 
 " Husbands," exclaims St. Paul, " love your wives, even 
 as Christ also loved the Church ; wives, love your hus- 
 bands as the Church loved Jesus.* Marriage," contin- 
 ues he, " shall be an honorable and glorious thing, and 
 the marriage-bed undefiled." f 
 
 Now this is no dream. I have said, a sacrament is a sign, 
 and it expresses. I add, it is a force, and it works. It 
 contains a grace which lifts man's heart to the height of 
 such exalted virtue. Man, in the plane of nature, is ever 
 dreaming, down to the very frosts of old age, even when 
 he comes under the very sneers of skepticism and im- 
 morality — dreaming a long, long dream that never comes 
 true. He would fain love forever, and he loves but for 
 an hour ; he would fain love in the depth of his soul, 
 and he loves but in the senses ; he would fain love the 
 ideal, and again he finds himself always confronted 
 with the fallen reality ! But lo ! the Christians whose 
 hearts have been touched with the grace of God through 
 Christ ! and these have loved in truth, in unity, and for 
 eternity ! " This is a great sacrament," I say, in Jesus 
 
 and the Church Question our old Gallic firesides, 
 
 question our European homes wherever the sap of 
 Christianity has conserved its vital power, and they will 
 answer you with the grand echo, so grave and tender, 
 of conjugal love. 
 
 [In the peroration of this conference, the speaker shows the su- 
 periority of virginity to marriage which he has so extolled.] 
 * EphesiaiiB, v, 25. t HebrewP, xlii. 4. 
 
CONJUGAL SOCIETY. 89 
 
 A young Christian married pair were one day sailing 
 over the Adriatic, reading in the pages of a pure book, 
 and, deeper yet, in the pages of their own pure hearts. 
 The words which they read from without, and to which 
 they harkened from within, were these : " Is it not mis- 
 ery to love for this life only? Have you no longing 
 for eternal love ?" * Ah ! it is the misery, the longing 
 of us all : the misery of transient love and the longing 
 for eternal love! I know, indeed, that the love of 
 husband and wife shall continue in another form in 
 future ages, and it is from some delicate, subtle appre- 
 hension of this that the Church has derived the re- 
 pugnance it feels for second nuptials, to which it re- 
 fuses the solemn benediction of the priest. There is 
 a love and fidelity beyond the tomb, a love for eter- 
 nity. But, after all, this love is no longer conjugal; 
 for in conjugal love, exalted as I have deemed it, there 
 are two profound infirmities. It is too earthly, the senses 
 have a share in it, and the senses are always fallen ; it 
 is too exclusive, and in the heart itself, elevated as it is 
 above the senses, it too much absorbs two individual be- 
 ings each in the other, at the expense of great loves and 
 sacrifices for humanity. Therefore it is that Jesus 
 Christ, when questioned by the Jews on the mystery of 
 the life to come, answered, " In the resurrection they 
 neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are as the 
 angels of God."f 
 
 No more marrying and giving in marriage, in the 
 earthly sense ; and yet there is a grand continuance of 
 love ; there is the latest bloom of what I have called the 
 tree of life, the consummate flower of love, virginity. 
 0, vainly have men sought to make virginity the foe of 
 love ; it is the sister, the continuator, the perfecter of 
 
 * " A Sister's Story," by Madame Craven. t Matthew, xxii. 30. 
 
90 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 loye ; it is tlie reproacli that men cast upon my Eoman 
 Catholic Church, and it is its glory. For me, this alone 
 would be its demonstration, a demonstration that needs 
 no further proof: — the Catholic Church has always ac-* 
 cepted, affirmed, and practised voluntary celibacy ; and 
 highly as it has extolled conjugal love, higher still has 
 it exalted Christian virginity. 
 
 Ah ! virginity is that craving for love in another life; 
 it is the exclusive longing after love eternal, infinite ; 
 for " the marriage of the Lamb,"* of which St. John 
 speaks in the Eevelation ; when one shall no more 
 love one single person ; when one shall no more be ab- 
 sorbed in a single created mind and heart ; when the 
 veil being rent (for love in this world is a veil — as it 
 were a bridal veil that is spread over the wedded pair — 
 a transparent veil, which reveals the mystery of God, 
 but hides it even more), as in the temple of Jerusalem, 
 when the hour of types and figures had passed away 
 and the Jewish people was making way for the Chris- 
 tian let me, let me rend away the veil! I 
 
 long to love God, no more through a heart finite and 
 fallen, like mine, however pure and tender it may be — 
 I long to love God, face to face, heart to heart, and to 
 clasp him in the exclusive embrace of my love ! 
 
 David has sung of these things of old. He has 
 spoken of the lonely bed where by night the tears fl-ow, 
 drop by drop like the dew, or in torrents like a storm 
 of rain. I long for these drops — these streams ; I long 
 to groan and cry out in my heart, in solitude : *• I have 
 roared by reason of the disquietness of my heart." f 
 God, thou art my God, early will I seek thee !"J: " My 
 heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God."§ As 
 the hart in the sultry days of summer, I am athirst — 
 
 * Rev., xix. T. t Pe. xxxviii, 8. $ lb. Ixiii. 1. § lb. Ixxxiv. 2. 
 
CONJUGAL SOCIETY. 91 
 
 athirst for the infinite beauty! eternal love, ever 
 old, and ever young, without spot or wrinkle ! rap- 
 ture of the heart ! calmness of the reason ! My 
 bones are fevered and again are chilled, and " all my 
 bones murmur : * Lord, who is like unto thee ?' "* 
 
 This is the utmost expression of love ! 
 
 The day shall come when all Christian spouses, freed 
 from the veil, relieved of the burden of the flesh, re- 
 leased from the prison of an exclusive, individual, self- 
 ish love, shall say these things ! They say them already, 
 in the types and shadows of all holy loves ; and they 
 see, afar ofl", those nuptials at which every spouse shall 
 be a virgin, and every virgin a spouse, and when the 
 one race of man ransomed by Christ shall perfect the 
 bloom of conjugal love, in the bloom of eternal vir- 
 ginity ! 
 
 * Pealm xxxv. 10. 
 
LECTURE THIRD. 
 
 December 16, 1866. 
 
 THE CORRUPTION OF THE CONJUGAL RE- 
 LATION BY THE IMMORALITY OF THE 
 AGE. 
 
 [In a rapid exordium, Fatlier Hyacinthe showed the connec- 
 tion of this Lecture with the preceding. Tlie latter had for its 
 object to bring distinctly to view the ideal of the marriage rela- 
 tion as the Creator had realized it in the beginning, and as the 
 Redeemer had restored it in the fulness of time. To-day the 
 speaker proposes to study the corruption of this relation by im- 
 morality in general, and especially by the immorality of the 
 present age. 
 
 The contest between good and evil belongs to all ages ; but it 
 has certain more dramatic situations — certain more solemn and 
 startling crises. In Europe, and particularly in France, we have 
 arrived at one of these conjunctures. The immorality of the age 
 attacks the conjugal relation: 1. In its essence; 3. In its legisla- 
 tion ; 3. In its supernatural consecration hy the sacrament. Such 
 are the three points of view taken by the speaker.] 
 
 Part First. — Corruption of the Marriage Relation in 
 its Essence. 
 
 [Father Hyacinthe shows, first, how the immorality of the age 
 attacks the very nature of the conjugal relation, and disregards 
 the essence of marriage in separating it from love.] 
 
 I believe I have proved, in the last Lecture, that the 
 idea of marriage is love — love, in truth and in justice, love 
 in all the demands of personal dignity. Marriage, I said, 
 
CORRUPTION OF THE CONJUGAL RELATION. 93 
 
 is the exclusive form of love among men, the only one 
 which it can assume in order to be worthy of our 
 grand personal nature. 
 
 Now, the tendency of society, in our day, is to separ- 
 ate marriage from love, and to put asunder what the 
 law of God and the heart of man have made one. In 
 marriage without love, and in love without marriage, 
 there is a twofold immoral tendency — the expression is 
 not too strong — and it is the fountain-head of a large 
 part of. our moral disorders. 
 
 1. I have said that marriage is the indissoluble part- 
 nership of two lives — that is, two souls, two persons, 
 two existences, in which everything is shared, nothing 
 divided : consortium omnis vitce. It is the communion 
 between husband and wife, in all things pertaining to 
 heaven and earth, to man and God : divini et huinani 
 juris communicatio. This is true marriage, as the 
 Romans defined it, and as Christians have practised 
 it. Such marriage obviously implies love. It implies 
 harmony of character and conformity of taste, agree- 
 ment of temperament and age, community of moral 
 habits and religious convictions. It supposes, in one 
 word, in respect both to soul and to body, everything 
 which can attract to each other two human beings 
 who are some day to be united, never thenceforth to 
 separate. 
 
 Now, is it not true, that generally, in the contracting 
 of marriages amongst us, these personal considerations 
 are almost wholly set aside, or at least subordinated to 
 considerations of interest ? Is it not true that, once 
 sure of a certain fitness (which, by the way, is sus- 
 ceptible of a most elastic construction) in the position 
 of the families, the question which is considered, the 
 practical and decisive question, is the combination of 
 
94 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 fortunes? And between two beings who yesterday 
 were unacquainted and to-day have hardly met, they 
 make up a match (I am forced to say it) as they would 
 drive a bargain ! I am not talking about exceptional 
 cases. I am speaking of the general law among the 
 wealthy classes of our country, and even in the most 
 honorable and Christian families. JS'ow, Gentlemen, I 
 make bold to say that in this way marriage is falsified, 
 perverted by the very act with which it begins — the 
 choice of the partners to it. 
 
 [2. After having shown in detail, how, in thus constituting 
 marriage without love, the institution has been perverted, Father 
 Hyacinthe proves, on the other hand, that love without marriage 
 becomes the source of incurable corruption,! 
 
 What, then, is to be the result? Inevitably, I had 
 almost said legitimately — I should have erred, I should 
 have been false to the dignity of this pulpit — inevitably, 
 fatally, love, banished from conjugal society, will es- 
 tablish itself separate from marriage, just as marriage 
 has been established separate from love. Thus human 
 nature takes its triumphant revenge against the false- 
 hood and tyranny of social prejudice. Love, only, is 
 overthrown in this seeming victory ; it perishes in the 
 act of avenging itself There is no marriage worthy 
 of the name without love ! But then there is no love 
 worthy of the name without marriage ! The true seat 
 of love, the seat of its repose and dignity, is the soul. 
 But, exiled from marriage, love is by that very fact 
 exiled from the soul. It ceases to be a virtuous senti- 
 ment, and becomes a distempered passion. Thenceforth 
 it tears itself from the pure heights of our moral being, 
 peopled with those joys which the conscience shares 
 with the affections — gmidivAii de veritate conceptum — 
 
CORRUPTION OF THE CONJUGAL RELATION. 95 
 
 and goes down, down to those troubled regions where 
 the spirit is imprisoned within the senses, and sinking 
 ever lower and lower along this swift declivity, and 
 under this fatal weight, it finally deserts the soul and 
 becomes the tenant of the body. Love then is no 
 longer love — it is lust! 
 
 [3. Father Hyacinthe next considered the social result of this 
 separation between marriage and love. Marriage without love 
 tends to extinguish the true type of the wife; that type pre- 
 eminently ennobling, radiant with a grace at once so alluring 
 and so pure. Gratia super gratiam^ mulier sancta et pudorata. 
 " Grace upon grace, is a holy and modest woman."* Love out- 
 side of marriage tends to realize the type of the harlotl 
 
 More than once I have had to speak the name of the 
 harlot; to-day I am forced to stop and look her in the 
 face. Shame on the over-nice and prudish surgeon 
 who shrinks away from the wound which he ought to 
 examine and touch and heal ! 
 
 The Lord said of his chosen people : " There shall be 
 no harlot of the daughters of Israel."! The word of 
 the Lord was not obeyed ; the harlot was in Israel, and 
 everywhere. The Greeks knew her ; they had seen her 
 born of the foam of their azure waves and the rays of 
 their fiery sun. But the Greeks were wrong. She is 
 not the child of nature ; she is the child of humanity. 
 Ah ! let me not brand her infamy upon her till I have 
 first done her justice and showed her mercy! I am 
 bound to say, even in the presence of this most corrupt 
 and corrupting being, that in the ruin of woman, as a 
 general rule, man is the great criminal. Woman is the 
 victim — man, the murderer. 
 
 It is not prostitution that is a novelty in the world ; it 
 
 * Ecclesiasticus, xxvi. 15. + Deut. xxiii. 17. 
 
96 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 is the position it occupies. Of old time, prostitution was 
 almost exclusively an appendage of aristocracy or royal- 
 ty. AVlien it entered France, it was concealed at first ; 
 but afterward it came forward, unabashed, among those 
 privileged ranks where men too often thought them- 
 selves above the laws — above morality itself; and there 
 it sowed that seed of storms from whicli we have 
 reaped a harvest of whirlwinds! But truce to these 
 niemories ! Let the dead rest in peace ! The wave of 
 revolution has swept over the palaces and washed them 
 with blood ! To-day the reign of the harlot is more 
 democratic. Without deserting, alas ! the mighty of 
 this world, she has constantly enlarged the circle of her 
 empire. It is a strange application of the law — the 
 just law — which governs modern society, and whicli 
 tends, little by little, to make the privilege of the few 
 the common property of all ! She has extended her 
 view ; she has reached out her sceptre over the difierent 
 grades of the social hierarchy. Formerly it was only a 
 multitude, to-day it is a world ;* and this world, the 
 " half-world" — the demi-monde — as it is well named, at- 
 tempts to give tone and fashion to the real world ; must 
 I say it. Gentlemen ? in sight of their constantly grow- 
 ing success, the virtuous woman, unable to keep by her 
 side her husband, her son, it may be her father, has 
 more than once been driven, in her anguish, to ask the 
 secret of this fascination : " What power has this strange 
 woman, and why may I not have it ?" She has watched 
 that leering eye and marked the strange fire with which 
 it glows ; she has studied that smile, the inflexions of 
 
 * " Without collecting, as I have done for the past ten years, the grievances 
 of families thwarted in their dearest interests, it would not be possible to 
 suspect the social disorders produced in Paris by several thousands of women 
 acting in open rebellion against the duties of their sex."— (" Social Reform 
 in France,'' by M, Le Play, I., p. 277, second edition.) 
 
COKRUPTION OF THE CONJUGAL EELATION. 97 
 
 that voice and the motions of that form;* she has 
 searched into the mysteries of those toilets and that 
 luxury ; and too noble and too pure to acquire in reali- 
 ty the arts of- vicious seduction, she has acquired, alas! 
 too easily their outward appearance. 
 
 [Thus the first characteristic of this reign of corruption is, that 
 it is spreading more and more amongst us ; its second characteristic 
 is, that it is becoming more degraded in proportion as it is ex- 
 tended ; and in the sphere of morals, it is a reflex of the materi- 
 alism of doctrine which has come in upon us like a flood.] 
 
 They tell us that philosophic doctrines have no influ- 
 ence on the morality of men. I reply, that they have 
 an influence even on their immorality ; that they fashion 
 into their own image our vices almost as much as our 
 virtues. Yes, in societies elevated by a spiritual phi- 
 losophy, vice has difierent sentiments and a difierent 
 language from what it has in communities debased by 
 materialism, and which glory in coming from the 
 monkey, to end in nothingness, or in worms ! In the 
 former, the influence of courtezans is derived some- 
 times — rarely, it is true — from their heart ; very fre- 
 quently, from their wit ; always, in some degree, from 
 their grace and their beauty. But in our day all these 
 charms are supplied by a single one. " No, no," cries 
 sensualism ; " we don't want any supplementary attrac- 
 tions. No more distraction for the mind and heart ; it 
 is a bore to think, and an effort and a weariness to love ! 
 No more sentiment, but sensation ! And if beauty or 
 youth are any hindrance to this, what's the use of youth 
 and beauty ? Circe, thou sorceress, give me thy cup, 
 \and let me wallow in sensuality." 
 
 * " Lust not after her beauty in thine heart ; neither let her take thee with 
 her eyelids.''''— Proverbs, vi. 25. 
 
 5 
 
98 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 And now there are people that ask me not to be in- 
 dignant ! They would like me to stop coolly at the refu- 
 tation of error, and choke down in my man's heart, my 
 priest's heart, the cry of moral indignation ! No ! there 
 is something more here than an error in logic : it is a 
 shame upon our character and a peril to our social ex- 
 istence ! 
 
 Part Secois'D. — Violation of the Legislation of Mar- 
 riage l)y the Immorality of tlie Day. 
 
 [In setting forth the ideal of the conjugal relation in the last 
 lecture, Father Hyacinthe said notliing, strictly speaking, of its 
 legislation. This was because the laws which govern it, in its 
 moral and religious relations, are only a simple corollary from 
 the proposition developed in that lecture — that marriage is love 
 under the limitations of personal respect and personal dignity. 
 These laws are chiefly two — unity and indissolubility. They 
 foiTQ the primitive legislation of marriage, at once natural ^nd 
 divine, and they are anterior to all tlie positive enactments of civil 
 and religious powers.] 
 
 I know well enough that at this point, too, I shall 
 meet with gainsayers. The new schools affirm that man 
 began with the savage state, with fetichism in relation to 
 God, and with communism in relation to women. This 
 is not the place to enter into an exhaustive discussion on 
 these two points. Positivism, which forbids us all in- 
 quiries as to origin and end, is forever stumbling into 
 such inquiries itself without thinking of it ; and whatever 
 it may say for itself, it is by the merest hypotheses that 
 it pretends to throw light upon the past or the future of 
 mankind — hypotheses unsupported by facts, or rather 
 contradicted by all the data of experience. For these sav- 
 ages, from whom they say that we have descended, are not 
 only to be found in remote centuries. We have no need. 
 
CORRUPTION OF THE CONJUGAL RELATION. 99 
 
 in order to find them, to grope our way backward into the 
 darkness of the stone age, and to penetrate into the 
 mysterious caverns that have been excavated by our ge- 
 ologists. Africa and America, on their scorching sands 
 or in their icy forests, have preserved for us the living rep- 
 resentatives of these tribes; we know the savages — we 
 have seen them — we have spoken with them, and we have 
 recognized in their moral and physical type, not the germ, 
 but the decadence of humanity. They are fallen, or 
 rather degraded races, which we must take care not to 
 confound with simple barbarians. Barbarians can rise 
 from their fall — if not of themselves, at least by contact 
 with a foreign civilization; but savage races are so 
 crushed under the sway of the senses, that hitherto not a 
 single one — history makes affidavit to it — has been found 
 susceptible of civilization. They are to-day what they 
 were thousands of years ago ; asleep on the confines of 
 brute life, they do not even dream of reascending the 
 frightful declivity down which they have fallen. Ah ! 
 if savages were the primitive race that you pretend, and 
 if on the other side, as you also assert, progress was the 
 destined law of humanity, there would be no more sav- 
 ages, no more barbarians, the entire world would be civ- 
 ilized ! How then, and by what hand, so often continued 
 from age to age, has this mighty spring of progress been 
 relaxed among some races and broken among others ? 
 
 [Here Father Hyacinthe, having re-established the facts that 
 had been deijied by hypotheses, shows man beginning with mono- 
 theism and monogamy — that is, with the two great principles of 
 natural religion and natural morality. These principles were 
 afterward obscured, in consequence of original sin, but they 
 never totally perished from among men. The sacred deposit of 
 the monotheistic traditions was intrusted to Shem, and especially 
 to the mce of Abraham. The chain of monogamist traditions 
 
100 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 was continued through the pure and vigorous races that sprung 
 from Japhet ; through the Greeks and Romans in their best days ; 
 through the Celts, the Germans, and the Scandinavians. But 
 polytheism held sway among them, while polygamy was tolerated 
 among the Jews ; and in this way, the two civilizing principles 
 were isolated from each other.] 
 
 The children of Abraham, especially the Jews, wor- 
 shipped one God, alone, solitary, and majestic as that 
 desert in which he had appeared to them, lofty and 
 stern as the sky of brass above their heads. They were 
 monotheists, like their father, but like their father, also, 
 they were polygamists. Through motives of profound 
 wisdom, which it is not my present duty to unfold, God 
 had blessed in chastity and fecundity the limited polyg- 
 amy tliat had prevailed under the tents of Abraham 
 and Jacob ; and afterward, by a concession needful to 
 the training of this rude people, Moses had, I do not 
 say approved, but tolerated and regulated divorce on 
 the part of the husband. " From the beginning it was 
 not so; but Moses, because of the hardness of your 
 hearts, suffered you to put away your wives ;"* — because 
 they had not yet hearts pure enough and tender enough 
 to love with constancy the same wife, and to sacrifice 
 everything to this one love. 
 
 Polygamy and polytheism divided the world between 
 them. There was one God under the tents of Shem, 
 the polygamist ; one wife at the fireside of Japhet, the 
 polytlieist. But, lo ! the hour is at hand for universal 
 reconciliation : Japhet shall sit down under the tents 
 of Shem, and dwell with him, in brotherly love : " God 
 shall enlarge Japhet, and he shall dwell in the tents 
 of Shem."t The reconciler and organizer of our race 
 appears : Christ sends his apostles to proclaim through- 
 
 * Matthew, xix. 8. t Geueeie, 1x. 27. 
 
CORRUPTION OP THE CONJUGAL RELATION. 101 
 
 out the entire world the doctrine of one God, and the 
 duty of having but one wife ! Then, during a succes- 
 sion of terrible but most fruitful centuries, Jews, 
 Eomans, barbarians, blended, intermixed, by the over- 
 turnings of history and under the influence of the 
 Church, there is seen rounding into form this unique 
 civilization, to which there is no parallel in the past and 
 can be no successor in the future, the grand modern 
 and Christian civilization, whose children we are. Yes- 
 terday it was called Europe, to-day, TJie West, for 
 America joins hands with Europe across the ocean ; to- 
 morrow it will be called The World, and it will be for this 
 to unite at last in one resplendent halo on the brow of 
 mankind, those two rays of Eden for so long separated, 
 so long a time obscured, monotheism and monogamy, 
 the worship of one God in heaven and the love of one 
 woman on earth! 
 
 [As a matter of Hglit^ monogamy belongs to natural morality, 
 as monotheism to natm-al religion. As a matter oi fact, however 
 (although it has been too little noticed), Christianity alone has 
 had the power to establish their reign and maintain it and make 
 it universal in the world. The speaker called attention to the 
 efforts of the immorality of the age in comparison with the efforts 
 of the unbelief of the age ; the one striving to abolish from our 
 morals the practice of monogamy; the other striving to WTest from 
 our minds the belief in monotheism. Their triumph would be the 
 advent of barbarism to Christendom. 
 
 We are still too French and too Catholic to have the unity and 
 indissolubility of marriage effaced from our codes. But the im- 
 morality of the age tends to reduce them to the state of legal fic- 
 tions. It multiplies the violation of them in common life with a 
 frequency and publicity which our fathers never witnessed, and 
 against wiiich public opinion has ceased to protest. It parades 
 them as a spectacle, amid the applauses of the theatres ; it de- 
 mands the justification of them at the hands of a lying philoso- 
 phy, and their glorification at the hands of a corrupt literature. 
 
102 DISCOUBSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 The land is swarming with adulteries, adulteries of old so rare, 
 of old so severely branded by public opinion, so severely punished 
 by the law of the land ; adulteries — the violation of the most 
 sacred rights of the human person ! The scourge of the harlot 
 without the walls of home; that of the adulterous wife is 
 within.'] ^ 
 
 Part Third. — Violation of the Co7ijugal Relation in 
 its Supernatural Consecration ly the Sacrament. 
 
 [Father Hyacinthe had already shown, in the last lecture, how 
 marriage has been elevated by Christ to the dignity of a sacra- 
 ment. 
 
 Now, from this new consecration, the two great laws of unity 
 and indissoluUUty have derived at once a more absolute rigor and 
 more sabred significance. The union of husband and wife in 
 one love and one flesh, should be the living image of the union 
 of the AVord with human nature and with his Church in the 
 mystery of the incarnation. Now Jesus Christ is the spouse of 
 but one : He has espoused one Church, and cannot be divorced 
 from it. " Lo, I am with j'ou alway, even unto the end of the 
 world."* 
 
 But how is it possible to elevate and maintain at such heights 
 so earthly and inconstant a thing as the human heart ? Christ 
 has placed in the sacrament of Christian marriage not only the 
 sign which enlightens, but 1]iq force which sustains.] 
 
 He has said to the husband and the wife, " Come to 
 my altar — come, and kindle there the flame of a pure and 
 immortal love." And we see the two young Christians 
 coming forward amidst flowers and incense, and the 
 sweet and thrilling harmonies of the organ — they are no 
 longer bridegroom and bride, but two priests ; for Chris- 
 tian love is not only a religion but a priesthood ! They 
 come to the steps of the altar of the spotless Lamb; 
 they look at the sacred tabernacle, and they blush not, 
 neither do they tremble ! The invisible angels of the 
 
 * Matthew, xxviii. 30. 
 
CORRUPTION OP THE CONJUGAL RELATION. 103 
 
 sanctuary are there, and we hear the beat and rustle of 
 their wings, and the sweet savor of the love of heaven 
 is shed down upon the love of earth. The Catholic 
 priest is there, but, strange sight ! he seems despoiled 
 (as it were) of the omnipotence of his priesthood. He 
 is there, delegated by the Church as intercessor and 
 necessary witness — as intercessor, to pray and bless, as 
 witness to see and hear ; but by an exception unparal- 
 leled in the economy of divine things, he, the dispenser 
 of all the sacraments, from baptism to extreme unction, 
 is not suffered to be the minister of this amazing sacra- 
 ment. The ministers are these wedded ones themselves ; 
 their hearts are stirred with the purest and deepest in- 
 fluences alike of grace and of nature ; their voices trem- 
 ble, but do not hesitate, and while their hands are joined 
 in a holy clasp, two words fall from their lips and are 
 blended in one harmony: "I take thee for my wedded 
 husband" — "I take thee for my wedded wife." Enough. 
 By one act, in the presence of the witnessing priest, and 
 angels, and God, they have sealed the compact of their 
 natural love, and the sacrament of their supernatural 
 union. 
 
 This is marriage as our fathers understood it. It is 
 the fashion, now-a-days, to say that all this is a very fine 
 theory ! 
 
 In this decay of faith of which we are witnesses, the 
 sacrament of marriage becomes for many Christians a 
 religions fiction, as the text of our codes has become a 
 legal fiction. Its forms are observed from considerations 
 of propriety and conventionalit}^, but the sigyi that en- 
 lightens and the force that sustains are things which are 
 not remembered as they ought to be. 
 
 And yet is it not here that we must seek the true source 
 of those nobler inspirations and those more generous 
 
104 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 deeds, which the steadfastness of married life demands ? 
 For in marriage there is something more than a mere 
 compact. 
 
 " The chief thing in marriage" (so says a noble Chris- 
 tian writer of our own day, with admirable felicity of 
 expression), " the chief thing in marriage is a sacrifice, 
 or rather two sacrifices. The sacrificing priest and 
 priestess bear in their hands two cups ; and these two 
 cups must needs be alike filled to the brim, in order 
 that the union may be holy and be blessed of heaven."* 
 These two cups, my friends, are filled with tears as well 
 as joys. 
 
 True loye is more than a passion; it is a virtue. 
 Therefore it should stand in no fear of the disappoint- 
 ments and the bitterness the future cannot but have in 
 store for it. But how could love be a virtue, but that 
 it rests on God ? 
 
 [The Lecture concluded as follows :] ^ ' 
 
 Our trouble at the present day comes from these two 
 causes : we have separated love from marriage, and we 
 have separated marriage from God. It is time for a 
 reaction against these two errors. Let us have a 7noral 
 marriage, which shall unite two persons with the bond 
 of personal love, the only bond worthy of them ; let us 
 have a Christian marriage, which shall cement this 
 union with the indestructible power of God! Then 
 we shall have restored from its ruins conjugal society. 
 Then we shall be able to face Europe with confidence, 
 and say, "We are the same old France still, ever in the 
 van of all your forward movements, the van of the 
 progress of thought and character! Europe cannot 
 
 * Ozanam, " Civilization in the Fifth Centnry," Lecture on The Christian 
 Women. 
 
COKEUPTION OF THE CONJUGAL RELATION. 105 
 
 perish. She is like that bark that was bearing Caesar 
 through the storm. "Fear not," said the dictator, 
 "you are bearing Osesar and his fortune!" We too 
 may say to Europe, to America, to Christendom : 
 "Fear not. The thunderbolt may rend the sky — the 
 abyss may yawn beneath your feet — fear not, you are 
 bearing Christ and his Church." Western Christendom 
 cannot perish. 
 
 But one thing is not impossible — God forbid that it 
 should ever come to pass ! — that France should descend 
 to an inferior rank in Christendom. Ah ! if to those 
 great Christian countries — that Germany that fasts 
 upon the eve of battle, and carries the New Testament 
 in the shako of her soldiers ; that England that offers 
 her common prayer on the days of public humiliation, 
 and keeps her Sabbath rest, the glory of her industry 
 and civilization; that America which, at every crisis 
 of her national life, proclaims her faith in God as the 
 foundation of her safety and her greatness ; — if, I say, 
 we have nothing left to send to these countries but the 
 echo of an abject — yes, abject skepticism, and an im- 
 morality more abject still — ^great God, what is to be- 
 come of France ? call no longer upon liberty and 
 democracy ! Prate no more of a just balance of power ! 
 The direct, legitimate heir — it is a law of Providence in 
 lieaven, and it is a law of human nature on the earth — 
 the direct, legitimate heir of all skepticism and corrup- 
 tion, is not freedom ; it is slavery ! 
 
 5* 
 
LECTURE FOURTH, 
 
 December 23, 1866, 
 
 FATHERHOOD. 
 
 Gentlemen : I liave finished what I had to say upon 
 the conjugal relation ; and in spite of the fatigue which 
 I had to struggle against last Sunday, thanks to God, 
 and thanks to you, I was able fairly to reach the end 
 of this important subject. We looked at it, you will 
 remember, under the two aspects which all topics rela- 
 ting to humanity present — the j^ositive aspect, and the 
 negative aspect — the aspect of light and the aspect of 
 darkness. In the light of God the Creator and of God 
 the Redeemer, we saw this conjugal relation to be 
 founded in love — love on its earthly side, and love on 
 its heavenly side — natural love, perfect, tender, chaste, 
 between man and wife — supernatural love, which is at 
 once a reflection and a portion of that which subsists 
 between Christ and his Church. From these two forms 
 of love, blended into one, we easily deduced the two 
 principal laws of the conjugal relation — unity and 
 indissolulility. Passing then to the negative element, 
 as it has been brought into existence during the course 
 of ages, by the weakness and perversity of mankind, 
 we observed that the evils of the conjugal relation, the 
 violation of its laws and the perversion of its idea, 
 arise from the fact that it has been separated both from 
 
FATHERHOOD. 107 
 
 affection and from religion. Men have wanted mar- 
 riage without love, and without God ! 
 
 I have now to complete the idea of the conjugal 
 relation by speaking to you oi fatJierhood. 
 
 Gentlemen, the primary object of the conjugal rela- 
 tion is to be found in the relation itself. This object, 
 which in the first Lecture I called intrinsic, is the 
 personal and Christian love of the married pair — the 
 perfect union that is set up between them. When love 
 is real, when it is pure and deep, it has no other object 
 than itself; we love for the sake of loving, and that is 
 all. But there is an extrinsic purpose in the conjugal 
 relation, not less important, not less essential than the 
 former — the reproduction of the individual, and the 
 propagation of the species. These two terms, harmoni- 
 ously blended, consecrate paternity as the highest act 
 of human life in the plane of nature. We will consider 
 them one by one. 
 
 But before beginning, let us pause for a moment of 
 religious recollection. Let me, for my part, a son of the 
 apostles and an ambassador of Jesus Christ, remember 
 those great words that were breathed from the lips of 
 the apostle Paul over the cradle of Christianity : " I bow 
 my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, 
 from whom every fatherhood in heaven and earth is 
 named."* Yes, and I too bow my knees, bend my in- 
 tellect, and prostrate my soul before this Fatherhood, 
 which is at once the origin and end of that human 
 fatherhood, whose obligations, whose glory, whose fe- 
 licity, my stammering tongue would strive to utter 
 forth ! 
 
 * Epheeians, iii. 14, 15. The Vulgate translation (constantly cited in the 
 Roman Catholic pulpit) has ex quo omnis paternitas . . . nominatur, which is 
 much nearer to the original than the common Englieh version. " Every ling- 
 age" would be, perhaps, the most nearly equivalent phrase, — Tr, 
 
108 DISCOUBSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 Part First. — Fatherhood considered as the Mea7is of 
 Reproduction of the Individual, 
 
 I was saying, Gentlemen, that man, at his entrance 
 into the world, finds himself confronted by two myste- 
 rious laws, which dominate all his future — the law of 
 sex and the law of death. 
 
 We haye seen how man triumphs oyer the law of sex, 
 and makes it a law of honor and happiness, in the con- 
 jugal relation. But the law of sex is a law of nature ; 
 the law of death is a result of sin. Therefore, against 
 death the whole nature and person of man rebels. Ah ! 
 for my part, I know that there are no minds, saye those 
 that haye been spoiled by long indulgence in sophistry, 
 or, perhaps, in immorality, that can look on death and 
 annihilation with indifference. The unperyerted man 
 hungers and thirsts for immortality! God promises 
 him an immortality beyond the graye, in the eternal 
 world: first, the immortality of his soul; afterward, 
 "in the last day," the immortality of his body, which is 
 also to come forth from the darkness of the graye. But 
 this is not enough. Man is not content to become im- 
 mortal in the future world ; he would be immortal in 
 the present world. And so, indeed, he becomes, through 
 fatherhood. In the fulness of his life and strength, in 
 the maturity of his reason and affections, man has 
 measured himself, in spirit, against death, and has said, 
 " Good ! I can master him ! I shall open in my blood 
 a fountain-head of life, and with my blood I shall im- 
 part my soul, and with my soul I shall bequeath my 
 works. I shall still act among men, I shall dwell for- 
 ever in the land of the liying !" 
 
 It is the triple victory of fatherhood over death — by 
 its lilggdy by its ^ouly by its ivorh 
 
FATHEKHOOD. 109 
 
 1. And first, the father gives his Uoocl, and with it 
 that physical life of which the blood is the principal 
 and the base. 
 
 Have you seen, Gentlemen, in our ancient forests, an 
 old oak bending under the weight of centuries, and 
 almost ready to crumble into dust ? Before the catas- 
 trophe, it has foreseen it, we might say, by the sure in- 
 stinct of nature, and has sown around itself young and 
 vigorous offshoots, full of its sap, and lusty with its 
 life. Man, also, is to die. The tree bends beneath the 
 weight of its peaceful centuries ; man, less happy, be- 
 neath the burden of his few and evil years. But he, 
 also, has made of himself twain : one he leaves to fade 
 away in death and wither in the tomb; he sees the 
 other springing into life, and shooting out into the 
 future. It is his own flesh that buds and flowers again 
 in this other flesh; it is his own bones that, renew- 
 ing their youth, are the framework that supports it; 
 it is his blood which flows and throbs in these veins, 
 and his heart which lives again in this heart. Carve 
 thy wrinkles on my brow, Old Age ! Whiten my head 
 with the chill and dreary blast that breathes from out 
 the place of tombs ! thrust me, bowed and unresisting, 
 down that steep decline which no one reascends ! I have 
 vanquished death by fatherhood! His dart is broken 
 by the hands of my children ! " Grave, where is thy 
 victory ? Death, where is thy sting ?"* 
 
 2. But it is not only the body of the father, in some 
 sense, it is his soul, that lives again in his children. 
 
 Of all the mysteries which we carry within us, the 
 one least understood by science, least explained by reve- 
 lation itself, is that of human generation. A sacred 
 
 * 1 Cor. XV. 55. 
 
110 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 veil covers the cradle of life. I will imitate the reserve 
 of the Church upon these problems, before which the 
 genius of her illustrious doctors has paused in hesita- 
 tion, and leaving the secret things to God, will content 
 myself by asserting the mystery. The fact, which may 
 be proved but cannot be explained, is this : the son bears 
 the impress of the moral nature of his father ; he is not 
 only the offspring of his flesh and his bones, he is also 
 the offspring of his soul. 
 
 It seems to me that we get here a glimpse of light 
 on the mystery. St. Thomas Aquinas tells us somewhere 
 that the son is borne into existence by the soul of the 
 father.* The principle of life in man is but one ; it is 
 the soul itself: according to the elegant formula of the 
 schoolmen, the soul is the formal cause of the lody. The 
 act of fatherhood, then, is an act of the soul. The 
 whole soul is concerned in it ; it goes forth therein in 
 love, from husband to wife, from wife to husband, and 
 descending, through the parental relation, this glo- 
 rious scale, goes forth from parent to child. The 
 parents, so to speak, have shaped by their souls the 
 body of their child ; and when, from the bosom of God, 
 at the summons of the father, there comes down a soul 
 into this sacred mould, it finds there fold upon fold pre- 
 pared to receive it, and I know not what circumvolu- 
 tions of matter, in which are traced already, to a certain 
 extent, the lineaments of the mind. Away, then, with 
 the materialism which denies the action of the soul, aud 
 even its very existence ! but away, also, with the exclu- 
 sive and senseless spiritualism, which denies the close 
 alliance of the two substances, and the legitimate influ- 
 ence of the body upon the soul ! " And Adam begat a 
 
 ♦ Est qusedam motio ab anima patrie.— (i>« Malo, quseptio iv. Art. 6.) 
 
FATHERHOOD. Ill 
 
 son in his own likeness, after his image."* The parents 
 transmit to their children, with a resemblance in feature, 
 something of a resemblance in soul ; with their physical 
 temperament, something of their moral temperament; 
 and the work of assimilation which education is to 
 carry out, begins with the very fact of parentage. 
 
 Here, then, we have a man who lives again, both in 
 his body and in his soul, and who can go on with his 
 own work. 
 
 [Here, before showing how the father hands down his loork to 
 his son, the speaker drew from the idea of paternity this first les- 
 son of duty — the law of worthiness.'] 
 
 Every sound moral is derived from a doctrine. I have 
 set forth the doctrine of fatherhood, and you see how 
 this first law of duty springs from it at once — to be a 
 father one must be worthy of the office. To us, fathers 
 of souls, priests in the sphere of the supernatural and 
 divine, there comes a command from heaven, " No man 
 taketh this honor unto himself, but he that is called 
 of God, as was Aaron."f And may I not bring home 
 this stern command to you, priests of the family, fathers 
 of the body, indeed, but also of the soul, in the sphere 
 of the natural and human ? May I not say to you : 
 Take not this honor unto yourselves, unless ye be 
 called ; dare not usurp these lofty functions, if ye be not 
 worthy ? 
 
 Thou who art yet in the early spring of youth, some 
 day you shall be worthy, but not yet. Do not think 
 that fatherhood is some common thing — a means, and 
 not an end ; something to be thrown to a child as an 
 outside defence against temptation — a borrowed shield 
 against the dangers of youth ! Learn to wait in the 
 
 * QeneeiB, v. 3. t Hebrews, v. 4. 
 
112 DISCOUKSES OF FATHER HTACINTHE. 
 
 vigils of toil and chastity ; and when you have fairly 
 developed to its full maturity that grand human nature 
 which you bear within you, you may begin to dreani of 
 transmitting it! 
 
 And you, young man, there was a time, perhaps, when 
 you were worthy, but you are not now ! What have you 
 done with the integrity of human nature ? what have 
 you done with those two elements of paternity, a sound 
 body and a sound mind ?* Ah ! as I was just saying, 
 our blood is within us, but it is not ours : mine belongs 
 to my ancestors in the past ; yours, to your descendants 
 in the future. It is a trust, a trust more sacred than 
 deposits of gold. And yet you have not known how to 
 keep this treasure of the blood, with which you have 
 been put in trust for other generations. You dare not 
 bequeath to your sons the poor, dwindled current, or the 
 deadly poison which is flowing in your veins ! There is 
 such a thing as a blood of the soul, " sanguis quidam 
 animce,^^ as St. Augustine says, the blood of principles 
 in the intellect, and the blood of virtues in the will. 
 This blood of the soul you have squandered in the de- 
 bauches of skepticism, as you have squandered the blood 
 of the body in the debauches of immorality. You have 
 lost the energy of truth, you have not even the energy 
 of falsehood. Impotent to deny Christianity as you are 
 to affirm it, exhausting yourself in the sterile luxury 
 of doubt, you poor, pitiful eunuch in matters of intel- 
 lect and conscience — what ! you would be a father ! 
 when there does not lie in you the divine seed that men 
 are made of ? No ! no ! it is not for you. 
 
 3d. [After having thus deduced from the first two characteris- 
 tics of fatherhood the law of icartJiinesSy tlie speaker proceeds to 
 consider the third characteristic, immortality in works.l 
 
 * " Men? Sana in corpore sano." 
 
FATHERHOOD. 113 
 
 Every man has a work to do in tlie world, a work of the 
 intellect, or a work of the hands ; ■ and there is intellect 
 even in the work of the hands — " by the intelligence of 
 his hands," as the Scripture says.* And when man once 
 understands this profound and noble law of work, he no 
 longer submits to it as a necessity, no longer regards it 
 as a retribution, or as a mere means of acquiring ease or 
 wealtli ; all these ideas, no doubt, have their legitimate 
 and powerful influence in his purposes, but the charm 
 of work is quite another thing. I was just saying that 
 love, in one sense, is the end of love. I may say the 
 same of work. Man loves labor for the labor's sake ; he 
 devotes himself to his particular work for the sake of 
 that work, and for the direct and immediate results 
 which are to proceed from it. 
 
 It is the husbandman, the first of human workmen, 
 who has best preserved the inheritance and work of 
 Adam upon the earth. "/ am a hitslandman ; mid 
 Adam is my exam,ple from 7ny youth." \ He looks at 
 earth, through all her thorns and briers, in her seeming 
 ugliness, but hidden beauty, and says : " I love thee ! be 
 my bride : I will give thee the sweat of my brow, and thou 
 shalt give me thy fruit; and thou shalt be a fertile 
 mother of mankind \" He loves the earth, then, both 
 for herself and for her fruits; he loves the fields for 
 themselves, and for the splendor of the golden harvest 
 which covers them in summer ; he loves the vines for 
 the abundant and fruitful branches of autumn, and for 
 the new wine which rejoices the heart of man. These 
 trees which he plants, and under whose shade he shall 
 never sit, he loves them for themselves, and for the sake 
 of his children and his children's children, who are to 
 sit beneath the shadow of their spreading boughs. 
 
 ♦ Psahn Ixxviii. 72. t Zechariah, xiii. 5. (Vulgate.) 
 
114 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 The merchant and the mechanic devote themselves to 
 their handicraft and their commerce, as the laborer to 
 the soil; they pride themselves upon the wonderful 
 things which they produce or exchange. They love their 
 work, down to the very tools they handle ; they love the 
 labors of their days and the watches of their nights, the 
 anxieties of their uncertain youth and the triumphs of 
 their riper years. 
 
 In fact, it is the same with all work, under whatever 
 form and in whatever sphere : the magistrate adminis- 
 ters justice out of respect to justice; the philosopher 
 searches for truth from love of truth ; the artist gives 
 expression to the beautiful, from his passion for the 
 beautiful. 
 
 Thus it becomes the legitimate and profound desire 
 of the father of a family to see the work to which he 
 has devoted his life descend to his children, and be 
 continued by them; and such is in fact the custom of 
 well-established society, which is at once traditional 
 and progressive — either before it enters into the great 
 crisis through which we are noAV passing, or after it has 
 emerged therefrom. 
 
 If, then, we do not find it always thus amongst us, 
 it must be attributed to circumstances. Human nature 
 has not changed, and when the father cannot bequeath 
 his work in its exact form, he strives at least to be- 
 queath it in those grand traditions of probity and 
 honor, of patriotism and religion, which are connected 
 with his fortune and his name. When he has done 
 that, a man can afford to die ; for he has bound to- 
 gether in one firm association the two dearest creations 
 of his life — his work and his son ; he has won for him- 
 self a real immortality upon the earth ; and from that 
 other immortality which he shall enjoy in heaven 
 
FATHERHOOD. 115 
 
 among the chosen ones, in the bosom of God, he shall 
 smile upon his race with a sweet and holy pride, and 
 shall bless them, like Jehovah, to the third, the fourth, 
 the thousandth generation. 
 
 [In concluding, as follows, what he had to say of fatherhood 
 in its relation to the individual, the preacher showed from the 
 foregoing considerations the origin of the perpetual authority of 
 the fatlier over his children.] 
 
 An illustrious thinker has said : " The child is always 
 a minor before Nature, even when he is of age before 
 the State. The paternal authority is essentially per- 
 petual." In a certain sense, the child comes to his 
 majority the day that he fairly attains the age of 
 reason ; he has from that time a sense of justice and 
 injustice, he is free and responsible, he holds directly 
 from his own conscience and from God. But if man is 
 essentially free by virtue of his personality and his 
 manhood, he is essentially subject, as a derived being, 
 and as a son. And as the statue, the picture, the 
 melody, the inspired book, if they had souls, would 
 constantly refer their existence to the creative soul 
 from which, in some hour of genius, of anguish, of 
 rapture, they had sprung, just so the son of man, if he 
 have the spirit of a son, even though his brow be bald, 
 and his hair be white, will bow his white hair and his 
 bald forehead in respect, in love, and in obedience be- 
 fore the ever venerable head of him to whom he owes 
 his being and his life ! 
 
 Part Secokd. — Fatherhood considered as the Means 
 of Reproduction of the Haman Race. 
 
 [In leaving the sphere of the individiial, wide as it is, to pass 
 to the social sphere, which is still wider, Father Hyacinthe spoke 
 
116 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 of paternity as laying aside all that it has of narrow and almost 
 selfish. The father, in this view, is no longer the creator of his 
 son, but the creator of the humanity. 1 
 
 1st. AVe are asked every day by false science : " But 
 what is your God busy about ? JSTowhere, in nature, 
 can we find his personal action, but only law^s, calm, 
 solemn, immutable as fate itself/' Well, it is true! 
 Since he placed man as his vicegerent upon earth, God 
 has retired from the field of direct and personal action. 
 Hd reposes, as on a throne, upon the majesty and im- 
 mutability of these laws, which hide him so well from 
 the proud, and reveal him so clearly, so divinely to 
 true thinkers and true believers; "he rests from all 
 his work that he has made."* God created man, but 
 he left to man the glory of finishing the greatest of his 
 works, and creating the human race. "Male and 
 female created he them," says the sacred historian; 
 "and God blessed them, and God said unto them: Be 
 fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and 
 subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, 
 and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing 
 that moveth upon the earth."f 
 
 " Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth !" 
 It is this great command that the married pair still 
 hear resounding through the depths of their love, if so 
 be they are intelligent enough and pure enough to 
 penetrate the secret of that love. It is no longer an 
 individual love; it is a humanitarian love. It is no 
 longer the home, that SAveet and cherished home, that 
 is to be peopled; it is the world. "Replenish the 
 earth!" It is no longer a particular family which 
 they dream of creating ; it is the entire human race ! 
 
 * Genesis, ii. 2. t Genesis, i. 27, 28. 
 
FATHERHOOD. 117 
 
 They hear this voice in the understanding, and they 
 catch the echo of it in their hearts ; they are rapt in a 
 sacred ecstasy; they feel themselves, in some sort, the 
 priests of humanity ! I have said that marriage was a 
 priesthood, and I have no thought of retracting it. It is 
 the true priesthood of natural religion. I even suspect 
 that had it not been for the sin of our first father, it 
 would have been the only priesthood. They feel them- 
 selves priests. They are priests ; they look upward like 
 the priest at the altar — upward to Jehovah, the father 
 of all creatures ; upward, in the clear light of faith, and 
 the light of reason also. For man's reason, whatever 
 may be said of it, is the direct and living reflection of 
 God's reason. For the ideas by which it is filled and 
 illuminated are, as St. Augustine has so well said, prin- 
 cipal forms and radiations of the things which exist in 
 the eternal intelligence : idee sunt formm qicmdam prin- 
 cipales et radiationes rerum qum in i7itelligentia divma 
 continentur. Well, then, in their human reason and in 
 their Christian faith, in these royal forms and in these 
 divine illuminations, the married pair behold one of the 
 most sublime and glorious of conceptions, the concep- 
 tion of human nature, and they cry: God, send to 
 us this marvellous gift ! And like Tobias and Sara, in 
 the twilight of their chaste nuptials, kneeling before 
 the marriage bed, breathing forth that song which the 
 Holy Scriptures have preserved for us,* so the bride 
 and bridegroom of humanity, the wedded ones of the 
 new Israel, breathe the like aspiration — " Blessed art 
 thou, God of our fathers; let the heavens and the 
 earth bless thee, and the sea, and the rivers, and the 
 fountains abounding with water ! Let everything that 
 liveth and moveth in the creation show forth thy praise, 
 
 ♦ Tobit, viii. 5. 
 
118 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 Father! Author of life! And from us grant that a 
 holy posterity may proceed, that shall sing thy holy 
 name from generation to generation !" 
 
 3d. [The speaker next proceeds to follow out this idea of the 
 office of fatherhood in the propagation of the human race, into 
 the special form in which it appears in the reproduction of a 
 nation.] 
 
 The vast body of humanity has members and organs : 
 these are races and nations. The races and nationalities 
 of humanity are of divine institution. I know that 
 human law came afterward ; and because it is law I 
 honor it, — law of nations — law of w^ar — law of treaties ; 
 but behind all these laws there is another, the law of 
 God ! — the law of the same blood flowing in the same 
 veins, the law of the same tongue speaking through the 
 same lips, the law of the same ideas and the same char- 
 acter, the law of the same loves, and, if need be, the 
 same hatreds. There has been a typical race through 
 which God has spoken to all nations, a race old as the 
 world, and which still endures, strong and rugged as 
 the rock of Sinai, where it was born, as the loins of the 
 old nonagenarian patriarch, in which it was borne. 
 And what is said to this race ? " Eemember the days 
 of old, when the Most High divided to the nations their 
 inheritance; when he separated the sons of Adam; 
 when he set the bounds of the people according to the 
 number of the children of Israel. For the Lord's por- 
 tion is his people ; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance."* 
 
 Away, then, without ceremony, with the patriotism 
 which cuts itself off from humanity — which is anti- 
 humanitarian ! Away with that humanitarianism, too, 
 which cuts itself off from country, and is anti-patriotic 1 
 
 * Deut. xxxii. 7-9. 
 
FATHERHOOD. 119 
 
 It is in our own race, above all, in our own blood and 
 speech, that we ought to love the whole race of man ! 
 
 husband and wife, grand, ideal. Christian husband 
 and wife, it is not alone at the altar of your kind that 
 you minister, but at the altar of your country! The 
 question is, shall our country be preserved? I am 
 speaking as a Frenchman, to Frenchmen ! The ques- 
 tion is, shall France, our great and beloved France, be 
 expanded, elevated if possible, but at least saved from 
 humiliation and decay ? 
 
 Ah ! Gentlemen, I see a new law emerging here, the 
 law o^ fecundity. 
 
 1 hear it said that there are races that increase, and 
 others that decrease, or at least remain stationary. I 
 hear this said in the mpst eloquent of all languages in 
 the way of demonstration, the language of statistics ; 
 and it is a most heart-moving language on this point, 
 because the race that is decreasing is said to be our 
 own — it is said to be France. I am not one of those 
 who would estimate the strength of a country by the 
 weakness of its neighbors : this is an old heathen notion 
 which all Christian statesmen must repudiate. But I 
 do not wish my country to sink while others rise. I do 
 wish that in time of peace, as she stands looking at her 
 wealth-producing plough, France might not have far to 
 seek for hands to grasp it and to spread fertility through 
 all her fields. I do wish that in that terrible and glori- 
 ous hour when war breaks out, without quitting the 
 plough, without suffering those peaceful wounds upon her 
 sides to close, that flow with life and abundance, France 
 might find other hands to seize her valiant sword, and 
 wield it right bravely and proudly to strike down her 
 
 enemies. I do wish, when I look abroad of Germany 
 
 I sliall say no more, I have alreadv spoken of it; neither 
 
120 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 shall I speak of Russia, which is in a fair way to con- 
 quer Northern Asia, and which will soon, perhaps, rule 
 China, to the furthest East ; but on the other side of 
 the Channel, I see the noble Anglo-Saxon race, one of 
 the noblest in the world, and when I look at it I do 
 wish not to be compelled to blush. I do not count its 
 provinces and its colonies, I do not stop for the details ; 
 but a vast empire in the Indies, a flourishing and 
 gigantic republic in the United States, and a new con- 
 tinent emerging from mid-ocean, Australia, which is 
 soon to rival Europe and America! Pardon me, my 
 country ! forgive one who loves you well for addressing 
 you with such respectful but most painful frankness ! 
 but I do wish that I need not hear this reproach, with- 
 out having one word to utter in reply : "And you, sons 
 of France, there are not enough of you to colonize and 
 people Algeria !" 
 
 Gentlemen, in this pulpit, which is God's pulpit, and 
 before this audience, so well fitted to inspire one with the 
 truth, and then to give ear to it, I shall not spare all my 
 resources of sincerity. It is not pleasant to reflect indi- 
 rectly upon men whose talents and convictions I respect, 
 even in the midst of their monstrous errors ; but I am 
 bound to hold up to view certain doctrines that have 
 something to do with a state of things that has already 
 become inveterate. Now this is the doctrine of ^jositiv- 
 ism, or at least of one of the most eminent representatives 
 of that school. In a remarkable book which I glanced 
 over yesterday on your account, this author proposes as 
 the supreme remedy for the sufferings of the people, and 
 especially for the decline in wages, " the limitation of 
 the size of families in the laboring classes."* I quote 
 word for word, and it is not an accidental page, a chance 
 
 * John Stuart Mill, " Principles of Political Economy." Vol. I. 
 
