LESSON LIV.

GENERAL SUMMARY.

RELIGION IN TIME AND IN ETERNITY.

Religion the Only Source of Happiness in Time. Which is the Religion that makes Man happy? Religion the Only Source of Happiness in Eternity. What is Heaven? The Author's Declaration.

We are coming to the end of our task. We have followed Religion from its origin down to our own days, and everything tells us that it is pre-eminently the work of God. The need of a Restorer after the fall of Adam is incontestable. The fact of the promise of a Redeemer has been demonstrated, and from the time of this promise belief in the Redeemer was necessary. During four thousand years, the Messias, to be sent by God for the salvation of men, was continually brought before their minds by promises, figures, prophecies, and preparations. At length, the Desired of Nations arrives: the Eternal Word becomes Man for love of us. In Him and by Him are fulfilled all the promises, are realised all the figures, and are verified all the prophecies of the Old Testament.

The New Adam, He is really the Saviour of the world. He is the only centre round which all ages, past and future, assemble. His life and His works have been presented to our admiration and our imitation. The law of grace is His work: henceforth we must attach ourselves to Him by faith, hope, and charity. After showing the conditions and the object of our union with the New Adam, we explained in detail what would destroy and what would perpetuate it.

Here appeared the Church of Jesus Christ; and we have seen Christianity established, preserved, propagated, and brought before the senses during all the centuries of the Christian era. Therefore it-the Roman Catholic Church-is the only depositary of the only good and true Religion.

Hence flow three propositions, a magnificent summary of this

work, and of all demonstrations on Religion. (a) There is one true Religion, or for the last six thousand years the human race has lost the use of reason. (b) The true Religion is to be found in Christianity, or nowhere. (c) Christianity is to be found in the Catholic Church, or nowhere.

Thus, after passing down the sixty centuries that separate us from the birth of man, and crossing in imagination all the centuries that remain, we arrive at the threshold of eternity. Here time ceases; here ends all that belongs to time. Will the case be the same with Religion? No: Religion will last when the centuries will be no more; for the relations of which it is the expression are as unchangeable as the natures of God and man, on which they rest.

What, in effect, is Religion but the bond that unites man with God? Now, between a father and a son, between a mother and a daughter, there exists a sacred, indispensable, and unchangeable bond. Who will dare to deny it? Therefore, between God, a Creator and Father, and man, a creature and child, there exists a bond, and this bond, sacred and unchangeable, will exist as long as it will be true that God is the Creator and Father of man, and man the creature and child of God. Now, this will be true for all eternity. Therefore, Religion will exist for ever and ever: in æternum et ultra.

Before saying, or rather that we may say, what Religion will be in eternity, we must call to mind what it was and what it is in time. Let us recollect ourselves: the history that we are going to enter on is less its than our own.

In the beginning, God created the world and man: the world for man, and man for God. God, essentially good, made a good work: He could not do otherwise. Hence, the Book of Books tells us that casting a look over His works in their magnificent entirety, God saw that all the things He had made were very good.1 Man especially, the masterpiece of His hands, was very good. Intelligence, love, innocence, immortality, and happiness were his portion.

Happiness in his mind. He knew clearly all that he ought to know: God, himself, and creatures, from the fiery globe that hung above his head to the lowly hyssop that crept beneath his feet. He knew all the beings and all the riches of his vast dominions, and over all he exercised a sway that was absolute, and was as gentle as it was great. And this teaching which Religion gives us regarding our first state is so true that we find it at the head of the Genesis of every people.

1 Vidit Deus cuncta quæ fecerat, et erant valde bona. Gen., i.

Happiness in his heart. He loved with a deep, pure, calm love all that he ought to love: God, himself, and creatures. And his heart was the sublime medium by which the whole world, submissive to his laws, returned to God.

Happiness in his senses. Around him nature full of vigour, of life, of gigantic productions in harmony with his powers; above him, a cloudless sky; before him, a thornless land, flowers whose perfume and beauty were unmixed with defect, and fruits whose delicious juices would keep him in everlasting youth. No sickness then, no weakness, no fears, no sighs, nothing that could afflict the mind, disturb the heart, or impair the senses.

So much happiness man owed to Religion-to the sacred bond that united him, a creature and child, with God the Creator and Father, Truth, Goodness, Life, Immortality, Perfect Happiness. Meanwhile, the hour of crime arrived. Sin entered the world, and happiness fled from it. A thick mist overspread the mind of man. Concupiscence, like a fierce fever, worked into the marrow of his bones; the bright looks of his face grew dim; the strength of his senses was undermined; and death appeared before him, waiting for its prey. Farewell, clear light of the mind; farewell, pure love of an innocent heart; farewell, beauty of body; farewell, calm empire of the world; farewell, strength of organs; farewell, immortality; farewell, happiness!

As Lucifer, that great dragon, when driven out of Heaven, drew with him into the abyss a multitude of bright seraphs, so man in his fall drew with him the whole creation, which had been subject to him. All beings were weakened; animals saw their most gigantic species disappear; plants lost their virtues, and flowers their perfumes; thorns grew up instead of roses; and man and the world were no longer anything but a great wreck.

