kingdom of Jesus Christ; fathers teach your names to their children, to animate them to virtue; and, without knowing it, you become the model of the people, the conversation of the lower orders, the edification of families, the example of every station and of every class. Scarcely had the heads of the tribes in the desert, and the most distinguished women, brought to Moses their most precious ornaments for the construction of the tabernacle, when all the people, incited by their example, presented themselves in crowds to offer their gifts and presents; and Moses was even under the necessity of placing bounds to their pious alacrity, and of moderating the excess of their liberalities.
Ah! my brethren, what good, once more, may your examples do among the people! Public dissipations discredited from the moment that you cease to countenance them; indecent fashions proscribed whenever you neglect them; dangerous customs antiquated as soon as you forsake them; the source of almost all disorders dried up from the moment that you live according to God. And how many souls thereby saved — what evils prevented — what crimes checked — what misfortunes hindered! What gain for religion is a single person of rank, who lives according to faith! What a present doth God make to the earth, to a kingdom, to a people, when he bestoweth grandees who live in his fear! And, should the interest even of your own soul be insufficient to render virtue amiable to you, should not the interest of so many souls, to whom, by living according to God, you are an occasion of salvation, induce you to prefer the fear and the love of his law, to all the vain pleasures of the earth? Is the heart capable of tasting a more exquisite pleasure than that of being a source of salvation and of benediction to our brethren?
And what is yet more fortunate here for you, is, that you do not live for your own age alone. I have already observed that your examples will pass to the following ages: the virtues of the simple believers perish, as I may say, with them, but your virtues will be recorded in history with your names. You will become a pious model for our posterity, equally as you have been so for the people of your own times. Connected, through your rank and your employments, with the principal events of our age, you will be transmitted with them to the ages to come. Succeeding courts will still find the history of your piety and of your manners blended with the public history of our days. You will do credit to piety even in the ages to follow. The memory of your virtues, preserved in our annals, will still serve as an instruction to those of your descendants who shall read them; and it shall one day be said of you, as of those men full of glory and of righteousness, mentioned by Scripture, that your piety has not finished with you; that your bodies, indeed, are buried in peace, but that your name liveth for evermore, that your seed standeth for ever, and that your name shall not be blotted out.
Nor is this all: the example renders your virtues a public good, which is their first character; but authority, which is their second,