FATHERHOOD. 121 
 
 phrase ; it is an idea repeatedly expressed in this work, 
 and which pervades it all, as the translator himself ac- 
 knowledges. This author " expects little improvement 
 in morality, until the producing large families is regarded 
 with the same feelings as drunkenness, or any other phy- 
 sical excess."* He comforts himself, however, with the 
 hope that the time is approaching when " we shall be 
 able to convert the moi*al obligation," not to have too 
 many children, " into a legal one," and when the law will 
 " end by enforcing" this obligation upon " the recalci- 
 trant minority."! This is the sort of stuff that is called, 
 now-a-days, science, progress, the future ! And yet there 
 are those who would call me to account for having spoken 
 of the approach of European barbarism, and for having 
 given warning of the danger of such a despotism as the 
 human race has never known ! 
 
 [But fatherhood ought to obey not alone the law of fecundity ; 
 it shoukl follow one law more — the law of morality. Father Hy- 
 acinthe developed this cardinal law. He showed the resemblance 
 of eveiy father of a family to Abraham, when God showed him in 
 the stars of heaven the symbol of his race : it was not only his 
 sons who are to go forth from him, nor his sons' sons, but, in the 
 course of centuries, whole nations.:}: Now these generations are, 
 so to speak, contained in him, living one and the same life with 
 him ; aiid, according to the energetic language of the Scriptures, 
 he carries them already in his loins. § In this way it is, that by 
 the good or evil use which a man makes of his liberty, by the 
 wounds which, in his own person, he inflicts upon human nature, 
 or by the respect with which he surrounds it, a single man can 
 exert an influence either happy or fatal, salutary or corrupting, 
 upon countless generations. Original sin cannot otherwise be 
 explained ; it is a consequence of the exceptional dependence of 
 all men upon him in whom fatherhood was impersonated in all 
 its plenitude and its energy. The races peculiarly cursed, ofj 
 
 * lUd. page 459, note. t Vnd. page 464'. 
 
 X Gen. xvii. 4. § Heb. vii. 10. 
 
122 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 which the Scripture tells us, have this origin only : in cursing 
 the son of Ham, Noah simply expressed the law by which the 
 depravity of the father passes to the children. — It is not invaria- 
 ble : there are on the one hand the fatalities of nature, on the 
 other the liberty of the individual, which may free the son, 
 whether for good or evil, from the influence of the parent. But 
 with these exceptions, the law none the less remains such as ex- 
 perience and common sense have proved it to be — " like father, 
 like son ;" — such as the Holy Book has expressed it, in showing 
 the Lord as visiting the sins of the fathers upon the third and 
 fourth generation, and remembering mercy to the thousandth. — 
 It depends, then, at the last resort, upon fatherhood to raise or 
 lower the physical and moral level of humanity.] 
 
 I hear it said by sophistical science, that in an ap- 
 proaching cataclysm of the globe there is to rise a new 
 race superior to our own, just as we ourselves arose in 
 the last of the transformations of the earth. We should 
 be destined, then, to be to this race of the future what 
 the brute races are now to us ; but science consoles it- 
 self for this in its pantheistic indifference. Gentlemen, 
 there is a truth beneath these dismal fantasies ; — it is, 
 that it depends upon fathers, not to create a race supe- 
 rior to man — man is the last expression of creative wis- 
 dom — but to raise the human race above its present 
 position. It depends on them, first by fatherhood, and 
 then by education, to elevate, from generation to gen- 
 eration, the physical and moral level of our great and 
 progressive humankind ; as it depends upon them also 
 to depress, to impoverish, to corrupt it in everything — in 
 blood, in ideas, in morals ! Humanity is in their power; 
 they may, at their pleasure, raise it up to God, or depress 
 it to a level with the brutes. 
 
 [In conclusion, the speaker insisted upon the religious character 
 of paternity.] 
 
FATHERHOOD. 123 
 
 And yet it is not glory enough for Fatherhood to add 
 something to human nature day by day ; it must also, if 
 I may venture to say it, add somewhat to the divine 
 nature. Doubtless, God is perfect and unchangeable in 
 himself; but he needs to grow in us. He has bidden 
 us, through Christianity, to be "partakers of his own 
 nature,"* and his desire is to impart that nature ever 
 more and more to the bosom of humanity. Such is the 
 sublime goal of Christian fatherhood. It prepares new 
 subjects for that divine "adoption of sons" of which the 
 evangelist St. John has said: "As many as received 
 him, to them gave he powder to become the sons of God, 
 even to them that believe on his name, which were born 
 not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will 
 of man, but of God."f Christian fatherhood brings 
 forth children for baptism, for the holy supper, for all 
 the real and secret marvels of grace, for all the wonder- 
 ful intercourse of the personal and living God with 
 man. - 
 
 In their ardent longing for the Messiah, the Jews 
 watched unceasingly for his appearance among the chil- 
 dren of their fruitful marriages; every faithful father 
 hoped that some day, while embracing one of these 
 sweet creatures, lost in joy and adoration, he should 
 recognize beneath the features of his child the ambas- 
 sador of Heaven. The dream of the Hebrew family is 
 the reality of the Christian family. Christian father, 
 put back those fair locks, look at that pure forehead 
 from which the water of holy baptism has hardly dried 
 away, look at that clear and limpid eye, wherein is mir- 
 rored the blue of heaven, and with it, the smile of God ! 
 This child, so lovely and so innocent, this angel that 
 comes to you from heaven and leads you back thither, is 
 
 ♦ 2 Peter, i. 4. t John, i. 12, 13. 
 
124 DISCOUKSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 the Messiah. The redemption of Christ is upon him, 
 the grace and the yirtues of Christ dwell within the" 
 soul, and the Christ himself lives again in your son !"* 
 
 Fatherhood, then, is an eminently religious thing. 
 Like all that is truly great, it pertains to God, and par- 
 takes of him. It proceeds from him, for he is at once 
 its origin and its law; it returns to him, because it 
 brings into existence not for this human life alone, but 
 has its final purpose in the formation of a divine being. 
 How overwhelming the thought ! Once more I utter 
 from my heart that cry of wonder and of prayer : " I 
 bow my knees before the Father of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ, from whom all fatherhood in heaven and earth 
 is named !"f 
 
 ♦ See Gal. ii. 20 ; Phil. i. 21 ; Eph. ill. 17. t Eph. iii. 14, 15. 
 
LECTURE FIFTH. * 
 
 December 30, 1866. 
 
 EDUCATION IN THE FAMILY. 
 
 Gentlemen : We now understand fatherhood. It has 
 appeared to us as a very simple thing, seated by eyery 
 fireside in the world ; and at the same time as a yery 
 grand thing, superior, in a sense, to all royalties, asso- 
 ciated with all priesthoods, receiving directly from God 
 this wonderful power of vanquishing death by repro- 
 ducing the individual, and enlarging the creation by 
 propagating the kind. 
 
 A reproduction of the individual in his Uocd, in his 
 soul (in that orthodox sense in which I have explained 
 it), and finally, in his worhs, paternity creates for man 
 a primary immortality upon the earth, that immortality 
 of race which the divine promise has never separated 
 from the immortality of the person, and of which we 
 have an illustrious example in the posterity of the holy 
 patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Contemporary 
 rationalism is right in asserting this immortality of the 
 present life; but it is wrong, while asserting this, in 
 denying the immortality of the life to come. 
 
 It is in the right, also, when with us it honors in pa- 
 ternity the noble instrument of the propagation of our 
 kind, in the first place, under that grand Immaiiitarian 
 
126 DISCOUKSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 form, which our age seems to be called, more than its 
 predecessors, to know, to love, to serve; and secondly, 
 in those more particular and determinate forms which 
 are called races and nations. But it ought better to 
 understand and better to practise those two holy laws 
 of fecundity and morality- which expand mankind and 
 the nations in point of number, at the same time that 
 they elevate and ennoble them by virtue. 
 
 It should, above all, recognize that human fatherhood 
 finds its end, as its origin, in God himself, seeing that it 
 has for its supreme mission to prepare new subjects 
 of participation in the divine life in the bosom of 
 Christianity. Arrived at this climax, we have learned. 
 Gentlemen, to honor the name of father as that august 
 title for the glory of which one might almost say that 
 God and man are rival claimants. 
 
 Well, then, great as it is in its fli^st act, which is gen- 
 eration, fatherhood is greater still in its second act, 
 which is education, that gradual and glorious moral 
 generation. 
 
 [It is upon this subject of education in tlie family that Father 
 Hyacinthe proposes now to speak. He will consider successively 
 the agentA and the laws of education,] 
 
 Part First. — Of the Agents of Education. 
 
 1. [At the outset, by way of preliminaiy, he proceeds to define 
 education, and determine its precise object] 
 
 The deeper meaning of words is generally found in 
 their etymology. According to the Latin root, education 
 means a dratving-out, from the Latin educere. Educa- 
 tion is not, then, the creation of life, but the develop- 
 ment of the life already created. To bring up is another 
 word which carries a similar idea — to convey from a 
 
EDUCATION IN THE FAMILY. 127 
 
 lower to a higher plane ; it is to carry a being from the 
 state in which he exists now to a state in which he does 
 not yet exist. Education supposes, on the part of God, 
 creation — on the part of man, fatherhood ; and it rests 
 upon another law, universal in this world, the laiv of 
 tlie germ. 
 
 In whatever sphere I contemplate life, outside of the 
 bosom of God — in the animal as in the vegetable king- 
 dom, in the world of souls as well as of bodies — every- 
 where I find it beginning in a germ, where it lies latent, 
 and as if wrapped, up in a mysterious sleep. And, as I 
 am speaking of man, there are in him two germs, folded 
 one within the other — the soul and the body. The body 
 is formed with all its organs ; all its functions are there 
 in a rudimentary state ; and yet it is obvious that thus 
 far it is nothing more than a marvellous epitome of 
 man. The soul is constituted with all its faculties, and 
 even with the direct and involuntary exercise of them. 
 To speak only of the understanding, which is the root 
 of all, it bears already within itself one pre-existent 
 idea, the most simple and the most fruitful of all ideas, 
 the idea of oeing, a dawning light, which by and by 
 shall illuminate everything, but which now falls upon 
 no definite object, and in which the gaze of the infant 
 is lost without consciousness either of it or of itself. 
 
 Now, it is when subjected to this educational force, 
 that the germ begins to open, unfold, and to exhibit 
 outwardly, by their motion and outburst, the elements 
 infolded in its bosom. The educational force, for the 
 plant, is the soil in which it is rooted, the sunbeams and 
 the dew-drops ; for man, it is a cause as personal as him- 
 self. Upon this education, so different from all others, 
 the seal of individuality is set, with an unparalleled 
 dignity. Reason and liberty are essential to its min- 
 
128 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 isters ; and for its subjects, passive obedience is not suf- 
 ficient, we must have besides an intelligent and free 
 response. Education is not a thing imposed; it is a 
 free gift, freely accepted ; it is to-day from father to son, 
 what it was originally from God to man — a work of rev- 
 erence : "with great reverence thou dealest toward us."* 
 
 [Education in general, then, is tlie development of a pre-existent 
 germ; and the education of man in particular is the development 
 of a personal germ by the action of a free and intelligent agent 
 without, by the free and intelligent co-operation of the subject 
 within. 
 
 2d. This idea explained, Father Hyacinthe comes to the question 
 proposed in this first part of his discourse — who are the true and 
 legitimate agents of the work of education ? It must be observed 
 that this question is answered by the very idea of education, 
 which is only the complement of generation. The agents of edu- 
 cation can only be the authors of the life itself— the parents.] 
 
 I well understand that we must recognize three forms 
 of human society. I said so at the commencement of 
 these studies, and I still purpose to explain, in turn, 
 their rights and their dignities. There is domestic society, 
 as we have seen ; but there is, besides, civil society and 
 religious society. This child belongs to the family, but 
 he also belongs to his country, Avhich is temporal, and to 
 the Church, which is eternal. Thus I am very far from 
 denying the necessary and legitimate intervention of 
 Church and State in his education. I am not of the 
 mind of those who say, pretending to speak in the name 
 of Catholicism, " The State is a policeman ;" and I am 
 not of their mind who say, in the name of rationalism, 
 " The State is an insurance company." The State is 
 neither a policeman nor an insurance company, but the 
 
 • Wisdom, xii. 18. 
 
EDUCATION IN THE FAMILY. 129 
 
 highest organ of civil society, in the moral as well as the 
 material system. It has, then, a power oyer the things 
 of the soul, in relation to those matters which do not 
 pertain to the sphere of the supernatural ; and the most 
 sacred of its rights, as of its duties, is to watch over the 
 education of youth. As to the Church, I should not be 
 its minister, if I had forgotten the words of Jesus Christ 
 to his apostles : " Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations."* 
 Depositary of the religious instruction, and, by an inev- 
 itable consequence, of the moral instruction, which are 
 the salvation of families and empires as well as of the in- 
 dividual, the Church is, by the nature of things, the 
 great instructress of the generations of man. I fully 
 recognize, then, under different titles, and in different 
 degrees, the authority of the Church and of the State, 
 in education ; but I nevertheless vindicate the priority , 
 and in a sense the superiority of the family ; I assert 
 anew, that the father and mother are, by natural and by 
 divine right, the proper educators of the children whom 
 heaven and their love have given them. 
 
 [The father and the mother are the agents of education. They 
 fill each a separate function, and yet they cany on the work in 
 common. Father Hyacinthe remarks that in the first place the 
 father has the supreme authority in all domestic education. It 
 belongs to him of right, as the head of the family. This supreme 
 authority is delegated to the mother, but its source and royal seat 
 is always in the father ; for, as it has been already said, " the man is 
 the head of the woman." As for the mA)re special share of the 
 husband and wife in this complex work, it is determined by the 
 same principles which settle the harmony of the conjugal rela- 
 tion : man is especially the representative of reason, woman of the 
 affections.] 
 
 I return. Gentlemen, to the premises which I have laid 
 iown on the subject' of love. I said, in speaking of con- 
 
 * Matt, xxviii. 19. 
 6* 
 
130 DISCOUESES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 jugal love, of rational, personal, and Christian loye — 
 the only kind of which I spoke — that it presupposes an 
 intimate harmony between the two halves of hmnan na- 
 ture : the one, the head which thinks and governs ; the 
 other, the heart which loves and inspires. That which 
 is necessary, then, in the love of husband and wife, is 
 necessary in the education of children — we must have 
 the presence and the combination of these two powers. 
 The man, representative of sovereign reason, to utter 
 those lofty teachings of intelligence and faith, of which 
 the woman shall become the interpreter; to inculcate 
 those rules to which all owe obedience, not merely 
 the children, but the wife herself; to punish when pun- 
 ishment is necessary, and " to drive foolishness from the 
 heart of his child by the rod of correction."* But the 
 woman, the wife, the mother, has a function which is 
 the complement of the first, and which surpasses it in 
 gentleness, often in efficacy — the function of imparting 
 inspirations, and those tendernesses which enfeeble not, 
 but rather strengthen ; — that office of the heart which 
 pours itself into the heart, and which, by a sublime re- 
 action, develops the reason on the one hand, while it 
 strengthens the conscience on the other ! 
 
 To form a man, we must have these two forces, not 
 isolated, but associated in a common action. And this. 
 Gentlemen, allow me to say it in passing, is one of the 
 strongest arguments against the sophistry of divorce. 
 Ah ! love, of itself, can triumph over divorce ; but if it 
 should fail of its influence over hearts that had lost 
 their sweetness or their tone, I should appeal to parent- 
 age, — I should appeal to its work, left such a hopeless 
 abortion, if the parents separate before they have com- 
 pleted it. Ah ! if you can no longer love each other 
 
 * Proverbs, xxii. 15. 
 
EDUCATION IN THE FAMILY. 131 
 
 for each other's sake, love at least for the sake of your 
 child ! father's reason, turn not away from the mother's 
 heart ! heart of mother, do not revolt against the 
 father's reason ! but like the two halves of a single shield 
 joined into one complete and necessary defence, sur- 
 round this cradle and protect it. 
 
 [After tliese general considerations on the separate work of 
 the parents, the preacher entered into certain details to establish 
 the special importance of the maternal education.] 
 
 I said a great deal about the father, last Sunday : I 
 did so with a purpose. I fear that sometimes, in the 
 Christian pulpit, the part of the father is too much 
 sacrificed to that of the mother. But now I need to 
 render to the mother the homage which is due to her. 
 In this education of the child, which commences with 
 birth, or rather with conception, the influence of the 
 mother is the first in order of time, the most intimate 
 in the order of depth and penetration. The old Ara- 
 bian prophet was right when he said, "Man that is 
 born of a woman."* We have not thought of this 
 enough : the most decisive education of man, for body 
 and for soul, is given in the cradle. Now the real 
 cradle of man is the womb and the arms of the mother. 
 The long repose of nine months, that chaste and close 
 embrace, where the child is one flesh with its mother, 
 and I might almost say, one soul! And when it is 
 torn from this first caress, it is to find others, no less 
 close and fruitful, in the arms which await it ! " What, 
 my son !" cries the mother, " what, the son of my 
 womb I and what, the son of my vows !" f Leave the 
 infant in its mother's arms ! Who can fill the place of 
 
 * Job, xlv. 1. t Prov. xxxi. 8. 
 
132 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 the mother with the child, of the dearly loving with the 
 dearly beloved ? 
 
 Eecall that charming type of Christian art, that from 
 the Catacombs to the Renaissance is so often modified, 
 but which is never changed — that type of the Virgin 
 Mother, the pure and tender mother carrying in her 
 arms the Divine Child! Ah! I know that it is a 
 reality ; I know that there was at Nazareth a daughter 
 of royal stock, a mechanic's wife, ever virgin, yet the 
 mother of Jesus Christ; but I know also that this 
 woman has become, in the glory of Christianity, the 
 supreme type of motherhood ! Christian mother ! — 
 or, rather, whoever thou art, daughter of humanity, 
 created by the Almighty, redeemed by Christ — human 
 mother, if only thou have a mother's heart and sympa- 
 thies, look at the woman of our sculpture and our 
 painting, the mysterious and radiant image of our 
 cathedrals ! it is thy sister, thy model, and thy law — it 
 is thyself, if thou canst understand it! Be thou the 
 stem rising from the earth, and never separating from its 
 flower, so full of tender beauty and sweet perfume ; be 
 the blooming " branch that groweth out of his root."* 
 Be the mother that holds her infant, night and day, 
 cradled in the caresses of her arms — cradled in her own 
 purity and love. Like her, nourish it on thinB own 
 substance ; it is God who has filled thy breast ; uhere de 
 ccelo plena, as the Church sings. Lavish upon it that 
 divine food, the best of all for its physical and its moral 
 life. This substance is living with the life of thy own 
 soul, which penetrates and quickens it; with every 
 wave of this sweet draught, with every gush of this 
 chaste intoxication, something of thy heart and thy 
 thoughts is passing into thy son ! 
 
 * Isaiah, xi. 1. 
 
/ EDUCATION IN THE FAMILY. 133 
 
 It is, then, in the arms and from the heart of its 
 mother that the child receives its primary education. 
 It is there that it receives those first cares for the body, 
 which are at the same time the first things to waken 
 and stir the heart. The infant is sensible only of that 
 which touches its body ; it is upon that that its entire 
 attention is concentrated ; consequently, the mother her- 
 self should hold this body, this little sacred body, in 
 her arms, not only because she has for the task inimi- 
 table hands, hands instinct with intelligence and deli- 
 cacy,* such as other men and women have not, but also 
 because in touching the body she shall reach the heart, 
 and awaken its life in a smile. Gentlemen, this is 
 not poetry ; or, if it be poetry, it springs from the very 
 bosom of fact. What, then, is the meaning of a child's 
 smile ? Look at the animal, and on its inert lips and 
 in its eye, deep as it often is when nature is dreaming 
 there, you will never catch a smile. The smile is the 
 first gleam of intelligence, the dawning twilight of 
 reason and afiection : that is the reason why it belongs 
 only to man. So long as no distinct thought has lighted 
 up the baby's mind, it does not smile. But, some day, 
 among the chaos of forms that flit before the dim gaze 
 of its bodily eye, and the still more uncertain gaze of 
 its mental eye, one form is perceived more distinctly 
 defined; the child has seen its mother, the first indi- 
 viduality that has been revealed to it, the first thought 
 which has enlightened its mind, the first affection which 
 has throbbed in its heart. The human world opens 
 before it, the clouds of native ignorance are riven asun- 
 der, and like a rainbow, his radiant smile lights up his 
 cradle. 
 It is at the age of six weeks that the child first smiles 
 
 * Ps. Ixxviii. 72. "In intellectibus mannum Buarum."— I'w/g'ate. 
 
134 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 upon its mother ; it is not till after a year that it speaks 
 its first word — an event in the domestic history which 
 always makes a family-festival, and which really marks 
 an important epoch of life. The smile marks the be- 
 ginning of thought in the child ; but this thought is 
 of an inferior order, it cannot abstract itself from the 
 external objects with which it is connected, and come 
 back freely upon itself, and hold self-consciousness and 
 self-control. To deliver it from this tyranny of indi- 
 vidual forms which fix and absorb it, it must have a 
 sensible sign — for human thought cannot separate itself 
 completely from the senses, — a sensible, but arbitrary 
 sign upon which it may depend in its abstraction. This 
 sign is speech ; speech, which is not only the expression, 
 but the liberator of thought. The father of the human 
 race received it from God, and every son of Adam re- 
 ceives it from his mother. As the mother's gaze has 
 revealed to him the world of visible realities, even so 
 it is the mother's tongue which opens to him the world 
 of invisible realities, and the most august of all, God! 
 It is a tradition of Christian firesides, that the first in- 
 telligent word addressed by the mother to her child 
 should be this great name of God. Sublime preroga- 
 tive, which elevates the priesthood of the mother, in 
 this, at least, above that of the father, even above our 
 own. lips of woman, ye beguiled us in Adam, and 
 behold how God has counted you worthy to teach us his 
 truth, and to reveal to us his nature ! 
 
 Ah ! I cannot but remember that prophecy of Genesis, 
 when the old serpent of error and evil deemed himself 
 the conqueror of our race forever. The Lord God said 
 unto him : " On thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt 
 thou eat all the days of thy life : and I will put enmity 
 between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and 
 
EDUCATION IN THE FAMILY. 135 
 
 her seed ; she shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt 
 bruise her heel." * 
 
 I do not wish to hurt any one's feelings, but I must 
 speak the truth ; those doctrines, those crawling doc- 
 trines that cannot rise from the ground, but which 
 make it their business to lie in ambush for men's heels — 
 for all these infirmities of ours which bind us in thought 
 or feeling to material things — materialist, skeptical, 
 atheist doctrines, which sometimes lift their heads a mo- 
 ment, but can never do more than crawl, even while 
 they are giving such a magnificent hiss — I tell them : 
 You appeal to science ; but science does not know you, 
 and the real struggle is not between her and you! Take 
 care, you have a more dangerous enemy than she can 
 be : " / loill put eyimity hehueen thee and the ivoman /" 
 Your enemy is the woman, with that innate tenderness 
 and purity which makes mental corruption as repug- 
 nant to her as physical ; the woman, with that super- 
 natural power with which Christianity has endued her! 
 Between us and you, there stands the woman ! Between 
 your sophistries and our reason, there is our mother ! 
 After twenty, thirty years, and more, we still keep 
 within our souls the echo of her words and the impress 
 of her embraces ! The warmth of her caresses is still 
 glowing; the sting which her lips have made still bleeds ; 
 and we carry in that mother's kiss — that divine saluta- 
 tion — a permanent and infallible revelation of all that 
 is highest in heaven, of all that is deepest in the soul ! 
 No, until you have closed the lips of the Christian 
 mother, you have not succeeded in extinguishing the 
 Kingdom of God upon the earth ! 
 
 • Genesis, iii. 14, 15. (See the Roman Catholic versiona.) 
 
136 DISCOUESES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 Part SECOi;rD. — The Laivs of Education. 
 
 [After observing that education is not left to the caprice of pa- 
 rents, but should be carried on according to those higher laws 
 which spring from the very nature of things, Father Hyacinthe 
 reduces these laws to three principal ones. The first relates to 
 the surroundings in the midst of which our life is developed ; the 
 second, to its starting-point; the third, to its point of destination. 
 The direction given to education should be in conformity to the 
 actual facts concerning these three principal elements of human 
 existence.] 
 
 First Law. — True education is tliat tvMch is inteyided 
 to prepare man for actual life. 
 
 I do not know, Gentlemen, if there exists an error 
 more common, and at the same time more fatal to the 
 happiness of the individual and the progress of the race, 
 than that which bears upon the real elements and the 
 practical direction of human life. The father who does 
 not desire to bring up his children to barren reveries and 
 cruel disappointments, will carefully avoid this error. 
 
 The two principal spheres of our existence, are our 
 family and our work. 
 
 It is for family life, above all, that man is to be fitted : 
 for its interests, which are to be the great object of his 
 solicitude, and for its virtues, which are the great object of 
 his aspiration ; for its affections and its griefs, which will 
 always be the supreme delight and the supreme bitter- 
 ness of the human heart — that double cup of which I 
 have spoken, full of joys and full of tears ; but whose 
 joys have something of grave and holy, and whose tears, 
 however bitter they may be, do yet borrow something of 
 the sweetness of the joys. Public life itself is subordi- 
 nate to private life. What is a country, but an associa- 
 tion of homes ? What is public life itself, if not the re- 
 sultant of all the forces which act in all the homes ? The 
 
EDUCATION IN THE FAMILY. 137 
 
 existence and prosperity of nations consists entirely in 
 the existence and prosperity of its homes ; and this is 
 why the two fundamental laws of civil society have al- 
 ways been the laAv of property and the law of marriage. 
 
 After education for the family, nothing is more im- 
 portant than education for worh, that other substantial 
 and constituent form of our existence. The child may 
 choose between mental and manual labor, and in each 
 of these great divisions will find many varieties answer- 
 ing to all individual aptitudes as well as to all social 
 needs ; but his choice once made, he must apply him- 
 self with love and constancy, and remember that work is 
 not only a means, but, in a very true and noble sense, an 
 end. The work for which men, taken generally, are to be 
 fitted, is manual — agriculture, mechanic art, commerce ; 
 and it is one of the distinguishing characteristics of mod- 
 ern progress, that it elevates in importance and dignity 
 these common occupations, which Christianity has al- 
 ways honored, but which the prejudices of the world 
 have too often sacrificed to the liberal professions. 
 These great things, sciences, letters, arts, politics, with 
 wars and treaties of peace, have not, however, the ex- 
 clusive or even the primary importance that has too 
 often been given them in our education. All this 
 movement of human things is more on their surface than 
 in their substance. It is limited in its nature, often very 
 brilliant, but often, also, very corrupt ; and it is not, I 
 venture to say, the true movement of humanity. The 
 history of our race, as it is to be written in the future, 
 will be, more than anything else, the history of these 
 two elements of genuine life, these two foci of all sound 
 and lasting civilization — the family and the workshop. 
 
 I have named the two main foci of civilization, which 
 is equivalent to naming the two main schools of popular 
 
188 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 education — ih.Q family, where we are practically trained 
 for life, and the loorlcsliop, where we are practically 
 trained for work. 
 
 Popular education is deservedly one of the most living 
 interests of our time ; and the way which appears to 
 many as the only efficacious way of reaching this noble 
 end, is the creation of schools, properly so called, dis- 
 tinct from the home and the workshop. For my part, 
 I agree that the importance of the school had not been 
 sufficiently understood down to these later days ; it is a 
 fruitful truth which it is well to bring into the light, 
 but which, nevertheless, must not be exaggerated. 
 Everywhere, but above all, in France, there is nothing 
 more to be dreaded than exaggerated truths. Even in 
 the region of the higher education, it is not the school 
 which gives thorough knowledge of ideas and things, 
 experience of life, of men, of facts; how much less, 
 then, can it do so in the more modest and practical 
 sphere of popular education ! That which the child of 
 the people wants of the school more than anything else, 
 is the actual mechanical details of reading, writing, and 
 arithmetic, and a certain general culture, in which, some 
 day, I hope, no French citizen will be wanting. But as for 
 that luxury of learning, reserved for an intellectual aris- 
 tocracy, which must not be too much enlarged lest it 
 be too much lowered, the workman has nothing to do 
 with it; and as for the more profound knowledge of his 
 own art, he will prefer to obtain it by practice in the 
 workshop, rather than theoretically in the school. The 
 practice of good workshops has frequently been in ad- 
 vance of the theory of the schools ; and this theory, more- 
 over, remains barren and uncomprehended until applied, 
 and sometimes rectified, by the rude hands of the work- 
 man. However important the school may be, it does 
 
EDUCATION IN THE FAMILY. 139 
 
 not contain the great solution of education for the 
 masses ; this solution must be sought, first of all, from 
 the family and the workshop. Give the people uncor- 
 rupted and well-ordered workshops — there are too few 
 now-a-days; give them back their homes — there are 
 none of them left in our great cities ; and you will have 
 done more even than by multiplying our glorious 
 schools ! The educators of real life are the parents, in 
 that sanctuary of the family which we call the liome; 
 and the masters, the true and worthy masters, in that 
 sanctuary of labor called the worhsliop. 
 
 Second Law. — Education must not mistake alout the 
 real startiyig-point of liuman life. 
 
 [The preacher here reproaches the new schools of opinion with 
 solving two questions of origin by two chimerical hypotheses : 
 the origin of the species by the hypothesis of the monkey, or at 
 least of the savage ; and the origin of the individual by the hy- 
 pothesis of an unfallen nature.l 
 
 I would answer with the poet : 
 
 *' Give me nor insult nor excess of praise." 
 
 The human race did not commence with the savage, 
 and the individual is not born perfect ; he is born in 
 original sin. He who conducts the work of education 
 with no reference to this starting-point, will make a bad 
 and false thing of it. 
 
 I have to thank the eminent author of that very 
 fine and excellent book. Social Reform in France, a 
 book of really positive philosophy — a book that deals 
 with facts without falsifying them, and which looks at 
 them with the reason of an observer and the heart of a 
 good man. In this book, one of the things which 
 
140 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 affected me most, is the noble courage with which the 
 author has laid down as the basis of education and all 
 social progress, the dogma of original sin. I call it a 
 dogma, because I am a priest, and am speaking in the 
 name of the Church ; he calls it a fad, because he is a 
 man and is speaking in the name of experience. Well, 
 it is a dogma, and it is a fact, — a dogma, because God 
 has revealed it ; a fact, because experience proves it. 
 There is not a father of a family, not a serious and 
 thoughtful teacher, who has not seen wdth his eyes and 
 touched with his hands the reality of original sin. 
 
 Man is born in a fallen state ; with tendencies toward 
 truth, I admit — with aspirations after good, I claim. For 
 man is great even in his fall, like a palace tumbling 
 in upon itself, like a temple which even in its ruins 
 keeps something of the majesty of the god which dwelt 
 in it ! Man is great even in his ruins ; but he is in ruins ! 
 
 It is not a perfect being that we have to work upon, 
 but a fallen being. It is not alone the good tendencies 
 in him which must be developed, but the depraved 
 instincts which must be repressed. It is not a rough 
 sketch of civilization, which w^e have to complete, to 
 develop, and to perfect, it is an incursion of barbarism 
 which we must conquer and subdue. Yes, in every 
 century, in every generation, we are witnesses, in the 
 bosom of our great civilization, of a veritable invasion 
 of barbarians : they do not come now from the forests 
 of Germany, the deserts of Scandinavia or Scythia, they 
 come from the depths of original sin. Your children, 
 as nature gives them to you, are barbarians, and it is 
 for you to civilize them! This is the great work of 
 fathers — the work which gives such dignity to domestic 
 society, as compared with civil or religious society. The 
 civilizers of the human race ! say no longer that they 
 
EDUCATION IN THE FAMILY. 141 
 
 are the princes and the magistrates, the thinkers and 
 the orators. All these, no doubt, are ambassadors of 
 God, and benefactors of man, but theirs is necessarily a 
 secondary part. The true civilizers — the creators of 
 France and of Europe, the legislators of modern soci- 
 ety — are fathers ! 
 
 Original sin, being the starting-point, necessitates a 
 coercive force in education. All society worthy of the 
 name contains within itself a coercive force — the Church 
 as well as the State, and domestic society as well as both 
 the others. I recognize the usefulness and the neces- 
 sity, according to the circumstances of time and place, 
 of a more or less considerable exercise of this power. 
 I simply add that it is itself subordinate to a supe- 
 rior power, that of persuasion, of moral improvement 
 through reason and love. The principal instrument of 
 the Church is not coercive power. Do we make sincere 
 believers, virtuous Christians, solely or chiefly by repres- 
 sion ? No, we make only rebels or hypocrites ! Neither 
 is the supreme force of the State its material force. Can 
 we make citizens, and above all, French citizens, by 
 repression and force ? Well, it is the same thing in the 
 family : and the father who wields only the rod of dis- 
 cipline, is as guilty and as powerless as he who rejects 
 it in over-indulgence, and never knows how to com- 
 mand or punish ! There is a medium — the great and 
 wise medium which avoids both extremes — persuasion, 
 by reason and by love ! Speak, teach, by precept and 
 by example. Bring down from those heights on which 
 the father and mother dwell, and toward which the 
 child is constantly looking upward — bring down that 
 power of truth and virtue which takes hold of the free 
 faculties of the mind and heart, and you will have healed 
 in your child the wounds left by the original evil ! 
 
142 DISCOUBSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 AboYe all, have God with you. I cannot conceive of 
 the repression of sin without the divine action ! God 
 must interfere in all the acts of the family, and must 
 himself be, so to speak, an inmate of the home. This is 
 the grand tradition of all free and prosperous peoples in 
 Europe or America, and it is not for our France, with 
 all respect to the sophists, to repudiate it ! The presence 
 of God in the majesty of the paternal brow, in the au- 
 thority of the sovereign reason — the presence of God in 
 the depths of the maternal heart, in the tenderness of the 
 love which freely gives itself as God has freely given 
 himself to it — this is, as we shall shortly see, the third 
 element necessary to education, the most efficacious of 
 the laws which govern it. 
 
 Third Law. — Education must not' mistake about the 
 destination of human life. 
 
 [The end to wliicli education, as well as life, should tend, is God. 
 Father Hyacinthe here shows that the presence of God is neces- 
 sary, not only to the repression of evil, but to the development of 
 good. There are faculties in human nature which cannot be 
 brought into exercise, except by religious training.] 
 
 I would not have morals independent of religion; 
 neither, on the other hand, would I have religion inde- 
 pendent of morals ! If religion find no place in educa- 
 tion ; if the religious sentiment be not cultivated in the 
 child's heart ; if the child be not led, in his will and un- 
 derstanding, step by step toward God, religion will not 
 be destroyed, but it will be made independent of morals 
 and education. 
 
 It will not be destroyed, because we cannot suppress 
 facts by denying them. It is a very fine thing to dony 
 the existence of the religious faculty in man, amid the 
 applause of some feeble creatures in whom this faculty 
 
EDUCATION IN THE FAMILY. 143 
 
 has become atrophied ; but for all that, the religious fac- 
 ulty will continue to exist in human nature. And if we 
 refuse it all culture and all direction, it will break out 
 in some form savage and barbaric as original sin. Ah ! 
 you did not wish to bring God into the training of your 
 child's soul ? you did not wish to train up your child 
 for God ? Well, then, beware of terrible retribution from 
 God and from the child ! 
 
 Let me cite a recent, but historical example. The 
 founder of Positivism in France, the man who passed 
 his whole life in denying religion in all forms, and 
 even in its very essence, ended his career in a state of 
 profound mysticism, and by a strange but sincere at- 
 tempt at a new religion. His favorite book was the Im- 
 itation of Christy and he recommended it to his disci- 
 ples as a manual of humanitarian piety. He composed 
 a Positivist calendar, in which Christian saints go hand 
 in hand with pagan heroes; and, finally, he left to the 
 executors of his will the care of his room, as the cradle 
 of the worship of humanity, of which he believed him- 
 self the first high-priest.* — This was the way in which 
 the religious faculty, so long despised, avenged itself. 
 God was driven out by the gate of reason, and God came 
 back again by the gate of madness ! 
 
 [In the presence of such facts among cultivated minds, the 
 preacher asks, what would become of the masses if Christian edu- 
 cation no longer gave to the religious sentiment in them its legit- 
 imate direction. It is safe to assert, that after a few generations, 
 we should see the formation of a new paganism, and perhaps even 
 the reproduction of the most monstrous extravagances of the old 
 paganism — religious prostitutions and human sacrifices.] 
 
 Leave us then our Jesus ! I end with him what I had 
 to say of education, because my theme has not changed, 
 
 ♦ Augastc Comte et la Philosophie Positive, by M. Littrd, p. 643, et passim. 
 
144 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 my tone is as unvarying as truth ; I can only begin and 
 end with God. "-I am Alpha and Omega," says he, 
 " the Beginning and the End/'* And again : " I am 
 the First and the Last ; I am he that liveth, and was 
 dead ; and behold, I am alive for evermore."f 
 
 Leave us, leave us our Jesus Christ; he is better 
 than all your inventions ! Leave us that old Bible, that 
 we may teach our children to spell in it, — the Bible 
 which has created printing, the Bible which has civil- 
 ized Europe ! It is from the Bible that the little Germans 
 and Scandinavians are taught their language, and to 
 love at the same time their religion and their native 
 land! Leave us our Bible — us Frenchmen and Catho- 
 lics ; and above all, our Bible expounded by the Church ! 
 In that Bible my young kindred and your children may 
 spell out softly and solemnly the name of Jehovah in 
 heaven, and the name of Jesus in the manger and on 
 Calvary. — What, Jehovah, Jesus, that boundless ocean 
 — wouldst hold it in that little hollow in the beach 
 which we call the heart and mind of a child ? Yea ! 
 Behold the miracle ! That which distracted and skepti- 
 cal sages find it impossible to comprehend, the child ac- 
 cepts without difficulty, like the light of day, like the 
 words and caresses of his mother. He believes in the 
 eternal God, who loves, creates, and redeems him. He 
 believes in Him, he loves Him in return, and tells Him 
 so in prayer. The Bible and the Church for his under- 
 standing, prayer and the sacraments for his affections. 
 This is what will give to France and to the world that 
 grand future of which I shall never despair 
 
 * Rev. i. 8. t Rev. .. IT. 18. 
 
LECTURE SIXTH. 
 
 January 6, 1867. 
 
 HOME. 
 
 My Lord Archbishop akd Gsiq^TLEMEi^ : In order 
 to live in this world, things invisible — ideas, souls — 
 must take to themselves a body and a local habitation. 
 Eoyalty has its palaces, religion its temples ; the family 
 should have its home. The family and the home imply 
 each other, and prepare each other like soul and body 
 in the person of man. According to our point of view, 
 we may say with almost equal truth, that the soul forms 
 the body, and that the body forms the soul ; just so we 
 may assert alternately that the family establishes and 
 preserves the home, and that the home moulds and 
 keeps the family. 
 
 " I said : I shall die in my nest ; I shall multiply my 
 days as the sand."* Who has not repeated these words 
 of Job in his heart ? Who has not loved thee, possessed 
 thee, or dreamed of thee, thou dearest abode of man, 
 sacred nest of our loves and our griefs,, where it is so 
 sweet to live, and almost as sweet to die ! 
 
 On this threshold. Gentlemen, let us pause. 
 
 We are about to part to-day for another year, and we 
 can nowhere better take leave of each other than here. 
 You are going back to this abode of earthly happiness ; 
 I am going to seclude myself in that abode of self-denial 
 
 ♦ Job, xxix. 18. 
 
 10 
 
146 DISCOUKSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 and heavenly happiness, the cloisfcer ! The cloister and 
 the family are not foes — they are not even strangers. 
 Awaiting the time when Providence shall bring us 
 together again, we shall work, I hope, for the triumph 
 of the same cause ; we shall serve together the personal 
 and living God, Christ, the Organizer and Redeemer of 
 our race, and the Church, the supreme union of family, 
 and country, and of all mankind ! 
 
 [Father Hyacinthe proposed, in this Lecture, to study the home 
 in its three phases : 1. Ownership ; 2. Transmission ; 3. Occupa- 
 tion.] 
 
 First Part. — Owner ship of the Home. 
 
 There is no need of doing for Home what I have 
 done for Education. In naming it, I have already 
 defined it. The Home is the dwelling-place of the 
 family. 
 
 A human family must have a dwelling-place; it 
 needs, by all means, to own a home. As for us who 
 belong to the Catholic celibacy, we may do without! 
 Jesus Christ, bidding us count the cost in advance, has 
 told us : " The foxes have holes, and the birds of the 
 air have nests ; but the Son of man hath not where to 
 lay his head."* He alone, then, who feels himself called 
 to follow him afar off along these heroic paths, may 
 taste their austere delights ; he cannot enter into volun- 
 tary poverty but by the gate of absolute continence. 
 But the man of family, the man who is not one but 
 ' many, is not free to divorce himself from the earth : 
 it would be folly ; and if this folly were possible, it would 
 be a crime ! He must have in this world — on this soil 
 ou which we tread — some sacred corner where he may 
 
 * Matthew, viii. 20. 
 
HOME. 147 
 
 place the bed of his wife and the cradle of his children. 
 But this transient and make-shift possession of a home 
 — a home that is occupied, but not owned — does not 
 suffice to realize the ideal of the home. That ideal is 
 absolute ownership, conferring not only the right to use 
 for the time being, but the simple and permanent fee. 
 This is the sort of ownership which becomes to the 
 family a principle of liberty, of order, and of lia]jpi- 
 ness. 
 
 The ownership of the home is a principle of liberty. 
 Yes, indeed! we are not really our own, as a general 
 thing, unless we are completely in our own house. This 
 is a great principle in the legislation of all civilized na- 
 tions — the inviolability of the citizen's domicile: and 
 this inviolability covers another — it is the safeguard, the 
 affirmation of the inviolability of the person. I ven- 
 ture to assert that the inviolability of the man and the 
 citizen is never more strongly affirmed and more effec- 
 tively secured than in the ownership of the dwelling, 
 the absolute and complete ownership of the house in 
 which he dwells. And if this be true of the man — if it 
 is the right of property which makes him free and sove- 
 reign at home, which draws around him those lines 
 that no one in the world dares cross without his leave, 
 how much more is it true of the family, of that collec- 
 tive person which has many lives to defend, and which 
 is attached to life by many and varied ties ! Ah, the 
 family — it is like those giants, sons of Earth, who when 
 they fell, plucked up strength again as soon as they 
 touched the ground ; and even in the bosom of poverty, 
 it will live on, full of energy, full of faith in itself 
 and its future, if it can rest secure in the possession of 
 its little cot and its little field ! " Better," says the in- 
 spired book, " bettor the meal of the poor under a 
 
148 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 thatched roof, than splendid banquets in a strange 
 house !" 
 
 But ownership is not only a principle of independ- 
 ence for the family, it is also a principle of order. It 
 is thus that God has arranged the laws of the moral 
 world; he has joined together things w^hich at first 
 sight seemed incompatible. The family must be free, 
 but the family must also be conseryative. For owner- 
 ship is not only a fact, it is a fact glorified by an idea ; 
 it is not only an interest, the first of all interests, con- 
 taining the germ of all the rest, it is an interest conse- 
 crated by the holiness and majesty of right! Touch 
 not this patch of ground ! it is guarded, not by one fee- 
 ble individual only ; it is defended by the solidarity and 
 confederation of all rights! All rights are interde- 
 pendent in this world : the rights of the weak cling to 
 those of the strong ; and the rights of the strong, when 
 their hour of peril comes, are fain to fall back upon 
 those of the weak. Property, then, is conservative ; it 
 breathes a certain inspiration of equity which affects the 
 poor man, the laborer, the peasant, which renders them 
 deaf to the perfidious whispers of revolution, and leads 
 them to hope, not in catastrophes, but in progress — nor- 
 mal and harmonious progress. Consequently, the pos- 
 session of property by the people is the solution of the 
 most difficult questions of the time in which we live, 
 this age of mingled industry and democracy. Let it be 
 brought about little by little, in our great cities, in our 
 manufacturing centres, that the workman shall be no 
 longer the tenant of some damp cellar, or some freezing 
 garret, but the owner of his home, and I repeat it, he 
 himself, henceforth both liberal and conservative, will 
 set the seal of reconciliation and peace upon those cruel 
 antagonisms which divide and destroy us. 
 
HOME. 149 
 
 The ownership of a home is not only a principle of 
 liberty and a principle of order, it is also a principle 
 of happiness. The proud sentiment of liberty is one 
 of the inmost sentiments in the mind of man. Another 
 of these inmost sentiments is the calm and sober senti- 
 ment of order ! But there is something, in my opinion, 
 deeper yet — the sentiment of domestic happiness ! We 
 cannot live always in the dreams of the imagination, 
 the passions of the heart, or the intoxication of the 
 senses. There comes an hour when man aspires, by all 
 that is noblest and deepest in his nature, for something 
 settled — something which will fix the movements of his 
 life without confining them, which will settle and make 
 them fruitful. Somewhere or other he seeks a corner of 
 the earth for himself: there he builds his dwelling; and 
 hollowing out a fireside in the thickness of the ivall, he 
 lays together bricks and stones in a cement which will 
 defy the centuries! And then, his work finished, he 
 seats himself beside it. He peoples it in imagination 
 with a joyous group — the future companion of his life — 
 his children that are to be. Looking silently into that 
 sacred niche — mysterious centre of the human family — 
 he listens to the distracting sounds without — the din of 
 the city; the sounds of nature; the confused rumors 
 of trouble ; the uneasy tumult of the throng of yester- 
 day; to the careerings and whistlings of the wind; to 
 the rain, which beats against the windows, fierce but 
 powerless ; and the while, he, sitting there in honor and 
 in peace, leaning his head and resting his heart by this 
 warm and quiet fireside, murmurs in his soul, if not 
 with his lips, " This is my rest forever ; here will I dwell, 
 for I have desired it."* 
 
 Stability in the happiness of domestic life — this is the 
 
 * Psalm cxxxii. 14. 
 
150 DISCOUESES OF FATHEE HYACINTHE. 
 
 idea which is connected with the possession of a home. 
 It is a rude, but most delightful symbol, of the perma- 
 nence which is promised to man after this life, and 
 which dwells already in the depths of the Christian 
 heart. " We have a building of God, a house not made 
 with hands, eternal in the heavens."* We have a home 
 and household joys with uncreated truth and justice ; 
 but, until the time when we shall take possession of our 
 heritage in the infinite, when we shall inherit from God 
 the home in eternity, we must needs be heirs of that 
 sweet reflection from the heart and face of God, the 
 family fireside. This is why the inspired books delight 
 to unite these two things, religion and the family. It 
 is to that roof, the guardian of good morals as well as 
 of true joys, that they are continually sending their 
 disciple. " Drink waters out of thine own cistern," 
 cries the sage of Israel, in that Eastern style sq, full of 
 boldness and purity : " drink running waters out of 
 thine own well, and let them be only thine own, and 
 not strangers' with thee ! Eejoice with the wife of thy 
 youth ! Let her be as the loving hind and pleasant roe : 
 let her breasts satisfy thee at all times, and be thou 
 ravished always with her love."f 
 
 David has sung this domestic happiness on the harp 
 of the God of Sinai : *• Blessed is every one that feareth 
 the Lord ; that walketh in his ways. For thou shalt 
 eat the labor of thine hands: happy shalt thou be, and 
 it shall be well with thee. Thy wife shall be as a fruitful 
 /ine by the sides of thine house ; thy children like olive 
 plants round about thy table : Behold, thus shall the 
 man be blessed that feareth the Lord. The Lord shall 
 bless thee out of Zion ; and thou shalt see the good of 
 
 * 2 Corinthians, v. 1. t Proverbs, v. 15-19. 
 
HOME. 151 
 
 Jerusalem all the days of thy life. Yea, thou shalt see 
 thy children's children, and peace upon Israel !"* 
 
 You see, Gentlemen, how the prophets of God, the 
 teachers of the Jews and of mankind, have celebrated 
 the holiness and happiness of home. For in this law of 
 happiness there is a law of holiness : man cannot be 
 happy unless he finds something as great and pure as 
 infinity, at the depth of his loves. Go to the broken 
 cistern, go to that happiness which is only of the flesh, 
 and you will find but a dribbling thread of water, a 
 scanty and insipid draught, which can never quench the 
 great, infinite thirst of the human heart ! but go to the 
 well of the family and of God, go to the well of Jacob, 
 where the Lord sat and talked to the Samaritan woman ; 
 drink at those founts of joy which God himself has con- 
 secrated ; you will drink in happiness with holiness, like 
 a foretaste of that well of water that springeth up unto 
 everlasting life. 
 
 Part Secoj^d. — Transmission of the Home, 
 
 [The preacher remarks, in the first place, that perfect owner- 
 ship implies transmission, and that, in consequence, this second 
 characteristic of the home grows out of the first] 
 
 The home ought to be transmitted ; but why ? 
 
 First, because it is ^fact. People insist on facts now- 
 a-days, and with reason, for it is from facts that we de- 
 rive ideas and laws. Now, it is a fact in the history of 
 domestic life, among all races and in all ages, that the 
 home has been handed down from father to son. It is 
 enough for me that it is a fact, and I assert it on the 
 testimony of all mankind. 
 
 * Pealm cxxviii. 
 
152 DISCOUESES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 For my part, I shall never be one of that sort of phi- 
 lanthropists who have no respect for humanity except 
 where it is not to be found — that is to say, in the future : . 
 strange minds, who have nothing for its past but blas- 
 phemies, and nothing for its present but revolt; but 
 who make amends for this by the adoration with which 
 they honor it in some imaginary and impossible 
 future ! 
 
 Besides, this hereditary transmission of the home is 
 not only a thing of the past, it is a thing of the present 
 also. It exists throughout all Europe; and though 
 France should seem to be an exception, I must never- 
 theless insist upon it as a law of the civilization of the 
 present day. 
 
 France, Gentlemen, France is an exceptional country 
 — exceptional in her glory, exceptional in her misfor- 
 tunes. For eighty years France has been a devoted 
 land. She has devoted herself as a victim, she has de- 
 voted herself as a martyr, to the pursuit of great ideas 
 which it is her mission to popularize in the world, but 
 of which she has not yet discovered the settled defini- 
 tion and the practical application. I admire France in 
 her work — I admire her in her heroic sacrifice of herself 
 in the pursuit of an unknown end; but I do not take 
 her for a rule, in all the blind gropings to which her 
 mission condemns her. 
 
 And after all, our country is not an exception in this 
 respect. If we consider the real France, in the prov- 
 inces as well as the capital, in the country as well as in 
 manufacturing towns, the law of the transmission of the 
 home is still the controlling law of our national usages. 
 It is, then, an assertion based upon facts, in the present 
 as well as the past, that the transmission of the ances- 
 tral home is not, to be sure, among the absolute neces- 
 
HOME. 153 
 
 sities, but one of the normal and prosperous conditions 
 of domestic society. 
 
 But I wish to find the reason of this law. 
 
 The family is not that ephemeral thing we sometimes 
 see, which does not last even for a man's lifetime, and 
 which, beginning with the marriage contract, ends with 
 the coming of age and scattering of the children. The 
 family is an institution which is all the stronger in the 
 present as its roots are deeper in the past, and as it has a 
 manlier ambition and more practical means of perpetu- 
 ating itself in the future. The true father, when he 
 bequeaths to his son the glory of his blood, the tradi- 
 tions of his mind and heart, the carrying forward of 
 his work, sees other sons beyond this one — he beholds 
 generation after generation; and getting the victory 
 over death, he lays claim, not to an ephemeral immor- 
 tality, but to an immortality for ages to come. 
 
 The family, then, is a permanent institution, and 
 therefore implies, on the one hand, the transmission of 
 material interests; on the other, the transmission of 
 moral traditions. The family has these two bases : in 
 its moral relations it rests upon love, honor, religion, 
 virtue ; in its material relations it is founded upon the 
 soil, upon property, upon all the interests which attach 
 thereto. I repeat, then, these moral and material tradi- 
 tions are not the things of a day nor the work of an 
 individual ; they are the work of generations, and they 
 occupy the course of successive ages ! 
 
 1st. Let us take, first, material interests : let us study 
 them in these country-places of which I have spoken. 
 Country life is the primitive life of man, as it was insti- 
 tuted by divine authority, in the person of our first 
 parents. 
 
 " The Lord God placed man in the garden of Eden, to 
 7* 
 
154 DISCOUKSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 dress it and to keep it."* This was our original vocation, 
 and whatever we may do, we all preserve, in the depth 
 of our nature, a sort of instinct for it, stronger than all 
 our errors. Every year, as the Spring comes round, the 
 wealthy resident of the city feels these memories revive 
 witliin him; he exclaims, like Horace, weary of the 
 court of Augustus : " Dear country, when shall I behold 
 thee once again ?" rus, quando te aspiciam ? and 
 away he goes to seek health and happiness at his coun- 
 try-seat. Furthermore, besides these exceptional cases, 
 there are an immense majority in every nation, who 
 always live in the country ; and theirs is the model and 
 perfect home — the home not cramped up among streets 
 and alleys, but surrounded by grounds, where the family, 
 truly free and sovereign, without crossing the line of 
 their own property, can get from their own land, by their 
 own labor, all that is necessary or useful to the comfort 
 and even the luxury of life. And here, again, I recall a 
 verse out of our holy books — a very simple, but a very true 
 and very original idea : " For the good, are good things 
 created from the beginning. The principal things for 
 the whole use of man's life are water, fire, iron, and salt, 
 flour of wheat, honey, milk, and the blood of the grape, 
 and oil and clothing." f Now all these things are found 
 on the country homestead. There are the bees that give 
 wax and honey ; there are the flocks which yield wool 
 and milk. The country homestead is ready to take part 
 in every covenant between man and those living forces 
 that have been intrusted to nature by the hand of God, 
 for the service of human civilization. 
 
