No, Gentlemen, you do not feel the certainty of your incredulity, and if you did, we should not possess the certainty of our faith; for two contradictory certainties mutually exclude each other. I divide you into two classes some of you have studied the question of religion, the others know it only by prejudice. Those who have not studied the question have no right to claim the benefit of rational certainty; and do they not form the greater number among you? I appeal to you as judges: what have you done in order to place yourselves in connection with Catholic doctrine? What have you read? What have been the subjects of your meditations? In what solitude have you collected the powers of your minds before the problem of your destinies? Which of you has sufficiently weighed God in his hands, to address to Him with justice an eternal affirmation or denial?

As to the learned, to those who have strenuously consulted many books and many ideas, and to whom I grant, if they desire it, that they have also closely scrutinized Christianity in their investigations, is it necessary for me to contest their certainty? Who does not know the mind of a learned man? Who has not heard the sad lamentations of those men who have explored everything; and who, in their long navigation on the ocean of things, have only brought forth, with a more extended knowledge, more profound doubts? Gentlemen, truth meets all at the hour of death: it is there where we must judge of the sincerity and of the value of the two doctrines of the value of Catholicism and of the value of unbelief. Where is the Catholic, at the hour of death, who regrets his faith? And how many, on the contrary, are there of unbelievers, who press their dying lips on the crucifix, in adoration of that which they had blasphemed, and cursing that which they had adored! D'Alembert, that great geometrician, was upon his death-bed. A young man approached him, and said to him, with affectionate candour: "Monsieur D'Alembert, you have been always kind

to me; permit me to ask you one question. Does all that which you and your friends have written of Christianity appear now to you to be certain ?" D'Alembert, affected by a generous impulse, answered: "Ah! certain !"

See, Gentlemen, the last word of science and of genius with regard to religion, when they are kept to themselves, and have only desired by isolated reason to draw conclusions from the divine testimony. Knowledge exhausts life, and does not fill it. Yes, princes of earthly thought, you have hollowed out a deep and wonderful well, but you have not filled it. Between you and ourselves, to say all in one word, behold the difference: we believe, and you doubt!

Granted, do you say? we seek, and there is our merit; we are not certain, we seek to obtain it of every breeze that blows, we ask it of whoever is able to speak with eloquence; but, besides incredulity, do there not exist false religions? These false religions, do they possess certainty? And, if they do, what does your Catholic certainty prove? The worshipper of Jupiter dies in peace, the disciple of Mahomet dies in peace; you said, just now, that you would wait for us on the bed of death; well, we invoke this bed of death in favour of the most extravagant modes of worship.

Gentlemen, if I admit this, will it not be a very striking phenomenon, that human knowledge is incapable of imparting peace of mind at the hour of death, whilst the worshipper of Jupiter, the faithful Mahomedan, the observer of a worship, however savage and unreasonable it may be, may obtain peace in his religion. What is then the charm of religion if it be true that it suffices to adore, to bend the knee to earth, lift the eyes towards heaven, and say in any language: My God! if it suffice, do I say, for a human soul to pronounce that name of God, to be strengthened, consoled, and calm in death? Do you not see that you can say nothing more fatal to yourselves, and that even the error of religions possessed by minds of every kind, and imparting that peace to them which you do not

feel, proves that you are not in the road of humanity; that the Negro, the Caffir, or the Hottentot are happier than you; that they have more true knowledge than you have, and that God, in all countries, in all times, under all forms, rewards the soul that believes in him? Yes, the false religions will lift up their voices against you on the day of judgment, yes, it will be said to you: Sages, I gave peace to mankind, to my negroes, to my savages, to my Caribbeans, they lived in peace under the shadow of my name; and you, who have tormented yourselves, who have taken within your own selves your starting-point and your fulcrum, like those unhappy beings who would carry themselves away by their own efforts, you have remained plunged in doubt and agitation, you have only obtained from your studies, despair, which has not even taught you your powerlessness. This answer will perhaps suffice, Gentlemen; but I wish to show you that false religions do not possess rational certainty, that is to say, they do not impart to their disciples a conviction reflected, sovereign, immutable.

it

Was there a doctrine even in paganism? Was there in any reflection or teaching? Of what use can it be to discuss about that in which there is not even the shadow of reason? Thus, when Jesus Christ came into the world, what did the Roman empire? At first it held its peace, resting upon its powerful sword; but when it saw those Gallileans, who spread themselves over the empire, who appeared in the senate, who had in the army, in the prætorship, approving friends and brethren; when the empire became sensible of this march of persuasion, it roused itself and made a sign; was it to speak? To speak! it drew that sword which had subjugated the world, and smote with it, without cessation, old men, women, and helpless children; and that execrable cowardice is still the only defence of those false gods, wherever they remain. Where is reason? Where is rational certainty?

Ah! when I meet with a soul which has not my faith,

which believes not in the gentle words of Christ, I feel a tender pity for it. I bring myself to its level; I draw it near to me, as much as its age and condition permit me to do so; I do that which a mother might do in order to give to it the milk of love. It may despise my efforts, but it will not accuse them of being indicative of a faith without reason and without affection. But, let a Christian fall into the power of those childish forms of worship, without confidence in themselves, because they feel their degradation, they would not even try to convince him; they would say to him: Bow down, or die. But the Christian is not silent, nor does he bow down his head; the doctrine which is within him kindles and increases before peril; he remembers Calvary, and under the hand which is about to destroy him, he seeks still to persuade, even were it but his executioner. On which side is the conviction reflected, sovereign, immutable?

Perhaps, at least in the Christian sects separated from Catholic unity, we shall be constrained to recognise rational certainty? No more than elsewhere. The ignorant in these sects are incapable of arriving at rational certainty ; and the faith which they have, if their ignorance is invincible, is a purely supernatural faith, which is the fruit of grace, and which is able to save them. As to the learned of heresy, the force of logic leads them to destroy that which they would have wished to leave standing; they undermine, sooner or later, the dogmas which they themselves recognised at first as fundamental; and finally, they arrive at a Protestantism so complete, that it is only distinguished from rationalism by its name. I do not give you proofs of this, it is a history too visible even to the least practised sight, and I hasten to conclude by resuming: Neither in Christian sects, nor in heathen religions, nor elsewhere outside the pale of Catholic doctrine, is rational certainty produced with reference to divine things. We alone possess it; and as there is no certainty in error, but in truth alone, Catholic doctrine is truth.

FIFTEENTH CONFERENCE.

OF THE REPULSION PRODUCED IN THE MIND BY

CATHOLIC DOCTRINE.

MY LORD,

GENTLEMEN,

WHEN the aged patriarch Jacob was upon his deathbed, he gathered around him his posterity; and opening before them, for their instruction and our own, the vast field of the future, he said to one of his sons, called Judah: "The sceptre shall not depart from thy race, nor the government from thy house, till He come that is to be sent, and He shall be the expected of nations.” (1) Therefore, the first character by which Christ, the Son of God made Man, was expressly designated in the prophecies, was that of being the hope of nations. And at a later period, at the end of the prophetic age, another of those envoys of God said: "Yet a little while and I will move the heaven and the earth, and the Desired of all nations shall come." (2) And yet, Gentlemen, another prophet exclaimed in very different language: "Why have the Gentiles raged, and the people devised vain things? The kings of the earth stood up, and the princes met together, against the Lord, and against his Christ; they have said: Let us break their bonds asunder, and let us cast away their yoke

(1) Genesis, ch. 49, v. 10.

(2) Aggeus, ch. 2, v. 8.