Religion, which had constituted all the happiness of innocent man, came forward to repair the misfortunes of guilty man. A tender mother, she sets out with him from the garden of delights, accompanies him in his exile, wipes away the tears that flow from his eyes, speaks to him of hope in the midst of his punishments, and, seated by his death-bed, soothes the last pangs of his agony. O men! whosoever you are, who believe yourselves endowed with the faculty of thought, we beg of you to say, with your hand upon your heart, to whom is fallen man indebted for whatever knowledge, virtue, nobility, hope, or happiness he has retained or has recovered.

Take the human race at every period of its existence; follow it into every place; question it in every region that it has occupied

or that it still occupies: what answer? Facts, but facts as plain as the sun at mid-day, will speak to your eyes.

Again, who preserved among men, buried as they were in idolatry, some remains of justice, equity, morality, and subordination? Do I hear you say it was philosophy?

Ah! do not oblige us any more to draw aside the veil of its misery and shame. What were the lights that the ancient world owed to philosophy? What did it teach that religious tradition had not first taught? But why do I speak thus? What ideas were there, even slightly just, regarding God, the soul, the creation of matter, the sovereign felicity, or the end of man-ideas kept among idolatrous peoples by Religion, like a small inheritance kept by a father for a prodigal and rebellious son-that philosophy did not alter, condemn, or discredit, by mixing up with them ever so many sophisms and absurdities?

Come with me to the schools of the philosophers-the preservers, according to you, of truth in the ancient world. Question them on a truth that interests both you and me in the highest degree. Here we are in the school of Democritus: ask him, What is the soul? The great laugher will answer you, It is a fire. The Stoics will say that it is an airy substance; others, an intelligence. Heraclitus, the great weeper, will tell you that it is a motion. With Thales it is a breath, an emanation from the stars; with Pythagoras, a motive number, a monad; with Dinarchus, a harmony. These call it blood; those, a spirit; twenty others, as many other different things. Hence, for every answer to the question, What is the soul? only endless contradictions and silly reveries from the philosophers!

But let it pass that they do not understand the nature of the soul. Do they agree better about the rest, for example about its properties? It is immortal, says one. No, says another, it is sentenced to death. According to this man, it will exist for some time. According to that one, it will pass into the body of a beast. Yes, says some one else, but not to remain there: it must undergo three transmigrations altogether, and one transmigration may settle its state of existence for a thousand years. What good people, who cannot prolong their own existence beyond a hundred years, and yet promise thousands of years to others!

How shall we speak of these opinions? Shall we say that they are chimerical, foolish, absurd, monstrous? If what these people declare to us is true, why, let all of them use the same language; let one confirm what another asserts: I shall then be glad to listen to them. But when we see them divided on the nature of the soul

are we to tear it into pieces that we may continue such a shocking dispute?

How then shall I address these teachers? This one makes me immortal: what a happiness! That one makes me mortal: what an affliction! Another resolves me into the most minute atoms: behold me water, behold me air, behold me fire! After a little, I am no longer water, nor air, nor fire; I become a deer or a dolphin, I sport amid the woods or the waves. When I begin to examine myself, I grow afraid: I cannot tell what is my name-whether I am a man, or a dog, or a wolf, or a bull, or a bird, or a serpent, or a dragon, or a chimera, so numerous are the metamorphoses to which it has pleased philosophical gentlemen to subject me. Transformed into all the beasts of the earth, wild and tame-into all the animals of the land, the sea, and the air, of so many different shapes, quiet and noisy, sagacious and stupid-I roam, I swim, I fly, I creep, I rest; and now here comes Empedocles, who is going to turn me into a plant !1

Question all these famous masters on other truths, the bases of moral order and of society: they understand them no better. And the only words that rise to your lips on quitting their tiresome schools are those of a man who knew them well. There is no absurdity, however shocking, says Cicero, that is not brought forward by some philosopher !

2

And now do you really believe that these philosophers, who bear so close a resemblance to mountebanks that argue in the public squares, preserved in the ancient world those principles of justice and equity which maintained a little harmony among men, broke occasionally the chains of some slaves, and dried up a few tears? Was it of philosophy that Job, the patriarch of sorrow, born and living in the midst of heathenism, asked consolation? Where is the poor man, oppressed with misery, or the slave, torn with stripes, that ever said, O holy philosophy, comfortress of the afflicted, come to my aid!

If the philosopher whom they call their master, Socrates, wants at the moment of drinking hemlock to sweeten the bitterness of his fate, is it philosophy that he invokes? No; it is Religion-Religion which preserved and which brings to him the consoling dogma of the immortality of the soul. Conclude therefore with us that whatever truths and principles, and consequently whatever virtues and consolations, there were in the ancient world, they came from Religion, and not from philosophy.

But lo! the day dawns when this truth, that man owes everything to Religion, is about to appear with the greatest clearness. Do • Hermias, Irrisio philosoph., p. 15. 2 Remark of J. J. Rousseau.