 But all this, I repeat, this creation of the country 
 homestead, is not the affair of a single day, nor the work 
 
 * Geneeis, ii. 15. t Ecclesiastlcue, xxxix. 25, 26. 
 
HOME. 155 
 
 of a single man. The earth is like the child of whom I 
 was speaking not long ago; it bears the marks of origi- 
 nal sin. "Cursed is the ground for thy sake— thorns 
 also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee !* It an- 
 swers with barrenness and frowardness to thy sweat and 
 thy labor. The earth itself is a rebel and a savage, and 
 it is not till after long years of laborious education, that 
 it yields at last to the hand of man, and advances 
 from barbarism to civilization. But what thought and 
 experience, what perseverance, have been demanded in 
 the head that directed the progress of the improve- 
 ment of the land! What energy and courage must 
 equip the hands that have wrought out these plans 
 into execution ! It is not the work of a single man to 
 make covenant with the vegetable kingdom, to plant 
 trees and enjoy their shade and their fruits ; neither is 
 it the work of a single man to make covenant with 
 those inferior races in which Providence has given us 
 our lawful slaves, our indispensable allies, and (if I 
 might so speak) our too much neglected benefactors — 
 the domestic animals, who, as their name imports, are a 
 part of the home, and to whom the Lord did not dis- 
 dain to extend the covenant he made with Noah and 
 his family : " Behold, I establish my covenant with you, 
 and with your seed after you, and with every living 
 creature that is with you."f To develop and improve 
 these races, to associate them with the habits of the. 
 country family, and with the whole system of the culti- 
 vation of the soil, we still need traditions, years, genera-: 
 tions ! 
 
 Now, Gentlemen, if you refuse this element of time, 
 if you will not inscribe over all property, and especially 
 
 « OenesiB, iU, 11, 18, t Ggpepis, Ij, 9, |Q, 
 
156 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 over all country property, this great word, transmission, 
 inheritance, what is to become of all this work ? And 
 when the man who shall have undertaken it, the father 
 of the family, feels himself bending beneath its burden 
 far more than beneath the burden of years; when he 
 feels creeping upon his temples what they call, in the 
 poetic language of the south of France, "graveyard 
 floivers^' — the first gray hairs — he will look mournfully 
 at what he has begun, what he is never to finish ; he 
 will look at the possessions which are about to slip away 
 from him, and be desecrated by uncaring hands ; and 
 then he will have no more courage to toil and labor as 
 now, he will have courage only to weep ; and property 
 will receive a wound that all your Eeports on Agricul- 
 ture will never cure, to the end of time. 
 
 Our peasants understand this matter, — those practi- 
 cal philosophers, learned in the lore of experience and 
 tradition. I say again, I am not speaking against my 
 country, but with her and in her behalf. I could point 
 out to you, in one of our provinces, among their rugged 
 but fertile mountains, races true to their old proverb — 
 " The hearth-fire must be kept a-light."* And that the 
 sacred flame may be kept burning in the same dwelling 
 and by the same hands, they make long migrations to 
 the great cities, that they may bring back their savings, 
 the honorable reward of toil, and find once more that 
 fireside which their sacrifice has saved — that fireside, the 
 sight of which cheers the heart as well as the body, as 
 they say, " Aha ! I am warm, I have seen the fire !"f 
 
 2d. I pass now to moral interests. It is not the acci- 
 dent of blood which attaches the child to the father. 
 Paternity is pre-eminently a matter of liberty and fore- 
 
 ♦ Proverl) of Auvergne : " n faut que la maison fume." t Is. xllv. 16. 
 
HOME. 157 
 
 thought, in its moral relations. Like God, whose image 
 he is, the father has " created all things in number and 
 measure and weight."* lie has weighed everything in 
 the balance of his reason and his heart, and has said: 
 " 1 will have sons, I will raise up a race unto myself, 
 and I will bequeath an uncorrupted blood, an honorable 
 name ; and with these, immortal traditions of honor, 
 and patriotism, and religion ! The things 1 learned on my 
 mother's lap, and between my father's arms — the things 
 I have loved, and for which I have toiled — shall never 
 perish from beneath the sun!" What constitutes the 
 family, then, in the moral system, is that combination of 
 principles, sentiments, and operations, which our ances- 
 tors have wished to maintain after them; it is a life 
 which is developed and perpetuated in a collective person. 
 But let us take care not to become too spiritual: 
 mind does not cut loose from matter. Look at the 
 grace of God, of all things in the world the most spirit- 
 ual, for it is the communication of his own life to our 
 souls — it has not disdained to connect itself with mat- 
 ter. It is joined to some little drop of water or oil, 
 some particle of bread or wine ! So the moral traditions 
 of the family attach themselves to material things — to 
 the portraits of ancestors — to family heir-looms — to 
 the house, all impregnated, as one might say, with the 
 spirit of the ancestors — to the blessed roof which has shel- 
 tered them — to the fireside that has been the confidant 
 of their joys and of their griefs, that has shone upon so 
 many a cradle and so many a coffin ! All this speaks 
 to the heart ! Who can deny it ? But lo ! the mere 
 hired apartment of our parents, the house where we 
 were born, where wo grew up, children of the fluctu- 
 ating and tumultuous city ! when we sec it again after 
 
 * Wiedom, xi. 20. 
 
158 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 a lapse of years, we feel a wound re-open in our hearts, 
 our eyes fill with tears of inexpressible anguish and 
 delight, and we cry with the poet : 
 
 " O lifeless objects, have ye then a soul, 
 
 That clings to ours, and forces it to love?"* 
 
 i 
 
 If a house in which we have lived for a few years, 
 speaks so eloquent a language to our soul, what must 
 be that of an old ancestral mansion, in which genera- 
 tions have followed generations, where honor has accu- 
 mulated upon honor, where goodness and virtue have 
 gathered, as it were, in layers upon the walls ? The pa- 
 rental home is a sort of sacrament of the family, making 
 the family visible and operative ! A sacrament, as we 
 have said, is both a sign and a power : the ancestral 
 home is a sign which expresses the collective unity of a 
 race, and a power which works the perpetuation of it 
 from generation to generation. 
 
 Part Third. — Occupation of tJie Home. 
 
 [The preacher here puts the question why the home, as he has 
 described it, is less and less understood and realized among us ; 
 why we do not feel more keenly the importance of its possession 
 and its transmission ? One of the principal causes is the violation 
 of this third law : the family home should be occupied.'] 
 
 Alas ! of this poor broken-up and wandering hearth, 
 even that which still remains to us is deserted ! Sacred 
 stone of the family, centre of the domestic group, like 
 Jerusalem, thou art "left desolate!" Let us fix our 
 eyes a while upon this picture of desolation. It is pain- 
 ful, but it must be done ! 
 
 The children — where are they ? They are but two or 
 
 * Objets inanimes, avez-vous done une Sine 
 Qui s'attache a notre ame, et la force d'aimer ? 
 
 Lamartine. 
 
HOME. 159 
 
 three iii number, sometimes but one. A lonely plant, 
 always sad, often puny, of selfish nature, without ten- 
 derness and without joy, finding nothing around it to 
 love or to play with. This little solitary, a nuisance to 
 itself, and a nuisance, or at least an embarrassment to 
 others — they make haste to be rid of it out of the house ; 
 and a boarding-school education finishes the work of a 
 barren wedlock. 
 
 But the father of the family? Ah! for the true 
 father of a family, for the true head of a house, his 
 home is the dream of all his day. Eor long, long hours, 
 work and business keep him away from it. But in the 
 evening ? The day is for labor, the evening is for the 
 family and for God ! The star shines not in the sky so 
 sweetly as the rays of the lamp or the reflection of the 
 firelight in the window of that distant house, the place 
 of his joys and his repose, toward which he wends his 
 way, in meditation or in prayer. But no ! what should 
 he do there ? Home has no charm for him : his children 
 are no longer there ; his wife is there, no doubt — yes, 
 his wife! — but too often virtual divorce has divided 
 them in heart and mind : they bear the same name, 
 they live in the same house ; but there is no near and 
 high communion between the two. They have nothing 
 to say to each other, because there is no love between 
 them — no community of tliought and feeling. 
 
 The wife without a husband, the mother without 
 children — the woman doubly- widowed ! Ah ! I see her, 
 wandering, like a piteous ghost, by certain hearth- 
 stones whose honor she cherishes amid their ruins, 
 weeping over those cold ashes, the ashes of her own 
 heart and life ! " Call me not Naomi, call me Mara, for 
 the Almighty hath dealt very bitterly wath me T'* A 
 
 ' *Ruth, I. 20. 
 
160 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 bitter lot, in truth, and few the heroines among those 
 on whom it falls. 
 
 I look at the two extremes of society, and I see the 
 ruin of the family completed through woman, both in 
 the higher and in the poorer classes. 
 
 In the poorer classes, there was a time when woman 
 was called wife, mother ; they have baptized her, now-a- 
 days, by a name that does not belong in our language — 
 the workwoman! The workman I know and honor; 
 but I do not know the workwoman. I am astounded, I 
 am alarmed, whenever I hear this word. What ? This 
 young woman — is toil, unpitying, unintelligent toil, to 
 come bursting in her door in the early morning, to 
 seize her in its two iron fists, and drag her from what 
 ought to be her home and sanctuary to the factory that 
 is withering and consuming her day by day? What? 
 Is toil — brutal, murderous toil — to kill her children, or 
 at least to snatch them screaming from their cradles 
 and give them over into stranger hands ? And all the 
 time a false philosophy will be lifting «its head and 
 shouting: ** Equality! equality for man and woman! 
 equality for the workwoman by the side of the work- 
 man !" Ah, yes, equality in slavery ! or rather a pro- 
 found inequality in slavery and martyrdom ! 
 
 Ah ! Gentlemen, I breathe again ; for all these things 
 are but the excesses of industrial enterprise. But there 
 is something else than this amongst us — thank God, 
 there is something else ! Only the day before yesterday, 
 to go no further back, I saw the proof of it. This Uni- 
 versal Exposition of industry, which promises us, in- 
 stead of the horrors of war, the glories of peace, has 
 understood that it is becoming more and more neces- 
 sary to impress upon the work of material riches the 
 seal of moral goodness. The Exposition has institutea 
 
, HOME. 161 
 
 a special jury to award prizes to social virtue, the virtue 
 ■which contributes most directly to peace and public 
 order. Well, the day before yesterday, in a meeting of 
 that grave body, there was but one voice, one unanimous 
 voice, to proclaim the keeping of the mother of the 
 family at home as the remedy for our evils, and the 
 stimulus to our progress. If we are compelled to open 
 our eyes, then, to craving wants and profound miseries, 
 we must also lift our heads hopefully, and struggle 
 against them energetically. 
 
 And now what shall I say of the other extreme of 
 society ? The woman of the higher classes in our great 
 cities is subject to another seduction — to a different 
 tyranny: the seduction of the world, the tyranny of 
 pleasure. 
 
 I would not drive our French ladies from the drawing- 
 room ; far from it. I would that drawing-rooms now 
 silent might be restored again, and that the present 
 ones might be even more frequented. The Parisian 
 drawing-room perpetuates not only the traditions of wit 
 and grace, but the more precious traditions of just 
 ideas, noble manners, honorable and elevated senti- 
 ments. I know that in those drawing-rooms which 
 have ever been the special honor of our nation, it is the 
 Frenchwoman, the accomplished woman of the world, 
 who has wielded this beneficent sceptre ; it is she who, 
 leaving to others the care of making laws and writing 
 books, has chosen rather to inspire ideas, mould man- 
 ners, and govern through them. 
 
 I make no attack, then, on the reign of woman in the 
 drawing-room. But what I do attack is the sacrifice of 
 the home to the drawing-room, and above all, to that 
 life of excitement and dissipation which is called, nt)W- 
 a-days, "being in society." Begin by living at home. 
 
162 DISCOUKSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 and be — I am not afraid of the word, even for women 
 of the loftiest position — be houseiuives ; a common- 
 sounding word, but in reality sublime ! That is your 
 empire, the empire of the earnest woman; be house- 
 wives, watch over the realm of home ; be the educators 
 of your servants and your maids — of your domestics. 
 The very word might tell you this — dwellers in the 
 house — I had almost said, members of the family. 
 Domestics were the strength and glory of the society of 
 former days; they are the peril and the scourge of 
 society in our day : it is in great part the mistress of the 
 house that makes them what they are. 
 
 « H: % H: H: ^ »!: 
 
 The occupation of the home coming in to confirm the 
 two holy laws of its possession and its transmission, this is 
 the delightful, lasting, and religious form in which domes- 
 tic society appears to us as instituted by Providence. 
 
 I call to mind the patriarch Jacob, as he went to 
 Mesopotamia to look for a wife worthy of him in the 
 house of his kinsman Laban. The grandson of Abra- 
 ham, destined to found and give name to the house of 
 Israel, slept, one evening, after sunset, upon a stone 
 which he had placed under his head for a pillow; aud 
 there, in the simplicity which marked the communica- 
 tion of God to man in ancient days, Jacob dreamed 
 dreams which were more of heaven than of earth : he 
 saw a ladder that rested on the ground beside him, but 
 whose top pierced beyond the stars ; the angels of the 
 Lord descended along its steps and returned again, and 
 at its summit the Lord himself appeared and said : " I 
 am the Lord God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac 
 thy father; the land whereon thou liest, to thee will I 
 give it and to thy seed ; and thy seed shall be as the 
 dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread abroad to the 
 
HOME. 163 
 
 west, and to tlie east, and to the north, and to the 
 south."* And when in the morning the son of Isaac 
 arose from his slumbers and his dreams, he looked at 
 the stone upon which he had slept ; he reared it with 
 reverent hands, and anointing it with sacred oil, he set 
 it up for an altar, and said: "Thou shalt be called 
 Bethel, that is, the House of God."f 
 
 I am thinking. Gentlemen, of you ! This ladder, 
 which begins and ends in heaven, and does but touch 
 the earth, is chaste and Christian fatherhood. This 
 Jacob, son of the patriarch, father of the people of God, 
 it is yourselves, both now and in the years to come. 
 young men, and you of riper years, who hear me, you 
 have part in the vocation of Israel ; you have a great 
 race to build up, which shall extend from the south to 
 the north, which shall invade the east and the west, 
 which shall carry far and wide, in its peaceful invasions, 
 its civilizing colonizations, the glory of France, the 
 glory of the Catholic Church, the glory of your race and 
 of your name ! Ah ! take that stone on which you lean 
 your head, on which you rest your heart, the hearth- 
 stone of your home : take it with trembling hand, and 
 say, " sacred hearthstone, for a moment, perhaps, I 
 had despised thee, I had counted thee a common thing ; 
 but no, the water of holy baptism, the benediction of 
 holy wedlock, have rested upon thee ; and each day, a 
 common faith, a common prayer, a household Christian- 
 ity, renew thy consecration ! hearthstone of my home, 
 rise from the earth, stand thou as an altar-stone before 
 the Lord, and thou shalt be called Bethel, the House of 
 God ! On thee rest family and country ; on thee the 
 very Church of God shall rest, more firmly than on the 
 foundations of her temples ! 
 
 * Gen. xxviii. 13, 14. t Gen. xxviii, 19. 
 
THE NOTRE-DAME LECTURES. 
 
 ADVENT, 1868. - 
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 LECTURE FIRST. 
 
 November 29, 1868. 
 
 The Church iisr its most Universal Aspect. 
 
 [Father Hyacikthe, in his exordium, shows how the 
 order of ideas followed from the very outset of these Lec- 
 tures, five years ago, has its logical terminus in the sub- 
 ject of which he is to treat this year. In contradiction 
 of errors that leave to God an ideal glory and a nominal 
 
 * This series of Lectures had been given, for substance, during the Lent of 
 1867, at Rome in the church of St. Louis of the French. At the close of the 
 course, which was attended by throngs of French, English, and Americans, the 
 preacher was received by the Pope with the most cordial testimony of his ap- 
 proval and regard. 
 
 The reports of these Lectures, which, like all the discourses of Father Hya- 
 cinthe, though carefully studied as to substance, were absolutely extempora- 
 neous as to language, are more meagre and unsatisfactory than those of the 
 courses of 1866 and 1867. It had been the intention of the preacher to repro- 
 duce these Lectures in full under his own hand, and accordingly less care had 
 been taken to secure verbatim reports. But such as they are, these reports, 
 the best extant, are valuable both in themselves, and as containing the sequel 
 to the discourses on the Family and the State, and the prelude to the protest 
 of the preacher, which followed after the interval of a few months. 
 
166 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 supremacy only, by denying him a real existence and a 
 conscious life, he had begun by asserting the personal 
 God — the God that liveth and seeth, as the Bible ex- 
 presses it. But living as we do in an age which is an 
 age of thought, no doubt, but far less an age of thought 
 than it is an age of action, it is not for us to linger 
 on these metaphysical heights. In the pending discus- 
 sions the question on Avhich men are divided is, in fact, 
 far less the personal existence of God in himself than 
 his personal sovereignty over man individually and in 
 society.] 
 
 The great question of our times is the kingdom of 
 God. Is God to reign, or man ? — man, emancipated 
 from God by skeptical science, by " independent mo- 
 rality," by society organized independently of all influ- 
 ences, whether of religion or of church ? — or God, find- 
 ing in man not a slave but a subject, or rather a son 
 sharing in his empire and sitting with him on his 
 throne ? This question, which was mooted in the times 
 of the patriarchs and the prophets, in the time of Jesus 
 Christ, in all times, in fact, presents itself more than 
 ever at the present hour. Therefore it is that for three 
 successive years we have been putting this question to 
 the individual and to society; and the conscience of the 
 individual, the fireside of the family, and the forum of 
 free and prosperous nations have given back the same 
 answer: "The Lord reigneth." 
 
 But, above family and country, there is a form of so- 
 ciety higher and broader, into which man is received, 
 not to be absorbed by it but to expand in it, and which 
 is superadded to all other forms of society, that it may 
 help them all in realizing the kingdom of God. It is 
 the direct and sovereign instrument of this kingdom. 
 This society is the Church. 
 
THE CHURCH UNIVERSAL. 167 
 
 Not without profound emotion do I approach a sub- 
 ject like this, amid the excitement of the mind of Eu- 
 rope, Avhich is intent, at this moment, rather on reli- 
 gious than on political questions. I approach it, how- 
 ever, not by that side which irritates and divides the 
 minds of men — by considering the external constitution 
 of the Church and its relations to the State ; I come at 
 once to the innermost seat of life, a region at the same 
 time most divine and most human, in which, awaiting 
 God's appointed time, lie the fruitful and peaceful solu- 
 tions of the future. 
 
 My Lord Archbishop, having to speak of the Church 
 that you represent in the midst of us, permit me to sa- 
 lute, in the episcopate with which you are invested, its 
 most elevated order; in the throne of Saint Denis, upon 
 which you sit, one of the most constantly illustrious and 
 most justly influential sees of Christendom ; in your per- 
 son, finally, that best of all dignities — the dignity of con- 
 duct and of character. 
 
 Let us proceed, now, to consider the Church succes- 
 sively as a visible society, and as an invisible society ; 
 or to use the language of theologians, let me speak, first, 
 of the hody, second, of the soul of the Church. Thence 
 we derive the complete notion of the Church in its most 
 universal aspect. 
 
 That which strikes us, at first glance, in the Church 
 is its hierarchy, " beautiful and terrible as an army with 
 banners."* The Church should not, however, be con- 
 founded, as it too often is, with the clergy in general, or 
 even with the episcopacy and the papacy. It is always 
 a grave error to confound society with its government. 
 The family is not the father, and, Louis XIV. to the 
 contrary notwithstanding, the state is not the prince, 
 
 * Song of Solomon, vi. 4. 
 
168 DISCOUKSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 Bat nowhere else would this confusion be so false and 
 so fatal as in reference to the Church, in which the gov- 
 ernment is a ministry, not a domination. The Church 
 is a fraternity divinely constituted in the hierarchy. 
 " Be not yf- called Eabbi ; one is your master, and all 
 ye are b^ i;hren — one is your Father, which is in 
 heaven."* The Church, say the Scriptures agaai, is a 
 body, " the body of Chrisff The life is not in the 
 head alone, it is in all the members. Let not the laity, 
 then, lose interest in the Church, as an institution for- 
 eign to them, one from which they can, at most, ex- 
 perience the remote results. Together with the hier- 
 archy, they themselves are the Church. 
 
 The Church, then, must be understood as the whole 
 body of religious society, believers and pastors together ; 
 or, to return to Saint Paul's comparison, the members 
 with the head. In the present age of the world this so- 
 ciety has a determinate form, and its proper name — the 
 Roman Catholic Church. But although of divine ori- 
 gin and definitively instituted, this form is not the only 
 one that the Church has borne. Before being CatlioUc, 
 in the modern sense of the word, it was patriarchal and 
 Mosaic. It is important, then, since we are contempla- 
 ting the Church in its most universal aspect, not to con- 
 found it with any of its forms, not even with its present 
 form, the most perfect of all, and henceforth unchange- 
 able. The Church does not date from the apostles but 
 from tko patriarchs; its cradle is not in the "upper 
 chambc, ' but in Eden ; and as Saint Epiphanius hath 
 said (and therein he does but echo the voice of all tra- 
 dition), " the Catholic Church is the beginning of all 
 things." 
 
 The Catholic Church, considered as a visible organi- 
 
 * Matthew, xxiii. 8, 9. +1 Corinthians, xii. 27. 
 
THE CHUKCH UNIVERSAL. 169 
 
 zation may be defined, then, as " that universal fellow- 
 ship in which the true God has always been known and 
 worshipped, and the only mediator, Jesus Christ, prom- 
 ised or given, looked for or possessed; having "one 
 God, and one mediator between God and man, the man 
 Christ Jesus."* 
 
 [Father Hyacinthe takes up, in reverse order, these 
 three elements — universal fellowship, the living God, 
 the only Mediator. 
 
 He shows us the living God — that is, the one only and 
 personal God, always known and adored on earth ; — the 
 one God, in opposition to the gross plurality of polythe- 
 ism ; the personal God, in opposition to the cold and 
 unconscious abstraction of philosophy. "I live, saith 
 the Lord.^t He adverts, in the course of his argument, 
 to the positivist theory, which represents mankind as 
 beginning, in its religious life, with fetichism, and 
 making its way gradually through polytheism to mono- 
 theism and at last to the positive philosophy, and he re- 
 futes it by the incontrovertible fact of the monotheism 
 of the Bible.] 
 
 Next comes the One Mediator, the expectation and 
 " desire" (under divers names and in divers forms) " of 
 all nations,"^; as all systems of worship bear witness ; 
 but especially, and in a form so precise that it is, as it 
 were, his prophetic portrait and anticipated history, the 
 expectation and desire of that chosen family, and at a 
 later period of that favored people, who preserved intact 
 the notion of the true God. 
 
 Having but one God and one Mediator, the Church 
 also knoAvs but one people of God. Whilst everywhere 
 else the unity of our race is forgotten or denied, the old 
 Hebrew scripture alone refers to one pnmitive.pair the 
 
 • 1 Timothy, ii. 5. t Ezekiel, xxxiii. 11. % Haggai, ii. 7. 
 
 8 
 
170 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 diyersity of races ; and despite the narrowness too ha- 
 bitual to tlie mind and feelings of the Jews, they have 
 never repudiated this tradition of Genesis, and the char- 
 acter of universality which belongs to the religion that 
 flows from it. They had in their temple the Court of 
 the Gentiles, whither, from all the corners of the earth, 
 the worshippers of the true God might come and wor- 
 ship. Through all the phases through which it has 
 passed, the spirit of this religion has ever been love — 
 the love of God and the love of man. For this two- 
 fold love is no exclusive characteristic of the Gospel. In 
 that commandment which he calls new, and which in- 
 deed, in every age, is new to Pharisaism, Christ himself 
 sums up the law and the prophets — that is, the entire Old 
 Testament — " On these two hang all the law and the 
 prophets."* 
 
 I pause at the end of this first reflection ; but, in 
 pausing, indulge me. Gentlemen, in a personal reminis- 
 cence. It has been said : The audience and the preacher 
 are brothers. It is true ; I have felt it for four years. 
 There is no reserve among brothers, because there is no 
 giving and taking offence among them. The reminis- 
 cence that comes to my mind at this moment depicts 
 admirably this essence of the Church, the city of God. 
 
 I was a boy of seventeen years, and, after the manner 
 of that age, when nothing is yet in blossom, but every- 
 thing still shut up in buds and leaves, I was wondering, 
 in my vague way, what it was to love ; when God, w^ho 
 watches over the steps of the least and humblest of his 
 children, led me into a church at one end of my little 
 town, one evening in Whitsuntide. They were singing, 
 at Vespers, that brief but beautiful psalm, Ecce, quam 
 lonum — " Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for 
 
 ♦Matthew, xxii. 40. 
 
THE CHURCH UNIVERSAL. 171 
 
 brethren to dwell together in unity !"* I remember 
 how I entered, boy as I was, with all my vagueness of 
 thought and feeling. I was greeted by that soft and 
 majestic harmony, by all that multitude that sat sing- 
 ing before the tabernacles. It seemed to me like a voice 
 coming down from heaven, and the psalm said to me, 
 " Behold ! behold, how good and pleasant a thing it is 
 for brethren to dwell together in unity !" 
 
 The psalm went on to say : " It is like the precious 
 ointment upon the head, that ran down upon the beard, 
 even Aaron's beard, that went down to the skirts of his 
 garments. Behold, it is like the dew of Hermon, that 
 descendeth upon the mountains of Zion." 
 
 At last the psalm ended with that cry of the heart, 
 so piercing and so delightful, " For there" — in love, in 
 unity, in the fragrance of the ointment, in the freshness 
 of the dew — "there hath the Lord commanded his 
 blessing, even life forevermore !" 
 
 I know not whether there were tears in my eyes, but 
 I am certain that they were streaming and overflowing 
 in my heart! I had understood not only human love 
 in its purity, but love in its sublimest realization — the 
 fellowship of souls in God and in Jesus Christ. 
 
 11. There is no use in attempting to disguise from 
 ourselves the weighty objection that may be urged, and 
 with which constant attempts are made to disparage 
 the Church : Your edifice is very long, indeed, since it 
 reaches back to the beginning of the world ; but is it 
 not somewhat out of proportion, for it is exceeding 
 narrow ? 
 
 From the very beginning, as the Bible bears witness, 
 the division which separates our race into two hostile 
 camps, the children of God and the children of men, 
 
 * Psalm cxxxiii. 
 
172 DISCOUESES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 as it calls them,* ran on into the universal corruption 
 punished by the deluge. 
 
 This formidable chastisement is soon succeeded by 
 idolatry, and the city of God is confined within an ob- 
 scure and despised corner of the globe ; for Judea was 
 not more than twenty leagues in breadth. To-day, 
 even, religious statistics show lamentable results : out 
 of one thousand millions of human beings, we find 139 
 millions of Catholics, and, in all, 2G0 millions of Chris- 
 tians. A discouraging spectacle, it must be admitted ; 
 especially after two thousand years of Christianity. 
 
 To begin with, we might reply by pointing to the 
 hope of the future. But even if the future were holding 
 in reserve the most ample compensation, it would not 
 afiect either the past or the present. Therefore, although 
 fully believing in the compensations of the future, I do 
 not rest satisfied with them, either for myself or for my 
 hearers. I feel that the objection calls for a direct and 
 decisive answer; and this answer I seek and find in 
 what theologians call the soul of the Church. Hitherto 
 w^e have spoken only of the visible forms of the Church ; 
 we are now about to explore the invisible riches of its 
 prolific life. 
 
 Just as a large number of those who share in the 
 profession of its faith, in the exercises of its worship, 
 in the action of its government, belong, nevertheless, 
 only to the body of the Church, that is to say, are at- 
 tached to it only by external ties, so it may be that a 
 great number of those who have not this form of life 
 are still, in reality, of the Church, because they are 
 really God's by the state of their souls. The soul of 
 the Church is the invisible fellowship of all the right- 
 eous who have faith, at least an " implicit faith," in the 
 
 * Genesis, vi. 2. 
 
THE CHURCH UNIVERSAL. 173 
 
 one God and in the Redeemer, and who, cleansed from 
 sin through the efficacy of the blood of Christ, abide 
 in the grace of God. 
 
 Thus, beyond the boundaries of orthodox}^, vast and 
 mighty regions are held by heresy and schism. But, 
 in the bosom of heresy and schism how many truly be- 
 lieving and well-meaning souls there be, who are, in 
 reality, neither heretical nor schismatic ! 
 
 One day, when Jesus had just expounded the great 
 commandment of love for one's neighbor, a Pharisee 
 asked him : " Master, who is my neighbor ?" And the 
 Master — resorting to that teaching by parables of which 
 he was so fond, whether for the purpose of presenting 
 invisible truths in a more evident and palpable form, or 
 to escape the perfidious machinations of the scribes and 
 the Pharisees — the Master said to him : " A certain man 
 went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among 
 thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wound- 
 ed him, and departed, leaving him half dead. And by 
 chance there came down a certain priest that way."* 
 
 This priest was of the body of the Mosaic Church, 
 the then visible Church ; he had orthodoxy, an inflexi- 
 ble, perhaps implacable orthodoxy ; but, assuredly, ac- 
 cording to the Gospel narrative, he had not that prime 
 condition of the true priest, that " tender mercy of our 
 God whereby the Dayspring from on high hath visited 
 us."t He looked upon that man with an unmoved, 
 tearless eye ; he hunted in his casuistry for an excellent 
 motive for not stopping, and so he passed by. 
 
 After him came a Levite ; he paused longer, hesitated 
 more ; but he also passed by. 
 
 And the next man was a Samaritan. The Samari- 
 tans were the heretics and the schismatics of those days. 
 
 * Luke, X. 25-r.7. t Ibid., i. 78. 
 
174 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 When the Jews had exhausted upon our Tjord the old 
 vocabulary of injurious epithets ; when they had told 
 him that he was possessed with a devil, they added, as 
 the climax of all that triumphant argument : You are 
 worse than that — you are a Samaritan. And the Lord 
 Jesus answered them not ; he meekly suffered himself 
 to be classed with the Samaritans, those poor, despised 
 heretics.* Pope Saint Gregory the Great has remarked 
 upon the fact that Jesus Christ did not deny that he 
 was a Samaritan. 
 
 So, then, the Samaritan conies along. He sees the 
 wounded man. Without hesitating, he sets him on his 
 own beast ; he brings him to the neighboring inn ; he 
 examines his wounds through the tears of a tender 
 sympathy ; he binds up his wounds " with the sweetness 
 of oil and the strength of wine," and leaves him with 
 the host, saying : Keep this man, and take care of him ; 
 in two days I shall pass this way again, and whatsoever 
 thou spendest I will repay thee. 
 
 " Which, now," said the Master to the doctor of the 
 law, " which of these three thinkest thou was neighbor 
 to him that fell among thieves ?" And the Pharisee, 
 confused and ashamed, answered, "He that showed 
 mercy on him. " " Thou hast well said," added the 
 Lord ; " go thou and do likewise. " 
 
 That is the soul of the Church. Whoever has the 
 grace of Jesus Christ, which is not without faith, at 
 least, "implied faith," whoever has the great spirit of the 
 Gospel, its great, all-prevailing charity — the love of God 
 and one's neighbor — whatever may be his involuntary 
 errors, he belongs to the soul of the Church. 
 
 I hold, with all theologians, that whoever knows 
 the Eoman Catholic Church for what it is — for a fact, 
 
 * John, vii. 20 : viii. 48. 
 
THE CHUECH UNIVERSAL. 175 
 
 divine, autlioritative, is bound to enter it. Yes, who- 
 ever, looking upon it, not, in spite of one's self, by the 
 fault of birth and education, through prejudices that 
 render it fatally odious, beholds it as a fact, divine, au- 
 thoritative, is bound to enter it. But if it does not de- 
 pend upon the mind thus to see it, so long as there is 
 Jesus Christ and his love in the heart, every such a 
 one is my brother and my sister. 
 
 Now these are not theories, they are facts. Have 
 we not at our very doors, across the Channel, a striking 
 instance of this? People demand facts, positive sci- 
 ence : let us then have positive science in religion ; let 
 us leave abstractions and come to realities. 
 
 There is in England a choice company of Protest- 
 ant pastors, admirable both for learning and for virtue, 
 who, after long years of study, prayer, and hesitation, 
 have entered the Eoman Catholic Church. Not one 
 of them has acknowledged any want of good faith before 
 his conversion ; on the contrary, they have all declared 
 their perfect sincerity. I shall only cite one of them 
 by his illustrious name. Obliged to defend himself 
 against the charge of hypocrisy,- or at least, of culpable 
 reservations, he has produced a book entitled Apologia 
 pro Vita Sua, a book whose entire honesty is only equalled 
 by its soundness and its eloquence — John Henry New- 
 man, the first theologian and the first writer of Catholic 
 England ! And in this book he was able to write this 
 noble declaration : " / Jiave never sinned against light." 
 
 If that profound genius, that generous heart, that 
 man who has awaited, if not the hoary hairs of age, at 
 least the maturity of manhood, before re-entering into 
 visible unity — if that man has not sinned against the 
 light, by what right, ye unjust and violent men, would 
 you brand all who live in Protestantism with the stigma 
 
176 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 of falsehood and sin ? Never, never will I tolerate such 
 utterances as this ! I myself have but just now returned 
 from the most Protestant of all countries — from Eng- 
 land ; and I owe it to the truth to bear this testimony — 
 that I have found there, not only great citizens, but 
 great Christians. "When I clasped them by the hand, 
 when I mingled my thoughts with theirs, when I came 
 in contact with them, soul to soul — for that, after all, is 
 
 the only way to know men There are barriers, 
 
 you say. I know it : there are great gulfs, if you will ; 
 but cannot faith remove mountains? And cannot 
 charity fill up great gulfs ? Not violent discussions, not 
 bitter controversies will re-establish unity ; but charity, 
 love, the noble virtues of truly Christian hearts. . . . Per- 
 mit me then to take by the hand, to press to my bosom, 
 these Christians, sincere in their error, but sincere in 
 their love of God, of Jesus Christ, of men ; and, in that 
 embrace, let me take up again my psalm, " How good, 
 how pleasant a thing it is for brethren to dwell together," 
 if not in the same body, at least in the same soul, in the 
 invisible unity of the Church and of Jesus Christ ! 
 
 Even beyond the pale of Christianity, a like phenom- 
 enon is not impossible, and, without wishing to define 
 precisely in what proportion it exists, it is not presump- 
 tuous to afiirm that it does exist, if it is true, as taught 
 by the theologians of Salamanca, that great school of 
 the Bare-footed Carmelites, that " implicit faith" in the 
 Redeemer is sufiicient for the salvation of unbelievers. 
 In that case, the place of baptism with water is supplied 
 by the baptism of the Spirit. 
 
 [After briefly indicating this consideration — upon 
 which time does not permit him to dwell — Father 
 Hyacinthe closes this lecture by asking himself whether 
 he has indeed told all the height, all the breadth, all the 
 
THE CHURCH UNIVERSAL. 177 
 
 depth of the temple and the city of God.] The earth is 
 but a point in the immensity of heaven, and the race 
 of xidam is but a petty tribe in the universal Church of 
 God and his Christ. Are not the stars inhabited by 
 beings analogous to ourselves ; and, if so, do not these 
 beings form so many Churches scattered abroad through- 
 out the heavens, but blended, in the sight of God, into 
 a unity which we cannot see ? Science does not give 
 us the right to say this; but faith does not forbid our 
 thinking so. On the contrary, the psalmist calls upon 
 the stars to praise the Lord,* and the prophet affirms 
 that " the host of heaven worshippeth him."f 
 
 But what need have we of these suppositions ? Faith 
 teaches us that our Church upon earth is joined to a 
 Church that was before it, and is above it — the Church of 
 the angels. Doubtless the angels have, in the bosom of 
 God, a life peculiar to themselves. But they have also, 
 among us, a mission in which we are concerned, — " sent 
 forth to minister to them that shall be heirs of salva- 
 tion."3: This world of spirits is infinitely more popu- 
 lous than the world of men. It far more exceeds our 
 power of measurement than does the universe of matter. 
 
 And even this last, has it then no place nor part in 
 the Church ? Has not St. Paul declared that " the 
 whole creation groaneth and travaileth with pangs of 
 birth?" But with what is it in labor? With "the 
 manifestation of the sons of God!"§ This material 
 world is God's offspring. He created it as well as us ; 
 and it shall be joined with us in the final transforma- 
 tion that is to give to God's elect new heavens and a 
 new earth. "And I saw," saith St. John, "a new 
 heaven and a new earth. And I saw the holy city, the 
 
 * Ps. cxlviii. 3. t Neh. ix. 6. t Heb. i. 14. § Rom. viii. 19, 22. 
 8* 
 
178 DISCOUKSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 ne^y Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God as a 
 bride adorned for her husband !" * 
 
 And here I pause, my eyes fixed upon the coming 
 glory of the Church. I remember that eulogy which 
 the Bible pronounces upon the prophet Isaiah : " By an 
 excellent spirit he beheld what should come to pass at 
 the last, and he comforted them that mourned in Zion."t 
 
 We are all mourners in Zion ; and I first of all. 
 Zion ! Jerusalem ! ancient city of God, of old so 
 happy ! How art thou left, exclaims Isaiah, as a cot- 
 tage in a vineyard, where one finds shelter for a mo- 
 ment from the heat of the day!]; 
 
 Yes, we mourn in Zion. We weep among the ruins 
 that our enemies have made; and (why shall we not 
 confess it ?) among the ruins we have made ourselves ! 
 But the " tender plant"§ of the Lord is there. It shall 
 grow and lift itself above the kingdoms, above the sons 
 of Judah. This is " that which shall come to pass at 
 the last." Gaze upon it, ye that mourn in Zion, gaze 
 with firm heart and fearless eye, and be ye comforted ! 
 
 * Eevelation, xxi. 1, 2. t Ecclesiasticus, xlviii. 24. 
 
 $ Isaiah, i. 8. § Isaiah, liii. 2. 
 
LECTURE SECOND. 
 
 December 6, 18G8. 
 
 THE CHUECH OF THE PATRIARCHS. 
 
 [Father Hyacij^the first points out that the Church, 
 in its progress, has taken the same course as humanity 
 itself, which, before embracing in its unity the prodi- 
 gious diversity of peoples, has begun with the family, 
 and then passed into the nation. So, before receiving 
 its appropriate and definitive form in the Roman Cath- 
 olic Church, religious society has been successively 
 outlined in the patriarchal Church and the Mosaic 
 Church — under the form, first, of the family, and then of 
 the nation.] 
 
 In Adam and in ISToah, those two fathers of the hu- 
 man race, religion existed, of course, in the family form, 
 but it was coextensive with the human race. In Abra- 
 ham it is restricted to a particular family, which is sep- 
 arated from others — the "house of Israel." Idolatry 
 had invaded the country where Abraham dwelt, and 
 even the family of his own father. Then it is that he 
 hears, in his reason and conscience, that sublime call, 
 coming from a source higher than his conscience and 
 his reason, even from God himself, which is termed " the 
 vocation of Abraham : " " Get thee out of thy country, 
 
180 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto 
 a land that I will shew thee." 
 
 Thus, at the foundation of the Church, this especial 
 work of God, there is an inner voice addressed to a 
 wandering shepherd, a mystical contemplator of nature ; 
 a man at once profound and simple. Nothing here of 
 human reasoning ; an^ on the other hand, nothing of 
 miracle, nor of scripture, nor of doctrinal authority. 
 All this grand edifice rests, on God's part, upon an inner 
 voice, and, on the part of Abraham, upon a faith not 
 blind but yet obscure. " He went forth, not knowing 
 whither he went." The voice of God cannot deceive, 
 and when invested with the conditions without which 
 it never demands our assent, it is the firmest of all foun- 
 dations for our faith, our hopes, our sacrifices. 
 
 Now this grand individual inspiration has for its ob- 
 ject to restore the kingdom of God upon earth by 
 founding a new family of true worshippers. 
 
 The object of the Church in the midst of the corrup- 
 tion of the world, is always one and the same — to save 
 men by the law of God; that is to say, by truth and 
 righteousness; and toward this object it has, from the 
 very beginning, laid out two paths which always stand 
 open — that of the patriarchs and that of the prophets. 
 
 To the prophets, to the apostles, God says : Ye shall 
 have no wife, no child of your flesh ; ye shall leave your 
 family, ye shall renounce all worldly goods, and, what 
 is harder yet, all delights of the heart : let the dead bury 
 their dead. In exchange ye shall have offspring of 
 your lips, a race of spiritual children, begotten of your 
 prayers and of your words, and ye shall be founders of 
 the kingdom of God. 
 
 To the patriarchs and their successors, to laymen, to 
 fathers, to Christian husbands, God says: And ye, too, 
 
THE CHURCH OF THE PATKIARCHS. 181 
 
 get you forth out of corruption, get you forth out of 
 idolatry of mind and heart, and be the founders of a 
 race ; be the fathers of children — spiritual children in- 
 deed, above all, but likewise of children of your blood 
 and of your flesh, a posterity on which you shall stamp 
 your own seal, and with it the seal of the living God. 
 
 With these two vocations, the virgin apostles of the 
 New Testament and the prolific patriarchs both of the 
 New Testament and of the Old, the clergy and the lait}^, 
 the man of the household and the man of the sanctu- 
 ary, joined closely hand in hand — with these two voca- 
 tions, I say, the world is to be reformed ! 
 
 No doubt great kings, great popular assemblies have 
 their uses in the reformations of the world ; no doubt 
 the councils of legislators and the aspirations of the 
 masses are necessary ; great pontiffs, great bishops, 
 councils in which God is present — all this is useful, is 
 necessary to the moral and religious reformation of the 
 world ; but all this will come to nothing, if there is not, 
 by the side of this force, that other force, less apparent 
 but not less fruitful of results — the force of husbands 
 and fathers laying the foundations of the Church in the 
 Home. Get thee out of thy country ; get thee out of 
 thy corrupted dwelling ; get thee away from past idola- 
 try, and come forth into that home which I will show 
 thee! 
 
 This Abrahamic inspiration of paternity in the name 
 and for the cause of God, handed down in the patri- 
 arch's family, becomes there a domestic tradition, the 
 characters of which arrange themselves under three 
 main heads, the three grand acts of human life : birth — 
 love-^death. 
 
 I. The fact of birth is hallowed by the rite of cir- 
 cumcision — a rite of immense interest by reason of its 
 
182 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 antiquity and of the yast regions tliroughout which it has 
 been practised from the earliest generations — a rite both 
 human and divine, since Jesus Christ was subject to it. 
 
 But it is not enough to bow down before a fact, even 
 though it be both human and divine — we must en- 
 deavor to understand it ; and in this fact of circumci- 
 sion I recognize two ideas — separation from the rest of 
 mankind, special consecration to the true God. 
 
 1. Separation from the rest of mankind. This was 
 doubly necessary, since the point was to establish a 
 family, and a religious family. Do you think that a 
 family, however strong its sympathies, can do otherwise 
 than separate itself — hold itself more or less aloof from 
 other families? Were it to lose its proper character, 
 its special individuality, it would cease to be a family ; 
 and if we should ever get so far as to disregard the 
 right, the necessity of a separation, an isolation between 
 families, we should have at our doors, not socialism, but 
 communism. 
 
 Separation, then, is necessary. Within the great 
 bonds of justice and charity, there must be personal 
 character, jealous individuality, distinguishing the race 
 from all besides. But when the question is how to es- 
 tablish a religious family in the midst of intellectual 
 and moral depravity, when the very object of establish- 
 ing this family is that it may be a new ark, and a surer 
 ark than that of Noah, upon the waters of this new 
 deluge then, most of all, there must be separation. 
 
 Never, ye chosen families, whoever ye may be, family 
 of Abraham of old, Christian French family of our own 
 day, no, never, when it becomes a duty to separate your- 
 selves from error and sin, while holding fast to every 
 tie of justice and sympathy, never can ye build your 
 walls too high, never can ye dig your moats too deep. 
 
THE CHURCH OF THE PATRIARCHS. 183 
 
 " Be ye separate, my people ; go ye out of tlie midst 
 of Babylon !"* 
 
 And how effectually is lie separated by this inexor- 
 able circumcision — separated by the material seal that 
 he bears in the flesh, by the whole physiognomy of his 
 being, both moral and physical ! 
 
 Do you ever meet a Jew without recognizing him ? 
 Do you ever look with a moment's hesitation or doubt 
 on that exotic beauty, at once so sad and so fascina- 
 ting — those deep eyes, so full of intelligence and pas- 
 sion ? Do you ever hesitate when you encounter that 
 blood, so pure, so proud, so aristocratic above all others, 
 which has flowed on through the ages and through the 
 races, refusing to mingle with any other ? 
 
 Above all, have you studied, you men of thought and 
 of political science, organizers of families and society, 
 have you studied the original constitution of the Jew- 
 ish family? To-day, even under our very eyes, in 
 Europe and in Asia alike, the organization of the Jew- 
 ish family has survived the downfall of all its external 
 supports. It had a monarchy, a political organization : 
 the political organization, the monarchy, have crum- 
 bled to pieces centuries ago. It had a priesthood ; it 
 had a religious synagogue : something of these still re- 
 mains, but their genealogies are lost ; their worship has 
 fallen into dust. They have no more sacrifices, nor 
 Church, nor kingdom, and the Jewish family, sua mole 
 stat, is standing by its own strength ! It finds within 
 itself the power of preserving unimpaired, against mod- 
 ern civilizations as well as against mediaeval barbarisms, 
 the tradition of its blood and the tradition of its God ! 
 
 I know that people say : It is the mark of Cain that 
 this race wears on its forehead ; it is the curse of Cal- 
 
 * Jeremiah, li. 45 ; 2 Corinthians, vi. 17. 
 
184 DISCOUESES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 vary. Ali! I do not deny the heinous crime of Cal- 
 vary. I do not deny these millenniums of expiation. 
 But I know that if this people has said, " His blood be 
 upon us and upon our children," a better and mightier 
 voice has said, " Father, forgive them, for they know not 
 what they do !" And the Apostle Paul, also, acknowl- 
 edging them to be guilty, has declared that the sons 
 shall be " beloved for the fathers' sakes."* It is not the 
 mark of Cain, then,, that I behold; not the immortal- 
 ity of wrath : it is the immortality of love ; it is the 
 mark of Abraham, the great seal of the patriarchal 
 family, that God himself has placed upon the foreheads 
 of this people, and which this people preserves in spite 
 of itself, and in spite -of us. '^My covenant shall be in 
 your flesh for an everlasting covenant." f 
 
 2. Circumcision is not only a sign of separation from 
 the rest of mankind, it is also a solemn consecratmi to 
 the worship of the true God. In the moment when the 
 father, in the presence of the agony of childbirth, that 
 agony of unequalled danger and distress, receives the 
 new-born child in his arms, without knowing whether 
 he receives it from the hands of death or of life, two 
 profound feelings take possession of his soul — the sense 
 of the sovereignty of God, and the sense of the unwor- 
 thiness of the child. This child comes to him from 
 God, to return to God : it is from God, and for God : it 
 is a son of God rather than a son of man, and yet it is 
 "a child of wrath !"]; The words of Saint Paul attest 
 it; so do these heartrending cries, these tears that have 
 not learned to flow, this blood that is our first garment, 
 these obstinate struggles between life and death, con- 
 testing the possession of this cradle, which is perhaps 
 
 * Roman?, xi. 28. + Genesis, xvii. 13. X Ephesiane, ii. 3. 
 
THE CHURCH OF THE PATEIARCHS. 185 
 
 to be a coffin ! The sequel confirms this sad testimony. 
 Nothing so pure as the child's brow, except its heart. 
 And yet nothing so perverse as this heart ! It contains, 
 without doubt, the germs of every human virtue, but 
 choked by the more powerful germs of every vice. If 
 this nature, fallen through original sin, is not restored 
 by an education as firm as it is mild, as energetic in re- 
 pression as it is intelligent in counsel and affectionate 
 in feeling, this child will be the victim and the cause of 
 terrible disorders. 
 
 The religion of Moloch, spread over Western Asia in 
 the age of Abraliam, had preserved, under its horrible 
 forms, these two great truths whicli are now-a-days de- 
 nied — the sovereignty of God over the child, and the 
 unworthiness of the child in the sight of God. Hence 
 the atrocious custom of sacrificing children, especially 
 the first-born. Heartless parents placed them on the 
 red-hot arms of the brazen idol, and in a few moments 
 those frail and delicate bodies vanished in a funereal 
 smoke. Abraham struggled all his ]ife against this 
 worship of death. In his supreme trial he himself be- 
 lieved that God had called for this sacrifice from him. 
 He led his son Isaac to the summit of Mount Moriah 
 which is said to be the same as Calvary, to immolate 
 him with his own hand to that God who had given him 
 as the tardy consolation of his old age, and the sole 
 hope of his race. But the angel of the Lord caught 
 his arm ready to strike, and a voice from on high said : 
 " Lay not thine hand upon the lad ; for now I know 
 that thou fearest God, seeing that thou hast not with- 
 held thy son, thine only son, from me. . . . Blessing, I 
 will bless thee, and multiplying, I will multiply thy 
 seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which 
 is upon the sea-shore ; and in thy seed shall all the na- 
 
186 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 tioiis of the eartli be blessed."* This trial had for its 
 object to strengthen Abraham in a better faith, by re- 
 vealing to him that the true sacrifice is not a sacrifice 
 of death, but a sacrifice of life — that of the Messiah, 
 who should die only that he might give life to the dead, 
 and whose blood should reconcile with divine justice 
 not only the seed of the patriarch but all the nations of 
 the earth. The scanty drops of blood shed under the 
 circumcising knife of stone symbolized this sacrifice 
 both in its benignity and in its sternness. 
 
 II. From birth, I am brought at once to death — so 
 close is the connection between the cradle and the tomb ! 
 One act, however, separates these two extremes of our 
 life — the supreme act in the order of nature ! Between 
 the tomb and the cradle I behold the nuptial couch, and 
 I greet it with those grand words of the apostle Paul : 
 *^ Let marriage be honorable in all things, and the 
 marriage-bed be undefiled."f For love, holy love, forms 
 between this ascent of birth and youth and this decliv- 
 ity of old age and death, the summit of human exist- 
 ence on earth. 
 
 Of all divorces, the most senseless, the most disastrous, 
 is the divorce between the ideas of religion and the ideas 
 of love. Love — I am only saying the same thing over, 
 I know ; but let that pass ; I am not aiming at rhetor- 
 ical art, but at facts, at results — love, in its nature, is 
 the most religious of all human feelings ; it tends to- 
 ward the ideal, the infinite, and if, since the fall, it 
 slides all too easily down the steep course of human 
 degradation, is not that one reason the more why the 
 religious man, and above all the priest — the apostle and 
 
 * Genesis, xxii. 12, 17, 18, 
 
 + Hebrewp, xiii. 4. The rendering " in all things" which the original will 
 bear indifterently with the rendering ''in all per spnif,''' is naturally preferred in 
 Roman Catholic versions.— Tr. 
 
THE CHURCH OF THE PATRIARCHS. 187 
 
 prophet of the New Testament — should revive and re- 
 store it by surrounding it with the most stimulating and 
 invigorating atmosphere of the divine life ? 
 
 Yes, love and religion are the indivisible basis of the 
 family. I make bold to put the question, when man 
 and wife have not put God in their love, when perhaps 
 they have not put love in their hearts, what do they 
 come for at the foot of our altars ? What use is there 
 to them in a benediction, sacred, most assuredly, in the 
 intention of the Church that gives it, but formal, phari- 
 saical, or rather utterly worldly, in the mind with which 
 they receive it ? Does that consecrate marriage ? Does 
 that bring down God into their hearts ? No ; not un- 
 less their choice itself is holy, not unless love itself is 
 there already. For marriage is not the union of two 
 names, two fortunes, two material beings: it is the 
 union of two souls in the immaterial and divine cement 
 of love. Yes, divine, for this cement would have no 
 solidity, but that it had been prepared by the hand of 
 God. And that is what I admire in the patriarchs ; that 
 is what the Bible, in its smallest details, in that book 
 which is too little pondered, the book of Genesis, the 
 book for all Christian families after the Gospel — that is 
 what the Bible teaches me ; it teaches me the religious 
 care, the moral and divine inspiration that presided 
 over the love of the patriarchs and the marriage of their 
 children. 
 
 These unions have a twofold character — purity and 
 fecundity. 
 
 1. First, purity. This was necessary in the wives of 
 the patriarchs, in the women who were to be the wives 
 of the saints, the mothers of the chosen people, the an^ 
 cestresses of the Son of God himself Health, beauty-^ 
 above all, that moral beauty which shines through 
 
188 DISCOUESES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 13hysical beauty, purifying and ennobling it, — virtue in 
 the habitual exercises of the will, religion in the habit- 
 ual exercises of the soul, that is what was needed in 
 Sarah, in Kebecca, in Rachel, in all those strong and 
 tender women " which did build the house of Israel."* 
 So, neither distance, nor the difficulties of the journey 
 deterred the patriarchs when they wished to form an 
 alliance for themselves or for their sons. They held in 
 horror the fair but lewd daughters of Canaan, among 
 whom they lived, and they sent their servants, or went 
 themselves, to those high table-lands of Asia, where the 
 family of their fathers had continued to dwell in their 
 primeval purity. The marriage of Isaac and Eebecca 
 affords a memorable instance, the spirit of which is sum- 
 med up in this final passage of that touching history : 
 " And Isaac brought her into his mother Sarah's tent, 
 and took Rebekah and she became his wife ; and he 
 loved her : and so Isaac was comforted after his mother's 
 death."! 
 
