have done wickedly; but these sheep, what have they done? Let thine hand, I pray thee, be against me and against my father's house/'
Behold your model. By terminating your disorders, terminate the cause of the public evils; in the persons of the poor, offer up to God the retrenchment of your pleasures and of your profusions, as the only righteous and acceptable sacrifice which is capable of disarming his anger; and seeing these scourges fall upon the earth only in punishment of the abuses which you have made of your abundance, bear you likewise, in lessening these abuses, their anguish and bitterness. But that the public misfortunes should be perceivable neither in the splendour and pride of your equipages, nor in the sensuality of your repasts, nor in the magnificence of your palaces, nor in your rage for gaming and every criminal pleasure, but solely in your inhumanity toward the poor; that every thing abroad, the theatres, the profane assemblies of every description, the public festivals, should continue with the same vigour and animation, while charity alone shall be chilled; that luxury should every day increase, while compassion alone shall diminish; that the world and Satan should lose nothing through the misery of the times, while Jesus Christ alone shall suffer in his afflicted members; that the rich, sheltered in their opulence, should see only from afar the anger of Heaven, while the poor and the innocent shall become its melancholy victims: great God! thou wouldst then overwhelm only the unfortunate in sending these scourges upon the earth! Thy sole intention then should be to complete the destruction of those miserable wretches, upon whom thy hand was already so heavy in bringing them forth to penury and want! The powerful of Egypt should alone be exempted by the exterminating angel, while thy whole wrath would fall upon the afflicted Israelite, upon his poor and unprovided roof, and even marked with the blood of the Lamb! Yes, my brethren, the public calamities are destined to punish only the rich and powerful, and the rich and the powerful are those who alone suffer not: on the contrary, the public evils, in multiplying the unfortunate, furnish an additional pretext toward dispensing themselves from the duty of compassion.
Last excuse of the disciples, founded on the great number of the people who had followed our Saviour into the desert: These people are so numerous, said they, that two hundred pennyworth of bread is not sufficient for them, that every one may take a little. Last pretext which they oppose to the duty of charity — the multitude of the poor. Yes, my brethren, that which ought to excite and to animate charity, extinguishes it: the multitude of the unfortunate hardens you to their wants: the more the duty increases, the more do you think yourselves dispensed from its practice, and you become cruel by having too many occasions of being charitable.
But, in the first place, whence comes, I pray you, this multitude of poor, of which you so loudly complain? I know that the misfortune of the times may increase their number: but wars, pestilences, and irregularity of seasons, all of which we at present ex-
