sides, the chagrin of having encountered scorn is so much more lively than any pleasure that can accrue from retorting it. Lastly, from the moment that you live solely for the world, and that your pleasures or your vexations depend wholly on it, the judgments of the world can never be indifferent to you.
Nevertheless, it is in the midst of all these vexations that happiness must be at least professed. Every thing attributed to you, either by truth or vanity, is called in question: your birth, your talents, your reputation, your services, your success, your prudence, and even your honour. If you go to wreck, your incapacity accounts for it: if successful, the honour is given to chance, or to your inferiors: if you enjoy the good opinion of the public, the judgment of the more knowing is appealed to from the popular error: if possessed of the art of pleasing, it is immediately said that you have made a thorough use of your talents, and that you have been only too agreeable: if your conduct be superior to any attack, the most poignant ridicule is directed against your temper. Lastly, be whom ye may, high or low, prince or subject, the most desirable situation for your vanity is that of being unacquainted with the world's opinion of you. Such is the life of the world. The same passions which bind us together, disunite us: envy and detraction blacken our noblest qualities: and our gratifications find censurers in those who copy them.
But a believing soul is sheltered from all these uneasinesses. As he courts not the esteem of men, neither does he fear their scorn; as he has no intention of laying himself out to please, neither is he surprised to find that he has not done it. God, who sees him, is the only Judge he fears, and who, at the same time, consoles him for the judgments of men. His glory is the testimony of his own conscience. His reputation he seeks in the fulfilment of his duty. He considers the suffrages of the world as the rock of virtue or as the reward of vice; and, without even paying attention to its judgments, he is satisfied with giving it good examples. But what do I say, my brethren? The world itself, all worldly as it is, so full of censures, malignity, and contempt for its own worshippers, is forced to respect the virtue of those who hate and despise it. It appears that virtue imprints on the person of a real righteous man, a dignity, a something, I know not what, of divine, which attracts the veneration and almost the worship of worldly souls; it appears that this intimate union with Jesus Christ occasions his being irradiated, as I may say, like the three disciples on the holy mount, with a part of that celestial splendour which the Father shed around his well-beloved Son, and by which all liberty ceases of refusing homage. It is an inalienable right which virtue has over the heart of men; and, by a deplorable caprice, the world despises the passions it inspires, and respects the virtue it strives against. Not that the esteem of the world, so worthy itself of being despised, can be any great consolation to the believing soul. But this consolation is, that he sees the world condemned even by the world, its pleasures decried even by those who hunt after them,