 Such were these families. Monogamy was already 
 their prevailing spirit, and thus it is that amongst them 
 love had a purity, the wife a dignity, not to be found 
 elsewhere in all antiquity, at least in the same degree. 
 
 Polygamy makes its appearance among them, it is 
 true ; but it is very much restricted, and surrounded by 
 all the correctives of morality and religion. It is only 
 accidental. It is not mentioned in connection with 
 Isaac, and if Abraham and Jacob resort to it, that is 
 only to compensate for the absolute or relative sterility 
 of the principal wife ; in the quaint and striking lan- 
 guage of Rachel, " that she may bear upon my knees, 
 and that I may also have children by her.";|; 
 
 2. The mission of these families and their power lie, 
 
 * Rutb, iv. 11, t Geneeie, xxiv. CT. + Genesis, xxx. 3. 
 
THE CHURCH OF THE PATEIARCHS. 189 
 
 in fact, in their fecundify. Each of these men wishes 
 to be the father, each of these women the mother, not 
 of a son but of a people. The splendid vision of Abra- 
 ham, contemplating in the innumerable company of 
 the stars the prophecy of his posterity, remains their 
 ideal. 
 
 God had said to Abraham: "Sarah shall be the 
 mother of nations!"* Mark this, Gentlemen. Not of 
 a man, not of a narrow family, but the mother of a 
 people, " a great people." And does not history show 
 us, in fact, that two great nations have issued from the 
 loins of the old man, — by Sarah, Isaac and the Jews — 
 by Hagar, Ishmael and the Arabs ; two nations, brothers 
 and yet enemies ? The one has covered the world with 
 the prolific fragments of its exiles and captivities ; the 
 other with the proud, invading waves of its conquests. 
 And each has seemed to emulate the other in contribu- 
 ting largely to the civilization of the globe. 
 
 Yes, the sons of Isaac and the sons of Ishmael ! I 
 know that allowances, vast allowances, must be made; 
 but permit me to be just. 
 
 France is mourning — she will be mourning to-mor- 
 row — by the side of a grave forever illustrious, for that 
 incomparable orator who ever defended the traditions 
 of the past without repudiating either the grandeurs of 
 the present or those of the future. One day, when the 
 men and the deeds of the revolution were attacked in 
 his presence, he uttered that exclamation which ad- 
 mirably depicts the sublime impartiality of his soul: 
 "I shall never forget that the Convention saved my 
 country !" For myself, Gentlemen, I shall not be sub- 
 lime, but I shall be impartial, and say : I cannot forget 
 that Mohammedanism, despite its errors and its deeds 
 
 ♦ Genesis, xvii. 16. 
 
190 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 of violence, enthrones, this day, the idea, more than the 
 idea, the genuine sentiment of the unity of God, over 
 one hundred millions of my kind. From the shores of 
 Morocco to the foot of the Himalayas, from the recesses 
 of Yemen to the centre of Europe, one hundred mill- 
 ions of men bear witness, in the teeth of paganism, to 
 the unity of God ! And it is the sons of Ishmael who 
 have done this. 
 
 I make no recriminations against the unjust detract- 
 ors of the Mohammedan nations. You blame these 
 peoples, and you are right, but do not blame them be- 
 yond measure ; blame first the decay of Christian civili- 
 zation. Physician, heal thyself ! For we sons of the 
 Crusaders, heirs of Christianity, what have we done 
 with the traditions of Sarah and Eachel ? and has the 
 blessing of a numerous family been changed for us into 
 a curse ? 
 
 I shall not dwell upon this point. I merely point out 
 and denounce that covenant of w^iich the prophet 
 spoke, that covenant made with death by surrendering 
 to him the sources of life! "Your covenant with 
 death shall be disannulled, and your agreement with 
 hell shall not stand."* I point out and denounce, with 
 hand and heart and soul, that constitution of the fam- 
 ily which tends to introduce itself even into the inter- 
 nal arrangements of .the house, a superb palace, a palace 
 of pride and voluptuousness, that can never allow room 
 enough for oriental luxury, and has no place for a 
 cradle ! 
 
 III. After the woe of that people which cuts itself off 
 from the future by sacrificing its cradles, I know none 
 greater than that of the people which cuts itself off 
 from the past by removing its graves. Blind people ! — 
 
 * Isaiah, xxviii. 18. 
 
THE CHURCH OF THE PATRIARCHS. 101 
 
 that has lost the twofold faith in which the greatness 
 of our race resides, that it may shut itself up in that 
 circle of narrow selfishness and barren voluptuousness, 
 which it calls the present ! . . . . 
 
 [In this manner the speaker approaches the subject 
 of the consecration given to death by the care of fu- 
 neral rites. He shows that the family spirit strives 
 after fellowship in death, by means of a common place 
 of burial. 
 
 He shows how this spirit animated the patriarchs, and 
 wrought in them the more vigorously from the fact that 
 death, presenting itself to the mind of the ancients un- 
 der the image of a sleep, invested the sepulchre with a 
 higher importance. 
 
 He refutes, in passing, the refined spiritualism which, 
 no less than the coarsest materialism, leads to the neg- 
 lect of the grave. The body is the casket, the instru- 
 ment, the companion, of the soul ; it is a part of im- 
 mortal man ; it claims our respect for the sake of the 
 recollections of the past, and of the hopes for the fu- 
 ture. Let it rest, then, in an honored and cherished 
 grave, guarded by the memory of life, and the expecta- 
 tion of the resurrection ! 
 
 But not only is Abraham's sepulchre desired by all 
 the prophets as the place where they shall lay their 
 bones. Abraham's bosom is to the Jewish mind the glo- 
 rious and living sepulture of the just. Thither, as 
 Christ himself declared, Lazarus was borne by angels 
 to receive the recompense of his reward, and was be- 
 held " afar off, in Abraham's bosom." 
 
 This, in brief, is the thought with which the dis- 
 course concluded.] 
 
LECTURE THIRD. 
 
 Dkcember 13, 1868. 
 
 THE CHUECH IN THE FAMILY. 
 
 ^' But I tvould have you know that the head of every 
 man is Christ ; and the head of the tvoman is the man; 
 and the head of Christ is God."* 
 
 "What I have to say to you is nothing more than a 
 comment on these brief but profound words; and 
 therefore I invoke them at the very outset of my talk 
 with you. 
 
 The Church of the patriarchs was not wholly buried 
 with them in the cave of Mamre. It was its own sur- 
 vivor in the vigorous organization of the Jewish family 
 within the national Mosaic church. 
 
 It survives in the still higher constitution of the 
 Christian family in the bosom of the universal Church 
 of Jesus Christ. For not in vain has the Lord said, 
 " I am the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob ; 
 this is my name forever." The supreme Artist, in fact, 
 does not destroy the studies with which he preludes his 
 works, but perfects them, and incorporates them in his 
 masterpiece as integral parts. This masterpiece is the 
 Catholic Church, the Church of all mankind united in 
 God by Christ. In this final form are to be found, sub- 
 
 * 1 Corinthians, xi. 8. 
 
THE CHURCH IN THE FAMILY. 193 
 
 ordinated, but not impaired or crushed, the preparatory 
 forms of the patriarchal Church and the Mosaic 
 Church ; the domestic and the national Churches are 
 still living in the bosom of the grand and perfect cath- 
 olic unity. 
 
 The Church of the patriarchs is still the subject, 
 then, that is proposed for to-day's discussion. Only, 
 instead of studying it in its remote past, we will take 
 it up at the very fireside of the Christian family. We 
 have already, for one year, spoken of the Family ; but 
 we have not yet considered it in its special relations to 
 the priesthood of the Catholic Church. Moreover, 
 there need be no fear of repetition in such a subject. 
 The great concern, both of the speaker and of his hearers, 
 is not to bring out a discourse or a volume of artistic 
 symmetr}^, it is to bring out facts. We proceed, then, 
 to consider the family in its domestic priesthood, and 
 this domestic priesthood in its relations tuith the hie- 
 rarchical priesthood of the Catholic Church. 
 
 I. It is obvious in how many invidious and ridiculous 
 ways this word priesthood, in our times, has been abused. 
 To apply this word to the family is not to add anothei 
 to the list of these profanations. Eather, we are true 
 to tradition and to the most exact theology, when we 
 assert that in the proper sense of the word there is a 
 priesthood in the Christian family. 
 
 In baptism, every Christian is invested with a priest 
 hood, by virtue of the character which this sacrament 
 confers; to wit, a participation in the priesthood of 
 Jesus Christ. This sacerdotal character grows in Con- 
 firmation. It achieves its full development in the sacra- 
 ment of Orders. 
 
 St. Irenaeus, Tertullian, Origen, and many other Fa- 
 thers speak of this first degree of priesthood common 
 
 
 
194 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 to all Christians. The Greek Church has maintained, 
 and still professes this doctrine, distinguishing two 
 kinds of priesthood : one spiritual or mystical, which is 
 the common lot of all orthodox Christians ; the other 
 sacramental, peculiar to those who have received the 
 sacrament of ordination. The Council of Trent makes 
 the same distinction in different terms. It admits an 
 inward priesthood, which all should exercise, alongside 
 of the outward priesthood, the privilege of a few. So 
 that the heretics of the sixth century did not err in 
 teaching that every Christian is a priest, but only in con- 
 founding this priesthood with the hierarchical priest- 
 hood, or in reducing the latter to the proportions of the 
 former. Is this not the meaning of those words of the 
 Apocal}^se: Christ "hath made us kings and priests 
 unto God and his Father ?"* 
 
 And what are those "spiritual sacrifices" of which St. 
 -peter speaks,f if not the sacrifice answering to this 
 priesthood ? The Christian has even an active part in 
 the public sacrifice of the Altar. "Pray," says the 
 priest to the faithful, " pray, my brethren, that my sac- 
 rifice, which is also yours, may be acceptable to God, the 
 Father Almighty." Orate, fr aires, ut meum ac vestrum 
 sacrificium acceptalile fiat apiicl Deum Patrem omnipo- 
 tentem. 
 
 Now this lay priesthood reaches its perfect fulness 
 only in the Christian who has become a husband and 
 father. Prom being inward and private, it then be- 
 comes social, exerting upon domestic society, so far as 
 this society is Christian, an action of its own, although 
 subordinate to the action of the hierarchical priesthood. 
 
 This domestic priesthood has, in fact, three chief 
 'functions, which correspond to those of the hierarchical 
 
 * Revelation, i. 6. t Peter, ii. 5. 
 
THE CHUKCH IN THE FAMILY. ' 195 
 
 priesthood — religious and moral instruction, the govern- 
 ment of consciences, the exercise of worship. 
 
 1. Religious instruction. — In the lectures on The 
 Family, it has already been shown how the authority to 
 teach is, in the father, a natural authority, derived im- 
 mediately from the fact of fatherhood. 
 
 But when, in the Christian who has been consecrated 
 in his whole being by baptism, paternity is at once 
 raised into the supernatural order by the sacrament of 
 marriage, this authority of instruction becomes super- 
 natural in him, and constitutes in the Church a sacred 
 function. 
 
 Obligatory upon the father toward his children in the 
 patriarchal family, by virtue of a positive decree of 
 God,* the exercise of this authority is still more obliga- 
 tory in the Christian family, in which Jesus Christ has 
 not only not abolished it, but has confirmed it. 
 
 It is principally the right and the duty of the father. 
 For, although the mother is the first to reveal the good 
 God to the fruit of her womb and of her heart, still it 
 is the ofi&ce of the father to perfect and confirm this 
 revelation in the soul of his son, who comes down from 
 the mother's lap and stands by his side to be initiated 
 by him into life. 
 
 So little does the principal part in religious instruc- 
 tion devolve upon the mother, that she herself is obliged 
 to resort to the lessons of her husband. This is the 
 teaching of St. Paul, lie would have the woman, if 
 she has not understood the public instruction of the 
 priest in the temple, to question her husband in the 
 privacy of home, and to be a silent learner in his 
 school.f The husband, then, according to the apostle, 
 is the private, home-interpreter of the public instruc- 
 
 ♦ Genesis, xviii. 19. 1 1 Corinthians, xiv. 85. 
 
196 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 tion given by the hierarchical priest. That does not 
 mean that he is free to alter the instruction of the 
 Church ; he is no more free to do that than the Church 
 is free to change revelation. But because all outward 
 instruction needs to be interpreted — the Scriptures and 
 tradition being interpreted by the Church, the word 
 being interpreted by the priest in its name — the words 
 of the priest, also, will be interpreted by the father of 
 the family, and his words, finally, by the Christian con- 
 science; for the comprehension of religious truth de- 
 pends, in the last analysis, upon the good or evil dis- 
 position of the conscience and what theology so aptly 
 terms the light of grace, the light of the Holy Spirit. 
 Hence nothing is more futile, be it said in passing, than 
 the hope with which narrow minds flatter themselves, 
 of creating within the Church, by an exaggeration of 
 doctrinal authority, a sort of vulgar precision, a sort of 
 tyrannical uniformity, which are no part of God's de- 
 signs toward the soul of man. 
 
 Such, then, is the legitimate share, both large and 
 wise, that the Church gives, within its own fold, to lay- 
 instruction. 
 
 2. Tlie government of co7isciences, — It is not only 
 the instruction of the children that is given into the 
 hands of the parents, and especially into the hands of 
 the father ; it is their education, the practical formation 
 of their will, their heart, their conscience, their entire 
 soul ; their preparation from early life for the choice of 
 a profession ; the settlement of that vital affair, their 
 marriage ; in a word, their moral and religious guidance, 
 immediate and supreme, during the early stages of their 
 life, and, in all its subsequent course, indirect but al- 
 ways efficient. None of these things would be possible, 
 if the conscience of the children did not unfold itself to 
 
THE CHURCH IN THE FAMILY. 197 
 
 the parents, especially to the father. Yes, the father 
 must be the first guide, and to a certain extent, the first 
 confessor of his children. 
 
 Still more. A certain knowledge and guidance of the 
 conscience of the wife herself falls to the husband. The 
 order of nature demands it, and the order of grace. 
 The order of nature, because of the difierence of age 
 and of sex. In the early stages, at least, of wedded life, 
 the wife is as much of a child as of a companion, with 
 respect to her husband. He has received her, young, 
 ignorant of what awaits her in life, lacking in the teach- 
 ings of an experience which she has not yet undergone 
 personally, and which she has not even witnessed in 
 others. This child, in order that she may become 
 indeed a wife, must have a higher education that shall 
 make her equal to her new position. The type of this 
 education is to be met in the primeval fact related to us 
 in Genesis — Eve born of Adam. The wife should always 
 be born of the heart of her husband, should know all its 
 secrets, and share all its emotions and feelings. They 
 should be one, not only in the outward intercourse of 
 life, but in the close community of all human and divine 
 possessions. They should vibrate in unison in the 
 presence of those three great and increasing objects of 
 affection — the cradle of infancy, the love of married 
 life, the tomb of age. And as they should view the 
 things of earth with an undivided glance and an undi- 
 vided heart, so they should soar toward God with one 
 common aspiration and in one common flight. The 
 law of sex perpetuates what was first rendered necessary 
 by difference of age; and this order, established by 
 nature, is consecrated by grace. 
 
 The institution of Christian marriage, in fact, places 
 the wife in the same dependence toward her husband 
 
198 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 that the Church is in toward Jesiis Christ. " There- 
 fore," says St. Paul, " as the Church is subject unto 
 Christ, so let the Avives be to their OAvn husbands in 
 everything,"* This subordination extends to the affairs 
 of the soul, since, on the one hand, it is universal, " ifi 
 everytlmig" and, on the other, it finds its model in the 
 very union between Christ and the Church, "«5 the 
 Church is subject unto Christ.^^ And this is so true, 
 that, in accordance with the general teachings of theo- 
 logians, the husband has the power to invalidate, in the 
 forum of conscience, vows made by the wife, after mar- 
 riage, without his consent, when these vows affect, in 
 any way whatsoever, the conjugal relation. Some theo- 
 logians of great weight and authority even go so far as 
 to free the marital power from this limitation, and to 
 subordinate to it all vows made by the wife without the 
 husband's consent after marriage, whatever may be their 
 object. They only limit this sovereign power by the 
 general condition requisite to the validity of dispensa- 
 tions — to wit, that they should have a reasonable motive ; 
 but of this motive the husband alone is judge. 
 
 Doubtless, in behalf of the children, and still more so 
 in behalf of the wife, we must make important reserva- 
 tions touching the rightful independence of the human 
 conscience, and especially of the Christian conscience. 
 For if it is true that there is a government of the con- 
 science by outward authority, it is no less true that 
 there is a self-government of the conscience under the 
 eye and the hand of God, who alone sees into the depths 
 of the heart, according to that fine expression of Saint 
 Thomas : Deus solus illalitur animce. But these reser- 
 vations apart, we should not hesitate to conclude, not 
 only from the temporal point of view, but also and 
 
 * EphesianB. v. 24. 
 
THE CHURCH IN THE FAMILY. 199 
 
 especially from the spiritual point of view, that the 
 father of the family is the head of his house, the king 
 and the priest in one. " I would have you know, that 
 the head of every man is Christ ; and the head of the 
 woman is the man, and the head of Christ is God." 
 
 3. The exercises of worship. — Private worship is neces- 
 sary. " When thou prayest, enter into thy closet ; and 
 when thou hast shut the door, pray to thy Father which 
 is in secret.''* Public worship, also, is necessary : " not 
 forsaking the assembling of ourselves together." f But 
 the two, even when scrupulously observed, do not suf- 
 fice : there must be another — family worship, indicated 
 by these words, so often employed by Saint Paul : " the 
 church that is in the house." J; This worship is rendered 
 in the peasant's hut of schismatic Russia, by the worship 
 of holy images ; and in the heart of Protestantism, in 
 the aristocratic families of England, by family prayers. 
 Pamily prayers, which have almost disappeared from 
 among our French customs, especially evening prayers, 
 are, in fact, the solemn act of domestic worship. It is 
 not the mother but the father who presides, who is the 
 high priest. "What religious ascendency this example 
 gives over the wife, over the children, over the servants 
 themselves, who are not strangers nor slaves, but adopted 
 members of the family, admitted to a share in its wor- 
 ship as well as in its labors and its prosperity ! 
 
 But there is another prayer that goes from man to 
 God without crossing the lips, and that is mental 
 prayer. This too should be common to father and 
 child, and especially to husband and wife. 
 
 Do you remember that page of the Confessions of 
 8aint Augustine, beautiful above all the rest? The 
 
 * Matthew, vi. 6. t Hebrews, x. 25. 
 
 X Komane, svi. 5 ; 1 Corinthians, xvi. 19, 
 
200 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 personages are not man and wife, but mother and son : 
 but no matter — they are two souls wedded in tender- 
 ness and purity. A few days before Monica's death, 
 Augustine was with her in her house in Ostium. They 
 were both there, one evening, watching the sky, the sea, 
 the land, that Eoman scenery, so sad and so beautiful, 
 that speaks so deeply of the infinite. Their hearts 
 were going up in mental prayer, for they spoke not, or 
 at least they spoke but little; they were going up to in- 
 visible things, to ideas, to moral sentiments, to the soul, 
 to the eternal types of the true and the beautiful — to 
 God himself, the source of all these great things. There 
 came a moment when they attained unto God, idu oc- 
 elli, ictti cordis, with one outstroke of the intellect and 
 heart, like those who, sailing into port, touch the shore 
 before they are able to land. Even so, at last, they had 
 touched the shore of the Infinite. A moment fleeting 
 as time, but full as eternity. What happened to Mon- 
 ica and Augustine 'is the history of mental prayer in 
 Christian families : the history of religious life between 
 man and wife, the truest, sweetest, most enduring of all 
 loves I Yes, when a man and a wife have made com- 
 mon property of their conscience and their reason — as I 
 said before, I do not understand marriage without a 
 community of reason and conscience — when this wife, 
 understanding her husband, and this husband, under- 
 standing his wife, read together the great masterpieces 
 of human genius. Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, or bet- 
 ter still, the divine masterpieces. Genesis and the Gos- 
 pel ; when they contemplate the scenes of Nature, now 
 grand, now beautiful ; when they experience in common 
 the vicissitudes of the family, grouped around these 
 three centres — birth, love, death, like the statue of the 
 ancient desert, which responded with harmonious mur- 
 
THE CHURCH IN THE FAMILY. 201 
 
 murs to the first rays of the sun, their soul also 
 responds to this sun of Nature, of the human mind, of 
 the family, of revealed faith, this divine sun — for all 
 this comes from Gocl !— their souls blend in the same 
 prayer, and the husband, as "the head of the wife," 
 presides at this unuttered prayer, this love which is 
 prayer, this prayer which is love ! 
 
 Ah ! that man has never known what it is to love — he 
 has talked about love, he has not understood it — who 
 has not known these secrets of God in love, and of love 
 in God. In these hours we feel God, we gaze upon 
 him, we discern him — at least when our heart is pure — 
 and wiping away a tear, we exclaim : " We thank thee, 
 Lord ! for in these hours the old curse has been sus- 
 pended, the saddest of our pangs has ceased, and those 
 flowers, united of old in Eden, but separated ever since, 
 have mingled their splendor and their perfume on the 
 stem of human life — the flower of love and the flower 
 of virginity !" This married pair, are they indeed hus- 
 band and wife ? These virgin ones, are they still vir- 
 ginal ? They are virgin spouses, and espoused virgins ! 
 God is in their love, their love is in God. The hus- 
 band is priest, because he has been the teaclier of his 
 children and his wife; because he has governed their 
 conscience and their will ; he is priest because he has 
 'prayed with his lips in the midst of them, with his 
 heart in their heart, and with his soul in their soul. 
 Such is the priesthood of the household. " I am the 
 God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, the God of 
 Sarah, of Rebecca, and of Rachel; that is my name for 
 evermore !" 
 
 II. Having established, as the teacliing of revela- 
 tion, the existence of a domestic priesthood, of which 
 the father of the family is the priest, it is my next duty 
 
 0* 
 
202 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 to take up the reproach cast upon the Church, of having 
 brought about the downfall of this priesthood. I listen 
 to this objection, often violent and hypocritical indeed, 
 and yet, again, too earnest not to be sincere. It is sum- 
 med up as follows: The influence of a Catholic institu- 
 tion, compulsory confession, has destroyed in the fam- 
 ily the moral and religious authority of the father, by 
 yielding up the conscience of the mother and the chil- 
 dren wholly into the power of a stranger, the priest, 
 and this substitution has consummated the moral di- 
 vorce of man and wife. 
 
 It is first to be considered whether the fact which 
 serves as the starting-point for this objection is true or 
 false; and it is capable of proof, as a general rule, that 
 in the city populations of France — for we confine our 
 attention to France, and particularly to the cities — the 
 priesthood of the father of the family has disappeared 
 entirely, or almost entirely; the moral and religious 
 guidance of consciences, where it still survives, has 
 passed entirely, or almost entirely, into the hands of the 
 Catholic priest, who thus cumulates the two priest- 
 hoods, the hierarchical and the domestic. The fact, 
 then, must be frankly admitted, not, however, without 
 observing that there are exceptions so numerous and 
 respectable, that they must not be left out of the account. 
 
 Still, the fact exists, and we will not seek to justify 
 it in itself On the contrary, we do not hesitate to 
 pronounce it abnormal, for this fact implies profound 
 degeneracy in the character and authority of the head 
 of the family, and, in the families infected with it, a 
 moral and religious disorganization which passes into 
 anarchy or despotism, and the incidental results of 
 which, more profound than is imagined, make them- 
 selves felt throughout the whole structure of society. 
 
THE CHURCH IN THE FAMILY. 203 
 
 But admitting the existence and the danger of the 
 fact, it remains for us to seek its true cause and its true 
 remedy. 
 
 1. First, the cause. — Those who would throw the re- 
 sponsibility for it upon the Church, will do well to pon- 
 der this question : Is it the Church that has usuryed 
 this authority, or you who have abdicated it ? 
 
 If the question were one of particular acts, due, not 
 to the Catholic institution, but to a want of enlighten- 
 ment or of rectitude in this or that minister represent- 
 ing it, doubtless it must be admitted that in certain 
 cases the priest has usurped. I willingly admit that all 
 of us in the Church — laity, priests, popes — we are all 
 liable, both to error and to sin. Jesus Christ alone is 
 holy, with his Church taken in its universality — " Thou 
 only art holy." .... "I believe in the holy Catholic 
 Church" — and I do not deem it either expedient or 
 right to retort in an inverse sense the tactics of the 
 school of Voltaire — " Keep lying ; some of it will 
 stick !" Falsehood is even more hateful and more bane- 
 ful when it pretends to serve the Church than when it 
 pretends to ruin it. 
 
 But it is not a question as to particular acts, but as to 
 a condition of affairs already general, or, at least, tend- 
 ing to become so, which condition is said to owe its ex- 
 istence to the Catholic institution itself In this view 
 the priest has not been guilty of usurpation. 
 
 No ! it is no usurpation when we fulfil the universal 
 mission assigned us by Jesus Christ for the salvation of 
 souls He has told us to go to all, without distinc- 
 tion of husband or wife, master or slave, considering 
 them all as one in Christ Jesus. We have no right to 
 turn away from any one. He has also told us : " Whose- 
 soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them." . , . 
 
204 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 " Whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in 
 heaven."* "We have exercised this beneficent ministry. 
 Far from being the enemies of the family, we are its 
 benefactors, when we bring, in the name of Jesus Christ 
 and the Church, what the father of the family is power- 
 less to give — the outward means and the moral assu- 
 rance of the forgiveness of sins ; when we dispose the 
 heart to receive this pardon, and when we pronounce 
 that absolution which betokens grace and produces it in 
 the heart prepared for it. We are the benefactors of the 
 family — not its disorganizers, when, in the majesty and 
 sanctity of the sacrament, we receive confidences neces- 
 sary not only by virtue of the law of the Gospel, but 
 also by reason of the most imperative needs of the hu- 
 man soul, — confidences, however, which cannot and 
 should not be made at home. We are, finally, the 
 benefactors of the family when we make known to each 
 of its members, with the authority of our ministry, 
 " as though God did beseech them by iis,"f the coun- 
 sels and practical exhortations that enlighten the igno- 
 rant, and restore and strengthen the feeble. 
 
 It is not we, then, who have usurped, but it is you 
 who have abdicated. 
 
 You have abdicated your domestic priesthood in the 
 bosom of a Christian family, in that you have abdi- 
 cated the exercise of Christian duty. Is there any in- 
 struction, any government, any family worship in your 
 homes ? And if there be such, is it you who preside 
 over them and conduct them ? In the sanctuary of the 
 Church and in the sanctuary of the household, do you 
 lead the family in the performance of religious duties ? 
 And with regard to morality, do you put in practice the 
 morality of the gospel, or the morality of skepticism and 
 
 * John, XX, 28 ; Matthew, xvli:. 18. + 2 Corinthians, v. 80. 
 
THE CHURCH IN THE FAMILY. 205 
 
 lust ? Perhaps you have renounced the Christian faith. 
 How then could jou have any religious conviction, and 
 any conscience of right and wrong in common with your 
 wife and children ? Perhaps you have even lost all re- 
 ligious belief whatever, and passed over from the ranks 
 of the deists to the ranks of the materialists, or at least 
 of the skeptics ? Once more, how would you be able to 
 instruct the mind, give counsel to the conscience, and 
 direct the soul ? 
 
 Yes, you have abdicated, and by that fatal abdication 
 you have become the authors of the vast and profound 
 evil of which you complain, and from which you all 
 suffer. Children must have religion, their education is 
 impossible without it. Even skeptics generally admit 
 this, and, on this ground, they admit religion into their 
 families. Besides, the wife is not enough to guide the 
 children. She, too, must be religious ; and because her 
 mind acts rather by intuition than by reasoning, be- 
 cause her heart, more than man's, is made for suffering 
 and loving, there are invincible affinities and connec- 
 tions between her and God. But, in moral and relig- 
 ious matters, as in everything else, indeed especially in 
 them, woman cannot do without the man's government. 
 The great apostle comes back continually to this point, 
 " man is the head of woman, as Christ is the head of 
 man." To hear him, one might suppose that the hus- 
 band is a necessary mediator between woman and Christ, 
 as Christ is himself the mediator between the Church 
 and God. Now all this you have lost sight of. You 
 have held yourself aloof, or have even attempted to in- 
 vade the domain of the Christian conscience. And 
 then, alarmed at your encroachments or your abdica- 
 tion, the wife has taken her soul, and with it the cradle 
 of her children, and has laid them both at the feet of 
 
206 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 the priest ; she has put them in his keeping, waiting for 
 better days. We then have usurped nothing ; it is you 
 who have abdicated everything. 
 
 2. But is there no remedy for this evil ? God of 
 our salvation ! wilt thou not revisit thy people and build 
 up our ruins ? 
 
 It depends upon you, fathers, to bring about a better 
 future for the whole world ; it depends upon you to re- 
 alize it from this very day, beneath your own roof. 
 Learn to have some higher aspiration ; learn to be, in 
 the full meaning of the word, the- father of the family — ■ 
 the head of the house; learn, we beg of you, to send 
 us back within our proper limits, to have us confine 
 ourselves to the exercise of our priesthood ; and, to that 
 end, resume the exercise of your own. 
 
 I remember that several years ago*, eight young men, 
 under the guidance of the immortal Qzanam, founded 
 the society of St. Vincent de Paul But no, an ear- 
 lier and nobler example rushes to my mind. Eighteen 
 centuries ago, twelve young men, gathered by Christ 
 among the towns of Galilee and the boats of the sea of 
 Tiberias — tAvelve young men became apostles and regen- 
 erated the world. 
 
 Take heed, brethren and friends, young men who 
 hear me — take heed, not to the office of apostle, but the 
 office of patriarch. This day let a blessing attend upon 
 my words ; may they prove to be the calling of eight, 
 of a dozen true men to this divine office of father, and 
 they will have done more for France, for society, for the 
 Church, than the political and religious parties by which 
 they are rent and torn. 
 
 Yes; let a blessing rest upon these words of mine. 
 Ah, young men, may each one of you say to himself. 
 There is a priesthood that has perished from the world^ 
 
THE CHURCH IN THE FAMILY. 207 
 
 the most ancient, and, in one sense, the most indis- 
 pensable of all — the priesthood of the husband and 
 father. I will raise it up in my person. Henceforth I 
 will put away the speculative seductions, and, still more, 
 the practical seductions of materialism ; I will remain 
 pure, I will keep myself worthy, some day, of loving; 
 and, when that day has come, I will take my bride from 
 the hands of God, "the wife of my youth;"* I will 
 take her to my arms, I will press her upon my heart as 
 upon an altar, and, commingling my soul with hers in 
 one song, one flame, one incense-cloud, I will lift her up 
 before Jehovah as a victim, a glorious sacrifice of tender- 
 ness and purity ; I will love her " as Christ loved the 
 Church." I will ofier up myself for her, " as Christ also 
 gave himself for the Church," that through the power 
 of love "he might present it to himself a glorious 
 Church, not haying- spot nor wrinkle."f This will I do. 
 In my love I will be a priest — priest of the fellowship 
 of our consciences and our prayers. I will be a priest in 
 my fatherhood : God shall be in the fruitfulness of my 
 fatherhood as well as in the chastity of my love ! Woe ! 
 woe to the bastard races born only of flesh and blood ! 
 "Woe to the races that have no origin save the gross will 
 of the animal man ! But blessed, on the other hand, the 
 men who are born of God, whom their father has begot- 
 ten with his soul, whom he has begotten a second time 
 in his affection, upon whom he has stamped the divine 
 impress of his conscience, his justice, and his religion. 
 That is what I would be — let the Christian youth say 
 to himself. I would be a husband and a father ; I would 
 know, here on this earth, where people no longer seem 
 to have any idea of it, what it is to love a woman in God 
 and for God — what it is to beget children in God and 
 
 * Proverbs, v. 18. t Ephesians, v. 25, 27. 
 
208 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 for God. I would be a priest ! God of Abraham, of 
 Isaac, and of Jacob, grant me thy blessing ! 
 
 Thus it is. Gentlemen, that the priesthood after the 
 order of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob will rise from its 
 ruins, and stretch forth its hand to that other priest- 
 hood after the order of Melchisedek, that had no 
 father nor pedigree, says St. Paul — the priesthood after 
 the order of Jesus Christ and the Apostles. And when 
 these two hands have been laid in mutual fraternity 
 upon every family — the hand of the Catholic priest and 
 the hand of the household priest, — the hand of the father 
 respected in his independence and in his government of 
 hearts, and the hand of the Catholic priest appealed to 
 sincerely, faithfully, as he that is to help and complete 
 the work of the domestic priest, then the world will be 
 saved, and not before. Yes, whatever you may do, you 
 will be powerless, utterly powerless, so long as the 
 priesthood of the father of the family is not resuscitated, 
 and its hand does not rest in that of the priesthood of 
 the Church ! 
 
LECTURE FOURTH. 
 
 December 20, 18C8. 
 
 THE JEWISH NATIONAL CHUKCH. 
 
 In taking leave of the domestic Church of the patri- 
 archs, we give it our parting salutations as one of 
 those pregnant ideas which teem with inexhaustible 
 fecundity — one of those central points around which 
 we must build if we would leave behind us anything 
 useful and lasting. We shall come upon it again — we 
 shall return to it more than once as we proceed. But 
 just at this moment we are to study its transformation 
 into the Jewish national Church. For above the family 
 comes the nation ; and in the order of history, as well 
 as in the order of logic, the work of Abraham is the 
 preparation for the work of Moses. The domestic 
 Church of the patriarchs leads to the national Church 
 of the Jews. In a future discourse I will consider the 
 internal constitution of this Church. To-day I propose 
 only to consider in a general way the tie which, under 
 the Mosaic law, united the religious life with the life of 
 the nation. 
 
 On the summit of Mount Sinai I hear God uttering 
 his voice ; at its foot, I behold a people forming itself 
 into a nation. But this people is at once a people and 
 a Church ; and this God is at once the God of this 
 Church and the King of this people. So that the 
 
210 DISCOUESES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 Church, in this second phase of its development, unites 
 and merges its own life in the life of a particular peo^ 
 pie, thus giving the pattern of what it is to do hereaf- 
 ter, after the coming of Jesus Christ, in other forms, and 
 without weakening catholic unity, for each one of the 
 nations that shall be gathered into its fold. Now the 
 life of a people, viewed according to what is most gen- 
 eral and most essential, can be summed up in its agri- 
 cultural and its political life. What have the institutes 
 of Moses had to do in respect to each of these two ele- 
 ments ? 
 
 I. The prosperity of nations, as of families, results es- 
 pecially from the connection that they form with the 
 soil. Patriotism is not a purely moral sentiment ; like 
 all the feelings of our hearts, it needs an object incarnate 
 in matter. Our C02intry takes to itself a body in the 
 land of our forefathers, and the love that it inspires is 
 merged in love for the soil. In its soil does the father- 
 land wish to be loved and served. The surest source of 
 a nation's wealth, and the source nearest to its moral 
 life, is the soil made fruitful by human labor. 
 
 But what shall consecrate this wedlock of man and 
 the earth? What shall give to the earth that sacred 
 character of which it has need, not to charm but to fix 
 the roving heart of man ? What shall bring down 
 upon man's labor that strong, sweet anointing, beneath 
 which patriotism shall flourish, while the fields are 
 clothed with harvests ? There is no close and lasting 
 union of a nation with its soil, except that which is con- 
 secrated by religion. 
 
 With the Jews, the land is the object of an unparal- 
 leled consecration. This is the land, above all others, 
 that deserves to be called the Holy Land, and to exert 
 upon strangers an irresistible charm. Our fathers, the 
 
THE JEWISH NATIONAL CHURCH. 211 
 
 early pilgrims, bedewed it with their tears ; our fathers, 
 the Crusaders, bathed it with torrents of their heroic 
 blood ; we, ourselves, have learned at our mothers' knees 
 to name it and to love it, until we scarcely know which 
 is dearer to us, the land of France or the Holy Land ! 
 And do not its exiled sons, to-day, on the hospitable 
 banks of the Seine, as they did of yore on the hostile 
 banks of the Euphrates, still mingle the recollection of 
 it Avith all their dreams, with all their prayers ? " No ;" 
 they say to-day as they said of old : " We will not sing 
 while sitting by the waters of Babylon. At the re- 
 membrance of Zion we have but weeping and tears." 
 "By the rivers of Babylon there we sat down; we 
 wept, when we remembered Zion. If I forget thee, 
 Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning, let 
 my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth." 
 
 Situated at the junction of the three continents that 
 formed the ancient world, on the shore of that sea that 
 was the centre and the highway of the civilization of 
 antiquity, so near to everything and yet so isolated from 
 everything by that sea, by that other sea whose sandy 
 waves served it as a rampart, by the impregnable for- 
 tress of Lebanon, Palestine was the abode destined by 
 God for his people, promised with an oath to the patri- 
 archs, and given at last to their posterity. 
 
 But this land, favored in so many respects, is not one 
 of those enchanted and prodigal regions that charm 
 their inhabitants to sleep in voluptuous idleness. It is 
 not like Egypt, watered and fertilized by the Nile ; it is 
 a mountainous country, in which there is especial need 
 of the constant toil of man, and the constant blessing 
 of God. So God would continue to be, in the strict 
 sense of the word, the owner of the land, insomucli 
 that no portion of it might ever be alienated, and the 
 
212 DISCOURSED OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 Israelites might hold only as tenants. " The land shall 
 not be sold forever ; for the land is mine, and ye are 
 strangers and sojourners with me."* And the Jewish 
 people, on its part — because it is the- typical people, 
 and because, as such, it is to bring out in relief the 
 essential traits of national life, leaving in the shade 
 everything secondary — is a people of husbandmen and 
 shepherds. It is the most agricultural and the most 
 religious of all nations. 
 
 By reason of this close union of rural life and reli- 
 gious life, the three great feasts of the Mosaic institute 
 have reference to the work of the field. The Feast of 
 the Passover celebrates the time when the ears of grain 
 begin to show ; the Feast of Pentecost, the time when 
 the ripe crops fall beneath the sickle ; the Feast of Tab- 
 ernacles, the finished harvest. Then the head of the 
 family, still invested with the patriarchal priesthood, 
 notwithstanding the legal priesthood invested in the 
 tribe of Levi, went up to Jerusalem with the first-fruits 
 of his flocks and his fields, followed by his wife, his 
 children, and his servants. He came into the temple 
 to offer all that he had from the bounty of the Eternal 
 and his own labor. Then the peoi)le made merry to- 
 gether before their invisible Master. These were joyous 
 festivals, intermingled with chaste dances and religious 
 songs. 
 
 What a lesson for rationalism and for overwrought 
 mysticism ! In their excesses they come all the nearer 
 together, from the fact that they are extremes. They 
 would fain separate religion from the things of the 
 earth, and from the present life ; they would shut it up 
 in its sanctuaries, seclude it to the contemplation and 
 expectation of future happiness. That is, without a 
 
 * Leviticup, xxv. 23. 
 
THE JEWISH NATIONAL CHURCH. 213 
 
 doubt, the sublimest part of religion, and it is the 
 special mission of Christianity to develop it. But, 
 since the Christian does not, any more than the Jew, 
 cease to dwell on the earth, Christianity cannot be in- 
 different to any earthly interests or labors. AVith its 
 own divine breath it should fill the sails of commerce 
 toward distant isles ; it should speed its course over the 
 vast continents; it should bless the hard struggles of 
 industry, and consecrate its conquests, and animate, in a 
 word, the production and the distribution of wealth, the 
 evidence and the instrument of the universal brother- 
 hood of nations! But upon agriculture especially 
 should it bestow its sympathies and its benedictions. 
 For agriculture is the essential labor of nations, while 
 commerce and industry are only their luxury — a neces- 
 sary luxury, no doubt, but after all a luxury. 
 
 And since I am speaking of agriculture among the 
 Jews, permit me to revert to France, that France which 
 has been called by great popes " the tribe of Judah of 
 the Catholic Church," and to view it in its country 
 provinces. Its cities are great, but so are its fields. 
 Let us, then. Gentlemen, greet in its country homes — 
 the most intelligent and prosperous of all homes, as 
 they are the most Christian — that hardy race of French 
 peasants with their practical treasures of wisdom and 
 goodness, in our day too little appreciated. Here I be- 
 hold, upon our soil, in the midst of our brethren, th« 
 daily realization of the beautiful figure, at once posi- 
 tive and poetical, under which the prophets depict 
 Messiah's reign. Henceforth let there be no more 
 swords, nor spears. Lift up your heads ! Beat your 
 swords and spears into ploughshares, and with these 
 peaceful weapons pierce the earth with fruitful wounds ! 
 Be every man the owner of his field and vineyard. Sit 
 
2M DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 down beneath the shade of your own yine and fjg-tree, 
 and talk together of the joys of heaven, indeed, hut 
 also of the good things of the earth, that are the proph- 
 ecy and preparation of heaven. 
 
 And as we are speaking of our splendid peasantry, 
 suffer me to pause a moment before that man whom I 
 shall call, with the poet, " a ploughman clad in mourn- 
 ing." Beneath his black cassock, what simplicity! 
 what goodness ! I behold his abode, the poorest, per- 
 haps, and yet the brightest — the quietest, and yet the 
 most cheerful, looking out on one side upon the village 
 and the fields, on the other upon the church and the 
 graveyard. I know him well ; it is the country parish 
 priest, the obscure and sacred link between the catholic 
 life and the national life of our Church of France. 
 The country priest, one of the most deserving servants 
 of our native land, one of the most essential ministers 
 of our Church. 
 
 II. Man does not live by bread alone. So a people 
 worthy of the name does not live solely by agricultural 
 labor. There are national events, social institutions, a 
 political life. From one point of view, it is of the ut- 
 most importance that religion should be separated from 
 politics. It may not belittle itself to the proportions of 
 the parties, whatever they be, with which it might be 
 involved. People must not be able to say, instead of 
 the catholic Church, the catholic party. But from 
 another, and no less correct point of view, it is extremely 
 desirable, it is necessary, that religion should not hold 
 itself aloof from any element of national life. Whether 
 they are to be legally united depends upon circumstan- 
 ces ; but in every age and in every country, they should 
 be morally united. History, in every age, and particu- 
 larly in our own, shows that the most powerful peoples 
 
THE JEWISH NATIONAL CHUECH. 215 
 
 are precisely those in whom this union is most strongly 
 impressed upon thought and character. 
 
 Kowhere has it existed as it did among the Jews. 
 With them, the religious and the national spirit were 
 but one, and the name that people bear is literally true 
 — tlie peojjle of God. From God indeed, from God di- 
 rectly and by miracle, they received those three grand 
 things that constitute political life — liberty, law, govern- 
 ment. The three agricultural feasts of which we have 
 spoken above were also three political feasts. The 
 Passover celebrated liberty — the deliverance from Egyp- 
 tian bondage ; Pentecost, the promulgation of the law 
 from Mount Sinai ; the Feast of Tabernacles, the fel- 
 lowship of the people dwelling happily in its tents under 
 the safeguard of government. 
 
 1. Liberty. — It is with liberty in the public life of na- 
 tions as with love in the private life of families. Xo 
 more disastrous divorce than that between the idea of 
 religion and the idea of liberty. Through this divorce, 
 liberty degenerates into license ; it becomes a scourge. 
 Allied with religion, it remains itself, fruitful and glori- 
 ous. " If the truth shall make you free," says Christ, 
 " then are ye free indeed."* 
 
 Jewish liberty was the daughter of Jehovah. The 
 Hebrews were slaves in Egypt; worse than that — they 
 loved their bondage. They groaned beneath the blows 
 of Pharaoh's taskmasters; but when their daily task 
 was accomplished, they would sit down with sensual 
 delight to their flesh-pots, the remembrance of which 
 called forth their regrets during the painful beginnings 
 of their deliverance — " the land of Egypt, where we sat 
 by the flesh-pots and ate bread to the full."t This 
 satisfaction of their sensual appetites had such dominion 
 
 * John, viii. 32, 36. t Exodus, xvi, 3. 
 
216 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 over them, that Moses had a harder light, perhaps, 
 against these than against Pharaoh's resistance, although 
 he came to them bringing the gift of liberty from the 
 hand of Jehovah, saying, " I AM hath sent me unto 
 you."* And it was only with great difficulty that this 
 heroic ambassador of the Lord succeeded in delivering 
 them both from their political bondage to the tyrant^ 
 and from their religious bondage to idols. 
 
 From this twofold deliverance, thus simultaneously 
 effected, was derived the divine character of liberty, 
 which always, among the Jews, continued true to its 
 religious origin. Bondage never ceased to be, in the 
 hands of God, the most terrible of punishments, as liberty 
 was the most precious of rewards. Hence that hatred 
 of slavery which animated the Jews, and which, though 
 free from fanatical excess, at least in the brighter days 
 of their history, carried with it, into the wars so aptly 
 named " the wars of the Lord,"f all the fiery zeal of 
 religious passion. 
 
 After a few years of liberty, those Hebrews had grown 
 out of all recognition, for liberty is an educating 
 power, just as (in an inverse sense) slavery is. Behold 
 their struggles in the land of Canaan ; see how this love 
 of independence is confounded in their soul with the 
 love of God, and how there was developed in them a 
 passion — a wild passion, as I must call it, when I listen 
 to the accents of Deborah's song — a wild but most noble 
 passion, at once the most human and the most divine — 
 the passionate love of country and of God. They rose 
 up against their adversaries ; and when the men came 
 not up to crush the tyrants, the women were ready for 
 the work ! 
 
 I have mentioned Deborah, the wife of Lapidoth — 
 
 * Exodus, iii. 14. t Numbers, xxi. 18. 
 
THE JEWISH NATIONAL CHURCH. 217 
 
 Deborah the prophetess, who, sitting under a palm-tree, 
 judged all the children of Israel assembled unto her to 
 settle their disputes at her feet* Deborah, seeing her 
 people under the yoke of the king of Canaan, beneath 
 the sword of his general Sisera, unfurls the banner of 
 liberty, calls upon the warriors to follow her; and when 
 the warriors, who had no man to lead them to combat, 
 saw this woman braver than the men, they followed her, 
 and victory went with them ! And when the enemy was 
 defeated and put to flight — when the prophetess of 
 Israel had secured the triumph of liberty and religion, 
 she sang this song : 
 
 " The mighty ones were no more in Israel, 
 
 The warriors had ceased, 
 
 Until that I Deborah arose, 
 
 Till I arose, a mother in Israel 1" 
 " Awake, Deborah, awake !" — 
 
 thus she speaks aloud to herself, calling forth the en- 
 thusiasm that was thrilling in her veins ; 
 
 '* Awake ! awake ! utter a song ! 
 And thou Barak, son of Abinoam, 
 Arise and lead captivity captive ! 
 The stars fought in the height of heaven, 
 They fought in battle array against Sisera. 
 The river of Kishon has swept them away, 
 That ancient river, the river Kishon. 
 O my soul, thou hast trodden down the mighty ones T'f 
 
 Thus it was that, among the Jews, the love of God, 
 joined to the love of country, kindled even women's 
 hearts to a blaze of patriotism. 
 
 And in their internal organization what entire lib- 
 
 * Judges, iv. 4, 5. t Ibid., v. 
 
 10 
 
218 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 erty! Civil equality, political equality, I was almost 
 going to say social equality, were graven on their laws 
 in the name of God. All Jews were equal in the eye 
 of the law, and before the tribunal of the elders, who 
 were chosen for this high office with reference to their 
 age and their virtues, the experience they had acquired 
 in life, and the position they occupied at the head of 
 families. All employments were alike open to all, ex- 
 cept the ceremonial priesthood, which had devolved 
 upon the tribe of Levi, that the fathers of families in 
 other tribes might be eased of the burden of it, and 
 which was dearly bought by exclusion from all share in 
 the distribution of property. 
 
 A mere shepherd, like David or Amos, might become 
 a king or a prophet. There were no classes in this so- 
 ciety; all were "sons of Abraham, and never in bond- 
 age to any man."* No Israelite was a slave. " Over 
 your brethren, the children of Israel, ye shall not rule 
 with rigor ; for they are my servants which I brought 
 forth out of the land of Egypt ; they shall not be sold 
 as bondmen."f Nor did the law wish that there should 
 be beggars or paupers, at least paupers condemned to 
 perpetual and absolute poverty. X 
 
 A special statute of limitation secured the success of 
 this legal provision against misfortune, and even against 
 fault. The homestead could not be alienated forever. 
 By the decree of God, every fifty years, when the jubi- 
 lee trumpets sounded their glad and piercing peal, the 
 homestead reverted to those who had lost it.§ They 
 were, indeed, as Moses had said, a people of Icings and 
 priests ; for the sovereignty of the fireside is the foun- 
 
 * John, viii. 33. ' t Leviticus, xxv. 46, 42. 
 
 X Deuteronomy, xv. 4. Margin : " That there be no poor among you." 
 
 § Leviticus, xxv. 
 
THE JEWISH NATIONAL CHUECH. 219 
 
 dation of true national sovereignty, just as national re- 
 ligion draws its life from the religion of the fireside. 
 
 Doubtless it is out of the question to think of reviv- 
 ing these forms among ourselves. But it is indispensa- 
 ble that the same spirit should animate society amongst 
 us ; that, as it was among the Jews, the idea of the 
 nation should be in full harmony with the idea of 
 religion, and that both should find a firm foundation in 
 the constitution of the family. The Jewish people is 
 the typical people ; above all other nations it is the peo- 
 ple of the homestead, the people of religion and of 
 liberty. 
 
 No I neither the nations of Greece and Eome, nor 
 the Germanic races of the middle ages, nor the great 
 nationalities of modern times, have equalled this type 
 of society. And, besides the religious reason why God 
 permits this singular race to exist in its dispersion 
 among the nations of the earth, is there not a political 
 reason for the strange phenomenon ? May we not find 
 some indication of this in the words of Scripture : " He 
 set the bounds of the nations according to the number 
 of the children of Israel."* Yes ; if they have to learn 
 from us Christianity and the Gospel, we have yet to 
 learn from them the Pentateuch and liberty. 
 
 2. But what was the use, you will perhaps say, of de- 
 livering them from bondage, only to give them forth- 
 with a lato, and, soon after, a Icing f Because a nation 
 is not conceivable without a body of laws and a govern- 
 ment. What, then, is the legal system of the Jews ? 
 What is their government 9 
 
 In the Mosaic economy, contrary to the custom of all 
 other national constitutions, the first and principal 
 place is assigned to the moral law as it is graven upon 
 
 * Deuteronomy, xxxii. 8. 
 
220 DISCOUESES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 the human conscience, though not always recognized 
 by it; to the moral law as it remained after Jesus 
 Christ came to fulfil, not to destroy it ; to the Ten Com- 
 mandments of God, which are not only the teaching of 
 the Church, but the teaching of Nature herself, the 
 soul of civilization and true progress. Such is the law 
 brought by Moses to the people, written by the hand of 
 God himself on the tables of Mount Sinai, and in that 
 temple without images, where the Inyisible shall dwell 
 between the outstretched wings of the cherubim, the 
 book containing this law shall be the only image among 
 men of God's justice and goodness! And in every 
 age, and in every land, obedience to this law shall be 
 the condition upon which depends the dignity of man 
 and the liberty of nations. 
 
 Such being the nature of the Jewish law, we cannot 
 cherish any doubt as to the nature of their government 
 or the person of their king. This government is the- 
 ocracy in its most extreme, but also its purest and most 
 efiicient form ; not the government of society by priests or 
 by kings acting in the name of God, but government in 
 the hands of God himself, speaking directly to the con- 
 science of a people at once free and religious. The 
 Godhead was not to be represented in the temple of the 
 Jews by any image, lest it should be exposed to the idol- 
 atrous propensities of the people. So, also, there was 
 to be no visible royalty among them, because political 
 paganism almost always converted kings into tyrants. 
 
 To-day, Christianity preserves us from this social 
 idolatry. In those days there was but one possible pre- 
 ventive. " Your king," exclaimed Samuel, in the pres- 
 ence of the faithless people that asked for a king like 
 the other nations, " your king is the Lord your God."* 
 
 * 1 Samuel, xii. 12. 
 
THE JEWISH NATIONAL CHURCH. 221 
 
 And Gideon, rejecting the sceptre which they offered 
 him in return for his services, and which they wished 
 to make hereditary in his family, had before replied: 
 "I will not rule over you, neither shall my son rule 
 over you ; the Lord shall rule over you/"* 
 
 And when Samuel was wroth at this passion for servi- 
 tude that he could no longer repress, the Lord com- 
 forted him, saying : " They have not rejected thee, but 
 they have rejected me." And yielding to their foolish 
 desires, God gave them a king ; but by the side of this 
 royalty, or rather above it — above even the Levitical 
 priesthood itself, he raised up the ministry of the proph- 
 ets, through whom he continued to reign, delivering his 
 orders to kings and priests and people. 
 
 Such was the Jewish people in its liberty, in its laws, 
 in its government — a people essentially religious. And 
 if we seek for the lowermost foundation of this struc- 
 ture, so massive even in its ruins, we are surprised — the 
 skeptic, who believes only in material organizations, 
 would be stupefied — to find at the base of this nation- 
 Church and Church-nation, nothing but an idea ! 
 
 One day in the desert the Hebrews said, in sight of 
 the manna that rained down to them from heaven : 
 "Our soul loatheth this light food."f So there are 
 some modern consciences and reasons that would re- 
 volt at this foundation of a Church and a nation — only 
 an idea ! And yet that is all we can find there. But 
 what idea ? It is the idea of the living God ! 
 
 Look at the beginning of the book of Exodus ; you 
 will find there the same things that you have found in 
 Genesis, at the commencement of the history of Abra- 
 ham, Isaac, and Jacob ; a vision, and in that vision, God. 
 To Abraham, God the only Sovereign, Creator, and Pre- 
 
 * Judgep, viii. 23. t Numbere, xxi, 5. 
 
