observation." Truth is not the fruit of controversy and dispute, but of tears and groanings; it is by purifying our heart in meditation and in prayer that we alone must expect, like the magi, the light of heaven, and to become worthy of distinguishing and knowing it. A corrupted heart, says St. Augustine, may see the truth; but he is incapable of relishing or of loving it; in vain do you enlighten and instruct yourselves: your doubts are in your passions: religion will become evident and clear from the moment that you shall become chaste, temperate, and equitable; and you will have faith from the moment that you shall cease to have vice. Consequently, from the instant that you cease to have an interest in finding religion false, you will find it incontestable; no longer hate its maxims, and you will no longer contest its mysteries.
Augustine himself, already convinced of the truth of the Gospel, still found, in the love of pleasure, a source of doubts and perplexities which checked him. It was no longer the dreams of the Manicheans which kept him removed from faith; he was fully sensible of their absurdity and fanaticism: it was no longer the pretended contradictions of our holy books; Ambrose had explained their purport and their adorable mysteries. Nevertheless, he still doubted; the sole thought of having to renounce his shameful passions in becoming a disciple of faith, rendered it still suspicious to him. He would have wished either that the doctrine of Jesus Christ had been an imposition, or that it had not condemned his voluptuous excesses, without which, indeed, he was then unable to comprehend how either a happy or a comfortable life could be led. Thus, always floating and unwilling to be settled; continually consulting, yet dreading to be instructed; by turns the disciple and admirer of Ambrose, and racked by the perplexities of a heart which shunned the truth, he dragged his chain, as he says himself, dreading to be delivered from it; he continued to start doubts merely to prolong his passions; he wished to be yet more enlightened because he dreaded to be it too much; and, more the slave of his passions than of his errors, he rejected truth, which manifested itself to him, merely because he looked upon it as a victorious and irresistible hand which was at last come to break asunder those fetters which he still loved. The light of Heaven finds, therefore, no doubts to dissipate in the minds of the magi, because it finds no passion in their hearts to overcome; and they well deserve to be the first-fruits of the Gentiles, and the first disciples of that faith which was to subjugate all nations to the Gospel.
Not but it is often necessary to acid, to our own light, the approbation of those who are established, to distinguish whether it be the right spirit which moves us; fallacy is so similar to truth, that it is not easy to avoid being sometimes deceived. Thus the magi, in order to be more surely confirmed in the truth of the prodigy which guides their steps, come straight to Jerusalem: they consult the priests and the scribes, as the only persons capable
