which keep us in perpetual motion do not form for us more legitimate employments.
Yes, my brethren, I know that it is only at a certain age of life that we appear occupied with frivolity and pleasures. More serious cares and more solid avocations succeed to the indolence and to the vain amusements of our younger years: and, after wasting our youth in sloth and in pleasures, we appropriate our maturity to our country, to fortune, and to ourselves; but still, with respect to heaven we continue the same. I confess, that we owe our services to our country, to our sovereign, and to the national cares; that amongst the number of duties prescribed to us by religion, it places that of zeal for our sovereign and for the interest and glory of our country; and that religion alone can form faithful subjects, and citizens ever ready to sacrifice their all for the general good. But religion wishes not that pride and ambition should rashly plunge us in public affairs, and that we should anxiously endeavour, by all possible means, by intrigue and solicitations, to attain places, where, owing every thing to others, not a moment is left for ourselves: religion wishes us to dread these tumultuous situations; to give ourselves up to them with regret and trembling, when the order of God and the authority of our masters call us to them; and, were the choice left to us, always to prefer the safety and leisure of a private station to the dangers and eclat of dignities and places. Alas! we have a short time to exist upon the earth, and the salvation or eternal condemnation which awaits us is so near, that every other care ought to be melancholy and burdensome to us; and every thing which diverts our attention from that grand object, for which we are allowed only a small portion of days, ought to appear as the heaviest misfortune. This is not a maxim of pure spirituality; it is the first maxim and the foundation of Christianity.
Nevertheless, ambition, pride, and all our passions, unite to render a private life insupportable to us. What in life we dread most, is a lot and a station which leave us to ourselves, and do not establish us upon others. We consult neither the order of God, nor the views of religion, nor the dangers of a too agitated situation, nor the happiness which faith points out in a private and tranquil station, where we have nothing but ourselves to answer for, and frequently not even our talents; we consult only our passions, and that insatiable desire of raising ourselves above our brethren; we wish to figure upon the stage of life, and become great personages, and upon a stage, alas! which to-morrow shall disappear, and leave us nothing real but the puerile trouble and pain of having acted upon it. Even the more these stations appear surrounded with tumult and embarrassment, the more do they appear worthy of our pursuit: we wish to be in every thing: that leisure so dear to a religious soul, to us appears shameful and mean: every thing which divides us between the public and ourselves; every thing which gives to others an absolute right over our time; every thing which plunges us into that abyss of cares and agitations, which credit,