222 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 server had revealed himself under the name Elohim 
 and Adonai. To Moses, the shepherd wandering in the 
 desert, feeding his flock forty years in solitude, at the 
 foot of that Horeb that was afterward to behold him as 
 a nation's lawgiver, God reveals himself once more. 
 He is ever the same God, of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. 
 
 But in this revelation there is an advance, the last ad- 
 vance in monotheism. Elohim now calls himself Jelio- 
 vali. Beneath this new name there is a new conception, 
 a new idea ; it is no longer merely the Creator and Gov- 
 ernor — it is the Being. With painful effort human 
 philosophy lifts itself thus high ; it can rise no higher. 
 In the burning bush Jehovah said : / am that I am. 
 Thou shalt go to the children of Israel; thou shalt 
 bring them hither, that I may make my covenant with 
 them. If they ask thee. Who is the God that hath 
 sent thee to us ? thou shall say : I AM hath sent me.* 
 And there, no longer at the foot of the mountain, but 
 on its summit — there Jehovah sees them gathering 
 themselves together unto him ; there he enters into cov- 
 enant with them. 
 
 Ah! it is well that he does not call himself Lord 
 and Master, as in the days of old. It is well that now 
 he calls himself Jehovah, for this covenant is a cove- 
 nant of supreme liberty. He could have forced himself 
 upon them, for he was strong : he did not ; he suftered 
 himself to plead with them, for he was wise and just! 
 He imposed nothing — he merely proposed. Moses was 
 the ambassador that went up from the people to God, 
 that came down from God to the people, and God and 
 the people held converse with one another. He pro- 
 poses the covenant with its conditions ; the people ac- 
 cept it freely. A living idea, the idea of the living God, 
 
 * Exodus, iii. 13, 14. 
 
THE JEWISH NATIONAL CHUECH. 223 
 
 has been revealed in one word : " Ye saw nothing," said 
 the lawgiver to the people, " ye saw no similitude ; ye 
 heard only a voice ; but it was Jehovah !"* 
 
 Between this living idea and this people an alliance is 
 formed, formed beneath this rock riven by repeated 
 thunderbolts; fit shelter for the stormy wooing between 
 the faithless people and the jealous God! It is more 
 than an alliance freely contracted ; it is a wedlock ! It 
 is to pass down through centuries of discord and centu- 
 ries of peace, through ages of glory and ages of igno- 
 miny ; through the prosperities of David and Solomon, 
 the captivities of Nineveh and Babylon, the scattering 
 abroad to the four winds of heaven : it will subsist de- 
 spite all changes, and throughout all ages. Always, 
 and despite his anger, Jehovah will be faithful to his 
 people. Always, and despite their rebellions, the people 
 shall be faithful to their God ; and together they shall 
 afford for all time the glorious, the unique spectacle of 
 a nation indestructible because it is a Church, a Church 
 immortal because it is a nation. 
 
 Yes. This people has lost everything ; everything 
 has tended to cast it down into the bottomless pit of de- 
 struction ; the land of Canaan has been taken away 
 from under its feet; it has been torn up by the roots, 
 and, as if it had been the prey of ravening beasts, its 
 bleeding fragments have been carried off by the nations 
 on every side. The throne of David, the altar of Aaron 
 — all is in ruins. But when its conquerors are nothing 
 more than a handful of dust, nothing but a name in 
 history, what has this people still left, that it should 
 live on and not cease filling the world with its woes and 
 with its glory ? It has its God ! This people remains 
 a people because it still believes in the God of Sinai ! 
 
 * Deuteronomy, iv, 12. 
 
224 DISCOUKSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 And this God — I do not mefin Jehovah himself, for 
 he is our God, indestructible by virtue of his owii 
 might — but this God, considered as the God of the faith 
 and the obsolete worship of this deathless people, what 
 is there left to him that he should survive all his mis- 
 fortunes ? For everything has gone against him, every- 
 thing has been battering into ruin the religion which 
 he instituted. Logic is against it ; and, what is worse, 
 facts, all history are against it. This waiting for the 
 Messiah is the grandest, wildest perseverance that ever 
 the world saw ! And yet the religion of the Jews stands 
 firm ; the God of the Jews abides still, despite the con- 
 futations of logic and of history. Why ? Because on the 
 side of God there is something mightier, in one sense, 
 than logic and facts — there is the faith of this people ! 
 
 Be this a lesson to us, to all Christian nations — a peo- 
 ple immortal because of its God, a God that cannot be 
 forgotten, because of his people. 
 
LECTURE FIFTH. 
 
 December 27, 1868. 
 
 THE JEWISH CHURCH IN ITS RELATIONS TO 
 THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 
 
 The Church of the Jews presents two very different 
 aspects, according as we look at it in the light of the na- 
 tional life of this people, or in the light of the religious 
 life of mankind. From the first point of view, it is only 
 a national Church, the finished model for the several 
 Churches which, within the pale of the great Catholic 
 Church, derive their life from this common source, and 
 infuse it more directly into the life of the nations whose 
 names they bear; such as the Church of France, the 
 Church of Spain, and, in the happy days of unity, the 
 Church of England. From the second point of view, 
 it expands to the dimensions of the human race itself, it 
 carries in its womb the germ and inception of the Cath- 
 olic Church. 
 
 " But what is the use," I hear some inattentive and 
 fretful spirit say — " what is the use of talking to us so 
 much about the synagogue ? We are no longer in the 
 synagogue, but in the Church." True, but the syna- 
 gogue is only the Church begun; and the Church is 
 only the synagogue developed and completed. The 
 Church of the Jews is the court of which our Church 
 
 10* 
 
226 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 is the temple. Before entering the temple we must 
 cross the court, and even pause there a moment in 
 pious meditation. " Our feet," says the psalmist, " shall 
 stand within thy gates, Jerusalem! Jerusalem is 
 builded as a city that is compact together." In so do- 
 ing we shall do the Church a service. A philosopher 
 who, in many respects, is worthy only of contempt, but 
 whose bold spirit seized and formulated many a truth, 
 Machiavelli, has said, that " in order to the preservation 
 of society, it should constantly be brought back to its 
 beginnings." And Tertullian, who is in all points a 
 higher authority, especially in the Christian pulpit, has 
 stated the same law in these terms: "Christianity 
 maintains itself by means of its holy antiquity, and in 
 no way can we better repair the ravages with which it 
 may be attacked, or threatened, than by bringing it 
 back to its beginnings."* To speak of Judaism, then, 
 is to speak of the Church, and to speak of it in a way 
 eminently adapted to be useful. 
 
 But before considering Judaism in its relatio7i to the 
 Church, it is important to clear the ground of one ob- 
 jection that starts up of itself. How can Judaism 
 stand related to the Church in its character of univer- 
 sality — Judaism, whose distinguishing character is just 
 the opposite, narrow and exclusive ? Because its mis- 
 sion was one of conservatio7i. It was to preserve for 
 better times the true religion, the constituent elements 
 of the universal Church ; and that could only be by se- 
 questrating those elements from the influence of the 
 rest of mankind, then almost wholly corrupt and idola- 
 trous. When we wish to keep some precious perfume 
 that is apt to diffuse itself and evaporate, we shut it up 
 
 * Omnino res Christiana eancta antiquitate stat, nee ruinosa certius repara- 
 bltnr quam si ad originem conseatiir. 
 
THE JEWISH CHURCH AND THE CHRISTIAN. 227 
 
 in a strong, well-sealed vase. So did Moses. This vase 
 he himself carved from the rock of Sinai; or rather, 
 he fashioned it in the body and the soul of this ener- 
 getic, obstinate race, so inaccessible to outside influ- 
 ences. " A stiff-necked people," as he often calls them, 
 whose stiff-neckedness, however, faulty as it was, was 
 none the less a qualification for its special mission. 
 
 Isolated in this little country, twenty leagues in 
 breadth, shut up between the sea, the sand, and Leba- 
 non ; isolated in its purity and pride of blood, that has 
 kept itself irreconcilably aloof from all admixture ; iso- 
 lated by its unsocial character, and that contempt for 
 the stranger which the stranger has repaid with, usury 
 — ^the Jew was especially isolated by his law. And 
 here I am not speaking of the Decalogue, strictly so 
 called, but of the whole body of the Mosaic law, so far 
 as it was peculiar to the Jewish nation. So understood, 
 this law enveloped the Jew, and held him bound up, as 
 it were, in a network of religious and civil prescrip- 
 tions, as numerous as they were minute and compli- 
 cated. It gave to his entire existence a foreign charac- 
 ter, that found no analogy in the rest of the world, and 
 was so exclusively peculiar to his land that this law 
 does not seem possible outside of Palestine. This is so 
 true that the gigantic labor of the Talmudists, after 
 the dispersion, had for its object to render it less im-^ 
 practicable by dint of interpretations and dispensa- 
 tions. " The people," exclaimed Balaam, " shall dwell 
 alone, and shall not be reckoned among the nations !"* 
 
 Still, under the forms of this religion that is so nar- 
 rowly and exclusively national, we find the constituent 
 elements of the grand and eternal religion of mankind 
 — Christianity. These elements are doctrine, moralitt/j 
 
 * Numbers, xxiii. 9. 
 
228 DISCOUESES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 and worsliip, which are identical, for substance, in the 
 Jewish and the Christian Churches. 
 
 1. Doctrine and Morality. — The doctrine is summed 
 up in the idea of God, and in the idea of the Messiah. 
 Of the latter I shall speak by and by. In the present 
 discourse we shall consider only the former. It is in 
 the Jewish race that the successive developments of the 
 idea of God have been accomplished, by the threefold 
 revelation of the patriarchs, the prophets, and the apos- 
 tles. To the patriarchs, God is Elohim — that is, the Al- 
 mighty Euler. He reveals himself to them in his con- 
 nection with the external world, as Creator and Pre- 
 server. To Moses and the prophets, he is Jehovah — that 
 is, the Being of beings, the Absolute. He reveals him- 
 self in his self-existence — " / am that I am ." Sublime 
 definition, which man hath not made, on which he 
 scarcely dares to comment, and which all the schools of 
 philosophy must borrow from the sacred echo of the 
 desert. 
 
 Monotheism is complete. There is nothing more to 
 be added upon the nature of God ; and when the Gos- 
 pel unveils the Trinity it does nothing more — if we may 
 so speak — than deduce the consequences of the princi- 
 ple laid down, and name by their mysterious names the 
 three personal terms of that life which subsists in the 
 Absolute Being — the Father, the Son, and the Holy 
 Spirit. "And the life was manifested."* And yet 
 these names had already been uttered by the prophets, 
 and if they resound with new solemnity in the syna- 
 gogue as it is about to be transformed into the Church, 
 it is because they are uttered by the lips of Jewish 
 apostles, called to teach them to the nations that with- 
 out their preaching would never have known them. 
 
 * 1 John, i. «, 
 
THE JEWISH CHUKCH AND THE CHBISTIAN. 229 
 
 "Go ye into all the world, baptizing the nations into 
 the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the 
 Holy Ghost." Thus shall be fulfilled the word of the 
 prophet Isaiah : " The toilers of Egypt, and the mer- 
 chants of Ethiopia and of the Sabeans shall come over 
 unto thee, and shall fall down unto thee, saying: 
 ^ Surely God is in thee, and there is none else ; there is 
 no God beside.' "* 
 
 You remember that noble, erring spirit, who, having 
 just drunk from the broad rivers and the grand epics 
 of India, found the lake of Tiberias but a pool in com- 
 parison with the Ganges, and the Bible insignificant by 
 the side of the Eamayana. And yet the God of hu- 
 manity is no more Hindoo than he is Greek. The God 
 of mankind is the God of the Jews ! In vain would 
 modern thought, abusing the powers that it derives in 
 part from revelation, seek to change in the future this 
 law of the past, and to create to itself a sublimer and 
 purer God than the historic God of the Old Testament. 
 Smitten with giddiness, it would reel between panthe- 
 ism and atheism, these two forms of recent paganism. 
 " Thus saith the Lord, the King of Israel, and his Ee- 
 deemer, the Lord of Hosts : I am the first and I am the 
 last; and beside me there is no God !"t 
 
 It is from the Jews, then, that mankind has received, 
 in Christianity, the complete idea of the living God; 
 and had it received from them no more than this, it 
 would owe to them a debt of eternal gratitude. But 
 the idea of God is not all. Along with it and the en- 
 tire dogmatic system of which it is the germ and the 
 sum, man has need, besides, of morality. Assuredly, 
 Gentlemen, we do not desire morality independent of 
 doctrine ; but no more do we desire doctrine independent 
 
 ♦ Isaiah, xlv, 14. tibid, xliv. 6. 
 
230 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 of morality. Away with the God who should not say, like 
 the God of the Jews, " Be ye holy, for I am holy !"* 
 Away with the God who should demand of his adorers 
 only a pharisaical preciseness in dogmatic formulas and 
 the ceremonies of worship, and should suffer himself to 
 be venerated by men prostrate in the meanest of all 
 mire, the mire of mysticism ! We would have a God 
 with "6? laiu 171 Ids hand." Et lex in manibus ejus! 
 
 Now, such is the God of the Jews ; and as they have 
 given us God, so they have given us the law. Not now 
 that narrow law of which I spoke at the outset, 
 that has been rent, together with the veil of the 
 temple; — and in vain do the Talmudists seek to put 
 together the fragments. The law that the Jews have 
 given us, the law that we are keeping, that we may 
 some day return it to them, is the law of the Deca- 
 logue, a law grand, holy, majestic like Jehovah, a 
 universal law to which the philosophical or religious 
 legislators of antiquity have never been able to attain. 
 I know that there are admirable things in the religious 
 codes of the East, in the grand philosophical systems of 
 the West. I am foremost to admire the nascent splen- 
 dors, the dawning glories that shine in these ethical 
 systems. But how inferior, when confronted with the 
 morality brought down from Sinai — with the Decalogue 
 of Moses ! There is not, to-day, in Europe, a thought- 
 ful scholar that would dare to make the comparison ; 
 there is not in the whole world a civilized people that 
 would dare to risk the exchange. The morality of man- 
 kind is that which was elaborated in the Jewish code, 
 that which was written by Moses, magnificently com- 
 mented by the prophets. That is our system of morals. 
 It is an everlasting system ! 
 
 * Leviticus, xix. 2. 
 
THE JEWISH CHUKCH AND THE CHRISTIAN. 231 
 
 Let it not be said that morality yaries with the indi- 
 vidual, and still more so with the race and the century, 
 No. Morality never varies ; it is immutable as God — • 
 inflexible as conscience. The applications only of moral 
 principle vary with a most harmonious flexibility, a 
 most productive liberty. But as to morality itself, I re- 
 peat, it varies no more than God varies in the circle of 
 the heavens — no more than conscience in the depths of 
 the human soul. It is immutable ; the old command- 
 ments of Sinai are, for all time, the rule for nations, 
 families, and individuals. The Gospel of Christ and 
 the apostles has but thrown additional light upon it, 
 and cleared away all shadows, especially those of Phari- 
 saism ; and by vindicating morality against the Phari- 
 sees, the Gospel has vindicated Judaism itself, which 
 they had corrupted. 
 
 Were the Christian law, in fact, superior in substance 
 to the Mosaic law, that could only be because the Mo- 
 saic law had failed to recognize inward rigliteousness, or 
 because it had failed to recognize charity, which rises 
 superior to the law of which it is the crown. But neither 
 of these hypotheses is admissible. The law of Moses 
 did not merely condemn the act — it did not merely 
 cleanse the outside of the cup, like the Pharisees, leav- 
 ing corruption within; but it sought to make inside 
 and outside, the visible deed and the inspiring intention, 
 both pure in the eyes of God. Therefore it is that Mo- 
 ses, prohibiting the act, has also forbidden the desire ; 
 he has uttered that word which is at once the glory and 
 the sting of the human conscience, "Thou shalt not 
 covet." 
 
 You deem yourself no murderer, because you have 
 refrained from the act — because your hands have not 
 been imbrued with the blood of your fellow-man. You 
 
232 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 consider yourself pure, because you liaye not attacked 
 the life, nor the property, nor the honor of your brother ; 
 you think yourself exempt from God's judgment and 
 the pangs of conscience, because you have not robbed 
 your neighbor of his chief honor, his chief treasure — 
 dear as life itself — the love, the fidelity of his wife. . . . 
 If you have coveted the blood of your brother, if you 
 have coveted his gold or his honor, if you have looked 
 upon his wife to lust after her, you have committed 
 murder, robber}^, and adultery in the dark recesses of 
 your conscience! "Thou shalt not covet." They are 
 the words of Moses. 
 
 And he adds. Even though 3^ou should not have 
 done this in the depths of your heart, even though you 
 should have respected inward and outward righteous- 
 ness, take heed! righteousness is a very narrow, and 
 contracted, and imj)otent thing, when it comes short of 
 love! "And now, Israel, what doth the Lord thy 
 God require of thee," exclaims the lawgiver, at the end 
 of his commandments — " what doth the Lord thy God 
 require of thee, but to love him with all thy heart and 
 with all thy soul?"* 
 
 And Saint Paul, commenting upon Moses, has said 
 in his turn : " He that loveth another" (for, as Saint 
 John says, let no man think to love God whom he 
 hath not seen, when he loveth not his neighbor whom 
 he hath seen,f) " he that loveth another hath fulfilled 
 the law. For when the law says. Thou shalt not 
 kill ; thou shalt not steal ; thou shalt not bear false wit- 
 ness; thou shalt not commit adultery, it is briefly 
 comprehended in this — Thou shalt love."J; How can 
 we commit murder, falsehood, adultery, when we love ? 
 Love, stronger than righteousness, restrains us in the 
 
 * Deuteronomy, x. 19. 1 1 John, iv. 20. X Romans, xiii. 8-10. 
 
THE JEWISH CHURCH AND THE CHRISTIAN. 233 
 
 presence of all those boundary lines that passion wonld 
 transgress. Saint Paul was right. " Love is the fulfill- 
 ing of the law," even the law as Moses understood it. 
 Saint Augustine is right when he concludes : " Love, 
 only love, and thou shalt do what thou wilt." Ama et 
 fac quod vis. 
 
 Love, then, is the last word of Deuteronomy, and it 
 is the first word of the Gospel. Jesus Christ only 
 called this commandment " new" because it was new 
 to the Pharisees of his age, as it ever has been and must 
 be for all Pharisees in every age ; but he said : " It is 
 the great commandment of the law : Thou shalt love 
 the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy 
 strength, and with all thy mind,"* also ; for God must 
 be loved with the mind as well as the heart. And the 
 second commandment is like unto the first: Thou 
 shalt love thy neighbor. The patriarchs and the 
 prophets have summed up everything in these two com- 
 mandments. 
 
 I conclude. Gentlemen, that our morality is the mo- 
 rality of the Jews, as their doctrine is our doctrine; and 
 consequently, when I speak of the synagogue I speak 
 of our own religion, our own Church. When I sit 
 down with the patriarchs and the prophets, I sit with 
 my masters, my teachers, my forerunners in Christ! 
 " Search the Scriptures," said Jesus Christ, at a time 
 when as yet there was no New Testament; "search 
 Moses and the prophets ; they are they which testify of 
 me!"t I am right, then, in saying, with St. Augustine, 
 that Christianity is Judaism completed, as Judaism was 
 Christianity begun. " Vefus testamentum est occ2iUatio 
 novif et novum revelatio veteris." 
 
 2. Worship), ceremonies, sacrifices, prayer. — Worship 
 
 ♦ Matthew, xxli. 28. t John, v. 89. 
 
234 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 is the living bond between morality and doctrine, the 
 complete and supreme unfolding of the religious idea 
 in the human soul and of the religious soul before God. 
 And yet it is the most varying part of religion. We 
 know what diversified forms it assumes and presents 
 even in the Catholic Church itself. The primitive 
 Church beheld the prevalence, at one and the same 
 time, of the greatest unity of love and faith, and of the 
 greatest freedom of usage and rite. Later, much later, 
 a movement toward uniformity manifested itself, prov- 
 identially designed, no doubt, by that Spirit that does 
 not cease to govern the Church. But, even to-day, is 
 not the Latin ritual, in certain Churches and religious 
 bodies, diversified with authorized or rather consecrated 
 differences ? And is there not, alongside of the Latin 
 rite, the Greek rite, or rather the Oriental rites ? 
 
 It is understood, then, that the ceremonies of the 
 Church of Moses have not all been transferred to the 
 Christian Church. But a great number of them are 
 perpetuated here, and the child of Israel, assuredly, 
 would not feel himself altogether in a strange place 
 were he to consent to sit down in our temples, and look 
 around him. Astonished and delighted, he would see 
 once more what he had believed to be buried and lost be- 
 neath the ruins of Zion ; the golden candlesticks with 
 their mystic lights, the ever-burning lamp attesting the 
 presance of Jehovah ; the smoking censers, the instru- 
 ments of music, the songs, and the rhythmic march of 
 our processions, recalling the sacred dances before the 
 ark. . He would find, along with the numberless choris- 
 ters, the Levites, clad in robes of white linen, and the 
 priests in their glittering vestments, standing around 
 the altar like a grove of cedars of Lebanon.* 
 
 * Psalm xcii. 12, 13. 
 
THE JEWISH CHURCH AND THE CHKISTIAN. 235 
 
 He would gaze upon the water flowing as in the an- 
 cient purifications, but with greater efficacy, and the 
 shew-bread upon the altar, and those religious and fra- 
 ternal feasts of the new Passoyer ; and that Lamb, eaten 
 without the breaking of a bone of it. Lamb ever immo- 
 lated, and yet ever immortal ! He would recognize his 
 Passover festival in ours, his Sabbath in our Lord's day, 
 and how many other features taken from his Church 
 and preserved in ours! And are not our basilicas and 
 our cathedrals the worthy inheritors of "Solomon's tem- 
 ple, and the more glorious temple of Zerubbabel ? 
 
 Some, it is true, of these ceremonies of the Hebrew 
 ritual, so rich and so varied, have disappeared ; the 
 others have been preserved in the Catholic ritual : but 
 still we can say of them all, that they have survived in 
 this ritual, survived in newness of life, for they were all 
 symbolical, all prefigurative of the future worship of 
 Christian humanity. 
 
 But however great the ceremonies may be, they are 
 only the outward vestment of the worship ; the body is 
 not there, still less the soul. The body of worship is 
 the sacrifice ; the soul is prayer. Here, then, the simi- 
 larity, I go farther and say, the spiritual identity be- 
 comes more striking. 
 
 The sacrifices of the Jews ! Be not alarmed. Gentle- 
 men, lest I enter here into details ; we will come back 
 to them subsequently ; for I shall not grow weary of 
 the Church of the Jews any more than of the Church 
 of the patriarchs, and I shall always revert to the sources 
 of our Catholic Church, to reinvigorate myself and 
 you with the spirit of our origin. For the present, I 
 shall only ask myself. What is the origin of the Chris- 
 tian worship, from the sacrificial point of view ? and I 
 reply : It is the blood-offering of Judaism. 
 
236 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 Oh ! what an odor of blood in the temple at Jerusa- 
 lem ! It is worship — the expiation of sin by blood ; it 
 is the reconciliation of God and man by blood. Saint 
 Paul, explaining Moses, says in his epistle to the He- 
 brews, " And by the law are almost all things purged 
 with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remis- 
 sion."* 
 
 ye plains of Bashan, ye broad pastures of Gilead, ye 
 fertile hills of Judea, how many flocks ye were wont to 
 feed ! But your lambs, your many bulls, did not exist 
 merely for the wealth of families ; every year they were 
 led by thousands to the temple at Jerusalem ; they were 
 brought lowing and bleating to the brazen altar, whose 
 unquenchable thirst was always crying out for blood. 
 The priests, exclusively engaged, so to speak, in this 
 sacred immolation, raised the knife, thrust it in, and 
 drew it reeking from the bowels of these victims. Blood 
 flowed in torrents through the gutters around the altar. 
 But never did the sacred stream spring up that could 
 cleanse the world! The prophet — the priest of the 
 spirit, elevated, according to the real institute of Moses, 
 above these priests of matter — the prophet said to them 
 in the name of the Lord : " Enough, I am full of your 
 burnt-offerings. Will I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink 
 the blood of goats ? I am full."f " Cease, ye priests of 
 matter, cease ye Pharisaic priests," exclaims Malachi, 
 "or I will spread dung upon your faces, even the dung of 
 your solemn feasts."^ There was something more, then, 
 than this blood ; the prophet knew it, he told it in bold 
 language, and the priests listened to him. 
 
 What shall wash away sin ? Ah, in these times we 
 have got beyond the feeling of sin, and the need of ex- 
 piation. You remember. Gentlemen, the hero of Shak- 
 
 ♦ Hebrewp, ix. 22. t Isaiah, i. 11 ; Psalm, 1, 13. $ Malachi, ii. 3. 
 
THE JEWISH CHURCH AND THE CHRISTIAN. 237 
 
 speare's tragedy, who, alone, in the dead of night, looks 
 at his hand, stained with innocent blood, and cries : 
 
 *' What hands are here ? Ha ! they pluck out mine eyes ! 
 Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood 
 Clean from my hand ?" 
 
 Nothing but blood can cleanse blood ; it is only the 
 blood of a God that can wash away sin ; the sweet savor 
 of the blood of Christ alone that can remove all spots, 
 ransom all crimes. The prophets knew this; they lifted 
 up their hands to the future, they lifted up their eyes to 
 the hills, and pointed to a cross ! 
 
 Behold the true blood ! Behold the sacred stream 
 that has purified the soul ! Behold the worship of the 
 synagogue restored to its true idea. Jesus, by his blood, 
 has taken away all our shame. Worship through 
 blood, expiation by blood, is what makes the Christian. 
 The man who should believe in the divinity of Jesus 
 Christ, without believing in the efficacy of his blood — 
 in the necessity of Calvary, in the only and sovereign 
 expiation of the cross, that man would no longer be a 
 Christian ; he would no longer have the worship of the 
 Catholic Church ; he would no longer have the worship 
 through blood, the atonement for sin and the reconcili- 
 ation with God through blood. The Christian is the 
 one who has the worship oi the cross — the worship of 
 Calvary; and, if he pursues to the end the needful un- 
 derstanding of this blood, this Christian is the Catholic 
 who goes from Calvary to the altar, and says, with Saint 
 Paul, the shedding of this blood is no longer needed for 
 our ransom ; " for by one offering he hath perfected for- 
 ever them that are sanctified."* But this blood, that it 
 
 ♦ Hebrews, x. 14. 
 
238 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 may be applied to us, must flow over us indiYidually, as 
 it has flowed over the race of man universally. " This 
 bread that we break," adds St. Paul, "is it not the 
 communion of the body of Christ ? The cup of blessing 
 which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of 
 Christ ?"* That is the worship of the Catholic Church 
 — the worship of the blood on Calvary and the blood on 
 the altar. 
 
 But, however high the sacrifice may be above the 
 ceremonies, it has need of a soul, a voice that shall in- 
 terpret it : this voice is the voice of prayer. Now the 
 prayer of the Jewish Church is the Psalms. 
 
 Strange people ! One day there arose among them a 
 man who united in himself all their faults and all 
 excellencies, a man more astonishing than the people 
 itself — David ! A nature essentially religious, like the 
 Jewish nature, and, like it again, ardently, profoundly 
 passionate ; thrown upon life as upon a stage, amid the 
 adventures of the warrior and the visions of the proph- 
 et, under the touches, so diversified and yet so harmoni- 
 ous, of human life on one side and supernatural revela- 
 tion on the other, David resounded like a harp, and 
 from his heart-strings, now wrung with anguish, now 
 thrilled with joy and happiness — from his heart, open 
 now toward earth, and anon toward heaven ; from the 
 breast of the adulterous and bloody lover of Bathsheba, 
 the wife of Uriah ; from the humiliated, repentant, and 
 sanctified breast of the forefather of Jesus Christ, there 
 came forth cries — my friends, cries that have not their 
 like in the records of the human soul, and yet to which 
 everything in the human soul must tend. 
 
 Mankind has not heard their like before nor since, and 
 thus it is that it never wearies of repeating them. . . , 
 
 * 1 Corinthians, x. 16. 
 
THE JEWISH CHURCH AND THE CHRISTIAN. 239 
 
 Tears and sobs — tears of the heart and groanings of the 
 soul ! Nights spent upon that guilty couch, wet with 
 his tears, clutched in his arms, gnashed upon by his 
 teeth, upon which he tosses in the thorns of remorse or 
 the thorns of temptation! Nights spent in prayer 
 upon that guilty and solitary couch, on that penitent 
 couch from which he now rises, in the sweet and happy 
 calm of pardon won, with quivering lips, with trembling 
 bones : " All my bones shall say, Lord, who is like unto 
 thee !"* — to thee who leadest me down to the pit, who 
 leadest me back from death unto life, from hell unto 
 heaven ! 
 
 Behold the prayer of the Jew who thought but of 
 himself, his adulteries, his murders, his son dead at 
 eight days old, to whose icy feet his lips were pressed, of 
 his throne contested by an enemy, of the grand hopes 
 of his future, that " of the fruit of his loins should be 
 raised up Christ to sit upon the throne."f And while 
 thus pouring out his soul, while making the confession 
 of his life, this man becomes, as he has so well been 
 named, " the prince of prayer !" 
 
 Yes ; the prince of individual, the prince of universal 
 prayer. Gaze toward the setting of the sun, listen to- 
 ward the rising thereof, wherever the Catholic Church 
 is to be found — what do I say? — wherever the syna- 
 gogue, wherever the place of Christian worship is to be 
 found, whether in the fold of the schismatic but Chris- 
 tian East, or in the fold of Protestantism — everywhere 
 I hear lifted up the grand prayer of the Psalms of Da- 
 vid ! All mankind is praying with his words, weeping 
 with his tears, hoping with his hopes. David had said, 
 " My praise shall be of thee, in the great congregation."! 
 And at the same time, outside of the temples, in the 
 
 * Pi*alm XXXV. 10. t Acts, ii, 30. t Pealm xxii. 25. 
 
240 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 sanctuary of each household, behold that young man 
 struggling against his youthful passions, that old man 
 shuddering before the open grave, that wife, that 
 mother, that poor weeping woman, whose tears have 
 been her meat in the night-season — what do their lips 
 murmur ? Miserere met, Beus ! " Have mercy upon me, 
 God, according to thy loving kindness." " Out of 
 the depths have I called unto thee, Lord ! Lord, hear 
 my voice! If thou. Lord, shouldst mark iniquities, 
 Lord, who shall stand ? But thou art good ; more 
 than in any human heart, with thee there is mercy, and 
 with thee is plenteous redemption."* 
 
 Let us, then, my friends, remember Israel and Zion, 
 and, summing up Israel and Zion in one great and emi- 
 nently practical fact, let us remember the Bible. Israel 
 is not the tents of Shem, not the tabernacles of the des- 
 ert, not the temples of Solomon and Zerubbabel. All 
 these have vanished away. What gives Israel its un- 
 failing life is its God and its Bible. Israel has em- 
 bodied itself in its Bible ; the whole of it is the work of 
 Israel; and that, says Saint Paul, is its crowning 
 glory, t 
 
 The Church of Jesus Christ, the Catholic Church, 
 has not the gift of inspiration. We have not among 
 us a single sage, a single inspired pontiff that has the 
 power, even had he the wish, to write a line that should 
 be the word of God. We have pontiffs, doctors, coun- 
 cils assisted by God, but not inspired by him ; assisted 
 to study, to understand, to explain the inspired word 
 of the Church of the Jews, the word written, from the 
 first book of Genesis to the last word of the New Tes- 
 tament, by a Jewish pen ! The Jewish Church, from 
 the prophets to the apostles, has been the only mouth 
 
 ♦ Psalms, 11. 1 ; cxxx. 1, 2, 3, 7. t Romans, iii. 2. 
 
THE JEWISH CHURCH AND THE CHRISTIAN. 241 
 
 inspired of God, of whose utterances it could be said, 
 " The mouth of the Lord hath spoken them."* 
 
 And yet what do we do with the Bible ? Is this book 
 the object of our study, our preaching, our teaching ? 
 Is it the light that shines upon the family, the State, 
 the soul ? Let it not be said to me : The Church pro- 
 hibits the reading of the Bible. That is a terrible cal- 
 umny ! The early Christians read the Bible and medi- 
 tated upon it day and night, and the more zealous ones 
 learnt it from beginning to end by heart.. The early 
 Christian priests had two equally sacred compartments 
 in their tabernacle, the one for the eucharist, the food 
 of the heart, the other for the Bible, the food of the 
 mind. Since when has the Church changed? Since 
 when has the spirit of the Church been divided against 
 the spirit of the Church ? It is a terrible calumny, I 
 repeat. What the Church does forbid, is reading it 
 without legitimate precautions, reading it without the 
 spirit of docility, in a spirit of rebellion, heresy, and 
 schism. But reading, meditating upon the Scriptures, 
 is evermore the true spirit of the Church of Jesus Christ! 
 
 What then ? Do we read the Bible ? Do we not too 
 often seek our knowledge in merely profane authors, in 
 the discoveries of man ? And when we refer to the 
 traditions of the Church, do we not practically give the 
 first place to mere church-doctors ! No one venerates 
 more than I do the Fathers of the Church — Athana- 
 sius, Basil, Augustine ; the great school-men of the 
 middle ages — Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventura, Scotus ; 
 the great modern theologians — I need name only the 
 king of them all, Bossuet ! Yes. But Bossuet, Scotus, 
 Bonaventura, Thomas Aquinas, Basil, Athanasius, and 
 all the rest, are not the hooh. Give me the iooTc, the in- 
 
 ♦ leaiah, xl. 5. 
 11 
 
242 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 spired word ! Let me rest upon the foundation of the 
 apostles and the prophets ; let my thirsty roots pene- 
 trate even to the fatness of the fruitful olive-tree. The 
 Bible, the Holy Scriptures, the light of the family, of 
 the nation, of the soul, this is the book of the Church ! 
 And our branches will be thin, and our foliage with- 
 ered, and our blossoms will fall before they can bear 
 fruit, as long as we do not steep them afresh in the 
 knowledge, in the light, in the practice of this divine 
 book! 
 
 While rationalism, this modern force from the clois- 
 ters of German universities, is trying to find its way 
 into the book independently of the Church and of the 
 Spirit that inspired it, thereby transforming it into one 
 of the most active and formidable poisons, corruptio 
 optimi pessima ; while rationalism is doing this scholar- 
 like but mischievous work, we shut the book, or rather 
 we do not open it, nor seek in it for a remedy. 
 
 " I looked," said Ezekiel, " and behold a hand was 
 stretched out to me from heaven ; and lo ! a mysterious 
 book. It was written within and without — without, in 
 an earthly language, and in human characters; and 
 within, in the language of heaven, and in letters from 
 the hand of God. It was a closed book, and the hand 
 reached it forth to me ; and a voice said : Eat this book !" 
 Woe to him who, able to read it, reads it not ! But woe 
 also to him who reads it only with the eye of a haughty 
 intellect ! It must be eaten with the heart. " son of 
 man, rise and eat this book ! And I took the book, and 
 it was in my mouth as honey for sweetness ; and I was 
 filled with its substance; and the voice said to me, 
 again, Son of man, go, get thee to the house of Israel, 
 and speak with my words unto them."t 
 
 * Ezekiel, ii. 8. 
 
THE JEWISH CHUECH AND THE CHRISTIAN. 243 
 
 Kise, then, Chiircli of Christ ! Rise as one man ! 
 Take the book from the divine hand that offers it, 
 meditate upon it with your understanding, devour it 
 with your love and your heart, and then shall you be 
 the masters of the world ; you shall speak to the children 
 of idolatry; the world shall hear you, for your lips 
 shall be no longer your own, but God'(3 ! The lips of 
 the Christian soul are for the word of the Lord, and it 
 is that word which they never cease to declare ! 
 
LECTURE SIXTH. 
 
 January 3, 1869. 
 
 CONFLICT BETWEEN THE LETTER AND THE 
 SPIRIT, IN THE JEWISH CHURCH. 
 
 Tlie Letter hilleth, hut the Spirit giveth life.* I take 
 this text of Saint Paul as the starting-point and sum- 
 mary of this whole discourse. I have already remarked 
 in the Jewish Church two elements mutually opposed, 
 but alike necessary to the object of this Church : an 
 element of separation, in order to the conservation of 
 the sacred deposit of revelation, and an element of uni- 
 versality, in order to the diffusion of this revelation 
 among all mankind. These two elements I call, in the 
 words of the apostle, the letter and the spirit. By the 
 letter, the Bible, that is, the Old Testament, tends to 
 separation ; by the spirit, it tends to universality. The 
 intestine struggle between these two elements makes up 
 the whole interior history of Judaism; and the open 
 rupture between them, in the time of Christ, is the 
 commencement of the Christian era, and the inaugura- 
 tion of the Catholic Church. As sons of this holy and 
 infallible Church, we no longer need to fear the tri- 
 umph of the letter ; but as members of a Church com- 
 posed and governed, after all, by fallible and sinful men, 
 we ought not to pass over its internal conflicts. Let us, 
 
 * 2 Corinthians, iii. 6. 
 
THE LETTER AND THE SPIKIT. 245 
 
 then, observe the instructive spectacle of the combats 
 between the letter and the spirit within the pale of Ju- 
 daism, considering in order, in the Jewish Church, the 
 representatives of the letter and the representatives of 
 the spirit. 
 
 I. The reinesentatives of the letter. — These were the 
 Icings and the priests. The kings represented it in pol- 
 itics — the priests, in religion. 
 
 1. David exclaimed, "He shall have dominion also 
 from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the 
 
 earth Yea, all kings shall fall down before him, 
 
 all nations shall serve him."* And beholding, in this 
 radiant future, that one of his descendants, whom he 
 called the Anointed, the Christ, as above all others, he 
 said, or rather God said through him, " Sit thou at my 
 right hand until I make thine enemies thy footstool. 
 Eule thou, and thy people shall be willing in the day of 
 thy power, in the beauties of holiness from the womb 
 of the morning: thou hast the dew of thy youth." f 
 
 In this throne of the son of David and of the Son of 
 God, there were, then, two royalties united : the tem- 
 poral kingdom, that should reign over the house of 
 Jacob, restricted to the narrow limits of its own blood, 
 — " He shall reign over the house of Jacob," — and the 
 kingdom that should extend over all mankind with- 
 in the broad bounds of the faith of Abraham — " Of his 
 kingdom there shall be no end." J; 
 
 The danger was of confounding these two kingdoms, 
 and, as always happens in such cases, of absorbing the 
 heavenly kingdom in the earthly. It was to this dan- 
 ger that the synagogue succumbed. 
 
 In a national Church, or in a religious nation, noth- 
 ing is easier, nothing more fatal, than this confusion be- 
 
 * Psalm Ixxii. 8, 11. t Pealm ex. 1-3. X Luke, i. 83. 
 
246 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 tween religious forms and political forms. Great even 
 in its merely human character — for it is human both in 
 its function and in its origin — the business of govern- 
 ment becomes greater yet when it gravitates toward 
 the heavenly spheres of morality and religion ; but re- 
 ligion belittles itself, abdicates its own dignity, shocks 
 all the instincts of human nature, and at the same 
 time wounds all the attributes of divine majesty, when 
 it puts on the forms of politics, catches up its ideas and 
 characteristics, and pursues its paltry interests. 
 
 Yet such was the kingdom that the kings and their 
 followers perpetually dreamed of bestowing upon hu- 
 manity. For a single moment, under David, the pro- 
 phetic ideal briefly seen and described by this prophet- 
 king, shines with a pure lustre. But it soon veils itself 
 behind the worldly, let us say the heathen, ideal of 
 Solomon. 
 
 Solomon was a great king, especially at the outset ; 
 he was always great, even in his errors and his crimes. 
 But, intoxicated with the knowledge of nature that he 
 possessed, according to the inspired word, "from the 
 cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop that groweth on the 
 wall," Solomon, not content with the knowledge that 
 lifteth up to God, wished also to possess all the riches 
 and all the amorous delights of earth ; he built palaces 
 little like the palm-tree beneath which Deborah judged 
 Israel, or the tents under which David and his soldiers 
 camped ; palaces so sumptuous that the queen of Sheba 
 came from far Arabia to admire them. He had harems 
 filled with women, mostly strangers and idolaters: 
 seven hundred sultanas and three hundred concubines ! 
 And then, this intoxication, rising — I will not say from 
 his heart, but from his senses, to his reason — he fell 
 down with his wives at the feet of all their idols, ven- 
 
THE LETTER AND THE SPIRIT. 247 
 
 erating, under tliese poetical symbols, that great nature 
 which is the handiwork of God, yet which so easily 
 usurps the place of its Creator ! 
 
 Such was the spectacle presented by Jerusalem under 
 David's successor. A revolting spectacle, but extenu- 
 ated, at least during the reign of Solomon himself, by a 
 glory which he was not mighty enough to bequeath to 
 his heirs in Judah, and his rivals in Israel. He be- 
 queathed to them only his pride, his sensuality, and his 
 idolatries, and when the two hostile but kindred mon- 
 archies finally succumbed beneath the blows of those 
 powerful neighbors, those northern conquerors, whose 
 favors they had so often courted, whose arms they 
 had so often defied, they left behind them, in the 
 history of the holy people, only a long trail of blood 
 and filth. 
 
 That is the kingdom of Judah, the kingdom of 
 Israel ; that is what was proposed to the world under 
 the name of the kingdom of God ! 
 
 The Jews had been so perverted by their kings, or 
 rather — let us not be unjust to the kings — the Jews had 
 been so perverted by their national pride, that they 
 could not rid themselves of this gross ideal, and they 
 forever dreamed of ruling over the nations, under the 
 desecrated name of the kingdom of God, with the sword 
 and the rod of iron. When Jesus, their true Messiah, 
 came to them, they knew him not ; and this was, in a 
 great measure, because he had rejected this kingdom, 
 too narrow and too low for him, and because he had pro- 
 claimed the true principle of the kingdom of God, the 
 spiritual kingdom which is in the world, but "not of 
 the world," a spiritual kingdom that "comes to bear 
 witness to the truth."* They preferred the seditious 
 
 ♦John, xviil. 36,37. 
 
248 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 Barabbas, who had fought and shed blood in the streets 
 of Jerusalem to deliver them from the Komans ; they 
 preferred all the false messiahs, all the lying, impotent 
 christs, who ended their senseless intrigues by bringing 
 on the ruin of the nation, the city, and the temple that 
 they pretended to save. 
 
 Break, then, thou vase of national Judaism, that 
 God, by the hand of Moses, had fashioned with such 
 loving care ; royal, priestly vase, be broken, since thou 
 wouldst have it so ! Thou shouldst have preserved for 
 all men the treasures of religious life ; thou hast chosen 
 rather to shut thyself up in jealous selfishness; be 
 broken, and from thy scattered fragments let that fra- 
 grant balm go forth, which is for the healing of the 
 nations ! 
 
 " The vase was broken," says the Gospel, " and the 
 house was filled with the odor of the ointment."* 
 
 2. What the kings did in politics the priests did in 
 religion. In truth, if it is a fatal error to confound re- 
 ligious and political forms, it is a still more terrible 
 blunder to confound, in religion itself, the accidental, 
 accessory forms with the essential ones. Every religion, 
 especially the true, the Christian religion, which ex- 
 tends back to Moses, Abraham, Adam, is not merely a 
 religious idea, a religious sentiment, as contemporary 
 rationalism is pleased to say. It is a fact, and therefore 
 it has positive forms ; it is a living fact, and therefore it 
 has a settled organization. But the religious fact, ex- 
 isting in time and space, should take into account the 
 conditions of space, so diversified, and the conditions of 
 time, so changeful. Its organization is to exercise its 
 functions amid the most dissimilar, even the most con- 
 tradictory surroundings. Hence, besides the substantial 
 
 * Johu, iii. 3. 
 
THE LETTEB AND THE SPIRIT. 249 
 
 and permanent forms, the accessory and shifting forms, 
 with which the former are, so to speak, invested, ac- 
 cording to the exigencies of race or epoch. By en- 
 deavoring to confound religion with its accessory forms, 
 peculiar to such and such a country and race, we should 
 cut it off from the great current of humanity in the pres- 
 ent. By endeavoring to bind it down to worn-out forms, 
 we should cut it off from the great current of humanity in 
 the future. We should be forgetting what Saint Paul said 
 to the old synagogue : " That which waxeth old is ready 
 to vanish away."* We could not render religious unity 
 a worse service. Now, it was on this very rock that 
 the Jewish priesthood made shipwreck. 
 
 I would not speak of this priesthood otherwise than 
 with great respect. Last Sunday we breathed the per- 
 fume of its censers, and listened to the harmony of its 
 chants. The rod of Aaron had not budded for nothing 
 in its hands, and in its tabernacle we have almost 
 adored the body of Jesus Christ prefigured in its manna, 
 the word of Jesus Christ anti-cipated in its Decalogue. 
 But, after all, however respectable the Levitical priest- 
 hood might have been in its origin and in its essence, 
 it no longer deserves our respect in the corruption that 
 came over it toward the end — at least over the greater 
 part of its members. This corruption has retained its 
 special name, Pharisaism. 
 
 Is Pharisaism hypocrisy ? No; whatever our diction- 
 ary may sa}^, Pharisaism is not, in the biblical sense, 
 hypocrisy, unless we mean that most subtle form of 
 hypocrisy, the most innocent and at the same time the 
 most fatal — the hypocrisy that knows not itself, ai d 
 considers itself sincerity. Jesus often said, " Pharisees, 
 hypocrites !" but he explained this word by auothe^-r- 
 
 * Hebrews, viii. jg. 
 11* 
 
250 DISCOUKSES OF FATHEE HYACINTHE. 
 
 " thou blind Pharisee !" And the great Apostle Paul, 
 himself a Pharisee, brought up, as he says, at the feet 
 of the Pharisee Gamaliel, pays them this remarkable 
 tribute, that they really had " a zeal for God, but not 
 according to knowledge."* 
 
 Pharisaism, then, in its deepest aspect, is religious 
 blindness — the blindness of priests who are put in trust 
 with the letter, who think that the less they explain it, 
 the safer they keep it; a blindness that extends to 
 every point of the sacred deposit ; blindness in doctrine 
 — the predominance of formula oyer truth ; blindness 
 in morals — the predominance of outward works oyer 
 inward righteousness; blindness in worship — the pre- 
 dominance of outward rites oyer religious feeling. 
 
 Blindness in doctrine. — The Pharisees taught the 
 truth. " The Scribes and Pharisees sit in Moses' seat," 
 said Jesus Christ ; " belieye what they say, but do not 
 what they do."f There is no reyealed idea, enlighten- 
 ing and quickening the world, without a word to con- 
 tain it — lucerna verlum tuu7n, Dornine.X The Lord's 
 light is in a lamp. But if the word closes itself to- 
 gether, and shuts up the idea as in a narrow and jealous 
 prison — if it darkens it, stifles it — that is Pharisaism. 
 This is what the Apostle Paul called keeping the truth, 
 but keeping it captiye in unrighteousness. § This is the 
 thing which extorted from the mild lips of the Sayiour 
 Jesus that terrible anathema, "Woe unto you! Ye have 
 taken away the key of knowledge ; for ye enter not in 
 yourselves, and them that are entering in ye hinder.|| 
 Woe unto you !" 
 
 In morals, it is outward works, the multiplicity of 
 human observances, piled up — a miserable and tyranni- 
 
 ♦ Romans, x. 2. t Matthew, xxiil. 8. $ Psalm cxix. 105. 
 
 I Romans, i. 18. ii Lnke, xL 52. 
 
THE LETTER AND THE SPIRIT. 251 
 
 cal burden upon the conscience, making it forget, in 
 unwholesome dreams, that it is an honest man's, a 
 Christian's conscience. The Pharisees said to Jesus 
 Christ, " Why do not thy disciples wash their hands be- 
 fore eating, according to the tradition of the elders ?" 
 And the Saviour answered them, " Why do ye trample 
 under foot the commandments of God to keep the com- 
 mandments of man ?"* 
 
 As to the rites, they are necessary in worship, as 
 formulas are necessary in doctrine — woe to him who 
 rends asunder the formulas of biblical revelation or the 
 formulas of the Church's definition !— as works are ne- 
 cessary to morality — ^woe to him who slumbers in a 
 barren, dead faith, without works ! 
 
 Worship ! why, it is the very blossoming of the reli- 
 gious soul; the emotion of the heart ascending fragrant 
 and harmonious into the presence of God. It is the 
 action from within outward ; it is also the reaction, no 
 less legitimate, no less salutary, from without inward. 
 The ritual arouses religious sentiment, gives birth to 
 inspiration in the conscience and the heart. 
 
 But Avhen there is no longer any religious feeling, 
 when the heart and the conscience are bending under 
 the burden of outward observances, " Full well,'' says 
 Christ, again — for the Gospel is full of these things, the 
 Gospel is the perpetual condemnation of Pharisaism — 
 " full w^ell did Isaiah prophesy of you. This people hon- 
 oreth me with lips and hands, but their heart is far 
 from me."t 
 
 This is the yoke of which Saint Peter spoke — '* a yoke 
 put upon the neck of the disciples which neither our 
 fathers nor we were able to bear."| This is the smoth- 
 ered and oppressed inspiration that they thought to send 
 
 ♦ Matthew, xv. 1-6. t Ibid., xv. 7. X Acts, xv. 10. 
 
252 DISCOUESES OF FATHEK HYACINTHE. 
 
 forth over the face of the earth to renew it. This is 
 Judaism — not the Judaism of Moses, but the worn-out 
 Judaism of the Scribes and Pharisees ! When the 
 whole world, by the eloquent voices of Greece and Home, 
 was calling on the East for deliverers ; when by the agita- 
 tion of barbarian tribes, moving, all at once, in the depths 
 of Germany and Scythia, the world was craving light 
 and civilization — that is what they offered it ! Judaism 
 made itself more and more of an impossibility the more 
 the world had need of it ; blind and fanatical Pharisaism 
 threw itself across the threshold of the kin^om of heav- 
 en, to prevent the generations of man from entering ! 
 
 Get ye behind me, ye men of the letter ! get ye be- 
 hind me, ye foes of the human race ! " They are con- 
 trary to all men," as Saint Paul has said. And thou, 
 Lord Jesus, arise, my Saviour and my Lord — thou who 
 in all thy gentle life wast but twice in anger! . . . Jesus 
 had no wrath against poor sinners; he sat at their 
 table, and when the adulterous woman fell at his feet, 
 blushing with shame and weeping with remorse, he 
 lifted her up, only to absolve her : Go in peace and sin 
 no more ! He had no anger against heretics and schis- 
 matics ; he sat upon Jacob's well beside the Samaritan 
 woman, and announced to her, with the salvation which 
 is of the Jews, the worship which is in spirit and in 
 truth. But twice was Jesus angry : once, scourge in 
 hand, against- those who sold the things of God in the 
 temple; once, anathema in mouth, against those who 
 perverted the things of God in the law. 
 
 Kise then, meek Lamb, in thy pacific wrath against the 
 enemies of all men and against the real enemies of the 
 kingdom of God; rise, and drive them from the temple! 
 
 Thus it was that the synagogue perished, and" the 
 Christian Church arose. 
 
THE LETTER AND THE SPIRIT. 253 
 
 II. TJie represe7itaUves of the spirit. — I have told yon, 
 and you know already, that we have nothing to fear 
 from the triumphs of the letter. Still, we cannot ignore 
 the combats, the temptations, not merely of every priest, 
 but of all piety ; the temptation of believers as well as 
 priests is to the predominance of the letter over the 
 spirit. Let us glorify God for having suffered us to be 
 born in an infallible and holy Church, which Jesus 
 Christ protects and shall protect until the final accom- 
 plishment of his work, through succeeding ages, against 
 all the errors of our mind and all the weaknesses of our 
 will! 
 
 But what voice is this that strikes upon my ear ? It 
 is no longer the harsh voice of earthly dominion or 
 carnal legislation ; still, it is not a Christian voice, not 
 the voice of Jesus Christ that I was repeating just now ; 
 and yet, although long before Jesus Christ, how it resem- 
 bles him ! 
 
 "Hear," says the voice, "hear the word of the Lord, 
 ye rulers of Sodom ; give ear unto the law of our God, 
 ye people of Gomorrah," and yet it is speaking of the 
 Church of Sion ! " To what purpose is the multitude 
 of your sacrifices unto me ? I am full of the burnt- 
 ofierings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts ; and I de- 
 light not in the blood of bullocks, or of rams, or of he- 
 goats ; your new moons and your appointed feasts my 
 soul hateth ; they are a trouble unto me ; I am weary 
 to bear them ; your incense is an abomination unto me. 
 When ye spread forth your hands, I will hide my eyes 
 from you ; yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not 
 hear ! Wash you ; make you clean ; put away the evil 
 of your doings ; cease to do evil ; learn to do well ; seek 
 judgment, relieve the oppressed ; judge the fatherless, 
 plead for the widow. Come now, and let us reason to- 
 
254 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 gether, saitli the Lord. Though your sins be as scarlet, 
 they shall be white as snow !"* 
 
 This is the Yoice of the religion of Moses, in all its 
 energy and all its clearness. What a difference between 
 it and Pharisaism, of which I have just spoken, that 
 letter which stifled, with its fatal constrictions, the 
 reason, the conscience, and the heart ! And how like 
 the Gospel, that law of Jesus Christ which has but two 
 commandments; an insatiable hunger, an unquench- 
 able thirst after righteousness, and a heart ever open in 
 compassion ! Ah ! I feel that we have here no longer a 
 local law, a national organization, a restricted and tem- 
 porary code, we have the law of all nations and all ages, 
 and it needs but the breath of Saint Paul to waft it 
 from one end of the world to the other. 
 
