SECTION XVII.

ON REPENTANCE AND AMENDMENT.

WHILE recommending you to banish inquietude of mind, I have alluded to your not permitting yourself to degenerate, and principally not to relax in the unceasing task of advancing in the scale of improvement.

The man who ventures to say, "My moral education is completed, and my works have corroborated it," assuredly deceives himself. It is always incumbent upon us to learn how to regulate our conduct for each day, and those days which are to come; we are under obligation to preserve our virtue invariably on the alert, urging us to new actions; and we are equally bound to recollect our faults and to repent of

them.

On this last subject there is nothing more true than that which is advanced by our religion, "that our whole moral life ought to consist of one continued repentance, and in endeavours to amend our conduct. Christianity itself is nothing else." Even Voltaire, in one of those lucid inter

vals, when he was not devoured by his rage for reviling it, wrote the following words: "Confession of our faults is an excellent thing; it is a restraint upon crime, and it may be traced to the most remote antiquity. In the celebration of the ancient mysteries, it was customary for persons to confess their offences. We have adopted and rendered sacred this wise custom; it is the best of all to lead back hearts corrupted by hatred to conciliation and pardon *." How disgraceful, if what is here admitted by Voltaire, should not be deeply felt by him who is honoured with the title of Christian. Let us listen to the voice of conscience. Let us blush for the actions which it condemns. Let us confess them before God, in order to purify our hearts; nor desist from this sacred process so long as we are permitted to live. If this, moreover, be not done with inattentive spirit; if the sins recounted in the sight of heaven be not condemned only with the lips; if repentance be united to a sincere desire of amendment, there can assuredly be nothing at once more salutary, more sublime, more worthy the character of man.

* See Quest. Encicl., book iii.

When conscious that have committed any

you

wrong, do not hesitate to repair it. Simply by this act you will set your conscience at rest. To delay making reparation accustoms the mind, and chains it down, to evil, and the links become each day stronger, until it begins to lose its usual selfrespect. And woe to the man who has once lost his own esteem; woe to him when he feigns to value himself, while he feels his conscience loaded with a mass of putrefaction which ought not to exist; woe to him, also, when, aware of the presence of this corruption of soul, he believes that there is nothing left for him to do but to disguise it. He no longer retains his station in the grade of noble existences; he is a fallen star, a calamity of the creation.

If some forward youth should call you poltroon because you dare not to persevere in a course of iniquity as he does, tell him that he is the bravest of the brave who can resist the seductions of vice, and he the craven who permits himself to be vilely dragged along chained at her chariot wheels to swell the bad triumph of the hideous enchantress-Sin; tell him that the arrogance of the sinner is false strength, since it is certain that on his death-bed-unless raging in delirium-he

will lose it all; and farther, that the strength of which you are ambitious is precisely that which deigns not to notice ridicule whilst abandon the broad and evil way,' for that of virtue and of heaven.

you

When you have committed an offence, never tell a lie in order to deny or extenuate it. Lying is a base weakness. Confess that you have done wrong; in that there is some magnanimity; and the shame you will experience in making the confession will bear fruit in the applause of the good. If you have been unfortunate enough to offend any one, have the noble humility, that true criterion of the gentleman, to ask his pardon. Inasmuch as your conduct will show that you are not a poltroon, no one will venture to call you vile for an act of frank magnanimity. But to persevere in the crime of insulting the innocent, and rather than admit your error and retract your words, to enter into mortal strife or into eternal enmity with the injured, are the mad tricks of proud and ferocious men ;— are infamies of so black a dye as to make it of some difficulty for the world to veil them under the brilliant name of honour.

There can be no honour except in fulfilling the dictates of virtue and the laws of God; there can be none without submitting to the condition of

continual repentance and renewed determination

to amend.

SECTION XVIII.

ON CELIBACY.

WHEN you have finally decided upon the sort of profession which you judge best adapted to your character, and have acquired that firmness and perseverance in good habits which worthily entitle you to the name of man; then, and not before, if you entertain thoughts of marrying, try to find such a wife as may merit your entire and lasting love. Yet before quitting the state of celibacy, reflect long and well if it may not be better you should continue to prefer it.

Suppose, for instance, that you should not so far have succeeded in restraining your natural tendency to anger, to jealousy, to suspicion, to impatience, and the harsh exercise of superiority, as to presume that you will appear amiable in the eyes of your companion, you had really better have fortitude enough to renounce the hopes and blessings of matrimony. For if, possessing such qualities, you take a wife, you would be sure to make her miserable, and it is impossible that you could be happy yourself.