obscure saint, a patron of the blind, the orphan and the miserable, an author may write a more heart-dissolving page than with all the gods of the Pantheon. Here indeed is poetry, here indeed is the marvellous. But would you seek the marvellous still more sublime, contemplate the life and the sorrows of Christ, and remember that your God was called the Son of Man. We will venture to predict, that a time will come when we cannot be suffici ently astonished how it was possible to pass over the admirable beauty of the expressions used in Christianity, and when we shall have difficulty to comprehend how it could be possible to laugh at the celestial religion of reason and misfortune. 273 UPON THE HISTORY OF THE LIFE OF BY FATHER DE LIGNY THE History of the Life of Jesus Christ is one of the last works for which we are indebted to that celebrated so. ciety* nearly all the members of which were men distinguished for their literary attainments. Father de Ligny, born at Amiens in 1710, survived the destruction of his order, and prolonged till 1783, a career which commenced during the misfortunes of Louis XIV, and finished at the period of the disasters of Louis XVI. Whenever in these latter times we met in the world with an aged ecclesiastic, full of knowledge, wit, and amenity, having the manners of a man of liberal education, and of one who had been accustomed to good company, we were disposed to believe that ancient priest a Jesuit. The Abbé Lenfant also belonged to this order, which has given so many martyrs to the church; he was the friend * Father de Ligny was a Jesuit, of Father de Ligny, and it was he who made him finally determine to publish the history in question of the Life of Jesus Christ. This History is, in fact, nothing more than a commentary upon the Gospels, and it is that which constitutes its great merit in our eyes. Father de Ligny cites the text of the New Testament, and expounds every verse in two ways; the one, by explaining in a moral and historical point of view what you have just read; the other, by answering any objections which may be urged against the passage cited. The first commentary is in the page with the text, in the same manner as in the Bible of Father de Carrières; the second is in the form of a note, at the bottom of the page. In this manner the author offers to your view, in succession, and in their proper order, the different chapters of the Evangelists; and by thus bringing to your observation their affinity, by reconciling their apparent contradictions, he developes the entire life of the Redeemer of the world. The work of Father de Ligny was become very scarce, and the Typographical Society have rendered an essential service to religion in reprinting a book of such eminent utility. We know of many histories of the life of Jesus Christ, among the productions of French authors, but not one which combines, like the present, the two advantages of being at the same time an explanation of the Scriptures, and a refutation of the sophisms of the day. The Life of Jesus Christ by Saint Real wants grace and simplicity; it is much more easy to imitate Sallust and the Cardinal de Retz, than to acquire the style of the Gospel. Father Montreuil, in his Life of Jesus Christ, The Conspiracy of the Count de Fiesco, by Cardinal de Retz, appears to have served as a model for the Conspiracy of Venice, by Saint Real. There subsists between these two works the difference which always must subsist between the original and revised by Father Brignon, has preserved, on the contrary, much of the charm of the New Testament. His style being a little antiquated, contributes perhaps to this charm; for the ancient French language, and more especially that which was spoken under Louis XIII, was well calculated to display the energy and simplicity of the Scriptures. It would have been fortunate had a good translation of them been made at this period. Sacy was too late, and the two best versions of the Bible are the Spanish and English versions.* The last of these, which in many places retains the force of the Hebrew, was made in the reign of James I; the language in which it is written has become a sort of sacred language for the three kingdoms, as the Samaritan text was for the Jews; the veneration which the English have for the Scriptures appears to be augmented by it, and the antiquity of the idiom seems as if it increased the antiquity of the book. Finally, it is impossible not to be aware, that all the histories of Jesus Christ which are not, like that of Father de Ligny, a simple commentary upon the New Testament, are, generally speaking, bad, and even dangerous works. We have copied this manner of disfiguring the Gospel from the Protestants, not observing that it has had the effect of turning many persons to Socinianism. Jesus Christ is not a man; we ought not therefore to write his life in the same manner that we would write that of a simple legislator. We may endeavour to relate his works in the most affecting manner, but we can never paint him any other than as a human being;-to paint his divinity is far above the copy, between him who writes with rapture and genius, and he who by dint of hard labour is enabled to imitate this rapture and this genius, with more or less truth and happiness. M. de Chateaubriand was not acquainted with the excellent German version of Luther. Editor. our reach. Human virtues have something corporeal in them, if we may be permitted the expression, which the writer can seize; but the virtues of Christ are so deeply intellectual, there is in them such a spirituality, that they seem to shrink from the materiality of our expres sions. It is this truth so delicate, so refined, of which Pascal speaks, and which our grosser organs cannot touch without blunting the point. The divinity of Christ is no where to be found, and cannot possibly be found any where but in the gospel, where it shines among the ineffable sacraments instituted by the Saviour, and amid the miracles which he performed. The apostles alone were able to pourtray it, because they wrote under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. They were witnesses of the wonders performed by the Son of Man; they lived with him; some part of his divinity remained stamped upon their sacred writings, as the features of this celestial Messiah remained, say they, impressed on the mysterious veil which wiped the sweat from his brow. There is besides some danger, that under the idea of producing a work of taste and literature, the whole gospel may be transformed into a mere history of Jesus Christ. In giving to facts a certain air of something merely human, and strictly his torical, in appealing incessantly to an assumed reason which is too often nothing more than deplorable folly, and in aiming at preaching morality, entirely divested of all dogmas, the protestants have suffered every thing like exalted eloquence to perish from among them. In effect, we cannot consider either the Tillotsons, the Wilkins's, the Goldsmiths, or the Blairs, notwithstanding their merits, as great orators, more especially if we compare them with a Basil, a Chrysostome, an Ambrose, a Bourdaloue, or a Massillon. Every religion which considers Pascal's Thoughts. |