 But the voice of the spirit continues, and this time it 
 no longer speaks of the carnal law, but of the earthly 
 Tcingdom: " And it shall come to pass in the last days, 
 that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be estab- 
 lished in the top of the mountains, and shall be ex- 
 alted above the hills, and all nations shall flow unto it. 
 And many nations shall go and say : Come ye, and let 
 us go up unto the mountain of the Lord, to the house 
 of the God of Jacob ; and he shall teach us of his ways, 
 and we will walk in his paths ; for out of Zion shall go 
 forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusa- 
 lem. Come, let us beat our swords into ploughshares, 
 and our spears into pruning-hooks, for the Anointed of 
 the Lord shall reign in justice and peace, all the idols 
 shall be utterly abolished, and the Lord alone shall be 
 exalted in that day !"t 
 
 That is the future which the kings and their succes- 
 
 ♦ Isaiah, i. 10-18. • Ibid., ii. 
 
THE LETTER AND THE SPIRIT. 255 
 
 sors had marred. Mark it well, it is not oppression, it 
 is deliverance ! It is the property of the letter to pre- 
 vail by force, that is its necessity. It has no other way, 
 if that is indeed a way. It is the property of the spirit 
 to appeal therefrom to the liberty of man, to the liberty 
 of God. " Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is lib- 
 erty." That is why I do not behold in the hands of the 
 Messiah a blood-stained sword ; but I see the nations 
 rising spontaneously like the sea murmuring in its 
 depths; all. nations shall flow unto him; they arise, 
 they ascend toward the God of Jacob ; no subjugation, 
 but emancipation ; the reign, not of Messiah the con- 
 queror, but of Messiah the deliverer. 
 
 But, you will ask me, what is this voice that 
 preaches to priests the spiritual kingdom, and to 
 kings and nations the divine royalty? The voice 
 shall tell its own story ; it shall give its origin and mis- 
 sion. 
 
 It, was "in the year that king Uzziah died," that 
 Isaiah beheld in the temple the vision of Jehovah, high 
 and lifted up, and heard the continual cry of the sera- 
 phim. Holy, holy, holy ! And at the voice the settled 
 columns of the temple heaved and rocked, and the 
 house was filled with smoke. Then said Isaiah, " Woe 
 is me ! for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in 
 the midst of a people of unclean lips; for mine eyes 
 have seen the King the Lord of hosts." Then flew one 
 of the seraphim unto me, having a live coal in his 
 hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the 
 altar ; and he laid it on my mouth, and said, " Lo, this 
 hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken 
 away, thy sin is purged." And I heard the voice of the 
 Lord, saying, " Whom shall I send, and who will go for 
 us ?" Then said I, " Here am I ; send me." And he 
 
256 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 said, " Go, speak to tlie people."* Such is tlie commis- 
 sion of the prophet. 
 
 And why should there not have been need of proph- 
 ets and saints in the Jewish Church, seeing there is 
 need of them in the Catholic Church ? Those two 
 mendicants who, in the dream of Pope Innocent III., 
 support the crumbling basilica of the Lateran, that 
 seems to symbolize the decline of the hierarchical Church 
 of the Middle Ages — those two mendicants, Dominic de 
 Guzman and Francis of Assisi, what are they, then, 
 but prophets of the New Testament, sprung, not from 
 the hereditary succession and tradition of the centuries, 
 but from the burning kiss of the Lord's altar-coal ? 
 Yes, there is need of saints, of prophets, that is, men of 
 love, of martyrdom ; men of vision, who read not only 
 by the letter but by the spirit, " whose eyes have seen 
 the Lord of hosts" in the vision of their reason enlight- 
 ened by faith, in the ecstasy of their conscience quick- 
 ened by grace. There is need of men who speak with 
 God face to face, like Moses ; and above all — above all. 
 Gentlemen, there is need of men who love God heart to 
 heart, and who march on amid the strifes of days and 
 centuries — strifes whose full meaning can be appre- 
 hended only by such as " see afar off the things that 
 shall come to pass at the last, and comfort them that 
 mourn in Zion."f Such were the prophets. 
 
 1. They were seers. They beheld the future. They 
 did not look merely at the present — this present that so 
 satisfies the capacity of narrow minds and hearts. They 
 did not even turn back, with craven tears, to the irre- 
 coverable past. It was the part of the Gentiles, of all 
 heathen antiquity, to dream of a golden age forever 
 lost. The prophets looked forward, and they saw this 
 
 * Isaiah, vi. 1-9. t Ecclesiasticus, xlviii. 24. 
 
THE LETTER AND THE SPIRIT. 257 
 
 lost golden age of Eden appearing in a more complete, 
 more lasting form, at the vestibule of heaven, but yet 
 upon the earth. 
 
 The prophets believed in the future because they be- 
 lieved in God. They believed in progress ; they were, 
 in all antiquity, the only men of progress. Antiquity 
 had no faith in progress — did not even know it by 
 name. The prophets believed in the most incredible 
 and most essential of all progress — progress in morals 
 and religion. They believed in it despite the fall, or 
 rather because of the fall and the redemption. To them 
 evil did not lie in the essential corruption of our na- 
 ture, nor in the inflexible decree of fate ; it lay in man's 
 freedom, and the remedy was found in God's freedom. 
 If God had suflered that by reason of sin the starting- 
 point of human nature should be set back to hell, it 
 was that the goal of humanity should be carried forward 
 and upward to heaven. From these heights to which 
 their faith had soared, they looked down and beheld 
 salvation spreading from the individual to the nation, 
 from the nation to the human race, from the human 
 race over all nature. 
 
 Such was progress to the mind of the prophets. Such 
 was the universal Zion which they hailed in the future. 
 Isaiah prophesied it during the existence and compara- 
 tive prosperity of Jerusalem. Jeremiah mingled it with 
 his tears over the smouldering ruins of his beloved 
 city. Ezekiel, in captivity, described Zion, not now the 
 city of the Jews, but the metropolis of humanity, a city 
 in which every nation should find a home ; and he in- 
 scribed over its portals these immortal words: "The 
 name of the city shall be, the Lord is there."* 
 Jehovah-sham mah, 
 
 * Ezekiel, xlviii. 35. 
 
258 DISCOUESES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 2. This is what the prophets, believing seers and see- 
 ing believers, believed and looked for. This, also, is 
 what they loved, for they were not merely men of intel- 
 lect, but men of heart. 
 
 I have no love for Utopians ; I do not admire the 
 mind that dwells exclusively in the future, that lives 
 upon barren and chimerical dreams ; I love the men of 
 the future who are men of the present, who meditate, 
 but also work. The prophets were workers ; they did 
 not love the future in the future, but in the present, 
 which contains it in the germ ; they did not love man- 
 kind in mankind — too abstract, as a mere conception, too 
 vast, as an aggregate of individuals. They loved hu- 
 manity in their nation ; they loved the typical Jerusa- 
 lem of their visions in the earthly Jerusalem of their 
 daily lives. 
 
 how I love to see them, as I read their pages, stand- 
 ing up to confront every national, every religious act of 
 that grovelling people ! confronting every evil act to de- 
 nounce it, every act of duty and religion, of beneficence 
 and progress, to bless it in the name of the Lord ! How 
 I love to see them as they wend their way down the 
 dark valley to the brink of that brook Kedron — that 
 "brook in the way" of which Messiah was to drink ere 
 he should " lift up his head,"* and then climbing again 
 the steep path that led to the citadel and the temple 
 where Jesus was to teach, frequenting the public places 
 where at times the desert wind, as if in mockery of their 
 hopes, would stir the hot and parched dust, and fling it 
 in their faces ! But then, in the dark valley of Kedron, 
 in the citadel and temple of Zionj in the streets swept 
 by the whirlwind— everywhere, throughout the city 
 which they cherished with their affectionate devotion, 
 
 ♦ Psalm cv. 7. 
 
THE LETTER AND THE SPIRIT. 259 
 
 they beheld that Zion which was to grow and expand 
 from within until it should embrace the whole world. 
 Thus loving the house of Abraham and the Church 
 of Jesus Christ, they loved the future and humanity in 
 God. 
 
 In the presence of these great examples, suffer me to 
 say to you about love of country what I said to you 
 about love of family ; we have forgotten, or at least we 
 do not sufficiently remember, what it is to love a coun- 
 try, a people, a city, in God and in man — to see and 
 love therein the commonwealth of man and of Jesus 
 Christ, the commonwealth of time and of eternity. 
 
 3. The prophets were men of vision, men of love : 
 they were also men of imr ; and, when necessary, men 
 of martyrdom — soldiers and victims. Not without a 
 struggle, in truth, do we cross that Red Sea that sepa- 
 rates the present from the future. We stand upon its 
 brink, pent in between the inquietudes of the past and 
 the forebodings of the future. The prophets have 
 crossed it, bearing on their stalwart shoulders the ark 
 of God and the ark of the human race. But what 
 fightings! what struggles! — struggles magnificent as 
 their visions, as their love ! They shrank — in the weak- 
 ness of their human nature, they shrank from these 
 struggles. They knew that the word of God is, sooner 
 or later, the death of them that bear it. *' I have slain 
 them," saith the Lord, " by the words of my mouth."* 
 " Ah ! Lord God," exclaimed Jeremiah, " why dost thou 
 call me ? Behold, I cannot speak, for I am a child." 
 And the Lord said unto him : " Say not I am a child ; 
 for I shall put my word in thy mouth, and thou shalt 
 confound all my enemies ; I shall set thee to root out 
 and to plant, and to pull down and to build u^^ • I shall 
 
 ♦ Hosea, vl. 5, 
 
260 DISCOUESES OF FATHEIl HYACINTHE. 
 
 set thee OA^er the kings and priests of Judah, oyer all 
 the nations of the earth : they shall fight against thee, 
 but they shall not prevail, for I am with thee."* 
 
 And to Ezekiel, the colleague and successor of Jere- 
 miah, God always spoke this language of battle : " Fear 
 not. I send thee to a rebellious nation, but 1 shall 
 make thy face strong against their faces, and thy fore- 
 head strong against their foreheads. As an adamant, 
 harder than flint shall I make thy forehead : I shall 
 set thee as a wall of iron and as a city of brass, for I 
 shall be with thee."t 
 
 After this fashion did the prophets struggle for Zion, 
 that resisted, that rejected them. Never did they aban- 
 don her ; they ever loved and served her. 
 
 We are about to separate. Gentlemen, for one more 
 year. Suffer me, at this moment, to entreat you to 
 unite with me in an act of self-consecration to this 
 kingdom of God, this Church whose outer courts we 
 have been treading together. Christianity is not a 
 thing of to-day, nor of yesterday : it is not only of 
 the historic epoch of Jesus Christ and the apostles ; it 
 is of David, of Moses, of Abraham — it is of Adam, the 
 father, king, pontiff of us all. In this one religion, 
 then — in this Church whose form may change, but 
 whose substance abideth unchangeable, ah! Gentle- 
 men, and — suffer me this word, for it is in my heart — 
 friends, brothers, let us consecrate ourselves, as did the 
 prophets, to the love and service of the kingdom of 
 God! The kingdom of God is formally constituted 
 in Christianity, in the Church, catholic, apostolic, and 
 Eoman ; but this Church, as I have but just now been 
 saying, must ever go on changing from form to form, 
 " from glory to glory," until it shall have spread its mild 
 
 * Jeremiah, i. + Ezekiel, ii., iii,, iv. 
 
THE LETTER AND THE SPIRIT. 261 
 
 dominion over the whole world, until it shall have 
 reached, with all the human race, " the stature of the 
 perfect man in Christ Jesus." 
 
 Do we not wish to labor for this reign ? And what do 
 we, if we do not this ? What are the works of our pri- 
 vate and our public life, if these works do not bear ulti- 
 mately upon the kingdom of truth, justice, charity, all 
 that is included in Christianity — all that makes up the 
 Church, catholic, apostolic, and Roman. I do not ask 
 you to love this Church as it does not wish to be loved — 
 to love it as one loves a sect — as the grovelling Jews 
 loved the synagogue, with a mind and a heart shrunken 
 up within the letter; I do not ask you to love our great 
 Catholic Church by glorifying the infirmities of its life 
 (which are your infirmities and mine), and condemning 
 all the truths professed and all the virtues practised 
 outside of it by men who arc often unwittingly its sons. 
 No ; away with all sectarian love ! I ask you to love 
 the Church with the heart of the Church itself, with a 
 heart that measures itself only by the heart of Christ. 
 " Be ye also enlarged !" I say to you as Saint Paul said 
 to the Corinthians — " Our heart is enlarged. Be not 
 straitened in your own bosoms. Be ye also enlarged."* 
 
 Sufier me, Gentlemen, before we part, to tell you the 
 secret of my soul, the secret of my youth ; how, on the 
 day of my ordination to the priesthood, here in the 
 nave of this cathedral, not thronged as it is to-day, as 
 I lay prostrate on its cold pavement, wdth burning, 
 throbbing heart, the thought that sustained, that en- 
 tranced me, was the thought that I should have hence- 
 forth but one love, one service — the kingdom of God in 
 man. 
 
 Yes, Gentlemen, let us love the Church in every man, 
 
 • 2 Corinthians, vi. 11-13. 
 
262 DISCOUESES OF FATHER HTACINTHE. 
 
 and every man in the Cliiircli ! "What matters his con- 
 dition? Eich or poor, ignorant or learned, omnibus 
 debitor sum, "I am debtor to every man," says Saint 
 Paul. What matters his nationality ? Frenchman or 
 foreigner, Greek or Barbarian, omnibus debitor sutn, I 
 answer with Saint Paul : I am debtor alike to barbarism 
 and to civilization. So far as concerns our loving the 
 man, what matter is It, even, in one sense, what is his 
 religion ? 
 
 If he be not a son of the Catholic Church according to 
 the body, the outward unity, he is, perhaps, he is, I hope, 
 according to the soul, the invisible unity. If he be not 
 a son of the Catholic Church according to the soul or 
 according to the body — either according to the spirit or 
 according to the letter — at least he is such in the prep- 
 aration of God's counsels. If he have not the bap- 
 tismal water on his brow, I am grieved, but nevertheless 
 I behold there the blood of Jesus Christ ; for Christ 
 has died for every man, opening to the whole world his 
 great arms upon the cross ! The world belongs to Je- 
 sus Christ, and therefore the world belongs to the 
 Church, if not actually, at least potentially. Let me, 
 then, love every man ; and you also, with me, love every 
 man, not only in himself, not only in his narrow and 
 earthly individuality, but in the great Christian fellow- 
 ship, the great divine fellowship which invites us all. 
 
THE EDUCATION OF THE WORKING-CLASSES. 
 
 SPEECH BEFORE THE CHURCH CONGRESS AT 
 MALINES, BELGIUM. 
 
 Septembeb 6, 1807, 
 
 YOUE HlGHis^ESS, MY LORDS, AKD GeKTLEMEN" : — 
 
 I will not attempt to hide the deep emotion which I 
 feel. I look about me and am abashed — abashed by this 
 very assembly from which I am to gather inspiration 
 for the words that I shall speak. I see before me one 
 of the princes of the Church — a prince indeed, by wis- 
 dom and virtue. I see this illustrious group of bishops, 
 my fathers in the faith. I see eminent statesmen, mas- 
 ters of learning and eloquence, and I find this desk 
 still warm and throbbing with the hands that have 
 pressed it, and the tones that have thrilled it. I see 
 this great assembly, gathered from the four winds of 
 heaven to discuss, here in this free corner of the earth, 
 called Belgium, the religious interests of the Catholics 
 of the two worlds. Gentlemen, I was abashe'd, but I 
 am so no longer. I feel that I am not here as a stran- 
 ger. I am among my brethren ; and these cheers with 
 which you greet me I accept, because they are not 
 meant for the individual, which is nothing, but for the 
 cause, which is much — I had almost said, which is every- 
 
264 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 thing. This cause I define in two words — the Catholic 
 Church; and the Catholic Church in the nineteenth 
 century. 
 
 On that day which no priest ever forgets — the day 
 when, prostrate on the pavement of the church, I took 
 for my chaste and only spouse the holy Church of Jesus 
 Christ, with lips in the dust, eyes in tears, bosom rapt 
 in ecstasy and heaved with sobs — I vowed in silence to 
 love her well, and, so far as in me lay, to serve her well, 
 not only in her great past, which never can return, in 
 her great future, which is yet to come, but in her 
 present, at once so grievous and so grand — her present, 
 such as History, and therefore God, has made it. 
 
 Now, in this service of the Church of the nineteenth 
 century there arises a question which, of all questions, 
 is the most perplexing and threatening — the Working- 
 Class question. 
 
 It is an immense question, but I shall confine myself 
 to a single aspect of it, the Education of the Worlciiig- 
 Classes. The hope of the harvest is in the seed, and Leib- 
 nitz might well say, "Give me the instruction of the 
 youth for a century, and I will change the face of the 
 earth." But this transformation can be accomplished 
 only in so far as the education of the working-man is 
 effected under the conditions prescribed by the nature 
 of man, and the general harmony of the divine plan. 
 
 There are three grades in this education — primary 
 education in the family, business education in the shop, 
 religious education on the Lord's-day. 
 
 I. Family Education. — I put the family in the front 
 rank. It holds this rank in the order of time; it 
 should hold it in the order of influence. 
 
 Among the multitude of superior minds that concern 
 themselves about the condition of the working-classes, 
 
EDUCATION OF THE WORKING-CLASSES. 265 
 
 I am amazed that there should be so few to comprehend 
 their real wants. For the cure of their ills, the means 
 of their advancement, men go on a vain quest among 
 new inventions and combinations, specious theories, and 
 even special and accidental institutions. They are to 
 be sought rather in the family — that institution, as old 
 and as universal as mankind, which is rooted in the 
 tenderest, strongest, inmost recesses of human nature ; — 
 that institution coming from the hands of God himself, 
 rescued from the wreck of Eden, washed by Jesus Christ 
 in his own blood, and raised by him to the dignity of a 
 sacrament, that he might make of it one of the seven 
 columns which are to bear up, to the world's end, the 
 edifice of regenerate humanity. [Applause.^ 
 
 It is the family, then, which must be sustained or 
 restored in all classes of society, but especially in the 
 working-class of our cities. It is to the family, more 
 than to any other agency, that the primary education 
 of the child must be remitted. 
 
 In primary education, there are two things that de- 
 mand special consideration — the place, and tlie agent. 
 The place is home ; the agent is the mother. 
 
 Home! There the cradle is to rest; there the first 
 years of childliood to be passed. Has not Providence 
 implanted this instinct in the hearts of all his creatures, 
 even of the inferior orders? Does not the bird build 
 its nest in the fragrant moss, under the shelter of the 
 hedge, or amid the branches of the tree ? In every rank 
 of nature is there not some special, some sacred place, 
 where the earliest hopes, joys, sorrows of life are to be 
 harbored ? Surely, then, the human race is entitled to 
 a spot where it may lay its young, more sacred than 
 these cradles of the lower races ; it is entitled to a home 
 neither mean nor murderous — fatal neither to the body 
 
 12 
 
266 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 nor to the soul of the little child. This home is to be 
 of itself the primary education of the young soul, the 
 nascent imagination and feelings. These walls are 
 more than walls ; this roof is no mere putting together 
 of timbers and tiles; these bits of furniture are no 
 Yulgar objects. All these things speak a deep language, 
 and exercise a mighty moral action. We Catholics, 
 have we not, in our divine religion, sensible signs called 
 sacraments — water, wine, bread, oil; material things, in 
 short, but material things which reveal, and, in different 
 degrees, communicate, things invisible ? So, in the plane 
 of nature, in what I would call household religion, there 
 is also a mysterious influence of places and things — a 
 secret communication of family habits, fiimily virtues, 
 family feeling, by material objects themselves. The 
 little child sees what his fathers saw, mingles his life 
 with objects full of their memories, and, as one might 
 say, impregnated with their spirit. He receives there- 
 from some indefinable impressions, some indelible marks 
 which he will carry with him through all the wander- 
 ings of youth, down to the gray hairs of old age. 
 
 If this is poetry. Gentlemen, it is " positive" poetry. 
 It has ifcs germ in facts, and its roots in the nature of 
 things. And it shows us, withal, how important it is 
 for the child to be brought up in the home of its 
 parents, and not under a strange roof. 
 
 As I have said, the principal agent in household 
 education is the mother. Not that I would disparage 
 the father's share in it ; on the contrary, I should be 
 disposed, if I were to speaks my mind freely on this 
 subject, to reproach some Catholic authors for not 
 taking sufficient account of it. We are in danger of 
 forgetting the father, in presence of the mother — that 
 ideal so pure, so graceful, so Christian. But I am not 
 
EDUCATION OF THE WOEKING-CLASSES. 267 
 
 now attempting a complete treatise on family educa- 
 tion; I am insisting especially on the importance of 
 that primary education, the care of which is devolved 
 almost exclusively on the mother. At this period of 
 life, the object is to form the body and the heart of the 
 child : by and by, the reason will have its turn ; but it 
 will never be fairly developed, except on this twofold 
 basis, physical and moral — a body and a heart worthily 
 prepared. Xow, no hands but a woman's are capable 
 of this agricultura Dei — this husbandry of God. No 
 hands but hers are pure enough and gentle enough to 
 handle this new-born, tender body, that might be chilled 
 and blighted by one imprudent touch. No hands but 
 hers are potent enough to waken within it that organ 
 of the heart which, as science tells us, is the first to be 
 born, the last to diiQ—primum saliens et uUimum moriens 
 — and in which, nevertheless, the very faculty of love 
 lies so often extinguished or corrupted in the germ. 
 Yes ! as the hands of the priest are consecrated to touch 
 the body of Christ on the altar — that glorious body, 
 hidden beneath the limitations of the sacrament — in 
 like manner the hands of the Christian woman, by the 
 marriage benediction and the grace of motherhood, are 
 hallowed that they may worthily touch the body of the 
 little child, — that feeble and yet glorious body, since it 
 is the shrine of a soul — I might almost say, the shrine 
 of a God. For by baptism it has become a living mem- 
 ber of Jesus Christ. \^Applause.'] 
 
 Home ! Mother ! — Where are they, to-day, for the 
 people of our great cities ? Ah ! I have laid my finger 
 on two gaping, hideous wounds of modern society — the 
 bad condition of the dwellings of the working-classes, 
 and the withdrawal of the mother from her home. These 
 are two of the principles most active, and yet most 
 
268 DISCOUESES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 commonly overlooked, at the root of the evils of society. 
 Here, in the disorganization of the family, in the demor- 
 alization of the people, we see the gathering of those 
 black specks which go climbing up the sky, and cover 
 it with clouds, to burst, by and by, in a tremendous 
 storm. 
 
 Do you call this, then, a home ? Is it not rather a 
 den — this dank, dark, fetid cellar, from which its tenants 
 are absent all day, and into which, at nightfall, they 
 come huddling back in a loathsome herd? Is it the 
 abode of the living, or the sepulchre of the dead ? — this 
 close, stifling garret, in which, in order to stretch him- 
 self upon his Procrustes' bed (I am citing a fact that has 
 lately come to my knowledge, in Paris), the weary laborer 
 is obliged to open the dormer-window at night, and put 
 his feet out on the roof? I put the question — Are such 
 as these fit dwellings for free citizens of France., and 
 Belgium — for men redeemed by the blood of Christ? 
 [Applause.l 
 
 If the mother were but there, her look and smile might 
 irradiate that darkness, and transform that ugliness to 
 beauty, and make a feast of joy in the midst of all this 
 wretchedness. But Manufacture — tyrannous Manufac- 
 ture — has dried up the fountain of her breast, and 
 dragged her, feeble and staggering, into the great work- 
 shop, noisy with the din of labor and the din of blas- 
 phemy, where she can no longer hear the cries of the 
 child that has been carried away from her and left 'in 
 the careless hands of some mercenary stranger, from 
 which it shall come back to her dead or blighted. 
 
 These are not exaggerations. Gentlemen, they are 
 facts that are already far too common, and which tend 
 to become the law in all the great manufacturing cen- 
 tres of population. Now it is the duty, the imperative 
 
EDUCATION OF THE WORKING-CLASSES. 269 
 
 duty of Catholics to enter into association among them- 
 selves, and with Christians of all Churches, with benevo- 
 lent men of every class of opinion, to make one last ef- 
 fort in favor of the working-classes. Let us strive to 
 give them back the family of which they have been 
 robbed. Let us strive to give them a home, humble and 
 poor of course, but honest and cheerful, where the 
 mother may dwell with her children, and give them 
 those cares of heart and body which nobody else in all 
 the world is fit to give. [Ap^jlause.] 
 
 I am no Utopian, and am not so simple as to suppose 
 that all these things can be accomplished in a day. 
 Whatever might be that coalition of all powerful influ- 
 ences, all wise intellects, all generous hearts, to which 
 my longings aspire, years must needs elapse, and years 
 again, before the family, now so fatally impaired among 
 the people of our cities, could regain its vigor and its 
 beauty. Meanwhile, Gentlemen, what shall we do? 
 Charity has been the mother of wonderful inventions. 
 For the homeless she has opened creches and asylums ; 
 for the motherless, she has trained up devoted hearts to 
 the work of education, whatever their sex, or name, or 
 garb. Especially has she been training up, now for 
 three centuries, by the heart of Vincent de Paul, that 
 extraordinary woman whose mission has been chiefly 
 reserved for this nineteenth century, and for this great 
 crisis of the laboring-classes, this helper of the working- 
 man as of the soldier, on the battle-field of toil or of 
 sufiering — the Sister of Charity. If anything could fill 
 the mother's place beside the cradles of the people, it 
 would be this nun uncloistered and unveiled, living in 
 the world but not of the world, and who, by an unex- 
 ampled combination, carries a virgin's heart within ^ 
 mother's bosom. [Prolonged applause.'] 
 
270 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 Leave the little one with the Sister of Charity. Leave 
 it to the school-teacher, standing in the place of the 
 parent, to the asylum or the school that must answer in 
 the place of home. Do not suffer any hand, under any 
 pretence whatever, to tear it out of the very cradle, and 
 present to us that spectacle so loathsome, if it were not 
 so pitiful — the eight-year-old factory-hand. 
 
 I am constrained to tell the whole truth to this great 
 manufacturing interest, which has been, in turn, flat- 
 tered to the point of sycophancy, and insulted to the 
 point of outrage. I deal neither in flattery nor in in- 
 sult. I deem it the noblest homage that can be ren- 
 dered to any earthly power to believe it great enough to 
 hear the truth. I say, then, to the manufacturing in- 
 terest, that it has no right to lay its hand upon the 
 child before the age marked by nature and religion. So 
 to act is to commit a crime more heinous than that 
 which so long defiled America, and which she has had 
 to wash away in seas of blood. Among those men that 
 were owners of men, there were good and upright ones, 
 who were rather the benefactors of their slaves than 
 their masters ; and there were others that had neither 
 conscience nor heart. They saw in the negro nothing 
 but a machine, and enforced from him labor without 
 measure or rest. This was the oppression of the body. 
 But all oppressions, like all liberties, are mutually con- 
 nected, and from the oppression of the body they passed 
 to the oppression of the soul. If slaves get hold of the 
 truth, the truth will make them free. No intercourse, 
 then, with the sources of knowledge — with the audible 
 teaching of men, or the silent teaching of books ! And, 
 finally, to intellectual oppression these studious and 
 cruel tyrants added moral oppression. They were in 
 the right, a thousand times over, for of all the confed- 
 
EDUCATION OF THE WOKKING-CLASSES. 271 
 
 erates of liberty, the most dangerous is not knowledge, 
 but virtue. No virtue for slaves! We have taken 
 away the Gospel — now take away nature ! And because, 
 in the absence of the Gospel, and in the very wreck of 
 human nature, so long as that nature has not perished 
 altogether, there remain still two noble sentiments, two 
 mighty roots from which, even yet, all may bloom again 
 — conjugal love and parental love — they destroyed the 
 family itself, so that in those woe-stricken cabins men 
 might not even embrace in honor as in affection the 
 partners of their misery and the offspring of their loins. 
 
 You shudder, my friends, and you do well. And 
 yet nothing is wholly ruined ; however great the evil, it 
 is not hopeless. This negro is a grown-up man, and if 
 in a childhood more happy than his maturer years, he 
 was nursed upon the bosom of a negro yet Christian 
 mother — " black, but comely" — with the healthful and 
 honest milk of chaste wedlock; if he has known the 
 Gospel and loved the Saviour, he carries deep within his 
 breast hidden resources ; he will feel within him sudden 
 and mighty quickenings of an honest conscience and of 
 Christian dignity, and against the threefold tyranny of 
 body, mind, and heart he will rise in victorious revolt! 
 
 Gentlemen, the being effectively oppressed, the victim 
 incurably blighted, is not the man, but the child. It is 
 the little white slave of Europe, that has never known 
 its cradle or its mother, and that comes to its conscious- 
 ness in the gloomy factory, a sort of earthly hell, over 
 whosp portals you might write, 
 
 " Who enter here, leave hope behind." 
 
 Its gasping lungs fill themselves with draughts of air 
 that are nothing less than draughts of poison. Its 
 puny limbs, bent under the burden of toil before the 
 
272 DISCOUKSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 bones had hardened, are doomed from infancy to de- 
 crepitude. Its understanding, also, stunted in its early 
 growth, is twisted, in the darkness, into miserable mal- 
 formations. In vain, at a later day, with useless pity, 
 you may make the effort to teach it some few truths. 
 After years of brutal degradation, the negro may begin 
 to remember; after some months only of this odious 
 regimen, the child loses the faculty of acquisition. 
 Never shall it hold in its hands those three common but 
 sublime keys that unlock so many things in life and in 
 the soul — reading, writing, and arithmetic! Never 
 shall he possess those rudiments of knowledge which 
 ought to be the common lot of all : something about 
 the shape and the life of this world in which he lives ; 
 much of the glory and destiny of the country he is to 
 love and serve. Never, no! never, shall he have the 
 clear, strong revelation to himself of his own soul and 
 of God. His soul and God ! it is not only ignorance 
 that has robbed him of them, it is vice. What trans- 
 actions are those that take place in that gloomy factory, 
 that hell of precocious and yet hopeless depravity ? I 
 will not attempt to say ; I will only listen to what is 
 told us by the mouth of one of our own poets, the elo- 
 quent interpreter of the frenzies and the miseries of 
 wickedness in the human soul : 
 
 " Man's virgin heart is like a deep, deep vase : 
 Let the first water poured therein be foul, 
 And ocean may flow over it in vain. 
 And never wash it clean ; so deep th.' abyss, 
 And the stain fastens to its inmost part."* 
 
 * "Le coeur cle Thomme vicrge est un vase profond : 
 Lorsque la premiere eau qu'on y verse est impure, 
 La mer y passerait sans laver la souillnre : 
 Car Tabime est immciise, et la tache est an fond." 
 
 —Alfred de Musset. 
 
EDUCATION OF THE WORKING-CLASSES. 273 
 
 Woe unto yon, ye hands that have put a blight on 
 childhood ! Woe unto you, for all your grandeur, for 
 all your skill, for all your wealth ! Ye hands of merci- 
 less enterprise, ye shall be dried up and withered like 
 the hand of the tyrant of Israel under the curse of the 
 prophet of Judah : " the hand of Jeroboam dried up so 
 that he could not pull it in again to him," because the 
 Lord had cursed it.* Ye have been guilty of the most 
 cowardly, the most revolting, the most irreparable of 
 crimes ! [Prolonged applause.'] 
 
 II. Factory Education. — I have dwelt too long, per- 
 haps, on this primary education of man. You must 
 put the blame of it, Gentlemen, on your own attention 
 and sympathy, and then on that empty cradle, that ab- 
 sent mother, that sorrowful home, over which we felt 
 that we must pour out our tears and our hopes to- 
 gether. 
 
 The education of home concludes by a great religious 
 act, the first communion, which is like a first coming 
 of age of the child. More precocious, in this respect, 
 than the rich man's Child, the laborer's son enters, from 
 that time forth, into a sort of public life. From the fam- 
 ily, he passes to the factory. Am I mistaken, Gentlemen ; 
 and ought I to speak of the school as coming between the 
 family and the factory — first, the primary school, and then 
 the professional school ? No ! the school is not between 
 the family and the factory ; it is alongside of both. It 
 does not form, with the family and the factory, a third 
 grade of popular education ; to put it all in one word, 
 its function is not principal and independent, but sep- 
 ondary and subordinate. I have great sympathy and 
 respect for these modest and self-denying instructors of 
 the people. Whether they are conneqted with publip 
 
 f 1 Kings, xiii. 4. 
 12* 
 
274 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 scliools or private, whether they wear the garb of lay- 
 men or of some religions order, no matter, so long as 
 they are faithful to the dignity of their calling. I, for 
 one, will never have anything to do with the coarse and 
 undeserved insults that have been flung at them, with 
 different spirit, by extremists of all parties. But hon- 
 orable as their calling is, I repeat, it is only secondary. 
 Practical good sense refuses to see in the school what 
 too many of our contemporaries think they see in it — 
 the most effective instrument for the elevation of the 
 working-classes. Permit me. Gentlemen, to cite the 
 words of a master of economic science, a patient, im- 
 partial, sagacious observer, whose name and works 
 I would be glad to find becoming popular among 
 Catholics: "In free and prosperous nations," says M. 
 Le Play, " the teacher has only a subordinate part. The 
 real education is given by the family, aided by the 
 priest; it is completed by apprenticeship to business, 
 and by the practice of social duties."* 
 
 The factory, then, after the family, is the second 
 centre — the second home of the education of the people. 
 But what is a factory, correctly understood and rightly 
 organized ? It is a place where there is practical recog- 
 nition of the personal rights and dignity of the working- 
 man, and especially of the working-child. A personal 
 being is always an end, never a means ; he is not to be 
 used like an irrational animal or an unconscious tool. 
 If we expect service of him, if we derive profits from 
 him, we are bound to deal toward him, as God does 
 toward us, " with great respect" — cum magna reverentia 
 disponis nos,\ What is a well-constituted factory? It is 
 
 ♦ " La Beforme Sociale en France, by M. Le Play, author of Ouvriers 
 Europeens, Commissioner-General at tiie Univerpal Expoeitions of 1855, 1863, 
 and 1867. Third Edition, Vol, H., p. 369, 
 
 t Wiedpm, jcii. 18, 
 
EDUCATION OF THE WORKING-CLASSES. 275 
 
 one which has at the head of it an honorable man as 
 patron,* — a man really worthy of that title. There are 
 those who object to this title as somehow ridiculous or 
 invidious; to me it seems a very grand title, a very 
 noble and Christian title. To my mind, it suggests the 
 idea of a paternal relation, and in this very idea the 
 practical solution of our social questions, by means of 
 relations of mutual affection — by means of free, and yet 
 close and lasting association between masters and work- 
 men. In such a factory, under such a father of the 
 people and of the laborer, it is possible to sacrifice im- 
 mediate profits, however considerable, to the training 
 up of intelligent and virtuous apprentices. In such a 
 factory, it is not the only question how to turn off the 
 most work in the shortest time, but how to make the 
 business as honorable for its workmen as for its work — 
 for its moral side as for its material side. In such a 
 factory, they " seek first the kingdom of God and his 
 righteousness," and all the rest is added unto them. 
 For the righteous and the profitable are more closely 
 connected than men think; and science has recently 
 proved that in the productions of manufacturing in- 
 dustry are to be discovered indications of the grade, not 
 only of the workman's intelligence, but of his morals. 
 
 With the aid of capable and faithful foremen, such a 
 patron will make the factory under his direction the 
 best of professional schools. The good workman is 
 trained, like the good soldier, less by precept than by 
 example — less by general and theoretical notions than 
 by practical struggle with the realities of his business. 
 Come on, then, my young conscript of labor ! I would 
 there were a great many more of your sort of conscripts, 
 
 * The title commonly applied, in French, to the master of a chip or of a 
 manufacturing concern. 
 
276 DISCOUKSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 and a great many less of the other sort — [Ajjplause] — 
 yes, conscripts of husbandry for those vast open work- 
 shops the fields, and conscripts of mechanic industry 
 for those narrower, but not less fruitful, workshops of 
 our cities — these make up the grand, pacific army that 
 constitutes the true power and the true preponderance 
 of a nation ! [Renetued applause,] Come on, conscript 
 of labor ! enter the battlefield of the shop ! Go in to 
 those fights that are not always without danger — that 
 are never without courage and glory! And you, old 
 veteran of a foreman, captain of the noble host, follow 
 him, guide him, urge him on with look, and word, and 
 action. See how he will avenge his early reverses by 
 valiant feats of arms ! How he will lay his victorious 
 hand on this wild beast — this brute matter in revolt 
 against mankind ! He shall seize it by the forelock, he 
 shall twist his hand into its mane, and bring it down 
 at last, subdued, docile, broken to his will, to fetch and 
 carry the inventions of science, and the creations of 
 genius. [Ajjplatise.] 
 
 One word more, Grentlemen, as to the factory. It be- 
 longs to it to complete the formation of the moral and 
 religious man, as well as of the intelligent and skilful 
 artisan. It is not only the chief school of the profession, 
 it is the chief school of life. The family, with its aux- 
 iliaries, the school and the catechetical teaching of the 
 Church, has rather formed the theory of life than put it 
 into practice. Its teachings of good have fallen into the 
 child's soul under the form of a mysterious revelation, 
 the power and beauty of which he has felt, but the 
 whole bearing of which he has not been able to grasp. 
 Every theory, so long as it remains an abstraction, dif- 
 fers more or less from the reality. It has to descend 
 into the region of facts, and come into a contact with 
 
EDUCATION OF THE WORKING-CLASSES. 277 
 
 them which does not destroy it ; far from that, it con- 
 firms it, but at the same time modifies and makes it 
 fruitful. This is the truth that there is in the tenden- 
 cies of positivism. So soon, then, as the mother and 
 the priest have settled that sublime, real, eternal theory 
 of religion and virtue, it is for the factory to subject it 
 to its inevitable and decisive test — to confer upon it, or 
 withhold from it, " the freedom of the city" in practical 
 life. If everything in this new school says to the young 
 apprentice — " They have been deceiving you, or rather 
 they have been deceiving themselves ; the great move- 
 ment of men and things is not, cannot be, such as they 
 have told you" — if this contradiction of the belief of his 
 childhood penetrates into his mind and heart by all the 
 teachings of word and example, by all the influences of 
 that moral atmosphere that acts upon us with so much 
 greater energy than the physical atmosphere, there is an 
 end of the principles inculcated by his parents and his 
 early teachers ; he will quit them as a broken reed, and 
 will suffer himself to be drawn easily down the seduc- 
 tive slopes of doubt and pleasure. On the other hand, 
 let the child happen upon one of those factories, such 
 as we too seldom meet with now-a-days, that are a sort 
 of continuation of home and school ; let him hear and see 
 there the practical commentary on all that he has been 
 wont to believe and love; let him breathe there that 
 wholesome spiritual atmosphere, the free, refreshing, bra- 
 cing inspiration of the conscience and heart; and soon 
 you will see coming out in him, in manly shape, those 
 youthful virtues over which the two sacred wings of fam- 
 ily and of religion have been brooding, and which have 
 been warmed into life by the pressure of those two hearts 
 of which I dare not say that one surpasses the other — in 
 such equal tenderness and piety hath God formed them 
 
278 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 both to tend the cradle of human childhood — the heart 
 of the mother, and the heart of the priest. [Applause.'] 
 
 III. Education ly the Lord^s Day. — I have just been 
 speaking of the priest and the mother in the same 
 breath. In fact, Gentlemen, if I have ever spoken of 
 the family and the factory separately, I have never 
 meant, in so doing, to isolate them from religion. In 
 these two primordial laws, of love and labor, whose re- 
 spective centres, the family and the factory, I have in- 
 dicated, there is involved, and, so to speak, interlaced, a 
 third law, greater still, which, with them, makes up the 
 web of human existence. I mean prayer. 
 
 We cannot be the disciples of the school of "Inde- 
 pendent Morality," because we cannot be the partisans 
 of the doctrine of an impersonal God. We have a 
 morality which comes from the living God and returns 
 to him ; and in that golden chain which binds earth to 
 heaven, all the links are not mere duties of man to 
 man. If one would be an honest man, in the full and 
 sacred meaning of that desecrated name, he must not 
 leave out of view, in respecting the claims of personal 
 duty, the first, the most living, the most sacred of all 
 personalities. Kow, this communion of the living and 
 personal soul with the personal and living God is what 
 we call prayer, in the largest and fullest sense of the 
 word. It is not enough to think of God; we must 
 pray to him. When men become accustomed to ap- 
 proach God only by the way of thought, they end by 
 not believing in God at all. He vanishes away, or at 
 least becomes transformed in those confused and chilly 
 clouds — evanuerunt in cogitationihus suis — and of the 
 Being of beings there remains nothing but a sublime 
 but unsubstantial idea. There must be the heart, the 
 acts, the movements of a soul whose respect and love 
 
EDUCATION OF THE WORKING-CLASSES. 279 
 
 reach out to the God in whom it has its being on the 
 earth, to the Father who awaits it in heaven. Individual 
 prayer, too, is not enough. There must be common 
 prayer — the meeting and intermingling of souls in^ 
 presence of the same light and heat. Such prayer as 
 this must have its sacred time and its sacred place — the 
 Sabbath and the temple. It remains for me. Gentlemen, 
 to say of this day and place that they are, not only be- 
 fore, but after the first communion, the highest school 
 of the child, the youth, the man. 
 
 Therefore the first, the most necessary, of all the ele- 
 ments of popular liberty, is the liberty of the Lord's 
 day. There are those who do not understand this need 
 of rest to soul and body. Commonly they are among 
 those who employ labor, not among those that do it — 
 those who receive its profits without knowing its weari- 
 ness. They are not among those who have torn their 
 hands on the thorns and briers of the workshop — on 
 the hard asperities of matter, or who have been bend- 
 ing for six days over ihe earth cursed for man's sake, 
 the brow bathed in sweat, the soul exhausted with toil. 
 Ah ! I can conceive the nature of their objections to 
 the law of rest — I see through their repugnance to the 
 liberty of the Lord's-day ! But the workingman, when- 
 ever he is not under the pressure of physical or moral 
 violence — whenever he is left to his own instincts — the 
 workingman claims as his dearest and most sacred right 
 the enjoyment of that day which makes him indeed 
 a free man, indeed a husband and a father, indeed a child 
 of God. It is demanded in his behalf by the sense of 
 the dignity of human nature — by the exigences of family 
 life — by the religious wants of the soul — by the voice of 
 whatever is noblest and most commanding in our nature. 
 
 I still remember the impressions of my childhood. 
 
280 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 Suffer me this little reminiscence, which any one of you 
 could recall from his own memory, and which might 
 come from among our working-men as well. In the 
 morning when I waked, how well I used to know that 
 it was Sunday ! In the clump of trees near the window 
 the bird was singing more sweetly, and the church-bells 
 were chiming more gladly, the air was fuller of music 
 and perfume ; the sky was so fair, the sun so splendid. 
 It was always a mystery to me, and I used to ask my- 
 self sometimes how nature could so change its face and 
 be transfigured on a fixed day. But afterward I came 
 to understand it. Dear child, from off whose brow the 
 baptismal water has hardly dried, upon whose cheek the 
 mother's kiss still lingers, it is but the reflection of 
 thine own religious soul that is cast upon the face of 
 nature, making her more beautiful — more like thyself! 
 [Applause.] 
 
 The child rises with delight, and betakes himself to 
 the house of worship, which is the house of God, but 
 also the house of the people. The rich have their pala- 
 ces; they may be content, then, with a modest chapel. 
 But the people must have their cathedrals. . . . [Ap- 
 plause,] They must have festivals such as are not 
 given to the princes of the earth, such as religion alone 
 can realize. The true popular fete — if I may use that 
 much -perverted word — the true democratic festival, is 
 the Lord's-day. In the vast basilica all the arts gather 
 themselves together about the altar, to mingle their en- 
 chantments in one supreme enchantment — architecture, 
 sculpture, painting, music, and, above all, eloquence. Yes, 
 eloquence ! how rude soever the words of the priest may 
 be, by the very nature of the truths which he proclaims, 
 by the very chords which he is sure to thrill in human 
 hearts, the priest cannot but be eloquent [Applause.] 
 
EDUCATION OF THE WOEKINCt-CLASSES. 281 
 
 Into that presence come the people, feeling their own 
 greatness. The little children, as they cross the 
 threshold, are welcomed like kings, with the majestic 
 voice of the organs ; they breathe the odor of incense and 
 of flowers; they listen to those sublime and touching 
 chants, those Latin words which they do not under- 
 stand, and from which, nevertheless, they learn so 
 much — words of eternity let fall into time — mysterious 
 secrets of the far-off land, seen dimly from our exile. 
 Transported with faith and hope and love, they go from 
 hearth to altar, and from altar back to hearth, and 
 bring back God's kiss with them to their mother, even 
 as they carried their mother's kiss with them to the 
 house of God. 
 
 And yet this is the day which certain "friends of the 
 people,'^ forsooth, would wish to extort from. them. 
 False friends, that think only of their bodies, that see 
 in them nothing but their material wants, the toil and 
 the enjoyments of the beast of burden ! ye courtiers 
 of democracy, who flatter the people while you despise 
 them, have some faith in the people's souls, crede animm ; 
 and that you may have, do begin by having a little 
 faith in your own ! [Applause.] 
 
 Yes, this law of Sabbath rest, so religiously demo- 
 cratic, is now-a-days misapprehended on every hand. 
 Patriotism imposes on me something more than an or- 
 dinary consideration for my own country, when I am 
 speaking on another soil than hers. No, no! I mis- 
 take; my country asks of me nothing but justice, and I 
 know that if men may say much in censure of contem- 
 porary France, they are bound in justice to say much 
 "in praise of her. I will speak, then, without constraint, 
 and make my complaint of the violation of the Lord's 
 day in the great manufacturing towns of France. It 
 
282 DISCOUESES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 happens, now and then, that I have occasion to pass 
 through their streets on my way to the church to preach 
 the word of God. I am revolving in my heart the les- 
 sons of the Gospel, and all along the street there are 
 the visions of hell, the ponderous carts, the shrieking 
 axles, the smoking pavements, the clouds of dust that 
 shut me out from the sight of the sun and of God ! I 
 hide my eyes with my hands, and groan, "0 Trance, 
 this is thy doing !" 
 
 But some one will answer me — " To be sure ; but it is 
 liberty. You must respect the liberty of France ! You 
 must respect the conscience of your fellow-citizens !" 
 Ah, I have nothing to say against liberty. I speak of it 
 with lips all the more sincere and earnest as they are 
 more truly Christian and Catholic. The hour cometh, 
 but is not yet. Gentlemen, when misunderstandings 
 shall be done away. This century shall not have passed 
 away before it shall be acknowledged that that pontiff 
 so great, and at the same time so grievously misunder- 
 stood, Pius IX., who has battled so bravely against revo- 
 lution, is the same who has made the boldest and most 
 successful advances — yes, the most successful ; I say it 
 notwithstanding apparent failures — toward liberty in 
 Europe. Let us not be guilty of that for which Saint 
 Paul reproached the Christians of Corinth — let us not 
 '^ divide Christ" — let us not separate Pius IX. in twain. 
 For my part, I take him in the whole of his glorious 
 career, from his most blameless prosperity down to his 
 most touching misfortunes — from the time when the 
 flag of progress and reform was unfurled by his priestly 
 and royal hands, before 1848, down to the convocation 
 of the (Ecumenical Council, which is greeted at this 
 very hour, not only with the applauses of Catholics, but 
 with the sympathies of Protestants and of Eationalists. 
 
EDUCATION OF THE WOBKING-CLASSES. 283 
 
 No, we have no disposition to trencli upon liberty. 
 We would not interfere with the advantage of the work- 
 man, nor the exigencies of the manufacturing interest. 
 "What contemptible sophistries are these! Have you 
 never heard of two great embodiments of liberty — two 
 great organizations of industry, which are as good as 
 your own, if not better — England and the United States ? 
 I have had the pleasure of visiting London. I never 
 shall forget the emotion which filled me at the sight of 
 that city like the ancient metropolis of the seas of which 
 the prophet speaks — "the woman that sitteth upon 
 many waters." And in those mighty floods, I saw no 
 vision as of the abyss, but only a vast and solemn equi- 
 librium, as it had been the majesty of a throne rocking 
 and yet stable. There she sat, the great empress of the 
 seas, giving law to isles and continents, stretching afar 
 over kings and peoples, not, like them of old, the rod of 
 oppression, but the beneficent sceptre of her riches and 
 her liberty. And I heard the din of her vast industry, 
 and through the streets there poured the living sea of 
 men and vehicles. Then, by and by, there dawned a day 
 which was like the days of my childhood, a day such as 
 public life in my own land has not now to show, a day 
 which was not like other days. No noisy wagons noAV 
 in the streets ; no throngs hurrying to business. The 
 giant machine that had been roaring and thundering 
 the day before, had suddenly stood still as if before the 
 vision of God. The great movement of British indus- 
 try was hushed, and in the streets I saw naught but 
 families going their way, calm and cheerful, to the place 
 of prayer; I heard naught but the sweet chiming of 
 Protestant bells, that remember that they once were 
 Catholic, and wait the day when they shall be Catholic 
 again. [Applause.] 
 
284 DISCOUESES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 Let no one say, "England is an aristocratic and 
 feudal power ; her Sabbath rest is one of those relics of 
 the middle ages which the breath of modern progress 
 will soon have swept away." I look across the ocean, 
 and there again I find this same Anglo-Saxon race clad 
 in like grandeur under forms the most unlike. This 
 time there is neither mediaevalism nor aristocracy. It 
 is the foremost prow of modern civilization under full 
 headway on her glorious and daring course toward an 
 unknown future. It is, I love to think, the people 
 chosen of God to renew the face of the earth, and to 
 prepare for those old truths and institutions which 
 cannot pass away, newer and more enduring garments. 
 Now, the United States keeps holy the Lord's- day, just 
 like England, and sends back to us, across the ocean, 
 that same answer of God's silence to man's profanations. 
 [Applause.] 
 
 When I speak thus, Gentlemen, in eulogy of these 
 great countries, I do not mean to recommend to you a 
 servile imitation of them. Neither do I ask to have 
 engrossed among our laws anything that is not settled 
 in our character. The law exists in France, indeed, but 
 it exists as a dead letter. I do not ask to see it enforced. 
 I am satisfied that in countries like Erance and Bel- 
 gium there would be immense difficulties in adopting 
 that course. What I ask is not the enforcement, but 
 the liberty of the Sabbath. Liberty through the Sab- 
 bath ; and the Sabbath through liberty ! [ Good, good; 
 that's it I] Yes ; I say again the liberty of the people 
 through the Sabbath, and the observance of the Sab- 
 bath through liberty ! 
 
 If I had the right to speak to governments, I would 
 do it with the respect which is due to them, with all 
 their faults. We have been applauding here the no' 
 
EDUCATION OF THE WORKING-CLASSES. 285 
 
 words of M. de Maistre, when speaking of Eussia : " I 
 respect everything respectable, in sovereigns or in peo- 
 ple." I would tell them, then, " Give your own ex- 
 ample, and I ask no other support from you for the 
 cause for which I plead. Let the public works scrupu- 
 lously respect the Lord's-day, and the State will compel 
 the individual to blush before it." [Applmcse.l And 
 you, lords of the forge and the loom — organizers, legis- 
 lators, monarchs of labor and wealth — you can do more 
 for this cause than crowned heads can do. You have 
 been mighty in crushing the liberty of the Sabbath ; 
 you shall be mightier yet in restoring it ! [Applause.] 
 
 And now. Gentlemen, before I close, suffer me to 
 make one last and pressing appeal to your zeal in favor 
 of these three great restorations among the working- 
 classes — the family, the factory, the Sabbath. Yester- 
 day, in language such as only he can use, but such as 
 spoke the feelings of us all, the Count de Falloux said 
 to the illustrious Bishop of Orleans, " My lord, you have 
 recommended to us early rising, and you have enforced 
 precept with example; for we never fail to find you 
 awake bright and early in every good cause." Now, 
 I wish every one of us might be bright and early, too — 
 that we Catholics might have the honor of leading all 
 the rest in the practical understanding of what is get- 
 ting ready for us in no distant future. 
 
 What is getting ready — men call it by an ill-defined 
 name, a name that provokes excitement and contention 
 — democracy. I tried to explain this word, nearly two 
 years ago, at Notre-Dame, in Paris,* and was taken to 
 task for it by some people. Since then, I have come 
 upon a very similar definition in the recent work of that 
 courageous bishop whom I have just named. I reassert 
 
 * Advent Conferences, 1865. Conference Third. 
 
286 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 it, then, with pride, and say to all those who make use 
 of this name : — There are two sorts of democracy in the 
 world ; of which sort is yours ? Is it radical revolution ? 
 Is it the prostration of all greatness, and intelligence, 
 and virtue, — of the whole social hierarchy — before the 
 mere force of numbers ? Is it the brutal levelling pro- 
 cess which passes over everything to debase and crush ? 
 If that is your democracy, it is the worst of all barba- 
 risms, and we will fight it, if need be, to the death. But 
 if by democracy is meant the gradual and peaceful ele- 
 vation of the toiling and suffering masses whom in the 
 country we call the peasants, and in the cities the work- 
 ing-class, — their elevation to fuller education, to more 
 settled prosperity, to a purer and more effectual moral- 
 ity, and, as a legitimate consequence, to a wider social 
 influence, — we are on the side of that democracy, not 
 only because we are sons of this generation, but because 
 we are sons of the Gospel.* 
 
 Already it begins to dawn. In behalf of you all, I 
 greet this Christian democracy that settles itself deep 
 and firm by the hearth-stones of our homes, in the 
 shops of labor, in the sanctuary of our temples. It will 
 change history, which in past time has never known 
 how to write of anything but the intrigues of the cun- 
 ning and the conquests of the violent, the impotence 
 of state-craft, the corruption, too often, of riches and 
 of the arts. It will give as a subject for the meditations 
 of sages, the intelligent and faithful fulfilment of those 
 laws of private life to which public life itself is subor- 
 dinate, if we did but know it. It will rear up a grand 
 
 * " If democracy is the elevation of the common people, the peasants, the 
 working-men, to a higher grade of education, prosperity, morality, and legiti- 
 macy, then the Church goes for democracy."— 2/'J.^/tei«me et lepenl social, by 
 the Bishop of Orleans [Dupanloup]. 1866, p. 166. 
 
EDUCATION OF THE WORKING-CLASSES. 287 
 
 people, which shall seek the practical happiness of its 
 existence, as well as the inspiration of its literature and 
 art, in the affections of the family, the struggles and 
 the joys of labor, the chaste emotions of worship, and 
 the splendid festivals of religion. 
 
 Doubtless the crisis through which we are passing is 
 one of the most terrible, one of the most profound, that 
 our race has ever known. Let our efforts, our courage, 
 and our faith rise to the height of these solemn events, 
 but let us not doubt concerning the final issue. I can 
 understand the ruin of the organizations of heathen 
 society; but as for society that has been touched by 
 Jesus Christ, — as for humanity which for centuries has 
 had the spirit of the Gospel, — as for Europe, in a word, 
 it may suffer, it may agonize, it cannot die. [Prolonged 
 applause. For afeiu mmutes the proceedings of the Con- 
 gress were suspended^ 
 
MEMOEIAL LETTEE 
 
 ON THE LIFE OF 
 
 MONSEIGNEUR BAUDRY, BISHOP OF Pl&RIGUEUX. 
 
 [The religious and theological teacher to whom Father Hya- 
 cinthe gratefully ascribes the strongest and best influences that 
 affected his student-life, was the Abbe Baudry, professor in the 
 theological seminary of St. Sulpice, at Paris, and afterward 
 bishop of Perigueux. The following Letter was addressed to 
 the editor of a posthumous volume of Bishop Baudry, entitled, 
 " Christian Thoughts on the Heart of Jesus," {Pensees Chretiennes 
 sur U Co&ur de Jesus).] 
 
 My Dear Feiekd: — I wish to thank you for the 
 noble book which you have given to the public ; and I 
 make bold to do it, not in my own name alone, but in 
 the name of many others who, like us, are disciples and 
 spiritual children of Bishop Baudry. You have done 
 a work of filial piety, in which every one of us must 
 feel an interest. Perhaps, without suspecting it, you 
 have really brought out the best possible life of our com- 
 mon father. His outward life would furnish but little 
 of incident. It was passed almost exclusively in the 
 cloisters of our seminaries. It was that of the most 
 regular and modest of Sulpitians — which is a great 
 thing to say for the heavenly life, but very little for 
 the earthly. His true life was his inner life, the life of 
 his intellect and heart; but above all, of his heart, for 
 
 13 
 
290 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 with this great Christian spirit, both the root and the 
 fruit of the intellect were in the heart. Has not Bishop 
 Baudry really unfolded to us his own heart, while attempt- 
 ing to speak only of that Heart of Jesus which Avas the ob- 
 ject of his constant thought, his intimate and confidential 
 fellowship, and his practical imitation ? How truth- 
 fully and charmingly you show him to us, at evening, 
 in that dear little chamber where we knew and loved 
 him so well, pressing out into his soul's cup the sweet 
 or bitter juices of the day's experience, mingling and 
 assimilating them into that highest unity of man, the 
 unity of his love, and then pouring them out over these 
 pages, written for himself alone, like the outpouring of 
 his soul into the bosom of Jesus Christ. 
 
 But in point of fact it was not your direct or princi- 
 pal aim to reveal to the world one of the loftiest and 
 most secluded souls that God has granted to his Church 
 in our age ; it was your main purpose to help in throw- 
 ing new and vivid light on that devotion to The Sacred 
 Heart which, in our time, is one of the strongest attrac- 
 tions of Christian piety. At its very origin a subject 
 of controversy, and ever since, for many, even among 
 believers, a subject of distrust, this devotion has most 
 commonly been defended, just as it has been attacked, 
 by superficial arguments, in its relation to the imagina- 
 tion and the sensibilities. Without disregarding either 
 of these two aspects, our author goes deeper, even to the 
 mysteries of man's moral constitution. Heathenism 
 had placed the seat of life sometimes in the abstractions 
 of the intellect, sometimes in the emotions of the sen- 
 sibilities. Christianity puts it back where it belongs, in 
 the heart, the centre in which thought and sentiment 
 come together, the one to receive real life, the other to 
 gain ideal purity, both to come under the fructifying 
 
MEMORIAL LETTER. 291 
 
 control of the -will. This is the point of view from 
 which Bishop Baudry contemplated his subject. The 
 life of man radiating from the heart, the heart of man 
 having its object and its law in the heart of God mani- 
 fest in the flesh, such is the substance of this book, full 
 of instruction as it is of piety, and which, by a beauti- 
 ful care of Providence, is brought before the public 
 amid the joy and enthusiasm of the festivals in honor 
 of the lover and evangelist of The Sacred Heart, the 
 blessed Marguerite- Marie. 
 
 These pages, it must be acknowledged, bear the im- 
 press of a metaphysics sometimes so profound, and a 
 mysticism always so tender, that they might seem hardly 
 appropriate to the wants of society, in which, even 
 among Christians, contrary tendencies unhappily pre- 
 vail. The objection is so plausible, that I could pardon 
 a less acute and earnest mind than yours for being 
 alarmed by it. But, thank God, you understand that 
 the prejudices of the day need not to be humored, but 
 to be withstood. You justly believe that it is not for 
 us to level down the summits of doctrine and piety, be- 
 cause too many of our contemporaries fail to reach 
 them. In our own time, as in all past time, the two 
 wings with which to mount upward to these summits 
 are the metaphysical and the mystical — intellect and 
 love. This powerful and harmonious flight character- 
 izes all the masters in divinity, as they used to be called, 
 from St. John and St. Paul to Origen and St. Augus- 
 tine ; from St. Bonaventure and Gerson down to St. 
 John of the Cross and M. Olier. To reproach you with 
 this publication as an anachronism, would be equivalent 
 to reproaching Bishop Baudry for having continued 
 among us that succession which can never fail, and that 
 race which can never become extinct. 
 
292 DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 
 
 Be of good cheer, then, my friend. This unfinished 
 book (you have called our attention, in advance, to its 
 incompleteness), this artless book, the expression of 
 which is forgotten in the thought, and has none but an 
 unconscious eloquence — this book, whose very substance, 
 full of beams of light, of horizons half unveiled, and 
 of sublime but fragmentary studies, reveals less the 
 labor of the intellect than the inspiration of grace — 
 this book will do its own work, as did the life of which 
 it is the sweet and touching memorial. The life, like the 
 book, was unfinished, and yet how fruitful ! As he used 
 to tell us at St. Sulpice, and as you remind us in your 
 affecting preface, our friend was only an mitiato7\ It 
 was his mission to think rather than write, and the 
 works he has left behind him are not books, but dis- 
 ciples. This book, which is hardly to be called a book, 
 because it is so much more, will be for many an initia- 
 tion ; it will scatter germs of thought and virtue in 
 men's souls, and will join to us brothers and sisters un- 
 known, but not unloved, in that spiritual family in 
 which, unworthy as we are, it is our honor to be counted 
 among the first-born. 
 
 Accept, my dear friend, with the renewed expression 
 of my thanks, that of my fraternal attachment in our 
 Lord Jesus Christ. 
 
 Brother HYACiji[THE, 
 
 Of the Immaculate Conception, 
 Barefooted Carmelite. 
 Parts, August 21, 18G5. 
 
APPENDIX, 
 
 LETTER OF MONSEIGNEUR DUPAOTiOUP, 
 
 Bishop op Orleans, 
 
 TO THE CLERGY OF HIS DIOCESE, 
 
 On the proposed Definition of tJie Dogma of Infallibility in the 
 (Ecumenical Council. 
 
 Gentlemen: In sending me your farewell greetings and 
 prayers before my departure for Rome, you have spoken of the 
 trouble and anxiety produced among the faithful of your parishes 
 by the violent controversy that has been excited in the news- 
 papers concerning the approaching Council, and especially con- 
 cerning the definition of the doctrine of papal infallibility. 
 
 This anxiety I fully appreciate. 
 
 The Holy Father and his privileges are here in question — 
 matters of closest interest to the Catholic heart. It is natural in 
 filial piety to wish to invest a father with every gift and preroga- 
 tive ; and, on the other hand, how painful it is for sons to hear 
 discussed what they would rejoice to have proclaimed by accla- 
 mation as their father's honor and glory. 
 
 Controversies, then, upon the infallibility of the sovereign Pon- 
 tifi" cannot but have eukindled in men's minds these two feelings, 
 both of which are worthy of respect. 
 
 But, however sweet and dear these suggestions of filial love 
 may be, there is, Gentlemen — ^you feel it — something more to be 
 considered and listened to in the proclamation of a dogma than 
 
294 APPENDIX. 
 
 tlie impulses of sentiment. There are reasons pro and con. — 
 reasons on wliicb, in a question not yet settled, great minds have 
 taken different sides ; there are, besides, the very interests of the 
 venerated and cherished Father himself, which might be com- 
 promised in the attempt to exalt them ; there are, above all, the 
 interests of the Church, which take precedence of his interests ; 
 there is, finally, the sacred welfare of souls, the present condition 
 of minds, which must be taken into account ; in a word, by the 
 side of supposed advantages there are also objections which must 
 be weighed deliberately and gravely. All this should not be for- 
 gotten, Gentlemen, unless we wish to expose oui-selves, despite 
 our good intentions, to the risk of mingling contention with love, 
 and turning a matter of theology into a matter of enthusiasm or 
 of anger. 
 
 God forbid. Gentlemen, that I should wish to give pain to a 
 single one of my venerable brethren in the episcopate ! Had 
 bishops been the only ones to utter their views on this subject 
 according to the inspiration of their conscience, I should have 
 kept silence, and listened with respect to respectful discussions, 
 without contradicting their doctrines for or against the question, 
 or their views for or against its opportuneness. "Without wishing 
 to judge the conduct of any one, such would have been my own. 
 And if, subsequently, at the Council, I should have been called 
 upon to decide one way or the other, I should have done so, for 
 my own part, in the simplicity of nry conscience, in the truthful- 
 ness and charity of my soul. 
 
 Such, however, has not been the case — far from it; and the 
 question, launched upon the public in a very different manner, 
 has evoked the anxieties which you have made known to me, 
 and upon which, according to my promise to you, I make it my 
 duty to give you my opinion. 
 
 But, before doing this, I must recall to your minds what has 
 been said and done up to this time, and how the question stands 
 at this moment. 
 
 I. I shall begin, Gentlemen, by observing, that such a question 
 was a matter for the Council, and should have been treated by it 
 
APPENDIX. 295 
 
 alone. Unfortunately, intemperate journalists have not left this 
 task to the future Assembly of the Church. Storming the doors 
 of the Council, even before, a long while before it could assemble, 
 they have made haste to open the debates upon one of the most 
 delicate theological subjects, and to announce beforehand how 
 the Council should and must decide. It was an effort made to 
 create a current in public opinion favorable to their desires, and 
 to bear down upon the assembled bishops with all the pressure 
 of this anticipatory judgment. 
 
 Shall I go so far as to mention the pious artifices resorted to 
 for the same object ? Some have gone to the point of distributing 
 in the streets— I have seen it myself, two years ago ; they are 
 keeping it up to this day — thousands of little handbills, with the 
 vow to believe in the personal and separate infallibility of the 
 Pope. They have got them signed by good Catholics, many of 
 whom, assuredly, would scarcely claim to be theologians, and 
 certainly do not understand the first word of the question.* 
 
 Two papers especially, the Civiltd Cattolica, and the Univers^ 
 have taken the most astonishing steps. While the Holy Father 
 was enjoining prudent and rigorous silence upon the counsellors 
 of the Roman congregations charged with the work of prepara- 
 tion for the Council, they did not hesitate to throw open to the 
 public questions which, in their opinion, should be agitated and 
 settled by the future Assembly. They announced, in particular, 
 that the matter of the personal infallibility of the Pope would be 
 defined by it; even more, that it would be defined by accla- 
 mation. 
 
 This delicate question having been raised after this fashion, 
 and dragged into the street and the press, a Belgian prelate, my 
 reverend friend Mgr. Dechamps, recently nominated Archbishop 
 of Malines, has published a special work, entitled : Is it opportune 
 to define in tlie approaching Council the Infallibility of the Pope f 
 and he answered in the affinnative. The new Archbishop of 
 
 * In certain towns the laity have taken the initiative with their paetora, 
 going to them and requesting them to sign either the vow of belief in infalli- 
 bility, or one of the petitions to the Council on this subject- 
 
296 APPENDIX. 
 
 Westminster, the pious and eloquent Mgr. Manning, had already, 
 in a prior work, treated the same question, from the same point 
 of view, and he has subsequently taken it up again, still more 
 positively, in a second letter to his clergy. The English papers. 
 Catholic and Protestant, have taken an active part in the contro- 
 versy. 
 
 On the other hand, the German bishops, convened at Fulda — 
 as announced several days ago by the Memorial Diplomatique — in 
 addition to that letter which all Europe has admired for its 
 moderation, elevation, and dignity, have addressed the Sovereign 
 Pontiff a memorial (without, however, exposing it to the greedy 
 publicity of the newspapers), asking him not to permit the ques- 
 tion of his personal infallibility to be broached at the approach- 
 ing Council. 
 
 Such was the state of affairs when the controversy was revived 
 in France among several of our venerated colleagues. Unfortu- 
 nately, the papers immediately took it up with extreme ardor. 
 The quick and keen simultaneousness of the attacks aroused the 
 public : a certain portion of the press, under whose eyes this de- 
 bate was carried on, has made deplorable sport of it, and well- 
 known publicists have thrown ridicule upon what they call " the 
 Holy Warr 
 
 Finally, other writers, laymen and ecclesiastics, in France, in 
 England, and in Germany, following the example thus set them, 
 have broken silence and expressed, in their turn, their opinions 
 and their fears. 
 
 With this spectacle before one's eyes, it was difficult not to ask 
 one's self: If the question is already treated in this manner be- 
 fore the public, what will be the case if it comes to be presented 
 to the Council ? And it was impossible not to feel, once more, 
 the grievous fault of the journalists, who, with the greatest in- 
 discretion, have been the first to start a question of this nature. 
 
 The question is indeed a grave one. For it is the question of 
 proclaiming a new dogma, the dogma of the personal and sepa- 
 rate infallibility of the Pope. 
 
 We say " a new dogma," not in the sense you understand, Gen- 
 
APPENDIX. 297 
 
 tlemen, that a dof^ma is created by the Council : the Church does 
 not create dogmas, it declares them. And there must be no am- 
 biguity hei'e. I say a new dogma in this sense, that for eighteen 
 centuries the faithful have never been held to this belief under 
 penalty of ceasing to be Catholics. 
 
 It is a question, then, of obliging all Catholics hereafter to be- 
 lieve, on pain of anathema, that the Pope is infallible, even — I 
 make use of the very words of His Grace the Archbishop of 
 Westminster — even when he pronounces alone, " without the 
 EPISCOPAL BODY, UNITED OR DISPERSED," and that lie Can define 
 dogmas by himself, " separately, independently op the 
 EPISCOPATE,"* without any co-operation of the bishops, express 
 or implied, antecedent or subsequent. 
 
 Now this, as you see, is no speculative dogma ; it is a preroga- 
 tive which, in its practical realization, would be fraught with the 
 most serious consequences. 
 
 Such is the question that we see discussed every morning, and 
 decided ofF-hand by an overweening press, with the strongest 
 freedom. 
 
 Besides, many treat the matter just as if, in their eyes, there 
 was no difficulty in it whatever. " It is enough," says one of 
 them, " to know our catechism." Bossuet, apparently, did not 
 know his; nor Fenelon, who had a very different idea of infalli- 
 bility from Bellarmln's ; nor even Bellarmin himself, who, on 
 this point, did not agree at all with other Roman theologians. 
 To hear these editors, one would suppose that the proclamation 
 of the dogma of Papal infallibility is so necessary, so easy, and 
 so certain, that the Council will not even have to examine it; 
 and to doubt its decision, even for a moment, would be to insult 
 it : it would also subject one to the suspicion, at least, of very 
 lukewarm devotion to the Church and the Pope. 
 
 This is what they say, accompanied with such abuse of those 
 who do not agree with them, that, in truth, all restraint is forgot- 
 ten, and the debate becomes strangely acrimonious. 
 
 * Pastoral Letter of Archbishop Manning, on The (Ecumenical Council and 
 the Infallibility of the Roman Pontiff.— FOsUcript. 
 
298 APPENDIX. 
 
 Yet nobody knows in the least what the Council will see fit to 
 do or not to do on this point — the Council that does not yet 
 exist. 
 
 But meanwhile, Gentlemen, these excesses of controvei*sy 
 trouble the faithful, and place them in the evidently dangerous 
 situation that you have indicated to me. For, if the Council 
 should see fit not to follow the line so imperatively laid down for 
 it, would it not appear, in the eyes of many, to have fallen short 
 of its duty ? It is asserted, and justly, that the bishops will have 
 full and entire liberty at the Council. But, truly, what liberty is 
 left them henceforth, by such discussions, conducted in such a 
 manner by the newspaper- press ? To judge from the way in 
 which the debate has been carried on, do they not seem to de- 
 nounce beforehand, as schismatics and heretics, those who will 
 permit tliemselves to be of a different opinion ? 
 
 These, Gentlemen, are common-sense considerations, presented 
 to me orally and in writing, not merely by yourselves, but again 
 and again by a host of the best and most Christian spirits, who 
 are interested and agitated by these disputes that are raging near 
 and far. 
 
 I have waited long before deciding to speak on such a subject. 
 You have decided me. My anxiety w^as not, indeed, to know 
 whether certain men would suspect, more or less, and Calumni- 
 ate my zeal for the Pope and the Church, but to know what I 
 had to do to serve those cherished causes as I ought. I have ex- 
 amined at length, in all its aspects, and especially from a practi- 
 cal point of view, the question discussed in the newspapers. I 
 have found in it, for my part, difficulties of more than one kind — 
 difficulties which, it seems to me, should strike even those who 
 are most convinced, theologically, of the Papal infallibility. 
 
 Assuredly, I have no relish for precipitating myself into so 
 violent an affray. I deplore the controversy that is being carried 
 on before the public, and if I write, it is not to aggravate, but 
 rather to calm, and even, were that possible, to suppress it. For, 
 for my part, I hold it to be very inopportune, much to be regret- 
 ted, for the sake of the Holy See itself; and the quarrels that 
 
APPENDIX. 299 
 
 have just taken place have only strengthened my conviction, al- 
 ready of long standjjig, as to this inopportuneness. 
 
 These difficulties it is— without going to the bottom of the the- 
 ological question — that I would simply set forth in this paper. 
 
 I do not discuss the question of infallibility itself, but only its 
 opportuneness. And, moreover, the views that I shall present 
 here are no merely personal views of my own. I have often 
 discussed them with a great number of my venerated colleagues, 
 both in France and elsewhere, and these reasons have seemed to 
 ns so weighty, to them as well as myself, that at the very least 
 they are of a kind to bring the religious press to reflection, and 
 to persuade it, at last, to leave such delicate discussions for the 
 bishops. 
 
 II. These debates, as I have said, have no less astonished than 
 saddened me. For, indeed, prior to this meddling and these 
 noisy demonstrations on the part of a certain portion of the 
 press, the question had not been raised. God be praised, silence 
 had come over quarrels which it would be better, I have ever 
 thought, to forget than to revive. Never had the authority of 
 the Holy Father been more respected in the Church, never had 
 his voice been better listened to. Never had the bishops been 
 more ready to gather around the papal throne, hurrying — not by 
 the order even, but at the simple wish of the Pope — from the 
 ends of the world to the centre of Catholic Christendom. 
 
 Wherein, then, was it possible for the Council toT3e an occasiou 
 of provoking controversy upon papal prerogatives ? Was it for 
 this object, was it to have himself declared infallible^ that the 
 Holy Father wished to convene the bishops of the whole world ? 
 Did the definition of the doctrine of personal infallibility enter 
 at all into the motives and the causes of the convocation of the 
 Council ? Not the least in the world. 
 
 When Pope Pius IX., in his two celebrated allocutions, an- 
 nounced to the bishops assembled at Rome, in 1867, his project 
 of convoking an (Ecumenical Council, he did not say one word 
 upon the necessity or the expediency of having the future as- 
 fiembly set up his personal infallibility as a dogma of faitb. 
 
300 APPENDIX. 
 
 Neither did the five hundred bishops, then met at Rome, in 
 their address to the Holy Father, in reply tc^this communication, 
 say one word about this question. 
 
 Finally, in the Bull of Convocation, in which the Holy Father 
 laid down the programme of the future Council so broadly and 
 in such grand terms, there is again no mention made of his per- 
 sonal infallibility. 
 
 No ; nowhere, in none of the acts of the Holy Father, does 
 there appear, for a single instant, this anxiety to aggrandize his 
 authority by means of the Council and under favor of that re- 
 spect which the world pays to his virtues and his misfortunes. 
 
 You know. Gentlemen, that the Vicar of Jesus Christ assigns 
 other and grand objects for the assembly of the representatives 
 of the Catholic Church. 
 
 " To cure the evils of the present century in the Church and 
 in society," that is the purpose for which the Pope has convened 
 the Council ; and therein, of a truth, what questions are con- 
 tained that have been raised by modem times and by the pres- 
 ent crisis ! It is everywhere anxiously asked whether, in such 
 an uncertain era — when from one moment to another events may 
 start up to dissolve the Council before it can finish its task — the 
 bishops will even have time to consider thera. 
 
 And it is in the midst of such pressing and necessary ques- 
 tions that people wish to start a new, unforeseen, unexpected 
 question, of unmistakable difficulty, and charged with tempests 1 
 and to run the risk — in the path laid down by tlie newspapei*s — 
 of showing the world, instead of that grand spectacle of unity 
 which it is expecting of us, a totally different one ! 
 
 Alas ! we can foresee already, by the bitterness of these prelim- 
 inary debates, what discussions this question — if carried there- 
 might give rise to in the Council ! 
 
 But why carry it thither ? Is there any constraining necessity ? 
 Do the perils of the times demand it ? 
 
 Not at all ! But I hear it said, we have to do here with a 
 principle. 
 
 A principle ? Well ! I reply in turn, this priijciple, if it is pne, 
 
APPENDIX. 301 
 
 is it then necessary to the life of the Church that it should become 
 a dogma of faith ? How, then, do you explain it that the Church 
 has lived for eighteen centuries without defining this doctrine 
 essential to its life ? How do you explain it, that the Church has 
 formulated its body of doctrine, produced all its doctors, con- 
 demned every heresy, without this definition ? Evidently, there 
 is no necessity here, and the solution of this question is no more 
 indispensable than it was called for. 
 
 The reason, moreover, is simple. The Church is infallible, and 
 the infallibility of the Church has answered every purpose until 
 now. Do you fear lest, in future, it should become insufficient ? 
 and do you flatter yourselves that those who are unwilling to 
 believe in the infallibility of the Church united with the Pope 
 will be more ready to believe in the personal and separate infalli- 
 bility of the Pope ? 
 
 Is there in the Catholic Church any misgiving as to the infalli- 
 bility of the Church ? Are not all agreed on this point ? Does 
 not the least of the faithful know that he is in communion with 
 his pastor, who is in communion with his bishop, who is in com- 
 munion with the Pope V Does not that suffice abundantly for the 
 security of our faith ? And have not the faithful, in this marvel- 
 lous harmony of evidence, a sure guarantee against error ? 
 
 Do you fear lest the Church be no longer able to live in the 
 future upon the same foundations that have supported it during 
 a past of eighteen centuries ? 
 
 Why, then, do you speak of the necessity of making in the 
 Council a new definition concerning the rule of faith, and estab- 
 lishing dogmatically a new rule of faith ? What ! Is it in our 
 centuiy that the necessity has arisen of putting this in question, 
 of meddling with this fundamental principle, this mainspring of 
 the Church's life ? Have we been constituted for so many cen- 
 turies, then, in a defective and incomplete manner ? 
 
 After eighteen hundred and seventy years of teaching, must we 
 ask ourselves, in Council, who has the right to teach infallibly ? 
 And that in the face of the unbelieving and Protestant world 
 that is watching us 1 No ; let us drop these questions, for which 
 
302 APPENDIX. 
 
 there is no call. Let not these foolhardy editors go on prema- 
 turely to stun and bewilder the good sense of the faithful by vio- 
 lent controversies, that have the semblance of wishing to force 
 these questions beforehand upon the bishops. As for myself, 
 Gentlemen, my opinion, with deference to my venerated col- 
 leagues, is fixed on this point. When the oak counts twenty 
 centuries over its head, to dig down under its roots in quest of 
 the original acorn is to unsettle the entire tree ! 
 
 III. But are there not. Gentlemen, decisive precedents for this 
 question of opportuneness that engages our attention ? I shall 
 first recall to mind the wise conduct of the Council of Trent and 
 Pope Pius IV. 
 
 In the times of the Council of Trent, the question that agitated 
 the public so intensely, and was even on the point of causing the 
 dissolution of the Council, was, in substance, though in another 
 form — for questions never present themselves twice in precisely 
 the same form — the very one that we are handling at present. 
 
 How shall we forget the prudence with which the Holy See 
 w^arded ofiF the danger of those controversies by putting an end to 
 the debate ? 
 
 Pius IV., seeing, at last, how excited the public mind was, 
 wrote to his legates, ordering them to withdraw the subject from 
 debate, and declared that nothing must be discussed that could 
 provoke wrangling or dissension among the bishops. He laid 
 down this wise rule, that nothing should be decided but by their 
 unanimous consent : Ne definirentur, nisi ea, de quibus inter 
 Patres unanimi consensione constaret* 
 
 The Council saw that it had something else to do, in the pres- 
 ence of the errors of the times, besides setting up as dogmas 
 opinions, however respectable they might be, that were the sub- 
 jects of controversy among the doctors, something better than 
 denouncing Catholic theologians. And the discussion was laid 
 aside, without detriment to the Church. 
 
 I well remember, and more than one bishop present at Rome 
 in 1867 can remember, that one of the chief cares of Pius IX., 
 * See Pallavicini, Book XIX., chap. XV., and elsewhere. 
 
APPENDIX. 30S 
 
 before decidini? upon convening the Council of tlie Vatican, was 
 lest some question should come up of a kind to provoke wran- 
 gling and dissension in the episcopate. But the Pope remem- 
 bered the prudent conduct of the Council of Trent and Pope 
 Pius IV., and, hoping that it would not be forgotten in the future 
 Council, he kept on. 
 
 Are we to suppose that, for starting and deciding so delicate 
 a matter as that of the dogmatic definition already announced, 
 our times are more favorable than those of the Council of Trent, 
 and that we live in an age of livelier faith and more general sub- 
 mission to the Church ? 
 
 Another precedent of wisdom and moderation must be recalled 
 here — the conduct of Pope Innocent XI. toward Bossuet. When 
 Bossuet wrote his Exposition of Catholic Doctrine, after having 
 firmly established, in the matter of the authority of the Holy See, 
 the primacy of divine right, the primacy of honor and jurisdic- 
 tion of Saint Peter and the Popes, his successors, he expressly 
 and purposely passed over, in silence, the question of papal in- 
 fallibility. 
 
 " Concerning those things which, it is known, are disputed in 
 the schools, although the [Protestant] ministers do not cease al- 
 leging them in order to render that power odious, it is not neces- 
 sary to speak of them here, since they are not a part of tJie Catho- 
 lic faiths 
 
 Did this deliberate and intentional silence upon the subject of 
 papal infallibility prevent Innocent XI. from approving the 
 work ? Far from it ; for that holy Pope addressed to Bossuet 
 two briefs, in which h^ congratulated him on hamng written the 
 hook in a manner and tcith a wisdom eminently adapted for recall- 
 ing heretics to the way of salvation, and procuring the Church the 
 greatest facilities for the propagation of the orthodox faith. 
 
 Bossuet, moreover, in carefully avoiding, in the wisely-expressed 
 spirit of Innocent XL, the point in controversy, has only imitated 
 the Catechism of the Council of Trent. I have read and re-read 
 tliis grand Catechism, composed by order of the holy Council 
 and the Sovereign Pontifis, by the most celebrated Roman then- 
 
304 APPENDIX. 
 
 logians ; I Lave read it with the express purpose of finding out 
 whetlier it had any tiling to say either for or against tlie infalli- 
 bility of the Pope, and I have ascertained tlTat it does not say a 
 single word about it. Neither is the subject included in the sol- 
 emn profession of faith prepared by order of Pius IV., and in- 
 serted in the Roman pontifical. 
 
 Finally, why should we not cite in this place the example of 
 the venerated Pius IX. himself? We know that two years ago, 
 in 1867, one hundred and eighty-eight Anglican ministers wrote 
 to him expressing their willingness, and inquiring of him the 
 possible terms of union. What did the Holy Father do ? In an 
 answer full of charity and wisdom, he spoke of the authority of 
 the Church, he spoke of the supremacy of the Pope ; but he did 
 not speak of his infallibility. 
 
 At a time, then, when the Holy Father, in the inspiration of 
 his noble and peace-loving heart, sets such an example of moder- 
 ation and wisdom, do journalists, sheltering themselves. behind 
 the venerated name that they desecrate in such contests, under- 
 take, by dint of sweeping assertions, to bear down upon public 
 opinion, wiiile, with the same operation, as if they wished to in- 
 timidate and silence the bishops, they hold suspended over their 
 heads insults and attacks full of violence and gall. 
 
 I can say to them : You know neither Pius IX. nor the episco- 
 pate. 
 
 IV. We have just spoken of our brethren of the seceded com- 
 munions. Truly, it is bj'' placing ourselves at their point of view 
 that the question of defining the personal infiillibility of the Pope 
 becomes especially grave and dangerous. 
 
 Think of it: there are seventy-five millions of detached 
 Oriental Christians ; there are nearly ninety millions of Protest- 
 ants of different shades of belief 
 
 Assuredly, if the Church has one supreme interest, if all truly 
 Catholic hearts have one ardent wish, it is the return of so many 
 brethren spning from the same mother, but to-day estranged 
 from us. That is the great cause, for which we should all be 
 ready to give our blood, and should tremble at the bare thought 
 
APPENDIX. 305 
 
 of aught that might put it in jeopardy. Hence what pressing 
 invitations from the Holy Father to the Oriental Churches! 
 What an appeal to the Protestant communions ! 
 
 Well ! what separates the Orientals from us ? The supremacy 
 of the Pope. They are not willing to recognize it as of divine 
 right. That is the point upon which it has never iDcen possible, 
 either after Lyons or Florence, to bring them to an earnest, ef- 
 fectual decision, and to bring about a permanent return. 
 
 And now, to this difficulty, insurmountable up to this day, which 
 has kept them for nine centuries aloof from the Church and from 
 us, it is proposed to add a new and much greater obstacle, to 
 raise up between them and us a barrier that has never existed — 
 in a word, to force upon them a new dogma that has never been 
 spoken of to them, and threaten them, if they do not accept it, 
 with a fresh anathema ! 
 
 For it is not merely the primacy of jurisdiction that they will 
 have to acknowledge, but the personal infallibility of the Pope, 
 
 " WITHOUT AND INDEPENDENTLY OF THE EPISCOPAL BODY."* 
 
 Could there be, I demand — and here I merely repeat what good 
 sense has suggested already to every one who has been willing to 
 consider the matter — could there be, toward the separated 
 Oriental churches, anything more contradictory than such con- 
 duct, less persuasive than such language ? " We invite you to 
 profit by the great occasion of the (Ecumenical Council, to come 
 to an explanation and understanding with us. But take notice, 
 in advance, what we are going to do — build up a new wall of 
 separation, a new and higher barrier between you and us. Now, 
 a moat separates us ; we are going to make it a great gulf. You 
 have refused hitherto to recognize the simple primacy of the 
 Roman pontiff; we are going to force you to believe, as the first 
 step, something very different, and to admit what, up to this time, 
 some of our Catholic doctors themselves have not admitted ; we 
 are going to set up as a dogma a doctrine much more obscure for 
 you, in Scripture and in Tradition, than the dogma which you 
 have already rejected — to wit, the personal infallibility of the 
 
 * Archbishop Manning. 
 
306 ArPENDix. 
 
 Pope, alone, ' iiidepeiident of aiid apart from tJie bishops.'' Those 
 are the conditions under which we offer to treat with 3^ou." 
 
 Would not such speech be a mockery ? Would it not also be 
 a misfortune ? Inviting and repelling at the same time ! 
 
 These considerations must be still more striking if we reflect 
 upon the intellectual attitude of the schismatic Christians of the 
 East. When we treat with men we must really know how they 
 stand. Now, upon this point, w^hat is the position of our estranged 
 brethren ? 
 
 They have remained precisely where they were in the time of 
 the schism, that is, in the ninth century. They have not gone 
 forward one step since then. They have no knowledge of the 
 controversies that have been raised upon this subject in the West- 
 ern Church. They have not read Bossuet, nor Bellarmin, nor 
 Melchior Cano. And whatever personal conviction we may have 
 as to the infallibility of the Roman pontiff, we must admit that 
 the ninth century was fjir from ready for the definition of such a 
 dogma. In fact, up to that time, the Councils were the great 
 manifestation of Church life ; they were continually meeting ; all 
 the great dogmatic definitions had been made in Council. The 
 Greeks, then, are in no respect prepared for the definition that 
 people would have forced upon them by the Council of the Vati- 
 can. It is my profound conviction, that one of the certain, inevi- 
 table results of such a definition would be to postpone to the distant 
 future the reunion of the Oriental Churches. Such a consideration 
 will not seem trifling to any one who knows the value of souls. 
 
 A recent circumstance will show whether the fear that we ex- 
 press here is without foundation : it is the response given to the 
 envoy of the Sovereign Pontiff by the Vicar General of the 
 schismatic Patriarch of Constantinople. Among the reasons as- 
 signed by him for declining the invitation sent from Rome, 
 occurs this one : " That the Greek Church cannot recognize the 
 infallibility of the Pope, and his superiority over (Ecumenical 
 Councils."* 
 
 * The Civiltd Cattolica, " Chronicle of the Council." Quoted by the Bishop 
 of Grenoble. 
 
APPENDIX. 307 
 
 The Armenian schismatics use the same language, and I have 
 had before my eyes an Armenian journal, which pretends that if 
 Rome invites them to the Council, it is " to force upon them the 
 infallibility of the Pope." 
 
 Perhaps it will be said : Why, what are you so anxious about ? 
 The schismatics do not desire any reunion. What matters an 
 additional barrier between them and us ? For my part, I am far 
 from thus losing hope, and, though ignorant of God's designs for 
 the nations, I do not believe that I have any right thus to seal the 
 tomb of these ancient Christian nations, especially when I con- 
 sider that in this tomb, beneath this Oriental soil, are reposing 
 such ashes as those of Athanasius, Cyril, Gregory, Chrysostom, 
 mingled with those of Paul, Anthony, Hilarion, Pachomius, and 
 so many other saints illustrious forever. 
 
 Even were it so to be, even were neither the breath of God 
 nor any human effort destined to recall these ancient people of 
 the East from the error in which they are lost, even then I could 
 not believe that it was in accordance with the charity of Jesus 
 Christ and the mission of a great Council, to alienate them still 
 farther, and render their return more difficult. 
 
 I have often had the good fortune to confer at length upon the 
 welfare of these ancient Churches with the Eastern bishops 
 whom I have chanced to meet at Rome, in our great gatherings ; 
 and, besides, an active private correspondence with several of 
 them has enabled me to become somewhat acquainted with the 
 state of affairs. 
 
 What 1 have learned from them is this : That there is a great 
 desire for reconciliation. Yes ; in this dull, lethargic East there 
 are many souls aroused by these aspirations. And at the same 
 time they are keenly sensitive for the slightest details of their 
 ancient customs : how much moie so, then, for anything that en- 
 ters into the great dogmatic questions ! 
 
 Assuredly, the Council of Trent pursued a very different 
 course, and showed a considerateness toward the Oriental 
 Churches far more worthy of the Church of Jesus Christ, and 
 that too in a question of vital importance. Every theologian 
 
308 APPENDIX. 
 
 knows liow, at tlie request of the "Venetian ambassadors, the 
 famous canon beginning, Si quis dixerit Ecclesiam errare, a 
 masterpiece of charity and theological prudence, was moderated 
 so as to uphold the truth, and at the same time to spare the 
 Oriental Christians. 
 
 V. The question is still more delicate in its bearings upon 
 Protestantism. For the Eastern schism admits at least the au- 
 thority of the (Ecumenical Councils — those that it regards as 
 such — and the authority of the Church, of which it is persuaded 
 that it forms a part, whereas Protestantism does not admit this 
 authority. Upon this precise and decisive point — the authority 
 of the Church — turns the great controversy between them and 
 us. Protestantism is, more than anything else, the negation of 
 the authority of the Church. In this principle of division con- 
 sists its essence, its deadly plague. And this, many of our alien- 
 ated brethren are beginning to get a notion of. They feel that a 
 principle which allows of division to infinity, which admits that 
 one may continue to be a Protestant after he has ceased to be a 
 Christian, cannot be the true Christian principle. Hence this 
 labor in the womb of Protestantism, these grand and cheering 
 conversions, of which especially England and America afford us 
 the spectacle, and these longings after union which exist, I know, 
 in the heart of so many Protestants. 
 
 Which one among us does not sympathize with this labor 
 and these sufferings of so many souls? Who does not invite 
 them lovingly ? Who does not pray with them ? For they are 
 praying — I know it myself— for this great, supreme interest, the 
 union of the Christian Churches. " There are," said no less a 
 one than Dr. Pusey, to me, at Orleans, two years ago, " there are 
 eight thousand of us in England, that pray every day for union." 
 
 Ah ! If this reconciliation so much desired could at last be 
 brought about ! If England, above all, great England, might 
 some day come back to us ! Of all the reconciliations that the 
 world has seen, this, assuredly, would be the happiest and yield 
 the richest fruits. I said in my book upon the Papal Sovereignty, 
 which was written, as I might say, under the fire of the struggles 
 
APPENDIX. 309 
 
 for the Holy See, I saM confidently to such of the English as are 
 mastera of themselves and then* prejudices : You have been, for 
 three centuries, the most formidable enemies of unity : what an 
 honor it would be for you to restore unity in Europe ! How be- 
 fitting it would be for your hands to upraise the standard of 
 Christian Catholicity — for your vessels to bear it over the seas to 
 all the countries that you visit ! Happy they to whom it shall be 
 given to see those better times, perhaps not far distant ! 
 
 Well ! the Council has revived these hopes among a great 
 number of our alienated brethren and among ourselves. Ah ! 
 no doubt we must fear that they will not all be realized. But 
 partial conversions, at least, may be witnessed, and in great 
 numbers ; above all, a powerful impulse may be given. Time, 
 with the grace of God, would accomplish the rest. 
 
 May the Council at least, for those to whom the Holy Father 
 but recently addressed that pressing appeal, not prove the hardest 
 stumbling-block ! 
 
 No longer talk, then, of first enjoining upon them, as the con- 
 dition of their return, the personal and separate infallibility of 
 the Pope ! For this would be to forget all prudence, as well as 
 all charity. 
 
 The new Catholics, I have heard said, are full of fervor for this 
 dogma. Yes; certain new Catholics, perhaps. But I myself 
 know other converts, who have been troubled by the announce- 
 ment of a definition. I know certain Protestants, desirous of 
 coming to us, whom this alone deters. I know some, whom this 
 definition would absolutely repel. 
 
 It seems to me that one must be very little or veiy poorly 
 informed as to the present disposition of our alienated brethren, 
 not to see that thereby we should inevitably raise up a fresh bar- 
 ner — an ever-insuperable one, perhaps — between them and us. 
 
 Wait, then ! I would say to the impatient : schisms and heresies 
 do not last forever. The Church has waited comfortably for 
 eighteen centuries without this definition, and the truth, kept by 
 her, has been well kept. 
 
 VI. There are still other perils, of another sort, which are also 
 
310 APPENDIX. 
 
 very grave. "We must take into account the consequences that 
 such an act might have from the point of view of modern govern- 
 ments; there is an expediency in this, or rather a wisdom, from 
 which the Cliurch may not depart. I know that many of the 
 bishops, even the most courageous, are anxious on this point. 
 
 And truly, not without cause ; for there are serious reasons for 
 fearing, even from this point of view, that the possible disadvan- 
 tages of the definition of infallibility may be very great. 
 
 Let us look at the facts ; let us examine the true condition of 
 Europe. 
 
 Out of the five great European powers, three are not Catholic — 
 Russia, Prussia, and England. I do not speak here of America 
 and the United States. And among the second-rate states of Eu- 
 rope, a large number, again, are in heresy and schism — Saxony, 
 Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland, Holland, Greece. "Who is igno- 
 rant of the grudges that all these governments still cherish 
 against the Church? Now I merely put the following grave 
 question : Do you believe that defining the personal infallibility 
 of the Pope is calculated to remove these grudges ? When, by 
 reason of an inveterate prejudice, that is not to be destroyed by 
 aggravating it, these governments regard the Pope as a foreign 
 sovereign, do you think, in good earnest, that declaring the Pope 
 infallible is going to ameliorate the position of Catholics in all 
 these countries? Is it to be believed that Russia, Sweden, Den- 
 mark, will become milder toward their Catholic subjects ? Will 
 their hatred of Rome be appeased, and their reconciliation made 
 easier ? 
 
 If any one is tempted to treat lightly, as mere chimeras, these 
 apprehensions as to the disposition of non-Catholic governments, 
 I shall merely recite in this place facts of our own age. Why, 
 then, were the Catholic archbishops and bishops of Ireland, and 
 those of England and Scotland, obliged, in 1826, to sign the two 
 declarations that I now have before me ? 
 
 In one of them, the Catholic archbishops and bishops of Eng- 
 land and Scotland, confronted with this charge — The Catholics 
 are accused of dividing their allegiance between their temporal 
 
APPENDIX. 311 
 
 sovereign and the Pope — reply to it at length. In the other, the 
 Catholic archbishops and bishops of Ireland are forced to go to 
 the length of protesting that they do not believe " that it is law- 
 ful to kill any person whatever, under pretext of his being a 
 heretic" — an exaggerated, yet palpable and permanent reminis- 
 cence of the bulls launched against Henry VIII. ; and further- 
 more — be this especially noted — " that they are not required to 
 believe that the Pope is infallible." 
 
 Cry out as much as .you like against the injustice of this mis- 
 trust and these imputations — such solemn declarations forced 
 upon the episcopate of a great country are a sufficient proof of 
 their power. I have read that declaration of the Irish bishops, 
 I must confess, with a flushed face. What must they not have 
 suffered in having to repel, even in finding still alive in their 
 country, such suspicions, impugning everything most sacred in 
 conscience, everything most delicate in honor ! 
 
 Do you wish for other proofs ? You know the atrocious laws 
 which were so long suspended over the heads of the Catholics of 
 England and Ireland, and which it has been so hard to abolish. 
 Well, when the famous Pitt, at the close of the last century, as 
 an act of policy that I am willing to believe was one of generosity 
 also, thought for the first time of delivering the Catholics from 
 this yoke, what troubled or abruptly checked the English states- 
 man ? The papal power, old memories of the quarrels be- 
 tween the popes and the crowned heads. Therefore it was 
 that he wished to know, above all, what were the Catholic 
 teachings upon this point, and, with this object, he applied to 
 the most learned universities of France, Belgium, Spain, and 
 Geimany. 
 
 I have before me the responses of the universities of Paris, 
 Douay, Louvain, Alcala, Salamanca, Valladolid. Looking at the 
 question as a question of divine law, and consequently passing 
 over what may have been the international law of another age, 
 th^y all reply in so many words, that neither the Pope, nor the 
 cardinals, nor any body nor individual in the Romish Church, 
 have any civil authority from Jesus Christ over England, any 
 
312 APPENDIX. 
 
 power to release the subjects of His Britannic Majesty from tlieir 
 oath of allegiance. 
 
 This doctrine, then professed by the greatest universities of the 
 Catholic Church, might suffice to relieve Pitt's apprehensions as 
 to the opposite doctrine, which, we are forced to admit, is pro- 
 fessed in famous bulls hj more than one Pope. But suppose the 
 Pope is declared infallible ; will not this dogmatic definition of 
 the Pope's infallibility be apt to revive former mistrust ? Cer- 
 tainly it is to be dreaded, and for the following reason. 
 
 The non-Catholic governments, as a matter of fact, are not 
 going to believe in this infallibility ; and this immense power 
 having been conceded to the Pope as a matter of dogma, the 
 Pope, in tlieir judgment, may abuse it or exceed its limits. But — 
 a weighty matter in their view — their Catholic subjects will be- 
 lieve in it, and will be obliged to submit to all its decisions, even 
 those that are, in the opinion of these governments, the most in- 
 jurious. How, then, can we fail to see that from that moment 
 the papal power will appear to them far more formidable and 
 odious ? They already have, they still cherish this sullen mis- 
 trust of the Church with which every one is familiar ; how much 
 more will they suspect the infallible Pope, a single man, who, in 
 their view, will afford them far less guaranty than the Church, 
 that is to say, the bishops of their country and all countries ! 
 
 VII. And the governments of the Catholic nations themselves, 
 how will they look upon the proclamation of the new dogma ? 
 We must ask ourselves this also. For, after all, the governments 
 will not consider themselves as having no interest in the ques- 
 tion. Who will persuade them that it does not concern them ? 
 
 Here again, in order to estimate calmly and accurately the 
 consequences of the dogmatic definition announced and demanded 
 so clamorously by journalists — verily, it is high time that they 
 should desist from meddling in the most private, grave, exclusive 
 affairs of the Church — let us come down to the reality of things, 
 to facts ; let us see what is, and what will be. 
 
 The great fact, deplorable yet incontrovertible, and never so 
 settled a fact as it is to-day, is this : the governments, even of 
 
APPENDIX. 313 
 
 Catholic countries, are full of ill-feeling toward the Church. All 
 history proclaims this ; for history is full of the conflicts between 
 the two powers. 
 
 But why speak of the past ? In the very hour that I write 
 these lines, are not three of the four great Catholic powers of 
 Europe — Austria, Italy, and Spain — more or less involved in de- 
 plorable contests with the Church ? And even among ourselves, 
 may not difficulty spring up at any moment ? And would not 
 even this word be too mild for the terrible eventualities of such 
 a possible revolution ? 
 
 That is the situation ; the Catholic governments have been, 
 are, or are liable to be involved more and more in conflict with 
 the Church. 
 
 Assm'edly, no one deplores more than I do these formidable 
 conflicts, when they arrive ; and, however little relish I may 
 have for such contests, perhaps I have already shown — ^you will 
 pardon my alluding to it — that I am not one of those who shrink 
 back from them and grow faint ! But that is not the question ; 
 Mid whether the governments are to l)lame, or not to blame, that 
 is not the question either. The question is, how will the govern- 
 ments, to-day, regard the declaration of papal infallibility ? 
 
 Is this a timorous anxiety ? Ought the Church, in its Coun- 
 cils, consulting only the principles of its complete independence, 
 so far as human governments are concerned, to act, decree, de- 
 fine, even in the most delicate practical questions, as though the 
 governments did not exist, and without having the least care as to 
 whether its actions would or would not wound them to the quick ? 
 
 Such is not, such never was, in matters not of necessity, the 
 custom of the Holy Church. 
 
 Ah ! if, at one stroke, by a simple dogmatic proclamation, we 
 could cut short conflicts, efface inveterate mistrust, and, by a 
 mere decree, render the governments of the Catholic nations 
 obedient to the Church and the Pope, like sheep, that would be 
 worth the while ! 
 
 But to flatter one's self with such an idea, especially at the 
 present day, would be the most chimerical of illusions. 
 
 U 
 
314 APPENDIX. 
 
 Can any one doubt that a dogmatic definition of the personal 
 infallibility of the Pope, far from suppressing old mistrust, would 
 only revive the causes, or, if you will, the eternal pretexts of it, 
 by giving them additional plausibility ? 
 
 In fact, what are these pretexts ? Assuredly, I make no pre- 
 tence here of justifying the governments ; always and eveiy where 
 almost they have wanted to oppress the Church. But we must 
 look at men and things as they are. 
 
 In the first place, there are the memories of the past. 
 
 By declaring the Pope infallible, the sovereigns may ask, do 
 you declare him impeccable ? No. The sought-for declaration 
 not being at liberty to add to or take away from what is, and 
 what has been, that which has been witnessed once may be wit- 
 nessed again. Now, we have seen, it must be said respectfully 
 and sadly, but it must be said— for histoiy constrains us, and 
 Baronius himself, the great historiographer of the Roman Church, 
 teaches us that in matters of histoiy we must not garble the 
 truth* — we have seen, in that long and incomparable series of 
 Roman pontiffs, some Popes, a small number it is true, but still a 
 certain number of Popes, who have shown themselves weak, or 
 ambitious, or grasping — Popes that have confounded spiritual 
 things with temporal, pretenders to dominion over crowned 
 heads. There is no certainty that in all the ages to come we 
 shall have a Pius IX. on the Papal throne. 
 
 Is it not natural to suppose, if the Pope is proclauned infallible, 
 that these reflections will suggest themselves, of their own ac- 
 cord, to the existing governments ? And is it not useless — I will 
 add, is it not very dangerous, even to revive such memories ? 
 Assuredly, I am not the one that is reviving them ! But why do 
 imprudent advocates of the Papacy take upon themselves every 
 day the pitiful mission of reviving and embittering them ? 
 
 Moreover, people will ask upon what objects this personal in- 
 fallibility is to be exercised. If it is to be only on mixed mat- 
 ters, in which the conflicts have ever been frequent, what are the 
 
 ♦ We need only read in his Annals, the history of the tenth century, to bo 
 eatiefied that he does no garbling himself. 
 
APPENDIX. 315 
 
 limits of tliese ? Who is to determine them ? Does not the 
 spiritual come in contact with the temporal on every side ? Who 
 will persuade the governments that the Pope will never, in any 
 moment of excitement, pass over fi'om the spiritual to the tem- 
 poral ? Will not the proclamation of the new dogma seem — not 
 to skilled theologians, but to governments that are not theolo- 
 gians — to establish in the Pope, in matters scarcely defined, and 
 often scarcely definable, an unlimited, sovereign power over all 
 their Catholic subjects, a power all the more subject to mistrust 
 on the part of the governments, because it will seem to them 
 constantly liable to abuse ? 
 
 And then, people will begin to think of the doctrines formu- 
 lated, if not defined, in many celebrated Bulls. 
 
 Assuredly, I have not the least desire to defend, in this place, 
 Philip the Fair and his imitators. But, after all, in the Bull 
 Unam sanctam^ for instance, does not Boniface VIII. declare 
 that there are two swords, the spiritual and the temporal ; that 
 the second, as well as the first, belongs to Saint Peter, and that 
 the successor of Peter has the right to appoint and to judge 
 kings : Potestas spiritualis terrenam potestatem insiituere liabet et 
 judicare ? 
 
 And in the Bull Ausculta fili, he requests the king to send to 
 Rome the archbishops and. bishops of France, together with the 
 abbots, &c., to treat there of all that might seem useful foi' the good 
 government of tlie kingdom of France. 
 
 And even after Protestantism had arisen to change so radically 
 the condition of Europe, did not Paul III., in the famous Bull 
 that excommunicated Henry VIIL, absolve from their oath of 
 allegiance all the subjects of the king of England, and offer 
 England to whoever should conquer it, promising to the conquer- 
 ors all the property, real and personal, of the Protestant 
 English? 
 
 Do you suppose they have forgotten that Bull in England ? 
 The declarations, of which I cited a few words to you just now, 
 do you think that they were not demanded of the Catholic 
 bishops of Ireland because of the still lively remembrance of that 
 
316 APPENDIX. 
 
 Bull ? Shall I be permitted to speak out my whole mind on this 
 point, and ask, in accordance with history : Was not that terrible 
 Bull, at the period in which it was published, calculated to drive 
 off rather than to recall the English nation? Is it altogether 
 certain that it was not a great misfortune for Christendom ? In 
 any case, I should not, by so thinking, contradict any Catholic 
 dogma, not even that of Papal infallibility, if it should ever be 
 erected into a dogma. 
 
 I am sad — and who would not be ? — in calling to mind these 
 great and painful facts of history ; but they force us to it, these 
 persons whose foolhardy flippancy is stirring up such burning 
 questions. They force us to it, and it is my profound conviction 
 that all this plunges the best minds into deplorable agitation, and 
 that, had people undertaken to render the Papal power odious, 
 thej'- could not do a better thing than to perpetuate such contro- 
 versies. 
 
 For, after all, will not sovereigns, even Catholic sovereigns, ask 
 themselves : Will the dogmatic proclamation of Papal infallibil- 
 ity, or will it not, render such Bulls impossible in the future ? 
 What, then, is to prevent a new Pope from announcing that as a 
 definition which has been taught by several of his predecessors, 
 that the Vicar of Jesus Christ has a direct power over the tem- 
 poral affairs of princes ; that it is one of his attributes to institute 
 and to depose sovereigns ; that the civil rights of kings and peo- 
 ples are subject to him? 
 
 Then, after this new dogma shall have been proclaimed, no 
 priest, no bishop, no Catholic, will be able to disavow this doc- 
 trine, so odious to governments ; that, in their view, all civil and 
 political rights, as well as all religious beliefs, are placed in the 
 hands of a single man ! 
 
 And perhaps you think that governments would look on with 
 indifference to see the Church gathering together from all quar- 
 ters of the earth to proclaim a doctrine which, in their estima- 
 tion, might have such consequences ! 
 
 And they will be all the more induced to consider the defini- 
 tion of the Pope's infallibility as an implied consecration of these 
 
APPENDIX. 317 
 
 dreaded doctrines, seeing that these doctrines are far from being 
 abandoned. The journals that give themselves out among us 
 for the pure representatives of Roman principles, unceasingly 
 parade these doctrines in their columns, establish them with a 
 great array of arguments, and even venture to brand, as tainted 
 with atheism, the doctrine to which both Catholic and non- 
 Catholic sovereigns adhere so firmly — that of the independence 
 of the two powers, each in its own sphere. 
 
 But a little while ago, we read in a French journal the follow- 
 ing words, quoted with approbation, wherein those who main- 
 tain that the two swords are not in the same hand are compared 
 to the Manichees : 
 
 " Can it be, then, that there are two sources of authority and 
 power, two supreme aims for the members of one and the same 
 society, two different objects in the mind of the divine organizer, 
 and two distinct doctrines for one and the same man who is both 
 a member of the Church and a subject of the State ? But who 
 does not see at once the absurdity of such a system ? It is the 
 dualism of the Manichees, if it is not atheism." 
 
 That is also what the Abbe de Lamennais claimed in the ex- 
 travagances of his logic ; and he set up against the first of the 
 four articles this dilemma: ultramontane or atJieisi. These ex- 
 travagances of his have met with but little success. And, to all 
 intents, the writers in question belong, in this respect, to the 
 school of Lamennais. But the more they reproach governments 
 with not admitting the doctrine of the Bull JJnam sanciam, and 
 with holding fast to the independence of the two powei"s, the 
 more they themselves will demonstrate the strength of the repug- 
 nances and the universality of the alienations that I dread. 
 
 And when I speak of the independence of the two powers, far 
 be it from me to throw a moment's doubt upon the divine and 
 sure authority of the Church to define, to proclaim, and to re- 
 iterate, both to government and to subject, the sacred and eternal 
 laws of right and wrong. But everybody understands, and it is 
 perfectly obvious, that that is not the question. 
 
 No ; this old irritability is not on the point of disappearing ; 
 
318 APPENDIX. 
 
 passionate journalism has done all it could to revive it ; and we 
 can affirm with certainty that nowhere, either in France, or in 
 Catholic Austria, or in Bavaria, or on the borders of the Rhine, 
 or in apostolic Spain, or in that Portugal which but lately ex- 
 pelled the Sistei-s of Charity, is the disposition of European gov- 
 ernments favorable to the proclamation of the proposed dogma. 
 
 Does it seem to you, then, that the hour has come for arousing 
 animosities against the Holy See from one end of Europe to the 
 other ? 
 
 Or, rather, is not the present hour already replete with dangers 
 sufaciently numerous and sufficiently great ? 
 
 Do you wish to make the separation of Church and State the 
 order of the day throughout all Europe ? 
 
 Do you wish to force the Council into still other hazards ? 
 How little it would take, in the present state of Italy and of 
 Europe, to bring about the greatest misfortunes ! 
 
 We cannot shut our eyes to the facts ; there are certain spirits 
 who are bent upon driving the Church to the last extremity. 
 
 In what interest ? 
 
 Vin. I have now come to the theological difficulties, not ex- 
 actly of papal infallibility itself— this question, let me repeat, I 
 am not discussing one way or the other — but to the theological 
 difficulties of defining it ; for these difficulties, if really serious, 
 are an additional and a strong argument against its opportune- 
 
 Are the journalists who seem disposed to enjoin it on the 
 Council to define Papal infallibility, and to define it by acclama- 
 tion, aware of the conditions under which the Council would 
 have to make this definition ? Really, one would not say so, to 
 see the manner in which they speak of it ; — as if they had no idea 
 how strange, how monstrously abnormal, how utterly impossible 
 is the part they are laying out for themselves, especially for the 
 last six months, meddling to the extent that they do with the 
 most sacred matters in the government of the Church. 
 
 I am not sm-prised, moreover, at their extraordinaiy impru- 
 dence. They are no theologians. You, Gentlemen, are acquainted 
 
APPENDIX. 319 
 
 witli all the questions that I am going to remind you of; you 
 have been taught them in our schools. But at the same time that 
 you are taught them, you are also taught not to discourse upon 
 them needlessly to the faithful. As priests, you have a double 
 duty — to study things that are obscure, to preach only things that 
 are clear. As to the laity, let me repeat, I do not blame them for 
 being ignorant, but I do blame them for agitating and deciding 
 questions of which they are ignorant. They know not what 
 difficulties they are running against foolhardily, and it becomes 
 my unpleasant duty to give them warning, by reminding you, 
 Gentlemen, of what you know already. 
 
 *' In so grave, so delicate, so complicated a matter," thus, with 
 excellent judgment, speaks his Grace the Bishop of Poitiers, "we 
 should not suffer ourselves to be governed either by enthusiasm 
 or by personal feeling : eveiy word should be weighed and ex- 
 plained, every phase of the question examined, every case fore- 
 seen, eveiy false application eliminated, all the disadvantages 
 weighed against the advantages." 
 
 Moreover, the Bishop of Poitiers is not the only one that 
 speaks thus. Among theologians, the greatest partisans them- 
 selves of infallibility admit the prodigious practical difficulties 
 that may be encountered. The difficulties, they say, are inex- 
 tricable, intricatissimcB difficultates; and the ablest men, they say, 
 have the utmost difficulty in getting out of them — in quibus dis- 
 solvendis multum tJieologi peritiores laborant. 
 
 1. Difficulties arising from the necessity of defining the condi- 
 tions of the act ex cathedra — not all the pontifical acts having 
 that character. 
 
 3. Difficulties arising from the twofold character of the Pope, 
 considered either as a private teacher or as a Pope. 
 
 3. Difficulties arising from the manifold questions of fact that 
 may be raised with regard to every act ex cathedra. 
 
 4. Difficulties caused by the past and by historic facts. 
 
 5. Difficulties arising from the veiy essence of the question. 
 
 3. Difficulties, finally, arising from the state of contemporary 
 minds. 
 
320 APPENDIX. 
 
 The first thing, then, for the Council to do, before laying down 
 a dogmatic definition, would be to determine the conditions of 
 infallibility ; for to define the infallibility of the Pope, without 
 settling and defining the conditions of that infallibility, would be 
 to define nothing, since it would be either defining too much or 
 not defining enough. 
 
 How are these conditions to be determined ? Theologians are 
 at issue on this matter, whether theoretically, in the abstract, or 
 practically, in the concrete. In a word, when and how is the 
 Pope infallible ? That is what must be determined. Yet on this 
 point the diflBculties are anything but trifling. 
 
 Is the Pope infallible whenever he speaks ? Some theologians 
 have maintained this. Or is he only infallible when he speaks, 
 as they say, ex catJiedra ? 
 
 Now it is precisely in defining the conditions of utterance ex 
 cathedra that the Council, should it see fit to take up this matter, 
 would find plenty of study, and plenty of work. 
 
 What, in fact, is an utterance ex cathedra ? "What are its con- 
 ditions ? This point is discussed in all the schools ; some require 
 more, others less. Cardinal Orsi does not speak exactly like Car- 
 dinal Bellarmin, nor Bellarmin like Capellari, who was after- 
 ward Pope Gregory XVI. 
 
 Mansi speaks either of " Councils previously assembled," or of 
 " doctors convoked," or of " Congregations appointed," and of 
 " public supplications," " Without these,^^ he says, " let Bossuet be 
 indeed assured that we no longer recognize tlie Pope as infallible.^''* 
 
 Bellai-min endeavors to reconcile those who say, Pontifen 
 consilium audiat alioimm pastm'um — ^let the Pope listen to the 
 counsel of other pastors — with those who say that he can define 
 of himself alone, etiam solus.\ 
 
 Well ! in the presence of all these difierences of opinion, and 
 I cite here only a few of them — since a much larger number is 
 estimated, even among the ultramontane theologians — how shall 
 the Council act ? Approving some, disapproving others, it must 
 undertake the hard task of making choice in a dogmatic and 
 
 ♦ De Maistre, Du Pape, liv. I. ch. x. 5. t Disputationes Bellarmini. 
 
APPENDIX. 321 
 
 absolute manner among all these tlieological opinions. But upon 
 what sure, clear, and indisputable grounds will it rely in doing that ? 
 
 Once more, what, precisely, is an act ex cathedra ? 
 
 Is it a simple brief? Some say yes ; others, no. Is it a re- 
 script ? Is it a bull, a consistorial allocution, an encyclical ? 
 
 Must the Pope, in an act ex catliedra^ address himself to the en- 
 tire Church ? The greater number say yes. No, says an Eng- 
 lishman, a lay professor of theology* and a contemporary jour- 
 nalist : even though the Pope should have spoken to only a 
 single bishop, even to a single lay brother, he may have wished 
 to teach ex cathedra. And that is sufficient. 
 
 Well, then, is it necessary, as some claim, to avoid all doubt as 
 to his intention, that the Pope should define the doctrine under 
 penalty of anathema against error ? 
 
 Or is it enough, as others pretend, that he should express, in 
 any manner whatever, his intention of making a dogma ? 
 
 Or, indeed — and this is maintained by the lay theologian whom 
 I have just cited — can he speak ex cathedra^ even though he 
 should not distinctly express his intention of commanding assent? 
 Etiamd dhlujatio assensum prcesiandi non diserte exprimatur.j 
 
 Or, as others claim, must the Pope take counsel? And, if 
 so, whom must he consult ? Some of the bishops ? Or, in the 
 absence of bishops, the cardinals? Or, in the absence of car- 
 dinals, the Roman congregations ? Or, in the absence of the 
 congregations, some of the theologians, or of the doctors ; and if 
 so, how many ? Would it be enough for him to prepare a de- 
 cree alone in his closet? Why make any distinction, say some, 
 when the words of promise make none ? 
 
 Moreover, here is another contemporary theologian, the Ger- 
 man, Phillips, who does not stop at this difficulty. According to 
 him, a definition ex catliedra does not require that the Pope should 
 have consulted any one whatever, either the Council, or the 
 
 * Mr. Ward, De Infallibilitatia extensione, thesis duodecima, p. 35. Mr. 
 Ward is a converted Anglican minister, now a zealous Catholic, who, although 
 a layman, has been professor of theology in the Grand Seminary of the Arch- 
 diocese of Westminster. 
 
 t Mr. Ward, Thesis duodecima. 
 
 U* 
 
322 APPENDIX. 
 
 Roman Church, or the College of Cardinals. The German doc- 
 tor goes still farther ; according to him, it is not necessary that 
 the Pope should give (lie definition any ripe consideration ; 
 
 Or that he should study tlie question carefully^ by (he light of the 
 word of Ood, written and traditional ; 
 
 Or that he should pray to God, before pronouncing. 
 
 Without any of tliese conditions, his decision would be not less validi 
 not less effective, not less obligatory upon all the Church, tJmn if he 
 had observed all the precautions dictated by faith, piety, and good sense. 
 
 What, then, is needed, according to this doctor, in order that 
 a definition should be ex catliedra ? This : " It remains to be said, 
 after the above, in order to defend the validity of a decision eso 
 cathedra, Uiat it exists whenever the Pope, in Council or out of 
 Council, VERBALLY or by writing, pronounces to all jfaithful 
 Christians, as Vicar of Jesus Christ, in the name of the apostles 
 Peter and Paul, or by virtue of the authority of the Holy See, 
 or in similar terms, with or witlwut the threat of anathema, a de- 
 cision concerning dogma or morals." 
 
 According to this theologian, the Church has not the right to 
 lay down any restriction, any condition whatever, touching the 
 validity or the exercise of infallibility. 
 
 A French writer, the author of a recent treatise, De Papa, says 
 essentially the same thing, and claims, for the infallibility of the 
 Pope speaking to the Church universal, only one condition — not 
 that he should have prayed, not that he should have deliberated, 
 studied, taken counsel, but simply that he should have had the 
 intention of making a dogma, and that he should have been free 
 from all constraint. 
 
 Mr. Ward, as we have seen, does not even claim that the Pope 
 should address the Church ; if he addi'esses a single bishop, a 
 single lay member, that is sufficient. 
 
 You see, then, how some do not hesitate, to-day, to treat these 
 immense questions. 
 
 I say some, and I beg you to note this word ; for I would not 
 have all the most radical theories set down, contrary to my in- 
 tention, to the account of Catholic theology. 
 
APPENDIX. 323 
 
 Well ! will the Council, in view of all these opinions, declare 
 that there is a necessary form in which the Pope shall he obliged 
 to exercise his infallibility ? Or would the form go for nothing, 
 and the Pope be infallible when and how he should see fit, with- 
 out having prayed, or studied, or taken counsel, merely address- 
 ing himself to the first-comer ? 
 
 And since determining the circumstances under which the 
 Pope is infallible is also determining those in which he is not, 
 there will then be tw^o dogmas to define, instead of one — the 
 dogma of infallibility, and the dogma of fallibility. It will be 
 declared, as a matter of faith, that the Pope is infallible under 
 such and such conditions, but that without them he is fallible. 
 
 And how, I repeat, shall we set about fixing these limits? 
 Where are they clearly laid down in the Scriptures ? Where, in 
 the teachings of the theologians, so diverse and so contradictory 
 on this point? What opinions are we going to establish as dog- 
 mas, what as heresies ? 
 
 And if this is not done, into what terra incognita are we going 
 to precipitate the Church ? 
 
 IX. But this is not all. Besides the question of law, there will 
 also be the question of fact. Who shall decide, as a matter of 
 fact, whether such or such a decision of the Pope fulfils all the 
 conditions of a decree ex cathedra ? Will this always be easy to 
 ascertain ? No. 
 
 The most advanced partisans of Papal infallibility acknowl- 
 edge this in good faith. The English theologian. Ward, for 
 instance, says expressly : " Inasmuch as all Papal allocutions, all 
 apostolical letters, even all encyclical letters, do not contain defi- 
 nitions ex cathedra, they must he closely examined in order to ascer- 
 tain in a satisfactory manner which of them are acts in which the 
 Sovereign Pontifi" may be said to speak ex cathedra; and we 
 must examine closely even the acts ex cathedra themselves, to as- 
 certain clearly what he teaches ex cathedra^'' that is, infallibly.* 
 
 * " Circa has igitur allocutiones et litteraa apostolicap adlaborandum est, ut 
 Batis dignoscatur in quibusnain earum Pontifex ex cathedra loqui, et quid- 
 nam ex cathedra docere, jure censeatuf." 
 
324 APPENDIX. 
 
 And tliis discrimination is often so diflScult, even for theologi- 
 ans, tliat Mr. Ward acknowledges, with a modesty that does him 
 honor, that he committed and obstinately persisted in a grave 
 error concerning the nature of the pontifical acts of various 
 kinds, denouncing the propositions designated subsequently in a 
 recent communication emanating from Rome. He had thought, 
 and had maintained, that each one of the acts that supplied' the 
 propositions for the collection called the Syllabus, should be re- 
 garded, on the strength of that alone, as having the character of 
 an act ex cathedra. This, he now admits frankly, was a great error. 
 
 Ecclesiastical history, moreover, is full of similar instances. 
 We have only to remember certain important acts of the Popes 
 in the past, about which theologians have disputed so much, 
 and still dispute, as to whether they are or are not ex cathedra. 
 
 When Pope Stephen condemned Saint Cyprian in the matter 
 of the baptism of heretics, did he speak ex cathedra f 
 
 Some afiirm it, others deny it. 
 
 When Pope Honorius, consulted upon the question of mono- 
 thelism by Sergius, Patriarch of Constantinople, and other East- 
 ern bishops, wrote those famous letters which gave rise to so 
 many debates, did he speak ex cathedra ? Theologians have had 
 keen disputes on that also. 
 
 Who, then, shall decide ? The Church. It will often be neces- 
 sary, then, to resort, after all, to the Church. 
 
 And indeed, besides the two questions of fact about which Mr. 
 Ward speaks, and which must be broached with regard to eveiy 
 act ex cathedra — Is the act one ex cathedra ? — And if it is, what 
 are its bearings ? — there is still another, not so simple in practice 
 as one might at first suppose. It is this : 
 
 May there not arise, in course of time, a Pope, concerning 
 whose liberty there will be reasonable doubts ? 
 
 The most zealous are forced to acknowledge this, and to admit, 
 in view of history, that a Pope may, under the influence of fear ^ 
 define error. 
 
 That makes, then, under certain circumstances, a third question 
 of fact to be established— the full and entire liberty of the-Pope. 
 
APPENDIX. 325 
 
 Is there not a fourth ? For if a Pope, even one declared in- 
 falUble, might, even in an act ex catJiedra, err through intimida- 
 tion and fear, could he not eiT from excitement, passion, impru- 
 dericef The partisans of infallibility say not. God, they say, 
 will not work a miracle in the first case, to prevent a weak Pope 
 from yielding to fear ; but he always will in the second, to pre- 
 vent a passionate or rash Pope from erring by reason of impru- 
 dence; and that, some of them add, even although the Pope 
 should not have taken any of those precautions commonly taken 
 in serious affairs. According to them, a Pope can define error 
 through weakness ; not otherwise. 
 
 That is the explanation given by these theologians. But I sub- 
 mit this question : Will it always be easy to estimate the con- 
 straint to which a Pope may have been subjected ? Ko. There 
 may arise cases in which such a determination would be a mat- 
 ter of the greatest delicacy ; and " every case should be antici- 
 pated." 
 
 Also, " every phase of the question examined." 
 
 Do you think that the solution of all these difficulties will be a 
 slight undertaking for the Council ? And these newspaper 
 writers, who talk so glibly about it, because its difficulties do not 
 make them much trouble — they do not even see them — are they 
 authorized to lay their orders on the Bishops, as they do, to un- 
 dertake this business ? 
 
 X. It is easy to say that the question is already decided ; but 
 real, sound theologians know that, in fact, it is no such thing, and 
 that if the Council is to proceed in this matter with that delibera- 
 tion and gravity in which these holy assemblies of the Church 
 have never failed whenever the question has been on the procla- 
 mation of dogmas, that its discussions may be long and laborious. 
 
 Is tradition, whatever may be its testimony, unanimous on this 
 point ? Is history free from embarrassment ? It is in this direc- 
 tion especially that the definition of papal infallibility would in- 
 volve the Council— should it feel itself under obligation to enter 
 upon the question— in the longest and most delicate mvestiga- 
 tions. 
 
326 APPENDIX. 
 
 Indeed, by defining the personal infallibility of the Pope, we 
 should not only bind the future but also the past. For, if the 
 Pope is infallible, he has always been so. The proclamation of 
 this dogma would, at a single stroke, confer the character of in- 
 fallibility upon all that the Popes have decided for eighteen cen- 
 turies, provided they had decided under the conditions and in the 
 forms laid down for the exercise of infallibility. I say that the 
 Council could not have a graver and knottier subject to examine. 
 
 I reminded you, just now, of two historic facts — the dispute 
 between Pope Saint Stephen and Saint Cyprian, and the reply of 
 Pope Honorius to Sergius on the subject of monothelism. Well ! 
 if it were shown that Saint Stephen had pronounced ex catJiedra^ 
 infallibly, Undingly, then Saint Cyprian and the bishops who re- 
 sisted were not believers in the infallibility of the Pope ? 
 
 And Saint Augustine, who excuses them, because, says he, the 
 Church had not yet pronounced,* he did not believe in it either ? 
 And when he wrote concerning the Donatists, that after the 
 judgment of Rome there still remained the judgment of the 
 Church universal, restabat adhuc plenarium universm Ecclesim con- 
 cilium,\ he believed, then, that after the judgment of Rome the 
 judgment of the Church should go for something in defining the 
 faith. That is a fresh instance of the difficulties which might be 
 brought up by an examination of the facts of history. 
 
 Just so in the case of Honorius. Volumes have been written 
 to prove that the acts of the Sixth Council, which condemned 
 him, have been altered ; volumes to prove that this Pope did not 
 teach heresy ; other volumes still, to prove that Honorius only 
 wrote a private letter. 
 
 However it may be with these discussions, which it is so un- 
 fortunate to bring up again — whether Honorius was a heretic, 
 and justly condemned as such by an CEcumenical Council that 
 declared Horwrio Jmretico anathema; or whether he was simply 
 an abettor of heresy, and reproved as such by the Popes, his suc- 
 cessors, in the oath that they pronounced at their consecration, 
 Qui pravis eorum assertionibus f omentum impendit (the expression 
 
 * Saint Augustine, De Baptismo. t Epis. ad Geor. Eleus., xlviii. 
 
APPENDIX. 327 
 
 in the Liher diurnalis pontificalis, a collection of the authentic 
 acts of the Roman chancery) — over and above these undisputed 
 points of history, another question, a very serious one truly, pre- 
 sents itself in this place ; to wit — 
 
 In those times, then, did the (Ecumenical Council, consequently 
 the Church, consider the Sovereign Pontiff, while sending dog- 
 matic letters, literas dogmaticas* to great churches upon a matter 
 of faith, as liable to error, and the assembled bishops as compe- 
 tent to condemn and anathematize him ? 
 
 Pope Leo II. confirmed the sentence of the Council; the 
 Churches of the East and the West accepted it. Did, then, Pope 
 Leo II. and the Churches also believe that a Pope, pronouncing 
 upon matters of faith brought before his tribunal, may deserve 
 the anathema ? 
 
 That is a point upon which the Council would have to decide. 
 
 I have neither the intention nor the time to do here what the 
 Council would have to do in order to proceed with the wonted 
 circumspection of Councils — to take a complete review of the 
 history. I pass by the difficulties that the cases of Popes Vigilius 
 and Liberius might occasion. But I beg leave to remind you 
 of a single fact more. In the Middle Ages, one of the Popes, 
 Paschal II., makes the Emperor of GeiTaany, Henry V., such an 
 exorbitant concession in the matter of the investiture of bishops, 
 that a Council meets at Vienna, and an Archbishop, who was 
 destined himself, subsequently, to ascend the throne of Saint 
 Peter, under the name of Calixtus II., declares that the con- 
 cession made by the Pope implies an actual heresy, TuBresim esse 
 judicavimus, and condemns his letter to the Emperor. 
 
 And the Pope himself, before the entire Lateran Council, in 
 the presence of more than one hundred bishops, had already hu- 
 miliated nimself of his own accord, and the Council had oyer- 
 ruled and annulled his concession. 
 
 Whether, then. Paschal II. was to blame or not, at all events 
 his contemporaries, and he himself, believed that a Pope may 
 lapse into heresy. 
 
 * Cone. t. III., p. 1381. 
 
328 APPENDIX. 
 
 Will you say that an implied heresy (yet one worthy of anath- 
 ema), in a high pontifical act, proves nothing against infallibility, 
 when this act is not a definition ex cathedra f But how will you 
 make the multitude understand these distinctions ? 
 
 For here is another side of the question, one to which the 
 Council would also have to devote its serious attention — the con- 
 sequences of the definition in the view of the men of our times. 
 
 XI. We must not indulge in any illusions, not merely as to un- 
 believing minds, but also as to the enormous mass of minds in 
 whom faith is weak. For my own part, I cannot think, without 
 horror, of the number of those whom the definition now called 
 for would perhaps alienate from us forever ! 
 
 But even for the faithful, would the definition be free from dis- 
 advantages ? 
 
 I find myself constrained here to put questions that are pro- 
 foundly repugnant to me. But I am speaking of the past and 
 in behalf of the future. People force us to awaken the slumber- 
 ing past, and we have to labor for future centuries. 
 
 We have, then (let us suppose), the Pope declared infallible — 
 the Pope, who, nevertheless, as a writer, as a private teacher, 
 may make a heretical book and may obstinately persist in heresy. 
 That is the general opinion. 
 
 Still more, we have the Pope, who can, even as Pope, when 
 he does not speak ex cathedra — and even when he does speak ex 
 ca^Ae^frc^, in whatever is not the precise subject of his definition — 
 who can, according to universal opinion, err and teach error; 
 and then be judged, condemned, deposed. 
 
 Now, then, let us suppose a Pope erring or accused of en-or ; 
 it will be necessary to prove, either that his teaching is not ex 
 cathedra or that it is not erroneous : what additional difficulty if 
 the Pope has been declared infallible ! Contesting merely a mat- 
 ter of fact, shall we not seem to contest a matter of right ? And 
 if the Pope persists, what confusion among the faithful ! It will 
 be necessary, then, to prosecute for heresy the very man whose 
 infallibility is a dogma. 
 
 Let some new Honorius arise hereafter, who shall, I do not say 
 
APPENDIX. 329 
 
 define heresy, but foment it, by means of dogmatic letters ad- 
 di'essed to great cliurches — the declaration of infallibility will not 
 prevent this — can you imagine the perturbation that such a case 
 would occasion among churches and consciences ? 
 
 No doubt the theologians will make all the shades and niceties 
 of distinction, and show that there was no real definition ; but 
 how will the mass of minds who are not theologians be able to 
 discriminate between the Pope fallible in such and such acts, 
 even as Pope, and the Pope not fallible in such and such other 
 acts ? How will they understand that he can be infallible, and 
 yet, by high pontifical acts, be a fomenter of heresy ? 
 
 In the eyes of the public this will still be infallibility. Hence 
 uneasiness for consciences which will think themselves under 
 continual obligation to perform acts of faith ; and, for the ene- 
 mies of the Church, the opportunity to deciy Catholic doctrine, 
 by imputing something to it as dogma which is not dogma. 
 
 Without wishing, I repeat, to touch the substantial question, 
 the question of infallibility itself, I cannot refrain from making 
 one reflection here, from the point of view of men of the world. 
 The personal infallibility of the Pope, not the absurd, uncon- 
 ditional, universal infallibility of which we were speaking a little 
 while ago, citing certain theologians, but infallibility as Bellarmin, 
 for instance, understands it, constitutes an institution, not above 
 the power of the Almighty, doubtless, but certainly most pro- 
 digious, and more astonishing than the infallibilit}'- of tiie entire 
 Church. 
 
 How does it happen — this is what will astonish the faithful — 
 how does it happen that this immense privilege is at once the one 
 whose definition, on the showing of history, is the least neces- 
 sary, since the Church has been able to do without it for eighteen 
 centuries, and the one the certainty of which is less established 
 than the infallibility of the Church itself, since this latter is and 
 always has been an article of faith, whereas the other has never 
 been professed in the Church as a dogma ? 
 
 Moreover, the greatest partisans of infallibility themselves set 
 forth the immense practical difficulties that may be entailed by 
 
330 APPENDIX. 
 
 these two modes of existence of the Pope, fallible or infallible, 
 according to circumstances. IntricatissirrKB difficultates, they say, 
 in quibus dissoUendis multum peritiores theologi lahorant. 
 
 And indeed — still following their own statements — here are 
 some of the painful questions that may arise: Does a Pope, by 
 the act of heresy, cease to be a Pope ? — By whom and how can 
 he be deposed ? — When may the Pope be said to act as a Pope, 
 when as a private individual ? &c., &c. An Papa per hceresim a 
 dignitate excidat ? A quo ei quomodo veniat deponendus ? Quan- 
 donam ut Pontifex, aut utprivata persona, agere censeatur. 
 
 Will the declaration of infallibility render all these difficulties 
 less inextricable ? On the contrary, it would, in practice, add to 
 them enormous embarrassments. 
 
 Accordingly, certain ultramontane theologians * see only one 
 way of extricating themselves — namely, by proclaiming the abso- 
 lute, unconditional, and universal infallibility of the Pope. Other- 
 wise, and if only a conditional infallibility is proclaimed —the 
 infallibility ex cathedra — we expose the Church to evident danger. 
 Eccleda evidenti periculo exponeretur. And they prove it. 
 
 The system, they say, of papal infallibility in certain cases and 
 fallibility in others, implies an actual contradiction. May it not 
 happen that a Pope shall teach, as Pope, ex cathedra, the error 
 which, as a private doctor, he has held to be the truth — that is, 
 shall define the error in an infallible act, and seek to impose it 
 upon the Church ? Posset namque ipse suum errorem dejinire et 
 EccIesicB obtrudere. 
 
 It is said, in answer, that this hypothesis, precisely because it 
 hnplies a contradiction, will never be reaUzed. 
 
 Then, they reply, you are forced to have recourse to a miracle : 
 a Pope who errs obstinately, and of course uses all his efforts to 
 set forth his error as the faith of the Church {potest Pontifex per- 
 sonaliter in fide deficere, errorem suum pertinaciter tueri, et, quod 
 amplius est, mile et conari eum Ecclesiee obtrudere et proponere), yet 
 who will always refrain from defining it, and cannot come to the 
 point of producing a Bull that no human power can prevent him 
 
 * Albert Pighiu«, and others, cited by Bannds, qusest. I, dubit. 2. 
 
APPENDIX. 331 
 
 from writing ; or, on the other hand, a Pope who thinks one way 
 and defines another : Aut certe grande miraculum essei, quod ipse 
 definiendo contra mentem suam definiret. 
 
 Moreover, they add, is there not in this mixture of falUbility 
 and infallibility in one and the same man, a strange anomaly, one 
 that reflects most injuriously on divine Providence, that could so 
 easily have rendered the Pope infallible in every case as well as 
 in a few cases ? Contra divinam Providentiam, quce omnia suaviter 
 disponii^ pugnat Pontificem posse personaliter errare. 
 
 In short, they continue, why make any distinctions where Jesus 
 Christ has made none ? Oraxi pro te, Petre, ut wm deficiat jides 
 tua. That, say they, applies to Peter's faith in eveiy sense ; de 
 FIDE PETRI TUM PERSONALi ET PRIVATA, tum puUica et pastovali, 
 intelligitur. 
 
 Here are theologians, then, who state, who demonstrate, the 
 perils of infallibility ex cathedra ; who, logical and resolute, go to 
 the veiy end, even to the length of the absolute, unconditional, 
 and universal infallibility of the Pope : so that a Pope, they say, 
 could not, even if lie wanted to^ lapse into any error public or pri- 
 vate. Ut non possit, ettamsi velit, in errorem privatim aut 
 publice cadere ! 
 
 A French theologian* has set forth, at length, this whole argu- 
 ment, and, loading with abuse the greatest men of his country, 
 contents himself with presenting this truly insensate Romanism 
 as a perfectly free opinion : De libere controversa opinione qua 
 tenet liomanum Pontificem, etiam quatenus doctorem privatum, 
 esse infallibilem. 
 
 What ! My God ! We are also free to argue, if we like, on the 
 question whether the men at the antipodes walk on their heads 
 or their feet. There is not, so far as I know, any definition that 
 says the contraiy, and we should be amenable, on this point, only 
 to good sense. 
 
 It is evident that there are in the Church, at this moment, 
 many excited people who are hurrying on to strange excesses I 
 
 * De Papa, torn. I, p. 257. 
 
332 APPENDIX. 
 
 But the Council, we are sure, will not peimit itself to be drawn 
 down any such perilous decline. 
 
 XII. There is more than one point still remaining, on which 
 it is to be feared that the proclamation of the new dogma, if it 
 should take place, would perplex and unsettle, in the minds of 
 the faithful, what they have hitherto believed. 
 
 How, for instance, shall we per&uade them that this definition 
 will not involve, if not in law, at least in fact and in practice, a 
 degradation of the Episcopate ? 
 
 And first, from this point of view, they will ask themselves — 
 What will become of the Councils ? 
 
 Hitherto the Councils have been one of the grandest forms of 
 Church-life, one of its mightiest means of action. They began 
 with the origin of the Church, with the apostolic age; every 
 Christian centuiy, with the exception of the last two, has known 
 them. There have even been persons of high sanctity, great 
 minds. Councils even, that have demanded or decreed the periodi- 
 cal return of these sacred assemblies. The mistrustful policy of 
 a regime that has passed away, had, it is true, rendered them 
 during the last few centuries more difficult ; but modern freedom 
 has torn down these jealous barriers — the conquests of modern 
 science, by diminishing distances, have opened rapid communi- 
 cation for the bishops of the whole world with the Eternal City ; 
 and these deliberative assemblies find that while they have be- 
 come easier, they are at the same time more in accordance with 
 the ardent wishes of Christian peoples. 
 
 May we not see in all this a truly providential coinci- 
 dence ? 
 
 But if the next Council should define the infallibility of the 
 Pope, would not the faithful ponder and ask the question — What 
 is the use, henceforth, of (Ecumenical Councils? Now that a 
 SINGLE MAN, the Popc, " WITHOUT THE BISHOPS," Is able to de- 
 cide eveiything infallibly, even questions of faith, why assemble 
 the bishops ? Why the delays, the investigations, the discussions 
 of Councils ? 
 
 It is evident, indeed, that if the new dogma, once proclaimed, 
 
APPENDIX. 883 
 
 does not, de jure, suppress these great assemblies, it will at all 
 events, de facto, strangely diminish their importance. 
 
 You wish the future Council, then, to make a decree that 
 would, henceforth, suppress or weaken the Councils ! 
 
 And that the bishops themselves should decree their own ab- 
 dication ! 
 
 But this is not the only diminution that the Episcopate would 
 seem to undergo in the eyes of the faithful. Are not its most 
 essential prerogatives also, about which there is no dispute among 
 Catholics, going to be marvellously stripped, in practice at least, 
 of their reality ? 
 
 First, the bishops are judges of the faith— judges with the 
 Pope, of course, but still really judges. And hitherto they have 
 always participated actively in the judgments and definitions of 
 dogma ; they have always, in Council, decided as actual judges. 
 Ego judicans, ego dejiniens, subscripsi. They have ever been, in 
 the words of Benedict XIV., co-judices, associate judges of the 
 faith with the Pope. 
 
 But, under the new rule of faith, will it not seem to the faith 
 ful that there is henceforth only one judge, and that the bishops 
 are no longer judges in earnest ? Their co-operation, antecedent 
 or subsequent, will, in fact, no longer be necessary. The infalli- 
 ble judgment of the Pope, as Archbishop Manning says, will be 
 complete and perfect in itself, " without and independently of 
 THE EPISCOPATE !" If such is the will of the Pope, they will no 
 longer count for anything in definitions of faith. Then there 
 will be, in fact, but one single judge — the Pope. 
 
 Indeed, when the Pope shall have proclaimed, of himself, with- 
 out the Episcopate and without any bishops, a dogma of faith, 
 how shall we make the faithful understand these two tilings : 
 that the Pope's sentence, immediately, in itself, independently of 
 any episcopal assent, has the force of res judicata ; and secondly, 
 that the bishops still remain real judges ! 
 
 What sentence can they pass ?— A sentence of simple assent, 
 you say. — But that sentence will be free, at least ? No ; it wiU 
 not be free, for they will be obliged to assent.— Is it even re- 
 
334 APPENDIX. 
 
 quired ? No ; it is not required in any way, for tlie sentence of 
 the Pope is obligatoiy in itself, independently of any assent on 
 tlie part of the Episcopate. 
 
 I ask myself whether, under such conditions, the faithful will 
 still consider the bishops as real judges? 
 
 What would they think of a tribunal in which the president 
 would have the privilege of deciding and judging everything for 
 himself, so that all the other judges would be obliged to concur 
 with him ? The vote of the president alone would suffice ; the 
 opinion of the othei*s would be fashioned by his, dictated by his ; 
 no one, after he had pronounced, could judge differently ; and 
 the concurrence of his colleagues would not even be required for 
 the decision. 
 
 Evidently, such a tribunal would appear a mockery ; and of 
 judges there would be, in reality, only one. 
 
 Theologians may argue and make distinctions. But the faith- 
 ful, the great public who do not understand theological distinc- 
 tions, where would they stand ? 
 
 Without doubt the Pope is the principal judge, and his opinion 
 is always indispensable. Not only does he preside over the 
 com*t, but he confirms the opinion of the other judges. In or- 
 dinary courts, the vote of the presiding judge commonly pre- 
 ponderates; but in the Church, the vote of the Pope is essential, 
 and the judgment of the bishops, even in an (Ecumenical Council, 
 is only final when that of the Pope is superadded. In a word, in 
 definitions of faith, the bishops and the Pope have each their 
 necessary parts. Would that be still true of the bishops, in the 
 opinion of the faithful, when the Pope, declared infallible, should 
 judge alone? 
 
 XIII. Let us continue. Gentlemen — placing ourselves still at 
 the point of view of the faithful — to seek for and examine tlie 
 probable disadvantages of the dogmatic definition in question. 
 
 At the same time that they are judges the bishops are also 
 TEACHERS. All the catcchisms say this. The words of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ are explicit. It was to the Apostles, and consequently 
 to the bishops, the successors of the Apostles, that he said, Exiniea 
 
APPENDIX. 335 
 
 docete omnes gentes . . . JEcce ego vobiscum sum omnibus diebus [" Go, 
 teacli all nations. . . . Behold, I am with you always"]. It was 
 to the Apostles, and consequently to the bishops, the successors 
 of the Apostles, that Christ also said, Accipite Spiritum sanctum^ 
 &c. ['* Receive the Holy Ghost"] ; and finally, Qui vos audit, me 
 audit [*' He that heareth you,heareth me "]. These are all words 
 that every believer knows by heart. 
 
 That was why Saint Paul said, Fundati estis super fundamentum 
 Apostolorum. — Posuit Episcopos regere Ecclesiam [" Ye are built 
 upon the foundation of apostles. ... He hath made . . . bishops 
 to rule the church "].* 
 
 All tradition has constantly herein likened the bishops to the 
 apostles; and the Council of Trent, summing up all tradition, 
 says expressly, in speaking of the bishops, In locum Apostolorum 
 successerunt. 
 
 So the bishops, then, are not mere echoes ; they are teachers ; 
 they constitute, with the Pope, the Ecclesia docens. 
 
 But with the personal infallibility of the Pope, without the con- 
 cun-ence of the bishops, " without and independently of the 
 EPISCOPAL BODY," thcrc would be, in the eyes of the faithful, but 
 one to define, but one to teach — a single doctor, a single judge. 
 
 And the bishops are no longer voices in the Church, but mere 
 echoes. 
 
 The assent of the teaching body counting for nothing, then, in 
 what constitutes the essence of doctrinal judgment, how can the 
 faithful understand that this teaching body teaches ? 
 
 Moreover, Gentlemen, what is the teaching of the Church ? A 
 bearing witness. Neither the Church nor the Pope makes the 
 dogma ; they state it. Revelation is a fact ; revealed truths are 
 facts. And a doctrinal judgment is, at bottom, only the attesta- 
 tion of a revealed fact. Now, when the Church, assembled or 
 scattered, pronounces judgment, that is something that the faith- 
 ful understand without difficulty,— something that requires divine 
 aid, no doubt, but still thoroughly in accordance with the nature 
 of things, with the veiy harmony of the Church as Jesus Christ 
 * Ephesianp, ii. 20; Acta, xx. 28. 
 
336 APPENDIX. 
 
 has constituted it. It is a testimony confirmed by all those who 
 are witnesses ; the particular Churches attesting, by the very fact 
 that they bear witness to it, the faith of the Church universal. 
 When all the Churches, when the body of pastors united with 
 their chief has spoken, by that act the faith of the Church is fixed ; 
 what was only implied has become explicit, and the dogma is 
 defined, and the great Catholic maxim is realized — Quod ubiqite, 
 quod sempej\ quod ab omnibus. The faithful readily comprehend 
 that. 
 
 Whereas a doctrinal judgment of the Pope alone, without the 
 requisition of any assent from the Episcopate, would present 
 itself to them in a very different aspect. That would be, in a 
 matter of testimony, one witness authorized at his discretion to 
 supplant all the others ; a single witness instead of all ; one witness 
 that has no need, unless he likes, of the other witnesses or of their 
 testimony to learn what is the tradition and faith of their 
 Churches. 
 
 That is to say, in place of something very simple, very intelli- 
 gible, in the spiritual order, you would substitute, in the eyes of 
 the faithful, something extraordinaiy, something abnormal, a per- 
 petual miracle, and a veiy different sort of miracle from that of 
 the infallibility of the Church. 
 
 In the latter, at least, if there is any miracle, the faithful under- 
 stand that this miracle is absolutely necessar.y, and implied in the 
 very notion of the Church — without infallibility in the Church, 
 there is no Church. But they do not understand so readily the 
 necessity of this miracle for the Pope alone, because the Church 
 can be conceived perfectly well without the personal and separate 
 infallibility of the Pope. The infallibility of the Church will 
 always suffice for everything, as it always has sufficed. 
 
 The faithful know very well that in this grand and universal 
 testimony of the Church, the Pope is a witness, the chief witness, 
 the witness of the principal and supreme Church, that Church 
 which, occupying the central position, is in communication with 
 all the others, as all the others should be in communication 
 with it. 
 
APPENDIX. 337 
 
 But, until now, the faithful have not believed that the Pope was 
 the sole witness in the Church. 
 
 Thereafter, pronouncing alone, he would be so, whenever he 
 liked. 
 
 XIV. It is said, and well said — TIM PetruSy ibi Ecdesia. A 
 grand saying of St. Ambrose. But it is strangely abused at times. 
 
 To hear certain writers, whose exaggerations are certainly not 
 pleasing either to the Pope or to scarcely any one, one might sup- 
 pose that the Pope constituted, by himself, the whole Church. 
 No. The Pope is the head of the Church ; he is not the whole 
 Church. The word Church is a collective word, not to be ap- 
 plied to any one separate individuality whatever. The Church 
 of Jesus Christ has for its necessary head the Pope, and there is 
 no Church of Christ without the Pope : that would be a body 
 without a head. But the Pope is not and has never pretended to 
 be the whole Church. The true and legitimate practical use of 
 this saying is this, that in the divisions produced by heresies and 
 schisms, in order to learn where the Church is, we must see 
 where the Pope is. It is thus that we are sure that the Russian 
 Church, the Anglican Church, are not the Church of Jesus Christ, 
 because they have not the Pope with them ; and, on the other 
 hand, that the Roman Catholic Church is the true Church, be- 
 cause It recognizes the successor of Peter as its chief— Ubi PetruSy 
 ibi Ecdesia. 
 
 Let us. Gentlemen, not have the appearance, in the eyes of the 
 faithful, of putting asunder, by a definition that would be an oc- 
 casion of disturbance to them, what should not be put asunder— 
 the Pope and the Episcopate. 
 
 Certain theological schools have, for some time, been equally 
 in the wrong on this poi]it, in opposite directions : one set wish- 
 ing to separate the Pope from the Episcopate ; the other, the 
 Episcopate from the Pope. 
 
 The Church is a living body— Co7'pus. That is tlie word con- 
 tinually repeated by Saint Paul, who employs it to show in this 
 mystical body the relations of the head and the members, and 
 the harmony of the entire organism. 
 
 15 
 
338 APPENDIX. 
 
 The Pope is the head, the visible Cliief of the Church. 
 
 But if we put the head on one side and the body on the other, 
 ■where will be the life ? 
 
 The Church is a building — ^dificabo Ecdesiam meam; why 
 seek to detach -the foundation from the building, the building 
 from the foundation ? 
 
 The Church is built upon the rock. Yes ; but on the rock 
 there is the building, and the rock is only the foundation by 
 reason of its connection v/ith the building — Super lianc petram 
 adificabo Ecdesiam meam. 
 
 There are those that say : The rock is everything. Plainly 
 not. The head is not the whole body. 
 
 It is the foundation ; it is not the whole building. 
 
 The building, without the foundation, would fall ; the founda- 
 tion, without the building, would be the foundation of nothing. 
 
 No separation, then. Gentlemen ; neither Germanist nor 
 Romanist, neither Galilean nor Ultramontanist — either on dog- 
 matic definitions or on anything else ; Christ would not have it 
 so. Unum suit — " that they all may be one." 
 
 Let us leave the old, vain quarrels. 
 
 The faithful understand only the Church with its supreme 
 Head, and the Head with the Church. 
 
 This conception of the Church, moreover, is in no wise detri- 
 mental to the divine authority and the supreme initiative of the 
 Roman Pontiff. 
 
 Successor of Peter— Vicar of Jesus Christ, in whom dwelleth 
 the fulness of apostolic power— Chief of all the bishops— Pontiff 
 of the principal see in which all other sees maintain their unity — 
 universal Pastor, not merely of the sheep but also of the shep- 
 herds — mouth of the Church — key-stone of Catholicity. 
 
 Such is the Pope, such the head of the Teaching Church. 
 
 And, on the other hand, the Bishops : Successors of the Apos_ 
 ties — Judges and Teachers, with whom Jesus Christ is always 
 until the end of the world — Pastors of the peoples, under the 
 superior and chief authority of the Sovereign Pontiff: insUtuUd 
 by the Holy Spirit to rule the Church of God and to teach all nations. 
 
APPENDIX. 339 
 
 Such is the all-powerful economy of that mysterious and living 
 unity of the Church, in which everything is divine because every- 
 thing is one, where the arrangement and the correspondence are 
 such that each part, when it is in its place, shares in the might 
 of the whole. 
 
 No ; let us not astonish the faithful by bringing our criticism 
 to bear on this divine constitution ; let us not dig about these 
 sacred foundations ; let no one put asunder what Jesus Christ 
 hath made to remain eternally united. 
 
 Ah ! may we rather gather more closely than ever around the 
 Sovereign Pontiff in veneration, obedience, and love, and put 
 far away from us even the shadow of dissension! May we all, 
 in generous self-forgetfulness, sacrificing to the Church our per- 
 sonal prejudices, labor with one mind for the preservation of that 
 peace and that unity in which God dwelleth ! Then, but then 
 only, shall we offer to the world the spectacle of that great 
 " army icith hanners^^' of which the Scriptures speak ; an army 
 ** terrible," because it is set in array beneath its banners. 
 
 Then, too, by our example no less than by our teaching, shall 
 we bring to imperilled society that aid from God for which it is 
 looking, and that last hope of life for which it is calling aloud. 
 
 XV. These, Gentlemen, are theological details that I should 
 have been glad to avoid ; I have designed them for the clergy, 
 but they will also fall upon the highway, upon stony ground and 
 among thorns, among chattering birds, among the unfriendly and 
 the ignorant. But let no one be surprised at the opinions agita- 
 ted in our schools. This diversity, these discussions among theo- 
 bgians, are a proof of liberty, in dubiis libertas, and also of charity, 
 in omnibus caritas. But when we must come to necessary deci- 
 sions, about which there should be agreement, in necessariis uni- 
 ias, then we are no longer philosophers disputing ; we are doc- 
 tors teaching, and witnesses giving testimony. 
 
 It is our duty to undertake an exhausting labor in reflection, 
 in the drawing of distinctions, in the weighing of scruples, before 
 Jaying any burden upon your minds or your consciences. O, 
 flippant men who sneer at toil entered into for 5'ou, you do not 
 
340 APPENDIX. 
 
 complain of the minute calculations of astronomers and naviga- 
 tors, before you embark, nor of the investigations of the judge 
 that holds your fate in his hands. Theologians also merit your 
 respect in investigations that concern your souls and the truth. 
 Do not sneer, and do not woi-ry. Instead of listening at the doors 
 of our schools, enter that marvellous temple of Christian truth, 
 from which nineteen centuries have not torn a single stone, the 
 temple in which you find that unique combination of the divine 
 presence and of united testimony which is called the Church ; re- 
 sembling, in some sort, the luminous system of the world, which 
 is composed of one chief luminary, of countless stars, and of one 
 and the same light spread over all. 
 
 In the brightness of an unclouded noon, the light seems to come 
 from a single source ; but if the night grows dark, we see count- 
 less stars in the firmament for man's g lidance, thousands of rays 
 blending upon his head in one single effulgence. 
 
 XVI. I would fain sum up this long scries of questions, and 
 express clearly the state of my soul. 
 
 "We have our contests indeed — that is life ! — but upon this great 
 question of the Church we have peace. No Catholic doubts the 
 infallibility of the Church ; just as no one doubts the primacj^ of 
 the Pope, who institutes bishops, convokes Councils, proposes de- 
 crees, confirms decisions : no one doubts the constancy, the una- 
 nimity of tradition on all these points, for nineteen centuries. 
 Every believer, after having read the Gospel, consulted historj^ 
 hearkened to his pastor, pronounces from the bottom of his heart, 
 Credo Ecclesiam unam, scmctam, cailioUcam, apostoUcam. In fact, 
 in the testimony of the Bishops, the Popes, the Apostles, and of 
 Christ, there is, from the very beginning, an infallible harmony, 
 into which God himself enters. 
 
 All at once some few persons set about inquiring in whom in- 
 fallibility, in this Church, originally resides. And with ej^es fixed 
 upon a marvellous fact, they commence to agitate questions. In the 
 presence of a fact, they see fit to stir up hypotheses. In presence 
 of a solution, they put in question the elements of the problem ; 
 and a cause that has been adjudicated, terminated by happy ac- 
 
APPENDIX. 341 
 
 cord, they take up, revive, and rekindle ! Straightway, as soon 
 as the problem is enunciated, the enemy awakes and the faithful 
 are disconcerted, the East checked, Protestants turned back, gov- 
 ernments disturbed, the saddest pages of the history of the past 
 dragged to light, the bishops saddened, the peace of souls 
 compromised, and the way of salvation rendered more difficult. 
 Wherefore ? In what interest ? With w^hat gain ? 
 
 To-morrow, whatever might be the course adopted, what would 
 happen? That which was not discussed would be discussed, 
 what was forgotten would be revived, and the habit of discussion 
 once resumed — farewell to peace ! 
 
 No, no ! We are not going to assemble to substitute division 
 for unanimity, dispute for love ! 
 
 By the grace of God, the Church of France has, for two cen- 
 turies, richly deserved to be released from all antiquated jeal- 
 ousies. That Church, I boldly say, has been and will ever be the 
 heroine and the martyr of Unity. During the last hundred 
 years especially, there has not been a branch of the divine tree 
 better united to the trunk and the root, while spreading itself 
 farther, more zealously, across all boundaries : no branch more 
 Catholic, no branch more apostolic, no branch more Roman. 
 
 Our predecessors died upon the scaffold, that the unity might 
 not be broken; they accepted exile and confiscation, without 
 yielding either to the oppression of the people or the tyranny of 
 the despot. They were to be found with Pius VI. and Pius YII. 
 upon all the paths of exile, in the fellowship of martyrdom. It 
 was in the French clergy that Pius VII. found his strongest con- 
 solation. The Churches of the United States were begun b}^ 
 French bishops. French bishops have never wearied in defend- 
 ing oppressed Poland, starving Ireland, the down-trodden East. 
 Together we have demanded and obtained the freedom of parents 
 in the education of their children ; together we have defended 
 the freedom of religious association, the freedom of charity, the 
 development of civilizing missions. The whole Church is in- 
 debted to France for the Sisters of Charity, the Brethren of the 
 Christian Schools, the Work of the Propagation of the Faith in 
 
342 APPENDIX. 
 
 the two worlds, the Conferences of Saint Vincent de Paul, the 
 Colleges of the Jesuits and the Dominicans, the Little Sisters of 
 the Poor, and all that incomparable army of peace, which, like 
 our army of war, is the first in the world. 
 
 For twenty years the Papal See has been attacked, wounded, 
 betrayed, oppressed, delivered up to implacable adversaries. The 
 French bishops have defended, served, assisted, loved, exalted, 
 consoled it, with a magnificent movement that time has not 
 weakened. And is it not they, too, who in the evil days through 
 which we are passing, gave the first impulse to that touch- 
 ing and now universal work, the Peter's-pence ? Ah! I venture 
 to say that such devotion to Rome and to the Catholic world 
 gives the Church of France the right to be believed, to be heard, 
 when it speaks of its attachment to the Holy See and to the Vicar 
 of our Lord Jesus Christ. 
 
 What do I say ! So great is the enthusiasm of France for the 
 centre of unity, that extreme doctrines cross the Alps from France, 
 while from Rome come forth moderation, compromise, prudence ; 
 Rome it is that arrests the furia francese, and refuses to push 
 dogmas to excess. So, my brethren, be not uneasy ! Men of 
 faith, be not troubled ! 
 
 If I have decided upon going into all these details with you 
 and in public, it was because of this secret instinct, that I had 
 rather to calm agitated minds in my own country than to fore- 
 stall objections at Rome. I am convinced that no sooner shall 
 I have touched the sacred soil, no sooner kissed the tomb of the 
 Apostles, than I shall feel myself at peace, out of battle, in the 
 midst of an assembly presided over by a Father and composed 
 of Brothers. There all tumult will die away, all foolhardy med- 
 dling cease, all imprudence disappear, the winds and the weaves 
 wull be at rest. We shall think of the saints in whose seats we 
 are sitting, of the souls that we are to answer for unto God ; we 
 shall think of that God who sees us and who will judge us ; we 
 shall think of the Apostles, we shall seem to see them still in the 
 presence of the world that is to be conquered, and the Master 
 that is to be hearkened unto. And when in the place of that 
 
APPENDIX. 343 
 
 supreme Master of hearts, liis Vicar upon earth shall repeat to 
 each of us, " My brother, lovest thou me ?" O believe that 
 your old bishop will not be the last one to answer, " Father, thou 
 knowest that I love thee !" As the gentle bishop of Geneva said : 
 '■'■In the strife of love for the Vicar of Jesus Christ I have not permit- 
 ted myself to be overcome by any one. For twenty years my hair 
 has whitened, my hand has worn itself out in thy service. O 
 Holy Father, God knoweth that the last word of my lips and the 
 last throb of my heart shall be given to the Church and to thee." 
 Accept, Gentlemen and beloved fellow-laborers, the renewed 
 assurance of my deep and pious regards. 
 
 i{« Felix, Bishop of Orleans. 
 
 Orleans, Noveinber Wth : 
 Feast of St. Martin. 
 
 THE END, 
 
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